Why Google+ will become Google's only product - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222547/Why_Google_will_become_Google_s_only_product

<comment><USER2> "And between these two giants, it will be no contest. Google will almost certainly have vastly superior search -- it's Google, after all -- superior messaging, superior office documents, superior spam filtering, superior video chat -- superior everything."

I think the author is drastically overstating the inevitability of Google's product superiority. Google already spectacularly failed once at messaging with Google Wave, and Gmail doesn't actually have the market share that most people think it has (even just considering webmail). Office documents don't seem to be a make-or-break feature for social, and Google Docs has had very limited success competing with Microsoft Office (in fact, my favorite Google office productivity product, EtherPad, was killed in favor of Wave). Spam filtering is legitimate, but it's not that hard of a problem really in a technical sense; Facebook could keep up. Video chat is a weak point for Facebook, granted.

Besides, integrating your competitor's product as a feature of your own doesn't always spell success. Microsoft integrated Bing with its operating system through the IE search box, and look how little that has mattered. Both Apple and Microsoft have tried to "feature-ize" Dropbox, and Dropbox seems to have emerged unscathed. Instapaper is doing fine even in the face of the Safari Reading List. The list goes on. (Sometimes the strategy does work, such as IE against Netscape, but it's hardly clear-cut.)

<comment><USER3> I think Dropbox is a great example to illustrate the weaknesses of the product-to-feature template. Yes, a product can be crushed by a feature, but only if that feature is "good enough".

Dropbox, in particular, is remarkably resilient, because the competing features still aren't "good enough". Apple and Microsoft are actually relatively weak competitors because neither of them "plays well with others" (and having access to your files "anywhere" is a big part of Dropbox's value proposition). Amazon is a more significant threat (competing with your infrastructure provider is never easy), but even they haven't done enough to make Cloud Drive simple and ubiquitous.

Looking at Google+ that way, I think many products won't be threatened by Google+'s features. For example, Google+ doesn't support anonymity the way Tumblr does, so it isn't likely to be a "good enough" replacement.

Facebook might be special case, though. Other than the existing user base (which isn't an impossible hurdle), I don't really see any dimension along which Google+ isn't likely to be a "good enough" alternative. On the other hand, I've never been a fan of Facebook, so I'm probably a bad person to assess that.

<comment><USER4> People are invested in Facebook with their updates, photos etc. Unlike what the OP contends, people are not going to switch over their usage to a competitor based on features. Bing is as good as Google for most queries, but how many people have switched to Bing? Google is not attacking, it is defending. FB messages is already way more efficient for quick communication than email. It may not replace email, but can occupy significant market-share.

No matter how many places Google pushes G+, people are not going to switch unless they can achieve the same functionality by copy-pasting a link.

<comment><USER5> People were invested in Myspace with updates, photos, page customizations, etc. Now they're all on Facebook. There's no reason to believe they won't move again if the right feature set comes along.

<comment><USER6> I'd actually expect that Facebook's far deeper penetration would mean that there is a far lower percentage that are willing to jump on the "next big thing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually hope this does come to pass, but I don't see it happening any time soon given the current state of affairs. Only a handful of my friends use G+, and they are the web/coder guys. All the social butterflies, the girls, the parties, and the pictures post on Facebook. It seems to me that many of my peers' internet surfing these days consists almost entirely of hanging out on Facebook. They have never heard of reddit, they don't follow blogs, they have no compelling interest in international news or trends, and if they have heard of G+ they consider it irrelevant. I think there is a key demographic of extroverts around which social gatherings coalesce that G+ needs to start making a dent in if they ever want to dethrone Facebook as the social space.

The other thing that concerns me is Google's prior lack of commitment to these types of projects. Facebook did not succeed only because it was better than myspace, I believe it was also due to just how bad myspace became that people started actively looking for an alternative. Remember the terrible auto-start songs, horribly mangled html templates, creepy spam and rampant security flaws? It might be the case that in a few years Facebook will start to implode in much the same way. Too many crappy Zynga games, an increasinly cluttered interface, questionable privacy compromises, a constant battering of status minutia updates and/or some catastrophic privacy event might drive people to begin migration to a new service. That might take years though. My question is, will G+ still be there, ready to accept them with a stable of polished features and seamless integration to the entire Google application lineup? Or will Google have abandoned G+ years ago, the same way it did with Wave and countless other "experiments"...

</comment><comment><USER8> Apparently all this "integration" appeals to some people, but I can't say I'm one of them. The last thing I want is google+ integrated with my gmail (largely why I haven't signed up with google+). I'd rather just have my mail be my mail, not some sort of weird blob-like uber product trying desperately to force me to classify the people I kind of know into "circles". I get the value for the company, but as a consumer the idea of all this integration just creeps me out.

<comment><USER9> a circle is _exactly_ the same feature as a contacts group, something email clients have had since their inception. you've never organized your contacts into groups or lists so you could quickly send an email to a pre-defined list of people? that's exactly what a circle is. i can't imagine any rational reason to be creeped out by that.

and even if you don't group your contacts, that's perfectly fine. there is nothing forcing you to do that. after-g+ gmail works exactly the same way it did before g+, only now it has the ability to send mail to any circles you've set up in google+.

<comment><USER10> Similar, but not exactly the same. Contact groups are more of a memory aid. You just need to be able to find the person, and most of the time this is the only consideration. Circles involve privacy and thus they also involve social considerations.

For instance, I'd have all my f __* buddies in the same group but not in the same circle. People who I don't want to discuss my stuff together I wouldn't have in the same circle, and this happens a lot.

That said, it's been a while I don't even use contact groups, I have just 2 lists: people I actively communicate with (time doesn't allow for a ton of these) and people I seldom communicate with, or whose contact I may or may not need. I've also learnt to delete people who I don't need or want in my contacts, and found it to be a great life-hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I put money down with a buddy (when Google+ launched) that within a year Google would drop the Google+ brand. This article basically agrees with me, but has it backwards.

Google+ will just become Google. Owning an Internet scale social-graph is just too important for Google; thus they will do whatever it takes to own one. This will include forcing users who just want search (or email) to have the functionality of Google+; but to avoid brand dilution Google will drop the "+".

(They will continue to use the + in the UI for +1, but that's different).

<comment><USER12> Though I agree with your reasoning, I don't think the "+" is going away, and I do think your buddy will end up winning.

Like Circles, the + is becoming it's own strong brand, and though it may be that "Google+ == Google", the plus brand will stick around.

Likely, Google will still retain the non-plus Google search, but put most of it's efforts into improving and integrating the "account required" Google+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a well-written and persuasive, and I think Elgan does a terrific job at structuring his argument around the 'product-to-feature' angle.

What I don't agree with necessarily is the framing that Google's success is fait accompli. One skill that Google has _NOT_ established is their ability to integrate separate services such that the whole is _at least_ as much as the sum of its parts. One might argue the only case where they've had success in this is AdSense. Tell me if I'm forgetting something.

While Google's scale and technological advance is a major plus, if you don't design these integrated products cleverly enough, you end up with a bloated, confusing, nebulous morass that people can't grasp as easily as they would independent services. I'm sure Page is aware of this, but the devil is in the execution, and again, the precedent so far is not encouraging. It'll be intriguing to see how well they do this in 2012.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't see a future where the majority of people (knowingly) opt in to having their personally identifiable web histories stored and analyzed by anonymous nerds. Sure, that's happening already if one has a facebook account, and the battle's already over and lost there, but a lot of friends, more than I have on facebook, avoid social networks for that very reason.

That said, it seems like google's focus is now desperate imitation of anything remotely successful on the social web with subsequent bundling of the winners into one uber-product within google+. And it would be a real shame if this is as good as it gets. Is it?

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of this article: <http://hubski.com/pub?id=2069>

I think it's an interesting argument. Google+ might be Google's biggest success, and also sew the seeds of their downfall. Now that G+ is spreading into Gmail, there is no going back.

</comment><comment><USER16> When I heard "center all their products around one product" I first thought of Gmail.

I'm not sure if I'm alone on this, but Gmail is by far the most critical part of my Google experience.

<comment><USER17> Could this be simply because you're taking their search for granted? Perhaps because I Chrome, I find Google search to be my main way of getting around the internet, both for specific sites and specific queries.

<comment><USER16> I would say that's accurate.

Maybe it's because I type gmail.com far more often than google.com. In fact, I don't think I ever type google.com.

I probably make a couple dozen searches a day, but only spend around 30 minutes a day in the search engine. On the other hand, 99% of the time I have Gmail running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They center their products around ads, because that is where the profit margin is. Google is just unique in that it does a lot of externally tangential web services that on the outside don't make direct income but really keep the google brand going and strong. They are pretty much the only company to realize they can have a separation between what makes money and what makes customers.

