Google will stop calling games 'free' when they offer in-app purchases - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/18/5915415/google-adding-in-app-purchase-protections-european-commission <comment><USER3> I think this is a great move.

It will probably come as terrible news for manipulative game developers. From first-hand experience working at a company that did this and first-hand developer testimonials, IAP in "free" games and its design has long been associated with forcing emotional, heat-of-the-moment-spurred buys from consumers - ie. You were so close to beating the level that time but you lost your last life :( Get an extra life right now and you'll kill it this time around!!!.

Sadly, a portion of total players (1-2% from what I've seen) will fall for these emotional tactics and spend the money, often more than once. Even worse is when they later convince themselves that the money was well spent (say, for an extra life in Candy Crush).

I hope Apple also follows suit, as some sources allude to.

<comment><USER4> I think we're skipping the non-exploitative companies that rely on this model. Like mine.

We tried selling a game - it doesn't work. We have a free (ad-supported) and paid version of our game, and we make 95% of our money on ads.

Adding removing ads as an iAP to the free version, instead of having multiple versions of the game on the store, saw that go from 5% to 15% or so.

It's RARE to have any true success in the mobile game market. It's even RARER to have that come from a game that has an up-front cost.

iAP is the new shareware. Anyone that bitches about iAP has to get their head around this. The market dictates how people are willing to spend money, and it's via iAP, not up-front costs.

We love making games. We love our job, and our company, and we want to keep doing it. But there's a hard truth that ad-supported free games have very, very low ARPU - for us, in the $0.20 range. We're lucky to have millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of daily active users, but very few game studios are.

Someone that buys the ad-free iAP is worth 5x our average ARPU. So selling people customizations or whatever else iAP is the only way to raise ARPU to anything sustainable. Gamers don't (and never will) spend $60 on a mobile game again, and we have employees to pay and families to support. Yes, it can get exploitative, but if you have a better idea of how small game companies should survive - real ideas, not trolling - we'd love to hear them, because we would implement them immediately.

Edit: grammar.

<comment><USER5> The problem is not IAP on itself. The problem is when the apps mislead about what you get for your payment or when so called "free" apps are unusable without payment.

In a way, non-exploitative apps (with or without IAPs) are probably victims in current situation. I guess I'm not alone who simply do not trust anything with "offers in-app payments" label and avoids it as much as possible. There is no way for me to distinguish between "real game company" and exploitative company.

The problem of small game companies is that customers have no way to distinguish between good and crap game before buying and most of what is found in app store is of very little quality. I do not know how the company can solve it without better app discovery features from app stores themselves.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but at least the apps are free to investigate. Far less risk / hassle than paying, downloading, installing, running, uninstalling, and requesting a refund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a non-game app developer, I WANTED THIS FOR YEARS!

Google (and Apple) calling my apps "free" did bring in massive amounts of bad reviews.

I think this is good news for any developer that wants to offer a "free-to- download" app with non-exploitative IAPs. Think of a magazine-app: People should get the app itself for free to be able to choose which issue they want to buy. There is no emotional engineering going on. You don't want to trick people into believing this app is useful if they don't spend money - in fact, you don't even want people to download your app if they won't spend money anyway. But the app store says FREE...

We had/have major problems with getting tons of bad reviews like "THIS APP IS NOT FREE, ASKS FOR IN APP PURCHASE!!11".

We played with the description, so it would start with "buy" or "purchase" (e.g. "BUY THE NEW ISSUE ABOUT XYZ"), which helped a little (although most people seem to skip the description). We tried screenshots of the point where one needs to purchase... which is sort of fine for iPad screenshots, but a waste for smaller phone screens. We do now also offer a lot more content for free initially, which seemed to have helped most.

I'm hoping for a consistent labeling of all apps (not only games!) that sets correct expectations for the user when downloading an app.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is the best news I've heard in a long time, but how do they filter the "disable ads" IAP vs the "oh you spent 3 hours getting invested in this game, but you can't reasonably proceed further until you buy xxx"?

<comment> slipstream- Came here to say this. I guess that if devs want their games to be listed as free they'd need to have two versions of the app, a free ad-supported version and a paid ad-free version, instead of using IAP.

I have actually seen devs do this, but I can't remember any exact cases.

<comment><USER9> I feel like its pretty common to see both. I see the advantage in using the IAP though since you get to aggregate your ratings and reviews in one place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a developer who makes a portion of my regular income from an app offering IAP, this is concerning.

Sure, the bulk of apps with IAP appear to be spammy and simply attempting to "cheat" customers into spending money. But for apps like mine, that offer players a "preview" of fuller functionality and then offer them the ability to unlock those features for a one-time fee, it feels like morally-balanced developers are getting the short end of the stick.

I'd love to hear more discussion around this though, from both the perspective of other developers as well as customers and their experiences with paid, free, IAP, ad, and "trial" apps.

<comment><USER11> So you develop an app which is preview until you pay and you want to call it free? As a customer: that's not free!

<comment><USER12> It gives you a chance to try the app without buying it, and convenience of buying full version without having to go into play store to download new version, and also deleting the "demo" version.

For example if you sign up for a free MMO trial, you can either cancel it or just buy subscription - you don't need to re-install the game and reapply any customization you have done.

Also if it's a kid-game, and your kid is small, they might be super happy with the one or two free levels, and you wouldn't need to upgrade to full game.

<comment><USER13> That's still not free product, that's a free trial. Those are worlds apart in customer expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is a bad move. They are jumping to an ill thought-out solution before diving deeper into the problem. Many games are actually really free in terms of no time or other baitty limits; many are 100% feature and playable up to a certain level, or the full game is playable with some restrictions. I would call these games free. The problem is with games that either have time limits or paid upgrades that popups up frequently or are too easy to click (spammy and meant to trick kids). We don't want to punish the good guys and severely hurt their discoverability with this unthought-out blanket rule. In- app purchase is not evil if done right, it's the way people/companies are abusing it via spammy or adiction ways.

<comment><USER15> Hey fuzzythinker. I think you just defined the problem in a fairly limited way to support your argument. A game may be very eloquently developed and have a non intrusive but logical upgrade path after a good deal of time playing the free version. That can still cause parent's to get a shock (and it usually only happens at the end of each month) when they find out the "free game" they let their child download has in fact run up meaningful charges.

<comment><USER14> Why is that a problem? Setting up password protection for in-app purchases is easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just today I installed Smash Hit and found out that it's pretty much useless if you don't shell out some money, you have to start over and over from the beginning because checkpoints are a premium feature. I hope this change will put an end to this behaviour but I fear developers are always gonna come up with new ways to trick users.

<comment> TD-Linux Smash Hit isn't really that bad - basically the free version is a trial, and you pay one price for the full version.

I think this Google move is more targeted at the sort of games that don't fall into the trial/paid category, rather the sort that constantly try to bill you for microtransations.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I believe the free trial and full version were 2 different apps before. Now, you don't have to download a new app to upgrade and can keep game data from the trial. This seems like a better solution, though the price may be misleading due to how "free" games are displayed in the store. The new play store change should solve this.

<comment><USER5> I prefer buying new app. That way I know that I will still own it if I change the phone and I know the payment is one time only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From a user perspective this seems very nice.

It might be nice for developers too if it starts to train people to expect to pay more than $0-2 for a game.

I wonder if part of Google's reason is to push people toward advertising instead?

<comment><USER3> Either that, or push the customer base of Google to pay for quality applications. Sadly, with lack of curation, I would guess customers would be skeptical of spending money on a non-free game for fear of a poor purchase (crashes, not working, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds good.

Between the restricted profiles in 4.3 and this it's finally reasonable to hand the tablet over to a child.

Beyond this, I'd really like to see something added to provide a straightforward alternative to ad-support for apps. Something like a trivial option to generate ad-free builds for an ad including app.

More than a few times I've encountered a solid app which I would gladly pay a couple of bucks for, but it's only available as ad-supported.

<comment><USER4> That's because - truly and honestly - you're in a super-minority. Like I said above, our IAP conversion rate to ad-free is insanely small, and accounts for less than 5% of revenue.

Building in the IAP mechanism isn't trivial, and worse, IAP purchases can easily be hacked (especially on Android). Both platforms recommend you run your own server that verifies purchases with Google and Apple's servers, because even client-based validation is easily hackable.

We have IAP removal of ads, but we're VERY successful compared to the average developer, and actually run our own servers. For the average dev, it's a non- trivial task. (Apologies for repeating myself.)

<comment><USER19> I think we've missed each other here.

I'm not suggesting that these things are trivial, exactly the opposite actually. I'm assuming that they aren't and suggesting that they should be - that all the validation and heavy lifting is something that ideally Apple/Google would handle and enabling the functionality would be trivial from a developer perspective.

I wonder if conversion of free to ad-free would be better if the offerings were truly separate?

I'm somewhat distrustful of IAP for this purpose as it has been flaky in my experience (likely to due to the seller run validation services as you describe). I'm much more inclined to try a 'Free' app followed by purchasing the ad-free 'Premium' version than I am to buy an IAP to convert one to the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We should change the terminology back to old shareware days. If the Doom shareware floppy could have offered users a way to buy the full game from within the demo it would have.

