People are planting more vegetable gardens - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/27/822514756/fearing-shortages-people-are-planting-more-vegetable-gardens <comment><USER2> I'm planting a garden because I plant a garden every year. Well, I've been doing it for the past 25 years or so anyway. I've gotten quite good with production. I shudder at the thought of a bunch of noobs going out and starting a garden, but hey, I was a noob once too and I learned. My biggest advice for a beginner is to consider your approach to pest control. That means identifying the pests in your area, both bugs and animals, and whether you want to use chemicals or natural methods. Seeing as how I eat produce I prefer using natural methods but you have to realize they're not as effective and you will suffer losses. Sometimes those losses can be severe - you'd be amazed at the amount of damage squirrels, rabbits, crows, and various beetles can do to a garden in short order! The cool thing is you're going to learn about all kinds of new insects you never even knew existed happily munching away on all your produce! Enjoy!

<comment><USER3> I'd never skip on the opportunity for fresh organic meat and would totally welcome rabbits and squirrels to my garden if I had one xD

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure where you live but I'd think twice (and probably still do it) about eating rabbit from anywhere where people routinely put pesticides on their lawns.

<comment><USER5> I've always been a bit curious -- you cook the rabbit. Which pesticides (etc) survive the cooking process to the point where you'd need to worry about them?

<comment><USER6> Most pesticides survive the cooking process. As a rule of thumb, cooking kills most biological baddies (bacteria, worms, etc) and doesn't do much for anything else. If your threat model includes pesticides, botulinum toxin, or a number of other contaminations then you probably need to just avoid that food source, or at least limit exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not planting a garden because I fear shortages, I'm planting it so I don't have to make as many trips to the store.

<comment><USER8> I do it because some things are wildly overpriced at the grocery. Like, there's no use in planting cucumbers when they are $0.50 at the grocery. But fresh herbs are like $3 a bunch and berries can be $3-5 a lb, so it can make good financial sense to plant some of these.

An herb garden and planter will produce easily $100 worth of herbs over a season for nothing more than 20 minutes of planting, then regular watering and tending. I had so much basil last year that I literally ate it in salad.

Berry bushes can be a little more expensive, like $20-50. But they also yield crazy amounts of fruit over the season and grow in like 95% of the USA.

It's a good investment, and it's a nice way to get some out doors time everyday.

<comment><USER9> I focus on foods that are expensive or you simply cannot buy. For example, carrots straight out of the ground taste significantly different than store bought. Despite carrots being one of the cheapest foods I still grow some. Otherwise you nail it with herbs and berries. I estimate a couple basil plants save me at least $50 a year.

Another good item I always recommend is to plant the green onion stubs. About 3 square feet of green onions is enough for my family all year.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, good tomatoes seem to be unavailable in stores at any price (even before all of this).

<comment><USER11> Of course they don't substitute for fresh, but canned tomatoes are pretty good for a lot of cooking. They are harvested relatively ripe compared to store fresh.

<comment><USER12> They are also tomatoes bred for taste rather than shelf life, which makes a significant difference. Unless they're in season, I'd personally never use "fresh" tomatoes from the produce section. Canned tomatoes from a good vineyard will taste better and even be cheaper sometimes.

For whatever reason, my generation (20s) tends to have a some repulsive initial reaction to canned goods. But as long as they're packed sans preservatives, many fruits and vegetables are probably better for you than the "fresh" ones at the grocery store.

<comment><USER10> And don't overlook frozen. Not sure about tomatoes, but many vegetables are excellent in this format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We've started making bread every night for the next day, and I've heard many of my friends are doing this. It's better than what we get in the local bakeries (we don't live in France) and have already discussed continuing to bake now that we figured out some easy tricks. We started here : [https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html](https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html)

<comment><USER14> Conversely, just saw this twitter post by @gloomfather: "Oh dude yeah you gotta try baking your own bread in quarantine. It takes 14 hours to do right and it's boring as shit, but the results are often quite disappointing." :)

<comment><USER15> A very on-brand comment from that fellow. But if you not doing it to pass the time, I'd suggest using a bread machine!

<comment><USER16> If you do it the no-knead way, making bread in the oven is less work than a bread machine and less noisy. Less clean up, and better bread.

<comment><USER17> No-knead bread needs high-hydration dough, which is fashionable nowadays but not to everybody's preference. If you prefer something like normal sandwich bread then a bread machine will make it for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We had 10 pots on the patio last summer, growing cilantro, parsley, green beans, stevia, potatoes, basil, swiss chard, etc.

Drip irrigation tubes attached to a timer faucet watered it every morning automatically. At some point I'm going to try to hook in a Pi or Arduino so I can remotely control the irrigation, e.g. if it's raining I won't have to go outside & manually shut it off.

We'll be doing that again, and this spring we're also planning to plant a couple of rows of potatoes, carrots, and lettuce. Growing food is not difficult, but it does require some knowledge and understanding of soil pH, pest control, etc. Fortunately there are plenty of how-to videos these days.

The food you grow in an organic, chemical free environment tastes fresh and pure, is good for you, educational for the children, and very satisfying. It may not pay for itself in the first couple of years, but over time you'll find that it's well worth it. Freshly grown potatoes taste incredible.

We are thinking of getting chickens, but it may or may not happen this spring. Self-sufficiency takes a lot of work, but partial sufficiency is quite attainable for many people. Even if you're in an urban apartment, there are hydroponic devices and grow lamps to help you grow considerable veggies. I suppose we can thank the pot industry for that.

<comment><USER19> >Growing food is not difficult, but it does require some knowledge

I'd push back on the first part of this lightly. Growing _some_ food is not difficult. Growing food effectively however, in quantity and for a long period of time, does require a fair bit of experience and local knowledge that you just can't get in one season. My family gardened heavily growing up, and I've been gardening extensively since my mid 20's (late 30's now), and I would say I only now truly feel like I 'get it' with regards to many aspects of planting, harvesting, timing, and preservation.

Prior to the pandemic, my goal this summer was to have my house be 'food- independent' for 3 months of this year. I've revised that goal to try and get to food independence by end of spring and maintain that through the end of fall and into winter.

My argument would be that gardening has a very low barrier to entry: literally any one can (and should) have a garden. However, the top skill cap on gardening is very high and does take time to achieve. Its also not something that can be entirely short-cutted through self learning/ study. _How_ you grow depends on where you are and the details of your particular garden. Nothing else but experience will get you there.

<comment><USER20> >My argument would be that gardening has a very low barrier to entry: literally any one can (and should) have a garden. However, the top skill cap on gardening is very high and does take time to achieve

It really isn't. Gardening is very easy, and the skill cap is very low. The problem is that there is a TREMENDOUS amount of misinformation being promoted as knowledge, and beginners have no way to tell fact from fiction. Almost all of my learning curve was spent trying things that are based on incorrect assumptions or just plain memes. As soon as I learned "build soil instead of killing soil" everything became trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't think it has as much to do with fearing food shortages as it does with being bored at home. At least that's how it was for me.

<comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if the people planting vegetables are aware of just how much they would need to plant in order to supply even a small fraction of someone's required calories. I mean, there's a good reason we've centralized food production into massively efficient enormous farms with heavily mechanised harvesting.

<comment><USER24> For my family and me it's not about calories, it's about nutrition. Vegetables are an excellent source of all kinds of vitamins and minerals, especially ones grown in quality soil with quality seeds. It's also about fiber. We get our calories from fats and protein.

<comment><USER25> In general most people planting these gardens "ad-hoc" and not doing it more or less "as a job" probably don't have that much dedicated surface for this, nor can put in that much effort/time into it in order to obtain more than a nice and tasty complement for their meals. If you can consistently offset a shortage for your family then you're pretty much a farmer.

And I say this as someone who actually cultivated such a garden for years, with help from the family. I allocated a lot of time each day to tending that garden, more than most people would be able to do these days and have a stable job, even with WFH.

It was just a pretty hard but pleasant activity, relaxing, I got fresh air and exercise, and I could get some really tasty vegetables but nothing that could "feed the family". And my livelihood didn't depend on the success. Like a dessert at the end of the meal: great but not quite main course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Tangential topic, but does anyone have a good no-nonsense evidence based source for how to make bread and/or sourdough?

I've been trying sourdough and it's crazy how many contradictory pieces of advice and explanations you read e.g. if the yeast comes from the initial flour or air, what ratio of flour + water to feed it with, how many times a day you feed the starter, how many times you let the dough prove. It generally indicates to me that the process is very forgiving though (as so many variations work).

I would have thought most myths would have been put to bed by now as it should be relatively easy to run cooking experiments if you want to debunk something.

<comment><USER27> I highly recommend books by Peter Reinhart. I prefer to bake with whole grains, so I have his "While Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor," but anything by him should be great. His work is definitely based in experience and the science of yeast and flour.

<comment><USER28> The bread I make most often, the simplest and most delicious one I've had in my life, comes from Reinhart's _Artisan Breads Every Day_. So I can definitely second the recommendation of his books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Being in lockdown has enabled me to really focus on our vegetable garden this year. Am even getting into weeding which is not normally something I enjoy.

