Under No Circumstances Believe That You Need To Hire Rock Stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.thefailingpoint.com/2009/08/buildingateam/believe-that-you-need-to-hire-rock-stars/

<comment><USER2> That's very well written, however there's a better way to put it: when hiring, neither side should be trying _too hard_ to sell themselves. A candidate telling a company "I am a rockstar ninja" is a candidate selling themselves too hard. A company talking about "hiring the top C/C++/Java hackers, from a top-ten CS program" to create CRUD screens in PHP is selling themselves too hard as well. If you want top talent, give them top challenges. You can find plenty of people who are passionate about web development who would be interested in writing PHP for you. May be they can't implement a red-black tree on the white board (yes, I have literally heard of a PHP/Perl web developer being asked to do that), but they may have a great deal more knowledge when it comes to UI/UX, requirements gathering or people/project management.

I _do_ think there is room for "top talent" in a start-up, but the key thing is that they will almost certainly be doing work that is "below them" at one point or another. As pg pointed out, YC presently has a tenured MIT professor as their Systems Administrator.

There's also a corollary to that: if you're coming straight out of college and are looking for serious technical career growth, you may want to hold-off joining an early stage start-up unless they're doing something truly uniquely challenging (e.g. Netscape in the early 90s, Google in 1998 or -- right now -- Directed Edge or the YC start-up making an alternative storage engine for MySQL).

It's also true that seemingly "simple" sites such as various social networks, e-commerce and media sites (Facebook/Ning/LinkedIn, Digg, Twitter) _do_ grow to present many fascinating scalability and algorithmic challenges, these _do not_ occur until the stage where these companies are no longer early-stage start-ups (particularly now, when powerful web frameworks abstract away any systems programming).

(EDIT: some start-ups do have many scaling and algorithmic challenges, but usually not in the early stages)

<comment><USER3> _many fascinating scalability and algorithmic challenges... do not occur until the stage where these companies are no longer start-ups_

I agree with your point that you shouldn't think about scaling too soon, but you're overstating the case. Twitter is still a startup. And they emphatically did have to worry about algorithms and scaling while they were still a startup.

<comment><USER2> Good point, corrected my post. My point isn't "don't worry about scaling" (in fact, large scale distributed computing is pretty much my own area of expertise/interest). My point is that there's a lot of glory stories of grand technological challenges, but they _do not_ occur at your typical early stage start-up. If you want to solve these kind of problems, you're best off joining a company that's experience them (and _not_ joining an early stage start-up and wishing they would: been there, done that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _It's a very rare company where they can make the claim that their CEO is the recipe for success._

This seems to be the opposite of what most VCs tell. "We invest in people, not in ideas" is a common claim.

 _If you can't trust the guy sitting in the cube next to you, you are in trouble. Hiring rock stars and ninjas is inviting trouble because they are likely to be glory seekers who are thinking about their own personal rewards, and less likely to be thinking about the team_

I disagree with the stereotype he draws of "rockstars" (which is a retarded term anyways).

Overall this whole article is just based on a broken premise. The author suggests that a team of programmers is more than the sum of its individuals. This is false. A team of programmers is _less_ than its sum. The larger the team, the more dramatic the impact of this inverse correlation. Cf. The mythical man month.

That's why a very small group of "rockstars", or even an individual, can run circles around mediocre teams of any size.

<comment><USER5> Maybe the term "rockstar" is where the trouble lies. Because, I don't know about you guys, but when I think rockstar, I don't necessarily think about virtuoso performers capable of creating masterful artwork. I usually think about burning out by their 30's, trashing hotel rooms, refusing to work because the mic settings are incorrect.

I think what everyone's trying to get at is, "consummate professional devoted to their field." The sort of person who, in an academic setting, might obtain a PhD and publish, or at the very least an engineer who reads technical journals and contributes, either to newsletters or publications, or as a member of a professional society; someone who considers personal improvement necessary to do their job as best they can. I think even if you're looking to hire someone to work on your CRUD PHP webapp, that's the sort of attitude you need, regardless of their actual experience.

<comment><USER4> I fully agree.

Further I'd argue that even for your CRUD PHP webapp you ideally want the guy who, first thing, explains to you why doing it in PHP is a bad idea and how he'll do it with a more powerful tool in a day - rather than the guy who will just nod and then go off to blindly beat "something" into shape in a week.

Both candidates will deliver the first iteration of your "simplest thing that could possibly..." within a reasonable timeframe. But their respective effectiveness will diverge dramatically starting from the second iteration...

<comment><USER6> _> you ideally want the guy who, first thing, explains to you why doing it in PHP is a bad idea and how he'll do it with a more powerful tool in a day_

No, you don't. The last thing you need on a team is a person who's first thing is to start whining about things that cannot be changed. That kind of thing can quickly spoil the atmosphere. Rather, you want the person that accepts that things aren't perfect and use the strengths of the situation and works around the weaknesses. He'll need to do that anyway, even if you use the best "language du jour"...

Not accepting the weaknesses just leads to constantly chasing the perfect state while never completing the project.

<comment><USER5> You must be really good at differentiating that which can _not_ be changed from that which is ingrained.

<comment><USER6> If I have a code base of over a few thousands lines (yes, even when that small), changing the language is just a dumb thing to do. It requires a complete rewrite, while changing a language that your team has experience in for one it doesn't. And of course, the usual rewrite problems also apply: killing a fully battle-tested system in favor of one that has not even seen a strong discussion...

And all that because one new hire couldn't get to grips with the fact that the organization didn't use his favorite language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In programming, there is a VAST difference in productivity between great and mediocre programmers. That's because programmers create tools that do work. Bad programmers create shovels; great ones create fleets of bulldozers. Bad programmers create buggy, slow code; great programmers create fast, working, robust code and meet deadlines to do it.

I know this, because I'm a mediocre programmer. I struggle for a couple weeks to build something, and I talk to my Rock Star Programmer buddy, who immediately suggests a better solution. At his job, he creates stuff in a week that I couldn't create in my whole life (or at least it feels that way).