So new categories of apps:

      Free, no IAP, no cost, ads or something else
      Demos, IAP to upgrade
      Full, could be free but use IAP consumables, ads, whatever its all yours

</comment><comment><USER21> Props to Google. This is definitely the right thing to do. Let's hope Apple and Microsoft follow suit.

There are games out there that are deceptively unplayable without shelling out.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are they going to stop calling games with ads free as well?

<comment><USER23> Search engines too. I really wish there were more services out there that offered a paid alternative to ads, so that the consumer does not become the product. This will never happen though because many of the people with the means to buy themselves out of an ad-laden experience are the people the advertisers most want to reach. Without that cohort, I would imagine that the value per impression would drop remarkably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Finally. I want to see more clearance in app market like that. App market owners got lazy, there is little innovation today, just counting profits.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is the Right Thing to do.

Might want a refinement where it's possible to have whole-game access and the purchases are only cosmetic in nature.

</comment><comment><USER6> Currently, iTunes lists the top 10 in-app purchases in the app description, which makes it easy to gauge what will happen when you use the app.

The Play Store only recently added "Offers in-app purchases" as small print next to the device compatibility info.

Not sure if Android users will embrace any form of hybrid pricing that doesn't say "Free".

</comment><comment><USER26> "will stop"? It's been like this for weeks..? Or is that only because I'm located in the Netherlands?

</comment><comment><USER27> What they really should do is give some stats about how much money people typically spend on an app that uses IAP. E.G., "98% of users spend no money, 2% of users spent an average of $3.50", or something along those lines.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good. I remember when Steve Jobs said on stage "Free apps will stay free" but I can't track down the exact video of him. Seeing "free" apps in the top grossing column pisses me off.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good news, but I think this should go further. Like showing potential buyers the average or median amount spend for people who actively use(d) the app. Or money spend per hour/week of usage.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fantastic! Because frankly free - means free. Not 'trial version free - <USER2> expensive if you ACTUALLY want to use this game'

</comment><comment><USER31> Long, long overdue.

The absurdity of calling "its free to download bits to your computer but you have to pay us to use them" free was too much.

</comment><comment><USER32> Good. I got tired of clicking into "free" games, seeing "In App Purchases" and clicking the back button.

</comment><comment><USER33> Google has not been doing a lot right, lately, but this is bang on the money (pun intended). Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how this will affect free applications with IAP-powered donation buttons.

</comment><comment><USER35> Please stop calling F2P's "games".

</comment><comment><USER36> Google is the new Microsoft. the founders get down from their clouds and shit happens.

remember the history about why ctrl f in outlook is not search? this is the same.

probably someone was working a smart system to see when the game either had purchases or players dropped, and was working out a clever way to weed out the pay to win one... then one founder got fed up on pay to win bejeweled and dictated everything with in game purchases is now paid, even if it's just a donate button or skins.

<comment><USER37> What a hilarious delusion. Do you really think one of the founders (worth tens of billions of dollars) was having issues with paying 99 cents to get ahead a level in Bejeweled? And that he would find himself constantly confused as to which apps rely too much on IAP, since you apparently think he doesn't have the ability to read "Offers in-app purchases" on the app page?

I know people get attached to the ludicrous narratives they construct about different companies, but this is beyond hilarious.

<comment><USER38> lol Shaq spends $1000+ a week on apps, pretty sure a billionaire founder will have no issues

[http://time.com/21470/shaq-spends-1000-a-week-on- apps/](http://time.com/21470/shaq-spends-1000-a-week-on-apps/)</comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley pub that helped birth PC industry to close because of high rent - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/silicon-valley-pub-that-helped-birth-pc-industry-to-close-because-of-high-rent/ <comment><USER2> The nearest member of this restaurant chain (The Boardwalk in Los Altos) closed a few years ago for the same reason.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ken Kesey also drank there.</comment>


Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses - <AUTHOR> https://trends.vc/trends-0027-million-dollar-one-person-businesses/ <comment><USER2> Out of the 3 businesses they name, 2 are abuse based businesses. Park.io is for-hire domain-swiping, closet tools is follower and social network automation and spamming tool ...

</comment><comment><USER3> Best way to start on the path to building one of these businesses is to start building a following. Many of these 1 man companies are reliant on strong founder personalities that develop a following. Makes distribution way easier.

<comment><USER4> These are solo founder businesses. Many of the examples hired employees. If you have a boring b2b SaaS that charges $100 a month, you only need 1000 monthly customers to gross $1M a year. You don't need a personality, you need a decent funnel.

<comment><USER5> Assuming B2B. Can one individual manage the demands of 1000 clients?

<comment><USER4> No. If you look at the article however, many of the examples have employees.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Remembrance Agent: A continuously running information retrieval system (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/remembrance.html

<comment><USER2> As of a fairly recent (pre-Glass) interview I saw with Thad Starner, he was still using it. The interview must have been in 2011 or 2012. However, I've never seen the code for any of these things.

That said, RA (as documented) was a quick elisp hack -- so, you could hack up a similar thing in your language of choice for your editor of choice. (I think the use of elisp was dependent upon the fact that you can -- and many people do -- do everything inside emacs ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering why this sort of thing (i.e. agent based systems to ambiently "find, filter, and organize the huge amounts of information now available") are not more widespread. Is this an isolated set of hacks or did the work go off in some other direction?</comment></comment>


Build your own Steam Machine - <AUTHOR> http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

<comment><USER2>
        What are the SteamOS Hardware Requirements?
            ...
            Hard Drive: 500GB or larger disk

        Default Installation
            ... The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk.

It is odd that they are publishing these specs and making the default image so large when <500GB SSDs are the ideal drives for gaming computers.

<comment><USER3> SSDs are great, until your game library outgrows them. At the moment, it may be hard to fill half a terabyte with Linux games, but it's pretty easy on Windows. I've got 350GB of Steam games installed on my Windows machine, and I'm not a big spender on games. I've just bought Humble Bundles and one or two things during each of Steam's major sales.

<comment><USER4> I invested in 64GB of RAM. I have a little script to create a 32GB ramdisk on startup. Whenever I want to play a game, I copy its folder to the ramdisk, rename the original, then symlink it from the original location to the ramdisk.

SSDs are great, but ramdisk gaming loads in like five seconds flat. I suppose games will outgrow ~48GB in several years, but my hardware will grow old by then anyway.

<comment><USER5> How long does it take you to copy its folder to the ramdisk? Is this longer than it would take for e.g. the Linux kernel to figure out it should cache that folder in memory by itself?

<comment><USER6> The advantage is that it's definitely all in memory the first time you read it. For games this is very nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish viable gaming Mini-ITX builds ranged from $200 to $500, not $400 [1] to $2500 [2]. I'd really like to see SteamOS price competitive with consoles. I know that hasn't been the trend in the past, but PC part prices are a better value now than ever, it feels like should be almost in reach of a $300 shuttle with SteamOS that gives consoles a run for their money.

[1] [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mini-itx-do-it- yourself-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mini-itx-do-it-yourself- game-console,3531.html)

[2] [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-mini-itx- overcl...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-mini-itx- overclocking,3506.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is UEFI boot support being required unusual? Caught my eye, I don't often see it listed explicitly as a requirement.

<comment><USER9> You can create a BIOS bootable CDROM using grub-mkrescue[1]:

      (mkdir steamos && cd steamos && unzip ~/Downloads/SteamOSInstaller.zip) && grub-mkrescue -o steamos.iso steamos

It boots with QEMU:

      truncate --size 20G /var/tmp/disk.img && qemu-system-x86_64 -cdrom steamos.iso -hda /var/tmp/disk.img,if=virtio -vga std -m 2048 -enable-kvm

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Making-a-...](https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Making- a-GRUB-bootable-CD_002dROM.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So?

i could install Linux on any box and then give valve full control by having to run steam as root...

what can I gain with that? It's not like my graphic card will work magically anyway as Idoubt they do anything else besides install the peoprietary nvidia driver

</comment><comment><USER11> Something has gone wrong with Steam's caching/CDN solution, possibly because people have been hitting the direct URL instead of this one (steamstatic vs steampowered.com)

You'll probably need to wait until the rush dies down a bit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Disappointed that AMD and Intel graphics aren't supported yet. Didn't see that, installed, black screen after booting from Grub. Hopefully they'll release those versions soon.

<comment><USER5> As someone who only games casually, and has Intel Integrated graphics in all his Linux machines, I'm really happy that Valve decided to stick with one graphics platform and make that experience really good for their initial release. It means getting the code out to as many people ASAP.

Early releases of Canonical's Unity also initially were nVidia-only, IIRC, so I would consider this par for the course. (There's also the difficulty in finding ATI/AMD chips with all the people mining scrypt cryptocurrencies...)

<comment><USER13> Intel Graphics come with open-source drivers and it's the only graphics card I haven't had any problems with in Ubuntu.

<comment><USER5> How old is your graphics chip?