<comment><USER30> This. I used to grow veg before commuting and children got in the way. Last time I tried I didn't have the time to keep on top of the weeds. I hope that now we are all at home all the time, I'll be able to do a bit of hoeing any day I like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I run tech at a small farming and gardening supply company in Maine. We've seen order volume jump 2-300% in the past few weeks. We've done several VPS upgrades to handle the increased traffic, and our order number allocation system has broken down several times recently. Our digital infrastructure is keeping up now, but we're all still scrambling to keep the staff healthy and safe as we all work to get the orders out the door safely and responsibly.

<comment><USER32> Puts a new twist on "Elastic Beanstalk"

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I hope this convinces people to become more self-sufficient overall and grow a little of their own food. Living farther out from dense urban cores on more land will help, and conveniently, it will also make one less likely to fall ill. Telecommuting will hopefully enable people to live much less densely and avoid something like this recurring at its present scale.

<comment><USER34> The climate impact of individuals living in the city vs those living in the suburbs is considerable. More people living away from the city increases deforestation and is a net negative as far as lifestyle is concerned. Telecommuting is a nice option but most businesses don't work that way. I work in the commercial arts world. A lot of it is sensory stimuli and requires paying butts in seats. I can't dropship an experience through Amazon working from bungalow in Chiang Mai.

<comment><USER20> >The climate impact of individuals living in the city vs those living in the suburbs is considerable.

Yes, but in the opposite direction of what you imply.

>More people living away from the city increases deforestation

Why would that be the case? Almost all deforestation is for land for farming, not for houses. How much oil is burned growing food and shipping it and storing it and lighting and cooling stores to sell it?

>is a net negative as far as lifestyle is concerned.

Not everyone values the same materialistic things you do.

>I work in the commercial arts world

That's a make-work industry that doesn't need to exist. Consider the massive environmental impact of your industry, and how it adds absolutely no value to society at all. Yet you want to stop people from living further away from massive disease spreading urban centers and growing their own food at a cost of zero burned oil?

<comment><USER35> > Consider the massive environmental impact of your industry, and how it adds > absolutely no value to society at all.

What massive environmental impact? Commercial art sounds like one of the least energy intensive occupations. You just sit in front of a laptop with low energy consumption. You are sharing a building with hundreds of other people. You probably take public transport instead of commuting by car, live in a small apartment and share heating with other people. Really the biggest pollution source is the food that you are eating as an artist and that's not your fault. It's the fault of the farmer that is using diesel tractors, fertilizing his plants with artificial fertilizer, shipping his food with diesel trucks. All of these pollution sources will have to switch to renewable energy one day. What about that laptop? It's probably running on Renewables today!

<comment><USER20> >What massive environmental impact?

The one you describe in the rest of your post. Billions of tons of CO2 emissions and the outcome is a negative burden on society rather than a benefit.

>It's the fault of the farmer that is using diesel tractors, fertilizing his plants with artificial fertilizer, shipping his food with diesel trucks.

None of those things are the farmer's fault. They are the inevitable and mandatory cost of urbanization. Were you planning to just starve while making ads?

>All of these pollution sources will have to switch to renewable energy one day

That is physically impossible. What will have to happen is techno-industrial society will collapse as we exit the tiny blip in history of abundant energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm glad people are doing this. Us long-term gardeners, farmers, farm lifestylers and preppers are happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER37> > answer any questions

well, since you offered... ;) I've heard differing advice on using coffee grounds in gardens: some say you should and some say you shouldn't. Am I doing my garden a disservice dumping each day's pot of coffee grounds into the dirt? I'm trying to grow tomatos, peppers (jalapeno, bell and poblano), cilantro, beans, squash and zucchini.

<comment><USER36> Coffee grounds are good. Either compost or dig in directly.

Many people get confused about pH. Coffee grounds are acidic. But it will have negligable effect on soil pH. Something about buffering capacity (I'm sure I'll be corrected by someone). Same thing with pine needles. They are acidic but will not change soil pH.

They won't make much difference right away, but adding organic matter improves the soil over time.

<comment><USER36> Let me explain the pH thing better, now that I've had a think. Soil has a cation exchange capacity (CEC). Some soils have higher capacity then others. Think if it like a numeric count of all the molecular points where a cation could ionically bond. On each of those points, either you have a hydrogen (which makes it acidic) or another cation (which generally makes it alkaline). Those are calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, but also a few others in minute quantities even lead (Pb+2). Ammonium is a cation too.

When adding something, it adds more CEC attachment points, but also more cations and more hydrogen.

Within just the coffee grounds, many of the CEC points are occupied by hydrogen, so it is acidic. But when you compare the number of CEC points to that in the soil, the amount in your soil overwhelms. The good cations in your soil wont be affected much until you have enormous levels of coffee grounds (like >10% or something, I'd have to calculate it and I haven't).

And of course you can always just measure the pH and add cations which will displace the hydrogen (it will bond with the anion). Calcium is cheapest which is why people use agricultural lime. Dolomite will give you some magnesium which will probably produce healthier veggies. Potassium is important but too much will just bulk up the veggies rather than letting them develop more healthfully. Sodium is almost never useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's great if you can efficiently do it and actually use the results. If you have free time, or kids to help out, I think gardening can be a great hobby and help supplement your nutrition. I think it takes some practice to get right. Fertilization, bug control, selecting varieties, site selection and preparation... My past attempts at gardening have reminded me of the comparative advantage of outsourcing my food supply. Even when my garden has done well, I struggled to eat the results(weeks of non-stop zucchini gets old), and didn't have the time for preservation.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love gardening. Have a lot of really fond memories of playing in my mom's garden (despite terrible allergies) while she was working on it. Tomatoes, rhubarb, raspberries, all sorts of other spices and nectar plants for things like bees and hummingbirds. One summer memory in particular sticks with me, because it was probably my first lesson in the scientific method. Mom's hollyhock plants came down with what ended up being a bad case of rust[1]. We changed the watering routine, fertilizer...nothing worked. This was before google and all that, so we first went to the library and got some gardening books. Went out and compared pictures, but none were exactly the same. Next I clipped some leaves from the plants and we went down to the garden shop a few blocks away and, sure enough, the guy behind the counter (kicking myself I can't remember his name, probably 85 or so with crystal white hair) gave the diagnosis and recommended cutting off all the affected leaves and burning them. Saved the whole lot!

Unfortunately, because of work, I live in a city now and that means ... no yard with a garden. The wife also loves gardening. Anyone have any tips for setting something up in an apartment with a balcony? Irrigation is my primary concern.

[1] [https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/hollyhoc...](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/hollyhock/hollyhock- rust-in-gardens.htm)

<comment><USER40> You can make self watering pots with 5 gallons buckets, their lid, a pipe, and an old T-shirt. But if you're not going away, you can simply water every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Planting your own garden ensures you know what crap is sprayed onto the plants.

</comment><comment><USER42> There is not a shortage issue, there is a logistics issue.

The logistics issue is that we have commercial and retail supply chains that are Apples & Oranges level different in terms of getting end consumers what they need.

For instance:

1) Commercial Offices - why is toilet paper disappearing especially in big cities? It's not the production side that's failing. It's that a huge amount of toilet paper is bought and distributed by commercial contract stockers. The supply chain has NOT adjusted to get commercially stocked toilet paper to retail centers. And making it worse commercial distributors are FORBIDDEN to sell to retail in many cases! So now you're dealing with a supply chain + beurocratic issue. There are Mt. Everest sized stocks of commercial TP sitting in warehouses all over America.

2) Commercial Restaurants - These establishments fed the MAJORITY of office workers in major cities up until 3 weeks ago. Commercial restaurant supply chains are reeling - they have stock sitting on shelves and are trying to figure out how to get it into the retail supply chain with similar beurocratic and logistics issues.

There is not a food / grocery shortage and there is unlikely to be a food / grocery shortage in the USA.

But it is going to take some time to sort out how to adjust to this new normal.

And inevitably as soon as we figure it out the pendulum will swing the other way :)

<comment><USER38> You make a good point about the supply chains.

There is not a food shortage yet. However, I would not be surprised if there is a shortage of labor intensive food products in a month or so, depending on storage limits. I would not expect shortages of less labor intensive staples like cereal crops and maybe milk. It seems to me that meat packing is fairly labor intensive, so I would not be surprised if meat becomes more scarce at some point.

Fresh vegetables seem fairly labor intensive. Fruits can be warehoused for a year or so(AFAIK, at least in the case of apples). Some vegetables are probably more automated(potatoes, corn). I wonder about salad greens though.

FWIW, if you're just now considering getting a chest freezer to stockpile frozen goods, good luck. _Everyone_ is sold out.

<comment><USER42> With 30% of the US economy out of work and the gov't prioritizing business vs. consumer handouts I would argue the inverse.