So yes, I think he'd definitely be a bargain at twice my salary, and probably he makes more than that, and should. If I were going to start a company, I would definitely want some rock stars like him.

The trick is, you almost have to be one to know one.

</comment><comment><USER8> Further anti-joeltest hints:

You are only posting the job ad on craiglist for free

You ask for guru level C++,C# and Java in the ad but the app is in VB6/PHP

Programmers don't get a corner private office, they share a room with the call center and sales staff.

They don't get an aeron chair and height adjustable desk. They get something government surplus with at least one broken leg in the corner of shipping and receiving warehouse.

Your office doesn't have views of central park. It has views of a railyard and the police regularly raiding the junkyard next door

And finally, if you are paying $40,000 you are hiring RockBand playing programmers, not Rockstar programmers - there is a sublte difference.

<comment><USER9> These sound like things to avoid if you want to get a cushy job at a big company, not find stimulating work at a start-up. Or is that the point? Color me confused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If an actual rockstar ever becomes a programmer, they are going to be in very high demand.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you advertise for rock stars and/or ninjas you deserve every candidate that you get.

If you really do need such talent, you are unlikely to find it through classifieds or job sites, but through the network of technical people you know.

<comment><USER12> Rock star and ninjas are very common terms used by startup companies when hiring.

I personally am a bit turned off when I see that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> To me, the author and commenters are missing the point of hiring "rock stars". The point is sort of the reverse. _If_ your company was able to attract a "rock star", it probably makes something very interesting. This just -in the eyes of VCs and other companies- makes your company more interesting. The same applies to the times, where employees with PhDs made the company worth 70 mill$ more each (back in 2000).

<comment><AUTHOR> A good deal of the value you can bring to hiring has to do with your personal network as well. You could be a mad scientist working on cold fusion, but if you don't know anyone, and a VC hasn't validated it, does that make whatever you are working on any less interesting? Absolutely not.

The point of the post was that there is this tendency to believe in the myth of the rock star, and that only the rock stars can make something amazing. A couple of the engineers from my old founding team are in YC now, and they are meeting with many VCs early. Why? Because they made those contacts on the first go round. Did they need rock stars to make that happen? No. Are they "rock stars?" No. Not in personality type anyway. I do look forward to working with them again though. They made for a great team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Most of the guys who I regarded as the very best developers were in Seattle and Silicon Valley._

Sorry you see it that way. I have found little correlation between developer quality and location. Great developers can be anywhere, with many reasons why they haven't relocated to a tech center. They may be right under your nose. Sounds like you found a few.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a disproportionately high number of very very good developers in those centers. That in no way states that there aren't awesome developers elsewhere. They are everywhere. Finding them is hard, and you certainly increase your chances when in a tech center like Seattle, Boulder, Boston or the Valley. Non US countries that have great talent? The Nordic countries have amazing developers, and former USSR countries. Wow. ODesk has some great resources in that regard.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any open source alternatives to Alexa, Siri, etc? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I must confess I haven't used it yet, but snips.ai [1] is in my list of potential raspberry pi projects and claims to be open sourcing soon. On their FAQ page [2] you can find the reason why I have it in my list:

"Snips, on the other hand, runs completely on your device, with nothing being sent to the cloud. This means it guarantees your Privacy, works offline and doesn't have variable costs!"

Unfortunately this leads me to wonder whether or not the service will remain free, but for the moment it is "free for makers and for building prototypes". Commercial costs apply.

[1] [https://snips.ai/](https://snips.ai/)

[2] [https://github.com/snipsco/snips-platform- documentation/wiki...](https://github.com/snipsco/snips-platform- documentation/wiki/FAQ)

<comment><AUTHOR> >Snips, on the other hand, runs completely on your device, with nothing being sent to the cloud. This means it guarantees your Privacy, works offline and doesn't have variable costs!

Does this mean the language model will not learn as it is used more? I feel the main reason for sending & storing data in cloud is to train the algorithm to get better at recognizing & answering the questions.

<comment><USER3> Cloud or not, these products don't magically get better because of data, they have teams of engineers using your data to improve their systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our group at Stanford is building an open source conversational agent for data science:

Github: [https://github.com/Ejhfast/iris- agent](https://github.com/Ejhfast/iris-agent)

ArXiv: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.05015](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.05015)

<comment><USER4> Oddly enough, just got some coverage today: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142908-siri-rival- can-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142908-siri-rival-can- understand-the-messy-nature-of-our-conversations/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mycroft [https://github.com/MycroftAI](https://github.com/MycroftAI)

Jarvis [https://github.com/alexylem/jarvis](https://github.com/alexylem/jarvis)

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a lot to those services:

1\. Waking

2\. Voice to text

3\. Natural language understanding

4\. Skills (search, weather, reminders, etc)

None of those are trivial problems but #4 is notable because it is often used as one of the ways Google beats Alexa. It can be boiled down to if a human simply asks for what they want, what are the odds the assistant will have an answer?

That to me is the part least likely to have a good open source alternative.

</comment><comment><USER7> Never used it but the new voice recognition in Firefox uses an open source service called Kaldi:

[http://kaldi-asr.org/](http://kaldi-asr.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Jasper[1] is one such that popped up on HN a while back. I spent a wet weekend getting it going on a Raspberry Pi -- it was quite the effort to get all the moving pieces working together.

At the time you had the option of using AWS or Google to handle the voice, or possibly (if you have the time and knowledge) train it up to use a local service - this was gently discouraged by the documentation (it was referenced, but not well explained what it involved).

I believe you can now use Watson to offload the voice to text, too.

But in all those cases you're sending data off-site, which may be a concern. And each of those services has some usage constraints that _should_ be enough to cover household use, but I'm not sure what happens when you start to hit those limits.

[1] [https://jasperproject.github.io/](https://jasperproject.github.io/)

<comment><USER9> Inside the Jasper documentation, there is some discussion about the configuration of the Speech to text engine. They seem to list 5, 2 of which do not use off-site aids.