</comment><comment><USER19> No, the author missed it completely. Google's business is massively threatened in many different dimensions. Google is in a desperate fight to save their business, and the Google+ product is entirely a defensive reaction to the threat imposed by social networks, targeted searches (Yelp) and non-web searching (Siri) and information discovery. I do not forsee a future where people perform searches by going to www.google.com. A conventional search engine is going to look quaint in the coming years and that's bad if you make 97% of your revenue from something that has or will peak.

<comment><USER20> I don't agree with the author on many counts, but I wish that everyone who makes the point about Google being threatened by "social networks, targeted searches, non-web searching and information discovery" would elaborate a bit further.

Let us look at factors you have pointed out:

1\. Social networks: Google has 3 positions in Alexa's Top 10 for the US market. Only Facebook and Twitter are the only two sites that are social networks on that list. Other than Twitter (protected accounts), Bing and Paypal, every other site on that list is crawl-able by Google. Even for Facebook, it is better to have public than private pages (6,330,000,000 pages in the Google index). *

It is very much possible for Facebook to be double the size that it is at and also for Google to grow at the same time. There are more people using more of the internet every year. They all need to connect with others and also find other information they are looking for. Growth for both Google and Facebook need not be mutually exclusive.

The most tangible growth-related metric of year-on-year growth for Google is still pretty impressive: <http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html> Till a lot of the numbers start veering drastically off-course, I won't worry much about it.

2\. Targeted searches: There will always be niche companies who do this over a million domains. I do not think Google would bother too much with it purely because of the clout they carry in the search market. If you have to get good non-organic traffic, you need to be indexable on Google these days. There is also the fact that Google would not want to dominate in everything related to search as it leaves them badly exposed to anti-trust issues.

3\. Non-web searches: This is more of an input/interface matter. It has been possible to search through speech for a while on Android and it is something that is only bound to grow as speech recognition gets more and more better across all platforms. What matters is the quality of results and if competing platforms can provide better results from a non-Google platform, then Google would be in trouble. Parsing spoken text is different from delivering results for a query. So, Siri doing a good job of parsing what you are saying is different from Siri being able to serve results from a different search engine than Google.

If the majority of people who do speech-based searches get their results from Google, it will be something for Google to rejoice and not fear. In fact, I think Apple may have even done Google a favour with Siri. There is now going to be a race to be the best voice-based interface on non-iOS platforms as a result of Siri. There is also the increased awareness of this feature now due to Siri.

4\. Information discovery: If I am not mistaken, Google already is the leader on this front. They layer a lot of additional information into search results (which, I am not a fan of) and there is nobody of a comparable size who is competing with them on it.

* Alexa is a flawed metric. I am using it as a comparative/indicative measure. Google's page count is broken; but they do have a LOT of pages on Facebook that is crawl-able.

<comment><USER21> RE #1: Even if Google grows thanks to indexing Facebook pages, isn't "Where do people search for these pages?" the question that matters. And I'd bet that if people are trying to find a friend or a group or whatever on Facebook, their first attempt will be searching with Facebook.

That being said, Facebook's search could definitely use some help, and the more they improve it, the less anyone will need Google to search for things inside the Facebook ecosystem.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely correct there about Facebook being the primary destination to find Facebook friends. Point I am trying to make is that Facebook being open to being indexed by Google also contributes to Google's growth.

Searching for most names on Google throws up first results from Facebook, which makes it one more reason why I'll search for a name on Google than the situation where Google would not have the results on the what is probably the most authoritative page for most people. Thus, in the latter case, creating a situation where I am forced to use Facebook at the cost of Google.

Edit: I think there is a popular zero sum perspective to these things, which is not necessarily true when you look at it closely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open-Source CUDA/OpenCL Speed of Light Ray-Tracer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/favreau/Sol-R <comment><USER2> Nice work. Lately I've been playing with a pure CPU path tracer written in Go: [https://github.com/fogleman/pt](https://github.com/fogleman/pt)

The math is still way over my head but the code is simple enough to follow.

<comment><USER3> Looks great, props for going with Go instead of the usual C or C++ approach.</comment></comment>


Presented with two paths. - <AUTHOR>

I have two strong start up models at a point where I need to drop one and concentrate on the other.
I really can't pick between them.
What criteria would you personally use to separate the two?
Other than x has a bigger market. <comment><USER2> I'm going to assume "Other than x has a bigger market" can be extrapolated to be "Other than x has more of an upside."

And from that I'll extrapolate that you are in the entrepreneur game to learn and grow as an individual as well as provide something new and interesting for its own sake.

So I'd say "Pick the one that would likely cascade to greater discoveries down the road." In this case, a new mathematics would be a better choice than a new engine based on understood mathematics.</comment>


Ask HN: What technologies should I learn to build my Saas web app - <AUTHOR> I am a python developer and have few ideas for a saas web application. I understand the basics of html, css, javascript, but confused about what front end-frame work to learn. I can manage the backend with Flask/ Django. How should I get started? <comment><USER2> How dynamic does your webapp need to be? Can it do it's main function and provide value with back-end rendered HTML? If yes (or mostly yes) building that way will be much faster to test your idea. Some AJAX can be used as necessary.

If you do need (or simply want) to use a front-end framework, I would pick Vue.js as it's designed to be 'gradual' and so has a smoother learning curve. I suggest using single file compoonents (.vue extension) with properties and events and go without a central shared state.

Historically, React has been more popular and has a bigger job market. e.g. I use React at work and Vue for personal projects. I can't comment much on Angular other than the 1.x/2.x+ split isn't great for googling answers and many Anguar apps I've used are slow.

"Focus on product" as @maxxxxx puts it is the best advice. Work backwards from a goal. E.g. I want to release a product with x,y minimal features by z date on Product Hunt. Try to get others' hand on your app to get feedback and drive development based on usage/needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pick a popular one, stick with it and focus on the product. They are all good enough to get you going. Finding customers is much more difficult than dealing with the technology.

<comment><USER4> Picking a popular framework is most useful when you come to an edge/rare case and stackoverflow.com and forums are needed because the docs/manual fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd recommend just using plain JavaScript. There's a great blog article by Githubs engineering team about how they removed Jquery from their front-end and now rely just on vanilla JavaScript: [https://githubengineering.com/removing-jquery-from-github- fr...](https://githubengineering.com/removing-jquery-from-github-frontend/)

Also, don't be afraid of embracing multi page app versus going for a single page app (they're largely overrated).

For front end CSS design framework, I'd recommend something like Bulma. Very easy, modern and CSS-only. You can learn it all in less than an hour.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're familiar with Django, just go for it. The documentation is really nice and it is batteries included: admin panel, authentication, permissions and more. All this free stuff will let you focus on your app instead of what is around it.

For the frontend, it depends on your goals. If you need a quick prototype, just use the Django templating engine and ship something quick. If you want to learn, choose a popular frontend framework and stick to it. They are all pretty good. Check their API / ecosystems and pick the one you like :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Use Django. Check out the major frontend frameworks (React, Vue, or Angular) and pick the one that looks good to you. From there, you should be able to find tutorials on how to hook up that framework with Django.

<comment><USER8> I second this. Expose your backend with DRF ([https://www.django-rest- framework.org/](https://www.django-rest-framework.org/)). Once you get over initial learning curve, you'll have an extremely powerful and flexible library for building your backend.</comment></comment>


Two teenagers shot in Seattle's Chop autonomous zone - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53224445 <comment><USER2> What a horrible article. Doesn't mention the murderer, the reasoning, and the president "threatened to take back the city"? What a joke. They are committing a crime. Serving justice isn't taking anything.</comment>


App.net's new direction - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/02/25/adn-freemium <comment><AUTHOR> _The first wave of accounts is up for renewal on April 14 — just seven weeks from now. So App.net has seven weeks to convince its early adopters that it's worth paying more money for another year of service._

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Those of us that signed up for the $50/year deal got our subscriptions extended when the price dropped to $36. My renewal date is April 9th 2014 (i.e. more than a year away).

Setting aside that piece of nit picking, Marco's completely right that in order for App.net to be useful to both end users and developers it first needs to be popular. It's a chicken and egg problem in some ways (no users without interesting apps, no interesting apps without a lot of users). Opening the doors with invite-only free accounts goes some of the way towards solving that problem without the scaling issues that would come with unrestricted free accounts.

<comment><USER2> FYI - He corrected the original post to mark the correct date.

