On Ansible - <AUTHOR> http://benscofield.com/on-ansible/ <comment><USER2> Anyone wanting to play around with Ansible should really check out Vagrant too. Quickly spin up Vagrant instances (VirtualBox, etc VMs) in seconds to test things. I use Vagrant heavily to test puppet manifests/modules, and have thrown together several screenscasts about Vagrant @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant) and one about Learning Puppet with Vagrant @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with- vag...](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with-vagrant) but you can do the same things with Ansible.

See Vagrant & Ansible docs @ [http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/ansible.html](http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/ansible.html)

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I set up our dev team on Vagrant+Ansible+Github to ensure that we all have identical development deployment environments. Now pushing out configuration changes is as simple as doing a git push and telling everyone to pull and re-deploy their dev hosts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hope no one minds me sharing this here:

[http://lattejed.com/first-five-and-a-half-minutes-on-a- serve...](http://lattejed.com/first-five-and-a-half-minutes-on-a-server-with- ansible)

I'm not surprised most of the comments are positive. Ansible is a great tool. I recently started using it and would recommend it without qualification.

The linked post contains a simple Ansible playbook for hardening a virgin (Linux, Ubuntu in this case) install as well as how to install Ansible (on OS X) and some of the basics.

<comment><USER5> I was a bit put off by the very first thing being a download of unverified source code over a non-encrypted protocol, which was then run as root. Later worked out that you only did that on the ansible server, not on every server you deploy, but still.

The use of files in /tmp in the ansible rules is also asking for trouble (unless ansible goes to lengths to securely write to files in /tmp without eg following symlinks). debconf-set-selections can read from stdin, or you can put the file somewhere better.

<comment><USER6> Just to be clear -- by "unverified source code", you mean a github checkout. You can definitely clone github by HTTPs if you like.

Ansible does in fact use your home directory for writing files by default and the locations are not predictable.

There are also OS packages available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't say enough good things about Ansible. Just finished migrating 90% of our provisioning scripts away from Chef (they were due an overhaul anyways) to Ansible.

It feels liberating to say the least and knowing that I no longer have to train people to use Chef or worry about my remote Chef server going down unexpectedly is a big benefit.

Ansible:

\- faster

\- drop-dead simple syntax (easily extendable with modules)

\- did I mention modules? There are a TON.

\- readable playbooks

\- just plain fun

</comment><comment><USER8> We've also been using Ansible where I work and it's great. Chef/Puppet are probably more powerful, but I also found them more complicated to setup and use.

Ansible seems to hit this sweet spot between easy of use, flexibility, and functionality that is really great for people or organizations that are managing modest numbers of servers. Cases where Chef/Puppet would be overkill.

<comment><USER9> That is the feeling I get from Ansible, its seems easier to get up and running but I wonder if it is more powerful than Puppet as you expand beyond the initial phase. I have been implementing Puppet at work and the ramp up was hardeous but I am now at a state where I can do powerful things with Puppet(ENC, Hiera, Dashboard).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're new to ansible, I just released a quite extensive set of roles (basic server setup, security hardening, firewall, mailserver, nginx from source, oracle jdk, scala, monit, ...) on github [shameless plug]. I was missing these when I started out, so I hope it will help others. There's even a complete personal cloudbox setup (including an extensive idiot-proof tutorial) based on this included, as well as a vagrantbox to test the others.

[https://github.com/pjan/the-ansibles](https://github.com/pjan/the-ansibles)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing! Looks like you can eliminate the playbooks in the 'roles' directory with all of the manual includes if you've moved over to roles.

<comment><USER10> Hi Michael. You're welcome.

Tried working with roles, but it didn't allow me the fine-grained control I was looking for, at least not at the scale I'm currently using them.

I like to have the ability of just adding a new 'role' (wrong official terminology, but applicable to this use) to a machine (so adding it in a [x:children] in my examples here) without having to create a specific/exceptional role for it, yet also keep track of it (rather than just pointing a role to a machine without an audit trail). - If this makes any sense (Happy to discuss on another channel if you're willing to :-))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had a very similar "epiphany" when I was looking choosing a CM tool (see [http://www.selesy.com/news/14](http://www.selesy.com/news/14)). I'd add one reason to your list (and it's a biggie for me) - You don't have to install a client on every machine. Since I'm already using public/private keys for access, I'm ready to provision new machines immediately.

Recently I've been pairing Vagrant and Ansible so that developers' workstations are provisioned by the same playbooks that build the production infrastructure. This is a huge win as there's no variation in how someone set up their machine.

My next step is to use Cobbler to actually manage booting new machines and adding them to specific profiles (the phase prior to Ansible's CM role). In essence, cobbler provides the hosts file for Ansible.

Nice article and please share tips and tricks as you go!

<comment><USER12> (Post author here) Re: agents -- yep. I should've called that out explicitly, as it further supports the provisioning vs. ongoing factor in my decision- making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Puppet on a project for a few months now, and I'm definitely not 100% on it: it's... very rough around the edges, and far more fussy than it should be. But it does have one major thing going for it: wide OS support, specifically including Windows.

Ansible doesn't seem to have this, which makes it a non-starter for me. The project mentioned above that I'm working on is a build farm, and that farm includes Ubuntu, RHEL, and Windows boxes. Ansible also doesn't look like it was designed to shield Playbook writers from the underlying OS much, either. At least, it doesn't seem to have any analogue to Puppet's OS-independent `package` resource; Playbooks all call yum or apt specifically.

That's a shame, because it does look a lot simpler to get up & running with. Learning Puppet and building up useful manifests for it has been a real slog.

<comment><USER6> Actually ansible has quite a few abstractions available, namely you can use the 'group_by' module to dynamically select machines by OS, and 'roles' which allow abstracting away behavior from applying state. The 'when' conditional can also be used for OS variance.

One thing you may want to look at are the playbooks that we use to set up AWX, our UI, which works on both CentOS and Ubuntu and has some very different steps in place.

You can also see some examples in github.com/ansible/ansible-examples

We don't believe in hiding too many OS details from you -- for instance, not only do package names vary between distributions but think about how Apache is managed so very differently between Ubuntu and CentOS -- in fact, we've observed in many cases that trying to pave over those things can make content a lot harder to work on.

Generally people know what infrastructure they are running on and I think it's best when you take advantage of that, though you can easily have certain steps (see the 'when' conditional) that apply to specific OSes.

Another thing Ansible does is make it easy to do conditionals at runtime, such as "if this file is present, then do this", etc.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, but I'm not finding a link to those playbooks anywhere in the Ansible docs. The only cross-platform example I could find in the examples was the riak one [1].

Based on that example and the modules you mentioned, I'm guessing that the only real mechanism for multi-OS playbooks are separate sets of YAML files for each OS? If so, that's not exactly a great abstraction, though I'll agree it is workable. Still seems to be leaving Windows out in the cold altogether, as well, which is a show-stopper for my mixed environments.

[1] [https://github.com/ansible/ansible- examples/tree/master/riak](https://github.com/ansible/ansible- examples/tree/master/riak)

<comment><USER6> Edited my response above a bit.

We're going to be adding Windows support this year but have been concentrating on *nix operating systems as that's the core of our user base.

Definitely would like feedback on what specifically on Windows you are managing and for what use cases.

<comment><USER13> Well, I've got two main use cases for configuration management tools: 1) managing CI build farms, and 2) managing my home network.

Both of those environments are mixed-OS. The build farms are composed of a Jenkins master with multiple slaves of various OSes: Ubuntu, RHEL, and Windows. My home network is running Kerberos and OpenAFS (amongst many other random things [1]) on Ubuntu and Windows.

> We don't believe in hiding too many OS details from you -- for instance, not > only do package names vary between distributions but think about how Apache > is managed so very differently between Ubuntu and CentOS -- in fact, we've > observed in many cases that trying to pave over those things can make > content a lot harder to work on.

I don't know... the Puppet module for Apache [2] seems to do a reasonably good job of managing this. Admittedly, pretty much none of the "main" Puppet modules support Windows, but the underlying resource system absolutely does, so adding that support is just a matter of submitting pull requests to the modules.

[1] Everything's documented here: [https://justdavis.com/karl/it/](https://justdavis.com/karl/it/)

[2] [https://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/apache](https://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/apache)

<comment><USER6> Yeah that's in a module. This would be akin to a role in Ansible.

If you are looking at the core language for either, it doesn't hide those things but you can put whatever logic you want in the role/playbook/manifest/etc.

Hope this explains things!

Thanks for more info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just finished writing a book where I compare the experience of using Puppet, Chef, Salt, and Ansible. I use each tool to build an identical system so you can get a sense of how each one approaches the same problem.

The most valuable thing I got from that project was my introduction to Ansible. It was really a shining star in the pack.

I have to give credit to its predecessors (CFEngine/Puppet/Chef) and its competitor Salt all for being great tools in their own right. But it is Ansible that has the power and simplicity to really take on the ultimate competitor: manual installs and hodge-podge shell scripts.

Many of you would be shocked at how many tech companies still don't use any kind of configuration management (CM) tool.

When you think about it, a company's server setup is essentially the foundational "app" that the actual business app runs on. So, not using a CM tool is kinda like having no tests and no version control for your most important software.

