Radio hams do battle with 'Russian Woodpecker' (1982) - <AUTHOR> http://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html <comment><USER2> In theory, it should have been possible for the Hams to modulate the their transmissions, to write an expletive on the tracking screen of the Russian radar. In practise, it probably would have been too big a challenge with 1980's home based technology, as an HF transmitter that could accurately generate arbitrary waveforms was bleeding edge tech. Nice to dream about though.

I used to work in the Jindalee OTHR facility back in the woodpecker days. I've memories of sitting in the control room, and being given a tour of the airwaves by one of the senior techs, who was also a ham. The tour included listening on on the various HF radars that we could find, including the woodpecker, discussing each system as we went. By the nature of the project, a lot of the technical people had an interest in ham radio, so they looked out for the ham bands. The tech who gave me the tour used to occasionally have a bit of fun by plugging his ham rig into the main transmitter (lots of power, with beamforming).

The other cool bit of technology was the "frequency management system", which was a mini HF radar, used to map the ionosphere in real time. It was fascinating to watch the dynamics of the various ionospheric layers on the screens.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Officially, the Soviets don 't even admit the signal is theirs._

Just like that superbowl ring.

[http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on- football/22429359/patrio...](http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on- football/22429359/patriots-owner-robert-kraft-vladimir-putin-stole-my-super- bowl-ring)

<comment><USER4> "It would be in the interest of US-Soviet relations" \- in 2005?!

<comment><USER5> Why not? Better not start some stuff with Russia just because of some ring. I mean, it's Putin, I can see him throwing some childish fit over a ring he wanted to have. It's just too bad for russians.

edit: forgot to say it's the first time I heard of the story, and it is pretty 'wtf' to me.

<comment><USER6> The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this kind of thing interests you, drop by #priyom on Freenode! We've got current schedules of active number stations and loads of info about weird transmissions.

<comment><USER8> Also, check out WebSDR.org to listen to HF receivers around the globe. (My Raspberry Pi-based receiver here in Texas should be back online Sunday night.)

<comment><USER7> Yes, indeed! We actually use links to various of these (mostly the receiver located at UTwente in .nl) when a number station schedule activates. Our channel bot spits a link into the channel where you can listen via this very cool in-browser receiver to live number stations as they are transmitted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga-3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga-3) appears to be the radar system in question, with a photo of an antenna.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Duga-3 (over the horizon) long-range missile defence array was the source of the 'woodpecker' signal.

</comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 See also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76)

<comment><USER11> Nice username ;-) You'd have to change it to MDZhB though?

Also here are some recent 2015 transmissions:

[http://priyom.org/military-stations/russia/the- buzzer/2015](http://priyom.org/military-stations/russia/the-buzzer/2015)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It really does sound like a woodpecker. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMVdOc9UbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMVdOc9UbE)

<comment><USER13> That sounds oddly familiar, but i was just a kid when this thing was decommissioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty funny, but if you are a ham (i am) you're not supposed to deliberately interfere with other transmissions, period.

       -- KC2ZZQ

</comment><comment><USER15> Let's hope those times packed with hostility won't return ever.

<comment><USER16> They're already back, don't you read the news ?

<comment><USER17> GP may have been exercising <sarcasm>.

<comment><USER16> If that's the case, GP should have used the proper <sarcasm/> tag !</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Geolocalized Open Data for Marketers - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedatapond.net <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys

I've already spent several weeks on this project and I've decided to launch the website today even if it's not finished (beta version).

The idea is to continue the development according to feedback, comments and advice. There are still 1000 things to do : design, typo, features, improve lists...

What does the site offer? The idea is to offer users the ability to create their own marketing lists and use them as they please. You can create as many geolocalized open data lists as you want. You select a geographical area, define parameters (categories, keywords ...) and the system extracts for you downloadable data such as name, location, address, telephone number, website, email address ...

Let's say you want to get a list of all the restaurants in Manhattan. When you register, you receive 500 baits (a bait = a location detail such as name, address, phone number, website ... if available) 1\. Create a "fishing expedition" and define criteria (mainly category = restaurant) 2\. Create a new pond (you will fish in this pond): With the drawing tool, create a line around Manhattan. 3\. Click on "dig and fish" and you will know how many baits you need to get all the data 4\. Then click on "fish them all!" and you will have a list of all the restaurants and their available details (name, address, telephone number, website...). This list can be downloaded as a 'csv' file (you can open this file with Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets...)

