Tendermint – The completely decentralized consensus engine - <AUTHOR> http://tendermint.com/ <comment><USER2> The obvious question for anything that claims to solve Byzantine consensus is: what about Sybil attacks? If you rely on 2/3 of all nodes to be honest, but you open up the network for anyone to join, what stops me from creating a million fake "nodes" and outvoting everyone else?

So far I've only skimmed the white paper, but I didn't see any response to this problem. (If the answer is "good guys can make lots of fake nodes too" then you're creating a computational arms race that will inevitably lead to just as much wasted effort as proof-of-work.)

There's also the minor practical issue that every node has to do an amount of computation and network traffic that's linear in the total number of _other_ nodes, meaning the total workload grows quadratically with the size of the network.

<comment><USER2> One more question/critique:

Section 6.5 purports to give a game-theoretic justification for why a node should include as many valid signatures from its peers when proposing a block, for fear of retaliation. But nothing stops me from dividing my voting share among, say, a thousand nodes which appear to be unrelated.

If one of those nodes decides to "defect" (steal a larger-than-intended share of fees by excluding some signatures) then the expected time before it is selected again can be made arbitrarily large, by making the node's voting share arbitrarily small. If that expected time is significantly larger than the unbonding period, then there's no way to retaliate, is there? It can just unbond and then transfer its coins to a "new" node.

EDIT: I originally typo'd "arbitrarily large" instead of "arbitrarily small" above, but hopefully the meaning was clear.

<comment> zack-bitcoin If the blockmaker excludes signatures, then a larger portion of the fees get burned, and the blockmaker gets a smaller reward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi HackerNews!

We're using TM consensus to create something more interesting than just a crypto "currency", so the website and github hasn't been updated in a while. But the algorithm is still sound (as far as we know) and we're looking forward to launching soon!

</comment><comment><USER4> I have to agree with the whitepaper, "Tendermint is awesome. The future is now." It seems like a marked improvement over proof-of-work style blockchains.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this another fork of Ripple?

[https://wiki.ripple.com/Forks](https://wiki.ripple.com/Forks)

<comment><USER6> No, it's a completely different algorithm based on proof of stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a member of ConsensusResearch group [https://github.com/ConsensusResearch](https://github.com/ConsensusResearch) . We made some simulation tools around (Nxt-like) proof-of-stake consensus algo & published some papers around them.

One the possible improvements to proof-of-stake we're willing to investigate now is proof-of-stake + proof of-activity hybrid, where proof-of-activity is implemented like noted in PoW+PoA paper [http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf). From my personal point of view TenderMint is also about kinda PoS+PoA hybrid but implemented in another way. Do you Tendermint folks have simulation tools or may be even stricter models around your consensus algo to play with?

<comment><USER8> Interesting, at Bitsapphire we've been working on PBFT and economic simulations [https://github.com/bitsapphire/hyperledger- simulation](https://github.com/bitsapphire/hyperledger-simulation).

What's the best way to get in touch? Would love to work together on some things.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. What "hyperledger" means though?

My mail is kushtech [at] yahoo [dot] com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" We believe that the future is comprised of many interconnected-but- sovereign blockchains that serve different purposes for a variety of communities."_

They're building a securities market?

<comment><USER3> We're building the groundwork for it, and may tackle the securities market or partner up but for now our focus is on building out the foundation -- proper consensus logic and great block chain tooling.

<comment><USER9> Securities markets have existed on the internet since 1971, and apparently don't need consensus logic and block chain tooling to work, so I doubt the technical details will be the challenging part. Perhaps consulting with the federal regulatory bodies, or the billion-dollar gorillas in the room, might help ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am bit skeptical to this deposit method.

Large stock can easily control perhaps 10% of all coins. I think that might be enough to cause fork. Reward is huge, risk low (declare hack and go bankrupt).

<comment><USER3> A fork in general results in evidence of double signing by at least 1/3 of the voting power, so fork attacks (and thus double-spend attacks) are expensive to launch (depending on the market cap and existing owners of the blockchain). After slashing the double signers, the remaining validators can regroup as in a hard-fork and carry on.

It would be as if launching a double-spend attack in Bitcoin resulted in the destruction of the attacker's mining equipment (and whatever other fixed cost investments that were spent in setting up the mining equipment). This isn't actually possible with mining because mining power is anonymous. Pubkey identities and traditional quorum-based byzantine consensus allows for this kind of antifragility that Bitcoin cannot have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least the claims about Bitcoin sound like bullshit

"Security difficult to quantify — depends on extrinsic factors"

Nope, the security is very easy to quantify in Bitcoin - you know that there is certain amount of processing power behind a single block. As your transaction goes into the blockchain, you can be pretty damn sure that won't be reversed, once enough computing power is behind it.

"Blockchain forks often — difficult to build applications upon"

Nope, bitcoin blockchain forks very rarely. Where is this claim pulled from?

<comment><USER6> _in Bitcoin you know that there is certain amount of processing power behind a single block_

But how much did that processing cost in BTC? People come up with widely varying estimates. Cost of security matters because ultimately you want to denominate risk in the same currency that you're transacting.

 _Blockchain forks often_

There are minor forks (usually called orphans) every few days: [https://blockchain.info/charts/n-orphaned- blocks?timespan=30...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-orphaned- blocks?timespan=30days) Orphaning requires Bitcoin software to include complex chain reorganization code; a blockchain where orphans are very rare could omit such code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can anybody elaborate on the destruction of coins? Sounds dangerous...

"If the validator causes the blockchain to fork while its coins are locked in bond, all of its coins are destroyed. This means that as long as you sync your blockchain with the network periodically you never have to trust a central checkpoint."

<comment><USER6> Only coins owned by attempted cheaters get destroyed.

<comment><USER13> What about accidental cheaters?

<comment><USER6> I don't know how you'd accidentally sign two conflicting forks at the same block height, but it would suck to lose your whole stake due to such a bug.

<comment><USER14> I think something like that would happen about an order of magnitude less often than accidentally reusing k values or publishing your private key to the internet :)

<comment><USER13> Why, faulty software could make it easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Critique follows

>They propose a modification to the Bitcoin protocol such that it can tolerate colluding groups that control up to 1/4 of the mining power – less than the previously assumed bound of 1/2 of Byzantine mining power which requires an honest mining majority that follows the prescribed protocol.

Selfish mining is tolerable but unideal. It is a bit misleading to claim that 25% block withholding attacks are as critical as 51% attacks.

>Users keep an account in the system, where the user's account is identified by the user's public key or address.

Promoting address reuse isn't a good idea.

>When a validator signs duplicitously, a short evidence transaction can be generated by anyone with the two conflicting commit-vote signatures

The assumption that an attacker will tell you he is attacking isn't a very strong one.

>A user can avoid long-range attacks by syncing their blockchain periodically within the bounds of the unbonding period.

This security assumption means means that no one can safely join the network and perform an initial sync. It isn't explained how they prevent long range attacks, but it can be assumed that they do it through disallowing reorgs.

Disallowing reorgs allows another consensus breaking attack. The entire purpose of reorgs is to maintain consensus, so if an attacker can create a blockchain of length bond-period, they can trick you so you don't achieve consensus with the "main" blockchain.

Another thing that is worrying about this whole idea is that 2/3 of validators must come to consensus on what block to use. If you choose a block and broadcast your signature, you cannot sign again. So how do the validators solve the Byzantine Generals Problem? How do they determine which block they will sign? They could go with the first block they see, but that leaves you open to sybil attackers running many nodes and sending validators different blocks in order to trick them into splitting their vote. These are the fundamental problems that consensus systems are meant to solve, consensus systems shouldn't have to have a 2nd consensus system to support itself.

>There are three types of votes: a prevote, a precommit and a commit

It seems the paper is attempting to solve the previously mentioned problem, however the most fundamental explanation for the problem with this is explained by Byzantine Generals Problem. The problem essentially involves you sending a message of "I'm ready to attack" back and forth, but because you cannot know they received the message, you cannot attack. If they reply with a "okay, we got the message" message, they don't know that you received the message, so they don't know whether to attack. Whether there is 1 back and forth, 3 as in a "prevote to attack", a "precommit to attack" and a "commit to attack", or 100 back and forths, you aren't achieving consensus, you're skirting the issue.

The next few sections explain the mechanism, but not how it actually solves Byzantine Generals Problem. with additonal assumptions based on things that require consensus including "If there are less than 1/3 in Byzantine voting power and at least one good validator decides on a block B, then no good validator will decide on any block other than B"

>Each round has a designated proposer chosen in round-robin fashion such that validators are chosen with frequency in proportion to their voting power

If the pseudo-random seed for the next round validators is information that can be decided by "previous" (or not so previous) validators, a validator can choose themselves. With a high number of validators, it may take a few thousand blocks for, say, a 3% stakeholder to randomly be selected for a sufficient number of votes to choose the next seed, but once they have ground[1] their first block and made themselves a majority of validators, they can repeat over and over and control the blockchain.