[http://jasperproject.github.io/documentation/configuration/](http://jasperproject.github.io/documentation/configuration/)

I don't know if other portions of the code might use off-site access data processing. I wish more projects would create a system block diagram of their software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As far as I know there are no open source solutions for wake word detection. Most 'open source Alexa' projects require you to press a button to make it listen.

There is a free offline wake word detector here: [https://github.com/Kitt- AI/snowboy](https://github.com/Kitt-AI/snowboy) ... ok that was closed source when I looked last! Looks like you still need to use their website for training though.

<comment><USER11> Fwiw CMUSphinx supports wake words in the pocketsphinx project: [https://cmusphinx.github.io/wiki/faq/#q-how-to-implement- hot...](https://cmusphinx.github.io/wiki/faq/#q-how-to-implement-hot-word- listening)

<comment><USER12> Having used this one too, I can say with fair confidence that it is not good, unfortunately :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mycroft is Open source and it works with a Raspberry Pi [https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Stéphanie [https://slapbot.github.io/](https://slapbot.github.io/)</comment>


Django 1.0 alpha 2 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2008/aug/08/10-alpha-2/

<comment><USER2> I'm so glad to see Django inching closer to a real release. Their last release (0.96) is woefully old, so the only choice most developers have is to pick a random SVN trunk revision and develop against that. Deploying an SVN Head build of anything to production is just plain scary.

<comment><USER3> Django has a much different culture in regards to releases. It just takes a little getting used to. In Django-land, sticking with the .96 release is what's plain scary.

They release, bugfix and update very frequently. They just don't bother to make a big deal about packaging individual releases. From what I understand, most production web sites are using Django's latest trunk svn release, not some "random trunk revision". Almost all of the documentation reflects the changes in the latest svn release.</comment></comment>


We Are the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://alexyoung.org/2011/02/22/subscriptions/ <comment><USER2> Walled gardens are great when a medium is brand new. Without history and without a critical mass of knowledgeable individuals it's very much more difficult for individuals to find offerings of sufficient quality, and then from there to filter based on individual preferences and needs. Such was the case with mobile apps when the iphone came around. The quality of mobile apps tended to be rather poor at the time and there was a bewildering array of them. The iphone introduced a huge new chunk of people to smartphones, the appstore model was an attempt to raise the quality bar of mobile apps and to make it easier for users to find and buy apps. And it worked spectacularly well, propelling a once questionable development arena to enormous heights of popularity (and in some cases profitability).

If you look back on, for example, video game development you can see the problems that can occur without such walled gardens. The home video game market boomed in the late 70s and early 80s, with families buying new games like hotcakes. A lot of game makers jumped on the bandwagon and pumped the market full of low quality games. Whereas in previous years the total number of games for the Atari 2600, for example, had been in the low dozens in 1982/83 this number ballooned to _hundreds_. Consumers could no longer have much confidence in which games to buy and so they stopped buying, leading to a massive crash of the video game industry in the US that lasted until Nintendo came along with its own walled garden approach.

However, the video game industry has matured since then, and walled gardens are no longer very helpful (there are far more than sufficient resources these days to determine which games to buy and which to avoid based on individual preferences).

As the mobile app market continues to mature it will strain against its walled garden confines more and more. Increasingly such hand-holding is less necessary and more and more restrictive. Apple has a choice to recognize that the market is changing and to adapt or to ignore the changes and pretend as though it's still 2008 while the world passes them by.

<comment><USER3> I'm having trouble with your argument. After all, the 2600 was the original walled garden from which all others have sprung. It was also the source of court cases which set precedent for walled gardens. If I remember correctly, Atari ROMs had an image in them that the firmware checked for before allowing the ROM to run. But the image was copyrighted, so you couldn't sell Atari ROMs without giving a cut to Atari. The only exception was Tengen, who had a historical license due to being a spin-off of Atari.

<comment> T-hawk What you say is true for the Atari 7800, not the 2600. The 2600 had no protection or verification at all; it wasn't remotely thought of when the 2600 was designed in 1977. The 2600 happily runs any ROM at all containing executable 6502 machine code. There isn't even any BIOS in the 2600. Literally all it does at startup is point the program counter to an address within the ROM address space.

The 2600 was walled-by-obscurity for its first several years, since the video chip was custom designed by Atari and not documented publicly, plus the tools to write and compile and run 6502 assembler were fairly primitive. But by 1982 or so, enough reverse-engineering had been done and the tools had matured and enough Atari expertise was available on the hiring market that the system was essentially fully open.

(I've been there - I wrote an Atari 2600 game my freshman year of college in 1997.)

<comment><USER3> OK, so I didn't remember correctly. I'm glad I put that disclaimer in my first comment! I tried to Google for it, but the late 70s is prehistory for Google.

I'm still having trouble buying the collapse of the walled garden as the reason for the video game crash of 83-84. Pac-man and ET are widely cited as two of the major causes of the crash, and those were in-house Atari productions so the walled garden wouldn't have helped there.

<comment> T-hawk Well, garden collapse was one factor among many. It could be argued that Atari had to rush their shoddy Pac-man to market lest a competitor jump in with a clone first. Another factor was the appearance of pornographic games (Rule 34 applied even then) which hurt the field's reputation.

But there were plenty of other management and business causes of the crash too. Atari reportedly produced more ET cartridges than existed 2600 systems, hubristically deciding that ET would drive a wave of system buying. That sort of financial wizardry won't be saved by any amount of ecosystem walls.

I'd say that the openness of the system caused the failure of Atari itself more so than it caused the industrywide crash. Atari couldn't maintain premium game prices and volume against the flood of competition. (If better games weren't available, ET would have sold more in the vacuum.) A similar story played out in the PC market over the next decade: IBM created an open system, then got marginalized out of their own industry in a race to the bottom. But the whole PC industry always thrived.

I also think the crash itself is overblown in latter-day coverage. I was a kid and didn't notice anything at the time; Toys R Us still had shelves full of Atari games right up until the NES caught on. The bankruptcy of invincible titan Atari itself was a big event, but Coleco didn't fold until 1988 and Mattel and Magnavox trucked right on in other fields of business.