About a year or two ago I gave up trying to make two machines (one with i810G, one with i865G) work with Ubuntu because the drivers seemed to regularly regress.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


China to impose sweeping security law in Hong Kong, ends city's autonomy - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-signals-plan-to-take-full-control-of-hong-kong-realigning-citys-status/2020/05/21/2c3850ee-9b48-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html <comment><USER2> I'm quite sad for the people living in Hong Kong, to be stripped from their autonomy by means like dragging out the pro-democratic party members and "voting" for a person who is pro-CCP, and claiming that to be a legitimate.

Had it been a clean democratic process to end up in that, then so be it, but having things go in this kind of a fashion is truly terrible.

I truly hope they can still turn the situation over, and wish them all the best in their attempts - I'm lucky to live in a country where I do not worry about these kind of things, so it is easy to talk from my ivory tower, but damn I would be scared to live in a place where democratic process can be dismantled just because it is an inconvenience for someone else :(

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that made Hong Kong successful was that it was a financial hub. That kind of requires trust in a system, so that's going to go away. China has significantly devalued what should have been one of their best resources because they couldn't take criticism and leave a city alone.

<comment><USER4> Hong Kong used to be the _the_ Chinese financial hub and manufacturing centre.

Today it is just one more financial hub and manufacturing centre out of _many_.

It just isn't important any more. Its survival or not is pretty much irrelevant to both the West and China.

</comment></comment><comment> barry-cotter The end of any pretense that "One country, two systems" means anything real. But for coronavirus this would be the biggest news of the year. Millions of people have had any hope of democracy taken from them.

</comment><comment><USER5> The citizens of Hong Kong need a new domicile, perhaps Tsushima Island between Japan and Korea. In any case, somewhere where they can continue with the rule of law. There is no way that the economy of Hong Kong can thrive under the (non existent) laws of mainland China.

<comment><USER6> Hong Kong's economy is built on its (arguably at least economically) exploitative relationship with China. More improbable even than the successful implementation of a relocation plan (to N. Ireland, Tsushima Island, or whatever) is that China would allow this new Hong Kong to have any economic relationship with the Mainland. It has factored in the economic cost already, and has decided that the tradeoff of having a free and democratic Chinese city is too much. As Chip Tsao said on television recently,⁰ the Zhongnanhai is using 'bottom line thinking'—they have decided they can do without a window on the West, and so will neither act to save the other one nor allow the creation of a new one.

0\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtom_T9-g08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtom_T9-g08)

<comment><USER5> If Reunion and Mauritius can make a go of things in the middle of nowhere I'm pretty sure the people of Hong Kong can do equally as well, with or without China. However, having a reliable rule of law would be the big advantage that Hong Hong can bring to the table as no one, not even mainland Chinese, trust the legal system of China.

Particularly this matters in the finance sector where Hong Kong has plenty of expertise but it requires a solid legal foundation which Hong Kong now lacks. This can't be done overnight but Hong Kong should certainly start making a plan B. It's the only way they can expect to keep Beijing at bay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this will eventually affect cryptocurrency exchanges in Hong Kong. For example, as far as allowing US citizens.

</comment><comment><USER8> The western nations have this weird fascination with Hong Kong. It was basically unbridled capitalism over there, and westerners lived above the law among the local peasants.

The western nations should give Visas to Hong Kong residents, to get them to immigrate over.

That way, they can bring with them their delicious Cantonese cuisine, dim sum restaurants, and the rest. And start more Chinese restaurants in the west.

Oh wait.. the people in western nations can't tell the difference between regular Hong Kong people, and those from China. And will accuse these Hong Kong people of eating bats. Ok, well, scratch that idea. You're on your own over there.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is quite an important omission in this article (which is a bit too emotional without enough focus on factual info...) about the whole issue.

What is happening revolves around article 23 of HK's Basic Law (which governs its autonomous status):

" _The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People 's Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organisations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organisations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organisations or bodies_"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law_Article_23](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law_Article_23)

Of course, the key in that text is "on its own".

On the other hand, the counter argument is that they have failed to do that in the last 23 years.

Which, I think, explains this excerpt from the article:

" _"The social unrest last year showed that the Hong Kong government was unable to handle passing [national security legislation] on its own," said Ng, a Beijing loyalist who has for years pushed for a similar law._ "

So I read this as saying that the HK government is in effect in breach of the Basic Law and thus the Central Government will step in.

<comment><USER10> Yeah because the right to protest shouldn't be a thing and they should all bow down to the CCP. /s

It couldn't be clearer that if anything HK wants nothing to do with China.

<comment><USER9> I am just trying to comment something substantive to go beyond the sensationalist and emotional way the topic is usually (purposely) covered.

<comment><USER11> > The social unrest last year showed that the Hong Kong government was unable > to handle passing [national security legislation] on its own

This is a conclusion which definitely can be argued. Plenty of people point out to the roots of unrest coming from Beijing.

There could be determination that Sino-British Joint Declaration was violated by Beijing, with corresponding corrective measures from UN members.

<comment><USER12> > determination that Sino-British Joint Declaration was violated by Beijing

Unfortunately, China has clearly and publicly stated that they consider the Declaration non-binding and have no intention of following it.

> corresponding corrective measures from UN members

Unfortunately, China has a permanent seat on the UNSC and so can veto any resolution against them.

<comment><USER11> > they consider the Declaration non-binding

But others may think differently and act accordingly.

> has a permanent seat on the UNSC and so can veto

Russia has a permanent seat. And is under sanctions. Not even strongest possible - could be worse.

<comment><USER12> But did those sanctions have any meaningful effect upon Russia's conduct? Did the sanctions stop Russia from annexing Crimea?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mastodon 101: A Queer-Friendly Social Network You're Gonna Like a Lot - <AUTHOR> https://www.autostraddle.com/mastodon-101-a-queer-friendly-social-network-youre-gonna-like-a-lot-390948/ <comment><USER2> Mastodon is federated, not decentralized. There's nothing decentralized about it unless you're an instance admin, or both savvy and popular enough to run one alone.</comment>


BrowseGoods - an innovative shopping UI - <AUTHOR> http://browsegoods.com/

<comment><USER2> The layout of sandals within groups makes no sense. It's likely random, but I can't help but look for a pattern - are they arranged by color, price? Nope.

The idea is insiprational though. Keep digging.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's different. Though I can't really tell if it's "different good", or "different ridiculous".

The typical "online store" has such a long and boring history on the web. I'm inclined to like anything new in this arena.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The typical "online store" has such a long and boring history on the web._

I think it's amazing how little we can see past our metaphors - that our web pages are so much like our paper pages and web sites like magazines. I wonder how big a part of it is language... how long was it before horseless carriages became cars?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> give me a way to apply filters to it (like only show what's currently in stock, let me filter by available sizes and widths), and I might find it useful.

this seems like a fun way to drill down into categories and sub-categories, but I don't think it's enough to get someone all the way to product selection and purchase.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice idea. Needs work at the more zoomed in levels. I looked at hiking boots, and saw a bunch of little pictures of boots, but having to mouse over each of them to find anything out about them is inconvenient. It should probably automatically display more information (sort of like what you would see in a brick and mortar store), even if that means fewer items could fit on a screen. Maybe you could have the most popular items at one zoom level and show more if the user zooms in more.

Also, I would probably try to include more information It's also seriously buggy at this point, with half of the items "not available" and lots of prices in the pictures not matching prices in the mousever. Is this an Amazon ECS problem? I toyed with an application using it a few years ago and found that it was buggy as hell, giving info that didn't match their actual website, among other problems. I was wondering at the time whether it wouldn't be better just to scrape their HTML and not bother with their API.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the concept. The initial images are far too sparse (only 2?) but I think there are some good ideas here.

I'm always interested in services that give me a new way of looking at something. Keep at it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome. Try browsing for something using this and it actually works — you get an experience similar to a real store where you visually scan and select the things you like. This is seriously impressive. Sure, needs a bit of polish, but I think this is much better than browsing a list of links.</comment>


NASA mulls plan to drag asteroid into Moon's orbit - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23039-nasa-mulls-plan-to-drag-asteroid-into-moons-orbit.html#.U15Ld6YjsaY <comment><USER3> They also worked with the guys at Kerbal Space Program to add an Asteroid retrieval mission to KSP.[1]

[1] [http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/274](http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/274)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an old article (January 2013) and is very interesting, but substantially out of date regarding a story that has developed a lot. The concept, as indicated in the article, was developed by a KISS (Keck Institute) study group, which is a fancy way of saying about 30 scientists/technologists who gathered in a room at Caltech to think up some new mission concepts.

The concept caught some tailwind -- from the _manned_ side of NASA -- and HQ started talking about it as a possible mission concept that would be a step on the manned roadmap. Such fast uptake of a mission concept is incredibly rare.