I think that the chicken and egg problem may be a little more fundamental. The major social networks (Twitter/Facebook) first had a compelling application and then later migrated to try to be more like platforms. App.net is trying to be a platform first, without providing a compelling application first. They need at least one killer app to convince people to sign up, and that is what they should be pushing to end-users.

They can push the File API/platform to devs at the same time, but who is their real customer? The end user or the developer? It's hard to figure out.

<comment><USER3> Who is the real customer on Twitter? Users who follow celebrities or celebrities who post?

<comment><USER4> Both. It's a marketplace for real-time information, and any marketplace always has both buyers and sellers. This is especially important for Twitter, as each person can frequently swap roles.

<comment><USER3> Right. And that's why it's not confusing or complicated for App.net to target both users and developers. Both are their "real customers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish there was more interest in developing on top of the tent.io protocol. Open and distributed should be the goal for the next phase of social networks.

<comment><USER6> Tent.io introduced a few cool ideas, so I'm glad it's part of the conversation, but it's definitely not the answer.

The developers behind it have a weird preoccupation with preserving _all_ your content forever. For example, if you edit your Tent profile, people can still get all the old versions and see info that you deleted. And last time I checked, not only was this the default behavior, there was no way to opt out of it, either. And they claim this is a feature but nobody I have talked to wants it.

I also followed the Tent software's development for several months (initially I was extremely excited about the project). It broke frequently and progress on making it do what it was supposed to was slow. Plenty of features were promised ("we'll implement X next week") but never delivered even after months.

I don't think the developers really understand the problems social software solves, nor do they have a clear idea what their own project does and doesn't do (they seem to think _everything_ should be a Tent.io app, which is crazy), nor are they particularly good at shipping. I've moved on, personally.

<comment><USER7> Do you know much about pump.io, which looks like it is the replacement for status.net?

<comment><USER6> Not familiar, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also app.net's $100/yr developer account is perhaps not the best way to attract developers to the platform.

Our apps, whether they are dedicated app.net clients like Netbot or just apps that let you post content to a user's app.net account, add to the network effect that can help app.net grow.

Developers should be allowed to build against the platform at the same price as regular people pay to become members in my opinion.

I'll be watching app.net and seeing if they change their stance on this in the near future.

<comment><USER9> App.Net is literally paying their developers money, though. If you build a useful tool, you get money directly from ADN. I don't see why paying for access to the API and, more importantly, support, is a problem.

<comment><USER2> Apple charges $99/year for their iOS or Mac appstores, which has a far greater reach. So perhaps they've set their price too high.

<comment><USER10> The $99/year is mostly just away to filter out some of the noise from their review queue and tech support I think. I don't think the revenue from it matters at all to apple.(i'm sure if they thought they could get more quality apps by dropping the subscription, they would. You can still dabble with iOS development without the subscription.

<comment><USER8> I don't mind paying -some- price and I gladly fork over money for a good product or service. I bought Coda for $99, and MarsEdit for ~$40 and countless other great software.

However, paying $99 for the right just to develop against an API so I can add it as an option for an app I'm making doesn't compute for me.

I'd probably not use the service enough as a regular user to warrant it either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the problem is possibly that most people don't want to pay to get into a silo when there are so many free silos to choose from.

<comment><USER12> It's certainly why I haven't touched it. I suppose not having ads is nice, but it still seems to have the same fundamental problems that FB/Twitter/G+/et al have.

I really want something like tent.io to succeed (and when my time frees up shortly I'm considering playing around in that space) but I don't quite think anyone's figured out how to make these open frameworks be as user friendly and seemless as these convenient friendly silos.

App.net seems like the answer to a question, just not a question many people are asking.

<comment><USER11> Which worries me, I have a different business model with a similar problem: getting pay people to pay to use stuff that they can sorta-kinda use for free.

<comment><USER12> As do I. Well. As _did_ I.

I've pretty much canned the idea at this stage, because I'd love to build this thing, but the three funding options seem to be angel, subscriptions or ads. The first and third make me behooven to someone else; the third would also require (if I wanted to do it right) writing a ad-engine backend and actually hiring people to source ads and crap like that.

Subs _would_ be awesome, but since my app neither makes you money or gets you laid I don't see anyone paying for it.

<comment><USER11> When I get my stuff cooking, I'll be able to help people just like you.

All I need is zillions of dollars and for a 30 month patent process to run a smidge faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just don't think anyone wants yet another social network, with twitter, facebook (and google+ muscling its way in) no one is looking for another way to contact old friends or meet new ones... especially not at $36/year, as we saw with Instagram most people don't care about privacy or ownership, if you have a compelling product as long as it's free you'll get users no matter what your privacy policies are.

<comment><USER3> App.net is really an experiment to find out if this hypothesis true, or if there can be a viable business model selling to people who do care. Marco doesn't need everybody to sign up if he can reach profitability in the margin between the "most people" who don't care and the handful left over that do.

<comment><USER13> Great explanation, I guess it's similar to the Orabrush, even though most people don't care they realized that over 20 million would buy such a product,which is a large audience...

I'm so used to the boom or bust model, especially when it comes to SocN that it never occurred to me that they'd be okay with niche

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really wonder what the true costs of running/maintaining a Twitter-clone per user would be. Is it anywhere close to a few dollars per month per user?

To me, it feels like it should be a tiny fraction of that, but perhaps my judgement is off?

I mean, compared to say youtube, you have to deal with short strings of text...

<comment><USER15> Keep in mind that in a freemium app each paid user needs to pay for ~20 free users. So yeah, it should be on the order of 10 cents/user/month.

<comment><USER14> That's true.

But if it were cheaper, wouldn't a lot more people be able to sign up too? At $5/month, it's almost what you pay for Netflix. It's probably more than most people pay for their bank accounts.

<comment><USER16> They might be able to sign up if it was cheaper - but it doesn't mean they would. Cheaper isn't always "enough".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm personally really excited to get an invite! I think that invite systems are a great way of doing a controlled rollout while building hype.

I think we're about to see a new generation of apps that take advantage of user-owned file storage. For years, native apps have stored all of their data on hardware users own. Now that everyone basically has some kind of always-on file server, I think we'll be able to do similar architectures in the cloud. Imagine if we built the next Instagram by storing all the photos entirely in the user's Dropbox and just have a heavy caching layer on ec2. I'm working on a platform right now that should make building this kind of app pretty easy.

I think there's room for all of the competitors in the space to benefit from this paradigm shift.

<comment><USER18> I mean, I was excited to get an invite to google wave. Then I couldn't figure out what to use it for, didn't have any friends using it, etc... which has been my experience with app.net so far as well.

I find it a little ironic that you view dropbox as "user owned file storage." I don't have a dropbox account and don't want one. I'm happy to pay for (and I do pay for) a separate service that gives me webdav file access, but it seems like it's less and less common for programs/apps to support that. (please support that in your platform!)

<comment><USER17> I feel like I own my storage on Dropbox to about the same extent that I own it on S3. Do you not feel like you own cloud storage? Is it because we're just renters? I'm really quite curious what you find ironic.

<comment><USER18> A big part of "ownership" for me is the ability to replace the service with my own machine, whether I actually do that or not. So (for example) I'd have less ownership over the gmail account <firstname.lastname@example.com> than one with a custom domain, even if I chose to forward everything to gmail or use google apps. I haven't looked into it at all, but my understanding is that it would be hard or impossible to point applications to a self-hosted dropbox replacement; compare that to, for example, github where I could replace it if I wanted to fairly easily (at least for the small, personal projects I keep there; this probably becomes less true for larger projects, so take it as an example of my thought process rather than a statement about the "ownership" of data on github).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just cancelled my APP.net account two weeks ago. I tried the service for over six months. I was paying monthly.

At first, I enjoyed the service. But, I gradually stopped participating. Perhaps it was the lack of new people to follow. I might retry again, if more people use the service.

</comment><comment><USER20> The best direction for App.net would be to make developer accounts free.

You are building a platform, you want lots of apps. It doesn't make sense to charge developers $100/year. These are the people who are going to innovate on your platform. These are the people who will make your platform more visible by integrating it into various services.

The company I work for has Facebook / Twitter sign up. I use app.net and I would add a signup option to our website if I did not have to pay $100/yr to do it. Not when perhaps a handful of people will use it and I will see no return on this $64 additional investment.

