Raspberry Pi Zero vs. Elliott 405 - <AUTHOR> http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20151129/ <comment><USER2> One thing that's missing from the comparison is that the Elliott 405 likely came with a full set of documentation, down to the circuit level, whereas Broadcom has kept much of the Pi's SoC details proprietary.

In 60 years, archives and museums will still have great primary-source information on the Elliott 405 and its contemporaries. Will the same be true of the Pi? It's easy to focus on the smaller, cheaper, faster, but it must be realised that a significant amount of openness has been lost; and not merely because computers have become more complex, but also because there are commercial interests strongly discouraging us from understanding the details of how these machines work.

<comment><USER3> Another thing people always miss is that - unlike the Elliot 405 - the Pi doesn't come with a keyboard.

That's where they get ya.

<comment><USER4> Nah, it's the storage:

"8 GB (typical micro SD flash card - _not included_ )"

Which one's the better value _now_ , huh? (I mean, given it's no PS Vita memory card, but still ...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just for fun, if you extrapolate to 2065 you get something so small it's invisible and practically free, with a cycle time in the hard x-ray to gamma range, more than 150TB of main memory, and an output bandwidth comfortably fast enough for at least ten life-size holographic displays.

<comment><USER6> > for at least ten life-size holographic displays.

I remember reading somewhere that the bandwidth of the optic nerve is about 10Mbit/s. Given that we've had 10Mbit/s Ethernet for years, couldn't it be said that we already have the hardware to build a display that is indistinguishable from reality, and it is now "just" a coding problem, in that if a 10Mbit/s stream contained exactly the right information the brain would interpret it as reality?

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't you need much more than 10Mbit/s before the lens, if it's getting compressed down to 10Mbit/s after the lens?

That is, unless you're talking about injecting that data directly into the optical nerve.

<comment><USER8> The only way it's below 10Mbit/s if you have a cataract and are legally blind. Or it's dark.

The eye has significantly more bandwidth than 10Mbit/s - it's "reality" in front of the retina, (say, 20-30K) a bit above 8K at the retina (rods/cones), and almost the same in the optic nerve.

We can see/study data directly on the optic nerves now, and understand pretty well how common aberrations or deformities affect the retina.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In tech space, even 9 years can produce 1000x results. I love this microSD storage example, 2005 vs 2014: [http://i.imgur.com/1jyVev4.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/1jyVev4.jpg)

<comment><USER10> I had a similar realisation a few days ago - I was putting a new microSD card in my phone, and realised that it represented 100 times the storage of my first PC (200GB vs 2GB). I still get a feeling of "this shouldn't be able to store this much" every time I use a microSD card.

<comment> vive-la-liberte >this shouldn't be able to store this much

Same here. I was thinking about how many CD-ROMs it would take to store a certain amount of information, as a measure of just how much data something amounted to. Then I thought that with microSD cards, the same amount of data would sound much less impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The cost efficiency of the Elliot, adjusted for inflation, was 1445 dollars per cpu cycle per second (when running at the listed peak speed)

For the Pi Zero, it is 0.000000005 dollars per cpu cycle per second.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't take in account instruction-level parallelism, and of course the Elliot didn't have a global clock so the idea of CPU cycles doesn't really make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The part that's missing in the comparison:

Elliot 405: Used to run business calculations

Pi Zero: Used run a sprinkler system

What has been really interesting to me over the last several years that these stick computers have been around is how people are using giga-Hertz range processors with an huge operating system and truckloads of memory for stuff that's easily done with a small 8 bit processor with K's of RAM vs G's of ram and a simple time-sliced tasking mini OS written in an afternoon.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that one can buy a computer like the Pi Zero for $5. I'm afraid something is being lost in the process. Maybe it doesn't matter. I mean, if one can get something the size of your pinky that cost less than coffee at Starbucks to run Linux...

<comment><USER14> How many people do you really think can just casually write an OS? I can set up automated almost anything with almost no lines of code. We've lose the specialization because so many people now have access to these incredible things.

<comment><USER15> People not being able to write an OS is part of _" I'm afraid something is being lost in the process"_

You don't need a memory allocator, file system or scheduler for an 'OS' that runs a single task.

<comment><USER16> Nothing is being lost in the process as long as we continue to churn out people who are still interested in the low-level bits of the process.

I used to point out to people that the control algorithm they were so laboriously writing on their PIC/AVR (now Arduino...) could be replaced with a 20 cent transistor and a handful of diodes and resistors. For exactly the same reason: the overkill bugged me and I was bothered that "kids today" weren't learning things "the right way." Then I began to shut up because I realized I was looking at progress. We don't need experts in analog electronics to build basic control systems: a web hacker who learns C can handle the simple stuff (emphasis on _simple_ ).

Likewise, I now find myself telling others to forget about building 555 timer circuits or elaborate digital contraptions to sequence their LEDs and relays and just buy a $5 Arduino Nano and get it done in a few minutes.

It's progress!

<comment><USER13> Except that the higher up you get in hardware the more everything turns into analog again. All of a sudden one's and zero's are not one's and zero's any more! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't let anyone fool you, at six tons the 405 is almost 25 times more computer per dollar than the Raspberry Pi. Now that's value!

<comment><USER18> I have a boulder to sell you that you're gonna love!

<comment><USER19> The other day, I was looking at a smart lock on Amazon, and they listed the price per ounce. I think you may be on to something.

<comment><USER20> In Australian supermarkets the cost per unit weight net (typically 100 grams) has to be printed on shelf under / next to the price.

I've proposed the idea that the price of everything in the supermarket be averaged per unit weight, checking out then becomes just a matter of weighing the trolley / basket.

I see complications / gaming the system, fun idea though.

Maybe just knowing how much you spend per average kg of food, or per unit of energy, could be a useful metric for optimizing food expenses.

<comment><USER19> They'd sell out of helium balloons instantaneously, for one thing.

<comment><USER21> You'd have to weigh the trolley in a vacuum, of course.

<comment><USER22> I think the helium balloon prices are adjusted for inflation though.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I submitted the same post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10689371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10689371) 11 hours ago. But 4 hours ago, dang moved my comment to this post which was created 3 hours ago. It's very weird.

<comment><USER24> A kind of time travel, welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> BTW Elliot had quite interesting memory design: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory)

<comment><USER26> Ferranti Pegasus used the same (and it's still up and running!): [http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/images/I039/10307498.aspx](http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/images/I039/10307498.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Technological progress is an excellent example of how _deflation_ helps the average person. Your money buys more and more compute power each year.

Central banks are targeting _inflation_ , which slowly robs the saver of purchasing power.

Areas with high government regulation and control suffer from price inflation, where you get less and less each year for the same money: healthcare, education, war.

<comment><USER28> And though prices are continually falling for tech goods, people do not refrain from buying (as the myth says they will).

You know the iPhone you buy today will be much less next year, but you still buy because it serves a purpose for you now.

They only type of spending perpetually lower prices would probably decrease is speculative buying. If you don't need a particular good now, you may wait knowing the price will fall. But this is also a good thing.

<comment><USER29> Disagree, I've refrained from buying several products in recent years because I know if I can keep the old one going for one or two more product generations then the new one will be much, much better. It also influences my choice of product, I'm more likely to get something high end and keep it for longer.

<comment><USER28> OK, but in a general sense, the number of computing devices being purchased continues to grow.

Apple keeps setting iPhone sales records. Your examples, I would argue, are a _good thing_. People buy only when they absolutely need these goods, _not_ because they are afraid they need to buy in excess _now_ because their savings is going to lose value relative to the cost of these goods. They get full use out of the goods they purchase. Less wasteful spending, and wasteful use of resources needed to produce them. Moore's law illustrates that the cost of computing power has continually fallen. The industry has certainly not suffered because of this, would you agree?

So without putting to fine a point on it: The tech industry is as healthy as any in the entire economy. And yet, prices fall faster than just about any other. Consumers unambiguously benefit from these falling prices. Keep this in mind when economists or politicians sing the praises of "mild" inflation. This would certainly benefit governments who want to run a deficit and spend money they have to borrow. But I'd argue this does not benefit the consumer.

Thought experiment: will you plan on spending more on discretionary items (entertainment, vacation, home remodeling, investments, whatever...) if you anticipate / observe _rising_ prices on staples such as food, healthcare, rent/mortgage, gas, utilities, etc?

Or, will you spend more on discretionary items if you anticipate / observe _falling prices_ on those same items? Your available budget will be greater and of course your spending will increase in these areas if you have more money to spend. So the utility, or benefit you receive as a result is clearly higher.