So tying all this back to the topic, remember that Apple's interest is Apple's own survivability and profitability. Apple's responsibility is not to maximize the adoption and utility of the mobile phone app market in general. Apple's goal is to capture the biggest slice of the pie for itself, and it perceives that it has the clout to do that by dictating terms. Whether they will go the way of the NES to market domination or the way of IBM's Micro Channel to obscurity is up to the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Both Apple and Google have demonstrated that they want to be the only source of commercial apps for their platform."

Have Google really done this? Isn't there soon to be Playstation app store among others? And you can always download files away from the Market?

<comment><USER5> The example in my mind was Kongregate being removed from the Market. It got back on, but the comments from Kongregate referenced "competing app stores".

<comment><USER6> Kongregate was removed from Google Market, but that does not prevent it from being distributed separately (On Android you can download apps directly from the web and install them, without using the app store).

<comment><USER7> Unless you're on AT&T.

Suddenly I'm sensing a pattern...

<comment><USER8> That's funky. I just downloaded an apk and installed it on my phone.

On, uh, AT&T.

<comment><USER7> So you're using a custom rom or you're rooted. I thought it was obvious I was referring to stock. You can also run whatever you want on an iPhone if you root.

<comment><USER8> Stock 2.2. Not rooted. Settings > Applications > [checked] Unknown sources.

<comment><USER7> Which phones allow this? I'm honestly curious, I thought AT&T had switched that off on all models. Is yours grandfathered in or are they releasing new models with unknown sources enabled?

<comment><USER9> Given his "Stock 2.2" comment, best guess would be the Nexus One with AT&T bands. Since it wasn't sold by AT&T, it doesn't have the APK installation locked down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As bad as this sounds, I think that those who wish to get in bed with Apple deserve what they get. There are plenty of other platforms that can make money, and after my post on the lack HN thread regarding why people don't move over to Android produced few answers. It is also a topic of much discussion on the Readability blog post; a topic the author has yet to address.

The App Store can be very good for those who work with it, but in the same way that using Adsense can be good for those who use it. There are other options; they may not be the industry leaders, but they are viable options and you'd be a fool to turn down a platform with 100 users just because a tough platform with 110 users is better known.

In the same way that some men are attracted to insane girls, it seems that some developers simply cannot get enough of Apple's tough, kinky, anti-trust- bound love.

<comment><USER11> _There are plenty of other platforms that can make money_

List them, please.

Winmo has been a complete failure so far.

Android has shipped a lot of handsets, but the users don't seem to like to pay for apps.

Nokia is dead.

Palm is dead.

The next closest competitor to the Apple App Store is still nothing more than a tiny dot on the horizon. Maybe that will change, but most developers want to get paid TODAY.

<comment><USER10> > Winmo has been a complete failure so far.

I don't expect WP7 to immediately take the market by storm. If anything, Microsoft showed what they do with the Zune; they don't care for market dominance, just a share of that market will do them just fine. WP7 won't be the dominant phone, but I can see it being the new Blackberry and finding a great niche of paying customers.

> Android has shipped a lot of handsets, but the users don't seem to like to > pay for apps.

This is the attitude I cannot understand. People won't pay money for things that don't provide value, regardless of platform. Choosing Apple because "iPhone users pay for stuff" is like opening a McDonalds by a public school because "they've got the money to buy things". The Android market isn't perfect, but it's getting better and better and people that make good apps for Android will likely be rewarded by great sales.

<comment><USER11> _people that make good apps for Android will likely be rewarded by great sales._

Except that it seems most developers who have an iOS app and and Android app report far better sales from the iOS version of their apps.

In some sense you are correct, people will buy things that provide value to them. What is unclear is if the "value" in their Android handsets is the availability of apps, or the greater availability of _free_ apps. People buying iPhones seem to expect to pay for additional apps. It's unclear if people buying Android devices expect to pay for apps, or if they expect it to be FOSS, where the majority of the apps are free. If it's the latter case, then Android may never be a profitable primary distribution source for developers, though it can be potentially monetized in other ways.

<comment><USER10> To my knowledge most developers aren't exactly earning a mint from either platform. There are success stories on each platform, although as the iPhone at one time had more users it seemed only logical to go for that market.

Android is now at a point where the average user couldn't care less about OS having open-source aspects. The reason few people buy apps for Android is because while there are a lot of apps most of them are awful or have free alternatives. This is what separates the iPhone experience from the Android experience, and in my mind this is why people don't spend big on Android, and why people would if the right app came along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A year ago I would have laughed at the final statement that people will dump their iPhones faster than Apple is ready for.

Today, after working with Android for a year, I could care less if I had an Android instead of my iPhone. In fact, I find myself carrying around my development device for various apps and usability reasons.

I'm over angry birds. I'm tired of seeing all the polished over-done games in the app store. I prefer the simple, indie games of Android, I like the personality of the Android Market, I like the browser on my Galaxy, etc, etc.

Side note. My kids do not. They think my Android games are stupid.

<comment><USER13> Despite Android's popularity, people are not buying apps. The google app store is in danger now of getting people relying on free apps, so they may never be willing to buy apps. This is different to iPhone users. Of course, android app store may change as time goes on, and it gets new users, but the majority of apps in the android app store are free.

Also, it is not "I could care less", that makes no sense. It is "I couldn't care less".

<comment><USER14> I believe Google _wants_ the Android Store to be full of free apps...that just happen to be supported by Google ads. Otherwise, Google doesn't get anything out of the Android platform.

<comment><USER15> Other than the 30% share of payment for paid apps in the Google Marketplace...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well said. I've been using the iPhone since September 2007, but if Apple loses the Kindle app and Netflix app, I'll have no qualms about jumping to Android. Strong support from top tier web services companies (Rdio and Amazon come to mind) is my favorite thing about iOS - Apple underestimates how quickly they could lose that pivotal advantage.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't like the new restriction even though Apple obviously is in their good right.

But beneath this there is a deeper concern that is now making me consider choosing the web over learning to develop for iOS: I don't trust Apple. I love my iPhone and iPad, but these frequent and unpredictable changes to the TOS makes it quite a liability for me as a developer. Making a product/startup always involves the what-if-google-does-it risk, but this new what-if-apple- shuts-you-down risk is more disturbing imo.