<comment><USER21> I agree with this. I should not have to pay $100 to have the right to develop on their platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been pinging users on buddycloud, about why they signed up. Main reasons: they _don't_ want another silo / want data portability and they like the idea of beign outside a company controlling their social networking experience

Of couse I'm biased, but permit me to dream: it would be great if App.net would consider building on an open and distributed/federated design like tent, status.net or buddycloud. The App.net guys seem great at design and building an ecosystem and the syngergies would be a really interesting alternative to Twitter/FB.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would like an invitation too, but rather than have a hundred comments like this I made a google doc to consolidate them:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JrOted0DLopZzwPO0aymRLfT...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JrOted0DLopZzwPO0aymRLfTd2SnYNGzSQRejrlt6xY/edit)

Just post your email there if you want one, then delete someone's email if you sent them an invite.

(Mods - this strikes me as more organized, but you can remove it if you don't approve)

Thanks in advance!

</comment><comment><USER24> I like everyone else was curious when App.net was first announcing this pay- for-Twitter clone awhile back. But I admit I didn't really "get it;" I thought the idea of a Twitter that's not Twitter was possibly a very interesting idea. But I always thought the idea of it being more a platform seemed to not make much sense.

Now, I have to say, I _really_ don't get it at all anymore. What it is thing about now?

</comment><comment><USER25> I actually thought alpha, the name chosen for the app you see on app.net website, an alpha release of app.net, a Twitter clone. And I thought app.net was a bad name for a Twitter clone, until I realize they are trying to build an app platform.

<comment><USER26> I had a really hard time figuring out their value proposition, too. In fact I'm still not exactly sure what it is. I've given up and moved on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd love an invite if anyone has an extra! Email me if you can!

In exchange, I'll buy you a beer (or coffee) if you are ever in LA. Or if you are in SF I will be there next weekend, and I'll be you a beer (or coffee) then if you'd like!

<comment><USER28> Sent. Give the coffee to a homeless guy.

<comment><USER27> Thanks! Will do :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have a rough idea how many users are currently on app.net? Considering the audience is primarily developers and technologist I thought there would be some applications (particularly in the startup community) that could use it as an effective use acquisition channel. But it really depends on how many users there are, 5,000? 50,000? 100,000? more? I'd be interested to know.

<comment><USER30> There are over 40k users as of today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think app.net should be working on getting actual implementations of their file API out there (Instagram, every photo editing app, etc), yet that's _another_ chicken-and-egg problem: what company will encourage their own users to rely on an unknown third-party service?

This sounds like a problem that can be fixed by throwing lots of money at it, but that doesn't fit their business model...

</comment><comment><USER32> yeah no point! at this point its kinda mute... to be useful you need to have your friends in it! and the way its setup its not easy or user friendly to have people join, something like gmail gained traction with invite only because gmail is useful by itself you dont need anyone else using it to make it more useful, at this point it really doesnt matter if its dev friendly... twitter might suck right now for any dev, but app.net limited scope puts it in competition with way more tools than just twitter and facebook's of the world, if you are this limited, you might prefer to go use something like tumblr or do it yourself with your own hosting, why use app.net?

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone else have an extra invite for this platform? I'm unfortunately a little late to the party but I'd love to check this thing out! Thanks in advance, I'll do what I can in exchange to help you back.

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER34> I'm also interested in an invite (saas(at)omarabid.com)

Thanks!

<comment><USER18> sure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If they want users, why not more payment methods?

I really don't want to enter my credit card information on the page of a startup.

But now it seems to be a little too late. Good night, sweet service.

</comment><comment><USER36> App.net was an interesting attempt at taking on Twitter, but failed.

However there is a real challenger waiting in the wings. Its name is Buffer.

<comment><USER30> Elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If anyone has an extra invite, can you please send me one at firstname.lastname@example.com. Thank you~

</comment><comment><USER38> So I don't get it. The crowd funded this project and the crowd has to pay to use it?

<comment><USER39> The initial funding came from people buying a year's subscription. Once the initial subscription is over, they will have to choose whether or not to continue paying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> maybe i'm just not `getting it`, but what benefits does the app.net platform offer _exactly_ for developers? I could be wrong, but usually when services go from paid to free, its a sign.

</comment><comment><USER41> Switch to Buddycloud the true free social networking platform <http://buddycloud.com/>

</comment><comment><USER42> can anyone invite me email@example.com will be highly obliged

</comment><comment><USER43> Allright , i'm a user , what does App.net have that twitter or facebook dont ? why should i use it ? instead of non-paying social networks?

<comment><USER3> I feel like this gets gone over every time App.net is brought up. The value proposition is that rather than trading your privacy and your attention for a free service you'd rather pay and retain ownership. For developers, the value proposition is that you have a service you can treat more like a public utility than like a private company's secret API that they could revoke access from on a whim. Eventually, if the second part works out, there will be applications that only work on App.net and they will also become part of the value proposition for end users.

<comment><USER44> >The value proposition is that rather than trading your privacy and your attention for a free service you'd rather pay and retain ownership.

If that's the value proposition, than it's a terrible one. There is nothing inherently different about App.net that would protect your privacy or guarantee you ownership (of your tweets?). They can try and argue that position while they are tiny and inconsequential but it will ring hollow once (if) they get big.

I think there's potential in a service like App.net, especially if they cater to their audience (developers and start up culture in general) and are willing to go for a steady organic growth. Developers are a great group to target because they are fashionistas and they love to tie themselves to services that increase their 'street cred'. Now that GitHub is mainstream, the time is right for 'the next thing'. If App.net tries to be Twitter with a better EULA they will fail.

I've been sitting on the sidelines and looking at App.net, and never pulled the trigger on a subscription, but I may check them out now with an invite. I really hope they do well. There's potential.

<comment><USER3> > There is nothing inherently different about App.net that would protect your > privacy or guarantee you ownership

The concept here is that by making their money from the users directly they align the users' interests with their own.

> it will ring hollow once (if) they get big

I suppose it's possible that they could decide they're not making enough money and convert to an ad revenue model. The problem is that there is already an ad supported service which is quite similar and free, so if they did that they would essentially lose all their users instantly. They'd also be violating their own core beliefs. I think they're a lot more likely to shut down the service from lack of users than they are to "sell out" in this fashion. I mean, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from shutting down the Windows division and focusing on Office for Mac, except that it would completely undermine their brand, and they make significant money from the Windows side. It's the same situation here: switching to an ad model undermines their brand and loses them their paying customers.

Besides that, Marco's goal is to achieve profitability with a small userbase. I don't doubt that it's possible to do that, and it undermines the "they'll screw you over when they get big" concept because they are not, like most startups, trying to reach ridiculous scale before figuring out how to make money, which seems to leave the ad model as the only possible option.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Q-and-A: A Pay Model for Ecosystems - <AUTHOR> http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/q-and-a-a-pay-model-for-ecosystems

<comment><USER2> Why use the term "market failure" here?

"Ecosystems like coral reefs or forests are public goods. And we are drawing a benefit from these resources and some people may be drawing an income, but there's no cost. In economic language, this is a market failure. There is no incentive to maintain that resource and so it suffers what is called a tragedy of the commons."

This is not a market failure, it is the total _absence_ of a market. Without clear property rights, the tragedy of the commons is bound to ensue.

For example, it is widely known that poachers have decimated the elephant population in Africa. But on private property, the elephant population has rebounded enormously. The reason is simple: the people who own this land have a vested interest in maintaining large numbers of elephants on it.</comment>


Chesapeake Light Tower up for auction - <AUTHOR> http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/aucbystate/?sl=PEACH416009001 <comment><AUTHOR> \- Lightship deployed in 1930 marking the entrance to Chesapeake Bay

\- Replaced in 1965 by the Chesapeake Light Tower

\-- One of six "Texas Towers" along the East Coast, built in 1965; the only one still in service

\-- Initially staffed full time; automated in 1980

\-- ~13 mi (22 km) from VA shore

\-- Water depth ~ 45 ft (13.7 m)</comment>


Ask HN: How to get social traffic to your website in 2020? - <AUTHOR> I had a blog in 05' or 06' that did pretty well in terms of traffic - I remember that I used to write a few decent articles a month and then post them to Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon and the traffic surged for a while.
I wasn't really a power-user on those sites but if the content was good enough it usually got a decent amount of visitors from these platforms and then sometimes these visitors wrote about it on their own blogs (and then it generated backlinks for SEO) and the cycle continued.
Nowadays it seems to me like you can't get traffic without buying it through ads. I started writing some posts again which I believe deserve some traffic (shameless plug - textcritics.com) but I can't figure out how to start the ball rolling.
On Facebook, Instagram and Twitter you have to have tons of followers or friends to get some attention (which I don't and I would also like to stay anonymous so these platforms are out of the question) and on Reddit and the likes (and Hacker News...) you have to be a power-user or the community trashes you.
There are no ads on my website, so I'm not making money out of it, it's just a hobby. But even if it's a hobby, I still want people to see my content :)
Any ideas (other than writing this)? <comment><USER2> Start engaging with the types of people you think would be interested in your content - contribute to online communities and drop links when it's relevant and useful to the community. Contribute more often than you promote.