Debtors benefit from rising prices because they can pay off debt with cheaper currency. So, as previously mentioned government, the biggest debtor, promotes inflationary policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Awesome. The only thing that would make this chart better is seeing the factor of improvement on each stat. The differing units make it harder to eyeball than it could be. Also would be cool if the price was inflation-adjusted.

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting, but crazier is that the Zero kicks the snot out of the laptop I took to college in 1997.

</comment><comment><USER32> Excuse me for the digression, but the best thing of this post was to reencounter with Mr. Spinellis blog. I love his books (there's a new one!) and since I ditched RSS readers, I've never more visited it. I advice you to spend some time there.

</comment><comment><USER33> At least the Elliott 405 shipped with IO devices.

<comment><USER34> and that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The Raspberry Pi Zero even compares favorably to the Cray 1 supercomputer from 1975.

</comment><comment><USER36> Could have someone made a microchip in 1957 if they just "knew enough", I mean, if you sent someone back in time to 1957 with today's knowledge, could someone build a microchip from today back then?

<comment><USER37> The answer is no. Today's integrated circuits are all manufactured using extremely precise equipment not available back then. Furthermore, the designs are impossible to execute by hand and require complex software, not to mention extensive verification.

For a CPU like that of the Zero (ARM11), we're talking about at the very least upwards of 100 million transistors on a single chip. Only by simulating the design can you actually catch that single incorrectly biased MOSFET. Think software debugging, but on a whole different level. Then you have all the other components on the Zero responsible for tasks ranging from power management, networking, graphics processing, clocking, sound processing, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> On thing missing from the top trump card is power consumption.

</comment><comment><USER39> What difference it makes if all it does is blinking a LED?

</comment><comment><USER40> The comparison starts to look different if you include an "Availability Date" row...

</comment><comment><USER41> Haha. Love this. I just setup my PiZero to run Blockstore this weekend. I'm absolutely amazing by this little machine. Was actually blown away with the speed even though it's 1/2G of RAM. Impressed.

<comment><USER42> Blown away with the speed even though it's 512MB ram... Are you, by chance, coming from a windows os? If so, welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'd like to see a more recent comparison, honestly. Where can I find that? (10 years, for instance)

</comment><comment><USER23> Weight: 9g vs 3-6 tons

Price: $5 vs £85,000 (1957)

Amazing technology advance!

<comment><USER44> Also within that timespan, 1.2MB of magnetic film vs 8GB MircoSD card (upto 128GB on a Pi Zero?) That's Moore's Law in action!

<comment><USER44> edit: Specifically to storage, the Moore's Law equivalent is Kryder's Law, named after Mark Kryder. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think I prefer the Elliott 405 than the Raspberry Pi Zero ! (Joke)</comment>


Ask HN: Measuring how broken the office Internet connection is - <AUTHOR> The Internet at my workplace has been on and off lately and the IT admins don't admit to how bad it really is. Since it works ~(most of the time), this is often ignored and is frustrating.<p>How do i measure how bad the connection is? Is tcpdump logs the only way or have you come across a cleaner hack/plugin etc? <comment><USER2> Set up a script to poll a remote server every X seconds, collect the ping times and how many connections were dropped, and the average transfer speeds.

I've heard a lot of good things about [http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/](http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/)</comment>


Who goes Nazi? - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/1/ <comment><USER2> Yuck. Maybe the Nazi is the person who writes stuff like this. Also, it's convenient that none of the poor/working-class people are Nazis (unless they clawed their way up the class hierarchy, because then they hate their parents and also Jews).

I guess Nazism was a movement of upper-class twits, then?

<comment><USER3> This was written in 1941, before the Holocaust was widely known about. This person would have thought of Nazism as an ugly regime, like many others in history, perhaps the way we think of Assad or Putin but worse. She wouldn't have known they were nearly as bad as we do today.</comment></comment>


Apple hit with $1B lawsuit over facial recognition arrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/teen-hits-apple-with-1b-lawsuit-over-facial-recognition-arrest/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a fishing expedition to me. If they were able to prove Apple used facial recognition in the discovery process it would be embarrassing to Apple with their new overt security marketing push. While the plaintiff's argument is at least plausible, there's no proof and Apple denies it.</comment>


Made in the USSR: Reverse Engineering the Boeing B-29 (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/made-in-the-ussr-38442437/?all <comment><USER2> _At Orsha, the nickname "Ramp Tramp" puzzled many Soviet pilots and engineers, even those familiar with English. One rough translation offered was "Unshaven Vagabond," which still baffled Soviet airmen._

It puzzles me, and English is my first language! What does it mean?

<comment><USER3> A "ramp" (in US aviation jargon) is where aircraft are loaded and prepared for flight. The official term is "apron" and a common layman's term for this area of an airfield is "tarmac." Guessing this is the main source of confusion.

"Tramp" here probably means harlot (consider the cheesecake pinup nose-art common on WWII-era US bombers, as alluded to in the article.)

<comment><USER4> > _" Tramp" here probably means harlot_

I'm guessing it's actually akin to "hangar queen," an aircraft that's grounded for maintenance to an unusual extent [1].

EDIT: Or, it might be an analog to a tramp steamer, i.e., a merchant ship that goes from port to port to port carrying whatever cargoes the ship's officers can scare up as they go. [2]

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hangar_queen](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hangar_queen)

[2] [http://www.britannica.com/technology/tramp- steamer](http://www.britannica.com/technology/tramp-steamer)</comment></comment></comment>


Using Neural Networks to generate human readable passwords - <AUTHOR> http://fsecurify.com/using-neural-networks-to-generate-human-readable-passwords/ <comment><USER2> It'd be interesting to explore bounds on the entropy of these passwords. It'd be a shame if you could guess the rest of the password from the first 2-3 characters.

<comment><AUTHOR> The same idea can be extended to what you are proposing. The neural net has to be given passwords with high entropy so that it can learn to generate passwords with high entropy only. My post was more of a demo of what can be achieved with neural nets in this regard.

Best Regards.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Red Team - <AUTHOR>

Over the last few months I've read a large amount of disturbing articles on US surveillance. Although it's debatable whether the US has already started a descent into totalitarianism, it now possesses tools which put it at the top of a slippery slope. I now find myself wondering how likely it is that America will remain a democracy in my lifetime.
Instead of asking what we can do to avert a such a slide, maybe it's better to first ask a Red Team style question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team):
" If you had the means and motivation to turn the US into a dictatorship, how would you go about doing it? "
I'm keen to hear HN's thoughts (obviously not because I have such means nor motivation!). Rather, if the US was to descend into dictatorship it could quite possibly come from a strategy that many have not even considered. Being keenly aware of the ways in which the US could become a dictatorship, may better prepare us to prevent such a horror from happening. <comment><USER2> Is the (de facto) dictator a politician, or a group of businesses?

Regardless of where we are on the slope, or how noticeable the slope is, being told to be aware of it is a damaging step. If you're told you're capable of affecting something that has a bad outcome you'll be so alert and worried over it you'll be stressed. If that happens over a few decades as the democracy slips away you'll be too weak from stress ulcers and so on.

Yes, I am basically saying you can't healthily fight this. I don't look much into political history but I guess it's easier to get public support once the evils are laid bare. Maybe someone who knows history could point out when and where this has and hasn't worked.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd wage false flag operations on local soil and insist that Oceania did it, and Oceania is bad so we have to invade them to spread democracy and "freedom".

Rinse and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a lawful permanent resident, even talking about such things hypothetically could get me into hot water with USCIS.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't brainstorm on this subject.

<comment><USER7> Why exactly? The potential harm of the information being used by somebody for nefarious purposes?</comment></comment>


I gave away my books and sales increased - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-gave-away-my-books-free-and-sales-increased-4x <comment><USER2> There are a number of claims that this happens in the academic market as well.

Sources:

1\. Peter Suber's Open Access monograph, chapter 5, p. 107-110 (itself open access, of course). [https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book)](https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_\(the_book\)) argues that OA books facilitate "searching and sampling," and then people want to read the whole thing in the nicer print format.

2\. University of Michigan Press says it happens sometimes thanks to increased "awareness and visibility": [https://www.press.umich.edu/openaccess](https://www.press.umich.edu/openaccess)

3\. A phd thesis reviewing studies, and finding a negative relationship between OA and sales: [https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/68465](https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/68465)

4\. A swiss study of matched pairs of books, one OA, one traditional; no statistically significant difference in sales [http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN- CH_schlussbe...](http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN- CH_schlussbericht_en.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Hypothesis: Books that already have high exposure and demand will likely be negatively impacted by making a free version available. Books that would have good sales if more people knew about them will likely benefit from the increased exposure from making free versions available.