<comment><USER18> > _"I don't trust Apple."_

You shouldn't trust any platform vendor. If you're too small to get a contract stipulating that they _can't_ pull the rug out from under you, you should start developing only after making a careful calculation of risk/reward.

<comment><USER19> For many many years ISVs made money in "the Microsoft ecosystem".

Yes, sometimes MS pulled the rug out from under them and/or directly competed with them with unfair advantage. But not really that often.

They certainly never "pulled your app from the store". I'm still having a hard time getting my head around that concept and why anyone would invest development resources into that kind of platform.

<comment><USER20> "But not really that often"

Oh, except for every time that someone made a large enough profit (wordperfect, visicalc, Corel Office, Peachtree or Quicken) or made a big enough splash (Netscape/Mozilla, google, more recently mint.com) in their ecosystem.

"pulled your app from the store"

But, they can if you sell on XBox Live Arcade, or Windows Phone Apps Marketplace (especially if you have an open source license for your app that MS doesn't like).

<comment><USER19> Right, we can list a dozen or two Windows products that were possibly competed with unfairly by MS. Over a period of 20 years.

The vast majority of MS Windows software products fail for reasons other than the platform vendor screwing them over intentionally. MS has known from the beginning that the success of Windows was primarily dependent on ISVs developing for it.

The XBox and MS Phone stuff seem like different things entirely. XBox is specifically not intended to be a general-purpose application platform. I can't imagine the MS Phone will ever require more than a free download SDK to develop for it, although this "marketplace" is likely to be a more reviewed ecosystem.

 _especially if you have an open source license for your app that MS doesn't like_

It's not a question of MS not liking it. GPL, especially v3, is designed specifically to prevent binary-only app distribution which is the app store business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is the same sort of thing I've noticed with sites like eBay and Etsy. Particularly the latter - the administration and a certain brand of users act like all glory and power derives from the establishment, and you _need_ them and should be thanking them for their existence. Another group of people feel that the credit goes to the people who fill empty gray templates with content and bring the site to life.

This actually works out to be somewhat similar to politics. Reading forums and blogs, you can observe people's politics in their feelings about companies like this. Conservatives and religious folks often feel you should give respect to the site authority, while liberal people feel the customers deserve more credit and need more power. It's just like unions vs. management.

</comment><comment><USER22> Until we have viable alternatives, it seems rather fruitless to complain about the power that Apple has in terms of dictating App Store policies. I'm a fan of the HTML5 developments, but it doesn't offer anywhere near the level of sophistication available to native apps on iOS. To get developers like myself to abandon the investment we've made in terms of mastering Objective-C and iOS, a web-based alternative must at least offer comparable functionality.

<comment><USER23> Depending on what kinds of apps you write, this may never happen. How long do you think it will take, for example, for something like the Accelerate framework to be available in a usable form in a web api? It's hard enough to get something relatively simple like local storage standardized.

Unfortunately most of the apps that can be realized as web apps are just more of the glorified paperwork UIs I burned out on writing as a web dev in the first place.

<comment><USER24> Oh, if glorified paperwork UIs would be possible on the iPhone's Safari.

Unfortunately they're disabling the freakin' Upload inputs, so file uploads aren't possible without native hooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am currently considering my first smart-phone, and I want really want to go with Apple because I do like the refinement of iOS and the hardware that runs it, but their App Store policies are giving me pause. It seems to me that Apple's greed is getting the better of them.

I really hope that Apple will realize that even if they aren't getting a cut of in-App purchases, these Apps do add desirability to the iOS platform.

</comment><comment><USER26> Apropos RefinedPixel's comment (in the post's page) about webapps, the other day I accidentally found <http://www.apple.com/webapps/>

However, the current 'most recent' entries are dated December 3rd of last year. The small print does say "Apple is providing links to these applications as a courtesy [...]"

<comment><USER5> I remember this from when the iPhone launched, it was actually how they said we could build apps before the App Store existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's part of Apple's thinking that if an app can be satisfactorily built as an HTML5 app, there's no need for it to be in the App Store. If an HTML5 app meets consumers' needs, then there's no need for a native app.

But the crux of this entire debate is whether users will demand iOS versions of applications. Apple thinks they will, and they think they deserve a cut for it.

There are lots of emotional arguments being made right now, but it seems like this is a simple business decision for developers. If a developer doesn't see enough value in iOS (given its development costs), then he shouldn't build an iOS app, end of story.

</comment><comment><USER28> for every dev who leaves the app store there are 100 waiting to join. that's the main problem - you can't pressure apple as long as there are masses of devs willing to play by apple's rules.

<comment><USER29> The level of effort required to create a high-quality professional app is more than many dev teams are capable of. Despite the numbers you hear about 100s of thousands of apps the truly valuable apps are few and far between, Apple squanders those at their peril.

<comment><USER30> While that's true, it's hard to imagine a platform with millions of users willing to pay for apps and shortage of good developers. With the recent events it looks like Apple is mistreating all iOS developers, but in practice I think that most of them really don't have that much to complain about.</comment></comment></comment>


An Instagram Celebrity Shares More Than Just Beautiful Pictures - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dutiee.com/an-instagram-celebrity-shares-more-than-just-beautiful-pictures/

<comment><USER2> Fabulous, love the detailed advise he's given on gaining followers and his photo apps</comment>


Forget Greece: Europe's real problem is Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052005278.html

<comment><USER2> While I don't disagree with some of the author's analysis, and the thought behind some of his solutions, one premise of this article is flawed.

He promotes the notion that: 1) Germany creates wealth better than other countries, and 2) by _saving_ and _investing_ that wealth rather than _consuming_ it, Germany does a disservice to the world and impoverishes its neighbors. [1]

By the same logic, we should applaud billionaires for building mansions and enormous yachts rather than living modest lives and investing in startups and other businesses. And what of all the arguments about the US and other first world countries _consuming_ such a disproportionate share of the world's resources? If we were to consume less, and by necessity save and invest instead, we'd be impoverishing the rest of the world!