80% of people that get COVID have a mild case.(1)

Mild / average cases of COVID run ~2 weeks beginning to end.

Farming, food production, and grocery is NOT going to close down.

The available labor pool has massively expanded and without paycheck or stimulus coming lots of Americans playing 1-rung above farm labor are going to fill any void in the migrant labor pool.

(1) [https://www.webmd.com/lung/covid-recovery- overview#1](https://www.webmd.com/lung/covid-recovery-overview#1)

<comment><USER38> That doesn't take into account fear and the need to care for family. If, for instance, Mexico gets hit hard by COVID, you might see an effect on US agricultural labor supply as people return home to care for family or attend funerals. There is a fear factor as well. In China, I remember reading people were simply refusing to show up for work.

> Americans playing 1-rung above farm labor are going to fill any void in the > migrant labor pool.

Has this ever happened in modern times? I can see Americans filling voids in the construction and service industries, but farm labor is pretty hard work and doesn't pay well. Will Americans take a farm job when they can sit idle and collect enhanced unemployment benefits?

Keep in mind that farm workers generally don't have quality health care, and will likely fare worse as a population than an averaged sample of cases.

<comment><USER28> _" In China, I remember reading people were simply refusing to show up for work."_

This might be what happens with people who can afford to live off their savings or state support while out of work, but many won't be so fortunate.

Here's a more likely scenario for many of the seasonal workers who supply our food:

 _I soon spotted a group of men huddled in a corner..._

 _I stopped and asked them, from a safe distance, if they were following the lockdown._

 _Ramesh Kumar, who comes from Banda district in Uttar Pradesh state, said that he knew "there won't be anybody to hire us, but we still took our chances"._

 _" I earn 600 rupees ($8; £6.50) every day and I have five people to feed. We will run out of food in a few days. I know the risk of coronavirus, but I can't see my children hungry," he said._

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- india-52002734](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I received my Permaculture Design Certificate from Bill Mollison, my Permaculture for Aid Workers from Geoff Lawton, designed two properties, both included food forests, and I also like long walks on the beach and sushi. WHO'S HIRING APRIL 2020. Joke aside, gardens not only provide food, I've found they act as an anti-depressant and are quite fun to build.

One principle of Permaculture is to optimize space to provide for human needs. I feel like the HN community could come up with some cool shit in this space.

</comment><comment><USER44> Made a good penny selling my tomato starts this year. More than covered my seed purchases for our garden (not due to coronavirus, I just like gardening and splurged on them this year).

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm curious if the Feds will start to crack down on this kind of behavior. Think of the impact on veggie prices once a good portion of Americans are growing their own food. The New Deal already showed the US could come in a demand you pay fines for not buying crops you don't need. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm encouraged to see this. I don't really have anything profound or witty to say, but this makes me feel like we're probably going to be okay.

</comment><comment><USER47> Related to this the sales of my gardening app in March were about 100% higher than usual. That's coming off a low base (people don't like paying for apps) but it's a big change. Most of that was in Australia where it's coming into winter so it's not the usual vegetable gardening time. You can't buy vegetable seedlings anywhere at present as they're sold out immediately.

</comment><comment><USER48> Aspirationally, I'd like to put in the "Three Sisters" (corn, beans, and squash) [https://redandhoney.com/milpa-plant- one/](https://redandhoney.com/milpa-plant-one/).

What pests should I worry about in Northern California?

<comment><USER36> Some garden plants are sure to attract lots of pests. But corn, beans, and squash are not among the most heavily attacked in my experience. You probably won't have too much of a pest problem.

The crops with the most pests (in my experience) are brassicas (white butterfly), tomatoes (everything seems to attack tomatoes!), and beets (slugs).

Nasturtiums as a trap crop supposedly can draw away aphids. But remember that nasturtiums attract aphids. So it's a gamble. I guess just don't plant them too close. I've never tried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I live in a place where it's not good weather most of the year. So I tried some indoor garden with grow light somehow it didn't work the plants seemed to be sick just gave up. Instead I am stocking up some frozen veggies if they really goes short.

<comment><USER50> It takes minimum 1 acre of land to feed an adult. Small gardens make sense for things that are needlessly expensive, like mint, basil, etc...

If you have a backyard, the least effort - highest output thing you can plant is a fruit tree.

<comment><USER51> If you're hungry, you plant dense staple crops - an acre can yield something like 10 tons of potatoes (or carrots or pumpkins) - if you're not selling produce, then even planting 0.1-0.2 acres of potatoes means you'd have more potatoes than your family needs (because you eat lots of other things). It also takes a lot of labor if you don't have specialized machinery and will take a lot of space in the basement, but it will keep you from starving even from quite small plots of land.

A fruit tree is great, but the proper time to plant one is ten years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Here's the list for this year, first growing season after recovering from the Nov 2018 fire:

\- Red, green & yellow bell peppers

\- Jalapeños

\- Okra

\- Heirloom tomatos

\- Cherry tomatos

\- Yellow squash

\- Zucchini

\- Watermelon

\- Sweet corn

\- Sunflowers

Critters we have to deal with:

\- Black bears

\- Deer

\- Crows

\- Blue jays

\- Turkeys

\- Squirrels

\- Snails

\- Drug addicts who can't see me or the Glock I'm racking

</comment><comment><USER53> Hydroponics are really easy to produce :)</comment>


Usability Cookie - Did Hamilton lose the F1 Championship because of bad user interaction? - <AUTHOR> http://www.himalia.net/blogs/leovernazza/2007/10/usability-cookie-did-hamilton-lose-f1.html

<comment><USER2> I'd say that F1 teams have too much money riding on wins to allow that sort of shoddy design, but that doesn't seem to stop most big corporations.

On the other hand, F1 is a great source of innovation, and it's hard to believe that in the middle of all the brilliance that goes into the cars, there'd be a laughable oversight like this. I'll take McLaren's word for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah, imagine if your car had a button to eject your seat located next to your stereo controls.</comment>


Square Kilometre Array telescope to be shared between South Africa, Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=172694#SKA

<comment><AUTHOR> Reportedly the majority of the dishes will be built in South Africa and its partnering countries, as it had a stronger technical score during the evaluation.

I'm a bit disappointing in the decision to split the site but I'm happy a decision has finally been made. This is an extraordinarily exciting project for astronomy.</comment>


Science Exchange (YC S11) enables researchers to tap labs worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21635323-startup-enables-researchers-tap-labs-worldwide-conduct-experiments-their/ <comment><USER2> This is a cool idea. It seems like the meatspace analogy of BOINC[0], substituting physical lab equipment for computing power.

I wonder if this could lead to grant approvals requiring that procedures be duplicated in at least one remote lab and those results also discussed in publications. It would protect against tampering data tampering, but it could also potentially catch lab errors by providing a second dataset. Unfortunatley, I suspect the overheads will mean that such duplication in an external lab might be tough to justify, from a cost standpoint.

[0] [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/)

<comment><USER3> Sometimes results won't replicate because the people or equipment at the second lab aren't skilled enough to do the experiment correctly. You can get type II errors on difficult tests because of impurities, noise, etc. But most of the tests listed on Science Exchange seem like standard tests, where the labs doing it are probably better at it than you are, so this wouldn't be too much of an issue.

I think another effect of this experiment-for-fee model would be to level the playing field for smaller labs that can't master every tool simultaneously. Whereas before a researcher would have to choose between (a) learning a new technique and buying new equipment and (b) finding an alternative way to demonstrate a result, presumably with older or less reliable methods, now they can do a very simple one-off collaboration of sorts without any of the overhead of real collaborations (esp. negotiations over authorship).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article makes it sound more like Heroku for experiments than Uber, but I guess that comparison is too niche. Some other companies in this space are:

[https://www.transcriptic.com/](https://www.transcriptic.com/)

and

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't it be more like "Airbnb for Expermients" , you are renting out unused lab resources, right?

</comment><comment><USER6> Can companies/PR/media stop using "Uber for.." in their descriptions?

Uber as a company and their business practices isn't exactly positive to say the least.

<comment><USER7> My favorite is "Uber for genetic testing". That is exactly what I want, a company like Uber completely ignoring all moral and legal rules with complete access to all of my genetic information.

<comment><USER6> Thats exactly my point. Science Exchange (or 23AndMe) may be a good idea, but associating with a company that seems to be "ignoring all moral and legal rules" like Uber is not such a good idea.

I realize 22AndMe operates in a few legal grey areas but I believe they don't run the company by "ignoring morals" in their business practices and management.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best free tools out there for analytics? - <AUTHOR>

I am aware of google analytics, webmaster, etc. What other tools exists and how do you use it? <comment><USER2> Mixpanel has a free tier for their engagement and people plans.

I'm only played around with Mixpanel a little bit. I'm a little more well versed in KISSmetrics but they don't have a free tier.