But yeah I personally have had the experience of the first link - I've purchased many physical books that have free (and legal) PDFs online because I like print books better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's difficult to truly measure the outcome of this sort of promotion in completely new market conditions such as those we're currently experiencing. I run a retail business on the side (still work full time) and sales have more than doubled during the pandemic with no other changes to incentivize it. I've been selling the same product for 1.5 years, so I have a good idea of what an average month looks like.

Could be that people are spending more time online and therefore shopping. Could be that people are spending more time with their hobbies (it's a product for musicians). Could be people spending their stimulus checks. Could be a number of other factors.

My point is that's it's probably unwise to draw conclusions from data which was gathered in an unprecedented market, and its best to wait for market stability before running promotional trials.

<comment><USER5> I agree with this, I work for an ebook company and our sales are 2-3x what they usually are for this time of year.

Even so, well done experimenting with a different model Jeff, you'll have a larger (and more appreciative) fan base because of it.

<comment><USER6> > you'll have a larger (and more appreciative) fan base because of it.

That's an important point. Writers don't just want sales, they want readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing new...

[https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate- coelho/](https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate-coelho/) [https://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own- books-...](https://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own- books-080124/)

In short Coelho pirate his own books for free. Sales was 0 in the beginning, then 10k, next year 100k, next year 1m.

<comment><USER8> Slightly off topic, but it took me a few attempts to really get into The Alchemist - maybe because I didn't appreciate where it was going or it just wasn't good reading material for where I was in life.

Eventually I stuck with it and found it a really eye-opening read, I feel like it's a life guidance book in disguise and I'm usually averse to them but the concept of a Personal Legend really did resonate with me.

Not really surprised by all the negative reviews on Goodreads, I stubbornly felt a similar way for a while.

<comment><USER9> Brazilian speaking. Coelho is considered one of our finest songwriters of all time. He sells a lot, but is considered low literature over here. The Alchemist is basically a bunch of mystical and self help cliches.

Paulo Coelho likes to propagate the notion that he posses actual magical powers. When a news crew went to his house, he refused to unsheathe a sword because it might unleash catastrophic events.

That said, I read The Alchemist when I was a teenager and found it pretty fun. As a adult, I would never would never take him seriously.

<comment><USER10> You have to appreciate the imagination of the guy!

<comment><USER9> Well, that's the thing: he's not that original. He does know how to write enjoyable best sellers with mystic overtones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this has more to do with your target audience. The books in question are aimed at an audience which overall has a really good purchasing power.

To many people 15 euros is an expensive book but looking at my tech books shelf, and seeing an average price of around 50 euros(many of which I would have paid double without a single doubt of hesitation), you quickly see a huge gap between the different audiences.

Good developers and tech people certainly appreciate the complexity of tech books and are well aware that they are often guides to prototypes, as opposed to full, production solutions. Hence the reason why many are more than happy to support open source projects from our own pockets. Take "The Rust Programming Language" book for instance - it's completely free online but I was more than happy to purchase the paper version in order to support the authors, the same way I donate to the Linux foundation, the PSF foundation and so on. And sure enough, I appreciate someone's hard work here and I'd happily buy their books should I see them useful to me.

I can't recall which artist it was (I recall it being Jan Garbarek but don't quote me on this) who gave away an album online where you could get it for free or any amount you like. I recall several sales in the 5-digits which is a clear message. But much like textbooks, such music has a very particular audience and such... Let's call them "stunts" wouldn't be successful for most products and would backfire terribly.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's crazy sales numbers. Congrats. And I noticed an issue with leanpub sales notifications as well, was pleasantly surprised to see I'd earned more than what my emails were indicating. Seems to have been fixed, no discrepancy in last two weeks.

For all my books, I've made it free for a few days and promoted it on HN/reddit/twitter/etc. That period gives me the most sales (as both leanpub and gumroad allow people to pay more than the price of the book).

Before my latest book, due to increasing fear of the pandemic, I made all my books free for the foreseeable future and released the markdown source as well. Then, released the new book early (cutting down exercises and few more things). My post on HN [1] reached front page, in which I also mentioned about my other books. Last month saw the biggest sale ever for me, covers about four months of my living costs. After about two week break, I decided to update all my books (will take about two months). And then back to writing another book.

I also got an offer for one of my books from a publishing company, which I turned down. A few users wrote me a mail, felt nice to discuss and goes a long way in motivating me to continue writing and improving my content. A big thanks to all the readers :)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758217)

<comment><AUTHOR> For any author, I think the biggest joy we have is when a reader writes us and gives us some encouragement or helpful ideas/corrections/suggestions.

Sometimes, yes, it can be a little burdensome if someone dumps 20 different subjective grammar fixes, but even then, it shows someone cares enough about something I produced that they spent the time to give me some feedback about it.

Half the reason I keep updating Ansible for DevOps is because readers keep pushing new ideas or helping fix technical debt incurred by the passage of time in the book's GitHub repo!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease.

<comment><USER14> I don't follow your logic.

Without copyright, someone else could take the author's books and give them away or sell them without attribution. How would he benefit from that?

<comment><USER13> I am not opposed to copyright law that makes it illegal to _sell_ somebody else's work for profit. But what's the difference between me giving you a copy of the book for free (with attribution) and the author giving you a copy of the book?

I am opposed to copyright that stops people from copying works they have purchased (or obtained elsewhere) and distributing them. And my argument was that, as shown by the post, giving copies away for free can actually _increase_ overall sales rather than decrease them.

<comment><USER14> This is weak evidence for that conclusion. LeanPub makes it possible to buy a free book, so everyone who came for the free copy had an opportunity to immediately "tip" the author.

<comment><USER13> I'm not saying one anecdote along is sufficient evidence. But I've seen a fair few cases where content creators who previously had little audience or readership suddenly gained one by giving away their content for free.

In the digital age, it is so easy to copy books, films, TV shows. The arguments against making it legal, is that film studios will make less money. But what percentage of people are currently _not_ pirating content because it's illegal? I'd say a very very small handful.

I would much rather have the option to obtain a copy for free, and donate to the author if I thought it was worth it. Patreon works exactly like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice write-up but I'm really commenting in appreciation of the perfect iambic pentameter in the HN title.

<comment><USER16> wow, how did you notice that?

<comment><USER15> Not sure really, it just had that 'bounce'!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in > favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good > content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather > than decrease.

This reminds me of a semi-relevant experiment that happened in the underground UK bass music community; most labels are privately owned and self-releasing albums are the norm.

So, somewhere in 2009ish Vinyl was coming back within the consumer Market, it was always strong within the DJ and producer community as dubplates were a form of currency to show exclusiveness and clout to get people to come out to the raves to hear a certain 'sound.'

But, it occurred to the label owners and producers that they were losing a lot of money to the downloads, so instead they started to offer free digital DLs with the purchase of any vinyl pressing from these labels/producers. This was a direct response to customers voicing their opinions on forums and radio show chats/comments that made an effective feedback system possible.

I used to have to wait 2-5 weeks for a vinyl to arrive, and the USD-GBP exchange rate was horrible, so I often resorted just getting the digital version, but after having lost my collections due to failed HDDs twice I knew I had to change.

And once they offered this option the community responded and an influx of vinyl purchases started to come in from everywhere creating 2-3rd pressings just to fulfill demand Soon after that low-cost vinyl players were starting to gain traction and it really took off, as it was seen as somewhat of a status symbol.

Now, every bandcamp artist worth it's salt has limited pressings with exclusive deals that offer this as the model proved successful--many of the artists I follow are often sold out within a week.

The Freemium model can be pretty effective, I used it in my startup to some success: but 60x is beyond anyone's expectations, congrats!

Sidenote: the aforementioned music community had its humble beginnings as a Pirate Radio station and being a platform to highlight local talent in an emerging scene. Years later Red Bull Music Academy would come around and invest tons of money in PR and events for those same artists.

<comment><USER13> Great anecdote, thanks for sharing that. The more I hear these stories, the more I'm convinced that copyright law does not protect content producers at all. It protects the interests of very, very big distributors (record labels, movie producers) while in some cases making it _more_ difficult for indie producers to distribute (licensing, derivative works, distribution, it's all a nightmare).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not surprised. These books, and Jeff Geerling's contributions to Ansible in general, are a very strong resource for new Ansible users.

</comment><comment><USER19> "For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy." \- Tim O'Reilly

<comment><USER20> "Human life is so far a game of cross-purposes. If we wish a thing to be kept secret, it is sure to transpire: if we wish it to be known, not a syllable is breathed about it." – Hazlitt

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think there are a few reasons this works well (a simplification):

1\. Ideally, you want everybody who wants to consume your product to do so at the highest price they are willing to pay (as long as that is above the cost of production and some minimum profit margin). People willing to spend a lot of money are willing to also spend less, but people who are only willing to spend less money are not willing to spend more. Therefore you target the high- buyers first and the low-buyers second, until you reach zero.