> Say that some good validators locked on block B and round R, and some good > validators locked on block B0 at round R0, where R < R0. In this case the > proof-of-lock from R0 included in a proposal by a good validator will > eventually unlock those validators locked on R allowing the consensus > process to continue.

This "solution" helps prevent 33% deadlocks, I agree, however now you can seed your stakegrinding attack with an incredibly small validator/voter %. Depending on the parameters of the system, you may only need to become a validator once to control the entire blockchain forever.

The system of voters has somewhat _obscured_ it, but stake grinding[1] is still a major problem, in fact, it is probably the simplest and cheapest attack vector on the system defined in this paper.

In conclusion, this system has severe sybil problems, consensus problems, centralizations problems (in that one person could control the entire blockchain cheaply), structure problems (address reuse) and usability/security assumption problems (no one can safely sync with the network after the first bonding period is up?).

[1]Stake grinding is the process of changing data in a block to create a large number of new seeds (sometimes billions or trillions) until the seed designates you as the "winner", or in this case majority of validators.

<comment> zack-bitcoin I agree with you that the random number generator in tendermint isn't good enough. I am going to add one I have put in a different cryptocurrency before. Each validator gives the hash of a secret, and later gives their secret. All the secrets are XORed to find the random seed.

Tendermint consensus is based off the solution to byzantine generals for partial synchronicity explained in this paper: [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/tds/papers/Lynch/jacm88.pdf](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/tds/papers/Lynch/jacm88.pdf)

<comment><USER15> >I agree with you that the random number generator in tendermint isn't good enough. I am going to add one I have put in a different cryptocurrency before. Each validator gives the hash of a secret, and later gives their secret. All the secrets are XORed to find the random seed.

Tendermint doesn't have a random number generator at all. You cannot have consensus on random numbers, or else _they wouldn 't be random_. It is a fundamental problem that you are determining the next blocks winner based on numbers that can be influenced by previous winners.

<comment> zack-bitcoin 2 examples of multiparty games of choosing random numbers: 1) You and I each write either "1" or "0" onto a piece of paper, and simultaneously reveal to each other.

If the sum is even, I win. If the sum is odd, you win.

This simple 2-person game randomly generates 1 bit. It can be extended to arbitrary numbers of people by replacing addition with XOR.

2) N people each vote either "0" or "1". They reveal votes simultaneous. The minority participants are rewarded. The median of the votes is the next random bit.

I prefer (1) over (2).

<comment><USER15> Yeah, these work great out of consensus systems. Please consider that you're working on a consensus system though.

"Simultaneous" has no meaning. There are no means of instant communication, there is latency. There also is no _proof_ of time without a consensus system.

So what is the proof that I committed my 0 or 1 value before they revealed? Well you could trust a central authority to maintain that timestamping, or you could even use Bitcoin for your timestamping. In fact, your PoS system could probably work if it piggy backed on Bitcoin completely.

If that's too abstract for you, consider that I say I'm ready to commit, everyone sends me their commits, I construct a block with all their commits and a ton of other possible commits and then once I have created a seed that allows me to win and control the network permenantly.

<comment> zack-bitcoin After reflecting more on the difficulties of a random number generator on a consensus system, we decided to use round robin method to choose the next leader from the validators.

Thank you for the important issues you raised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _If the validator causes the blockchain to fork while its coins are locked in bond, all of its coins are destroyed. This means that as long as you sync your blockchain with the network periodically you never have to trust a central checkpoint._

This sounds very bogus. I'd like to see some algorithm details. Most likely it's just an excuse for another pyramid scheme.

</comment><comment><USER17> say you want to create a cryptocurrency but you want miners spending their electricity and computing power on something productive, or some transferrable state which can be consumed by another crowd of people.

what would it take and how would you go about building it? This seems like what tendermint is doing?</comment>


Show HN: pressureNET 3.1, now with more weather - <AUTHOR> http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork&3.1monday

<comment><AUTHOR> We just launched pressureNET 3.1 this weekend and started crowdsourcing weather conditions along with the atmospheric pressure measurements we were already collecting. We're seeing 10,000 barometer measurements per hour, and about 1 weather condition per minute.

Here's our launch blog post: [http://www.cumulonimbus.ca/announcing- pressurenet-3-1-now-wi...](http://www.cumulonimbus.ca/announcing- pressurenet-3-1-now-with-more-weather/)

Our plan is to dramatically increase the data inputs to existing weather models, as well as try building entirely new systems of weather forecasting. We're going to have a really incredible ability to predict thunderstorm formation with our high resolution view on atmospheric pressure.

We have a live data visualization / graphing tool on our main pressureNET site at <http://pressurenet.cumulonimbus.ca>

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been wondering this since last time I saw your app, but I wasn't sure how to ask it:

If I understand correctly, you use barometric pressure reported by peoples' phones to attempt to predict weather. This makes sense to me. How do you handle changes in barometric pressure due to changes in altitude. If I work in a tall office building, wouldn't the app see a change in barometric pressure when I go up the elevator? Is this small enough that it doesn't matter, or do you handle it in some way?

Anyway, the app looks great - I think I'll install it again to play around with. Keep up the good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment!

> How do you handle changes in barometric pressure due to changes in altitude. > If I work in a tall office building, wouldn't the app see a change in > barometric pressure when I go up the elevator? Is this small enough that it > doesn't matter, or do you handle it in some way?

These are excellent questions. The data is extremely noisy due to exactly the reasons you suggest. At near-sea-level, an 8 meter altitude change results in a 1mbar change. So the effect is very significant and causes noise. There are some simple methods to weed out the noise: some changes are obviously too fast to be meteorological in nature, so those can be discarded.

Cumulonimbus itself is not working to solve this problem right now, but Cliff Mass and his lab are. We've livestreaming our data to them and they are currently working on quality control algorithms. They are starting by looking for phones that aren't moving, using the GPS and accuracy information. From there they will work on assimilation and then begin forecasting.

Quality control and altitude correction is indeed important for our data to be properly used in meteorological systems, but currently we're seeing a simpler way to do quick analysis. The density of the network is getting pretty good in cities (though we're seriously lacking in more rural areas and we'll have to pick that up), which means that single data-point altitude changes are very obvious compared to the rest of the nearby points.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the fast response! It's pretty amazing to see the map, and see how many people are contributing data to this.

In terms of the data that is submitted:

1) Is my location data submitted, and if so, how accurate is it?

2) Is this data anonymized in some way (are all contributions linked to a single person - because this would basically give you my location data)?

3) The public sharing option is a little bit confusing - does this share with PressureNET, researchers, and forecasters in addition to the public?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Yes, your location is submitted. We just started collecting location accuracy information with this release a couple of days ago. So I'm not sure yet exactly how accurate this is, but we'll be learning about that in the coming days and weeks.

2) For the map view in the app and for our public site, yes the data is anonymized. However, we do keep a unique ID in the database. This is required in order to calibrate the sensors, filter out noise and have good quality control.

3) I forgot to add better descriptions / Help screen to this update. Sorry about the confusion. The Public option is not in use yet, but will be soon when we finish our livestream API. The idea is that yes, the data will then be available to us at Cumulonimbus, to researchers and forecasters, and also to the public at large. For the Public API, we do plan to anonymize the data but we haven't decided exactly how yet (hence it's not available yet).

Thanks for your questions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I keep pressureNET running in the background on my phone. I don't get much use out of the app itself -- barometric pressures on a map aren't that useful to me, but I like contributing to the project.

I worked with the developer(s) on previous releases with custom builds and I can confirm that battery life is very respectable and that this app does not consume crazy resources. On my Galaxy Note II w/ Android 4.1.*, when my screen gobbles about 30% of my battery, pressureNET sits around 2%.

Question for the developer: Will my alpha .apk distributed to me via email automatically update to 3.1+, or do I need to remove it and jump back into the official release channel?

<comment><USER4> Maybe you live in a bubble where you never book alirline tickets and medical insurance, then use those airline tickets to go abroad and then use the medical insurance when you hurt yourself.. You are the sterotype american silicon valley bubble boy.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the most profitable way to self-publish e-books? - <AUTHOR> With services like Lulu taking a cut of almost 50% for what is basically a hosted shop with decent SEO that sends e-books upon purchase, there must be services where I can upload a .pdf, .epub and similar documents for a (much) better price.
Additionally, it would be preferable with a means of applying an ID and/or purchaser's name to one of the book's first or last pages to discourage people from throwing up the e-book on a sharing service - while maintaining the incentive to share with people whom you trust.
I recall 37signals hosting one of their e-books themselves and selling it on Lulu, so maybe there is something to be learnt for setting up the service yourself.
With such a burgeoning self-publishing revolution, there must be someone who offers this service. <comment><USER2> eBooks are my area.