Mailchimp isn't an analytics tool but they offer analytics on their mail campaigns and they have a fairly large free tier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Piwik is a nice self-hosted alternative to Google Analytics. We've used it for several projects and it works pretty well.</comment>


Show HN: "Faster than Stripe Atlas? Is this real?" - <AUTHOR> https://www.dunster.io <comment><AUTHOR> 3) Why is this happening? Because our competitors are still using manual processes which turned into a major roadblock when Covid19 started, extended the waiting time of founders by 4 to 6 months instead of weeks. A lot of incorporation service companies are not paying attention on the value of heavily incorporating technology on incorporating startups, but now we know, because thousands, if not millions, of businesses were affected. According to World Economic Forum, there's a global increase in entrepreneurial activity because people are losing jobs, utilizing their skills and build their own startups to service, and having them wait for months to legally operate is not helping at all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a common question we get from prospects/website visitors. They would like to further understand why we are claiming this.

1) I used to work for our competitors and based on my experience I can confidently say that we are 2x faster than Stripe Atlas and 3x times faster than other competitors out there. Prior to the birth of Dunster.io, 7 business days is only available to founders with SSN and ITIN, and the rest will take ages.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 2) After also doing a little bit of research and surveying the competitive arena, Stripe Atlas normally delivers all documents in 12 to 14 business days, and that does not include the bank processing yet. While in Dunster.io, that is already included in our average processing time of 7 business days.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 4) Have we tested our platform on real life startups or customers to claim that 7 business is really possible despite Covid19? YES, we are consistently getting paid clients, 100% delivered in 7 to 9 business days including bank accounts and debit cards.

</comment><comment><USER2> A comparison will be wellcome</comment>


Microsoft Bringing HTML5 and JavaScript to Office 15 - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/08/microsoft-bringing-html5-and-j.php#.TvLxNtJsCZY.hackernews <comment><USER2> I wonder about the JS#/vendor lock in responses here in HN. We're talking about a _macro language in MS Office_ , where your development and runtime environment is very well known (MS Office). I don't know how much portability demands you expect from code you're writing to format your Excel cells.

      function mergeAndHideGridlines() {
          getRange("H15:I16").merge();
          activeWindow.displayGridlines = false;
      }

Sure I can picture someone pasting in code from his/her JS library to reuse in a macro, but I don't foresee people commonly doing the other way and having issues because the Excel function that they worked on for several days doesn't work for webpages.

<comment><USER3> Right, they are talking about exposing the existing Office API to Javascript. Not having Office generate Javascript or some abomination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good if it works. Writing plugins, or automating Office through COM is an exercise in frustration right now. I've had to automate office to do some ridiculous stuff with word docs by invoking the COM objects half a dozen times now, and each time I do it pushes me one step closer to learning rails.

<comment><USER4> Is there any reason you aren't using Open XML rather then COM? <http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5124>

For files <100MB I found it much nicer to use then interop.

<comment><USER3> Need to support legacy files. The last (and biggest) was to import word docs into a commercial typesetting system. We need to keep the barriers for our clients as low as possible so couldn't require they give us .docx.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If that reduces vendor lock-in, I'm for it. But knowing Microsoft since the Altair BASIC days, I _have_ to wonder what they are trying to accomplish.

<comment><USER6> Why would anyone think this is to avoid lock-in? If you're writing something to manipulate the Word document model using the Word API, it's unlikely you're going to be able to retarget that code to some other system. Just like if you use the Java libraries, it doesn't matter if the language is portable - you're still going to need Java to run the code against.

What they are trying to accomplish is simple: Keep more people using Office. JavaScript and HTML seem to be gaining more traction, so it makes perfect sense Microsoft would want their products accessible for such developers. What other reason would there be?

<comment><USER5> This is obviously not to avoid lock-in. This is Microsoft, remember?

But, if JavaScript becomes the de facto extension language for Office, at least we have a smaller problem to deal with than with VBScript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does Office need to be quite so complicated? It it purely to sell upgrades or are there people out there who look forward to this stuff?

<comment><USER8> There are lots of business uses to being able to automate documents. Being able to do so in JS rather than VBA would be a bonus for companies that have a need to do so, but don't want to train people in a language that's not used anywhere else.

It might also allow MS to do nifty online things.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Having used VBA in Access back in the day, I can attest that JS would be a godsend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like this idea. One of my first "hacks" in the workplace was using VBA to make an Excel worksheet automate some processes my co-workers hated. Incorporating JavaScript and HTML 5 means more programmers can make coworkers happy with less investment in programming infrastructure and not being able to use those skills elsewhere outside of spreadsheets.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember older versions of Office making HTML; two pages of some cryptic stuff after exporting Hello World doc...

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if it's going to be HTML5/Javascript or H5++/Microsoft JS# Professional...</comment>


Ditching fossil fuels would pay for itself through clean air alone - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/12/21361498/climate-change-air-pollution-us-india-china-deaths <comment><USER2> This submission has been effectively sabotaged by its title having been replaced with a much less interesting title.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used the article subtitle instead of the headline. I felt the former was too broad and didn't really say anything, while the latter is interesting and—more importantly—a better description of the article's content. (IMO, this is a pattern in Vox.com pieces.)

I very much hope I didn't sabotage it! I'd wanted to do the opposite if anything.</comment></comment>


First analysis of how Uber and Lyft have affected roadway congestion in SF - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfcta.org/emerging-mobility/tncs-and-congestion <comment><USER2> To be clear, Uber and Lyft are in cash burn phase, still... Yes, this is essentially still a free market economy but the prices of rides are largely subsidised to bring them to a point where they compete with public transport.

That said, public transport is often a last mile problem. How do you get to and from the node, with a baby, in bad weather etc. Public transport is far from ideal and TNCs fill the gap willingly.

TNCs fill the gap so easily by piggybacking off the Auto Lobby. If we had more, denser public transport coupled with reliable safe bike lanes (heck sometimes the whole sidewalk is missing...) public would be much more attractive.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how credible this is but someone who work at one of the ride sharing company told me most of the cash burn happens in new markets for rapid growth and established markets like SF are profitable.

<comment><USER4> I've heard the same.

Though reaching "profitability" is not really a focus for them until automated vehicles are ready to replace the humans on the road.

<comment><USER5> The question that nobody at these companies wants to answer publicly: what if fully automated vehicles are still decades away?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems tautological that uber/lyft would increase congestion. The one and only way it would not be true is if every single person who used the service had a previous option that they were readily utilizing. Though even there nonpassenger driving hours would probably cause a net increase in congestion anyhow. But I think it goes without saying that there are countless people that end up 'driving' far many more miles thanks to uber/lyft, myself being one of them.

In other words as you make transport more desirable, available, and affordable - congestion will increase. The natural retort against this is public transport, but route/time restrictions as well as other passengers will always pose a limit on both the desirability and availability of public transport, though it certainly tends to nail the third criteria at least.

<comment><USER7> I've heard that at many times 1/3 of cars on the road in SF are looking for parking. Don't really believe it is that high, but, if true, would be a way for uber/lyft use to decrease congestion in a meaningful way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A MUNI bus ride is 1/10 the cost of an Uber or Lyft and people would rather spend the extra money to not deal with the SF public. Ride share to work, your favorite restaurant, bar, and then home. It's like living in the suburbs in the city.

I wonder how many people who can't afford a vehicle but don't want to deal with public transit would leave SF if ride sharing was banned outright.

<comment><USER9> TNCs creating congestion makes sense to me for the same reason, so many of my trips simply wouldn't happen if I had to take public transport.

<comment><USER10> Worse they add an extra leg to all trips, not just more trips. At best it's last drop off location > pickup location > drop off location. On top of that many drivers will go to a fourth location to wait for their next passenger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Uber is really a heaven sent product for me and my family. We have to pick up and drop off our daughter at her day care on a daily basis and without Uber, I am not sure how would we have done it. I hope we can expand studies like this with the quality of life improvement which services like Uber have been responsible.

Also, there are other things which have improved too. Such as less drunk driving, improved safety especially when traveling at nights, predictability vs. taxis etc.

<comment><USER12> > We have to pick up and drop off our daughter at her day care on a daily > basis and without Uber

I'm amazed that Uber is considered an affordable commute device. Is that a SV phenomenon ?

<comment><USER13> Eh, it depends on how you look at it. If you are comparing Lyft/Uber to public transit, yeah they lose out by a lot, but I don't think a lot of people are doing that. I think a lot of people are comparing Lyft/Uber against the cost of owning a semi-new car in a major city and that's much more comparable.

Here's a super ball park monthly cost breakdown:

\- Car payment: $250

\- Parking: $200

\- Insurance: $85 (~$500 every 6 months)

\- Gas: $50

\- Registration: $40 (~$500+ a year)

\- Saving for maintenance: $50 (assuming $600 a year, which is probably low)

That's super super napkin math, but that's almost $700 a month for a car, which is basically the same as $30 each work day for a month. On top of that, you don't have to deal with the hassle of parking in a city, which has to be worth something.