Sound insane? It is.

Most developers would laugh at a company that had zero tests and didn't version control or even backup their code. But that's exactly what many companies do with their systems.

Yet, for many businesses, they don't realize the astronomical risks and costs of this neglect.

At a recent client job, the former system administrator set up all their servers manually and left ZERO documentation. I had to spend a few weeks devining what he did and try to capture everything into a CM tool (Chef in this case). Not one week after I finished doing that, one of their key servers inexplicably failed. Fortunately, I had done the work needed and they were able to bring up a replacement within minutes. Had that work not been done, the company would have been severly crippled and might have even died due to the days of downtime that would have been inevitable.

That's just a tiny example. The cost savings for a business are huge when the team uses a CM tool. When it takes a couple minutes to bring up a new server instead of hours/days/weeks, that's a huge savings (assuming your engineers cost greater than $0).

With Ansible, there is no more an excuse for not using a CM tool. It's so simple that it can actually be _easier_ than doing a manual install or writing a shell script. Some of the more complex CM tools take difficult weeks to learn, but with Ansible you can be up and running with confidence in a couple hours.

Not only that, but Ansible gives you robust remote execution capabilities right out of the box along with a lot of other cool stuff.

Shameless plug:

If you want to see Ansible in action and how it compares to the other CM tools, check out my book. Just barely launched a few days ago: [http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt- stack-a...](http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack- ansible.html)

<comment><USER15> I'm probably going to buy your book because getting our servers to be managed in a sane way is something I'm slowly trying to drive at our company. But I noticed you mentioned that if you have more than 100 servers then it's not really a great resource for understanding what's going on with the different tools.

Where _can_ I gain that perspective?

<comment><USER14> Hi Dan,

It really depends on your situation. Please shoot me an email and we can discuss in more detail: email@example.com

All of the tools will scale to at least several thousand servers, but they each have slightly different ways of doing it.

I'd recommend choosing the tool that makes the most sense for you at your current scale since they all can probably scale to what you need.

I mention that the book is for folks with less than 100 servers because I don't go into how to set up these tools for higher scale in the book.

So, to get the info on how to scale up to very large pools of servers it'd probably be best to first pick a tool and then look at its specific documentation for scaling up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shameless plug (just wrote it yesterday): Getting Started with Ansible on Digital Ocean - [http://procbits.com/2013/09/08/getting-started-with- ansible-...](http://procbits.com/2013/09/08/getting-started-with-ansible- digital-ocean) (instructions will work with just about any remote Linux server)

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes, found Ansible to be really simple compared to salt stack which I used earlier.

<comment><USER18> I'm finding quite the opposite. IMHO saltstack, more importantly sls files are insanely simple and clear whereas ansible playbooks appear very "busy" for lack of a better term. It's likely a personal preference in my case but I've found salt to have a relatively clean interface and to be very readable even when coupled with templating.

<comment><USER6> Ansible is generally designed around being maximally auditable. For instance, an IT manager said he can write a list of tasks and take them to someone and it's easy for him, not knowing Ansible, to see what is going on. That's important to us because they are quick to prototype and don't end up looking like Perl.

Generally we discourage templating except in playbooks, because we don't like the idea of playbooks turning into code, and I don't like the idea of mixing a lot of Jinja2 syntax along with YAML syntax at the same time.

Playbooks can be broken up into small files if they get long.

This also keeps them machine readable, so if you wanted to later write a script to analyze them, you could. So it's very important for us that our files are actually valid YAML.

Because they are, they aren't a description that gets compiled for one server at a time, but are instead a process, so it's easy to have the steps on one server influence a server later on down the line.

I'm not sure of an example of a 'busy' playbook you've seen, but I'd suspect it's probably just needing some whitespace in between lines.

To me, while they may have taken some interesting choices here and there, I don't care for their format since it seems to have taken Puppet syntax and made it more obscure -- and the idea of mixing template loops and such in there and having two interlaced languages is too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The widespread use of Puppet also has some benefits:

\- lots of documentation

\- Foreman ( [http://theforeman.org/](http://theforeman.org/) , backed by Redhat) as a great alternative to Puppet Enterprise

\- projects like GitHub's Boxen ( [http://boxen.github.com/](http://boxen.github.com/) ) to bootstrap your devel machine

\- a large repository of modules available: [https://forge.puppetlabs.com/](https://forge.puppetlabs.com/)

\- a couple of books, training, conference, if you like those things

However, I'm very aware of those ugly warts, so there's a lot of potential for a successor.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, to us it's not just a configuration focus.

One of the focuses in creating Ansible was to have an easy-to-use system where it was just as easy to push apps, so you don't have to strap things like Fabric and Capistrano on top.

Another major example is how easy it is to do zero-downtime rolling upgrades on top, from the core language, without having to provide any glue on top to get there -- so it can easily say "target 50 out of my 500 servers at once", and work with load balancing and outage windows to walk across your infrastructure and upgrade production applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ansible is great, but I've just burned an entire day (well, half a day) fighting bugs in it after doing a pip install --upgrade. So IMHO: The model is sound but it's still really unstable.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, that's interesting, and not something I hear often at all. What github bugs have you filed? Have you stopped by the mailing list to ask for help?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sprinkle deserves a mention if you're looking for to visioning only. It's Ruby, so it may be more appealing for Rubyists.

* DSL and wrappers for common shell tasks

* Uses Capistrano, which you're probably already familiar with

* Uses eRB for templates (more familiar friends)

* Does not require Ruby on the server

* Simple application structure (easy to extend)

[https://github.com/sprinkle-tool/sprinkle](https://github.com/sprinkle- tool/sprinkle)

</comment><comment><USER22> the thing that keeps me away from ansible is the pricing model. I find 100$/year/server way too much. and nobody can ensure me that the OSS version is all I'll always need.

<comment><USER23> I find this a curious objection. Would you still have hesitated when, as was the case until very recently, there was only the OSS version?

<comment><USER22> Probably I wouldn't have. I now they have to monetize the product, and for a software with simplicity as the strongest selling point, doing it through consulting/support I guess would be a conflict of interests. But when I saw the prices I was a bit shocked, and made me doubt about the company's strategy in the long term.

<comment><USER6> Hey guys, I'd suggest you look at some competitors for pricing and come back with me, they aren't really that different.

We're not going to be holding back on anything in Ansible, in fact, we're seeing several hundred contributors each month and are adding an average of 20 new modules to core each release.

This release also adds role dependencies and lots of nice new performance features.

For those looking for better solutions to things from proprietary software vendors, this provides a lot of options. If you're looking to not need those kind of features, Ansible is still there.

One thing we're not going to do is keep making Ansible more and more complicated over time -- there's a major focus on keeping it simple. When I started this project I said "if I can make a consultancy out of this I'm doing it wrong" :)

Actually being a company is good for us -- it allows us to hire extra people to work on Ansible, and it's allowing us to do more for the community not less!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I converted from Puppet to Ansible - best decision ever. Much easier to maintain - much easier to train others.

</comment><comment><USER25> Ansible still has this problem: [http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/posts/6-why-theres-no- rai...](http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/posts/6-why-theres-no-rails-inc)

It's also GPLv3. The WordPress community (oops nevermind, they aren't in the community because Matt Mullenweg says they aren't </s>) has plenty of problems with GPLv2. The GPLv3 is even longer and has more possible interpretations. I'm sure someone could interpret the GPLv3 such that YAML playbooks are GPLv3.

<comment><USER26> YAML playbooks can be under whatever licence you choose.

They aren't /linked/ in to or in any way part of ansible.

They are completely input to ansible. Saying that playbooks would be 'infected' or something is absurd. It would be like saying if I use GNU tar to compress a file, that file is now GPL.

And, after all that, even if your playbooks were GPL, there is no reason at all that you'd have to release them. It's perfectly fine to have internal non- released mods to GPL software.

<comment><USER25> Most of the talk about linking is gone from the GPLv3. It's mentioned multiple times in the GPLv2 [1] but only once in the GPLv3 [2]. This to me means that it doesn't matter much whether it's a compiler or an interpreter.

As for your tar example, the input to tar, to me, is pretty clearly data. The YAML from ansible, on the other hand, straddles the line between code and data. If I consider it to be code, though, in most cases it calls out to Ansible's GPLed modules. If it was Python doing this it would be pretty clear to me that it would fall under the GPL. I'm not sure I see the distinction between a sequence of function calls in Python and a sequence of tasks in YAML for ansible.

When you flatly state that "YAML playbooks can be under whatever license you choose" you are doing something common in the GPL world, which is making a specific interpretation for the GPL for a specific project. This has been done with WordPress. The distinction between JavaScript, CSS, and PHP code has been made by the leaders of the WordPress project. It doesn't come directly from the GPL. I don't like this at all. I think if they want specific rules they should state them in the license, and not do some hand waving so it looks like they're just using a standard license.

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html) [2] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)

<comment><USER26> GPL3 - .5:

> 'A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, > > which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which > are > not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a > volume of > a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if > the > compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the > access or > legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the > individual works > permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does > not cause this > License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.'

Doesn't that cover it pretty much?