1) Piracy is going to happen no matter what, so stop losing sleep over it. Count on the fact people _will pay_ for books and concentrate on _selling_ them.

2) Every eBook DRM has been cracked. But most who do that do so in order to be able to format shift. Get an eBook at $9.99 from Kindle Store vs $$ more from Sony or Kobo, then strip DRM and use Calibre to reformat to ePub for a Sony Reader or Nook.

3) As others have already pointed out, there's B&N's nascent PubIt! service. What that has going against it is that B&N uses a mutant form of the DRM that was common for ePub until B&N stuck its nose in. B&N books are stuck on Nooks for the average person (similar to Kindle) who doesn't want to learn how to DRM strip. You limit your market.

4) Kindle is THE monster. It's where the majority of eBook sales take place. If you know HTML, you can create your own eBook. If you need help, get Tallent's book: <http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/self-publishing-read/>

5) I'd stay away from Smashwords & Scribd. The first has a format meatgrinder that will drive you insane for trying to make things look good. The second has had that whole Archiving "error" marring its rep.

6) Make sure you have an ISBN so you control your metadata.

Any other questions?

<comment><USER3> _6) Make sure you have an ISBN so you control your metadata._

Could you go into more detail? I understand what an ISBN is, but why is it important for self publishing ebooks?

<comment><USER2> Answering several questions in one reply:

There are no shelves people can browse to stumble on your eBook, so owning your metadata for discovery and SEO is vital. Don't let someone assign one. They then own the metadata and can bork you, intentionally or accidentally.

I think outside the US, ISBNs are free or low cost. Here, RR Bowker has a monopoly and prices them unreasonably high (to be fair to them, they are used to dealing with businesses, not writers). <http://www.bowker.com/index.php/supportfaq-isbn>

No one will want to read your book, so don't push it on them with emails asking them to review it. Everyone already has a huge backlog.

I don't know what your subject matter is, so what Tucker Max just wrote about might not apply, but some might: <http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/28/tucker-max/>

Don't join social reading sites and befriend people only to pimp your book. People _hate_ that.

There are really only two formats for eBooks: Kindle format and ePub. Both are based on HTML, more or less. PDFs are another matter and are suited best for desktop, notebook, and possibly tablet (iPad) reading, but aren't considered eBooks per se. For PDFs, it's also good to customize them for eInk devices so people don't have to do reflow. See Sony's guide here, but there are now eInk devices with 5" screens, so keep that in mind too.

Direct PDF link: [http://www.sonystyle.com/wcsstore/SonyStyleStorefrontAssetSt...](http://www.sonystyle.com/wcsstore/SonyStyleStorefrontAssetStore/pdf/reader_createPDF.pdf)

Check out also Self Pub Review and Publetariat.

<http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/> <http://www.publetariat.com/>

Stay away from all the "services" that charge. I think HN readers have the skills to do all that themselves -- and better.

This all I can think of at the moment. I'm battling a cold and am groggy. Hope it helps.

<comment><USER4> "PDFs are another matter and are suited best for desktop, notebook, and possibly tablet (iPad) reading, but aren't considered eBooks per se."

If you publish poetry, you wouldn't want the text to reflow. You want it to stay exactly where it is. Just give it a 3:4 format (1:1,35) at eg. A4 paper size or larger, have it on screen in eg. an iPad size, and you will have a book that looks spectacular - and in 5 years too. And you can even have a cover on your book...

<comment><USER2> Oh, poetry is a whole other issue with controversies of its own due to reflow. I'm not going there. Not my area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First off, why limit yourself to only publishing electronically? You'll have a much larger audience if you offer paperback.

A few other options:

<http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/books.aspx>

<http://publishing.booklocker.com/>

<http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home>

Or for amazon, email firstname.lastname@example.com or one of the several how-tos. This might be outdated: [http://patdoyle.com/internetbusiness/publish-an- ebook-in-ama...](http://patdoyle.com/internetbusiness/publish-an-ebook-in- amazons-kindle-book-store/)

Then drum up more sales in facebook, posting info and links in forums and mailing lists, etc.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, most people don't care about paperback if they can get it in PDF (granted my books have been technical in nature).

If they discover it online, they probably don't mind reading it on their computers. If he's planning on doing some marketing in traditional channels, then you're right. It just depends on who he's targeting.

<comment><USER7> We cannot neglect the masses who like the feel of a paperback, who will read it on the airplane, on the bus, or on the pot.

On the technical book side, I have continued to see a market for people who want their own hardcopy of SICP, TAOCP, Feynman's physics books, and other greats.

<comment><USER8> I read my ebooks in all those places.

<comment><USER7> Me too. How representative are we of the population?

<comment><USER8> Maybe not very. I can say that I see plenty of people with ebook readers on the bus, subway, and commuter rail. 'Course, I work in Cambridge (MA), which I'm sure skews things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Learn it from the masters: <http://www.johntreed.com/HTWP.html>

He maks his money by self publishing Real Estate newsletters, which are information dense and there is a niche market for that kind of stuff.

He has a lot of sensible tips on self publishing.

</comment><comment><USER10> are you sure you can even sell the book? If I were you I wouldn't care about the commission just yet...publish it on the most popular service....see if anyone actually bothers to buy it...then if you see a ton of sales start looking for better alternatives

</comment><comment><USER11> I did an ebook earlier this year and the whole post-creative process was just horrible. I did self-publishing and trying to work around the various formats was just so not worth it. I had planned on doing several books along the same lines but, after dealing with how to make it look good on the Kindle, in PDF, on the Nook, etc, it just wasn't worth my time to write the other books.

<comment><USER12> Did you try Calibre?

<comment><USER11> I can't remember - this was March/April and, TBH, my memory is fuzzy now :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Additionally, it would be preferable with a means of applying an ID and/or purchaser's name to one of the book's first or last pages to discourage people from throwing up the e-book on a sharing service_

\- I could just remove the first/last page.

\- I could overwrite the ID/info

\- I could run the PDF through OCR software to produce a new untagged PDF.

Unfortunately, ebooks and piracy go together like bread and butter. PDF is a _portable_ document format and epub is just text. Your best bet is just to make it as pain-free to purchase as possible.

<comment><USER4> Besides, why shouldn't I be able to give away my book or re-sell it?! This bullshit about paying for a book is really just the borrowing price... just new techno babble to go with the copyright disputes.

I want to re-sell any ebook I don't want to own anymore. And I am not going to just dump it without trying to find another home for it.

How do we go about doing that - technically, I mean - never mind that "they" don't want you doing that?

I seem to remember reading something about an English service, which somehow made book swopping possible... ? Anyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are almost certainly other services out there, but the advantage of Lulu is that you have a much wider audience. Sure, 50% is high, but it's better to have 50% of something than 20% of nothing.

As an alternative, you might want to consider finding a niche online retailer, i.e. one that only sells certain kinds of books. These can have a loyal customer base. But I wouldn't know if they're any cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER15> I believe Amazon offer up to 70% through Amazon Digital Text Publishing:

<https://dtp.amazon.com/>

[http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?e...](http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=453)

Although that is also "basically a hosted shop with decent SEO that sends e-books upon purchase", I guess ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> I beta tested Pulley - <http://pulleyapp.com/> Quite good.. They just officially launched in Oct 2010... For $6, you get 100 MB storage, Unlimited orders, Unlimited bandwidth and 25 digital products to sell. I think it's quite alright.

</comment><comment><USER17> The most profitable way would be to write, design, market, proofread, build the website and integrate payment etc etc yourself. I've been doing some research, and it seems that the average author is content with low (compared to the profit) royalties as long as they only have to deal with writing the damn thing. There are ebook markets out there but a lot of them are having trouble gaining momentum as a go-to location for books. This is a chicken and egg problem, and as more authors offer their books as ebooks, this will get better and hopefully a number of markets will emerge.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're worried about piracy and high fees, why not create an online course instead of pdf e-books.

If it's an how-to book and not a work of fiction, you don't want to create a pdf e-book anyway. Here's why:

* Low perceived value. People know how to create pdf e-books. Just choose 'Save As' in MS Word. So it has a low perceived value. Much lower than the $13 real book you can buy from Amazon. This means you cannot charge a high price for your pdf e-book.

* They're static. Once they're out there, they're out there. You cannot add stuff, correct material or fix typos.