<comment><USER11> No - you are wrong. Dropping off kids has a lot of convenience if you take an Uber. You don't have to worry about parking and can actually spend time with your kid, like read them a story, when you drop off via Ubers vs. yourself. In my estimate, I save at least 15-20min per dropoff when I take Uber vs. when I do with my car. In the morning that 15-20min extra matter a lot.

<comment><USER14> I don't see how your point makes him wrong. If anything, it seems to reinforce his point.

<comment><USER11> Well you need to read it again.

<comment><USER15> No, he's right. Nothing you said made his point wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "TNC information was based on data originally gathered by researchers at Northeastern University from the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of Uber and Lyft that show the locations of available vehicles to mobile apps, and then was shared with the Transportation Authority."

Why would they use such a terrible data source. I had always assumed the cars in the Uber map are indicative anyway, not the actual location. Uber gives trip data to cities why not get real data

</comment><comment><USER17> This is why it blows my mind that scooters are effectively banned in San Francisco. They're such a perfect solution for inner-city travel.

<comment><USER6> In many ways, I think solutions like this are just kicking the can. Travel in a place like Bangkok for one day. Red lights look like the start of a motocross rally. There are even motorbike taxis. And motorcycles deciding the sidewalk doubles as a bike line is a common sight. But traffic is still completely brutal. That's also with city wide subway and airtrain transport options as well.

The problem is simple. People need access to the roadways in a fashion that grows linearly to low exponentially. But the capacity of the roadway capacity stays constant with an occasional constant bump. Even if you suddenly toss every single driver on a scooter, it's just one of those constant time bumps. You'll eventually bump into the exact same problem of a constant road capacity against an increasing roadway access demand.

You need a way of linearly, and indefinitely, increasing traffic capacity, not one-off constant value work-arounds.

<comment><USER18> Amount of potential traffic can't grow without limit. People need space to do other things. That puts a natural limit on the amount of traffic because people don't go places just to get there. They go places to do something when they get there.

<comment><USER6> The big underlying factor is population increase, both permanent increases of the local population and temporary increases from visitors. Though I imagine there are also other factors even beyond that one that also increase traffic. It's probably safe to say that increased income results in more activity involving transport, for instance. I'd agree there's definitely some theoretic cutoff where it becomes practically physically impossible to squeeze any more people into an area, but I'm not sure how practical it is to consider that since you're hitting major dystopia long before you get to that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "TNCs had little impact on congestion in the western and southern San Francisco neighborhoods."

Recently Supervisor Peskin apparently reached a deal to impose a "net fares" tax on the TNC's. I wonder if they will consider differentiating it by neighborhood: imposing larger charges downtown. Peskin has also lobbied for downtown congestion pricing although that is harder to implement, politically and technologically, than such a tax.

<comment><USER20> > Peskin has also lobbied for downtown congestion pricing although that is > harder to implement, politically and technologically, than such a tax.

Politically, sure. The idea has been floating around for at least a decade that I know of, and probably longer.

Technologically? License plate readers on every intersection, let's say, for the sake of argument, every intersection along Van Ness and South Van Ness going east, and every intersection along Folsom going Northwest. Maybe put the northern boundary at about Washington Street and also have readers at off- ramps. Maybe give people driving along the Embarcadero a free pass though and set the Eastern boundary there. Every car that enters this section of the City has their plate read, and you either pay with FasTrack or get a bill in the mail at the end of the month. If you live in this part of the City, you can apply for a waiver, oh and since we're reading plates and doing a DMV lookup for the address, the City could even charge extra if the vehicle is commuting in from outside the City. Actually, taking that into consideration, you wouldn't even need to apply for a waiver, any vehicle registered to an address within this zone simply wouldn't be charged.

In fact, to make this more interesting, if someone calls a Lyft or Uber to an address within that zone, you could have them collect a surcharge which will be paid directly to the City.

The technical challenge isn't very hard, actually kind of boring, I think the bureaucratic challenge is a bit harder once you get through the political challenge, which is the real hurdle. That is a potentially large source of revenue for the SFMTA though, between the tolls, the surcharges, and the additional monthly passes sold.

<comment><USER21> It's worth noting that London has had a congestion zone for 15 years now and it wasn't particularly difficult technologically back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use Lyft a lot when I travel, but I'm also acutely aware that such services have their downside. For example, using Lyft the way I do spares me both the hassle and the liability of a rental car in two unfamiliar and notoriously bad traffic environments (Silicon Valley and Seattle). How is that possible? Because that hassle and liability are pushed onto the driver, whose livelihood would be far more affected by an accident than mine would be. :(

With respect to congestion, there is definitely a problem that so many rides leave the driver somewhere other than where they'd want to be. Taking rides to and from dinner is one thing, because those trips balance out pretty well. Using a TNC as a commute alternative is quite another thing, because everyone wants to go one way in the morning and the other way in the afternoon, leaving every car occupied only half the time. Even worse, the effect is most concentrated in exactly the places people least want to drive themselves because of the pre-existing congestion. Every bad place gets worse.

I don't know of any solution that others aren't already likely to mention, but it's definitely a problem looking for a better solution.

</comment><comment><USER23> The issue with conclusions of reports like these is that yes, Uber/Lyft contributed to a congestion increase, but what would that increase have looked like without Uber/Lyft? How much would congestion have increased by without Uber/Lyft (due to the strong economy, jobs, etc)?

Would people instead have purchased cars and driven them around instead? Would we actually have had higher congestion?

Publishing reports like these without controlling for the economy/jobs/popularity of these cities seems to me to be an unfair attack on Uber/Lyft, where the real culprit might just be a strong economy.

<comment><USER24> How exactly would you control for all the rest? Where is there another San Francisco that doesn't have Uber that we can go measure?

I think these estimates pass the sniff test at least. Downtown SF has very little parking relative to demand, so Uber / Lyft are practically the only way to get there in a car.

<comment><USER25> "Downtown SF has very little parking relative to demand, so Uber / Lyft are practically the only way to get there in a car."

So, wait... Your argument is that there is a natural disincentive to go downtown with a car, unless one uses Uber or Lyft... But you also somehow doubt that the car traffic that _is_ downtown has been caused by Uber and/or Lyft?

So is everyone an idiot because they just drive around downtown, give up, and go home? Or they aren't in on this Uber/Lyft secret that nobody has heard about?

Or... And I'm just spit-balling here... Maybe you just argued against yourself very effectively.

<comment><USER24> My point was actually that the traffic is already relatively self-regulating due to the lack of parking, most people don't get there by driving. Sure it's plausible that Uber or Lyft increased the traffic, but it's difficult to assert that in an alternate universe without Uber or Lyft that more parking would not have been built (attracting more cars), or that you'd have more traffic from cruising (people hunting for parking). Development plays a huge role as well, perhaps Uber has allowed more development than would have been feasible without it, or perhaps all the new development would have happened anyway, either way it's a complex adaptive system that you can't easily just say "ah, THIS is the one and only cause."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> TNC - since when was this acronym used? Call it what it is, not some vague NASA-like revision.

</comment><comment><USER27> They packed SF like a clown car, of course all commute times went up. Not sure how it is Uber's fault.

<comment><USER28> Who is "they"?</comment></comment>


Credit card terminals have used same password since 1990s, claim researchers - <AUTHOR> http://www.csoonline.com/article/2913884/access-control/credit-card-terminals-have-used-same-password-since-1990s-claim-researchers.html#tk.rss_news?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=information_security <comment><USER2> I used to work at a retailer and I know the password myself.

This is a prime example of hyperbole. The password only allows you to change things like what is printed on the receipt (the banner), merchant ID and other such things. It basically allows you to enter into a menu to set a few settings. It's not as if you can get a dump of card swipes.

Just a few researchers spreading fear about what has been known for a long time.

<comment><USER3> So, you could change the merchant ID and send payments to other accounts?

<comment><USER4> That would be an interesting headache. I would hope there are some sort of back end checks in place for this type of modification

<comment><USER5> I once heard a story about a store-clerk who, upon finding their POS setup was broken, went down the street and 'borrowed' a configuration file from another store in the area that they happened to know had the same software.

Blissful in their ignorance of what was going on they then happily continued accepting transactions for the rest of the day. Oops.

<comment><USER4> Ha. Pretty damn saavy store clerk

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The important fact to point out is that even knowing this password, sensitive payment information or PII (personally identifiable information) cannot be captured," Verifone said. "What the password allows someone to do is to configure some settings on the terminal; all executables have to be file signed, and it is not possible to enter malware just by knowing passwords."

<comment><USER7> I wonder what is available in the settings interface? For example, is there some gateway address that could be changed to a MITM transparent proxy? They act like this is no big deal, but 9/10 of these machines has the same password!

<comment><USER5> Presumably (and I have worked on devices like these, but not for Verifone) there is some sort of encryption going on.

I.E. some protocols I've worked with have had all sensitive data protected by ANSI X9.24 Appendix 1 (I think...) derived keys, or keys derived by various other standard means, such that being able to read the data stream is pretty irrelevant.

<comment><USER8>
      > Presumably ... there is some sort of encryption going on.