Then the larger asteroid science community took interest, and was somewhat disgruntled because the concept had not been vetted by the community at large. Controversy ensued throughout 2013 -- partly centered on selection of an asteroid -- here is a good summary: [http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2013/07/nasa-warned-go- slow...](http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2013/07/nasa-warned-go-slow- asteroid-capture-project)

The concept is now called the "asteroid initiative" and I think it is also associated with enhancing NEO detection. The web site is here: [http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidforum/#.U151pF7fPRo](http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidforum/#.U151pF7fPRo)

</comment><comment><USER5> _Such work could help develop ways to use asteroid material for construction or spaceship fuels, making the captured asteroid a stepping stone for human missions to larger asteroids and eventually to Mars._

This has nothing to do with Mars. NASA's current political climate is to say that Mars is their goal and everything is a stepping stone towards it, but this isn't providing any of the key technologies we need for a manned Mars mission (heavy lift, artificial G, Mars landing craft).

 _EDIT_ : Not that this is without value. But sell it on its own merits. Saying "we need to mine asteroids to go to Mars" is making it _harder_ to go to Mars.

<comment><USER6> I thought artificial gravity was science fiction. Is that seriously being studied? I'm guessing they just are going to spin some kind of space capsule ala Space Odyssey 2001? What else would they be doing? Not generating any kind of artificial gravitational waves with a magical flux capacitor.

<comment><USER5> Yes, spin the craft. NASA's policy has been to never[1] do it, and instead say "but we've been studying microgravity for decades!"

We need experience in maneuvering and setting up a spinning craft and also playing through its failure modes.

[1] They did it exactly once, from my memory, but I forget the details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why go all that way (to the asteroid belt) and back, and stop two doors down? Bring it into earth orbit! Or is that not politically correct? Because the risks are indistinguishable.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts ...

Having it in Earth orbit is no great challenge - better to have it further out of the gravity well to be a better staging post, and there's more to be learned from having to go back and forth to it further out.

Look at the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. Each one was specifically designed to learn something new that was essential for the Moon landing. This seems designed for maximum learning and not just for the individual challenge.

<comment><USER7> Doing it at all is so near impossible at current technology levels as to be a pipe dream. To dream of putting further obstacles in our path is pointless.

You want to practice remote mining, do it on the moon, or at the bottom of the sea, or in a deep-core mineshaft here on earth. All simpler than going to the asteroid and bringing back gigatons of rock.

<comment><AUTHOR>
      > We choose to go to the moon in this decade and
      > do the other things, not because they are easy,
      > but because they are hard, ...

This won't happen in one step anyway, just as going to the Moon used many missions, each learning the next thing(s) necessary.

<comment><USER7> Hard? Its beyond our current level of civilization. We have projected only milliwatts to any distance beyond the moon. Moving asteroids proposes sending maybe terawatts. That's a lot of zeroes. Then propose autonomous robots to select an asteroid, navigate to it, attach to it, propel it and do course correction - aiming at good ol mother earth but trying to miss by a hair, with the biggest projectile mankind has ever launched.

Many other obstacles present themselves, but these two are huge enough.

<comment><USER8> > Its beyond our current level of civilization. We have projected only > milliwatts to any distance beyond the moon.

We have a 2kW nuclear reactor rolling around Mars at the moment. 400 watts in the interstellar neighborhood. 200W currently en route to Pluto.

Maybe you think nuclear is cheating? Solar might make more sense for this mission anyway, since it is in the Earth-Venus neighborhood. The Rosetta probe would generate almost 10kW at that distance from the sun.

<comment><USER9> We've also had fairly small devices (tens of tons) capable of yottawatt (10^24 W) levels of power output - admittedly not for very long....

<comment><USER10> Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia has the largest lasers maxing out in the pettawats, with only Tzar Bomba crossing over into yottawatts: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)#yot...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_\(power\)#yottawatt_.281024_watts.29)

<comment><USER9> Yes, large H-bombs were what I meant - would be good to find a constructive use for them.

<comment><USER10> There are actually many peaceful uses of nuclear weapons, both the US and the Soviets experimented with using them to dig big holes, and the Soviets also used them for geographic surveys (like that "thumper" at the beginning of Jurassic Park, but _much_ bigger ;)) and a few other things. Unfortunately all of these uses are politically untenable.

It would be great to use them in space though; it would probably be much easier to convince the public to go for that.

<comment><USER7> Getting them up there is the risk - a launch failure means raining radioactive death at random.

<comment><USER9> Not really - bomb design has come a long way in the last ~70 years - <USER2> bomb designs are very resilient to damage and very unlikely to detonate accidentally. And if that isn't good enough then take the parts to orbit separately and assemble in orbit.

We've had thousands of H-bombs on top of rockets for decades and a number of live fire tests where bombs delivered by missile detonated and so far there have been no accidental detonations.

<comment><USER7> Nothing survives uncontrolled reentry. It isn't detonation that's at issue; its melted bomb parts falling like rain across large swaths of a continent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady First off I have to admit I know practically nothing about this but wouldn't there be some very serious risks to doing this (Edit: If it's only 7m across I'm guessing it wouldn burn up in the Earth's atmosphere so probably poses limit risk to us in the form of an impact)? If there are it raises some serious questions about how humanity decides whether or not to allow NASA or any other space agency to go ahead with such a plan.

<comment><USER11> The burn would probably (deliberately) be done in such a way that the asteroid's trajectory would never intersect the earth just in case it failed.

Once it's in orbit around the moon it's not going anywhere.

<comment><USER5> Things in lunar orbit do degrade and crash into the moon. NASA has put a lot of stuff into lunar orbit over the years and they all eventually crashed. There's essentially no atmosphere, but the Moon is not a perfect sphere and there are mascons that perturb orbits.

It's a question of how high it is, too.

NB: I didn't know this until I asked /r/space about it several years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally I would like to attain some of the gas giants athmosphere( _Hydrogen_ ).

<comment><USER5> ITYM Helium-3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> why?

<comment><AUTHOR> It can be done by robot, it several new abilities, it acts as a staging post for deep space missions, it lets NASA examine an asteroid close up and repeatedly, and it can be mined, again demonstrating abilities needed for deep space missions and for long-term possibilities for resource acquisition and management.

Also, why not?

<comment><USER14> I think the second reason you listed to be much more compelling than the first. It could be argued that the space race was about ensuring that the US had missile superiority over the USSR, but I'd wager a significant number of the aeronautical engineers and astronauts involved were much more interested in going to the moon because it was there.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft to release Android-powered Nokia X2 handset - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27992439 <comment><USER2> [http://gigaom.com/2014/06/24/microsofts-android-line- evolves...](http://gigaom.com/2014/06/24/microsofts-android-line-evolves-new- nokia-x2-handset-has-opera-as-default-browser/)

"Here's a fun game. Mentally rewind 5 years and see how likely the following sentence would have been: Microsoft has decided to make Opera the default browser on its new, Linux-based Android handsets."

<comment><USER3> Well, five years ago, Microsoft-owned subsidiary Danger released the Sidekick LX 2009, which used NetBSD as its operating system, used a JVM derivative, and a browser not based on IE. Everything old is new again.

<comment><USER4> But 5 years ago it was axiomatic that Microsoft would throw such a system away, and replace it with something underwhelming. In this case, the Kin, a total disaster.

We're now seeing that Microsoft may be starting to rid itself of the platform tax that's crippled so many of their efforts. In the case of the Kin, that even included Exchange support, which wasn't a desiderata for its market (and to make things worse, the code/libraries the Kin team was supplied were extremely buggy).

<comment><USER5> > But 5 years ago it was axiomatic that Microsoft would throw such a system > away, and replace it with something underwhelming.

Is not not axiomatic that the Nokia Android phone is a temporary thing? They aren't trying to build a line of Android phones, they are trying to retain market share as a phone manufacturer until Windows Phone is more successful.

Either Windows Phone becomes a solid 3rd place Smartphone OS, and they kill their Android line, or Windows Phone becomes an obvious failure, and they sell the remnants of Nokia. Either way, 6 years from now MS will no longer be selling Android phones.

<comment><USER4> We're seeing hints it's no longer axiomatic.

But I'll agree the long term outcomes you sketch out are likely. The article itself indicated this phone is in part intended to get you to later buy a higher grade and branded Windows Phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a C# developer (and strong supporter of .NET and Xamarin) and this signals to me that I have that _many more_ options now - its great and very exciting for me to hear all this great news coming out of Microsoft almost every other week.

DevDiv's tools and frameworks is where it's at when it comes to building big multi-platform codebases - backend, front-end, desktop, mobile, cloud, whatever. Add to that the immense infrastructure and operations support I get from the MS business ecosystem and it's just icing on my Productivity Cake. I don't mind paying them because I get great stuff for the price.

I never understood how tech-intelligent people would hold so much hate towards a company that pretty much provides some of the broadest selection of tools and solutions geekdom has ever known.

Side Anecdote: A little bird recently told me that while working at Box, the attitude from management was so hateful against Microsoft that they were willing to blow through huge amounts of money just to roll their own HR system. What?! As an investor I want my investments to make me more money any way possible - and NOT be wasted trying to recreate wheels just to satisfy some sort of nonsensical personal grudge. This opinion people have with the brand loyalties (and grudges) they hold are non-sense through and through and bad for business.