* As you mentioned, they're (way) too easy targets for piracy.

* Lots of people don't want to read anymore. They want to watch videos instead. So might as well add some video.

* No analytics. Which chapter is most popular? You will never know.

* No interaction. People read a chapter in your e-book and have clarifying questions. But alas – no interaction is possible.

So that's why I think online courses are the way to go.

How to create an online course and sell it? This is what my startup does: <http://traindom.com>

<comment><USER19> Against your low perceived value, pit 37signals "Getting Real", which generated more profits for them (6 figures) than almost any mainstream paper tech book published the same year.

I agree that piracy is an issue, though.

<comment><USER18> There are always exceptions. 37Signals is a known brand. If you're not known, it's hard to charge a lot for a pdf.

<comment><USER19> If you generalize this logic one step more, you'll be in a happy place where you can make money from PDF e-books:

"There are always exceptions. XXX. If you're not XXX, it's hard to charge a lot for an e-book."

"There are always exceptions. I'm the world expert on home tarantula care. If you're not the world expert on home tarantula care, it's hard to charge a lot for an e-book."

"There are always exceptions. I'm a talented marketer. If you're not a talented marketer, it's hard to charge a lot for an e-book."

"There are always exceptions. I'm a former HFT project team lead writing about trading strategies. If you're not selling a book that can potentially make people thousands of dollars, it's hard to charge money for an e-book."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's another account of self-publishing to add to your list:

<http://tynan.net/selfpublish>

</comment><comment><USER20> You want e-junkie.com

</comment><comment><USER21> If you can get your book published and marketed by a 'top publisher', there's still money to be made the old way:

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/08/23/seth- godin-a...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/08/23/seth-godin-and- print-publishing/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Throw a PDF up on Amazon S3, generate unique links for people that pay for it. Or, you could not worry about unique links, and just trust people. Like others have said, piracy will happen, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Use Shopify with Fetchapp. Perfect ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does indeed sound perfect. The monthly expenses might deter some people, but it looks like the best thing you can possibly get (assuming you are already have some customers to send to the link).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The author keeps 80% of his sale on Lulu unless you are selling a seriously discounted product, or selling via Lulu into other marketplaces such as Amazon or Ebay.

Also, in our and other industry suppliers experience many books sell better when they are offered in both ebook and paper formats.

<comment><AUTHOR> 80% of _net_ sales. There is a per-copy e-book fee(!) of $1.49, which is a lot considering e-book pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Depending on your market, the freeium Drumlin Reader may be an option.

<http://drumlinsecurity.co.uk/>

Sister company:

<http://www.pdf-publishing.com/>

They have provided great customer service despite my limited use.

</comment><comment><USER26> My startup does: <http://fifobooks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER27> You could host it yourself using a straightforward e-commerce management system and a payment gateway.

<comment><USER28> I think it's not a good solution unless you are yet pretty "famous". IMO you should look to Amazon or other service with a well estabilished community you can get advantage of. Relevant read: <http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am thinking of using LeanPub, which takes 25%. You keep your rights.</comment>


Ask HN: What do do if I'm a CS student at a top school and I feel lost? - <AUTHOR> I transferred from a large state school to a top 5 Computer Science school this past fall. I transferred because the CS degree program I was in wasn't challenging, and the department was severely underfunded and understaffed. I felt miserable, despite having a small but close friend group there. I couldn't get into classes, the ones I were in were terribly taught, and I just felt like my life wasn't going anywhere.
However, now that I am in this top program, I feel even more miserable. The CS major is GPA capped, and at this point there is a good chance I won't make it into the major. The classes I have been taking to get into the major alternate between boring review of concepts I previously learned, and unbelievably challenging material that I can barely comprehend. As a result, my grades in those classes have been steadily declining. I feel very demotivated and stressed, especially since finals are coming up.
Additionally, this school is all the way across the country from where I grew up. I knew nobody in this city before I came here, and even now I only really know my roommate and 1 other friend.
Finally, to top it all off, I didn't get a tech internship this summer despite applying to around 90 companies. I even got to the final round of interviews at 2 companies, but still got rejected. I signed up for a summer class during the second half of the summer, but I'm worried that it will just stress me out even more. Plus I have no idea what to do for the first half of summer! I really don't want to bum around my parents house, as they are already disappointed that I didn't get an internship. Last summer I helped create a startup, but I left due to issues with the other founders.
Really I'm just writing this post to ask for advice. What to do if I don't get into the CS major? How to meet people and connect with my school? What to do about my failure to get an internship? <comment><USER2> I'm not a programmer, but I had plenty of academic hoops to jump through. Here's my 2¢, for what it's worth:

1\. Don't freak out. Not getting an internship is a bummer, but I'm guessing it's something you can recover from. Having done an internship gives you some worthwhile experience, but if you aren't even in the CS major yet then you probably still have time to do one eventually.

2\. When I hear about classes jumping between super easy and super hard, the first thing I think of is study skills. Don't take this the wrong way, but most college students have terrible study skills. If there's a study skills class, think about taking it, even if it sounds dumb. Plus, it might give your GPA a bit of a boost.

3\. Take some time to remember why you're doing this. Do you really want to do CS? If so, then it's probably worth the effort. If not, this is a good time to figure that out.

4\. Talk to a professor you trust. If you don't know one in the CS department, maybe someone who's further along can point you to someone? You can check in with them about how you are doing, and they may have some pointers. Plus, if you are going to be on campus for the summer, I'm betting there's a PhD student somewhere who would love to have your help. It's not an internship, but getting your name on a publication won't hurt anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Agreed, I'm just more concerned about what to do for the half of the summer that I wont be in class.

2\. I don't think there's a study skills class here, are there any online courses you would reccommend?

3\. At this point I have no clue why I'm doing this. Probably because it seems like the only career path that I can even attempt to follow?

4\. I had actually connected with a PHD student here who I knew through friends, but his lab didn't need any extra help at the moment. This school is so big that I feel like it's impossible to randomly connect with people in my department. Even most of the big CS clubs on campus even have strict admissions processes with less than 10% admit rates. I really don't feel connected with the department/program/faculty at all.

<comment><USER2> 1\. If you don't know anybody around town, maybe get a job to meet some people? Not anything fancy, just a summer job. If they are all full, it might be worth thinking more about going home, and you might have better luck working there.

2\. Maybe start with this one? [http://calnewport.com/books/how-to-win-at- college/](http://calnewport.com/books/how-to-win-at-college/)

3\. There's only one person who can figure this out. This is part of the reason I suggest an unrelated job. Sometimes finding out what we _don 't_ want to do can be just as useful.

4\. Is there some sort of more general advisor for the university that might help you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you heard of impostor syndrome? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16983195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16983195)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I'm not sure if it applies to me, but even if it does then I have to clue how to deal with it. The thread you linked is just people discussing it, with few concrete methods for fixing it.</comment></comment>


Google Chromecast - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/#netflix <comment><USER3> This is exactly what I've been wanting the Apple TV to be for ages. The only thing Apple TV is actually good for is Airplay. There doesn't need to be an OS or a UI for the Apple TV: your phone or tablet will be a better experience for typing and searching for content every time. Its a fool's errand to try to design a UI for a TV that isn't dreadfully painful to use: no one ever wants to interact with something 10 feet away.

This is what the future of TV should be: people should just think of TV's the way they think of their jamboxes: a higher fidelity dumb pipe for their existing content. If Apple turned the Apple TV into an HDMI dongle that solely included AirPlay and included it for free with every iPad and iPhone they sold, it would _truly_ disrupt TV. If I knew for a fact that every new iDevice owner was necessarily and AppleTV owner, I would _immediately_ start making AppleTV-enabled experiences. Overnight the iPad would become a real competitor to game consoles as well.

It just seems so obvious that this is the right way to go. The apps should live on the brain (your device), and the TV should just be an auxiliary screen, nothing more (We certainly don't need YET ANOTHER SDK for writing TV apps). Here's a fun exercise: go to your local Apple Store and ask them what an Apple TV is for _today_. Then watch them fumble around mentioning "oh if you have Netflix" and "isn't cable hard to use" and just the sheer lack of vision for the product. If it was just AirPlay it would be as easy to explain as an iPod speaker. If they did this, then you could also imagine indie people shipping TV Shows as apps as a viable model for the first time, completely skirting Cable networks.

<comment><USER4> Wi-fi isn't good enough. I can barely get AirPlay to stream music reliably ten feet away for half an hour (oh no! somebody in the next apartment turned on their microwave!), I can't imagine video being even remotely reliable, and certainly not at decent quality.

However, Netflix etc. work fine over wi-fi, because they're downloading and buffering the compressed stream itself, and then feeding that via the HDMI port to the TV.