The major point is just to be honest and authentic with your audience. Look at it as a conversation with people, not just as a platform for you to push content at them.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have time to create your assets then SEO would be a good idea, specifically the "skyscraper method" \- [https://backlinko.com/skyscraper- technique](https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique)

I recently used it and I'm starting to see results.

The major issue it takes time. Hope I helped.

</comment><comment><USER4> The best and most efficient method to get social traffic to your website is through SEO based website. It can transform online visitors into your regular readers. I suggest that you develop a strong content marketing strategy and social media marketing strategy as well. If you need more help in this regard then go click on this link [https://intelicle.com/seo-services-search-engine- optimisatio...](https://intelicle.com/seo-services-search-engine- optimisation/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Instagram and YouTube work great for us (influencer marketing and building our own "influencer" channel). A focus on Quality pays well</comment>


500 days left until Windows XP end of support - <AUTHOR> http://www.winbeta.org/news/500-days-left-until-windows-xp-end-support-will-organizations-upgrade-time#.UK-02CgFwLw.hackernews <comment><USER2> Where I work we're a Win7 shop for our MOE, but we do still support XP clients (PhD students generally get quite shitty if you recall their laptops for an upgrade midway through their research) and will do so until the very last day of XP support by Microsoft. It doesn't surprise me at all that the percentage is still as high as it is.</comment>


An Argument for Mutable Local History - <AUTHOR> http://jamie-wong.com/2012/05/25/an-argument-for-mutable-local-history/

<comment><USER2> I think Mercurial also misses the mark for uploading patch sets which might evolve / change over a few iterations. The workflow usually looks like one user is working on only one set of changes at a time, and in order to show them to upstream they want to publish them somewhere. If these changes get edited several time, and you use a traditional Mercurial repository you end up with lots of zombie tips which you absolutely don't care about, and unless you 'hg strip' very assiduously, they keep reinfecting repositories.

Yes, I know it's not a supported workflow. No, sometimes, this is what I want to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the hg equivalent to git reflog?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think there's a direct equivalent, but you can get the ability to reset to the previous state using bundles. hg help bundle, hg help unbundle. Whenever you do an amend or a rebase, it tells you where it saved the bundle</comment></comment>


Show HN: Snapshotly – Automated DigitalOcean Backups - <AUTHOR> https://snapshotly.com <comment><USER2> You're using the terms backup and snapshot interchangeably but they are not the same thing. Snapshots are images and require your droplet to be powered down. Which service are you providing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Snapshots are used because they persist even after the droplet/volume was deleted and you pay per GB/month instead of 20% of the droplet price. For volumes, you only have the option to create a snapshot.

The "backups" term is used mostly for SEO purposes. When a user wants backups for his droplet, probably for him is not important if the backup is considered by DO a "backup" or a "snapshot".

The DigitalOcean backups are also images at the core because the point-in-time image is created in the same way.

From the DO docs:

1\. A snapshot of the live system is taken, creating a crash-consistent, point-in-time image.

2\. The snapshot is backed up off-disk.

3\. The snapshot is deleted once the backup is complete.

Regarding the recommendation of powering of the droplet, in the future maybe there will be an option to choose if you want this before taking the snapshot. This will be useful for droplets with write-intensive operations.

Thanks, Alex

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Shameless ripoff of snapshooter.io [https://twitter.com/MrSimonBennett/status/120771279509938585...](https://twitter.com/MrSimonBennett/status/1207712795099385856?s=2)

<comment><USER4> Even if the screenshots are real and not just an edited source page, the user interface + landing page seems totally different to me.

To me looks like SnapShooter is really afraid of competition and thinks that the market must have only one product.

<comment><USER5> Google cache shows its a rip off.

I get snapshooter being afraid of competitions, it is a one-trick-pony from the looks of it.

Competition is awesome, it forces people to adapt. Ripping off a product, and it's content is not competition, its theft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does a snapshot mean that you're doing native DO snapshots? The throughput for these is terrible (1-4gb/min) and also had performance implications in our past tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, native DO snapshots are used. I tested with droplets up to 100 GB in occupied disk size and the snapshot required over 1 hour to be ready. For volumes, the time is lower.

Unfortunately, this is a limitation for most of the cloud providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this essentially $15 / month to press 'Snapshot' in DigitalOcean or am I missing the point here?

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting product. My DigitalOcean droplets have only weekly backups. I will give it a try for creating daily snapshots.

<comment><USER8> Your better off with [https://snapshooter.io/](https://snapshooter.io/) imo never let me or my team down

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the proposal, but I'm good paying less for more.

<comment><USER5> As long as you're happy trusting someone who ripped off another persons business, and was then stupid enough to rip off their site content and forget to change the name.

And then when they were caught, stole another companies privacy policy and again forgot to change the name.

This copycat will last a month or two and then vanish. You'd have to think very little of your own website/business/server to trust someone like that.

I don't really know snapshooter all that well (the one they ripped off) but just googling it I can see its got a bit more credibility, it looks like they're a digitalocean partner which alone speaks volumes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where are the "backups" being stored? Are they just snapshots sitting in my DO account? If so, I can just do this by myself with the DO API... if not, how are you downloading the snapshots? I don't recall if DO allows this right now.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm all for open competition but you should have chosen a different name, your choice is just sleazy IMHO.

As dorkley said, a rip off of the original and best ... SnapShooter.io

<comment><USER11> This seems like unfair criticism. I'd say snapshooter and snapshotly are sufficiently different. If the websites were similar, I'd see your point, but snapshotly is different enough that's it a clear price competitor.

<comment><USER5> The moron ripped off the site content from snap shooter and even left in the company name. He absolutely deserves criticism. The guy is scum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like you've just ripped off snapshooter.io tbh.

</comment><comment><USER12> Totally meta but the ratio green to gray usernames is unusually high here.</comment>


Can Startup Nation be an incubator for Palestinian high-tech entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesofisrael.com/can-startup-nation-be-an-incubator-for-palestinian-high-tech-entrepreneurs/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The $30 million investment fund gathered by Sadara, which is backed by first- rate investors including George Soros, AOL founder Steve Case, and former eBay president Jeff Skoll, as well as Google, Cisco and the European Investment Bank, has so far backed six Palestinian companies, three of which are start- ups."</comment>


Here's Everything Tim Armstrong Is Doing Wrong [SLIDE DECK] - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/huge-aol-shareholder-heres-everything-tim-armstrong-is-doing-wrong-slide-deck-2012-5#the-display-business-is-down-in-the-dumps-says-starboard-5

<comment><USER2> If Patch was acquired in summer '09, did it have to take them two whole years (give or take) to discover it wouldn't generate them cash? Check this [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/01/tim-armstrongs-aol- dr...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/01/tim-armstrongs-aol-dream-may-be- ending/) as well.</comment>


Why Some Recruiters Will Almost Always Be a Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.ere.net/2013/01/24/why-some-recruiters-will-almost-always-be-a-success/

<comment><USER2> You mean pissing off your customer and your source is a bad thing? OH MY. I've heard from business leaders who hate to use agency recruiters. They tend to mislead the business [by inflating resumes], refuse to inform the canidate properly, and attempt to flood the busines person with resumes.</comment>


Ask HN: Could I get feedback on these local communities for travelers? - <AUTHOR> http://nomadclub.co/ <comment><USER2> 1) This image is not only stolen, but is 651KB.

[http://nomadclub.co/community.png](http://nomadclub.co/community.png)

2) The overall design looks extremely generic, no useful information above the fold. I have no idea what you're selling.

3) I have no idea what this means: _" Discover new places and cultures. Select among our top European destinations. Book now."_

4) Your "How it works" page makes no sense either. It literally says:

 _\- Select your desired destination

\- Choose length of stay (min 2 weeks)

\- Reserve paying a 25% deposit (refundable until 1 month before departure)

\- Arrange any documentation needed_

What does it all mean? Are you a travel agency? Why 2 week minimum? What's the deposit for? What documentation?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) I believe it's not stolen since we got it from a a free webpage in which it was permitted to download the pictures and use them on your own website. If you know anything else about that please, let us know. If it's not permitted to be used in a web, we wouldn't use it but I believe it's not the case.

And about the other points, thanks, we just want to test the idea out, I guess we have to explain it better, so we will try to make it easier to understand.