You can distribute a GPL program, such as Ansible, and even bundle it _with_ your playbooks, modules, etc, as those are explicitly NOT extensions of ansible, they are separate, you now have an "aggregate". And as long as you aren't modifying the original GPL program, then "Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate". So you could licence your modules and playbooks in whatever licence you want. To be honest though, you don't need to licence them at all, if they are just for internal company use. And if you're going to distribute them, it doens't matter what licence it is.

Next, you aren't actually in 90% of circumstances, actually distributing ansible, or your playbooks. You're running it yourself (either you, or your company). That's actually one nice thing about it, you aren't installing extraneous software on the machines you're managing.

GPL covers the distribution of software, and requires the source to also be distributed along side it. It does not cover the use of it.

Wordpress, et al, are a slightly different situation. There, you actually are distributing and installing it on multiple computers. You're also distributing parts of it, in that quite a bit of it (javascript, templates, etc) are going to and from client machines, and even running bits of it on client computers. It's a bit more complicated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the Government Went After Matthew Keys - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-the-government-went-after-matthew-keys <comment><USER2> An average person might not know better than to talk to the FBI. But this guy considered himself to be a journalist? He should have kept quiet. Period. End of discussion. Was he utterly unaware of exactly how and why Martha Stewart went to prison?

Seriously. There are Youtube videos that go over this. I can't believe this guy fell for the oldest trick in the book!

I guess it's either one of

1) journalists are used to people talking to them, which makes them willing to talk to law enforcement

2) this guy thinks he's the smartest guy in the room (e.g. "this is bullshit"). I guess he never watched any episodes of Columbo? The smart person always goes to jail at the end. Just ask Martha.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those wanting some more background on Keys in general I made a timeline [1] There's also a good discussion of the sentencing guidelines here [2].

[1][http://newslines.org/matthew-keys/](http://newslines.org/matthew-keys/) [2][https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew- keys...](https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew-keys- possible-sentence-conceals-prosecutorial-power/)</comment>


Xapo – Bitcoin debit card - <AUTHOR> https://xapo.com/en/wallet/

<comment><USER2> FYI:

Unfortunately, due to financial regulations in the U.S. and India, Xapo cannot currently ship debit cards to addresses located in the U.S. or India. --> [http://help.xapo.com/95428-Is-the-Xapo-Debit-Card- available-...](http://help.xapo.com/95428-Is-the-Xapo-Debit-Card-available-in- every-country)

<comment><USER3> It's sad to see that the united states has to be mentioned like this now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of people are also upset because they signed up for the beta paid a $15 fee with the promise that there wouldn't be any additional fees. 2 days ago, they decided to institute a $5 a month account fee.

<comment><USER5> True, although they did waive the $15 fee for these early-birds, and of course the product is completely optional. You can say no thanks whenever you want. I also wouldn't say THEY decided. You can't create your own debitcard, well you could but no merchant would accept it. You need a partnership with an existing network, they have one with VISA, which means they had to negotiate terms on a card and this is probably the best they could come up with given they're a relatively small unproven company in the debitcard space. Although it was naive and sloppy to not have communicated earlier that it'd be unlikely to be able to negotiate a completely free card with a partner like VISA, sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So they charge a 1% fee to fund the account with a wire transfer.

Can someone explain -- I am not attacking this, I am seriously wondering -- why anyone would wire funds into this account, pay a 1% fee, and then pay with a debit card like they could from any other bank account?

(I get if you already have bitcoin, but I'm wondering what the point of the wire transfer support is.)

Source: [http://help.xapo.com/questions/94070-Does-Xapo-charge-a- fee-...](http://help.xapo.com/questions/94070-Does-Xapo-charge-a-fee-to-make- a-deposit)

<comment><USER7> People might want to participate in and support the Bitcoin ecosystem, for economic, political, or technological reasons. People might just be curious about the technology and want to play with it.

<comment><USER6> That's a little abstract.. Without deep diving is there a quick summary of the economic/political/technological reasons why one would pay an extra 1% fee to pay this way? Apart from curiosity.

<comment><USER8> For me that's actually cheaper than what my bank charges for international transactions and transfers. I need this often enough that it would save me quite a bit of cash. Also there's no fee if you have existing bitcoins by the looks of things, so the 1% is just a convenience tax, afaik there are cheaper ways to buy bitcoins that circumnavigate this. I admit to not knowing much about bitcoin, but this product has piqued my interest as it might solve a few of my banking woes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Request early access... invite 20 of your friends!

No thanks

Also, your password to the account is a 4-digit pin? What?

<comment><USER10> If that's really all the security they have, it's kinda bad, but it does encourage the right attitude for early bitcoin adopters, which is only put as much bitcoin in any online wallet as you would in your actual wallet.

<comment><USER5> It's not the only security. In short there's a rate-limited pincode, 2FA, spending limits plus a password for your vault, and they offer insurance against lost bitcoins that you didn't cause.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Xapo isn't the first to do this. ANXBTC[1] in Hong Kong has been doing this for a couple of months now.

And they ship the card to the US, among other countries.

[1]:[http://debitcard.anxintl.com/](http://debitcard.anxintl.com/)

<comment><USER12> Fees are here: [https://anxbtc.com/faq#tab4](https://anxbtc.com/faq#tab4) under "What are the fees?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting, an odd mishmash. whilst the FAQ is big it is not specific - eg 'we are not a prepaid debit card' (do you have a deposit license?) ... 'We automatically withdraw money from your xapo wallet' (and that doesn't count as preloading?).

To me, it looks like they've taken a standard visa backed prepaid debit card (although not putting visa logo on it I thought was a breach of scheme rules). They've added a nice ui, and wrap around of saying you can use bit coins.

However. Bitcoins stops at the point of actually using the card, where they convert it into the issuing country's currency (assume here: Usd). You're still using visa / other scheme network to transact and they don't take bitcoins.

The other comments are bang on and prepaid cards are immensely profitable with trxn fees to load them up, and 'hidden' fees for doing fx. What's odd here is that people using bitcoin are presumably doing it because they like the idea of not having to pay for all that crap! Much comment about how the funds are insured for 100% against _any_ loss - but no mention of FDIC...

<comment><USER5> My intuition for their setup was something like this: You know how a company like Oracle might give its top sales people creditcards with spending limits (for sales dinners with big customers), and Oracle pays for this?

I think Xapo is similar. But instead of giving the card to its employees, it sells it for $15 to its customers. And the spending limit? That's dynamic, based on the amount in the bitcoin wallet.

At the moment a payment is made, Xapo pays for it and it's a regular debitcard transaction. No bitcoin involved.

And then Xapo goes and removes the equivalent value in bitcoins from the respective user's wallet, which is not much more than earmarking those coins in their internal accounting as being 'company funds' now, no bitcoin blockchain involved.

That means there's no bitcoin or blockchain technology involved anywhere in the process. And yes, it's just as expensive as legacy banking products.

Why is it cool? Because it allows people to store their wealth in bitcoin, yet use a debitcard as they normally could. They need not a bank, or trust a bank. They need not a national currency or indeed trust monetary policy. If you're in Cyprus in 2012, that means your money wasn't seized by the government. If you were in Argentina in 1990, you wouldn't have suffered from 300% annual inflation. This debitcard is really to plug bitcoiners into the existing payment channels, and allow them to store wealth not in fiat but in bitcoin, for reasons similar to those of goldbugs. (e.g. it'd be no different from a debitcard connected to an account with gold-deposits/certificates)

I see it as a temporary product. IF and when bitcoin gains mainstream traction (if everyone follows Newegg, Expedia, Dish, Overstock, Tigerdirect, Reddit, Wikipedia etc) then one could not only store wealth in bitcoin, but also pay cheaply and securely and quickly with actual bitcoins. At that point, a debitcard will be redundant. But that's a long way away. Until then, a debitcard allows those who wish to hold wealth in bitcoin (again akin to goldbugs) needn't inconvenience themselves by being disconnected from the regular payment system everyone uses, they can now use a debitcard that's as shitty/brilliant as usual.

<comment><USER13> It's a thought - but I'm not convinced on scale. The market needs to be liquid enough to convert btc into target currencies easily. Otherwise, banks basically get btc, convert to domestic (regulated / 'insured') currency at point of receipt and then you're back in old world payments. N.b. I am straying from my area of knowledge but I am confused as to what would stop a btc based bank going bust or suffering from the same currency controls Cyprus put in place if you have put it in a wallet somewhere (we used to call this a deposit!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They charge a 3% fee for currency conversion, and that's every transaction since you are paying with bitcoin.

<comment><USER15> Also: "Note that there is a fee to store your coins in Xapo's Vault of 0.12% per year. The storage fee is charged in bitcoins and is calculated based on the number of coins you are transferring into the Vault."

<comment><USER16> Now that is just cute. Paying fee for them "storing" my deposits?? Seems wrong. I assume they themselves lend the bitcoins in their possession to others, this is where banks make most money after all. Unless of course Xapo actually has tunneled vaults deep in the mountains of Tai Mo Shan where they store shiny piles and piles of bitcoins...

<comment><USER5> Unless you're licensed as a bank, it'd be illegal to lend out these funds. As a mere money transmitter you are required to hold 100% of custodial funds, fractional reserve banking is not allowed.