2\. Value loss over time means that there is some non-infinite window in which to sell your product in order to maximize profits. The trade-off is likely market (people wanting to purchase), selling price and exposure (how many people even know it exists) - x axis is time and y is profit.

In relation to this story, the exposure was low and the market was lower as a result. Reducing price increased exposure and therefore allowed the visibility of the product to the market out there. Don't under value word-of-mouth!

I think this is why the film and music industry need to calm down about piracy. The EU for example withheld a study because it showed that piracy didn't provably harm sales [1]. How many people have had their internet shut off, been fined or worse because of piracy - when there's no proven victim. In fact, if anecdotes like this story are anything to go by - it may even improve sales.

My anecdote: After pirating the Matrix trilogy (in a time where I had no money), I ended up buying the films on DVD twice (each film individually and then the box set). I never would have purchased these films had I first not pirated them. Similarly, I found a PDF for a book on scrum before purchasing it - and then recommending my team do the same.

Side note: I remember interviewing for a company that did this kind of analysis and automatically adjusted prices for online websites. I don't think those guys actually had any clue (it was all very young programmers and no mathematicians/machine learning people) - but in theory it's entirely possible.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds- piracy...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy- doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/)

<comment><USER22> This an interesting addition to my line of thought which was, basically, "giving them away free is good PR" which, of course, drives attention and sales.

If _every_ book publisher (say, in the tech industry) announced free books at the same time, would this person's sales have increased by the same amount? Almost certainly not. Would they have increased at all? .. probably?

But your comment adds a new twist, which is the timing/price discrimination side, where, to run an experiment, we'd also have to control for works that were already out vs not, by running this experiment on new releases as well as works already available for sale for some amount of time.

<comment><USER23> Tech books are not all in competition with each other, seems to me. Free or not, something has to be of interest to me and good enough to cover opportunity costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lots of edtech companies gave away their tools for free [1] to support distance learning during school shutdowns. I'm sure most of them hope to garner additional sales in the long run, and possibly the short run also.

My edtech startup has been giving away our most popular tool for a couple months, and paid sales are probably up 30% during that time. It certainly wasn't why we did it (we've had philanthropic programs from the beginning [1]), but it doesn't hurt.

1: [https://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/](https://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/)

2: [https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/why-every-edtech- company-s...](https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/why-every-edtech-company- should-have-a-buy-1-give-1-program-97285608097b)

</comment><comment><USER25> You do a good service to the society, Jeff.

One hypothesis can be that many people (like me) ended up paying for both the books (ansible and kubernetes) even if it was free. Someone puts their soul into creating good books that we benefit from, so why not pay if we can.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Nobody who bought my book will buy it again

This might be mostly true, however when you've got something for free (because of a giveaway or through piracy) and you love it, you may want to buy it afterwards to show you support and maximize the chances of having more stuff you like in the future.

I actually quite often pay for stuff I already have and my level of satisfaction is on average much higher than when I pay for stuff I don't have (should I say obviously?).

</comment><comment><USER27> I really appreciate Jeff's "Ansible for DevOps".

It's what got me going in using Ansible. I didn't even finish the book (due to lack of time) or know all the features in the book but I appreciate knowing Ansible whenever I use it.

And his book is the reason I started writing my own ebook. It will never be as good as his but it's been a great experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to Amazon reviewers, your book would be much better than mine if you just add an index :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I stumbled across Jeff's post about giving away his books in March. The books looked particularly useful. I felt I would get value from them so I opted to pay. It's great to see others did also!

What also influenced my decision was that another of Jeff's projects had been quite helpful to me (DrupalVM).

</comment><comment><USER29> Thank you for this anecdote. I made a post awhile ago about how it's almost never small-time authors who get screwed by piracy and was promptly downvoted

Yet again, we find that benefits of exposure > costs of some free-loading

<comment><AUTHOR> To add to that point: I have a few google searches set up to get links to my books from warez/free download/random blog sites, and I see, on average, 3-5 new sites per day that have full PDF copies of my books.

In the beginning I worried about this, but in the end, there are two reasons why I stopped caring:

1\. I keep the book updated and relevant, so those versions of the book are basically historic artifacts and become more and more worthless over time. This value helps people who actually care about the knowledge in the book to decide to buy from LeanPub or Amazon, eventually.

2\. Most of the people who put up with getting popup ads and malware on their computers just to download my book aren't likely to pay for it anyways.

I have only filed one or two takedown notices, to people who posted YouTube videos infringing on the content of some of my talks and past videos, and once to a more popular / non-malicious site that was sharing a PDF.

<comment><USER30> I just read the 2016 bit about how you published individual chapters to gauge interest; that was pretty cool. Could I ask you a couple of questions about it?

1\. How does "purchasing" a few chapters look on the user side? e.g. Do you price every chapter and they only pay for the difference if they want to purchase the full book later? Do updates (which you said they're entitled to?) come out for individual chapters?

2\. How do you get the word out initially? (I see you mentioned going to conferences; it'd be nice if you could elaborate or mention if there are other potentially effective approaches.)

Thanks, and congrats on your success so far!

<comment><AUTHOR> In my case, using LeanPub, the way it works is as follows:

1\. I choose a point in time to start 'publishing' (in my case with A4D it was after 3 chapters were written, first draft). 2\. Users can start buying at this point, at a minimum price I determine (starting at 'free', or 4.99 and up). 3\. Any user who buys the book gets DRM-free downloads in any format from LeanPub, and the book is on their permanent shelf on LeanPub, so they can download any newer version forever, free.

As an author, when I push a new update, I have the ability to also send a notification email to all subscribed readers so they know a new version is available—otherwise I can just silently update it (e.g. for smaller bugfixes in the text or slight corrections).

<comment><USER31> Hi Jeff, love your work and have followed for a long time. I just noticed on Leanpub the minimum price for Ansible for DevOps is $9.99 despite following a link from your blog post that stated the $0 cost was being extended through April. Is it still intended to be $0?

See here: [https://imgur.com/a/UxSyr28](https://imgur.com/a/UxSyr28)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is now May, in most parts of the universe ;-)

<comment><USER31> Ahh, thank you! I legitimately forgot what month it was!

<comment><AUTHOR> Some days it feels like it's still March...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seem like an illustration of the power of reciprocity in social psychology.[1] You give something away for free and then those who took what you gave feel obligated to give something back to you.

I sometimes wonder if those who give away their book for an email would get more emails if they would first give away their book and only then ask your email.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_\(social_psychology\)#The_power_of_reciprocity)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hate it when people ask for an email for something free; feels the same as those annoying pop ups when reading half of the world's blogs these days. If I want to follow someone I'll find an RSS feed :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Out of curiosity, has (the print version of) _Ansible for DevOps_ been updated since it was first published?

I purchased the dead-tree version probably three or four years ago and, unfortunately, it was basically already outdated by that time. I learned a bit from it but so Ansible moves pretty fast -- or did back then, at least -- so it wasn't nearly as useful as it could have been. (I don't remember any specifics, sorry.)

That experience led me to stop buying books on new and/or fast-moving technologies.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is great, and it was interesting that Jeff could do the experiment.

I know two book agents and both agree that the #1 killer of new author sales is the fact that nobody else has read one of their books. There was an excellent article from book agents that found the "piracy" rate of new books foreshadowed their sales success.

It is one of the more interesting things about information economics that information can become valuable as a _reward_ for production.

</comment><comment><USER35> I buy a lot of physical books because I love them, an I can relate to this. Whenever I see a book in my field that the author is offering for download, I systematically buy it. When still wanting a book that is not freely downloadable by the author, I first look at a pirate copy and read it for a few days before buying. Would never consider buying a book before having seen an electronic copy.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is pretty much the freemium model. Free gives you free marketing as people will be talking about it. Sharing on social etc. The pricing page is effectively:

        Free: Book

        Premium: Book + nice feeling of helping out a nice guy

And sounds like a lot of people thought the premium version was worth it. Great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER37> What's the best way to get a paper copy? I see Amazon for the DevOps book; are they the easiest to deal with? Most reliable? Highest margin?

</comment><comment><USER38> Great work Jeff! I think it works like marketing when you give away the books. More people who are willing to pay knows about the books through the free copies.

</comment><comment><USER39> Those are crazy numbers and bravo to you. I am trying to use ebook as lead magnet for Sales Funnel and your insights are very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER40> It can make sense. It's also better for longevity of the work.