Color me skeptical. I would presume similarly, but I also would have presumed that they did not have the same password, either. A failure of that scope seems like it could be indicative of a systemic disregard for security.

<comment><USER5> >> A failure of that scope seems like it could be indicative of a systemic disregard for security.

Well, all the security systems have to be audited and signed-off by third- party testing labs approved by the payment card industry body (PCI) so your cynicism should be unwarranted.

But then I've seen code that got through those labs that I would be thoroughly ashamed of, so who knows really...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Speaking of "chip cards" I notice that my banks are stuffing my wallet with contact smart cards, but I haven't seen a single vendor in the U.S. that accepts those. Subway in my area, for instance, has terminals that accept ony contactless cards, and my local Target has gone so far to stuff up the slots for contact cards.

<comment><USER10> The US is very slow to adopt these kind of payment changes. I'd say I make about half of my CC purchases in Canada right now contactless.

My understanding is that since there are countless local banks in the US, adoption of technology changes is difficult and slow.

<comment><USER11> What will happen with people who travel from abroad in a few years?

Places like Latin America aren't even thinking about changing cards (heck, we're still adopting the old magnetic cards in most stores!). What'll happen when I visit Canada with my card in one or two years? Will those still be accepted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly, this last year, many businesses I frequent updated to new Verifone terminals. My credit card doesn't read on only that brand of terminal (works everywhere else i use it), unless I wrap it in a piece of receipt tape or plastic bag before sliding it thru, then it works after a try or two. Not sure why, but I haven't replaced the card yet simply because it is an interesting experiment.

<comment><USER13> > before sliding it thru

The US are _still_ using magnet stripes?

<comment><USER14> Yes. We're just now transitioning to chips. My cards are gradually being replaced with chip cards, starting last year. In October of this year, new rules will come into effect that basically require all cards and terminals to use chips, by putting the liability for fraudulent magstrip transactions onto whatever party was responsible for not being able to use a chip. (In other words, merchants will foot the bill for fraud if they don't upgrade their terminals.)

We're taking our time, but we're finally moving there.

Edit: despite _having_ chip cards, I've yet to be able to use the chip in the US. Many places now have chip-enabled terminals, but often not set up to use the chip part, and after a few failed attempts I just gave up on it.

<comment><USER15> _In October of this year, new rules will come into effect that basically require all cards and terminals to use chips_

How does this affect Square and similar peripheral readers for mobile devices? Will users of those now be liable for fraud?

<comment><USER14> Good question. Looks like the answer is, yes, you will be liable just like anybody else, and just like other providers, Square will start providing chip readers. They have a page about it here:

[https://squareup.com/emv](https://squareup.com/emv)

Interestingly, it looks like this may be the end of the model where the reader is so cheap they can give it away for free, as they list it for $29.

<comment><USER5> I do quite like their tiny reader, and I'm wondering if it uses some sort of modem for comms over the audio port...? Kinda cool.

<comment><USER14> I believe they've been using a modem sort of setup for a while, and this is probably the same sort of thing.

Their original reader was pretty much a magnetic reader head hooked straight to the microphone port, decoded by Square's software on the phone. You could record your card's stripe using a voice recorder program (I tried it for fun) and you'd get this fun squeaking noise from it.

Square's competitors eventually tried to discredit them by pointing out that this data was unencrypted, and that meant that Nefarious People could Steal your Precious Card Data using a Square reader. Square eventually responded by changing over to a reader that encrypted the magstripe data before communicating it to the phone, meaning there must be some sort of digital communication happening over the audio port.

<comment><USER5> OK, that's interesting, I had assumed that the older readers had simply transmitted the analogue signal generated by moving the mag strip through the reader, and was wondering if maybe the new one just attached to the mini-jack port and did its actual comms over bluetooth. But if they've already got a digital data transmission system in place then that's a whole different game.

Thanks for the insight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ingenico have a set-up password, too. Once you enter it you can change network settings which could be dangerous in the context of a poorly segmented network.

Given this I am wondering what kinds of settings are available in the Verifone secret menu. Is there anything like IP address, which could facilitate an MITM if an attacker walked up and changed it?

<comment><USER5> If there are keys that secure the traffic between the terminal and the bank, is an MITM setup going to be of any use?

<comment><USER16> While some card payment terminals talk directly to the bank, there is strong evidence that this is not how all POS work.

<comment><USER17> Yes. In large scale retailers, the payment terminals would either be connected via Ethernet to the private point of sale (POS) network in the store where they could only talk to the POS controllers, or they would be connected via USB or custom serial cables (IBM) to the POS register itself and all communications would run through the software on the POS terminal.

This password isn't the encryption key. Usually keys would be injected into the terminal either remotely through the POS terminal, POS controller or by shipping a special card w/a magstripe to the store where the manager or loss prevention person would swipe the card on each terminal that has the new key on it. PCI standards dictate that the retailer rotates the keys on a schedule with a documented procedure.

Changing the merchant ID probably would have little effect in most operations because the transactions aren't going directly to the MC/VISA/etc network, but are passing through a dedicated link to the merchant's acquiring bank. I've never tested this, but I would imagine that the acquiring bank would reject transactions that are for merchant IDs that do not belong to the customer that is leasing the connection. This situation actually happens quite often by merchants just mis-keying the merchant ID when setting up new stores.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for this insight. During a low point in my career I took on some contract work to deploy new POS at some QSR. I had to visit the secret menu on the Ingenico card terminals to verify network settings and in some cases (when whatever provisioning process did not work) manually set them. The terminals were to communicate with a local device in a 10.* IP scheme, and were supposed to get their own network settings via DHCP.

I've also had Walmart refund partial purchases without my payment card being present. This shows me that it's possible that Walmart stored the payment card information.

<comment><USER5> So there are a few things here I could maybe clarify, having worked in all sections of the chain from on-device security to issuing bank systems. (Remember I said maybe!)

You're right, not all POS talk directly to the bank. One of the products I worked on was a store-level switch, the POS would talk to that. However the store-level switch did not have the requisite keys to decrypt all of the data the POS would put out. In particular there are some pieces of data (PIN is one) that must, by card-scheme rules, be encrypted from the point of entry all the way to the bank. The keys used to achieve this are injected into the terminal during manufacture or during an update process that can only be activated using further keys held by the banks, not at the store level.

On your refund - Walmart may well be able to process a refund simply by specifying an amount and a transaction reference - they don't necessarily need to have had the card details to do that. Their bank can take that reference number and apply a refund against the transaction, looking up your account details in their database in order to inform your issuing bank about it. In some cases they may not even need to supply an account or card number to the issuing bank, just a transaction reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On the ones i have used it is 147369

</comment><comment> Church- Saw this an' stars and stones, first thing that popped into my mind. Was Barnaby Jack that rascapllion. I figure he would've had something to say on the matter.</comment>


Ask HN: Deep Learning startups made by indie founders? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I'm interested in DL, but it's hard to come up with practical applications for it that I can create on my own.
It would be really cool to make a  project that utilizes the recent advances in DL(seems like a big opportunity), but all the applications that come to mind seem to require a ton of resources(data, compute, scientists, developers), and are useful only for huge companies(self driving cars, search, spam, face recognition, etc).
Are there any DL-centered startups made by solo founders on small budgets?
What are some ideas or areas where a solo developer can make something useful and profitable? <comment><USER2> Here is one idea: stock trading robots - no customers, no employees... Just great location independent lifestyle business and the brier to start is pretty low: linux box + historical data...

I have been doing it for years and I am earning much more on this "side gig" compared to my "real job" or maybe I should call my full time job a "side gig" at this point...

<comment><USER3> where to get historical data?

where to get real-time data?

what api allows you to trade stocks?

<comment><USER2> Real time data here are two that are free:

[https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/](https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/)

[https://iextrading.com/developer/docs/#getting- started](https://iextrading.com/developer/docs/#getting-started)

The majority of discount stock brokers provide API, here is one example:

[https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041)

Historical data, the cheapest I can find 20+ years of data fro less than a $100 was on eBay, just search for: "us historical stock market data"

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Https://SignalBox.ai

My deep learning startup, self funded, I wrote all the software myself

Recently just built and launched hydra too hydrachain.io

<comment><USER5> How is your startup doing? Can you share your story? Maybe post in IndieHackers?

I am interested in freelancing/consulting in data science and deep learning but don't know where to start.

<comment><USER4> it was a slow-ish 6 months, but I'm cash flow positive, but in the last 2 months after the launch of my second product it's gone crazy - both Hydra and Signalbox

this month I've 4x revenue, next month is 20x already booked, I turned down an acquisition offer 2 weeks ago from one of our customers, and next week I had to cancel speaking at an AI pitch conference thingie because I'm going to discuss acquisition from a different customer, wish me luck

I would like to tell my story, but frankly, my todo list is mental. I've just been interviewed by the telegraph, a UK newspaper, so there'll be an article there

[https://ramm.science/](https://ramm.science/) for those interested</comment></comment></comment>


Making a programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Richienb/ROS-Code <comment><AUTHOR> Currently making a programming language, probably won't become massively popular but here it is anyways.