Data from services such as Google Maps or Foursquare can not be used for marketing or communication purposes. For example, the Google Maps Terms of Service (3.2.4) states "Customer will not extract, export, scrape, or cache Google Maps Content for use outside the Services". Data from The Data Pond are under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

The data you will get from The Data Pond are not as rich as data from services like Google Maps or Foursquare but, at least, it is legal to use them.

If you have any comment or advice, do not hesitate. Shot.

<comment><USER2> Some feedback:

1) It seems you're selling location details for businesses and other places of interest? Make it extremely clear that this is not people. Also need much more detail on the source, legality and quality of this data.

2) Remove the fish/pond/bait naming. It's not a game, and these terms and descriptions just make it harder to understand and look unprofessional. Stick with normal terms like credits/lists/locations, etc.

3) Location and geographic data is an extremely competitive field. You need to figure out exactly who you're selling to and why. It seems you're going after self-service individuals/small-businesses market. Beware that there will be lots of unscrupulous and shady characters in this segment.

4) After the above, figure out your pricing and make it clear.

5) HN is not the best place to show this. Try some of the marketing forums and chatrooms to get feedback.

<comment><USER3> I do not agree 2) & 3)

Maybe his way to be different is to use funny terms and gamify the experience.

OSM is very geeky and this _could_ be a new open door for many.

immediate reference : glitch.com . How not helpful would it be to follow your recco ? (then again, the guys @ glitch are uber successful before glitch, so they are more prone to "do whatever they want and just not fit the traditional"

<comment><AUTHOR> 2) Several people made this remark. Now, I do not know if I keep it that way or if I do something more classic.

3) I'm learning. I am not used to the field of "marketing"

<comment><USER4> Do you have a business problem you're solving with what you've built? If you're new to marketing, what was the motivation behind creating this?

Generally, within marketing you need reliable data that can support audience segmentation, market research, targeting or advertising.

The restaurant scenario may be good for a sales person, but they would want more information like the owner/manager of the restaurant, details on foot traffic etc. so they can 'size up' a target customer for a 'sales call'.

That said, bsed on the data quality disclaimers you noted, it seems the data may not be practical for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Duly noted. What do you mean by "for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Neat idea! We recently stumbled upon the store information in OpenStreetMap and have been trying to decide what we want to with it. I think there are several interesting possibilities, but I'm mulling over whether they might be commercially viable.

You might get some more feedback if you don't require registration to test out your platform (I personally am not thrilled about creating yet another account just to try something out). A compromise would be to allow users to enter the query, and only see say, the top three results. In order to see the rest, users could be required to register. That way, people can test out the flow of the service before deciding whether to give you their email addresses.

I personally think your previous language of "bait" and such was cute. You have a pond theme, and you could commit to it further by having graphics like "fishing expedition" or a net to represent the catch. I'm not a marketer, so it's quite possible that manigandham is right. Nevertheless, I suspect that a single data point should not be enough to change your theming either way.

Hope that helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Many people were not convinced by the analogy with fishing. So I changed the text to something more classic: projects / lists. Less fun but more serious... If I have a time today, I will set up a demo that will not require registration. Thanks for the advice.

<comment><USER5> The demo is a little unclear. The instructions says to "Click [shape]" and I think you should probably delete that, since I don't see the shape anywhere else on the page. Starting with "Click where to start" is probably clear enough, although I think you can clarify the language further.

After someone clicks the "delete selected shape" button, you should probably resume the click-shape mode (with the crosshair cursor). It took we a while to figure out how to start clicking the shape and that I need to refresh the page if I want to restart.

Beyond that, I only got it to give me results when I specified a very small area; my earlier attempts encountered a "too big" error. I would guess that you are running into performance issues for larger areas, but limiting the area too much makes the demo less impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I will take into account these remarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Only by looking at the front page and the about page, I didn't understand how one can earn "credit"/"bait". Also, if it's "Open Data", why does it require credits to access it ?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are many things to improve. This is a beta. I'll try to do something easier to understand. I am not used to the vocabulary of marketing. Any advice is welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, I've added a demo. No need to register to test the system now. [https://www.thedatapond.net/new-demo](https://www.thedatapond.net/new-demo)</comment>


Show HN: Ireadit – Hide the comment section of unread articles on HN and Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://octobanana.com/software/ireadit <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

I've noticed lately that I tend to jump into the comment section on hacker news and reddit before reading the associated article. To prevent this, I wrote ireadit, a browser extension that hides the comment section if the article link has not been viewed. This is my first time writing an extension, so I am open to any and all comments or feedback.