Chromecast appears to be able to download the queued content over wi-fi, and then transmit via HDMI, which is a much more reliable way to go, given the state of wi-fi.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you need a new router with a 5ghz channel.

That said, I don't know what's going on with your Airplay's music streaming, but the bitrate of music is far below Netflix's. It shouldn't matter much though, I stream my desktop in nearly lagless 1080p to my MBP via Splashtop. The compression isn't really that bad.

<comment><USER6> _Sounds like you need a new router with a 5ghz channel._

According to this review[1] it won't be useful for the Google Chromecast: _" Internally, the hardware supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi 802.11, which isn't quite as nice as the dual-band Wi-Fi offered on Roku's Streaming Stick."_

[1] [http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-media-receivers/google- chrom...](http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-media-receivers/google- chromecast/4505-6739_7-35823617.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think people aren't understanding how awesome this technology is:

1\. Every time someone shows you a YouTube video, you spend 10% of your time watching it and the other 90% thinking about that one video you know of that's funnier. With Chromecast, you can queue that sucker up for nexties right from your own phone, without interrupting the video that's currently playing.

2\. Chromecast does NOT use the resources of the device used to control the TV for processing...its don't on the dongle itself. This will save battery power, minimize bandwidth consumption, and you can do other things with your phone while watching things on the TV.

3\. If it can run Chrome, it can cast to Chromecast. Apple, Microsoft, and Google devices playing together in one ecosystem. No more throwing the babies out with the bathwater.

4\. $35.00. Thirty-five dollars for a device that ups the WAF most HTPC nerds have dreamed of for years! I would have bought this at $100!

This is what the Nexus Q was meant to be, but hardware drove the price down dramatically.

I haven't been this excited about a new piece of hardware since the iPhone. This is a game changer.

<comment><USER8> I don't get it. I have an HTPC, and I watch Youtube on it all the time. I will often pause what I am watching to look something up related to the video I am watching. I don't have a personal phone as I get by fine with my work phone. It's a blackberry, so not compatible anyway. Also, when watching TV, its with the family, and we all are interested in what we look up. As far as I know, this only does some video, and doesn't send web pages to the screen. Yes, it's $35, but it's pretty limited from what I can see.

<comment><USER9> It's limited compared to what you can already do, but that's because you have a HTPC. Same for people who have a Google TV device, an Apple TV device, a Roku or whatever media box or media center plugged in to their TV. To you and me, who don't mind learning how to use a media center device, this doesn't really change anything.

The Chromecast is a device for your mom; something where she can just take her iPad and press "send to TV" and it appears on her TV.

<comment><USER10> I don't have much interest in this and was just skimming over the comments but I have to thank you -- your comment got my attention.

My mother (on the complete opposite end of the "techie" spectrum from me) watches soap operas on her iPad every few days while laying in bed. I'm certain she'd much rather watch them on the huge TV across the room instead.

> The Chromecast is a device for your mom; something where she can just take > her iPad and press "send to TV" and it appears on her TV.

I was trying to figure out what I'd use this device for and you've answered that question for me. I'm ordering one of these for mom.

<comment><USER11> I realise it's twice the price, but an Apple TV will be much simpler to use, and will work with almost all apps on her iPad that play video (and audio). That includes all the built-in apps and nearly all store-bought apps.

There's a strong possibility your mother's soaps are being played in a way that's unsupported by the Chromecast.

<comment><USER12> > I realise it's twice the price, but an Apple TV will be much simpler to use

But it's made by Apple and will require you to install iTunes and iCloud on everything you own and it will only work if you throw away all the equipment you already own and replace them with Apple-made devices.

That's potentially quite a grab of money.

But that's just the smallest cost: The only reason ever to buy Apple is if you're willing to go all in. Choosing Apple is trading away your freedom. And as a guy who likes having options, that's a cost I will _never_ be willing to pay.

<comment><USER10> I bought the iPad for her this last Christmas. She has yet to "install iTunes and iCloud on everything [she] owns" and is getting along just fine.

(Side note: I'm an open source zealot, my e-mail address ends in @gnu.org, and my primary laptop runs Debian GNU/Linux. I also own a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. I like having options too.)

<comment><USER12> But to use an Apple TV to play or display anything from your network, you will need to publish it via a "iTunes library".

This will require you to install iTunes. If on Windows, iTunes will completely hijack your machine, steal all file-associations and if you're lucky (like I was) completely molest all ID3-tags when attempting to clean up music- metadata, meaning the only "good" copy left of my music's meta-data was the iTunes library. How convenient is that for Apple, eh?

I had to _manually_ go and tag 10000+ MP3s to make them usuable again outside iTunes. But I did that, because to me, choice matters.

If I need to go through that shit again to get an Apple TV to work.... Yeah. Not happening. Ever.

Fuck that shit. I don't say that often on hacker news, but seriously: Fuck that shit.

<comment><USER11> You clearly haven't used an Apple TV for many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Power cord required (not shown).

What the hell is this about a "power cord". The specs and details are totally not clear. Is this not powered by HDMI? If it requires a power cord, these images are deceptive marketing.

<comment><USER14> Does anyone know if this is actually powered solely by HDMI:

www.roku.com/streamingstick

<comment><USER15> It is, but only works on a TV that supports MHL HDMI. The chromecast stick works on any HDMI port because it doesn't rely on the port for power.

it's too bad it can't use MHL power where available and fall back to external. Seems like an obvious feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Worth noting- the $35 Chromecast dongle comes with three months of free Netflix membership (including for existing users), which makes the thing very cheap indeed.

<comment><USER17> If you get multiple Chromecasts do you keep getting bundles of three more free months?

<comment><USER18> Bottom of [1]:

 _"...you will recieve an email with a promotional code for 3 months of Netflix. Offer valid for previous, new and existing Netflix members, one per Netflix account."_

I would suspect not.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromecast](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromecast)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Sorry! Devices on Google Play is not available in your country yet. We're working to bring devices to more countries as quickly as possible. Please check back again soon."

<comment><USER20> And while the UK does have a devices page on the Play store with Nexus devices and Chromebooks, no Chromecast here either.

Is this available anywhere but the US? Standard Google...

<comment><USER21> They say it was to be released "in coming weeks" (whatever that means) in UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Korea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a little confused by this device, and I haven't been able to find the info from Google.

Is it that this device acts like an AirPlay receiver of sorts and accepts a video feed from an approved device or is it that the device simply acts as a remote and the device gets its own stream from Internet sources? The latter is much more intriguing than the former, although both have issues for sure, but hard to complain for the price.

It's an interesting concept either way. I don't see it as a huge threat to the Apple TV or Roku, as both do a lot more and have dedicated controllers. Using an Apple TV with an iPhone is nice in some respects, but the wifi connectivity isn't great. A Bluetooth pairing would be exponentially better. It doesn't appear this device uses Bluetooth either.

As I see it, I could envision having an Apple TV or Roku for a main TV and something like this for another TV or for a computer monitor than can support this.

<comment><USER23> It's the latter, although it also supports local receiver mode, so for example, you can cast your browser tab to the display.

<comment><USER22> And I'll be able to stream whatever is in that one browser tab to my TV without restrictions?

<comment><USER7> Yes. But its in 'Beta'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious to see what kind of Chromecast support they build into Google Hangouts.

Right now we have meetings on-site and usually have one person in the meeting running a Hangout on a laptop to communicate with the remote folks. Being able to have a "portal" to all the remote attendees would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER25> If it works as advertised, this could be disruptive. They made it dead simple to stream content from any device to your TV. So anyone can use it, particularly the older generation.

Potential for number of apps that could be developed is endless. Apparently, Washington Post is building an app on top of it ([http://t.co/dTWesNOoIC](http://t.co/dTWesNOoIC)). So possibilities are endless. And good news - another step towards making cable TV irrelevant.

P.S. I just bought one. Can't wait to play with it's SDK.

<comment><USER26> > They made it dead simple to stream content from any device to your TV. So > anyone can use it, particularly the older generation.

That's not really new. Apple TV lets you do the same thing with AirPlay, and it works great.

Seems like a decent device, and the fact that it works with non-Apple hardware is obviously useful for people who don't have Apple households, but I don't think it's disruptive.

<comment><USER27> > Apple TV lets you do the same thing with AirPlay, and it works great.

Not entirely. AirPlay is baked into the OS, so devs don't need to do extra work to support it. Chromecast (or, the Google Cast SDK) is built into the app level, and works in a fundamentally different way (i.e. streams from the internet and allows multi-user queueing vs. streams from the audio/video output of the device).

I don't think it's terribly disruptive - it's essentially AirPlay 2.0 - but it _is_ new.