Germany is perhaps culpable here -- culpable for making _bad_ investments which enabled wealth destruction. And they're further culpable for bailing out Greece, which perpetuates the problem and supports our world's already out of control situation with respect to moral hazard.

[1] I'm ignoring his point about currencies here, because I don't really disagree with the notion that Germany engaged in a counter-productive vendor- financing scheme on consumer goods. That's the same boat that China's in with the US. What I'm trying to emphasize is that the problem is _who_ they loaned money to and _for what purpose_ , whereas the author seems to imply that any increased German consumption would have been better than increased savings.

[2] The author also seems to think it is misguided to blame the spendthrift politicians in Greece. Whatever you think of the economy of Germany, I can't see what's mistaken about blaming spendthrift politicians.

<comment><USER3> > 1) Germany creates wealth better than other countries

No, his basic argument is that Germany creates wealth better than others in large part because EMU has allowed it to benefit from unnaturally low exchange rates. If it still had the deutschmark, it would be trading at a much higher level, reducing its competitiveness.

I think he's pretty much spot on with his analysis, but who knows what the solution is.

<comment><USER4> Wait, with the strong Deutsche Mark West Germany had trade surpluses all the time.

German's core competitiveness is not based on price. Price has an influence, but countries buying a German (Siemens) gas turbine for a power station don't do it because it is especially price competitive. They do it because of its technical qualities mostly. Same for the High Voltage DC lines that Siemens sells to China. Same for the high-speed trains that Siemens sells to China, Russia, Spain, ...

Siemens HVDC systems in China: [http://www.innovations- report.de/html/berichte/energie_elekt...](http://www.innovations- report.de/html/berichte/energie_elektrotechnik/benchmarks_hvdc_technology_siemens_puts_world_s_800_145973.html)

<comment><USER3> That is indeed a valid counter-argument. I guess you'd have to quantify the proportion of its exports that are price-insensitive to be sure. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a rough idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Nor will they accept that German industry was able to thrive over the past decade because of a common currency and a common monetary policy that, over time, rendered industry in some neighboring countries uncompetitive while generating huge real estate bubbles in others."

I don't really buy it. Germany was strong even before the Euro was invented, and other Eurocountries were already struggling before that. And we see big companies moving out of Germany into cheaper Eurocountries on a regular basis.

I am also not sure I entirely buy that there is a right or wrong way to handle a strong export industry. I think ultimately what causes problems is just wasting money (ie on bureaucracy and "bribes" a ka subventions for shoddy businesses).

</comment><comment><USER6> I've heard the exact opposite point being made about the US: they have a large-ish trade deficit, and quickly increasing debt, but everyone who sells what the US people buy buys US state debt, so everything works out in the end.

As an entertaining thought, try to picture what would happen if Greece, or even the US, would go bankrupt (i.e., default on state bonds).

I like the idea of "restructuring" bonds by asking people to give up a part of the face value against being insured from the default. (This sounds a lot like the scare game, though... if Greece defaults, the non-insured bonds are nothing, and if enough people exchange their bonds, everything works out and the folks who stuck to their non-insured bonds have the higher face value _and_ get their money).

<comment><USER7> > As an entertaining thought, try to picture what would happen if Greece, or > even the US, would go bankrupt (i.e., default on state bonds).

Argentina has done so at least once.

I prefer default to inflation.

With default, either folks stop lending to govt or their lending becomes a donation. Since govts can't be trusted to borrow, either one is an improvement over inflation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Re: public investment in banks: "That strategy worked in the United States, and there's no reason it can't work in Europe."

Isn't it a bit early to say that the strategy worked in the US?

</comment><comment><USER9> I am german and that viewpoint is entirely new to me. Thank you for the link.

<comment><USER10> That it is novel somewhat surprises me. I thought it was commonly known and accepted that it was in large part German banks that were being bailed out when bailing out Greece. Similarly, as I understand it - and have long understood it, since perhaps 2005 or so (I'm Irish) - the property bubble in Ireland was driven by historically low interest rates - only easily possible with an influx of foreign capital denominated in Euro. Inflation in house pricing was so extreme that relying on it became an accepted way of becoming wealthy. Now, in Ireland, lots of people are pointing fingers, blaming politicians, banks, property developers, etc., but the real theft was by the property owning middle class themselves. When people wonder where the money of the boom went, they need only look to people who owned houses.

And another problem with house ownership - especially in English-speaking countries - is that it is seen as politically damaging to enact policies that cause house prices to fall, because it reduces the perceived wealth of the middle class. But this very same dynamic is what causes people to be upset, screaming that teachers and policepeople can no longer afford houses on their wages, ergo wages must rise, first time buyer tax rebates / etc. and other stupid policies that just serve to push up house prices even further.

It's all pretty depressing, and makes one despair somewhat of democracy.

<comment><USER4> The number one lender, by far, to Greece is France, not Germany.

Germany is distant third.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, the numbers I know about indicate that France is owed 66% more than Germany, but that's not very distant. It's also somewhat hard to find a breakdown of debt numbers private and public, owed to entities in other countries.

For example, I understand the lump of debt owed to Switzerland was because of a Greek bank being HQ'd there:

[http://www.read- news.info/financial/switzerland%E2%80%99s-no...](http://www.read- news.info/financial/switzerland%E2%80%99s-non-exposure-to-greece/)

The bank's deposits are backed by Greece; it's now HQ'd in Luxembourg.

Was Switzerland the one you had in mind for second?

<comment><USER4> France is then lending 66% twice as much as Germany to Greece. '66% more' than Germany is significant IMO. So much for the theory that this was largely for bailing out German banks.

Basically France' banks are being bailed out (plus a lot of other countries incl. UK and US).

Germany is not especially exposed to Greece's problem. Germany also provides only 11% of Greece imports (though Germany has 20% of the EU GDP). Greece's problems are home made (lots of weapons imports, large military, corruption, country run by a few families, ...). The decision to spend billions on military ships, submarines, military aircrafts, tanks, etc. is entirely political.