It can currently be installed manually. The option to download from browser stores is coming soon.

You can check out a short video linked in the README.md that demonstrates how it functions.

<comment><USER2> I just made an app for hacker news and think I may implement this option if that is okay with you.</comment></comment>


Malware researcher Marcus Hutchins, known as 'MalwareTech', pleads guilty - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/19/malwaretech-legal-case-over/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't make the fundamental problem here go away: they arrested someone who was not in the United States when allegedly violated a law of the USA. The USA does not have jurisdiction over the entire world. If they thought they had a case, the right way to do this is to issue an arrest warrant and ask the UK to arrest and extradite him. If this was a thing, international travel would halt because you would need to countercheck everything you've ever done online with the laws of the country you are flying to.

Consider this fictionary tale: you fly to Budapest for a fun trip. You are jailed for posting the Soviet hammer and sickle on your Facebook two years ago -- it's a crime under Hungarian law to use that symbol. Do you think this is right?

Here's the law:

Any person who: a) distributes, b) uses before the public at large, or c) publicly exhibits, the swastika, the insignia of the SS, the arrow cross, the sickle and hammer, the five-pointed red star or any symbol depicting the above so as to breach public peace - especially in a way to offend the dignity of victims of totalitarian regimes and their right to sanctity - is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by custodial arrest, insofar as the did not result in a more serious criminal offense.

<comment><USER3> I'm okay with how the US handled this. The crime he pleaded guilty to caused innocent people real financial harm, and it's not like the US sent FBI agents over to the UK to pick him up. He flew here on his own, knowing (presumably) that he had committed a crime that could get him arrested here.

Kinda stupid to commit crimes against people in a country and then travel to that country before the statute of limitations has expired.

I might have a different opinion for victimless crimes, but it's irrelevant to this discussion.

<comment><USER4> FWIW his crimes didn't target any country specifically, so he could've faced trouble anywhere in the world.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with prosecuting him in the US, but presumably the US authorities could've just as well spared themselves the work and referred this to the UK authorities in whose jurisdiction the crimes were committed.

<comment><USER2> And that is fine, again, the so called Dread Pirate Roberts 2 was arrested and convincted in the UK mostly based on info the US handed to the UK. The problem is the US arresting someone who was. not. in. the. USA. when committing the crime (if he did).

<comment><USER5> >The problem is the US arresting someone who was. not. in. the. USA. when committing the crime (if he did).

How is this a problem? if you cause material damages to Americans and you then go to the US the country is going to come after you.

Why would the US not protect its citizens to the best of its ability and prosecute people who harmed them, even if they harmed them from a place that wasn't the US. We're talking about global financial crimes, they don't know any borders to begin with.

If you kill someone outside of the US, and then you travel to the US, I'd be concerned if you wouldn't get arrested

<comment><USER4> As far as I'm aware it is not alleged that Marcus Hutchins caused material damages to Americans, it is alleged that he sold his malware to Americans.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the federal government has ever claimed that any Americans were infected with Kronos.

<comment><USER6> Not even that, he sold his malware, not to Americans specifically, or targeted at Americans at all, but he sold malware that someone subsequently used against US citizens.

It's a stretch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Plea bargained. That's how its done in the USA folks. At least in over 90% of cases. The concept of having a fair trial and your day in court is a thing of the past. Amazing it took so long.

<comment><USER8> I've been following Marcus on Twitter for the last couple of years, and he's been sounding increasingly desperate lately. Regardless of whether he actually authored Kronos, I could easily see him taking the plea bargain as a way out.

I strongly feel that a malware researcher who stopped WannaCry and spends his free time making reverse engineering tutorials shouldn't go to prison because of a trojan he wrote as a teenager (assuming he really did write it).