<comment><USER7> Here's a good start to explaining the animosity. Microsoft spent billions to make sure companies didn't adopt open source software. It wasn't just the SCO money. There was also an associated PR and marketing FUD (Fear-Uncertainty- Doubt) campaign claiming that open source software would destroy your company through lawsuits.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer referred to Linux in 2001 as "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_controversies...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_controversies#Microsoft_funding_of_SCO_controversy)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Micr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Microsoft)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What this says to me as a developer in the Microsoft ecosystem (admittedly, enterprise side and not mobile):

"Four years ago we had you writing all your apps using Silverlight. Two years ago we chucked that out the window (ahahahaha) and told you to switch over to WinRT. Now we're going Android. We hope you've got the message by now. But in case you haven't, let us restate it in plain English: Dear developers, GO THE @$#!% AWAY."

<comment><USER9> I think the real message is:

"Hey, we're a company. We have things. That doesn't mean users use our things, or that developing for said things is going make you money or a userbase. That requires looking at the market and seeing where _users_ are."

They create the supply side. If there is no demand, blindly working in their tools is just a silly mistake. I think it has been plainly demonstrated nothing Windows Phone offers entices the mobile market away from Android en masse at this point.

<comment><USER8> In part, that's because of the poor app ecosystem. I've been very interested in Windows Phone as a mobile platform, but there's just too much stuff I've come to rely on my phone for that a Windows Phone doesn't do because there aren't any apps.

And part of the reason for the poor app ecosystem is that they've actively discouraged developers from developing for their platform. Heck, there's a huge number Android and iOS apps that are written in C# using Xamarin, and are therefore theoretically very easy to port to Windows Phone, but haven't for reasons as basic as the developers not wanting to upgrade to Windows 8.

<comment><USER10> Not sure why the above comment was downvoted -- it seems to make a sensible point. (Though I don't know if I'd agree with "actively discouraged.")

If I were Microsoft, I'd give significant $$$ to folks who have created cross- platform app development platforms. Then I can improve the number of Windows Phone apps pretty quickly. I may not get apps optimized for my platform, but at least I'd have _something_ , and then I could offer additional incentives for optimization. That's what Amazon is doing with the Fire phone and developer credits.

Xamarin would be one example, and PhoneGap (or whatever it's called now) can probably be made far nicer and faster. Last year Microsoft did announce a partnership with Corona, but as far as I know nothing has come of it yet in terms of a public release of the SDK: [http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and- wi...](http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and-windows- store-support-coming-to-corona-sdk-in-2014/)

<comment><USER11> We did some progress on PhoneGap [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/vstudio/dn722381.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/vstudio/dn722381.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To me, this looks like Microsoft opening a new front against Google and one which has the potential to change the landscape - note that I said 'potential', I'm not claiming unequivocally the strategy will be successful and Google will be sent to the dustbin of history.

What I am claiming is that Microsoft:

\+ May have the killer smartphone app - carrier independent voice calls (aka "Skype").

\+ Clearly has a more thoughtfully designed user interface in the form of Metro versus Android's WIMP on a phone mashups.

\+ Could offer a more thoughtfully integrated suite of development tools should they get Android tooling into Visual Studio.

\+ Already has a set of platform agnostic cloud services that are at least as good as Google's and since they include Office more attractive to general users.

\+ Because of their B2B orientation, access to revenue streams other than advertising and therefore more latitude in providing a more appealing user experience in the consumer market.

Finally it is possible that Microsoft will play the 'bundling' card against Google's policy in regard to its platform, and by producing an Android phone, they get legal standing.

<comment><USER13> > \+ May have the killer smartphone app - carrier independent voice calls (aka > "Skype").

So does every Android and iOS device, unless Microsoft wants to remove it from the android matket and the app store.

> \+ Clearly has a more thoughtfully designed user interface in the form of > Metro versus Android's WIMP on a phone mashups.

That's debatable. I prefer Android to Windows Phone. Sometimes, even over the iPhone.

And there are days I miss WebOS...

> \+ Could offer a more thoughtfully integrated suite of development tools > should they get Android tooling into Visual Studio.

I kind of like the Android toolset.

> \+ Already has a set of platform agnostic cloud services that are at least > as good as Google's and since they include Office more attractive to general > users.

At least as good as Google means Google is still the standard. Attractive to Office users.

> \+ Because of their B2B orientation, access to revenue streams other than > advertising and therefore more latitude in providing a more appealing user > experience in the consumer market.

Only as long as they can indirectly monetize a lock-in from the handset.

<comment><USER12> You've already told me many many times that you don't like Microsoft. And if I didn't know, I could just look at your user profile where it is stated explicitly.

There's about zero content in your response.

Just scattershot contradiction using the pick apart technique in hopes of trolling an inflamed response.

<comment><USER13> If you disagree with my argument, you should discuss it. If you disagree with my taste, you can do so politely.

> Just scattershot contradiction

It's appropriate when many of the statements are simply false.

\- All competitors have Skype. This is _not_ an advantage.

\- The interface being "more thoughtfully designed" is debatable. I am hardly alone in preferring vanilla Android over Metro and it remains to be seen how well this interface mimics its big brother. This would create a halo effect if Windows Phone proved very popular. So far, it hasn't.

\- A lot of people love Visual Studio. A lot of other people don't. I like it for C# work. I prefer Emacs for Python, JS and PHP. It's also not an option on two out of three major desktop OSs. I find the Android toolset very good for Android development and Xcode is unbeatable for iOS development. For Visual Studio fans, merging Visual Studio with the Android tooling may be a big thing, but for the rest of us, it's inconsequential. Most developers I know base their decisions on things other than what is the IDE that'll be used with a project. I fear for companies that do otherwise.

\- Azure may be as good as Google's cloud offerings (haven't paid much attention), but how a platform agnostic cloud service infrastructure can be called a competitive advantage still seems an interesting question. I'd like to see some elaboration on that, because platform agnostic is, well, agnostic.

\- Finally, Microsoft has a lot of B2B clout that allows them to throw money into other divisions until they achieve meaningful market share. However, unless Microsoft finds a way to monetize their Android offerings, they'll eventually give up and the phones will have to hold their own. This is an advantage in that Microsoft will offer all kinds of financial incentive to companies who develop for it or sign exclusives. It's money in the bank regardless of application or product success. Unfortunately, in my experience (yes - I have dealt with Microsoft) they are not the most generous partners. They'll offer mostly stuff that costs nothing to them (licenses) in exchange of stuff that has cost to you (effort, exclusivity). I've had much more attractive partnerships.

<comment><USER14> Visual Studio certainly is an option for Android, iOS and OSX development, when combined with Xamarin. I even think this is the best crossplatform mobile toolset that currently exitst and others think so too [1].

If you think the Android SDK is very good, have you ever started the emulator and tried to debug an app? It's horrendously slow and buggy, if it works at all. iOS and especially WP are so much faster and easier to develop for.

[1] [http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/xamarin-3-enterprise-edition- re...](http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/xamarin-3-enterprise-edition- reviewed/240168321?pgno=2)

<comment><USER13> > If you think the Android SDK is very good, have you ever started the > emulator and tried to debug an app? It's horrendously slow and buggy, if it > works at all.

It really depends. The iOS emulator runs x86 code. The Android emulators are full hardware emulators, but, if you choose to run your software on x86-based virtual hardware, it'll use your CPUs virtualization facilities to run faster than most handsets (which may not be the best idea considering actual hardware is much slower)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft releases a phone running Android, Microsoft releases hardware running Linux, pigs are flying and hell is freezing over etc etc.

The real news is that this is not just an Android phone, it's a really good Android phone. It has a front facing camera, a decent SoC, enough RAM, what appears to be an IPS display (according to some sources), likely very decent build quality, and a price that is likely to dip below €100 or even $100 soon enough. Android phones in that price range are generally extremely bad quality, but this seems to be a very decent package.

<comment><USER16> Except it doesn't have the Google Play store or Play Services, so it's not going to appeal to the usual Android user.

As someone who uses Windows Phone, I keep scratching my head wondering why Microsoft even bothers.

<comment><USER17> It's a Nokia phone, not a Microsoft phone. It takes an average of 18 months to bring a phone to market. The Nokia acquisition was completed just two months ago, and the teams must be fairly independent right now. While the Nokia acquisition was being completed, Nokia was legally required to act as if the acquisition would fail.

China approved the Nokia acquisition only on April 8, what would have happened if they didn't? Without an Android strategy, Nokia would be left without any momentum for atleast a year in a fast moving market. Remember how FTC denied AT&T and Tmobile's merger?

The only interesting thing here is that Microsoft didn't immediately kill the X2 and lay off Nokia's Android team. They could do that anytime or sell that division to some other company. There would be a lot of people at MS calling for its head. The headline, story and most of the comments seem to be implying that it's Microsoft that conceived and implemented this idea which is wrong.

<comment><USER18> I've received an invitation from Opera for publishing/porting app on Nokia, which stated that Microsoft team will be contacting me should I choose to proceed... So it does sound like they seems to be taking some part handling Nokia store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Look at the pseudo-win-phone interface on that X2. It looks what it is: an imitation of another phone.. also it's blatantly confusing for users who will now see what appears to be a windows phone interface but be unable to use windows phone apps. Odd strategy.