Seeing as they've not ever communicated any lending product and as there's no hint of that anywhere, and seeing as they're the most funded ($40m) bitcoin company by reputable VCs who do due diligence and stress regulatory compliance, I doubt they'd be so blatantly breaking the law on this point.

The fee is indeed for the wallet service of insured storage with easy configurable pincode, password, 2-factor authentication and daily spending limits. If you can do all that yourself, awesome. But there's plenty of mainstream users who haven't a clue of proper security measures, and paying 0.12% annually for secure and insured storage, sounds like a decent deal.

I don't use it myself, I can easily set up my own secure cold storage. But it's a nice product, particularly for securing something many see as an investment vehicle that can easily do 10x, perhaps 100x value increase in the next 10 years. Paying 0.015x every 10 years to store, secure and insure that vehicle isn't such a big deal, and that's their fee structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this similar to CoinJar's Swipe?

[https://www.coinjar.com/dna](https://www.coinjar.com/dna)

</comment><comment><USER18> Does it have chip & pin? It will need that to work well in Canada.

<comment><USER19> I was in Ontario for a few days and saw no problems using a mag stripe instead of a chip. (We do use a chip when we can thanks to Amex though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fees. Hundreds of bloody fees.</comment>


Show HN: Bitcoin site I started in under 1 hour - Really Rapid prototyping - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoinsaresexy.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Just want to say that I've been really excited about bitcoins and I wanted to start an experimental bitcoin business. The process was pretty straightforward:

\- Think of a name and idea (I thought amazonbitcoins going down was a shame so decided to start another site without trademark issues..)

\- Download twitter bootstrap (I've never used it before - I'm more of a backend engineer)

\- Start writing code while reading the docs. (very good docs on bootstrap btw)

\- Find a merchant account (bitpay took about 5 minutes to get setup)

\- Ended up developing an entirely static site which has a full end-to-end solution!

I'm pretty impressed that bitcoin even allows me to do that. I have a site with a fully integrated payment solution in under one hour.

I still haven't figured out how conversions back to USD/EUR would work but I'll get there :)

So that's my Show HN for today.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm very skeptical of this, because everything is listed under the actual dollar cost, even with the bitcoin conversions. How is this viable?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm taking a hit on the exchange rate hoping for a future appreciation of bitcoin value. Basically, I wanted to speculate in bitcoins in a productive way. This was the best experiment I could think of in the short term.

Also, the dollar > btc conversion is handled by bitpay.com.

Most of the ideas came out of an earlier discussion on reddit and viable bitcoin businesses, etc. The idea was to start something that consumers would really want i.e. good deals.</comment></comment>


You Get What You Pay For - <AUTHOR> http://linux-haters-redux.blogspot.com/2009/01/you-get-what-you-pay-for.html

<comment><USER2> This article reads like troll bait. Should this be on Hacker News? The author (whoever it is) talks more about the problems with free software rather than the _"two major problems that Linux faces concerning its spread on the desktop"_. The rant itself seems a bit too incoherent.

> _Desktop-Users need commercial applications..._

Umm... no. Different users have different needs. The vast amount of free software available should be able to cover most of this need. For example, the default Ubuntu installation includes an Office Suite, a browser, media players, and more. OpenOffice is free. Firefox is free. MPlayer is free. If these applications are free and people use them, why would you _need_ their commercial counter-parts?

> _The extra ten percent of features that makes an app usable for your average > Desktop-User are the 10% that every developer hates; those features are hard > and boring to develop, and implementing them is just no fun. You need to pay > developers to implement them._

This is simply not true! Even though many projects have "hard and boring parts to develop", that doesn't mean that a programmer would absolutely refuse to code those parts without compensation. For example, the Linux kernel is made from a "labor of love". People wanted to actually develop this, for free even! I am sure that there are many parts in the kernel that have "hard and boring parts", but that doesn't mean that programmers will not do it without pay.

> _PE calibre software will NOT be created by the community. It just takes TOO > much manpower, TOO much work. No one is coding that in his spare-time._

GIMP, as the author stated before, is an alternative. The author dismisses GIMP as inferior without stating why. GIMP _is_ a perfectly decent alternative for people who don't want to shell out money for Photoshop.

More generally to the author's last argument, lots of things require a lot of manpower and work. Just because it is hard work does not necessarily mean that no one will do it. Some people might have a surprising amount of determination.

> _This kind of software will also not be created by an open-source company. > There is no business-model that would supports the effort. Just imagine if > Adobe released PE as open-source - you think that people would still shell > out 70€ for a boxed-version? Nope, people would just copy it. There are some > exceptions. For example, Mozilla receives their money from Google not from > their users._

First off: yes, it has! How has the open source community survived so long? Secondly, not everything must be a business. Peope do create things out of pure volition.

Thirdly, the real world isn't zero-sum. For every gain, there is not an equal loss. If Adobe open-sources its products, it doesn't mean that no one would buy it. A comparable example to this is the music industry's pirating problem. Even though many people use torrents to get their music for free, there exists this "sampling effect" that actually encourages people to buy music. Relating this to the author's suggestion that people wouldn't "shell out 70 euros for a boxed version", yes some would.

Source: [http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/01/dutch-government- stu...](http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/01/dutch-government-study-net- effect-of-p2p-use-is-positive.ars)

> _See? That is another typical example of the difference between open and > closed source software. Will a great spell-checker be created by hobbyists > in their spare time? No! It is a repetitive, boring task, and coding skill > alone does not suffice. You also need language experts. Will they work for > free? No! Then who will pay them?_

Um... yes. A great free spellchecker has been created before. It is called Aspell (and others exist, also). Secondly, a _spell checker_ doesn't require a "language expert", it simply requires a dictionary (or word list). Granted, there are funky grammar rules in some languages like conjugation, but they can be directly inserted into the dictionary. If you do need a "language expert", ask your friends to help (or if you are attending college, ask a foreign- language professor). Would they necessarily demand payment for their services? Of course, there are exeptions...

> _For each of the software programs mentioned, there is a half-assed open > source clone._

That is very rude! Programming for free is a labor of love! Why would a programmer "half-ass" something as hard as a clone of another program. If the programmer has no interest, then he or she would not even bother with creating the clone! Again, that is a very insulting remark.

Regarding the second half of the author's rant, people create their own resources for drivers. If it isn't there, make it! For example, open-source wireless drivers. There are a lot of different kinds of wireless cards available. Not all have a driver for Linux provided by the company. Therefore, people create their own, like MadWifi. If you need a specific driver, chances are that someone else probably already made it, especially the more popular products.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_wirel...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_wireless_drivers)

> _Linux on the desktop is a joke. Nothing more._

A lot of people use it; how is it a joke?

No one environment suits everyone perfectly. MS Windows works for some, OS X works for others, and some prefer Linux. Please, do not generalize and say that Linux is not right for everyone.

<comment><USER3> "GIMP is a perfectly decent alternative for people who don't want to shell out money for Photoshop"

It _can_. It really depends on the features that you need. I can hardly imagine myself doing some professional Webdesign with Gimp. Im a Photoshop user and i tried hard to learn Gimp to do some serious work on it. I think that it may not suit every Designer's needs. But for Illustrator, i think there is a valid alternative: InkScape. I think it's one of the most promising piece of open-source software for graphic designers. I liked it. But i dont use it since im more comfortable with Illustrator. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The one point that I agree with the author on is that it is exceedingly hard to write a non-trivial closed-source application that is easy to install and works on all Linux distributions (or even just the major ones like RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Gentoo, Mint, Mandriva, CentOS, Xandros, and Slackware).

The app would have to support at least Gnome and KDE, and ideally should work with XFCE, Enlightenment, and [flux/black]box. And then you have to deal with the nightmare that is linux audio (oss, alsa, esound, arts, jack, gstreamer, phonon, etc).

I mean, static linking, autoconf, etc. all help, but it's still a lot of work. But testing each release on every (even major) combination of distribution, CPU-type, Window Manager, graphics tool-kit, and audio framework quickly becomes untenable. The return on investment for this sort of testing for a software author is staggeringly small.

And this is from someone who uses Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) as their primary OS.

</comment><comment><USER5> (projecting this article to 10 years ago)

Server-Users need commercial applications. That's just the way it is. The extra ten percent of features that makes an app usable for your average Server-User are the 10% that every developer hates; those features are hard and boring to develop, and implementing them is just no fun. You need to pay developers to implement them.

Do you really think that something like INFORMIX-ONLINE is going to be created by the community? My coworker, who manages our customer service group, shelled out 1500 deutschmarks for INFORMIX. He does not regret it, even though installation is a PITA. Why? It just works: it works with our network; he gets results fast; there are a bunch of skilled DBAs and books available, etc.

In Linux we are stuck with mSQL. Sorry, but no cigar! INFORMIX calibre software will NOT be created by the community. It just takes TOO much manpower, TOO much work. No one is coding that in his spare-time.

This kind of software will also not be created by an open-source company. There is no business-model that would supports the effort. Just imagine if INFORMIX released INFORMIX-ONLINE as open-source - you think that people would still shell out 1500DM for a boxed-version? Nope, people would just copy it. There are some exceptions. For example, Cygnus receives their money from chip manufacturers not from their users.