<comment><USER9> He not only wrote the malware but personally sold it for $7000 per copy to botnet operators and other kinds of cybercriminals to facilitate bank account theft and fraud. He's changed now and is trying to be a force for good, but he definitely made mistakes in his past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few friends and myself chipped in some money for his legal defense, taking hin at his word when he said he was innocent.

Lesson learned, I suppose.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't hold it against him that he pled guilty. The government has unlimited resources, and he didn't. Innocent people plead guilty every day.

<comment><USER12> The government absolutely does not have anything near unlimited resources. I've been listening to the Ken White podcast All the President's Lawyers and something he repeatedly says is just how shockingly few criminals, especially white collar criminals, actually get prosecuted because there's simply no budget to go after them.

<comment><USER11> With respect to Ken White, that's a load of crap. Between AUSA's, FBI, CJA's, FD's, and judge's office, at least $0.3M in my case and counting.

<comment><USER12> That's kind of the point. When they go after someone they're going to spend the money. No point spreading resources so thinly that they can't prosecute anyone properly.

<comment><USER11> That's the opposite of your first point. When they have no trouble spending the money, they have no trouble spending the money.

<comment><USER13> He said exactly that: it's shocking how few criminals _get prosecuted_. Like, at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Statement from Markus: [https://www.malwaretech.com/public- statement](https://www.malwaretech.com/public-statement)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is something I don't understand.

From the contents of the "attachment A" it seems like the FBI (or whatever other US agency) "sat" on the code they indirectly purchased for 2-3 years (the UPAS) and for several months (the KRONOS), observing the behaviour of Hutchins and "Vinny" and collecting evidence against them.

Shouldn't they have _somehow_ acted to prevent the spreading of the malwares?

</comment><comment><USER16> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19702872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19702872)

</comment><comment> lachlan-sneff This is too bad, Malwaretech does really good work; his blog is excellent. We've all done stupid things when we were young, myself included.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I fucked around with random internet-accessible systems (late 90s, early 2000s). However, I never wrote malware to steal credentials or the like. That strikes me as fairly targeted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What law did he break? Was he actually breaking into computers which is against the law? Or is there some other law that makes the tech illegal?

</comment><comment><USER19> >He also agreed to plead guilty to a second count of conspiracy.

Can someone elaborate what that conspiracy is?

</comment><comment><USER20> I wouldn't automatically take this at face value.

Hutchins took a plea deal. It's well known that there is rampant abuse of the plea deal in the US justice system [1].

That's not to say he's totally innocent of everything but that him pleading guilty to this single count may not be as straight forward as the article would make it seem.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocen...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence- is-irrelevant/534171/)

<comment><USER21> We don't know his actual sentence yet, do we? The article says "up to 10 years" but the actual duration will be suggested by the prosecution based on the plea, no?

<comment><USER13> His defense and the prosecutors have stipulated to two counts, each of which has a _maximum_ sentence of 5 years. The norm is for like crimes to be sentenced concurrently, so "up to 10 years" does not seem accurate.

The plea agreement itself stipulates to the sentencing level. Assuming all charges group, the maximum proposed sentencing level is 13, with the caveat that the agreement allows prosecutors to argue for an adjustment of as many as 8 sentencing levels. With no previous criminal history, a level 13 offense is 12-18 months.

 _Late edit_

I missed that he also loses 3 levels for accepting responsibility. At level 10, his guideline range would be 6-12 months.

For more detail on how this works, Google [popehat whale sushi].

<comment><USER21> Right; the probable sentence is much lower, but how much lower is to a large extent up to prosecutorial discretion (8 levels), no? Levels 2-8 (taking 2-8 levels off 10), with no priors, would be guideline 0-6 months, if I'm reading this table correctly.

(I also read Popehat.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No GitHub Repo Access - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/

<comment><USER2> Seems to be fixed, here are the messages:

21:08 UTCEverything operating normally.

21:02 UTCWe continue to investigate problems with HTTPS based Git operations. Things are working again, but moving very slowly.

20:39 UTCGit operations over SSH appear to be functioning normally, however we continue to investigate problems with operations over HTTPS. We will update when we know more.