I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though...that seems like a perfect candidate for a paywall to capture some of the value created from the books he's giving away. Of course I don't know the whole story and realize it's a personal choice -- but, in any case, this is exactly why giving a book away for free can be so powerful.

I'm planning to launch a book marketplace that offers books for free if downloaded via P2P while charging a small fee for direct HTTP downloads.

[https://100millionbooks.org/librery/](https://100millionbooks.org/librery/)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though

I figured it would also offer people a distraction / way to learn something during the workday (or night, I guess, outside of US and most of Europe). I've considered doing a full-fledged course a few times (and have had offers to do it for a couple different platforms), but live streaming it kind of forces the issue, and has helped me get a little more structure on my YouTube channel, which has kind of been festering since 2006 :D

Now I'm considering moving on to a similar 'Kubernetes 101' at some point, maybe. It's _relatively_ fun for me, and if it opens up possibilities of another group like Device42 sponsoring portions of it, that would be a net benefit IMO—most of the free content I see is absolute-ground-level and doesn't really get far enough to make someone productive.

I know for myself, having really good intro-course-level content free would've helped my growth earlier in my career (before I was able to get my workplace to pay for decent training material and conference travel).

<comment><AUTHOR> One other aside, I'm often reminded of:

There's a saying "Those who can't do, teach."

I think, on the contrary, a good teacher has to not only be an expert on a topic, but has to poke and prod it further, then distill everything about it down to the essentials to turn it into teachable lessons.

Anyways, I figure that I have a certain amount of knowledge in my head. It would be nice if I could spread that knowledge as far and wide as possible, since that could ignite a bit more passion for good software and solid automation in others.

<comment><USER33> I always heard it as, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

OTOH, I worked at a .edu for several years (networking) and was asked to teach a course when the contracted instructor suddenly had to back out at the last minute. That led to me teaching a course or two per semester for a few years and, to be honest, I'm fairly certain that I _learned_ way more when I was teaching than my students did. As you said, you have to be much more than just an expert on the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice one Jeff! Amazed to see these kinds of sales figures. I hope that you're saving some of the income for yourself - you deserve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, and thanks! I turned an almost-emergency 'need a replacement' laptop purchase into a 'wow this new laptop is so much nicer' purchase.

(My 2016 non-TB MacBook Pro's battery had started ballooning and it was getting difficult to click the trackpad. The bottom case was touching the table in the middle and the front feet were about .5mm in the air. Didn't want to let it get worse!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hi Jeff, interesting statistics. Your Ansible book has been a great resource to me. Thanks for writing it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Of course, by blogging and posting on HN about this experience, it will be more difficult to tell what portion of future sales is due to giving the books away for free, and what portion is due to blogging about having done so.

Seriously, with the downvoting? This was meant to be a philosophical comment on the self-referential effect of posting about the experience.

<comment><USER43> What do you mean? By giving his book way for free, he was able to get HN attention (and thus get more sales).

<comment><USER24> Right, but if the message from his blog post is "do what I did, and you'll see similar results", then it's not sufficient just to give away your book. You also have to have a notable story to tell about it, and then go tell that story elsewhere. It's an indirect effect, not a direct effect. Also, if lots of people do this, then the publicity benefit of blogging about it will shrink because the stories won't get clicks anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that I did post about it twice ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353)) in the past, when the promo was ongoing, and those posts didn't front page.

And I admit, it's not just "make something free and sales go up"—I've probably spent more time during this lockdown working on tying together social media + YouTube videos + book marketing, once I noticed the uptake on the free offer.

The strangest thing to me? The 'ignition point' for going from a few hundred to multiple thousand copies of the book being given away in just a few hours was a LinkedIn post that was shared pretty heavily.

LinkedIn... seriously!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Congratulations, those are great give-away and also sales numbers!

I do something similar on leanpub [1] by setting the minimum price very low, free reading online, and a Creative Common share license and encouraging people to share my books with their friends.

As you mentioned, leanpub makes it really easy to update books and I am probably going to pull my books from Kindle Marketplace because of the overhead of updating them.

I like your approach - I am tempted to copy your process.

[1] [https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson](https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah updating books on Amazon is a painful process; I wish they made it way easier, but their model is very much tied to the traditional publishing model.

<comment><USER44> Yes, but there is no reason that Amazon's self-serve Kindle publishing platform could not support easy updates with automatic notifications to readers (if they opt-in for notifications). Leanpub does it very well.</comment></comment></comment>


Recruiting Technical Co-Founders - <AUTHOR> http://andysparks.co/post/28923167943/recruiting-technical-co-founders

<comment><USER2> Vision is a word I don't like and gets thrown around a lot. It's not quantifiable. If you are a non technical co-founder you need to be able to bring in the money. That means you're either 1) Able to raise VC/Angel and probably have a track record, 2) Have serious connections/customers in the space you're starting a business in, or 3) Putting your own cash in.

<comment><USER3> Makes sense. So if the proposition is that a technical co-founder is to work for equity but no salary, perhaps that already shows the non-technical founder has failed the test of bringing in enough money to start the business.

<comment><USER4> How would you propose the non-technical founder raising funding without a product? Personally, I can sell the vision all day long, but people want to see a product. Any advice for non-technical founders who want to raise "idea" funding to pay a developers salary?

<comment><USER5> There are two options and they both sound kind of cliched. 1)

1) The first is two find some way to "hack" together a product yourself. This can be as simple as a "demo" in keynote/powerpoint or something that you can show off to investors as the product initially. Or if you are in a service business, perform the service manually for a few customers (run it from a spreadsheet) and prove the need before plunging into full fledged development. Both of those will most likely also reduce the time-footprint of your development

2) A lot of accelerators seem to be accepting pre-product companies these days and I think this is the strength of a lot of the accelerators is to get you into the product stage. These could be a viable option if you have one in your area

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a 'technical co-founder' and I can't say how many times I'm approached by people who want me to build some application for them in exchange for 10-20% of equity. What do they bring to the table? In most cases it's just their 'idea'. So usually my question to them is - why can't I just take this idea and execute it on my own?

If you want to find a good technical co-founder - be good at sales. Business is successful when you can 1) build a product 2) sell it. Well, part 2 is the hardest one in 99% of cases. If some biz co-founder can nail it - he/she will have no problem finding a tech co-founder.

<comment><USER7> LOL, I get that a lot too. "The first version is 90% done.", they say. "I just need to delegate it to a tech co-founder so I can focus on business.", they add. "You'll get double-digit equity, up-to 13%, even.", they conclude. For me, "co-founder" starts at (100 / n)%, where "n" is the number of co-founders.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, equal share[1] and then dilute (again, equally) as other non-founder shareholders come on board.

[1] and equal equity share means everyone needs to bring an equal amount of value to the company. If they want me to build the entire thing and they sit back and watch the money roll in, then they are not adding equal value, so why would this be worth equal (or, god forbid, less than equal) equity to me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Getting technical cofounders is pretty tough if you don't know much about tech. Too many non-technical founders are interested in technical cofounders to "Build their idea for them". I don't think this arrangement is a co-founder arrangement as much as it is a work-for-hire agreement. The key with getting a technical co-founder is that you actually "co-found" the idea together. It is just as much as his idea as it is yours. If you keep this in mind, finding the right technical co-founder will become easier.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree. People need to approach with "What do you think about this idea" not "I've got an idea and now I just need someone to build it". Thats a quick way for me to decide rather there will be a follow-up conversation when I'm being "courted" by someone with an idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this approach, Josh. Lots of us non-designer non-dev. types need honest and brutal feedback on ideas/product more than anything else.

<comment><USER8> But you have to make sure to ask the right questions[1]! For examble, asking feel-good questions (questions that give positive answers and make you feel good about your idea, rather than questions that give you actionable feedback) doesn't add any value and at worst could even be harmful.

[1] [http://hackfwd.tumblr.com/post/23669383330/rob- fitzpatrick-h...](http://hackfwd.tumblr.com/post/23669383330/rob-fitzpatrick- how-to-do-early-customer-development)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good point. Adding this point into my next post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My tactic for winnowing non-technical potential founders who respect what you bring to the table versus those who likely do not is the following. I point out to them I am already engaged in my own company using my extensive technical background to successfully market and sell on my own, and am quite busy and happily successful, but could carve out the 10 or so hours per month to provide my expertise guiding their technical decisions as a board member, even helping them find technical founders who have the time to implement. I give them a quick "taste" by describing what kinds of technologies and APIs someone implementing their idea would need to be involved in, and after some quick Googling, their top 2-3 potential competitors in either the same or adjacent spaces, and key decisions that straddle the business-technical spectrums they will need to make that they haven't thought of yet that can dramatically impact the technical architectural decisions an implementor would have to subsequently make. If some numbers are available, I give them a development budget and time line "rough sketch", and tell them I can work up a set of potential MIRRs for their implemented product/service if they have some available numbers from potential customers. I describe that board members with this much due diligence before board meetings typically receive a 2% stake pre-seed, then step back.