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting but I am having a hard time finding its documentation.</comment></comment>


How to Build a Button - <AUTHOR> http://randsinrepose.com/archives/how-to-build-a-button/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but this is just a non-issue. How often do you change brightness? Once or twice a day? I have no problem hitting the virtual escape key without looking.

So much drama!

Sure, it's not a perfect solution, but it's also not something that should keep anyone from using what is otherwise a stellar machine.</comment>


Ask YC: What do you think of niche social networks? - <AUTHOR>

a. What do you guys think of niche social networks?
b. What about a niche social network as the only feature of a site?
c. What about a niche social network as one of the features among a host of different features on a site?
d. Is there any stigma associated with the words "social network" in the VC / Angel community, now that there are thousands of these popping up each day? <comment><USER2> I would stay away from a couple of things. One is the "social network" label. Personally I think it's overused and it's meaning is starting to expand (I think a 1990 BBS would qualify as a social network today).

You might have a hard time with niche social networks. The primary reason being that the bigger players are building tools to allow folks to roll their own networks. So the chances are users won't want to get an account for every single niche network and prefer to stick to something from within the larger networks they belong to.

Depending on the exact niche market and just how special your site has to be for that niche market compared to the generic sites you might still have a good shot at building something useful. I would prefer some label like "community" over "social network" though.

I think del.icio.us, flickr, last.fm are great examples of community driven sites that serve a niche market.

Things like "social network for wine lovers" I think are likely to fail.

<comment><USER3> _Things like "social network for wine lovers" I think are likely to fail._

Actually, Cork'd was acquired back in May! <http://hivelogic.com/narrative/articles/corkd-acquired>

<comment><USER2> interesting, i was making up the wine lovers part. good to know that I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Connectedness to the things that matter to me is like oxygen.

I think websites that connect people to ideas and people they care about will only grow in importance and popularity as more and more hackers get the little things right (user experience), and implementing these as features of a site becomes easier and cheaper (less time and money) so that more sites can be driven by those with the best connections and insight into their community, rather than by those who happen to have the right tech skills.

At least, I hope this is what happens. It can be a lonely world out here. There are few things as important (and, for many, as difficult) as finding the right people and information to surround yourself when you exit "the system" and are faced with crafting your life experience all on your own.

The internet may already have come a long way, but I think this is just the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the answer really depends on the niche you want to go after. Do XBox360 fans need another social network login/pass to remember? I'd assume not, a Facebook community probably would be easier for them.

But, I'd also assume that there are viable opportunities out there that, by the nature of the niche, would function better as an isolated specialty site. Things like a social network for elementary school children would make sense in that context.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think you need to distinguish between a niche social network and a niche community. Social networking is effectively a specific bundle of features (profiles, friend/ buddy-lists) but there are a raft of social features that can be deployed as part of a community that may be more effective. For example, whilst a social network for sports fans might not work, some kind of wiki/ digg combination might be killer.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think we don't need just another social network. Do you know about identity crash problem ([http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=identity+cras...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=identity+crash&defid=2585949))?

We need some bridge between websites and social networks. some kind of cross- site copy-paste technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> One challenge is that niche networks by definition are not going to be as large as general networks. So they won't generate enough advertising revenue. And unfortunately, most networking sites are solely dependent on advertising.</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't code editors ever have line numbers on by default?  - <AUTHOR>

I have always found that whatever IDE I'm using ( Eclipse, Visual Studio, Aptanna etc..) line numbers always seem to be off by default. Not having line numbers makes it difficult to debug and if you're going to be coding you are definitely going to be debugging. Do the majority of people not use line numbers? <comment><USER2> Intellij makes line numbers mostly unnecessary. Click on the link in the stack frame displayed by the debugger and you go to the right line in the right file. And if you really must know the line number, it's in the bottom status bar, about 3/4 of the way over.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a nice way to handle things, I've never tried Intellij maybe I will for my next project. Still if you have to look at log files for why your program crashed, line numbers are almost essential. Just a small gripe of mine that I never understood why it's done this way, maybe an IDE developer will see this and chime in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What do you need line numbers for?

I use the "jump to line" command when I'm looking up the cause of a compiler error message, but in an IDE world I doubt I'd need even that, since it'd presumably just link the errors to the appropriate lines visually.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think line numbers help in gauging how large a class or method is if the file is longer than a few hundred lines. They also help organize things for me, if I roughly know what line a certain piece of code exists at I can usually find it faster (using jump to line) than without having line numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always wondered this too. Maybe try to track down the author of a text editor and see what the answer is.

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe Komodo has line numbers turned on by default.</comment>


Josh Topolsky announces he's leaving Engadget - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/12/hello-i-must-be-going/

<comment><AUTHOR> He's too much of a professional to say so, but I think many people will get the feeling that this decison was motivated by "The AOL Way".

</comment><comment><USER2> Dan Benjamin recorded a 40-minute interview with Josh three months ago. He talked about his experience becoming Engadget's editor-in-chief, coming from a background as a music producer:

<http://5by5.tv/pipeline/33>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll miss Josh's writing for one. Always enjoyed his articles even if I didn't always agree with him. Hope he surfaces again soon. Keep writing, Josh!

</comment><comment><USER4> And AOL loses another editor. He says he'll be sticking around as editor-at- large, and co-hosting the podcast, so... maybe this is a way for him to keep writing without being under AOL's posting mandates?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get User's info based on their Twitter Id? - <AUTHOR>

I posted this question earlier but looks like it was not the right time to post and unfortunately didn't get enough responses as I was expecting. So wanted to give it one more shot.
So, the issue is, I want to get user's info based on his Twitter Id, like.. GitHub, LinkedIn, StackOverflow, Facebook, Flickr, HackerNews, etc.
I looked at Rapleaf but it needs User's email address which I don't have since Twitter doesn't return that info.
Rapportive is doing good job but not sure what service they are using. Also they use user's email address to get more info.
Any help would be really appreciated.
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> We just launched what you're talking about: <http://qwerly.com>.

The API documentation is here: <http://qwerly.com/about_us/api>

Let me know how you get on (email is in my HN profile) or @maxniederhofer on Twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just tried with my account. It's awesome. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a ton :)

<comment><USER2> I'm doing a bunch of customer development at the moment. Would love to chat before you use it in production somewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


One Week of Harassment on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter <comment><USER2> The most recent episode of This American Life ([http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/545/i...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/545/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say-say-it-in-all- caps)) has Jezebel writer Lindy West reach out and talk to one of her trolls who created a page celebrating her father's death and claiming she was a disappointment to him. He sent her an apology after realizing there was an actual person on the other end of his trolling and they actually have a remarkably civil conversation about the incident. It's highly worth listening to.

<comment><USER3> See also [http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/my_embarrassing_picture_went...](http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/my_embarrassing_picture_went_viral/)

"The most common response was not remorse or defensiveness but surprise. They were startled that I could hear what they'd been saying."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scary to think that the venn diagram of young gamers and future programmers is pretty substantial.

The ratio of men/women in college was pretty abysmal. This may not be the exact cause, but it certainly doesn't help the cause. Truly is a shame that so much talent is driven to other fields due to lack of basic social skills.

<comment><USER5> All you have to do is watch the HN comments on any thread that (even tangentially) mentions women. There's no shortage of of existing programmers / old gamers that are virulently hostile.

<comment><USER6> Definitely. I'm involved here because I think of HN as my people. But it's an embarrassment to me elsewhere. Sort of like that one cranky old relative who can be perfectly nice but also will spew out some unbelievable shit.

<comment><USER7> Yup. As I've said before, I've considered leaving because this place generally seems to accept utterly reprehensible behavior. I don't understand why aggressive sexism (and racism too, though that's not this thread) is tolerated on Y Combinator's doorstep. I told dang when I spoke to him about this that I think not eighty-sixing racists and sexists will self-select out the people who _aren 't_, and that's a real bad look for YC.

I've flagged more posts in this thread than I have at any point on HN, by a lot. It's kind of amazing.

<comment><USER8> > I've flagged more posts in this thread than I have at any point on HN, by a > lot. It's kind of amazing.

There's some inconsistency with flagging. If the comment is flagged it turns to [flagkilled] at which point it can't attract any more downvotes. But some posts are not bad enough to flag, but very unpopular, and people can just keep downvoting those posts - even after the post can't be edited any more.

It'd be nice if the edit period was as long as the downvote period. And it'd be nice if a [flagkilled] post was still able to be downvoted, or it automatically attracted some downvotes when it dies or somesuch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anonymous free speech can sure bring out some ugly things in people. Freedoms, though, often cut both ways, protecting important and significant behaviors but also sometimes allowing sad and pathetic ones.

I think it would be delicious punishment if the author of each of those tweets were forced to read them out loud, in front of their mothers, sisters, wives, friends, bosses, coworkers, and children. If someone's willing to send messages like that to a real life person, they should see how people in real life react to their hate spew.