</comment><comment><USER6> For every argument that states that something will "Never" happen there will always be exceptions to blow their theories out of the water.

Here is one such case.

In the 3D modelling software world, Maya by Autodesk is arguably the "best" 3D modelling program out there for the Film and Gaming industries. It also ranks as one of the most expensive (the base version costs about $2k, and the complete is around $7k)

It comes in a linux flavour.

That's not to say theres no good alternative open source solution - Blender is one. While it doesn't have the depth of features that Maya has, producing animations in Blender is typically a faster process due to its unique nature.

I've also (due to the nature of the open source of linux/blender) been able to integrate Amazon's EC2 directly with my computer so that it becomes a virtual render farm which I can dedicate as many machines to rendering meshes/animations as I like, quickly and easily with little outlay in capital.

This is just too damn difficult to do under the other OS's (I will be attempting it under OSX soonish though)

Generalisations just don't work IMO.

<comment><USER5> _Generalisations just don't work IMO._

All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. Consult your pineal gland! →←

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is deeply flawed.

People _do_ pay for linux, and sometimes more than other OS's. So yes, you do get what you pay for.

Most commercial applications run just fine on linux. This is because most commercial applications are written for the web these days. Most of these web applications work fine on linux.

You can't compare the 20,000+ included, and free applications that linux comes with out of the box to a bunch of crappy legacy windows commercial desktop applications.

"Linux supports more different types of devices than any other operating system ever has in the history of computing." -- Microsoft even agrees with this statement, and MS research confirmed it.

Linux has _way_ more drivers than windows. Out of the box, it includes many more drivers... and going forward, many of the drivers will still be available in 2-5 years than with windows. You often don't need to search random websites for your drivers either... they come with linux.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a nonsense article, why did that get voted up? He's uninformed at best, what a waste of time.</comment>


NetBSD now runs on Amazon EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.netbsd.org/amazon_ec2/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319632>

</comment><comment><USER3> Only a matter of time, netbsd runs in so many different places it even works well in xen.</comment>


Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer - <AUTHOR> https://energy.gov/eere/buildings/downloads/novel-ultra-low-energy-consumption-ultrasonic-clothes-dryer <comment><USER2> It's not the fastest clothes dryer, but I often use one that runs on fusion in outer space.

<comment><USER3> For apartment goers (or those that live in uncooperative climates) the reliability of such a system is a bigger problem than the speed.

But for those that can use it, it is indeed a great system.

<comment><USER4> Can you put your clothes on a fire escape? Or in your bathroom (works great if you have a bathroom with a window).

<comment><USER3> Every apartment complex I've lived in has had rules banning hanging clothes (no idea about enforcement). Also, for any group larger than 2 I imagine the clothes would not dry fast enough to keep up.

And most bathrooms are small and often without a window.

Not a complaint, just pointing out that sun-drying is often not a real choice. Often it is.

<comment><USER5> Many management types will attempt to tell you that you can't hang clothes on a line. In nineteen states, such rules are explicitly prohibited by state law: [http://www.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void- in...](http://www.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void- in-19-states/) . They have the cheeky name of "right to dry states".

A related thing often banned is external over-the-air antennas, protected by US federal law.

<comment><USER6> Well, the focus in that particular article is on HOA bans, not apartment ones. For instance, the Hawaii law (the first one I clicked on that seemed particularly cut-and-dried) is restricted to single-family homes and townhomes.

"The purpose of this Act is to prohibit real estate contracts, agreements, and rules from precluding or rendering ineffective the use of clotheslines on the premises of [b]single-family dwellings or townhouses[/b]." [0] [http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2009/bills/SB1338_CD1_....](http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2009/bills/SB1338_CD1_.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not just use a vacuum pump and pull the water vapor out at a constant temperature. You can flow 33C dry air (use a condenser before expanding and heating, if you like) across the clothes as they tumble to keep them from freezing.

You wouldn't have to pump below a 10% of an atmosphere to quickly dry your clothes (vapor pressure of water is 5% of an atmosphere at that temp).

To give an idea of how fast: With a 1liter/sec STP air intake, you would extract ~1gram/sec of water so in 15min you would remove ~1kg of water.

<comment><USER8> And with the air mostly removed, you can spin the drum really really fast! I think you're on to something here. :P Maybe not.

I've done hundreds of solvent evaporations under vacuum (rotovap). The problem is you need a trap, or else solvents condense in the pump which causes your efficiency to go down. So now you need a heat pump or similar, now you're talking about a really complicated dryer. But it'd be efficient.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, thanks for the comment on the condensation.

The output pump would really need to mostly pump water and vapor at the input and liquid at the output, but not to very low pressure... even a peristaltic might be doable (no rotary vane/blower needed). It was just a thought, I used to rotovap too so running through the calculations seemed like a fun idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A bit puzzled why GE needs government funding to do research -- they make a lot of money already.

The idea sounds pretty neat but I wonder about longevity of the piezeoelectric transducers. A clothes dryer needs to last at least 7-10 years, minimum. A resistive heating element is about as simple as you can get, and it's cheap to replace if it does burn out.

<comment><USER10> Batteries don't last this long, why does a dryer have to? it's not all about longevity ...

<comment><USER11> Because dryers are expensive appliances. If they're going to make one that only lasts one tenth as long, it better cost one tenth of the price too.

<comment><USER12> Take operating costs into account also.

<comment><USER13> And time lost waiting for a new one to be delivered, disposal fees...

<comment><USER14> Don't forget delivery and installation fees too. They don't deliver them to your house for free.

<comment><USER10> Who cares about delivery fees? it's the total cost that matters.

<comment><USER14> The delivery fee is a significant fraction of the total cost of a modern dryer in the US. Saving a little money by getting crappier dryers will likely have a larger total cost because of the delivery fees, and also the cost of your time in taking time off from work to accept delivery.

<comment><USER10> that dryer costing $180 at Home Depot has free shipping, by the way... [http://www.homedepot.com/p/Magic-Chef-Compact-1-5-cu-ft- Elec...](http://www.homedepot.com/p/Magic-Chef-Compact-1-5-cu-ft-Electric- Dryer-in-White-MCSDRY15W/301134985) .... and by the way, you are paying for shipping even if you by at the store (it is just included)

<comment><USER14> WTF? We're talking about real dryers here, not dorm-sized dryers that you can dry maybe 2 shirts in.

However, if you select the Samsung 7.5cf dryer, it also has free delivery. Of course, this is built into the price, and $550 for an appliance isn't pocket change.

<comment><USER10> here is a pocket change dryer that is slightly larger: [http://www.homedepot.com/p/Amana-6-5-cu-ft-Electric-Dryer- in...](http://www.homedepot.com/p/Amana-6-5-cu-ft-Electric-Dryer-in-White- NED4655EW/206029544) and of course it also has free shipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this mean the socks won't come out of the dryer warm? That's sort of a deal breaker for me.

<comment><USER16> Can't you stick them in the microwave?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > At the end of the project, appliance manufacturers including GEA will be > ready to invest in this technology and commercialize it. This will result in > the U.S. becoming the leader in the clothes drying industry and generate new > jobs and innovative applications of the technology.

Pretty sure as soon as China is aware of this idea (if not already), they will have something in production and out the door faster and at a much larger scale than the US. Could someone explain why innovative ideas like this have to be published _before_ they're actually built?

<comment><USER18> GE appliances is already a Chinese company so pretty sure they have some chance to be the first to actually commercialize it. So no need to worry about China copying it..

<comment><USER19> As if I could ever find a clothes dryer in china.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's the effect on the clothes themselves? I won't let anything but underwear, gym clothes, socks, and tees in a dryer because it's generally considered bad for them. I hang dry all of my wovens.

</comment><comment><USER21> And how will my cat react to this thing? Something with enough sonic energy to vaporize a significant volume of water is probably loud enough to wake every animal in the area.

<comment><USER22> Looks like they calculated the optimum as ~500-600 Hz? That's in human hearing range too.

<comment><USER21> Give it a try: "600 Hz Sine Wave Sound Frequency Tone" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERHcqYNLHyg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERHcqYNLHyg)

and 500: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlEfshsoyZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlEfshsoyZk)

If that really is the range they are targeting, this product is doomed. That will be one heck of a noise to cancel. "Soundproof box" is right up there with perpetual motion, zero-point energy, and spherical chickens in vacuums.

<comment><USER23> A 'soundproof box' is hard because most of those boxed things we want to quiet down (say, pets) still need to be a _part_ of our environment, breathing air and the like.

A clothes dryer, meanwhile, is a near-ideal case for vacuum isolation + elastic dampening. Build a box with a door; hang an airtight motorized barrel in the box from a bungee cord, with a _second_ door, and electrical connection; and then, whenever both doors are sealed at the same time, [slowly] evacuate the air from the box.