<comment><USER11> Another problem is that tax receipts in Greece are way below what they should be. The Greeks' view is that their government is useless at spending public money, so they view it as their duty to dodge as much tax as possible. One law, for example, allows Greek property owners to avoid paying tax on a building until it is completed - so a lot of property owners don't build the top floor on block of apartments, so it isn't "finished" and therefore nontaxable.

We had a similar problem in Ireland up until the 1980s/90s where dodging tax was practically a national pastime - if you rang up your bank, they would advise you on how to dodge tax! They would encourage customers to set up accounts in the Cayman Islands. Even the _former Irish Prime Minister_ was in on the act:

<http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/ojidojsnmh/>

The key to solving the tax receipts problem is a strong body for collecting tax and heavy penalties for non-compliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, there is an economy which is competitive on the world market and that's a problem.

Sure.

<comment><USER3> Yes but one of the main reasons it is so competitive is that it benefits from an unnaturally low exchange rate. If germany still had the deutschmark it would trade at a much higher level, making the economy less competitive. The european central bank has kept the interest rate low for a long time, benefiting mainly the german economy. Other smaller european economies were left with interest rates that were much to low. This resulted in a flood of cheap credit, leading for exmaple to a housing boom and subsequent bust in Spain/Ireland.

<comment><USER12> Proof? In its years of existence the German Mark never reached parity with the US dollar.

On the contrary, switching to the stronger Euro made Germany's exports less competitive, not more, outside of the EU.

<comment><USER13> Not quite a fair comparison, as the DEM was exchanged to be ~0.5 EUR when the Euro was first introduced. Thus the DEM reaching US parity would have been equivalent to 1EUR being 2USD, which has yet to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh, no! Not again!</comment>


Convolutional Neural Networks, Explained - <AUTHOR> https://ayearofai.com/rohan-lenny-2-convolutional-neural-networks-5f4cd480a60b#.c6b8ipmdn <comment><USER2> Great article and simple to understand! Nice job guys</comment>


Fully-Fledged Guide on Ways to Protect Your Data Online - <AUTHOR> https://utopia.fans/privacy/fully-fledged-guide-on-ways-to-protect-your-data-online/ <comment><AUTHOR> Learn how to protect your data!</comment>


Ask HN: What would you like this robot to do? - <AUTHOR>

I have a hunch that the time is right for a robotics revolution (only six years after Bill Gates thought so), and rather than watching it pass me by, I intend to start it. I want to build the company that puts a robot in every home, and I'd like Hacker News to help me find the path to that goal. By way of introduction, I'm an Australian robotics post-doc currently designing and implementing systems to control fleets of mining robots for Rio Tinto.
Phase one of my plan is to build a robot with the following combination of technologies: a Kinect, a laser-projector, an omni-directional mobile platform, and a permanent internet connection. It explicitly does not have any manipulators because I don't believe the tech is suitable or cheap enough for consumers yet. Likewise legs, anthropomorphism, and the idea of robot-as-household-slave. Targeting a price point and market similar to a high-end laptop, I want to ensure the tech is rock solid, sufficiently cheap, and - in combination - becomes a platform technology for subsequent ideas.
The Kinect lets us build maps and localise using SLAM, perform face-tracking and recognition using the camera, and enables voice control using the microphone. The projector lets us draw on any surface (laser projectors are focus-less), and the omni-directional platform lets us keep an image in a stable position while moving the robot elsewhere. The permanent internet connection let us farm out computationally intensive tasks (like learning, inference, and map correction) to the cloud, interact with other internet connected devices in the home, and to source exteroceptive sensory data like news, weather, remote commands, etc. There's a few other features that are less interesting but necessary, like a ring of IR sensors on the base for short-range obstacle avoidance, a pan-tilt head for the projector that lets us point it somewhere different to the Kinect, and batteries sufficient for at least two hours of full activity. To build a business starting from this product, it will eventually require an app store that offers new applications and tasks, as well as new drivers to control or receive information from additional devices.
Ultimately, I envisage this and subsequent robots as the heart of an interconnected home. Like a butler with no arms, but who uses the Force to control all your other electronic devices. (OK, that analogy could use some work...)
My question to HN is - what would you like this robot to do?
Some examples to get the ball rolling: * Project a ticker-tape of HN headlines on your wall. * Show previews of the shows on other channels onto the space around your TV. * Respond to queries such as "Is Sophie in the Lounge Room?" - both in person, and remotely via the web. * Connect to wifi-enabled lighting and turn it off when people leave the room. * Monitor and log resident's locations and activities over time, ultimately to enable applications such as optimising heating/cooling in each room. * Verbally describe your agenda for the day. * Send you an SMS/email if someone enters your home during the day, with video. * Animate a school of fish swimming across your walls, avoiding obstacles such as pictures and doorways. * Using the SLAM map, calculate the dimensions of the house, carpeted area, etc.
As for the next steps, I'm posting this question because the biggest risk factor right now is "does anyone want this?" I work with a lot of talented people, many of them wanting to work on cool consumer technologies such as this, but most too risk adverse to quit their salaries and dive in to a pre-revenue startup. I need to find some partners - preferably two; one hardware, one a better programmer than me - and a mentor who's built a product company before. I've got leads in both directions, but nothing solid at this point. Assuming there's some interest in the concept (and prior to this question, my chats at networking events have all been enthusiastic, but there's a huge selection bias there, and here for that matter) I'm going to run a hackathon with a select few workmates and students on my poaching list. We'll start by building the sensor/projector part, because our laboratory already has the perfect omni-directional platform, and we can probably license that tech. Then, with something to show off, I'll start pitching for grants and investment. <comment><USER2> Kinect, a laser-projector, an omni-directional mobile platform...