We are an agency that wants you to meet interesting people while traveling and working remotely, the min 2 weeks is there because we believe that could be a minimum to make a meaningful impact within this community.

<comment><USER2> 1) That's not how copyright works. You took an image with watermarks and used it on a commercial website.

2) If I'm already traveling, why should I book anything with you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will check that out and if necessary, delete it,

Plan would be to give you people to connect and a plan of experiences to do together, like trips to cities close to the destinations, activities inside the locations in which we are and services like coworking or gym membership

<comment><USER2> You need to explain this, it's not clear from your current website. Instead of "book blah blah blah" your message should be something like "plan activities with other people".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are testing an idea of developing communities in different places in Europe, here's the first try: [http://nomadclub.co/](http://nomadclub.co/) In case your answer could be yes, what do you think the website should have and what do you think it'd be important for the service to provide? would you use it? we're happy to take any feedback! :)</comment>


Apple Goes After The Camera Market Too - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/apple-goes-after-the-camera-market-too/?ref=technology <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the saying "the best camera you have is the one you have with you".

The idea of a dedicated camera from Apple would be interesting, though. The user interfaces on existing cameras always feels crude, and there isn't any hope of improvements via firmware upgrades. It fells like a marked ripe for Appl-ification.</comment>


Ripple Escrows 55B XRP for Supply Predictability - <AUTHOR> https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-escrows-55-billion-xrp-for-supply-predictability/ <comment><USER2> Escrows for a few months. I thought it would be in terms of decades...</comment>


When a Good Idea Works: the origins of Processing - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23187/?a=f

<comment><USER2> Videos: <http://vimeo.com/1747316> and <http://vimeo.com/658158>

Processing in Javascript: <http://processingjs.org/exhibition>

A related browser-based project with a simpler syntax, Algorithm Ink: [http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/contextfreejs-algorithm- ink-...](http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/contextfreejs-algorithm-ink-making- art-with-javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I used Processing as the starting point for a recent project ( <http://www.tinkthank.net/software/tiction> ). Prototyping with Processing and its accompanying IDE got me up and running literally within minutes.

Inevitably I exported the whole thing to an Eclipse project because I needed more flexibility with threading and things, but for prototyping anything with a strong visual element I couldn't imagine a more perfect framework.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://processing.org/></comment>


Soon all your blog comments will belong to Facebook or Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/16/soon-all-your-blog-comments-will-belong-to-facebook-or-google/

<comment><USER2> How exactly does it work though? Yesterday I logged into a web site using OpenID, and noticed something very bad: they referred me to my OpenID provider (yahoo in that case), where I logged in, and then I was referred back.

This is BAD because it is a paradise for phishing. How can I be sure that a random website really forwards me to my openID provider, and not to a phishing site that looks exactly the same?

To be fair, most users might be logged into their OpenID site (or Facebook connect - isn't that essentially the same thing?) all the time, so they wouldn't need to enter login credentials on their "openId site". But overall, it made me think the only solution would be a browser plugin for handling the login stuff.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about other openid providers, but myopenid uses those crazy ssl certificates that are very pronounced in your url bar, pretty hard to phish imo

<comment><USER2> I don't care so much for the ssl certificates as a protective measure, to be honest. Maybe I should invest more time to understand them, but my current impression is:

\- there are now ways to get ssl certificates for free for anyone. So it would be easy to get a certificate for myopenid, where the "i" is not an "i" but some exotic letter that looks the same (or something like that).

\- ssl certificates often don't work correctly (setup in the wrong way), so clicking away the warning is becoming a nobrainer. Maybe there isn't even a way to set them up to work correctly across a web site with subdomains, I am not sure. I mean, not even the Chaos Computer Club got them working on their own web site...

Of course ssl certificates are still necessary, but they don't seem to be sufficient to me. I suppose even if I type in an URL directly I can be fooled (DNS servers hacked or whatever), but still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or Disqus.

Or Wordpress.

</comment><comment><USER5> They don't already?</comment>


Oracle's Newest Audit Tactic: Focusing on Java - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2019/01/31/oracles-newest-audit-tactic-focusing-on-java/#fc0556854960 <comment><USER2> Intel's newest audit tactic, focusing on illegal installations from VTune, Intel C++, Intel Fortran, ....

Want to use commercial software? Pay accordingly.

Not wanting to pay for it? Plenty of options available.

[https://adoptopenjdk.net/](https://adoptopenjdk.net/)

[https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/](https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/)

[https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/](https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/)

[https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/](https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/)

[https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download/](https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download/)

<comment><USER3> That's not exactly the same. Oracle is infamous for bait and switch, where it's free at first. With Java, they first snuck in some extra components that triggered license requirements, then later, just changed the whole jdk license.

They are very aware that big companies wouldn't be nimble enough to switch to openjdk in time to avoid the license fees.

Additionally, they know that companies have 3rd party software that bundles what was once "free" oracle jdk. The end user gets to foot the bill for that rather than the 3rd party.

<comment><USER4> Old JDKs, bundled or not, require an explicit flag (`-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures`) to enable commercial features.

As to new JDKs, Oracle has open sourced (or discontinued) all previously commercial features so that now OpenJDK and Oracle JDK are _the same software_ : [https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk- rele...](https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for- java-11-and-later)

Infamous or not, the licensing situation is now clearer and better than ever before: Oracle offers the same software under a commercial license for those who wish to buy support, or under a free license to those who don't. The download pages for either option clearly identify the license, and point the user to the other option, if that's what they want:

* [https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ind...](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html)

* [https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk...](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk11-downloads-5066655.html)

* [https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/](https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/)

<comment><USER3> The companies that were caught up in this are, for the most part, the ones on Oracle JDK 8, which is substantially different than OpenJDK.

The "UnlockCommercialFeatures" doesn't catch everything either. For example, Oracle once added a clause about "embedded devices" needing a commercial license. With a very broad definition of embedded.

This is pretty clearly a cash grab.

Also, If the bits are truly the same as of version 11... what's the point of making people download a duplicate codebase where the only difference is one text license file?

<comment><USER4> > For example, Oracle once added a clause about "embedded devices" needing a > commercial license. With a very broad definition of embedded.

No, field-of-use restrictions had applied under Sun, too, as licensing Java to mobile/embedded devices was Java's income source. Later, various commercial features were also a source of income. Oracle has now completely opened the JDK (and there are no field-of-use restrictions for the free license), opened all commercial features, and has switched to a support model.

Like all companies providing open source runtimes/languages, Oracle, too, must fund Java somehow (as I explained in another comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19069655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19069655)). You're free to think that the funding model now is less preferable to you personally than the previous ones, but I don't think anyone can claim it is any more of a "cash grab" than the previous monetization strategies.

I think that if anyone claims that recent changes to Java's licensing and release models are not for the better, then they are either misled or misleading.

<comment><USER3> Ahh, yes, you're right. The clause was there. But Sun, in practice, applied it to things that most people would call "embedded". Oracle used a broader definition that included PC hardware in many situations.

Not sure I understand the whole funding argument. Swift, golang, v8, typescript, etc, seem to be fine as open source.

<comment><USER4> Golang, V8 and TypeScript are _tiny_ projects compared to OpenJDK. Oracle employs _hundreds_ of full-time OpenJDK contributors. Swift is funded through iOS (just as .NET is funded through Windows and Android through, well, Android). I don't know if this is true anymore, but the number of people developing Golang at Google is (or used to be, last I heard) close to the number of people there modifying OpenJDK for their internal use. V8 is also funded through Chrome, BTW.

<comment><USER3> I'm mystified as to why Java is so much bigger than any pure open source language implementation.

In any case all this jockeying around with the license will certainly reduce the user base. From talking to my peers at other companies, we're all putting together our "get off of java" plans now.

<comment><USER2> Most of the companies I work with are either Java or .NET shops, moving away from any of those platforms means rebuilding their business, for some of them, even the services that they sell, throw out worldwide trainings moving the whole company into a new stack.

A large majority of corporations aren't that allergic to software licenses, they have other issues on their top list.

<comment><USER3> It's not the license by itself. It's the relationship with that vendor.

<comment><USER2> On the enterprise space there are much worse vendors than Oracle, still everyone is buddy with everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having worked there myself before and leaving in disgust this is definitely how it goes down.

Further, I always suspected some kind of dodgy dealing at some clients I'd visit since there'd be an army of their employees who'd be negative about Oracle but always a single big-wig that managed to be super passionate about Oracle.

Of course I never found evidence of anything dodgy - just a number of clients where this was a notable pattern.