<comment><USER21> If you are going to go through all the effort to create a proper vacuum, and then isolate all the little penetrations needed to maintain whatever is inside, just throw the wet clothes into the vacuum and call the thing a freeze dryer. No sonic required. A heat lamp inside a vacuum chamber would probably dry stuff using much less energy than either sonic of hot air.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure whether organic materials would be very happy with all their water content getting sublimated out of them due to the sudden drop in pressure. The result would probably look more like cotton jerky than fluffy towels. (If anyone has a Youtube link of such a reaction, though, I'd love to be proven wrong!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The demonstration seems to assume that physical contact is possible. For layered clothes it may not work that well, if at all. But! Even if we assume there's no progress in that area, I can still see this being used in an industrial laundry. I've worked in one and there are machines specialized for different types of garments. With automation, it may actually make economic sense. So while use in a consumer market may seem far out, industrial applications are still possible.

</comment><comment><USER25> Electric ceiling fan in a small room dries a stand full of clothes in 4-5 hours in a 70%RH climate and costs a LOT less than drum dryers and is safer for the garments.

<comment><USER26> This is how I dry all of my cycling kits, gloves, socks, warmers, etc. I have a four hanging drying racks [1] that I hang on the four ceiling fans in my home gym. The lycra dries in only an hour or two since there is airflow on all sides of the items. It makes for very efficient drying and it wholly prevents heat degradation of the lycra.

[1]: [https://www.containerstore.com/s/stainless-steel-lingerie- dr...](https://www.containerstore.com/s/stainless-steel-lingerie-drying- rack/d?productId=10035031&q=drying)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The video showed a small bit of fabric touching the transducer. I'm not sure how well it's going to work with a big heap of jeans, jumpers and the like.

</comment><comment><USER28> Depending on the ultrasonic frequency used, and the spacing of seams/tailoring of the clothes, it's possible that some clothes will come out of the dryer in pieces, and you will have to sew them back together... Although I suspect wide availability of these dryer will quickly eliminate that kind of sewing, much like the prevalence of dishwashers has almost eliminated non-dishwasher-safe kitchen stuff.

</comment><comment><USER29> So this project ran from 2014-2016. Any word on whether anything was accomplished?

</comment><comment><USER30> > DOE's Building Technologies Office is seeking new clothes dryer technologies > that can increase the energy factor (EF) from 3.7 to 5.43 lb/kWh without > increasing drying time by more than 20% over baseline units.

They're concentrating too much on kWh. One could use the same technology and focus on variable electricity pricing. I want a dryer that I turn at night, and it dynamically turns on-and-off as electricity rates go up and down. It ends at a smooth tumble in the morning so I can put on my day's clothes and fold the rest at it's lowest wrinkle-point.

<comment><USER31> In Australia, that's very hard to achieve because the residential energy market is heavily regulated specifically to _avoid_ exposing low-end consumers to spot pricing.

<comment><USER32> In at least WA, NSW, QLD and ACT you can go on time-of-use residential tariffs.

And driers (and washing machines - which use a considerable amount of energy particularly if they heat the water internally) typically already have timer- start functions.

<comment><USER31> Sure but time of use is _far_ less volatile than actual spot pricing. Hell, in WA and QLD it's not unknown for AEMO to post _negative_ energy prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I saw something like this demoed on Australian TV about 15 years ago. I was always wondering what happened to it!

</comment><comment><USER34> Will it kill bug infestations?

</comment><comment><USER35> I want to see a study done on such a devices safety. The sound waves it emit are able to desiccate clothing. What is the effect of these sound waves escaping the device? Would it desiccate living tissue?

<comment><USER36> Probably the same ultrasonics hat are used in humidifiers. Hint, they don't travel far.

<comment><USER37> They mention that in the video.

It also mentions that they're thinking of creating a tumble/drum dryer with these piezoelectrics. As opposed to a traditional tumble dryer that spins to aerate the cloths, I think the spinning motion would instead be required to pin the clothing against the piezoelectric lined drum (though I imagine it would need to stop and change direction periodically in order to expose different areas of the fabric to the drum wall).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If these go mainstream it would be thousands of times more handy to the small shop then for cloths. Vibratory cleaners with that kind of volume are crazy expensive!

</comment><comment><USER39> I sincerely hope this is no vaporware...

</comment><comment><USER40> Vibration of molecules... sounds alot like heat energy

<comment><USER41> As but the difference is in the amount of energy expended vibrating them no? It sounds to me more like vigorously shaking the water off the cloth fibers and then hoovering them up, which is much more energy efficient than heating said water until it turns into a vapor and hoovering it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The logical next leap is to cook food with ultrasound which will hopefully be somewhat faster than conventional cooking and less harmful (no protein denaturing [1]) than microwave cooking

1\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11088227](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11088227)

<comment> chroem- The whole _point_ of cooking food is to denature proteins and kill pathogens. Denatured proteins have exactly the same nutritional content as functional proteins: they're just not folded into their original and potentially dangerous shape anymore.

<comment><USER42> "denaturing" does sound scary and bad -- It's a dumb way to describe what happens in any cooking process.... it sounds like turning food into plastic before eating it (take the nature our of it) LOL.

Anyway, there are real health risks according to the World Health Organization:

"Food safety: Food safety is an important health issue. In a microwave oven, the rate of heating depends on the power rating of the oven and on the water content, density and amount of food being heated. Microwave energy does not penetrate well in thicker pieces of food, and may produce uneven cooking. This can lead to a health risk if parts of the food are not heated sufficiently to kill potentially dangerous micro-organisms. Because of the potential for uneven distribution of cooking, food heated in a microwave oven should rest for several minutes after cooking is completed to allow the heat to distribute throughout the food."

That sounds like nuking the surface of the food then waiting for it to cook after it has ben microwaved which may or may not fully achieve thorough cooking.

[http://www.who.int/peh- emf/publications/facts/info_microwave...](http://www.who.int/peh- emf/publications/facts/info_microwaves/en/)

<comment><USER43> That's why your microwave oven has a power setting. It toggles the magnetron on and off during cooking, so that your food cooks more evenly.

<comment><USER42> Yet it never does, unless maybe you have a $2000 microwave oven?

<comment><USER43> Yours doesn't toggle on and off when you use the power level controls? Maybe it's broken; this is a feature that all microwaves have, because it's so cheap to implement. Note that the lights and fans and things keep going; it's only the magnetron that turns on and off. You might hear a difference in the sound of the microwave, or a relay clicking when it toggles, but that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Ultrasonic Dryer? Who needs this? And DOE dropped nearly a million on it? Was it an SBIR grant with nice kickbacks? :-)

I found a washing machine with ultrasonic much more interesting:

[http://www.tovatech.com/blog/3759/ultrasonic- cleaner/ultraso...](http://www.tovatech.com/blog/3759/ultrasonic- cleaner/ultrasonic-washing-machine-looks-like-it-is-available-in-japan)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/dolfi-washing- devic...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/dolfi-washing- device_n_6510494.html)

Would be a little worried about stress on your clothes AND/OR Ears. [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/09/sounds-you-cant- hear-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/09/sounds-you-cant-hear-can- still-hurt-your-ears)

<comment><USER45> Maybe it will keep mice and bugs away while it is running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Advanced clothesline technology, now available with WiFi.</comment>


Integrating Microsoft and LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-linkedin-beginning-our-journey-together-satya-nadella <comment><USER2> Microsoft owns my "employee" identity thru office 365.

I don't love them owning my "job-searching" identity too.

Seems like the most valuable service they have to offer is to corporations. "Want to know how often your employee is updating their resume? Pay us for access." Of course they'll spin it differently, but in short that's the value.

<comment><USER3> And then they will also use that information to help other companies poach your employees, at best. At worst, the data will be purchased for some sales team to identify and target your company to sign some wildly overpriced long term sales contract. They will know employee behavior and who the key prospects are in your organization.

It has happened before.

Even I was shocked how tens of thousands of companies handed over mind blowingly valuable customer data to Facebook. They aggressively promoted their Facebook Page to their customer base: please like us on Facebook!

What did Facebook do? They took that data and sold it to competitors as ad inventory. I never saw a single company owner complain. Companies spent millions of dollars and years of effort building up a customer base, and just handed it right over to Facebook.

To put it in more blunt terms, Facebook stole companies assets through social engineering. I saw friends turn around and build profitable, multi-million dollar businesses through this single data usurpation channel.

Will companies get more savvy about locking down their data? I'm not counting on it.

<comment><USER4> Just a pet peeve, but please re-consider the casual use of the word "poach" when referring to companies hiring employees. It reduces a worker's agency to that of a farm animal or wild game, as if they were owned by their employer and "stolen" away by some other employer. I think we can all agree that we are not the property of our employers, so the word "poach" is pretty inappropriate and I'd argue moderately offensive.

The rest of your comment is spot on though, so thanks for posting it.

<comment><USER5> Use "lure" ... no, that implies that employees are like rodents. Next time try "propositioned"... no that's for whores.

This is tough stuff.

<comment><USER6> "recruit"

It isn't that hard :)

<comment><USER7> Implies you're a soldier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Redefining social selling through the combination of Sales Navigator and > Dynamics 365

When the acquisition was first announced, I stated that Salesforce should be very concerned.[0] Account-based marketing (what they're calling "social selling") is how successful startups (and others) sell to enterprises these days, and they're willing to shell out cash to software that helps them do that.[1] Having consulted many enterprise SaaS companies, I know that having the LinkedIn social graph integrated into their CRM would be worth the hassle of switching from Salesforce to Dynamics 365.

[0] Same reason why I'm selling my Salesforce holdings today.