<comment><USER20> That pseudo-win-phone interface was my first thought too, a really bad idea IMHO, as you pointed out it will only confuse users.

Something I also thought was that the idea is to create a better opinion of the windows phone, and to confuse users to buy windows phones in the future. I also wonder how nice this pseudo-win-phone will play with all the other android apps.

(Disclaimer: I have used a WP7.8 phone and hated it, since then I developed a hate for the windows phone, I feel so limited when compared to android)

<comment><USER21> WP8.1 is so far ahead of 7.8. Don't write WP off just yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems like Microsoft and Amazon are not getting the real benefit of this platform by excluding the Google Play store from their versions of the Android experience. I guess it's understandable _why_ they're doing that, it's just bad for users.

Are there some kind of licensing terms that prevent them from shipping forks like this with the Google Play store as one of two app stores available? Would they have to make the all the Google apps 'first class' citizens just to allow users the ability to install any of them ala carte?

<comment><USER23> Yes, Google requires making their search and services default and allows only superficial Android modifications for anyone who wants to distribute Google Play Services.

Reference: [http://www.androidbeat.com/2014/02/android-open-google- certi...](http://www.androidbeat.com/2014/02/android-open-google-certified- android-not/)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the link. I thought I vaguely remembered hearing something about this before.

Just as with Microsoft and Amazon, I get why Google does this, but I think it hurts users and pretty much guarantees there's going to be limited Android experiences for lots of users out there. "Take all our apps, on our terms, or take none," pretty much guarantees the Microsofts and Amazons of the world are going to take none.

Andorid may be an open platform but it's primary app distribution channel clearly is not. It's an interesting contortion...they don't qualitatively screen apps, but they effectively screen what flavor of the platform can have the chief app repository itself.

<comment><USER23> They often also cause a bad experience. 512MB Android devices are cheap and popular, but they run poorly when Google+, Google Play Books, Google Play Newsstand, etc. are always running in the background. Most people won't go to the trouble of disabling all of them and won't realize that their devices can actually run well. It would be easy to feature them prominently inside Google Play instead of pre-installing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't have an issue with Microsoft releasing an android phone.

My issue is that this phone has 1gb ram and front facing camera for the price of Lumia 520. I'll need to fork out at least twice that amount to get the equivalent hardware spec in windows phone.

<comment><USER25> 20 times this. Sounds like they're already burying Windows Phone (which would really suck, since it's _way_ better than Android IMO, especially since 8.1).

<comment><USER26> Hmm, just wondering. Why do you think windows phone is better than android? Android is easy to hack about with, custom roms, the source is open and out there (most of it anyway)and generally has great usibility.

<comment><USER25> Usability. I strongly disagree that Android has much of that, and I suspect that a great many Android users simply don't know any better. Windows Phone really is _that_ much better.

Rant: My first smartphone was a Lumia, and then when it broke i went to a Sony Xperia (with a rather clean Android 4.3 on it).

I never even realized how well-designed WP was until I went to Android. Examples:

\- Operation. Nearly all of WP is easy to operate with just a thumb, single- handed. All important controls are either near the bottom or reachable by swiping. On Android, I have to reach to the top for all kinds of stuff. It's simply, apparently, an Android design pattern to put a bar with buttons on the _top_ , as far away from my hand as possible. This is plainly ridiculous. On WP, there's a clear relationship between "how important is this action" and "how close is it to the bottom". As it should be.

\- Consistency. All well-designed WP apps work the same. Swipe left/right for different screens/tabs, touch the left-side of an item for select-boxes, operations on the bottom and more operations by selecting "...". This is the same nearly everywhere, both for built-in apps and for most well-designed apps from the store.

\- Cleanliness and clarity. The Xperia _forced_ me to choose a home screen background picture, making it very difficult to read text and icons. I google- image-searched a "black.png" to work around this, but still, it's cluttered by default, and you need to do work to clean it up. Similarly, most good apps are really clean and uncluttered. I get the info I want to see or manipulate, no bullshit bells and whistles.

\- Quick. WP's live tiles are a perfect middle ground for me between bloated Android widgets and app-icons-only like in iPhone. My homescreen only contains the stuff i do often, with bigger buttons for stuff i do more. All this, without cluttering the UI like doing something similar on Android would do (by hand-dragging around a combination of widgets and icons).

Needless to say, I went back to Windows Phone (anyone want to buy a Sony Xperia SP, btw?). Upgraded to WP 8.1, which added:

\- The best mobile calendar app I've ever seen. The week view is simply amazing [1].

\- Fix for _every single thing_ I want that Android had and WP hadn't: better volume controls, action center for notifications and quick access to settings, stuff like that.

I'm well aware that none of the above includes the things you mention: customizability, open source, etc. WP indeed doesn't have that - it's much more like iOS in that respect. I thought I'd miss this, but with 8.1 fixing all the issues I had with WP, I realize that actually I don't want customizability, I want the thing to work great out of the box.

You only need customization if what you start with sucks.

On the hackability aspect though, WP app development is a _very_ smooth experience compared to Android app dev (assuming you have a Windows computer ready somewhere). The API is very well designed and documented, and the tools are great (assuming you can stand Visual Studio).

[1] [http://conversations.nokia.com/2014/04/17/windows- phone-8-1-...](http://conversations.nokia.com/2014/04/17/windows- phone-8-1-calendar/)

<comment><USER27> Re: Operation, screen and thumb;

This is one of the things I hate about the >4" screens, the interfaces were all designed with things being reachable, but now, I with large hands even, can't do it.

<comment><USER25> Well, get Windows Phone and you wont have that problem. Even the ridiculously huge Lumia 1520 is quite usable with one hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This has even fewer apps than WP8, let alone the "real" Android. I don't see why anyone would want this.

<comment><USER16> I don't know why you're being modded down, you're exactly right. Just like the Ovi Store on Symbian, the Nokia Store offers a fraction of the apps that Play, Microsoft App Store, and even the Amazon App Store offer.

As for why people would want this, it's actually good hardware for the price, and if it's ever rooted and flashed with a full Android ROM with Play support, it would end up being a nice phone overall.

<comment><USER29> Skip all that work, and just get a Moto E. At least it's an Android device that actually comes with access to Google's app store and services out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hell has officially frozen over.

Seriously though. This is great news, good to see that Microsoft is opening themselves up. Whether or not this is because of the new leadership, it's definitely the step in the right direction for Microsoft.

<comment><USER31> Just business tactic, not 'opening up'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > "The whole idea of bringing more people into Microsoft Cloud through these > services is the very core of the strategy," Jussi Nevanlinna, vice-president > of mobile phones product marketing at Microsoft, told the BBC.

That blade cuts both ways: By providing full/native MS cloud support on Android, you are allowing people who would otherwise be "locked in" to WP, to escape into Android.

Couldn't this potentially end up hurting their cloud services more than it helps?

<comment><USER33> If you assumed they were at all likely to buy WP. But most of them were not. The choice MS faces is not "sell them WP or sell them Android" but "sell them Android or someone else will"

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> For $115 you can have a Dogee Valencia DG800, which runs circles around this crippled MSNokiAndroid phone:

[http://www.doogeemobile.com/doogee-dg800-smartphone- android-...](http://www.doogeemobile.com/doogee-dg800-smartphone- android-4-4-mtk6582-4-5-inch-1gb-8gb-13mp-camera.html)

I'm still wondering where Microsoft is going with this. I really don't see this working very well without the benefit of the Play Store

</comment><comment><USER35> Embrace, extend, ...

But seriously: I'm very curious to see where this goes. Perhaps a way of running Android apps on Win phones? That would be a tremendous boost.

</comment><comment><USER36> What browser does this use? Is there now an IE for Android?

EDIT: It's Opera Mini: [http://gigaom.com/2014/06/24/microsofts-android-line- evolves...](http://gigaom.com/2014/06/24/microsofts-android-line-evolves-new- nokia-x2-handset-has-opera-as-default-browser/)

<comment><USER2> It's actually "Opera" based on Blink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Earlier Nokia X handsets did actually run Android too, so this move isn't that much unexpected.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure how this differs from them as it has exactly the same interface. Unless it comes with Google Play?

I've got a dual SIM version of the Nokia X and it's about as bad as you imagine it to be. Side loading Google Play helped, but it's still not great. The Moto G is a much better investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nokia. The fact that Nokia belongs to Microsoft is immaterial here. It's a Nokia phone.

<comment><USER28> Nokia doesn't belong to Microsoft. Nokia's _phone division_ belongs to Microsoft. I imagine the actual Nokia company will begin selling Android phones in a couple of years again, too, so you can't call these "Nokia phones". They are Microsoft phones now.

<comment><USER40> Nokia can't market mobile phones under the Nokia brand until 2016.

Also, the company Nokia doesn't own a phone division anymore, they'll have to build one, if not from scratch, then pretty close to. That mean they don't have any competitive advantage over pretty much any other company in a similar situation.

Never mind that they really, really struggled to compete in the smartphone market - that's why they offloaded the mobile phone division in the first place.

In other words, I doubt very much that we will see consumer mobile phones from the not-Microsoft-owned bits of Nokia.