In every case so far, they have gone radio silent, and months later I always find out that their ideas still go unimplemented, which does not surprise me. I believe an authentic counteroffer for a genuine board position (if you already have a track record that aligns with the counteroffer) is a positive and non-combative response. If they genuinely appreciate what you bring to a potential team, they would believe it fair to exchange 2% for that value, or at least they will start dickering. If on the other hand they are just looking for Work For Hire on the cheap, they'll move their pitch onto the next technical persone they run into.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've yet to start my own company, but you better believe I have a working list of "co-founder" candidates in mind. I've been building the list for years and I believe the opportunity, and the components necessary to execute, will drive my choice when the time comes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Agree 100% with the college entrepreneurship club comment. The connections I made with entrepreneurial-minded, passionate people while still in school have been hugely beneficial.

<comment><USER13> That's definitely something I wish I had joined. It's definitely one of the major things I regret not doing while in college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would be willing to work w/ a non-technical founder if the product is in a niche that few people have access to. Like medical, financial, business operations, etc. The reason technical people focus on consumer apps is because we don't have insight or access to niches with paying customers.

</comment><comment><USER15> _> we've known each other for between four and five years_

Probably the most important line for me. This one line wraps up all the jargon about liking, trusting, respecting, etc. No, you don't _actually_ have to know a cofounder for many years, but I do think that it should _feel_ like you're long time friends / colleagues by the time you're making the plunge.

<comment><USER8> I completely agree with this. I've only known my cofounders for ~five months (we formed during the previous local startup weekend; never met before that) but it sure feels like we've known each other a lot longer. People have even been telling us that from watching us interact, if they hadn't known different, they'd have assumed we'd known each other for many years.

This really makes a huge difference. It makes working together easy.

Interestingly enough, I'm the technical cofounder and they're the non- technical (using the usual definition, not the one in the article) cofounders, but they bring a lot of value to the table. Between them, they bring a massive network (both in the industry and in the startup scene in general), many years of experience in their areas and a track record. I've also (obviously) seen them work and its impressive. Before I teamed up with them, I was squarely in the only-technical-founders camp, but now I couldn't imagine starting a company without them.</comment></comment>


Did we forget about HTML-emails? - <AUTHOR> http://b.jarqu.es/post/6768002849

<comment><USER2> I very strongly do not want HTML email to come back. I consider the dominance of plaintext email to be a victory, let's not concede it. HTML email was quite popular in the mid to late nineties and it was a disaster. Why do we want messages to go from 600 bytes to 30k? Why do we want readability of the message to be determined by either the sender's sense of design and/or our client's capabilities? Why do we want to make email threads that much more difficult to to create and follow? It's bad enough we've succumbed to top posting, I can't even imagine what the size and readability of an HTML email that has been replied to 20+ times would be. Please, let's stick with plaintext.

<comment><USER3> While we're at it let's get rid of streaming HD video and all that cumbersome CSS and Javascript (it just slows down page load times, and why should websites be dictated by the owner's sense of design?).

<comment><USER2> The website analogy is pretty poor. How many websites today aren't designed by professional designers?

When you hand the design reins to everyone, you end up with Myspace profiles and Geocities sites. There's nothing wrong with either of those, but context is essential. When I'm reading through dozens and even hundreds of emails a day that are crucial to my daily work, I really don't want to have to deal with Paula's pink hearts theme or Bill's Boston Bruins theme. There's a time and place for everything. I do want confidence that I can read my emails quickly and easily, and plaintext makes that promise a lot better than HTML does.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly the reason emails come in two parts (text and HTML). You can tell your client to only show plaintext emails if you're so inclined (just like you can tell Firefox to only use your own personal stylesheet).

Personally, I prefer the HTML emails and find them faster to go through. It takes me about 2 seconds to skim a Thinkgeek mailer with product images and see if there's anything interesting, vs. having to actually read the entire email and click a bunch of links.

Then there are all the nice graphs and colors in the server monitoring emails I get that let me get a big picture overview of the server farm health at a glance every week. If I see any red or too many spikes, I can decide whether to investigate further or get back to coding.

For all the benefits I get from HTML email, I'll risk the small chance that getting an email with Paula's pink hearts theme will seriously fuck up my day.

<comment><USER2> Not all HTML messages include a text section. I just looked at the raw message of 6 HTML emails and only two of them had multipart/alternative sections. But if it could be agreed upon to always send both, I think that would be good.

And for sure, you do make some good points on where HTML email can be a good thing. Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic.

<comment><USER4> That's my beef with them too. I prefer text emails, since I do a lot of my email reading on the CLI. It's true, and annoying, that a fair amount don't include multipart/alternative sections. For me it's not a huge problem as I have plugins that will extract the text from the HTML and present the text only, but it's not exactly a great reader experience.

Much much worse, however, are all of the people/companies that include multipart/alternative sections, but do it completely wrong: "This is an HTML- email. Your client lacks HTML support. Please visit [url here] to view this email" or even worse "This is an HTML-email. Your client lacks HTML support. Please upgrade your software".

I come across these almost daily, and it bugs the hell out of me. Unless it is something very important (bill, sign-up email, etc.) I simply ignore these emails, and they never get read. (Yes, it really is out of spite. I'll ignore them when reading email in a web client or on my phone later. They simply lost their chance)

I don't really like HTML mail, but I can live with it. I see the reason why it exists (great for advertisement). However, if you use HTML email, do include multipart/alternative section for non-HTML clients, and include the same information there, non of this "your client can't handle HTML, you loose crap".

<comment><USER3> It's actually a pretty bad idea to use multipart in that way anyway, as having very different html and plain text content in your email is a flag for spam filters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't really call it HTML if it's so wildly nonstandard.

Personally, I think we need "Markdown Email". It looks great in plain text, and something like an end user custom stylesheet could render it pretty-fied for those that care.

Wishful thinking, sadly.

<comment><USER6> I like this idea a lot.

Also something that would help would be an ignore based backward compatibility standard. Like how browsers ignore tags they don't understand, then you could send a markdown formatted message that is marked in a way that the alternative non markdown text-only version is used by older clients.

<comment><USER3> You can already use the multipart/alternative MIME type for that (which is what HTML emails use), it's just a matter of email clients deciding that they'll show a Content-Type other than text/html if it exists.

For example, you could use just a plain text part and a multipart/alternative with a text/markdown Content-Type. The email client would render Markdown if it's capable of handling it, and the plain text version if not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> HTML mailers were the bane of my existence in my previous job. I'd finally get everything looking right in all my tests and then our third party testing service would come back with some obscure spacing issue in Windows Live Mail, or Eudora, or Outlook 2007, and I'd spend the rest of the day coming up with fixes that wouldn't break something somewhere else.

As long as Microsoft continues to use the MS Word Rendering Engine to display e-mail in Outlook, it won't matter what kinds of standards work is attempted in the HTML e-mail space ... and even if they change, it's not like all those old Outlook clients will go away for a while.

</comment><comment><USER8> The reason people moved away from them is that a few bad apples were tracking emails via logged images. Then you got the images stripped which made the whole thing kind of pointless. Not to mention the fact that there's the actual HTML engine rendering mess.

HTML email sounds good on paper (and to marketers) but the reality is that its a nightmare.

<comment><USER9> A _few_ bad apples _were_? Image based e-mail tracking is de rigeur to this day for nearly any marketing e-mail you receive, and has been since e-mail marketing has been a thing.

Any e-mail marketing provider worth their salt will include these without even asking the person sending the batch.

<comment><USER10> So much that most email clients disable images by default and have been for years to help prevent abuse by spam.

<comment><USER11> And if it's actually important or you're curious or you can't read it and want to know what it says, you'll click the "show images" button. Email tracking is hardly a bad thing, it provides useful data. Some address never reading emails/never showing pictures? Stop sending them stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > You can't allow some arbitrary code to run in the user's mail client, we > already have enough security problems in emails.

Webmail aside, what are the security implications of running javascript in an email client? Any reason why they're worse than going to a web page?

(You might say you choose which web pages you go to, whereas email gets sent to you. But with all the 3rd-party advertising javascript, you end up running a lot of arbitrary code while browsing)

<comment><USER3> Email clients shouldn't be more vulnerable than browsers these days, since I think most email clients use a browser rendering engine for HTML emails now anyway.