[1] See dozens of VC-backed ABM software companies sprouting up everywhere and charging $xx,000 annually.

<comment><USER9> Your comment is the only intelligent comment on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't help but suspect this will be the end of LinkedIn. Why would any firm want Microsoft to have control of so much potential competitive intelligence? As well as the ability to potentially interrupt / snoop on critical communications?

Yeah, LI messages aren't as important to most people as plain email, but LI messages are used for a lot of recruiting and B2B sales stuff. Think about it like this: if I compete with Microsoft, why would I want to continue using LI to contact potential customers (or potential employees for that matter) thereby giving MS access to so much important info?

I wonder if all it's going to take to trigger a mass exodus away from LinkedIn is the emergence of a truly viable competitor?

<comment><USER11> You're exaggerating. Microsoft and Google literally own your email, while only recruiters check their LinkedIn messages, most of them being spam.

<comment><USER10> _while only recruiters check their LinkedIn messages, most of them being spam_

That does not jibe with my experience at all.

And it goes beyond the messaging thing anyway. LI hosts job postings directly, and has a lot of internal information about all sorts of companies. Now you might say "well, somebody could mine that stuff anyway", and that _might_ be true. But the LI API has some limits and scraping is a PITA.. but now MS has the data with direct access, which makes it far, far easier for them to do something nefarious with it if the urge strikes.

And as much as MS have changed, seemingly for the better, of the past few years, there's still a lot of reason to consider the reasoning behind the old saw "The two biggest tactical mistakes you can make are staging a ground invasion of Russia in the winter, and partnering with Microsoft".

<comment><USER11> > _" The two biggest tactical mistakes you can make are staging a ground > invasion of Russia in the winter, and partnering with Microsoft"_

While I hole heartily agree with that line of reasoning, in this instance they are buying LinkedIn, not partnering with them. Skype is still alive.

My problem is that LinkedIn is an overvalued property. I mean OK, Microsoft and others could extract useful data from it, but it's nothing you can't infer from other places IMO.

And mark my words, but Facebook will eat their lunch. Maybe that's why Microsoft bought LinkedIn, as a defensive move. Time will tell.

<comment><USER10> _While I hole heartily agree with that line of reasoning, in this instance they are buying LinkedIn, not partnering with them._

Right, the point referring to that old saw was more of a comment on Microsoft's trustworthiness in general. That is, it is a suggestion that Microsoft are not to be trusted in terms of what they might do with the LI data.

 _I mean OK, Microsoft and others could extract useful data from it, but it 's nothing you can't infer from other places IMO_

Yeah, that's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The coming feature list, from the article:

* LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite

* LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center

* Enabling members drafting résumés in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn

* Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties

* Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365

* LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem

* Developing a business news desk across our content ecosystem and MSN.com

Few of these features benefit the user.

Good reason to switch to LibreOffice, if you haven't already.

(My last Microsoft Office purchase was Word 97. LibreOffice is pretty good now, although the early years of SunOffice and OpenOffice were painful. I liked Windows 7, and I still have one machine running it, but everything else is Linux now.)

<comment><USER13> The online stuff from MS is pretty compelling... even though the hosted version isn't quite as good as onsite Exchange, it's still one of the better integrations of an enterprise email + calendar option out there... and the skype for enterprise integration could still be a little better.

I think the web options for office will probably be good enough for most, which is why they pushed that way in light of the google docs properties. This is where the money will be made for MS in the next decade to be sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's pretty sad that these quite big companies don't manage to stay independent. All this power concentrated in very few ecosystems. If fear that the future holds nothing but walled gardens nobody can escape because some big companies bought half the internet and now everybody is depending on them. I think there should be some kind of monopoly-legislature for tech companies regarding walled gardens and a too tight integration of their services without giving 3rd parties a chance. It's seriously hurting the whole country and hampers innovation.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a feeling that most of the population will think this is an improvement but personally I try to avoid as much "integration" as possible. I don't _need_ the universe tied into my E-mail, documents, etc.; I just want tools that can focus on one thing and do it well. The more connected everything is, the more damage you can do by accident ("great, I just E-mailed my entire list of connections via auto-complete and I have no idea how that happened!", or "why am I receiving system notifications every 10 minutes from the CEO of FoobarCo?").

This doesn't mean that I don't integrate things, it's just that I usually do so on my own terms. In my experience, 3rd parties are pretty bad at guessing exactly _how_ I want two things to work together. I would rather see services remain open, with several options for tying them together, than have a monolith decide on exactly one way to do it that serves primarily their interests over mine.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've closed my LinkedIn account half a year ago and besides less spam from recruiters, my life goes on happily.

I don't think LinkedIn brought any value to me or to my career.. I didn't find a better job and frankly I probably don't want the job that someone on LinkedIn is offering.

$ 26B / 450M users ~= $57 / user

That's how much MS paid for my account. So they think it's valuable, but not for me.

<comment><USER4> I've got mixed feelings about LinkedIn. On one hand, they're the poster child for dark patterns and persistently trying to sneakily vacuum up and monetize your personal info. On the other hand, and apparently unlike most of HN, I appreciate recruiters reaching out to me and try to answer as many of them as I can even if it's just a polite "no thank you". It's nice to know what's out there even if it's mostly "bottom of the barrel" type jobs. It's also nice to have an easily updatable "online resume". Even if the value LinkedIn provides is $0.01 it's better than a resume in document form sitting on my hard drive which provides me zero value.

I figure as long as I am careful and use reasonable op-sec, using LinkedIn can't hurt, even if it doesn't really help much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I fail to understand how a group of smart, well paid executives all got in a room, wrote down these ideas, and no one said this was dumb.

<comment><USER18> Synergy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center

Err... I'm not sure I like the sound of this. Isn't this just for application updates / system stuff?

<comment><USER20> Don't worry, I'd trust LinkedIn with access to anything. They have a pretty stellar history of being on the up-and-up.

<comment><USER21> I suspect you're being downvoted because your sarcasm isn't obvious enough.

Either that or you're living in a parallel universe where LinkedIn is a completely different company.

<comment><USER20> Making a post without explicitly labeling it as sarcasm is always a risky maneuver but I prefer the nuance.

<comment><USER22> The best outcome is when sarcasm is not detected, yet the comment still gets upvoted.

<comment><USER23> But who knows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> • LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center

• Enabling members drafting résumés in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn

• Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties

I can't help but feel that the direction they're taking this in will be horrible for the Microsoft experience. It looks like they're trying to monetize LinkedIn integration in Windows…

<comment><USER25> Hi, I see you're updating your CV.

Would you like me to share it with every recruiter in your extended network? How much are you willing to pay that I _don 't_ share it with your coworkers?

Love, Linky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't really get it. Active Directory and Exchange already do all that at the enterprise level. Integrating with LinkedIn will simply scare everyone from using LinkedIn.

I like a lot of the stuff MS is doing these days, but this one really doesn't make sense to me. One has an enterprise vision and the other is "extraprise?" It's a very awkward fit.

</comment><comment><USER27> Notification: appreciated.

LinkedIn account: closed.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like it might be a good time to start a new career focused social network.

<comment><USER29> You start linkmeup.com and I'm on there. MS is a subpar company in my opinion even though a lot of people seem to love them now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> None of these "TODOs" sound desirable to me...

</comment><comment><USER31> If your company executives were lazy enogh to check your LinkedIn profile up to now, don't worry Microsoft will allow them to do it automatically.

</comment><comment><USER32> Rarely has future product announcements (the tight integrations) been this disappointing. Not since the MBP at least.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great! Soon I have recruiters popping in while playing Gears of War 4 on my Xbox One. Can't wait!

</comment><comment><USER34> Satya Nadella LinkedIn profile is almost empty and showing only one position: Microsoft CEO starting 2014.

Any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there anything stopping them from using crazy analytics on LinkedIn and poaching "the best" employees from their competitors? Just a thought...

</comment><comment><USER36> Given the hue and cry Salesforce made to try and block the acquisition from going through, I suspect an integration with Dynamics as well.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm a bit conflicted about this. But leaning towards deleting my account. What are the alternatives for job seekers?

</comment><comment><USER38> I remember back in the day, 1997, when Hotmail ran on FreeBSD and was actually a decent free web mail service.

Then Microsoft bought them, and the usability has been steadily going down since, until I eventually was forced to abandon it: it couldn't even handle plain text ASCII e-mail properly any more (\n's would be eaten and sent e-mail would end up being one huge line).

But of course, it will be all different with LinkedIn this time. Of course it will.

</comment><comment><USER39> >>LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite

Oh, gods. Please no. : [</comment>


The End of Wall Street As They Know It - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/wall-street-2012-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> Specifically, the relevance to startups:

"I'm not married and I take the subway and I watch what I spend very carefully. But my girlfriend likes to eat good food. It all adds up really quick. A taxi here, another taxi there. I just bought an apartment, so now I have a big old mortgage bill." "If you're a smart Ph.D. from MIT, you'd never go to Wall Street now," says a hedge-fund executive. "You'd go to Silicon Valley. There's at least a prospect for a huge gain. You'd have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. It looks like he has a lot more fun."