<comment><USER41> I'd like to see Nokia back in business (used their phones all my life), but it indeed looks quite unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn It's the cheap Android phone everyone expected Amazon to make. I didn't know Nokia had an Android store. Is it better or worse than Amazon's?

</comment><comment><USER42> I sincerely don't get what is the point of releasing an android phone with Nokia Store rather than Google Play...

</comment><comment><USER43> "It will cost 99 euro ($135; £80) when released in July."

Is that the price with a 2-year contract or is this going to be a great value phone?

Will I be able to wipe this phone and install stock Android? Skype, Outlook, Bing, and all that other MS crap is unwanted. I'm actually a MS supporter and understand the need for them to create all of those services but I personally don't/won't use them.

Also, why are UK citizens against adopting the euro?

<comment><USER44> Why are the US against adopting the Euro?

I'm only partially joking there. The Euro has had large amounts of turmoil in the past three years which has involved large bailouts of some countries. The inevitable path appears to be closer alignment of fiscal policy (including taxation and public spending) which is sovereignty that the UK public is opposed to giving up. There's a strong anti-EU sentiment in the UK with a significant proportion in favour of the UK leaving the EU.

<comment><USER43> That makes sense. It was a real question I had, I have no opinion of the matter.

I guess the UK sees itself as having a more stable economy that other European Union countries, so it would benefit from having a separate currency (but the other countries would be hurt by not having a very strong country adopt the euro).

<comment><USER45> Not more stable, but historically out of phase. i.e. when Germany has done well the UK has had a down phase and vice versa.

The killer flaw in the Eurozone is not appreciating how useful different currencies are for dampening the effect of such differences. Greece is the classic example, where for them the Euro was too strong making them globally uncompetitive, leading to a nasty downward spiral, whereas Germany benefit from their exports being far more competitive than they would be if they were still using the DM.

<comment><USER43> Basically, "don't put all of your eggs in one basket".

I was thinking purely about efficiency at first but forgot how complex real- world economics really is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> They could get Android apps working on Windows Phone OS, rather than this. Microsoft is useless these days.

<comment><USER16> I doubt that will ever happen, and I hope it doesn't. I'd much prefer to see proper ports of Android and iOS apps, rather than some Frankenstein style compatibility layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Did anyone notice the specs section in this article? "A front facing camera for taking selfies"

</comment><comment><USER47> Microsoft really needs to get back on that path of completely changing the game in the mobile realm. I don't know if this is the start, but its sure as hell better than releasing the same thing slightly updated over and over again (Don't mimic Apple with this strategy, it won't work for you MSFT)

</comment><comment><USER48> MS shouldn't forget to... threaten themselves with their own bogus patents ;)

</comment><comment><USER49> it had already been developed, it would have made no sense for them to scrap it.

<comment><USER50> It was developed before or after Elop's burning platform speech ?

<comment><USER33> Elop's burning platform speech (memo, really) was from February 2011.

So the Nokia X came way, way after...

<comment><USER50> It was a rhetorical question.

But it's not necessarily true that Nokia X came "way after". Nokia could have put the project on hold when they started serious negotiations with Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Oh, Jesus, this looks like the unfortunate result of a Windows Phone and an Android phone in a teleporter accident.

Many here are cheering as if this is good somehow, because Microsoft is open and what not. But look at it. It looks like Windows Phone, but is an Android phone. It exists to confuse customers.

What is the supposed end game here? "Hey, buy this and if you like it, we'll make you abandon all your Android apps, and switch to _real_ Windows phone - because the home screen tiles look similar"?

I don't think so.

This project is more the result of a slow-moving corporate behemoth that started this project way before Microsoft announced it's buying Nokia. It was too late to turn that giant ship in time, I guess, so enjoy your mutant monster.

By the way, the startup sound is Ripley whispering "Kill me" in your ear.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Embrace, extend and extinguish"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)</comment>


Draw Your Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/05/draw-your-ideas.html <comment><USER2> Quick video summary:

1\. Draw out your idea. The sentiment here seems to be more about getting the idea out of your head than planning how to implement it; that putting the idea on paper transforms it. It also lets you share it more easily.

2\. Recognize luck. Dorsey discussed how certain factors come together to encourage building an idea. The idea for Twitter was several years old, but in 2005 cross carrier SMS made it easier to realize. Also his working situation (@Odio with Evan Williams and Biz Stone) allowed exploration of other things. Ev and Biz immediately understood the concept due to their blogging background.

3\. Iterate. Dorsey talked about how the @, RT:, and # paradigms were user- driven, and the Twitter founders thought it was ugly and resisted it initially. Talked about Square and the need to iterate on the designed to make it polished enough for people to trust.

4\. Know when to stop. Sometimes ideas just won't work, and you need to put them aside, knowing that some element of the idea might resurface later. I thought it was interesting that he couched it this way, as it is more palatable than the thought of killing an idea entirely.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use balsamiq.com

</comment><comment><USER4> Great video, but no, I will not draw my ideas.

I make flow-charts. I think in "connections" therefor I create huge sheets with hundreds of arrows connecting my thoughts. It is really ugly, but this is how I think, this is how I understand my world.

Also I take audio notes.

I do this because I am not a visual person. Pictures have little meaning to me.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I practice for a Google non-abstract system design interview? - <AUTHOR> How can I practice for a Google SRE non-abstract system design interview? <comment><USER2> Google "System Design Github.com". There are some amazing guides there. GCP names their products pretty clearly (looking at you AWS) so mapping them to Google Cloud products should be easy.</comment>


Facebook's Privacy Cake - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/facebooks-privacy-cake/ <comment><USER2> A good analysis. Traditionally I haven't seen many in depth articles in the social space, mostly emotional reactions or people severely misunderstanding product positioning because they don't personally use it (2 years ago this was Snap). And even if they are a user, most people have a hard time articulating the value proposition of a free social product.

<comment><USER3> well stratechery is your site lol. Ben Thompson is one of the best at doing exactly what you described.

<comment><USER4> Dont forget about his podcast Exponent where he frequently expands on his weekly stratechery articles. Good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could FB do it? Yes. Are people stupid enough to buy it? Probably. Are they going to actually deliver what they are claiming? Hell no. Zuck will suck up any communications in his platforms and store it forever and make it available to various governments to spy on people and for corporations to exploit for profit. Nutters will continue to rile up other nutters privately but it will be more difficult to point your finger at FB.

<comment><USER6> Facebook has indeed not shown to be truthful in any way. And rhis is far beyond a small mishap where they hired the wrong person for the wrong spot and managed to deal with it for now. A beliveable transformation of their corporate culture would take _a lot_ — starting with a resignation and a self- denunciation of Mark Zuckerberg himself.

<comment><USER7> or at the very least some kind of independent check/audit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clearly this was not taking the Zuckster seriously.. it was clearly sarcasm...

< Another set took Zuckerberg entirely too seriously:

I am not a stock market person but the fact that Facebook's stock hardly budged on a day that Mark Zuckerberg said he planned to pivot the company to a totally untested new business model seems odd to me

— Casey Newton >

</comment><comment><USER9> Evil company says it's not going to be evil any more. And they really, really mean it this time. Honest.

<comment><USER10> They didn't really say that, though. I couldn't help but notice that Zuckerberg's essay didn't even mention, let alone address, some of the largest privacy problems with Facebook at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That idea is what Google+ overcomplicated and underdelivered. And sadly, it's also what Friendfeed was before facebook bought and snuffed it.

<comment><USER12> > That idea is what Google+ overcomplicated and underdelivered.

People keep saying things along those lines.

Based on the number of healthy non-it-specialist communities I saw (that still stay there as long as possible) I don't think that is the explanation, except if you mean the initial launch.

My explanation is a giant PR mistake where they tried to push a botched identity consolidation at the same time and with the same name as their social network.

Ironically they later came back and fixed the identity problems and usability wise it became one of the better ones IMO. (I'm talking about keeping different groups of people separate, not protecting against TLA agencies.)

In the end we should probably be happy: they could have owned social networking in addition to mail and search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Facebook and Google will continue to be privacy nightmares unless their business models change fundamentally.

</comment><comment><USER14> tl;dr: Facebook plans to focus more on "privacy" in its marketing. Nothing changes about the data collection from a technical/product point of view. Question is whether people will believe that Facebook now is a privacy-focused company or not.</comment>


Ask HN: How does one make a profitable side project with $1k in savings? - <AUTHOR>

Let's imagine one has about $1k in savings. How should they proceed about launching a side project which will generate a decent amount of income for them so they could eventually leave their job within 2 years? <comment><USER2> First of all to answer your question, it is possible to build a side project to generate a decent amount of income within 2 years with $1k.

 _If anyone tells you otherwise, they are wrong._

I know this for a fact because; when I was 14 with little coding experience (I had played with HTML at 12) I decided to start making money online with $0.

I'm not going to go into everything from 14 until now but I am going to highlight that it is possible and I'll just focus on some highlights although, you can easily discover the rest by searching the web anyway:

Having $0 to start with and being 14 years of age, I have to improvise which meant my first venture was forum boosting, and within a few days I was making the equivalent of $XX/day in a domain forum currency - which could be then exchanged for cash or used to purchase hosting/domains etc. It was actually growing fairly rapidly that I ended outsourcing a lot of the work.