<comment><USER28> "Streams from the internet" isn't inherently superior. There are things about it that are nice and things about it that are not so nice.

1\. it requires the dongle to have equivalent internet access as the 'controlling' device. So it would seem you'd be out of luck if you wanted to stream from a mobile device using a cell modem, to a chromecast on a display in, say, a hotel, conference room or cabin without (unfiltered) wifi access to the internet.

2\. sometimes internet-streamed video, even when possible, is far inferior to just soaking some processing power from the mobile device. People who locally- save video content for performance/quality reasons aren't going to be wild about it happily ignoring that local store to pull down a choppy/compressed stream.

3\. it seems to limit the stream to codecs the device supports. So one can't likely chromecast from an HTPC that's otherwise perfectly capable of streaming xvid/divx/etc.

multi-user queue-ing is nice. Airplay really should pick that up.

But I'm not at all wild about "it's own internet stream". While the pros are neat in certain situations, the cons are a deal-breaker for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Whats the privacy policy? Do I need a Google / Youtube account to use it? Just what data is shared with Google? E.g. Will all my viewing habits be stored? Will Google ads on my browser suddenly target me based upon my TV use?

</comment><comment><USER30> It's $35, but it only offers the Airplay receiver functionality of the Apple TV (I don't think it will do display mirroring of computers and Android devices though).

From what I've read (please correct me if I'm wrong), the Chromecast doesn't function as a standalone device. In other words, you need a smartphone/tablet/computer to play things on it. It doesn't have its own interface where you can browse and play content like the Apple TV does.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I bought one.

The fundamental problem I'm trying to solve with this device is streaming youtube to my parents TV. I want something low-tech that they can invoke from their Computer/Android/iOS device and I don't want them to learn a new menu.

The pricepoint is what sold me. AppleTV is too expensive for what it does, and while the power plug is annoying, it's easier than their current solution, which involves leveraging an old PS3 for Netflix playback.

So yeah, this is not a straight up replacement for AppleTV, but it solves the subset of problems I'm looking for.

That's my $.02.

<comment><USER32> What you might be looking for, is nowadays positioned as a "smart TV converter box" $60-100. Basically a Android box that has a hdmi/av out, connects to wifi and comes with a remote. I set this up for my parents so they can launch skype on their old TV a couple remote clicks. But turned out they can install apps from google play so they get youtube, news and email too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Any word on if I can stream whatever is on my Android screen to this?

There are many times where I have pics on my phone (either via the phone's camera, or Picasa, G+, etc) that I want to show people at home - but there's no easy way to show them without having to pass around a tiny screen.

<comment><USER34> When you click the chrome logo on this page: [http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/#chr...](http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/#chrome) you can see G+ pics being displayed on the TV so I guess you could use it to show pics

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Will this bypass the need for a Hulu Plus subscription for TV watching? Hulu plus allows you to watch Hulu on a big screen device in addition to tablets.

<comment><USER36> Hulu will likely invest in trying to figure out if you're streaming the tab to be able to block it, its their way.

<comment><USER27> Screen-casting from the desktop version of Google Chrome is a (beta) browser extension. From 2 mins of Googling (I'm no expert), it looks like you can detect those trivially.

<comment><USER37> You can spoof Chrome to be another browser and AFAIK extensions installed is not broadcast to third parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Chromecast is not available in your country.

I live in Canada. Apple seems to be able to make this stuff work, why can't anyone else?

<comment><USER39> I know how you feel. Considering this thing will be sold at BestBuy, and we have BestBuy in Canada, why can't we get this thing day one?

<comment><USER40> It is sold out even for US customers on the Play store at this point. Bad week for me to be picked for jury duty, would have probably caught this in time otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Does anyone know if you can stream non-online videos? Like if I have a video file on my computer and want to play it on my TV, does Chromecast allow for this?

<comment><USER42> I guess you could always whip up an html5 page to play local videos

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nice, since the Play store says "We are out of inventory. Check back soon." [https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromecast&...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromecast&hl=en) I'm confused about it being USB-powered. Does it need to be plugged to both HDMI and USB at the same time?

Edit: The Buy button forwards to the Play store, where it's "out of inventory". They could change the wording to "Sold Out!" and then brag about that.

<comment><USER44> I noticed that the end opposite of the HDMI seemed to have a micro USB in port on it. I suspect that it is powered via that, however none of the demonstrations showed it being plugged in, so I believe it may have an internal battery which needs recharging.

Edit: The specs at the bottom of the page don't list a battery but it does list an included power adapter, so I guess you have to have that plugged in at all times.

Edit 2: Certain versions[1] of the HDMI spec provide power. It's possible that the USB is a backup solution for older spec'd TVs.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High- Definition_Link#Fea...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High- Definition_Link#Features)

<comment><USER45> You sure it's not just for firmware updates? The GameStick ([http://gamestick.tv](http://gamestick.tv)) is powered purely via HDMI.

<comment><USER46> The Gamestick is powered by MHL if you have it, but you have to power it through its micro-usb port if you have normal HDMI (source: have one). I expect it's the same for the Chromecast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Chrome Cast on Amazon Now

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DR0PDNE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DR0PDNE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00DR0PDNE&linkCode=as2&tag=aspweb-20)

<comment><USER48> Just purchased, thanks. :)

What's with all the Amazon reviews already? They should have locked reviews for a few days to prevent trolls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is useful for educational purposes, too - wirelessly streaming from a chrome browser or chromebook to a projector (via hdmi to vga adapter).

(An alternative if you have a laptop connected to the projector is to run AirServer to act as a virtual Apple TV, and then either airplay from your ipad or run AirParrot from a windows tablet. Of course Chromecast will be the first solution to work from android tablets, too, since Miracast solutions still seem to be non-existent or not so great.)

<comment><USER50> I'm actually desperately searching for confirmation on whether this devices DOES support Miracast (and screen sharing). My guy is saying "no", since it isn't advertised anywhere. I think this device might only be receiving URIs and control commands from other devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm confused. Can it grab and process the stream itself? So, if I pull up netflix on my phone, start a video, then force close netflix, will it still be playing?

<comment><USER52> Playback is cloud-to-device, not device-to-device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The Chrome and Android teams don't seem to be great bedfellows, it seems - <USER2> isn't clear to me what demarcates Chrome-branded products from products running Android in areas far from their original targets.

<comment><USER54> They two teams were recently merged, or at least now share the same leader, Sundar Pichai.

Chrome is likely the right name here, it supports most platforms where Chrome runs, not just Android.

<comment><USER55> Although it leaves the Google TV team in an awkward position

<comment><USER56> The GoogleTV g+, twitter etc. feeds, previously pretty active, have been dead since January. My guess is the bulk of the GoogleTV engineering talent left it to make chromecast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Well, just purchased mine. I was a little peeved that my nexus 7 didn't have HDMI-out, but this device looks perfect.

</comment><comment><USER58> Makes much more sense as a product than last year's Nexus Q.

</comment><comment><USER59> This doesn't seem much different from the MediaLink HD that HTC has had for over a year now. Although that ran Android and this runs Chrome. Both were capable of talking to NetFlix and other content URLs directly once they got the WiFi information from your device. This helps devices save battery since they don't have to download the data just to resend it, and don't have to transcode anything.

That said the MediaLink HD often had lag issues that kept it more in the realm of presentations and media and made it difficult for real time games. Even for presentations I'd often carry my own WiFi AP around with me or find ways to get it just to connect between the phone and device to avoid them. Home performance is probably better than conference and event performance.

I recently tried a Netgear Miracast adapter to send HDMI from an HTC One and the lag is completely gone. I haven't tried Google's implementation of Chromecast yet, but I'm suspicious it won't be nearly as lag and trouble free as a WiFi Direct only device like the Netgear, though. You have a whole extra OS running device in the chain to make things a pain. So I'm suspicious the extra complexity isn't worth it for this class of devices.

</comment><comment><USER60> Okay maybe this is really obvious, but how do I tell a device with no input which wifi network to connect to and what the password for it is?

<comment><USER61> From the setup page ([https://cast.google.com/chromecast/setup](https://cast.google.com/chromecast/setup)), it appears that it generates its own access point that you connect to.

<comment><USER62> This is how WiFi-enabled printers and bathroom scales work, too.

<comment><USER63> Does it mean that I have to disconnect from my home wifi and loose ability to google stuff during this process?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is cool....the only thing that is a bit annoying is the fact that the audio won't be 5.1, it will likely be stereo.

I mean, for YouTube videos it doesn't matter.

But if you are streaming a movie or something, then that may be an annoyance.

But that could just be me.

This is assuming that you have a digital audio source plugged directly into your receiver ofcourse, as opposed to your TV.