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584104></comment>


Independence Days: My Perfect Imperfect Gap Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/education/edlife/my-perfect-imperfect-gap-year.html <comment> aaron-lebo Flaunting wealth isn't cool. This essay is mostly him discussing jobs that middle and lower class kids accept as part of life. They don't get a NYTimes article about it.

His evidence that gap years aren't elitist is:

 _The idea that gap years are inherently elitist may be due to the potentially high cost of travel and of independent programs, which offer a structured experience — typically of adventure, service and more or less education — that can cost upward of $20,000. But that criticism cuts against the realities most students already face — that is, average in-state tuition and fees of $8,940, or $28,308 at private colleges, according to the College Board. When factoring in room, board and other expenses, this would mean spending about $100,000 over five years at public colleges and more than double that at private ones._

"See, college is expensive anyway, what's a little more debt gonna hurt?"

Well, that's easy to say when your parents can shell out $50k to go to college. It's obvious the guy has gained some perspective and its great to see, but he's still talking like a rich person who doesn't know what it's like to not only not have money but to have a family that doesn't have a lot of money. It's bordering on Romney's "just borrow $20k from your parents and start a company!". What about when your parents are borrowing from you?

His end point seems to be that gap years seem to reduce drinking or other goofiness in college. Why not instead of adding a gap year to the already ridiculous nature of today's college, get rid of the bloat which makes it so that you have to spend $50k to go to a 4 year summer camp?

<comment><USER2> The author said he worked through the gap year as his parents provided no support.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, sure, they provided no material "support."

But they certainly would have if he'd asked, and that's the point. He always had a lifeline, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is what it's like to come from money... whole 'nother world. The paragraphs about how a "gap year" is not a privilege mostly enjoyed by the elite, and mental contortions therein, are so painful to read.

> Although I appreciated my parents' support, I also recognized the extent to > which it had become detrimental. Their attempts to eliminate any possibility > of real failure had guaranteed its own kind of failure.

So you rejected it after your enlightening "gap year," right? Right?

<comment><USER2> Don't see the reason for negativity around "privilege". The point of the essay seems to be to explain how taking a year to live and work in the "real world" changes the perspective of a young adult, particularly with regard to finances.

<comment><USER3> >...changes the perspective of a young adult, particularly with regard to finances.

FTA: Time free from the obligations of schoolwork had enabled me to realize my passion for writing, and to apply this to an English major, where I would discover the most formative classes and professors of my education.

Hmmm.

<comment><USER5> Time scrubbing dishes enabled me to realize how lucky I was and that I should work harder in college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that we're even having this discussion about whether or not a "Gap Year" is appropriate is more evidence that the entire University system as it is today needs to be blown up.

>More colleges in the United States are encouraging applicants to consider a "bridge" year before enrolling, and many independent programs and some campuses — like Florida State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Princeton and Tufts — even offer fellowships and financial aid.

This is a huge red flag, is it not? To me this looks like a signal that Universities are becoming quite worried about their graduation rates (overall and "within 5 years", which I guess is difficult nowadays) and are willing to test out whatever it takes to keep enrollment up through all classes.

<comment><USER6> FWIW MIT tracks 6-year graduation rate and takes action (good or not TBD) based on what they find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting from a UK perspective to see this described as a "growing trend" \- the "gap yah" [1] has been a tradition amongst wealthy students for, oh, decades over here.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the equation is very different if you major in STEM rather than humanities or social sciences. An internship at Surfer would probably help you if you're an English major hoping to break into publishing or magazines, and I don't think a year off really harms your writing or reading skills the same way your math skills can atrophy if left unused. My only basis for this assertion is that I was a double math and English major, and I'd definitely say this is the case in my life, but I don't have any study to back it up.

A gap year between high school AP calculus and the much faster science and engineering track "Calc through Differential Equations" sequence at a rigorous university, on the other hand, could be very risky. Especially in schools like the UC system where many popular STEM majors are "impacted" and you may get bounced from the major if your grades are low (I consider this loathsome, failing out kids who might be bright but struggle a bit in their first year, but it's a reality).

I did read that the "eliteness" of your college doesn't really matter if you study STEM, but it makes a big difference if you major in humanities. That may also account for some of the class difference we see in this gap year issue. People who attend expensive, private schools, especially elite ones, and who major in humanities are probably not harmed by a gap year at all. Lower income people who attend state schools and major in STEM probably don't benefit much, and may watch their math get rusty just before they enter a challenging program with minimum GPA cutoffs.

</comment><comment><USER9> What should have been his correct response to growing up with some privilege? Something other than what he did?

<comment><USER10> He questioned his place in the world and did a little soul seeking. It's unfortunate that most people don't have this option but there's nothing wrong with what he did, probably gave him a good perspective that a classroom could never teach.</comment></comment>


Dayload: collects AWS usage and reports via mail - <AUTHOR> http://dayload.in/

<comment><USER2> Looks useful, but do I really have to give my AWS secret access key? You could do a lot with that...

<comment><AUTHOR> You can generate and use a restricted (read-only) AWS credential with AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management). <http://aws.amazon.com/iam/></comment></comment>


'Ray Casting Shadows' [Processing] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ktbyte.com/projects/project/88061/ray-casting-shadows?ref=20181206programming <comment><USER2> That's actually really cool; the "god rays" effect that visual effects apps like Nuke employ never look quite right because because they're really just 2D cheats.</comment>


Start-up blackmailed by investor / faces dissolution (/r/advice) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/389c71/3year_startup_market_value_4m_got_blackmailed_by/

<comment><USER2> The company litigation lawyers called him a business predator and a person beyond reason, saying that he is equivalent to a drug dealer in terms of his ethics. The litigation lawyer says that the reason he invested in our company initially was to steal the company to take it over soon.

We were one of the most promising companies in the state. Now with the 7-month litigation, we are running out of money and the company is insolvent already. We are facing possible immediately either bankruptcy or voluntary dissolution. I am trying my best to close more deals to get revenues into the company but in the healthcare space, no sales happens fast enough to keep up the legal fees.

This is my first start-up company which I worked my ass off for three years. For the first 2.5 years, I did not take any salaries and instead invested almost all my money into the business. With this litigation dragged along for 7 months, I did not have any income and my husband has been nagging me every single day to quit and just find a job.

Right now we can file a Federal complaint against this bastard for all the serious damages he has done to the company, but the business lawyer said that the damages are hard to quantify using numbers and mostly can be counted as stipulations, and in the end, we may not get anything from him. Plus we will run up a huge legal bill for Federal and State litigation together. Another option is to file company dissolution or bankruptcy. But it seems a real mess from other advisors' feedback.

Please advise what to do to protect the company or get out of the legal mess!!! Thank you very much!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> A shame that the OP won't post the name of the individual in question; it would be valuable information to avoid this exact same situation happening to yet another startup.

<comment><USER2> I definitely would love to do so, if I am not in a litigation with this bastard and almost running out of cash to defend me and my company.

This guy is from Denver, CO, 58 years old. I will add him to Founder Institute's blacklist during the summer, so that he would not mess with other start-ups.

Would appreciate further advice as to how to get out of this mess.</comment></comment>


MBA Students: Amazon, Google Are Hiring, MS "Super Interesting," Apple "Sterile" - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/01/08/mit-mba-students-amazon-google-and-t-mobile-are-hiring-expedia-isn%E2%80%99t-microsoft-%E2%80%9Csuper-interesting%E2%80%9D-apple-is-%E2%80%9Csterile%E2%80%9D/

<comment><USER2> Interesting stuff. I'm considering an MBA right now and am glad to hear there are good jobs at the intersection of business and tech.

As for Apple, I had a friend on the TimeMachine team and he said the same thing, it's a shitty place for developers.

And yet, Apple keeps putting out awesome products. It's totally counter- intuitive and counter the "coddle the engineers" thinking which dominates the valley.

<comment><USER3> John Gruber had an interesting explanation for this with his Auteur Theory of Design (with Steve at the top):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk3UcgbbmxQ>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ask HN: What is the ideal MBA to geek ratio in our industry? ;-)

<comment><USER5> Well, some MBAs could be geeks too and I think those totally belong in the industry.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but for ratio calculation purposes, should we count geek MBAs the same way as you count non-geek MBAs?

If a company has one non-geek MBA and 5 geeks, two of them also MBAs, what is the MBA-to-geek ratio?

<comment><USER6> The geek MBAs should count in both categories, of course. You have a 3:5 MBA- to-geek ratio in your example.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but if we count them as one geek and one MBA, they are being counted twice. Shouldn't we count them as 0.5 geek and 0.5 MBA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Article would be better titled as "What a handful of MBA students I met with for drinks had to say about Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple".</comment>


Ask: how is the Obama inaugaration funded? - <AUTHOR>

From India. I have been following the Obama campaign and the whole thing is quite inspirational.<p>It seems people have started to look up to Obama (like me) and there is a small question of how the inaugural is funded? I mean why spend so many millions in such difficult times? Do people need to purchase tickets for this? <comment><USER2> A portion of it is funded by tax payers, the remainder must be raised by Obama's team: [http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/18/obama.fundraising.tra...](http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/18/obama.fundraising.transition/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tickets were made available to the public through their elected representatives, free (though EXTREMELY hard to get).</comment>