There is always the risk of another WMF-style exploit though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It really is surprising, especially how sophisticated the email specification is (since it had to deal with gateways and multiple non-Internet networks, etc.). But, perhaps history has something of an answer here: it took email decades to work out how to handle multimedia, with all sorts of false starts and poor standards, so, perhaps HTML email is really just the continuation of this?

</comment><comment><USER14> _> Gone are the days of ugly plain text and we celebrate the arrival of beautiful emails._

The point of email is to read and understand information QUICKLY. Plain text allows one to do just that. If you are trying to make email an artistic masterpiece, you are missing the point.

</comment><comment><USER15> In my ideal world, all email clients capable of displaying "rich text" would support Markdown, with an X-header identifying the plain-text message as such.

</comment><comment><USER16> why does someone need html email anyway? say it in plain text and if that's not possible just stick in a url. And you get to actually track it easily too.

<comment><USER9> You could apply the same argument to webpages. I think HTML e-mail is a complete mess right now, but allowing some degree of e-mail styling does go a long way in helping users understand what the e-mail is trying to convey.

Something as simple as laying out tabluar data in a table is extremely hard to pull off effectively with a plain-text e-mail.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. For my Hacker Newsletter project I have a real hard time putting in all the links (one to the article, one to the comments) in text mode, but HTML makes this easy for users to scan and use.</comment></comment></comment>


Autodesk Graphic - <AUTHOR> http://graphic.autodesk.com/ <comment><USER2> AutoDesk has purchased most every potential competitor since they bought Generic CADD in the late 1980's. Except Sketchup. Google bought them just as they released professional tools. Then stopped development, cut features such as DXF import/export from the bottom tier and eventually spun off the dead hulk. In the interim, Autodesk created "TrueDWG" to spread FUD.

Anyway buying competitors has allowed Autodesk to shape the US AEC industry toward proprietary file formats such as Revit, while their low end product AutoCad Lite insures that small shops never automate and the construction design industry buys subscriptions in the hope that this year's features will actually effect the bottom line. They won't.

It's a great example of how to run a startup that creates a monopoly. They beat Adobe to the subscription model by more than a decade.

The _Autodesk File_ is an excellent look inside its early days: [https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html)

<comment><USER3> What about SolidWorks, NX, CATIA, Solid Edge, Creo and other big players in the field? Autodesk hardly has monopoly on the CAD market.

<comment><USER2> I agree that those are products which to varying degrees compete with parts of AutoDesk's product line. To me, Desault Group and Siemens aren't really competing as companies with AutoDesk, their core business lies elsewhere, i.e. manufacturing, and their interest in design software seems more of a byproduct of their core interest...e.g. Siemens licenses its parametric modeling technology to other Cad vendors (e.g. Nemetschek).

On the other hand PTC is a similarly sized company with a similar strategy of acquisition. It predates Autodesk's acquisition strategy and appears to target a different set of customers...hence no webstore. I suppose the analogy I'd draw is that AutoDesk has products that dominate their market segments in the way PhotoShop dominates its segment. There are competitors for profitable corner cases (in PTC's case product life-cycle management solutions), but those aren't in the just whip out a credit card and wait for the UPS truck sweet spot.

As an aside, my comment mentioned AEC and that's a market that Autodesk has clearly shaped and dominated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've got iDraw (Now Autodesk Graphic) on OS X. It's okay - but I still long for something that can go head-head with Visio. Omnigraffle is sort of in that space - but at the end of the day, there is a reason why 99%+ of network diagrams are done in Visio - just seems to fit in better when you are trying to line up routers, draw connections between them and network segments.

</comment><comment><USER5> A reminder than Affinity Designer exists,

[https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/](https://affinity.serif.com/en- gb/designer/)

And it's just swell.

<comment><USER6> I use this when I'm travelling because I've had so many issues with Illustrator requiring me to login, not even allowing me to do free trial option. I work in remote locations now and then and this becomes an issue.

It is fast and easy to use, would recommend if you're a Adobe Illustrator user looking to switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a rebranding of iDraw:

[http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/mac.html](http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/mac.html)

I guess Autodesk bought Indeeo?

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like a Bohemian Sketch alternative. A Windows version would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> This may provide some insight for the Inkscape developers on how they can add accurate dimensions to their draw program. Autodesk understands dimensioning and precision. Most draw programs have poor or nonexistent tools for dealing with units and dimensions.

<comment> minority-one That's because vectors are unitless. I've had to constantly explain this to graphic designers I've worked with...

<comment><USER9> SVG can represent vectors with units of "in", "mm", or "px". Inkscape only does "px", which means it's for drawing pretty pictures. There's no fundamental reason it couldn't support real units, but it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks like Autodesk Graphic is to Adobe Illustrator as Pixelmator is to Adobe Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER11> Their screenshots (and tutorials) are not convincing. Looks like they've got no freehand tool. It'd be nice to try a demo before buying this thing.

<comment><USER12> "Pencil and brush tools for sketching - quickly create custom shapes and paths." ([http://graphic.autodesk.com/mac/](http://graphic.autodesk.com/mac/))

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'freehand tool': do you mean something other than the pencil tool?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like none of autodesk's cloud or appstore apps are supported by their awesome student program or have free trials.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shout out to InkPad, Steve Sprang's wonderous original vector drawing app for ipad.</comment>


Single Worm Neurons Remotely Controlled with Lasers - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=single-worm-neurons <comment><USER2> Can orbital mind control lasers really be far away?

Assuming the government hasn't already developed this technology in secret of course. The real question is, how well do these lasers penetrate tinfoil?</comment>


Report reveals play-by-play of first U.S. grid cyberattack - <AUTHOR> https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061111289 <comment><USER2> Recap: An attacker exploited a vulnerability on their firewall that allowed unauthenticated users to reboot. Exploit was public, firewall was unpatched. Unlikely that the attack was targeted, making "cyber-attack" somewhat of a stretch in my book.

<comment><USER3> S/Unlikely/unknown

<comment><USER4> s/unknown/unlikely, according to the expert quoted in the piece.

> "So far, I don't see any evidence that this was really targeted," said Reid > Wightman, senior vulnerability analyst at industrial cybersecurity firm > Dragos Inc. "This was probably just an automated bot that was scanning the > internet for vulnerable devices, or some script kiddie," he said, using a > term for an unskilled hacker.

<comment><USER5> People still say script kiddie?

<comment><USER6> Why not?

<comment><USER5> Sounds like "Web 2.0" but probably just me.

<comment><USER6> I think it's meant to be an insult, so that seems appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a bill in congress (the "Securing Energy Infrastructure Act") that would pilot a program to move the most important control systems to use analog, manual controls.

Text of bill (pdf): [https://www.king.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01-17-19%20Securin...](https://www.king.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01-17-19%20Securing%20Energy%20Infrastructure.pdf)

Article summary: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-wants-to-isolate-power- grid...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-wants-to-isolate-power-grids-with- retro-technology-to-limit-cyber-attacks/)

<comment><USER8> Oh, joy. So it can take us days to reboot a grid blackout instead of minutes.

And analog is generally slower on the other end as well. So, if I can create a fast traveling disturbance, I can destroy your equipment before the analog system kicks in.

The problem isn't digital vs analog--it's connecting !@#$ to the Internet that doesn't belong on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks like they just rebooted firewalls.

I wish the lessons learned bullet points explicitly stated that management interfaces should only be accessed from internal bastion hosts (jump boxes). You'd be surprised how rare the practice is. Just getting people to disable internet access is a pain -- "but it has a really good password".

<comment><USER9> If the federal government wants things to change, they should form an independent red team, running exercises against private companies, and then help companies address issues (the US government leaning on a vendor gets a lot more action than Topeka Electric Coop). With fines to increase the cost of inaction.

The general consensus of reports thus far has been stupid, 101-level mistakes.

And guidelines and recommendations aren't going to help with people who don't read them.

E.g. Staff up NCATS [1], empower them with more binding regulation, and turn them loose to conduct non-requested tests of critical infrastructure

[1] [https://www.us-cert.gov/resources/ncats](https://www.us- cert.gov/resources/ncats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Solar energy seems like a great way to decentralize energy infrastructure, making it more robust to attack.

<comment><USER3> Nope,that's just the source. I can imagine overloading the battery farm or downstream distribution lines.

<comment><USER10> I'm referring to solar as a distributed energy source. Imagine homes and buildings having their own energy sources.

<comment><USER11> Most of standard solar panel installations in homes and buildings don't actually provide decentralization, as they tend to be linked to the grid in a way that they will not provide power at all if the grid is down.