From there I built my first website on its own domain and hosting and sold icons on my desktop (this was around the time of MDHP) and displayed the icons with links to the appropriate site. It was profitable and I sold around 6 of them.

After that I ended up creating/selling turnkey sites - banner makers, web directories (this was actually really huge), ebay typo sites etc as well as Custom Content Sites, RSS Mini-Sites and RSS Search Engines (before the likes of Yahoo! Boss).

I participated in a lot of arbitrage including discovering a method how to purchase domains for $x and resell them for $xxx+ - a method which I released for free, and one which still works today.

As well as the launch of an advertising network - when I was 16 which included securing a fairly large advertising deal (well it seemed it at the time!) with a dating site before I even had decided the name for it or wrote a single line of code. I ended up offering some differences to ensure growth including the ability for ads to blend perfectly with gradient backgrounds. The advertising network had a successful outcome, although whilst it is longer in operation on the domain it was on (I actually still own the domain name) the users loved it and all I will say is that they were happy where they ended up.

Since then I've been mainly buying/selling domains (using the method I released for free), playing with affiliate marketing and SEO.

\---

I'm not even the only one either, I could mention a _TON_ of people including some mentioned by others here and the likes of:

Sam (citricsquid) who with only $40 to his name bought 2 domains for $10 each and turned them into million-dollar websites. [1]

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3932829v>

\---

Now I don't know if you can code or not but if you can't then I suggest you learn or don't do something too ambitious initially. So keep it simple, learn the basics get to know your way around HTML/CSS and ideally something like PHP as there are a lot of CMS's available including the likes of Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal etc.

I also don't know your costs of living etc as well but, that isn't important. In order to be successful with your sideproject you need to ensure that you

 _build something you are actually interested in_

This advice may seem weird/useless advice but as you keep doing small projects/flipping them etc you realise what this actually means.

Yes, you should look for there to be some form of business there but trust me... if you're not interested in it you are going to give up and dedicate every spare second you have to making it a success and turning it into a full- time income.

I don't care if you end up making a men's lifestyle blog or a time-tracking app or whatever it is but pick something you are into and always think in the back of your mind "this can become a real business" of course that means it needs to be something you can monetize be it with paid signups and/or advertisements etc.

Now go and find something you're interested in.

Then look at the market what its currently offering and how you can differentiate from them or improve on them.

Once you've done that, build your MVP and grow your successful side project/business!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great post, itsprofitbaron. Thank you!

I will follow your advice and build something i am interested in (and expand my programming knowledge). Good luck with your ventures!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to answer that question because so much depends on your specific circumstances but I'll try. I'm assuming you're able to do your own programming because $1000 won't get you very far if you need to hire developers.

Find an area where you think you can provide something of value. It could be a hobby or a problem in your community. Figure out how to solve it and have a go. Get feedback early and keep an open mind try lots of things and understand what's working and why.

If you don't already know patio11's Bingo Card Creator story, then probably the best advice you will find is on his website:

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/>

Read the earlier ones on how to prioritize your time and validate your work (the more recent posts are more geared towards SEO and marketing).

Also Eric Rees's blog about the Minimal Viable Product approach: <http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/>

But you've been on HN for a while, so you probably already know all that?

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say forget that you have $1k, try to start from zero (or as close to it as possible)

When people think they have $$$ to throw at an idea they usually make bad decisions. Try and spend as little as possible of the $1k, test your ideas quickly for free and aim for simplicity and early revenue.

This is especially true if it's your first side project. Once you have two or three things launched you have valuable networks that you can draw on for your next project and so on.

</comment><comment><USER5> $1000 isn't a lot - in many parts of the US it will cover about 1 month of rent. Try to save more money from your day job, and work on your project at night and on weekends, whenever you can. At some point, you'll decide to launch, and it may possibly become a reliable income source.

May I leapfrog off your question: If your employment contract states "any software you write, on or off the clock, is property of the employer", how would one launch under that restriction?

<comment><USER6> That's a big if. In the entire state of California, any such contract clauses are invalid.

<comment><USER7> So if it says this in my contract it's invalid? How?

<comment><USER6> IIRC, The entire contract is not invalid, just the specific clause that says that.

The specific clause is:

        Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.

Most of the exceptions are regarding people who own and then sell the business, and a few others.

Which is to say that your employer would remain powerless, that's how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $1K is really not enough -- it gets you a fraction of one attempt. You really need to budget for multiple attempts.

Change your employer so you're not under that "on or off the clock" clause. Then save up some more.

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems like one of the constraints in this situation is needing your project to generate self-sustaining revenue by the time your 1k runs out.

For example, I wonder how long you could cover hosting for a small project with 1k?</comment>


Show HN: All Facebook Offers on one Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.foibly.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the OP. If you haven't heard of Facebook Offers, they're like coupons businesses can post on their Facebook page. But, if you're not already a Fan, they can be difficult to discover - so we made Foibly. Appreciate any feedback!

<comment><USER2> <http://tnw.to/o3dt>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the writeup!</comment></comment></comment>


Thousands of spies are watching trackerless Torrents - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/thousands-of-spies-are-watching-trackerless-torrents-151004/ <comment><AUTHOR> The research: [https://gist.github.com/Ayms/f2da9f860775ead2066e](https://gist.github.com/Ayms/f2da9f860775ead2066e)</comment>


Learning iOS from scratch, where to start? - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/learning-ios-from-scratch-where-to-start-e4d776802ae2#.gw98t9dlm <comment><USER2> Here's a repo of 2 dozen small iOS examples in Swift 3:

[https://github.com/melling/ios_topics](https://github.com/melling/ios_topics)</comment>


The Male Gaze - What, Where, Why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatwherewhy.me/blog/2012/06/11/the-male-gaze/ <comment><USER2> It is curious where to draw the line between a faux pas, sexism, and misogyny.

Most men are not misogynists and don't purposely make sexist remarks. I agree with this:

"I don't think that they intentionally set out to perpetuate the male gaze or to insult women or to discourage women from our industry. They just didn't think about it."

Men sometimes forget what offends women: talking about blow jobs, appreciating a woman's curves in a tight white dress, passing along "brogrammer" memes (there was a post on HN how this excludes women and is therefore sexist), giving masculine names to coding projects like "Testosterone," hiring booth babes, etc.

Men need to remember the tech industry is not a "boy's club" (even if it feels like it with our nerf guns, foosball tables, and Beer Fridays) and change their thinking/behavior accordingly.

We don't need to go around educating everyone in feminist theory and second- wave feminism to fix this. Just say: Dude, that is probably offensive.

<comment><USER3> "Just say: Dude, that is probably offensive."

Dude, that's kinda weak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No discussion, at all? Bleh...!

Oh well, it's not like I have anything insightful to add myself right now, I'd just like to heartily agree with this:

"I'm sorry if this post has been a long and rambling read. It's a topic that I feel strongly about. I believe in equality–regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, etc. I want to live in a world where, as a white, heterosexual male, I have no special privileges. And, I'm happy to use whatever privileges I may have today to help achieve that goal."</comment>


Ask HN: Do you Design / Code at client's place? - <AUTHOR>

I've turned down quite a few offers to work at Clients' place. Sometimes they ask to code simple Content Management Systems from their place. I never understood the logic. I thought may be they are paranoid or something. Wondering what you peeps do, presented with similar situation. <comment><USER2> By client's place, do you mean an individual in their personal residence or client as in a business and in their business establishment?

If it's a business in a business establishment, I think it's fine and in fact that's what I am doing most of the time as a contractor.

Working in a client's personal residence is another story though. I would never do it and I would suspect that he/she just lack the understanding about our line or work. Perhaps you could ask the next time you have a client that demands this situation. The insights might be very intriguing.

Good luck with your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> The offers were mostly to work in office setting, but, I was once asked to work in home of a film actor here, through a contact of mine.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Is this the worst terrorist act imaginable? - <AUTHOR>

Finding extra-terrestrial life would be the greatest discovery in history and is not something that can ever be eclipsed.<p>What prevents a nation from developing life that can live on Mars say and then secretly putting it there to mess up the search for extra-terrestrial life? <comment><USER2> No, but it would probably contend for the title "Dumbest thing to do with a couple hundred billion dollars".

<comment><USER3> I think the SETI guys just died laughing. The poor guys have been getting by on a shoestring for years - the chance of anybody spending billions to mess with them is.... remote :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What if this bio-engineered martian life form gains the power to disrupt the internet with an endless stream of bizarre posts?

</comment><comment><USER5> Although they go to great length to decontaminate probes which land on Mars, it may not be perfect. So we may be inadvertently bringing alien life to Mars already.

<http://www.spacewar.com/news/mars-life-03k.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but what is the chance that these bacteria would survive the trip and thrive on Mars?

<comment><USER6> Nonzero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like in _Contact_ , if you buy the it-was-a-hoax interpretation?

</comment><comment><USER8> To answer the question posed in the title, no, not by far.

</comment><comment><USER9> Chuck Norris.</comment>