<comment><USER65> Hmm, interesting point... I would be plugging this thing directly into a giant Pioneer receiver--never the TV monitor--and certainly HDMI is not itself an impediment to 5.1 audio, but details on supported digital audio formats seem a bit scarce now.

<comment><USER64> Based on all the images (and limited copy) here, it seems that it may need you to plug it directly into the TV and not a receiver.

I could be mistaken, but the video, images and copy all seem to go to the TV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> It'd be epic if this supported _ALL_ the "AirPlay" type tech...PlayTo, AirPlay, whatever "throw my video up there" formats exist.

I like the price and ordered one, but if it only supports Google's format, that'll be a bummer. I want this for AirPlay.

</comment><comment><USER67> This device is really appealing, but I am extremely disappointed that it can only mirror chrome tabs. I'd be much more interested in this device if they would throw out some native applications to mirror a whole screen like Apple's Airplay can.

<comment><USER48> You're asking for far more control than what Google has access to, at least on mobile devices. Apple can do it for iOS because they make it.

<comment><USER67> I specifically mean desktop. I'd be surprised to learn that VNC clients and such can manage it but something like this wouldn't, but I've been known to be wrong before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I dont understand how you stream content from your device to the Chromecast. My PC has Windows Media Player, my Windows 8 phone has XBox SmartGlass. Would these applications allow you to stream to the tv. I am abit lost...

<comment><USER69> No. There are 4 applications that know what a Chromecast is and can send video to it: Netflix for Android, YouTube for Android, Google Play for Android, and Chrome for Android/Windows/Mac/ChromeOS.

* ed: and ChromeOS.

<comment><USER70> Correction: Netflix for Android/iOS, YouTube for Android/iOS, Google Play for Android, and Chrome browser for Android/Windows/Mac/iOS/ChromeOS.

iOS support is a major factor here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I wonder how best to use this with a local Plex Media Server. I only really have one projector/ht directly attached to the media server right now, but in a future where I have N TVs throughout the house, it would be nice to have a $35 device on each to stream content. AppleTV support is pretty weak for PMS.

I'd really prefer wired gig-e, though. 802.11n is borderline for a busy network with several video streams. At that point I'd end up running a bunch of separate wifi APs, which raises the cost to where real wired devices start to be cheaper again.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's powerful, it's cheap ($35 vs $99 for Apple TV) in no time, this device will be on every other tv. Just imagine all that data...this is definitely a game changer. This is awesome.

Here's an article on the Difference Between Chromecast and Google TV (an Interview with Google's SVP of Android, Chome, and Apps: Sundar Pichai) [http://allthingsd.com/20130724/sundar-pichai-on-the- differen...](http://allthingsd.com/20130724/sundar-pichai-on-the-difference- between-chromecast-and-google-tv-interview/)

</comment><comment><USER73> They should make a cheaper audio only version for the speakers in your bedroom, etc. Kind of like the airport express. Maybe one with just a stereo jack and one with the same ports as the apple TV.

<comment><USER74> It doesn't even have to be cheaper, just have audio out.

<comment><USER75> S/PDIF for 5.1 surround!

<comment><USER73> Do people use 5.1 or 7.1 outside of TVs & home theaters much at all?

<comment><USER75> People buy ChromeCast just for TVs & home theaters.

<comment><USER73> I was talking about my audio only version. ChromeCast is made for TVs

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> The device has a microUSB port. The microUSB powers the device. The device plugs into the HDMI port. The device requires a microUSB powered cable to operate while plugged in through HDMI.

<comment><USER77> HDMI doesn't provide power, so that makes sense -- unfortunate as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Chromecast chrome extension works on PS3 YouTube App.

I just tried today and noticed, with the Chromecast extension for Chrome ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- cast/boadge...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- cast/boadgeojelhgndaghljhdicfkmllpafd)) installed.

I am now able to push YouTube videos from my laptop to my PS3 (YouTube App). This makes searching videos just so much more easier.

</comment><comment><USER79> So it seems not to be an actualy HDMI reciever that just outputs your devices screen on the TV so that you can do anything with it like playing back moviews, playing games on the big screen etc ? Thats that, i had hoped it was basically a Miracast reciever..HTC has a similar device called the Media Link HD which does this, its $90 though but seems to be the way to go for me as i dont want to be limitied by whats possible in chrome.

</comment><comment><USER79> Awesome that its so affordable. HTC has a similar device called Media Link HD which costs around $90 and i considered buying it. Chromecast all the way :)

</comment><comment><USER80> Just bought two - one for each TV in my house. I already have tons of media- streamer devices (TLBB XBMC, Pivos DS, Roku, etc) but they should be nifty.

</comment><comment><USER81> Looks like if you refresh enough it will allow you to purchase - Just ordered one. Took a lot less time than the Nexus 4 ordering process ;-)

</comment><comment><USER82> Did they stop offering the three free months of netflix? I don't see it mentioned anywhere on the page or amazon listing anymore.

</comment><comment><USER83> This is a $35 AppleTV. Well played google.

</comment><comment><USER84> So it's like an apple tv where you can push streams from your iOS or andriod device (e.g. youtube) but what about browser/app integration?

I would love to be able to create a "widget" that sits on my tv and has internet. I could think of a ton of things. Like snapchat but for videos .. just saying :)

</comment><comment><USER85> Will I be able to use free Hulu on Chrome through it? If so, this could make subscribing to Hulu Plus unneeded.

</comment><comment><USER86> Not available in the UK, but given the specs I'm unsure what should prevent it working as is in the UK?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'll buy this once there is wide adoption. I would like either a Bluray player or VLC to support this.

</comment><comment><USER63> Some compared this to AppleTV, but I would love to point out sellers of overpriced hdmi cables ($20-60, gold plated bla-bla-bla together with new TV). Also, Samsung sells wifi dobgles for their SmartTVs for $60-80 in my country. Hopefully that business will get more reasonable...

</comment><comment><USER87> At the same price as a Raspberry Pi, why would I want one?

For me, the only benefit I see to the Chromecast is frequent travel for use on hotel televisions. Otherwise, an HTPC is going to provide superior functionality at the same cost.

<comment><USER55> Well, I have a HTPC, and a PS3, and I still got this. Why? Because it's super cheap, and does a few things better than the other devices - Youtube and Netflix etc don't work on XBMC well at all, youtube on the PS3 is a pain since you have to wait for it to open the app, and being able to use this for play music will be great. For $17 (with the netflix months and shipping), it's well worth it.

<comment><USER87> It's great for a run and go gadget, but I don't think it'll replace my HTPC.

If I didn't already have dedicated hardware, I'd get one. As it is, there isn't anything it does that makes it worth including in an existing HTPC setup.

<comment><USER55> Really? How do you do Youtube/Netflix on your HTPC now? How about play music? If you are browsing youtube on your laptop and want to play it on your tv, how many seconds is that going to take to transfer the video playback?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I wonder if this is why Google never released a YouTube channel for roku devices.

</comment><comment><USER89> Hmm, this specifically mentions Chrome for Mac and Chrome for Windows. That very well may mean no capability for Linux yet. It also doesn't implicitly say Chrome OS, so maybe Chromebooks won't work either.

<comment><USER90> It says the Chromebook Pixel works. I wonder what it is about the Pixel specifically that allows it to work. I imagine a Linux port isn't _that_ far off, but unfortunately I don't have any windows machines left in my house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> So who is writing an app to trigger streaming from a local network file share?

<comment><USER92> That is half of what I use my Wii for, it'd be very tempting to switch to the Chromecast for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I wish this did a full laptop display mirroring like AirPlay. Looks like this only works with Chrome, so it looks like I can't rent / download a movie on a different service (say iTunes) and play it on my TV.

Bummer.

<comment><USER94> You can do full display mirroring via Chrome's Remote Desktop extension ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote- desk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote- desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp?hl=en)). I believe the same functionality exists for Chromecast, but don't quote me on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> _With Chromecast, you can easily enjoy your favorite online entertainment on your HDTV—movies, TV shows, music, and more from Netflix, YouTube, Google Play, and Chrome_

...as long as you live in North America.

</comment><comment><USER80> Listed, but not yet available to purchase, on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DR0PDNE](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DR0PDNE)

<comment><USER96> It's now listed as In Stock. Just purchased one myself, my order lists an expected arrival date of end of the month.

<comment><USER80> Just ordered two myself from Amazon - and now Google Play won't let me cancel my order there. D'oh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Has anyone seen thing regarding how setup works? That is, how would I choose a SSID and enter my wifi password since my 'remote' would normally talk to it using wifi?

<comment><USER69> Other dongles like this typically handle it one of two ways:

1) Plug into a computer for first-time setup. It has a USB port for power that can also be used to connect to a computer.