Enabling decentralization requires extra hardware and installation costs, so it's usually not done. Essentially you need a solution to disconnect all your house from the grid in that case for safety reasons - so that your panels/batteries don't send voltage back to the grid potentially killing the repairmen fixing the broken lines, and when the grid does come up, re-linking to its frequency safely is a bit tricky, etc. It's not _very_ hard, but it does require some extra stuff and thus expenses.

<comment><USER12> There's absolutely an extra switch that needs to be installed, but I think it's not so much the transfer switch requirement but two main things; 1) the battery cost, and 2) net metering.

Grid tie solar with net metering gives you all the benefits of a battery (except blackout coverage) with none of the cost. In other words, you get full retail value for 100% of your solar generation no matter when it comes or how much power you happen to be using at the time (because the meter runs backward, the grid acts like an infinite perfect battery)

Net metering is a nice solar subsidy while batteries where extremely expensive, but as battery costs plummet I assume net metering will also disappear. It's not really fair for the utility after all to be paying solar customers retail rates for their generation.

Without net metering you will only get paid for solar power that you happen to use while it's being generated, or that you can store for yourself to use later.

Finally, I'm not 100% sure but I would imagine a solar system with a transfer switch and no battery will just immediately overload or brownout if the grid is not there to keep the voltage steady. I would assume you need a battery to be able to serve any variance in your demand (e.g. a compressor turning on) even if your 1 minute average demand is actually running below your generation capacity.

TLDR: Batteries need to be cheap and net metering needs to die before you see most solar deployments that can run off grid.

The good news — if batteries are _durable_ then a battery backed grid tied system can actually pay for the batteries and then some, if you can arbitrage the demand pricing curve. This is a win-win for everyone (including utilities) and IMO absolutely the future we're heading towards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These attacks seem to be happening more and more (or reporting them more).

The DOE is funding potential solutions, saw this earlier this week

[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-energy-department-funds- tr...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-energy-department-funds- trial-130021787.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is anyone else having trouble reading this article? It seems to repeat itself over and over again. Reminds me of this SNL skit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQG7PaOE1Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQG7PaOE1Mo)</comment>


Show HN: Process Content Security Policy Violations with SQL, Send to Slack - <AUTHOR> https://pipedream.com/@dylburger/process-content-security-policy-violations-run-sql-on-violation-data-send-to-slack-p_brC8vJ/readme <comment><AUTHOR> Hi y'all, I'm a co-founder at Pipedream. During a recent refactor of our CSP, we used this workflow to store and aggregate CSP violations using SQL to report on our violation data. This helped us find a few entries we missed because our CSP was too strict.

Now that we've got a new CSP running in production, it's nice to get violations sent to Slack so we can identify other potential issues.

Tools like [https://report-uri.com/](https://report-uri.com/) are great for reporting on CSP violations, but we found this was an easy way to roll our own and get some advanced functionality (SQL, running Node code on each violation to filter and format the violation JSON) with little work.

You can copy and extend this workflow in any way you'd like!</comment>


Former TechCrunch Writer Spills the Truth about TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.medacity.com/1029/cry-me-a-river-techcrunch/ <comment><USER2> _> Siegler repeats the classic Arrington line that sometimes we criticize our "friends," but that's all part of the show. It is, and always has been the veil of legitimacy TechCrunch has traded on. But I know that at my time at TechCrunch, biting friends was only ever ordered, and only when what they were doing was so blatantly bad it needed calling out._

 _> TechCrunch has never ever once had editorial independence. What Arrington means by independence is he calls the shots. That's not real independence._

If that's true, TechCrunch basically has zero journalistic integrity and is a puppet rag. Can anyone credible substantiate or dispute this?

<comment><USER3> [http://www.businessinsider.com/arrington-told-a-room-full- of...](http://www.businessinsider.com/arrington-told-a-room-full-of-ceos-that- he-would-maniuplate-techcrunch-coverage-in-return-for-favors-2011-9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me? Or does reading articles written about articles written about infighting at a blog just.... not seem interesting at all?

<comment><USER5> Totally. But comments in a discussion about an article written about articles written about infighting are fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know, I come to hacker news and sometimes tech crunch to read about trends in tech, programming, hacking, and the like. For some time now, TC has read more like a soap opera. Between stories of being snubbed for a scoop by founders, to tangles with Arianna Huffington, I cant take them seriously at all. Get over yourselves people...

<comment><USER7> It may help alleviate your pains to think of Techcrunch as the TMZ of tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is TechCrunch more influential then Mashable?

In my opinion yes. Mashable's audience includes geeks and entrepreneurs but they're branching out to entertainment, music and the internet in general. Meaning much of their audience today are more interested in Lady Gaga than Facebook's valuation, bad analogy as most are these days.

TechCrunch readers are mostly employees of tech companies, startup founders, VC's and any job within this industry. Meaning if you get TechCrunch'd people expect more opportunities to come from the post (also the knock on effect) than just traffic. It really depends what your startup does too. Part of it is your name will be known to all of these influencers. Both of these are vanity uses, really.

TechCrunch will bring you valuable, influential traffic (should do, at least). Mashable will bring you more traffic. If you need early adopters, maybe getting TechCrunch'd is useful but if you need to target a wider mainstream audience then it's probably good to get posted on Mashable.

Saying that TechCrunch is no longer relavant is incorrect but in the end, press is far less important than building a product that users will love.

</comment><comment><USER9> You know who should run TechCrunch - if he's at all willing to take the job? Saul Hansell.

Former technology editor and reporter for the New York Times, left a couple of years ago to join AOL's seed.com (so he's already in-house) - in general, an old-school newspaper guy who's absolutely committed to high ethical standards. I could not say enough nice things about him. Hell, I might actually read TechCrunch again.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't want to sound accusatory, but can anyone give perspective on why this writer left TechCrunch? It sounds like he was at the centre of it all for a while, there.

I think it's important to know why/how he left if we want to make sure the whole article isn't biased.

<comment><USER11> It's a little hilarious to want to make sure an article about TC and Arrington isn't biased. If what he says here is true--and I'm certainly inclined to believe it given the flagrantly enjoyed conflicts of interest, lawsuits borne from shady dealing, opportunism (moving residence to Seattle), and egomania-- that alone would be just cause to depart, and probably on less-than-friendly terms.

Thinking about Arrington reminds me of the story arc on House where the cop goes hard after him for illegal narcotics. At one point he shows up with a warrant at House's residence and finds bags full of Vicodin. He tells House something along the lines of, "Egotistical people think they're smarter than everyone else. I've already seen you willing to skirt the rules. It's reasonable to conclude you skirt other rules too, like writing your own prescriptions."

Given the public, documented things we know about TC and Arrington, it would beggar belief that he did not use his power to trade favors and influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Duncan Riley went out on a bad note from Techcrunch. While he may be accurate with this post, I'd be careful b/c he has always had a bad taste about leaving Techcrunch. Regardless, there's no doubt that there are "Techcrunch friends" and "non-Techcrunch friends".

</comment><comment><USER13> This article should be titled "Former TechCrunch writer drafts poorly-written inflammatory post to draw pageviews to his new venture"

<comment><USER14> The best part about the title is that if you remove the words former and writer the title works for any TC post as well. It appears the young Padiwan has learned much from his master.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Siegler is a manchild.

Look at his subtle shot at Mashable recently:

[http://parislemon.com/post/9951081147/hope-everyone- enjoys-t...](http://parislemon.com/post/9951081147/hope-everyone-enjoys-the- new-world-order)

Translation: Arrington is out, this is what you can all expect to enjoy now! (not translated: Siegler crying into his iPad plushie.)

<comment><USER16> His post is 100% true though. Mashable has become TMZ, pumping out low quality content every minute to get the traffic they do.

<comment><USER15> Its not as if TechCrunch is above the tabloid crap. Look at this story, and every past TC drama, as evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Longtime readers of TC may be saying "there is no way Arrington was calling all the shots the past few years."

Bottomline: TechCrunch was many, many times better when Arrington _was_ callign all the shots. It was apparent. The posts were better. The companies he was writing about were more interesting.

In the past few years, that quality went downt he drain almost in parallel to him writing less. Mike's own posts became a small fraction of TC.

There was little evidence of Mike in the TechCrunch of the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER18> Summary: the author doesn't like MG. No need to read article in full. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Arrington seems like a jackass. Why anyone should really care about techcrunch is beyond me. Sure it gets you exposure but there are plenty of much more respectable blogs out there. Also its AOL, they're shit. Not sure if anyone remembers this [http://www.thefastertimes.com/news/2011/06/16/aol-hell-an- ao...](http://www.thefastertimes.com/news/2011/06/16/aol-hell-an-aol-content- slave-speaks-out/)

I'm sure we'll be better off without gossip on Arrington or techcrunch.</comment>