<comment><USER6> I've worked at BigCorp(s) and seen similar things but from the other side. Most people absolutely hated oracle from the director who ran the teams to the admins and devs.

The only people who liked Oracle were VP and above. They were so short sighted they signed a deal with Oracle after they drastically cut support costs the first year. They were so shocked in year 2 when costs went north of 1 million. Making Oracle much much more expensive than the competitors who also bid. Everyone knew the competitors were less expensive in the long run and actually good products.

Not to mention the time they were audited and owed big time due to a webservice sending changes to our ERP system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Once Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, i became dis-interested in Java all round. I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation.

The reason they are a huge company is the way they are predatory towards their customers. Probably why sun didn't survive as well, its kind of sad that this is the way of the world.

<comment><USER8> You should give C# a try. It's pretty open these days (bonus: it's a much nicer language than Java)

<comment><USER9> Or better use Go! It's 100% open/BSD license.

<comment><USER10> Go is good for system-level tools. But the web-facing / framework-wise is weak. The dependancy hell is not fully fixed yet.

<comment><USER11> This x1000 If you want to make a little cross platform binary for some utility sure maybe Go is the right choice, but most of the time people are building a "Web Application" in which case there are dozens of better languages to use

<comment><USER9> I found Go a better fit than Java & Python for my web APIs/micro-services. I'm not sure what web application are but Go compiles to WASM so it would make it an even more complete solution once WASM gets DOM access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When there are so many software options that don't involve buying from companies that use these kind of tactics, it's difficult to see how this will work out for Oracle in the long term.

Sure in the short-term they'll rinse companies for large amounts of money, but people tend to remember when that's been done to them, and aren't exactly keen to have it happen again.

Whilst I have no direct experience, a quick search indicates that IBM have similar practices. I wonder when/if that'll bleed across into Redhat.

<comment><USER2> Easy, Oracle bashers keep forgetting that Oracle and IBM pay the majority of salaries on OpenJDK developers.

Then again, there are plenty of other JVMs available since the 2000's, and many customers do pay for them.

<comment><USER12> That's an interesting characterization, that people who don't agree with Oracle's approach to licensing are "Oracle Bashers"?

Do you feel that the surprise audit approach to license compliance is a good one?

<comment><USER2> Yes, it quite common in the industry to track down on piracy use, Oracle is not alone in doing surprise audits.

There are even international organizations that collaborate with national police on that regard, [https://www.bsa.org/](https://www.bsa.org/)

<comment><USER12> Indeed it happens, but my question was more given your initial post, do you think it's a good way to manage licensing?

To me it provokes an adversarial relationship between software vendors and their customers and is quite likely a factor in the rise of the use of Open Source software in enterprise.

If the propietary software industry is to continue to prosper, it seems likely that annoying their customers with this approach to licensing is not a good one.

Now you could argue that this will have a knock on effect on Open source as many devs are employed by software companies, but that won't necessarily stop it happening.

<comment><USER2> The failure of pure open source, moving away from GPL and increase in dual licensing for enterprise software proves otherwise.

<comment><USER12> Ah well if we're arguing that kind of point, I'd say that in my line of work (Security tester) I'm seeing faaar more open source software than I did 10-15 years ago even in traditionally enterprise software friendly environments (e.g. banks/public sector)

The demise of proprietary unix in favour of Linux is one striking example.

another is the rise of open source products like Docker and Kubernetes. They are being heavily deployed in organizations that might once have considered more proprietary software options instead.

<comment><USER2> I mentioned failure of pure open source, the GPL dream, not open source as such.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I'd agree that GPL compatible licenses have failed.

To take one example Kubernetes, one of the most popular projects around at the moment is Apache 2 licensed which has been agreed with the FSF is an open source license. Other popular projects like Tensorflow also use this license

Likewise very popular projects like Visual Studio code, React Native and Angular make use of the MIT license which is also GPL compatible.

<comment><USER2> None of those licenses are copyleft, a company can pick any of those projects listed by you, sell a closed source product with their improvements, without giving even a semicolon back to upstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi all - I help run [https://adoptopenjdk.net](https://adoptopenjdk.net) \- I genuinely think that the article is spreading some FUD, but I also understand if folks feel strongly about looking at alternatives then you can read the full background [https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still- free-c02aef8...](https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still- free-c02aef8c9e04) and I'm happy to answer Q's here as well

</comment><comment><USER14> I actually think that is the best long-term approach for all of the parties involved:

In the past OpenJDK was missing critical features so that companies often used the commercial closed-source Oracle JDK. At the same time even then Oracle JDK was somewhat of a trap when it comes to licensing, as it included features not covered by the free licence that might be accidentally used by developers.

With Java 11 there is finally feature parity: Oracle contributed missing features to OpenJDK. Features that couldn't be contributed (due to licensing issues) were removed from the commercial Oracle JDK. So starting with Java 11 those two versions of the JDK are pretty much equal.

With Java 11 there's no reason to use the commercial Oracle JDK. Most of the companies that used the Oracle JDK before are better served by using one of the open-source OpenJDK builds: Either Oracle's OpenJDK build (which is only going to provide support for 6 months after each release), or one of the third-party builds that most likely are also going to track LTS releases such as Azul's Zulu or AdoptOpenJDK.

Oracle is very upfront about those changes: When you try to download Java 11+ from Oracle's website there's a huge yellow box with a warning about the license changes. In addition, that box also links to the GPL-licensed OpenJDK version.

As a Java developer I'm very happy about that new approach: With the feature parity between OpenJDK and the commercial release it's finally possible to develop and run Java applications on a 100% open-source stack, which is something that was much harder to do with earlier OpenJDK releases.

</comment><comment><USER15> I see articles like this and then see a bunch of comments about not wanting to use Java because of Oracle. But these articles are somewhat misleading in that there are free versions of Java out there. I think the authors of said articles just wants to stir the pot. This is old news and not really relevant with all the free alternatives. Even on our Ubuntu builds, when we install Java it's the open jdk variant that gets installed by default.

<comment> brown9-2 There's a response to this in the article - those free versions are only supported for 6 months.

<comment><USER16> I think what they mean is OpenJRE, versus Oracle JRE

<comment><USER17> To expand: in the waning days of Sun, they open sourced large parts of the Java development kit (JDK). This became OpenJDK, and is GPL v2 licensed (with a linking exception).

Initially, not all code was available under a GPL license.

Separately at the same time, Apache led the Harmony project to produce an open source implementation of Java SE 5 & 6\. This was successful.

As time passed, Sun (and maybe Oracle) open sourced more code into OpenJDK, leading to supporters switching from Harmony to OpenJDK. Additionally, Sun made the unfriendly move of licensing the TCK in a way that precluded any non- OpenJDk release from ever being able to claim Java compatibility. In response, Apache resigned from the Java board. And as of 2011, the Harmony project was stopped.

Because of the platform-independent goal of Java, there's a lot of ancillary "not-Java, but needed" libraries to build and run Java. These were not all open sourced by Sun / Oracle, but were reimplemented by RedHat under a project called IcedTea.

So, in summary, you can run OpenJDK/IcedTea and tell Oracle to pound sand.

The primary risk is that Oracle withdraws the things they do still control from the OpenJDK project, or stops working with the project to coordinate new releases. But they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they did.

<comment><USER10> It is more then that.

Many java-relate patent grant require passing the TCK.

<comment><USER4> Not if you're using OpenJDK, which is licensed under the GPLv2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know anyone who buys new softwares from Oracle. Only few large companies are going after Oracle new services and software, mostly because some selfish company executives.

<comment><USER19> "I don't know anyone who buys new softwares from Oracle."

I do - I doubt that there are many organisations licensing just the Oracle database these days - I suspect most of their sales are in the ERP/finance areas where there are relatively few competitors.

How many competitors are there for Hyperion FM/Planning?

Edit: Note that I'm definitely not defending Oracle, but the market for their products is quite complex and much wider than a relational database engine.

<comment><USER20> Do I know you? :)

As for competitors to hfm/epm: there are a few (onestream, tagetik, whatever sap is peddling...). But it doesn't matter, all this thing about auditing will go away when every Oracle customer is forced at gunpoint to move to cloud versions - where they can be squeezed for more money at the touch of a button. Hfm licenses, for example, are basically not sold anymore unless you get special blessing from an Oracle VP; it's FCCS or nothing.

<comment><USER19> Its been ~4 years since I was involved in that area - I know at that time Oracle was trying to recruit some of my colleagues for their cloud team. I don't think anyone took them up on the offer!

I did a lot of integration work with HFM for my previous employer - I was actually rather proud of the reporting solution we built on top of HFM, infinitely better than the reporting tools that Oracle provided. I sometimes wish that we'd productized that and sold it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Huh?