<comment><USER6> As makers and participants in internet culture, I think it's incumbent on all of us to find ways to minimize the downsides of anonymity and pseudonymity while maximizing the benefits. Because otherwise, the baby's getting thrown out with the bathwater.

Note, for example, that Facebook doesn't allow any anonymity, and Quora only allows it with tight controls. I think the long-term trend is to get rid of it, which would be a shame.

<comment><USER8> People are fine being ignorant bigots under their real names on Facebook.

[http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...](http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_when_i_starred_in_a_facebook_ad/)

Facebook introduced a new feature; created an ad with a Sikh man; racists everywhere.

<comment><USER6> Sure, some people are fine being ignorant bigots in the town square at high noon, too. But that doesn't mean that people are _equally_ comfortable being bigots no matter the circumstance. And even if the amount of bigotry were identical whether anonymous or not, it doesn't mean that people won't perceive anonymity as the problem because of the broken social feedback loop.

That said, I think anonymity actually is an enabler here. The KKK knew exactly what they were doing with those hoods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is disgusting. It's also disappointing how little most games (CoD, for example) have done to cut back on back behavior. I've seen players on some games just spew hate and nasty taunts in games with no repercussions. At most, they get banned from servers that care to moderate. Often there's not even a mechanism for reporting other players globally. The lack of oversight allows a culture of trolling and nastiness to thrive.

Twitter could also do more to proactively prevent troll accounts and monitor tweets without waiting for someone to report it. I'd be a little more sympathetic to startup-stage Twitter figuring it out, but they're to the point where I'd expect something better.

Those who raise the "free speech" argument fail to realize that these are private companies. Companies like EA and Twitter are well within their rights to limit what is broadcast on their servers and networks. You can say what you like (within some reasonable constraints), but that doesn't give you the right to have it amplified through someone else's work.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't normally have "showdead" turned on, it's worth doing so for this article. A) I'm grateful that HN's more active moderation is taking out some of the trash. And B) it's worth noting the details of the sort of awfulness that's getting moderated here. This isn't just a gamer problem.

<comment><USER11> > I'm grateful that HN's more active moderation is taking out some of the > trash.

I don't see it that way. I read those comments and there's very little vitriol in there. There's a lot of legitimate counter arguments being made that are being flag killed. You're essentially being grateful that HN's moderation is stifling any attempt at disagreement with their own political views.

<comment><USER6> Huh. An anonymous dude who thinks that feminism is the enemy is fine with bigotry. Who could have guessed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be entirely possible for Twitter to create various community driven feedback mechanisms, they just don't want to.

Plenty of online communities have various moderation systems, including HN that hugely reduce the potential for abuse, trolling and bullying - and most don't require your real identity.

<comment><USER13> They have community driven feedback mechanisms. When a user is flagged sufficiently often, they're pretty much gone.

Of course this is now abused against (some) X people and by (some) X people (for X being pretty much any cause or philosophy that creates uproar and with- us-or-against-us camps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I personally don't like the woman, but while scrolling down the list, the contrast between these people and the people i know online and in real life is so stark that i can only wonder:

Who are these people and where do they come from?

<comment><USER13> They seem to be everywhere.

The twitter usernames are public, and reading a sample of those biographies looked to me like everything from 13 year old boy to female middle aged graphics designer.

And even though these comments look very much the same, these seem to be actual accounts with normal use, not some troll battalion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This post appears to have been flagged incorrectly. I'm sure we've been using a bunch of words that would raise a flag, when in reality we're just talking about the content and important but sensitive issues.

Could some fix that? Remove the flag?

</comment><comment><USER15> It's illegal to make death threats offline. It should be online too.

<comment><USER3> It is, but there's a bunch of legal doctrine to say what _actually_ counts as a threat. Also, SCOTUS has a case before it now that will further refine the issue, specifically about online behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It just keeps scrolling...

</comment><comment><USER17> This doesn't seem like tech news. Flagged.

<comment><USER18> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic.

<comment><USER17> I agree very much. I didn't find this interesting, nor did it gratify my intellectual curiosity. Glad it's off the front page.

Would be terrible if HN devolved into a mess of posts about how dumb and hateful random comments are on the internet and turned into another outrage generating machine (just like the TV news you mentioned).

BTW, here's a nice HN alternative that someone pointed me to recently (for those of us that are sad to see what HN is devolving into):

[https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The entire internet is full of this. Every comment section every forum its just absolute anywhere and everywhere someone can post text. Anyone who makes any statement on the internet will receive hate, the more famous you are the more you receive.

<comment><USER20> What are you saying with your comment? That we should just accept this despicable hatred? That this is normal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hate to be that guy, but when you see the twitter account, you only have some reports of tweets like this, that's not how the situation is going to be improved. I agree it's outrageous to see people like this, but their twitter account is effectively completely useless to promote their message, I have to scroll down ~100 tweet to have something useful about video games. Their twitter account is effectively doing some publicity to this kind of message by posting only this kind of content.

<comment><USER21> Please do a constructive comment instead of downvoting me, I'm not posting any spam here. I just fail to see how only posting this kind of tweets is going to promote their cause in any ways, just have a look at their twitter account.

<comment><USER22> I think people are confused about what you're trying to say. I myself am a little lost.</comment></comment></comment>


Source: Microsoft wins Facebook bid battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9803689-56.html <comment><USER2> Facebook is the Pets.com of the new bubble. Once facebook fails the bubble bursts. They are paying for hype.You have to be able to make money to have a valuation of 15billion. Facebook made 50 million this year.The valuation is 300x their income. whatever ...i'm going to bed

</comment><comment><USER3> News Corp paid 580 million for myspace. MSFT paid 240 Million for 1.6 percent of facebook. ...guess which one of these companies has access to a financial spreadsheet application?

Obviously, Microsoft can lose 240 million dollars without much harm, but this unbelievable idiocy means that microsoft will either have a vast change in management very soon or an untimely death.

<comment><USER4> News Corp got Intermix for bargain basement prices due to some good old fashion shareholder swindling. News Corp probably had nothing to do with it, but it was inarguably an artificially low price. Though even had they paid what, at that time, would have been market rate, it still would have been an infinitely better deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's great for the people who founded Facebook, but personally i don't understand Facebook's valuation other than the networking effect. To me it's ridiculously overpriced. I wonder if that would make me less suitable to be a startup founder.

<comment><USER6> 15b isnt too too expensive really

broadcast.com was once worth 4b, amazon.com is worth 40b

heck the value of google has INCREASED 50b in just the last 6 months

facebook is a VERY important site. where else can I go on the internet to place ads targeted to a location AND interest. An insane percentage of those under 25 have fb accts, and the whole next generation will be locked into fb as they follow their older peers.

facebook has the internet on lock

<comment><USER7> Amazon sells stuff. Google makes money from a fantastic advertising business model.

What does facebook do again?

No one clicks on adverts on facebook.

<comment><USER8> The banner ads aren't where they make their money, it's in the mini-feed ads and the sponsored groups and beyond. Yesterday, Axe sponsored a free gift on Facebook and now 250,000 profiles are permanently decorated with an Axe advertisement.

<comment><USER7> Just wait until Axe realise their ROI is practically 0. Perhaps they can make it work, I don't know. I do know that when I started seeing adverts in my mini-feed I thought "For god sake it goes downhill now, I don't think I shall be using facebook much longer"

<comment><USER7> Just to add:

Google made a great business model by placing relevant adverts along side natural search results. People click on them because in some cases, they are what they wanted to find.

Facebook advertising 'Axe' in my minifeed (Which is supposed to tell me whats going on with friends etc), is totally wrong. It's like a popup. It's in no way relevant. No one will click on it/care about it, and it'll just drive users away to whatever's next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A $240M investment on a $15B valuation means Microsoft gets 1.6%, probably not the best outcome for Mark Zuckerberg. Looks like Facebook's investors are trying to make sure their share doesn't get diluted any further.

Also, this is great. Valleywag predicted the announcement shortly before it happened because the heads of PR at Facebook and Microsoft added each other as friends today: [http://valleywag.com/tech/confirmed/facebook-and- microsoft-f...](http://valleywag.com/tech/confirmed/facebook-and-microsoft- flacks-make-friends-before-deal-announcement-314647.php)

<comment><USER10> I assume you got the "not the best outcome for Mark Zuckerberg" from Valleywag, too?

I don't see why a higher valuation is "not the best outcome" for anyone invested in Facebook. Unless things are structured oddly, Mark Zuckerberg is being diluted as much as anyone else. Which is, not much at all. And wasn't $250 million the amount they wanted to take?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a fine example of Winner's Curse: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner's_curse>

<comment><USER12> Sounds like $240 million a small price (for Microsoft) to pay to beat Google at something.

<comment><USER7> 'we can make stupider investments than you'? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> MSFT is letting their ego get the best of them here for sure. They'd be a horrible poker player, which I guess might be why Bill, while the richest man at the world, hung out at the $3/$6 tables.</comment>