It can take the plans for the Death Star from the princess to Obi Wan. I'd buy it just to reenact this scene at cons. (As long as I was one of the first to have one, of course)

BTW: Here was my attempt at building something like what you are describing from a few years ago. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMZkd8YMgzw>

From what I learned building that, my advice is this. Don't ask us what we want the bot to do, make it open enough that we just _show_ you what we'll do. You need a community, not a "product". Building an entire mobility platform just so I could program a neat asterisk app was a chore I would have gladly paid for. I want to code, not solder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice example application... :-)

Thanks for posting the video too, looks like a fun project. I totally get what you're saying, and although I'd love to pull off Steve Jobs' ability to make things people didn't know they wanted, I'd like to at least have some market validation before I start. Even if I'm convinced this is a cool platform, I'm going to have to convince funding sources too, and they'll be easier to convince if I can point at willing customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think manipulators are key to the vast majority of truly useful robotic applications.

I'd be very interested to know why you think they are so difficult. Why would controlling arms be so march harder than controlling a self-driving car in San Francisco.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its not so much that I think they're difficult (although, they really are!), rather that they dramatically increase the computational power required for planning, the sensing required for pose estimation and object tracking, etc. Take Willow Garage's PR2 for example, it's a great robot that can do mobile manipulation, but there's no way a consumer is going to pay $285k (or $400k for the two-arm version).

<comment><USER3> But why does it need to cost $400K ?

Processor cores aren't that expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but they increase heat, energy use, weight, etc. Then you need more batteries, better cooling, bigger motors to carry the weight, etc. To do _robust_ pose estimation of arbitrary objects (cups, books, shirts, crumpled up pieces of really important paper, etc) is an unsolved problem, and current solutions require very expensive sensors. In particular, to accurately grab something requires extremely good localisation, which means you need a truly robust SLAM implementation, or more likely, a better IMU. Getting 2-5X better in IMU terms means roughly two orders of magnitude in price.

I absolutely want to build a mobile manipulator robot one day, but I'm 99.9% convinced that it shouldn't be the first thing I build.

<comment><USER3> So it seems it breaks down into 2 distinct issues :

\- cost of the arm mechanics

\- expensive sensors because the algorithms aren't yet good enough to do what's needed with cheap sensors

I don't know much about the sensor issues but I'm unaware of any fundamental reason why an arm which basically consists of some metal supports, joints and a handful of smallish motors should cost more than a new car.

As for the algorithm issues - humans seem to be able to make do with 2 eyes which seem about equivalent to a pair of cameras which aren't expensive at all. I take that as a proof of principle that the problem is solvable. Looking at how much progress has been made on robotic cars since the first DARPA challenge my bet is that a well focused effort could bring us close to a practical CV based solution within a couple of years.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the cost of a Barrett WAM arm (for example, they're popular in industry and research) is the controllers and motors. In order to get sufficient precision for pick and place you either move very slowly, or fast with extremely high gains. High gains mean overshoot unless you can also run the control system at warp speed. All that combined means the solution is non- trivial, and the few companies that have solved it can sell it at the sorts of prices we quoted.

As for computer vision, sure, it's _possible_. But an RGBD camera (e.g. Kinect) will be better. Condensing the explanation, these sensors project a grid of near-IR light using a laser, then use an IR sensitive camera to pick up the grid, noting that it is distorted by obstacles in the environment. These distortions can be used to determine the distance to corners in the grid. A normal RGB camera picks up colour, and putting it all together we get a 3D coloured image from a single frame. You cannot do that with a single camera in a single frame. You can do it with two cameras, but arguably its harder and more expensive.

<comment><USER3> I agree that using a Kinect is probably a good early approach. 3D CV certainly isn't easy. If I were developing a product though I'd want to be careful about being dependent on one company's technology. I'm not sure how easy it would be to replicate a Kinect like device (whether for legal or technical reasons) and my impression is that high speed laser scanners are very expensive.

If you'd like to continue this discussion my e-mail address is in my HN profile. I too am very interested in developing a robotics product. One of the things I'm really trying to understand is what exactly makes these arms so expensive and what, if anything can be done about it. You mentioned motors and controllers. I wonder which one drives the cost. With motors the problem might be materials and manufacturing cost, if its the controllers then I think the cost would be more in non-recurrent engineering (because electronics manufacturing usually isn't very expensive) and that can be minimized if you have a large market.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Read Github.com code on a widescreen - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tmlee/wider_github

<comment><USER2> There's got to be a better way to do this since the whole class .repository- sidebar gets overflown over.

Collapse .repository-sidebar with a button to a right bar that only has the icons and floats right unless mouse is over it, change .only-with-full-nav to be similarly hidden unless mouse is in that area, voila.

On other thought - perhaps the 980px container is just right for reading code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. There's definitely room for improvement like you just described there, which i'm open to adding them. =)

I would agree, it's not really a good idea to have code that stretches too much hence i guess why the 980px is probably just right. However there're times where this could get handy, instead of scrolling back and forth.</comment></comment>


Are any startups looking for a generalist - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering do startups look to bring a person on to their team that can handle the things some people are not able or do not wont to do such as phone calls, research, speaking to people on behalf on the startup to get feedback, etc. I'm a very quick learner and I'm great at figuring out things and getting my way.<p>If anyone would like to contact me to ask more you can email me firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> If English is not your first language stating as much will keep potential employers from being put off by grammar/spelling mistakes.

I would suggest looking in the "jobs" section.

If stated differently, your question would make a good general discussion about the value of generalists in startups. I happen to think they are valuable and necessary because they require less babysitting and have, by definition, broader experience and are proven adapters.

Specialists are great if they specialize in your area of innovation. Everyone else should be a generalist.</comment>


How Did the Game Genie Work? - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/article/12793/how-did-game-genie-work

<comment><USER2> NES Game Genie Technical Notes - [http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/gamegenie.html](http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/gamegenie.html)</comment>


Reverse engineering a superior chinese product - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/01/01/reverse-engineering-a-superior-chinese-product/

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8807651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8807651)</comment>


Free this weekend - Growth Hacking Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacking-Becoming-Hacker-ebook/dp/B00EJNQIWS/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-10&qid=1376687003

<comment><USER2> Nice! Does Amazon regularly offer free eBooks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, Kindle promotion just for the weekend!</comment></comment>


Xobni goes old-school with boxed software - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/16/xobni-goes-back-in-time-with-boxed-software

<comment><USER2> Anybody here using it?</comment>