2) The dongle broadcasts a wifi network. You connect from any computer to set it up over a web interface.

<comment><USER97> Thanks. I had considered #1 but since they're talking about tablets and phones and such without full-size USB ports, I didn't think they'd want to require an actual computer to be present.

#2 Seems quite workable though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> The "Buy Now" page has two options now: Google Play and Amazon. If I buy it through Amazon, do I get the 3 months netflix? Or is it only through Google Play?

<comment><USER99> Amazon offers the 3 months of Netflix too.

<comment><USER100> The banner that offered 3 months of Netflix service is now gone for me. It was there when I ordered mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Google may have just won the game, with an infinitely more simple approach than Apple TV, Xbox, and PS. What disruption is all about. Not a Google fan boy, but bravo.

</comment><comment><USER102> So it's a portable Apple TV...very interesting to see all that functionality in such a small form factor.

Still, nothing that a 5$ HDMI cable from my PC to TV cannot accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER103> If this works as an access point I wonder what the pairing will consist of and how easy it would be to stream "things" to neighbor's houses.

</comment><comment><USER104> V2 feature requests: Support MHL (Power over HDMI) Windows Chromecast audio driver/chromecast monitor. So any media player can play to Chromecast...

</comment><comment><USER105> I can smell the blood in a niche market.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=tv+stick](https://www.google.com/search?q=tv+stick)

</comment><comment><USER106> Does this work internationally? I mean, it's just a dongle. Can I have a friend purchase it in the US and have it work fine in Bolivia?

<comment><USER107> They haven't said anything about that, for obvious reasons, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. You probably can't run Netflix on it[1], but I bet YouTube would work just fine.

[1] Although if I understood correctly, the dongle depends on another device to connect to the internet. If you setup a DNS on your device that's connected to the dongle, it's likely that you can use Netflix as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> I think it's cute how Google checkout pretends they don't already know your home address and phone number. :)

<comment><USER109> Yes, the algorithm could probably have predicted you making this comment as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> its available to purchase on amazon now: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DR0PDNE/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DR0PDNE/) free shipping with prime

fyi you can probably still cancel your order on google play store, I cancelled mine 45 mins ago...

</comment><comment><USER111> Does anyone want to buy one for me and ship it to the UK? I'll make it worth your while...

Email me: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER112> Would it work to stream MacBook screen to a TV?

Because the system seems generic and it could bring AirPlay to any TV.

<comment><USER50> AirPlay is proprietary to Apple. The competing technology that Google (or at least Android) is throwing its support behind is Miracast (which uses WiFi Direct). I don't know if this device supports this kind of streaming, though; I get the impression that the device merely receives URLs from controlling devices, which it connects to directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> I already have a "smart tv", what does this give me that I dont already have?

<comment><USER81> I'm sure you aren't their target market. Personally I went for a bare bones TV because I have so many peripheral devices it made sense to keep using those.

Also - Can you stream games and other random apps to your TV? I would assume this would let you in the feature with supported apps.

<comment><USER113> I'm sure you're correct about not being their target.

I think there are already android apps that let you stream stuff to your tv via wifi, I could be thinking about something else.

If you already have netflix, is this device basically half off?

<comment><USER81> Sounds like it - Netflix is what, $10/mo? Pulling that off the top of my head. After tax it was ~$42 with basic shipping - so more than half off it sounds like :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> What is maximum video bit-rate this can handle? Can this do real 1080 with 7.2 audio?

<comment><USER97> During this morning's presentation, they mentioned 1080p with 5.1 but I don't know if that was the max or just an example.

[http://live.arstechnica.com/breakfast-with-sundar-at- google/...](http://live.arstechnica.com/breakfast-with-sundar-at- google/#post-313535)

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Any bets on how soon Apple respond by opening the long-rumored AppleTV App Store?

</comment><comment><USER116> As always I'm not allowed to buy it because I live in Europe (Sweden).

</comment><comment><USER48> I have a 30" desktop monitor (Dell u3011) that I use as my "television". I can now stream a video from my iPad to my 30". My monitor doesn't have speakers. Can I still listen to audio through headphones connected to my iPad? I'm assuming yes.

</comment><comment><USER117> This is a great Roku 3 competitor! Except roku can't play youtube.

</comment><comment><USER21> Any doc about what developers have to do to support Chromecast?

<comment><USER118> [https://developers.google.com/cast/](https://developers.google.com/cast/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> Best Buy is listing the model number as "H2G2-42"

</comment><comment><USER120> I wonder how long until they are available on Amazon.

<comment><USER121> I waited to order mine from Google in hopes of getting Prime shipping from Amazon... hope I didn't miss out entirely.

<comment><USER97> Just ordered from Amazon, guaranteed by the 26th.

<comment><USER122> same here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> As always with Google, you need to ask "What's the marketing strategy behind this? Why are they making this device?"

My guess : Yet another way to consume more medias / using Google services.

<comment><USER25> This device makes it possible to seamlessly share web content (via Chrome) to TV sets. Google wants more consumption of web content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Sorry OUYA. This will play any android game. :)

<comment><USER124> I would be very curious what SoC this is based around, whether Android games and other things can be added with firmware upgrades or if this is more of a VideoCore-style type chip like the Roku 2 and RaspPI.

Based on the price though I think this would be that class of processor and not really a competitor hardware wise with Apple TV (dual-core A6).

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> As always, not available in Australia...

</comment><comment><USER126> So its a streaming Chrome 2 Phone.

</comment><comment><USER127> comcast?

</comment><comment><USER128> Oh I thought this was hacker news, not advertising for giant companies that don't need it news.</comment>


Things Computer Science Freshmen Should Know - <AUTHOR> http://waltercarvalho.com/2013/07/16/strap-your-boots.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't write very often, let me know of anything I missed. I'm keen on general feedback too, if you feel like it.</comment>


Shorten this - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeldman.com/2009/08/10/shorten-this/ <comment><USER2> Fundamentally, the problem I see with the URL-shortening "market" is that there's almost no entry-cost, it's cheap to run, and the margins are very small.

How much code is a URL-shortening service? Like 50 lines of code + a mysql table? It's like a day's work, maybe two, to handle 90% of the features people need. And it's like a few MB of database and almost no processing power for each request.

And there's like no lock-in. I have no reason to use bit.ly over TinyURL or =>.ws, because they're all nearly the same, and it's not like they'll retro- actively break the links if I use another service.

As a result, they're competing with almost zero differentiating features in a market with no entry costs, no lock-in, and no obvious way to monetize. There's no way most of these services are going to stick around when they realize this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Except if someone tweets a link like <http://www.zeldman.com/2009/08/10/shorten-this/>, it will get shortened by a 3rd party shortener.

<comment><USER4> I don't use Twitter. Would it automatically shorten <http://zeldman.com/?p=2233> ? Does it just shorten all links, or just ones that need to be shortened?

I'm assuming all, since non-shortened links can't be "monetized". (Feh.)

<comment><USER5> It doesn't shorten all links.

Personally, I suspect the real source of the objection to URL shorteners is that they break referrer tracking and other sorts of ad-related analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering how many links from TinyURL and other sites I've made that still work fine, but point to URIs that 404 without any redirection or sensible handling by the host, I remain unimpressed with this image of zillions of useless, shortened links choking the web.

That said, bits like this suggest that it might be slowly dawning on people that in 2009, we don't need mile-long URIs.

<comment><USER2> It's a point-of-failure issue. As a general rule of thumb, dependencies are bad. They introduce "uncontrollable" risk into things. Obviously, websites and bloggers and web-apps can't do much about having the Internet as a dependency, but I don't want to have half my publicity for my content* reliant on a web service that could well be completely fly-by-night.

* - At this stage in my life, such publicity and content are only hypothetical :(

<comment><USER5> Fly-by-night is to be avoided in all things. I would recommend picking a shortener that's been around more than a short while and seems healthy, certainly - just as I would recommend picking a hosting company that has the same qualities.

<comment><USER2> Even the major shortening services are fly-by-night relative to other services one depends on. They're even fly-by-night relative to Twitter, for the most part, much less something like Wordpress, and infinitely less than something like Google or Apache.

<comment><USER5> TinyURL's been around since 2002. <http://tinyurl.com/a> still works.

How many of those TinyURL links lead to pages and sites that no longer exist?

Now, if your site is something that you're serious about keeping up over the long term, including retaining or properly redirecting all the URIs you offer, great - you're ahead of most of the web. However, if you don't want people to shorten your URIs, then you'll want to make short URIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find that orange background to be obnoxious. I wouldn't want to read his blog for more than a minute or so. But maybe that's what he was going for? ;)</comment>