>That's why I think Oracle is sort of hedging its bets with Java audits and not going in there as strongly. It's too soon. Give it five years when you're stuck in Oracle's ecosystem and Oracle needs money. Then they'll start auditing.

This is burying the lede...

</comment><comment><USER22> Lets assume that as an individual I want to move away from Java for backend development and currently I use Spring. Is there another ecosystem with a great IDE, type safety (or just type annotations), limits that allow one to not shoot yourself in the foot, a good debugger, memory safety and lastly speed ? Python really shines in most of the above except for the speed part.

<comment><USER23> Why not just use openJDK? Seems a bit drastic to do a full rewrite.

<comment><USER22> I agree. I wouldn't consider a full re-write but for further development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oracle wanted to be the apple of enterprise to offer an all in one oracle package that would be deeply integrated but they failed to assess the market.

It is not about Oracle not having competitive producta or services but about Oracle being stuck with their thinking in the 1991-2008 era.

</comment><comment><USER4> As someone who works at Oracle on the JDK (i.e. OpenJDK), I'd like to point out a couple of things, as the interviewee was someone who directly benefits from any fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding Java (but this is not an official comment, and I speak only for myself):

* Under the old BCL license the Oracle JDK was a mix of free and commercial features. Using the commercial features required explicitly turning them on with the flag `-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures`. You could not use them accidentally. Current JDKs no longer contain any commercial features, as explained below.

* Starting with JDK 11, Oracle has completed open sourcing the JDK[1], which no longer contains any commercial features. Rather than a mixed free/commercial license, Oracle now offers _the same_ software under two different licenses, the commercial OTN lincense, intended for those who wish to but a support subscription from Oracle, and a free and open-source license, for those who don't[2]. The commercial license download page[3] clearly states the different options:

 _Oracle Customers and ISVs targeting Oracle LTS releases: Oracle JDK is Oracle 's supported Java SE version for customers and for developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating your Java applications._

 _End users and developers looking for free JDK versions: Oracle OpenJDK offers the same features and performance as Oracle JDK under the GPL license_ (with the non-viral "Classpath Exception")

The page also links to the free option. The particular commercial JDK download page[4] also contains a big bright warning and links to the downlad page for the free license.

* That Oracle now only offers six months of free support (as oppsoed to before) is misleading. For at least the past seven years, Java had a major release every 3 or so years, and "update releases" (containing substantial new features, but no language or API changes) every six months, plus quarterly security and bug fixes[5]. The releases were also not supported for more than six months, and to be up to date on security, one was always required to upgrade to the semi-annual update releases. What changed recently, due to community demand, is how the features are distributed among the releases. _There are no more major Java releases_. The last one (ever) was JDK 9. Starting with JDK 10, the semi-annual releases are _not_ major releases but "feature releases," that are allowed to contain API and language changes, but are small, so that instead of a major upgrade every three years, the upgrade process is more gradual (e.g. compare JDK 9, the last major release, with JDK 11, a feature release[6]). The feature releases are therefore somewhere between a major release and an update release but much closer to the latter. While major releases were supported for a number of years and the feature releases only for six months, the feature relases are by no stretch of the imagination major releases.

* Similarly sized runtimes/languages -- Apple's Swift/iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's .NET -- are all part of ecosystems entirely or largely under the control of the companies owning the projects, and that generate billions of dollars annually, and so fund the development of the platform. Oracle has no control over the Java ecosystem, and so must fund the development of OpenJDK somehow. This is now done by offering long-term support for some of the feature releases, for companies that don't wish to upgrade to every feature release (in the past the funding came partly through the commercial features, which have now all been open sourced, and the annoying search toolbar that came with the JRE, which is gone now, too).

* Oracle employs hundreds of full-time developers who manage the OpenJDK project and contribute the lion's share of OpenJDK development[7]. While Oracle developers will continue to contribute most of the work, including security updates to current OpenJDK versions, they will not commit to backporting those contributions to old feature releases via OpenJDK's "JDK update" projects. Other companies have said they will do that work, so that there will likely be OpenJDK update releases for some feature releases, probably those that correspond to Oracle's LTS versions. Oracle encourages other members of the OpenJDK community to contribute even more.

[1] [https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk- rele...](https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for- java-11-and-later)

[2] [http://jdk.java.net/](http://jdk.java.net/)

[3] [https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ind...](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html)

[4] [https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk...](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk11-downloads-5066655.html)

[5] [https://java.com/en/download/faq/release_dates.xml](https://java.com/en/download/faq/release_dates.xml)

[6] [https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/](https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/) vs. [https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/](https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/)

[7] [https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building- jdk-11...](https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building- jdk-11-together)

<comment><USER25> Wow, so with Java, rather than developing software... I can spend my time reading through piles of legalese, trying to figure out which incantation of vague licensing/use language I'm beholden to.

<comment><USER4> The JDK is under the same license as Linux, so however closely you pay attention to the Linux legalese, that's as much attention you need to pay to Java's.

<comment><USER25> All JDKs are GPL?

<comment><USER4> All JDKs built from the OpenJDK project have the same license as the OpenJDK project, which is GPLv2 with the Classpath Exception (that means the license does not infect Java programs running on top of the JDK).

[http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html](http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html)

(The same JDK is also offered by Oracle under a commercial license for those who wish to buy a support subscription from Oracle, and other companies license the code to make their own commerical JDKs, e.g. Azul's Zing).

<comment><USER25> Sounds...complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But then the four last sentences say that they don't actually audit so much -- but they will, in five years' time!

 _It's too soon. Give it five years when you're stuck in Oracle's ecosystem and Oracle needs money. Then they'll start auditing. Right now, there's so much buzz going on around Java, they don't have to audit._

<comment> brown9-2 That's the trap the author is trying to warn people about falling into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps this is a stupid question, and someone please enlighten me - but would not the vast majority of JVM deployments be on either CentOS or Debian-derived base images with good support for an OpenJDK package?

I thought that the main differences between OpenJDK and Oracle java was the nicer font rendering and some Swing-ish stuff, is there a good comparison as to why people even use the Oracle Java?

</comment><comment><USER28> Or... Just run openjdk! Problem solved

</comment><comment><USER29> Thank goodness LibreOffice split from OpenOffice.org. A true blessing in disguise!

</comment><comment><USER30> Another biased article by Java hater who has no clue what he is talking about. Make Java Great Again!</comment>


Ask HN: Does 'Sort on Popularity' work fine in HackerNews search? - <AUTHOR> https://hn.algolia.com/?query=statistics%20visual&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story<p>When I run this search, posts with most number of points aren't appearing at the top. Results seem to appear in some random-order which I couldn't make much sense of. Could someone help me out. Thank you! <comment><USER2> The search results depend on Aloglia's algorithms. Revising the search to "visual statistics" changes the results, suggesting that word order matters. That probably makes sense for document searches since it favors searches that are more exact.

The order of the results also expresses how Algolia handles stemming.

There's probably some more information on Algolia's site.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the tip. but even with 'visual statistics' as search-string, the post with most points (Brown Univ) appears somewhat later. Unless you think the first-result is the most relevant match. As for me, I found the Brown University post to be a better match than what appears at the top, currently, for 'visual statistics' search.

<comment><USER2> The words "visual" and "statistics" are closer together in the higher ranked results. Proximity might be a useful ranking metric and YC may have chosen to tune Algolia for it or it might be the default.</comment></comment></comment>


ASK HN: Future clothing - <AUTHOR>

Why are we still wearing jeans with a T-shirt?
Do you guys have some suggestions for some proper future-proof clothing.
E.g. Waterproof, enhancing performance, health checking,...
Is there a company that already does have innovative clothing? <comment><USER2> This isn't too futuristic, but it's very practical and better than jeans: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/the-technical- pants-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/the-technical-pants-that- replaced-my-jeans/)

For something with more tech in it, you could build a northskirt [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UktOOIK_6nU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UktOOIK_6nU) or a light-up dress [http://www.ofbrooklyn.com/2014/01/15/adventures-in- wearable-...](http://www.ofbrooklyn.com/2014/01/15/adventures-in-wearable- electronics-light-up-dress/) or add TRON-style EL wire to anything [https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/10/11/tron-ify- anything-e...](https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/10/11/tron-ify-anything- electronichalloween/) :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's indeed nicely hacked together.

These are some links I found earlier: [https://developer.thalmic.com](https://developer.thalmic.com) [http://emotiv.com/](http://emotiv.com/)

This combined with some virtual reality, or Google Glass, could be really great.</comment></comment>