20:19 UTCWe are investigating problems with repository access and some GitHub.com features. We will report back once we have more information to share.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be up again. Mine is fine, and the status page says they are monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER4> This also breaks GitHub Pages. I can very mine is down.</comment>


Show HN: CoderScreen – Automated Technical Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://coderscreen.com/

<comment><USER2> two comments here:

first congrats if this is your project, on demand virtual machines with focused tasks and recording terminal sessions to evaluate later is pretty interesting and seems like no easy feat and even, outside the context of an interview, seems like it has a fun puzzle

that said, as somebody that's been interviewing technical candidates for the past three years or so, this doesn't appeal to me at all, primarily because it only time-shifts the "i'm staring over your shoulder problem" that makes even competent developers make stupid mistakes.

and to be honest, i'm not sure that as an applicant, i would be overly thrilled to receive one of these screens, it makes me think that the company can't be bothered to look at my resume, or ask me in person, or do a reference check, or even look at some code that i've provided. arriving here signals to me as applicant "this company isn't even willing to put in a 15 minute screen to ask me fizzbuzz" which, to my mind, is a bad smell to give off.

but mostly coming from the side of "i talk to a fair number of candidates" i never find that code samples or projects or anything really gives me as much insight as talking to somebody about their work, about the things they valued in their sample projects, or the things that they're presently passionate about.

on the spot code interviews are already problematic, but looking at a realtime playback and scrutinizing it feels like a net loss over having a candidate walk me through their thought process for `fib(n)`, a process which is already stressful enough when you _can_ explain yourself. it's great that these eventually run through a test suite, but

that said, i think there's truly something novel here for non-job situations it's like, you have ten minutes to write an ansible playbook to configure a machine with "git+nginx+memcached." that's a scenario where you're testing yourself against some unknown challenge in a domain you're probably strong in. but i don't think i find it an appropriate challenge 'experience' for applicants.

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that would make me, as someone who is recruiting heavily right now, not want to use this is that I fear it will be a massive turn off to really great engineers. If I was interviewing with a company and they made me do this before talking to them I probably just never would. If my first interaction with them isn't an opportunity to also sell them on the company/opportunity then the first impression is hugely suboptimal. I'd rather waste time on 5 phone screens and have 1 really great one where I get a chance to build a connection with the awesome engineer, it greatly increases the chance we'll end up hiring him or her.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neat. How is this different?

Trueability.com comes to mind.</comment>


Regulators Demanding Uber Price Increase to $75 Minimum in Vancouver - <AUTHOR> http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8d2fd6968b2b5c64d0d22dba2&id=716a9504de&e=60b1c5b342 <comment><USER2> How about Uber set aside $20 per ride in a fund and issue customers with claim card, a bit like a store rewards card. If the law ever gets changed so that Uber can refund the money then they commit themselves to do so, perhaps up to a limit of 5 or 10 years.

Soon the city will be full of people owed hundreds or thousands of dollars in refunds, a pretty solid reason to push for changes to the law, and demonstrate to the public just how much they're getting ripped off.

<comment><USER3> That's a clever concept.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, but I'm not sure how practical it is. The high charges will reduce the number of people choosing Uber over their competitors, so they'd be giving up a competitive advantage and the higher margins that might offset it. On the other hand, if the legislation never gets changed they get to keep the money, hence the cut-off period.

I've not idea what the financial reporting implications of this might be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is unfortunately turning into an example of "you can't fight City Hall".

In a city like SF, where the taxi cab service is the worst I've ever experienced (empty taxis just driving past you, or never honoring a commitment to pick you up even if you call in), Uber is something that is necessary. But the status quo's long term experience with enforcing a monopoly through laws/regulations, etc, will make it really hard for Uber. Uber will need to spend a great deal of time and energy trying to get those laws to change, which will likely be at a glacial pace, if ever.

I'm sure there's a huge amount of interest for this in SF, and taxi service is so bad, you might even be able to make this an election issue. But other cities like Vancouver I'm sure don't have as bad of an issue, so it might be harder to make it an issue that politicians will take notice of.

<comment><USER5> I've lived for years in both Vancouver and in SF. I can't say I prefer one's taxi service over the other. At least in SF, I have the option of Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar.

I would love to have Uber back home, but not for $75 a ride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As Uber's similar difficulties in New York show, the governments both North and South of the 49th parallel consider city transportation to be their exclusive domain and are not shy to regulate it instead of looking out for consumers.

In Vancouver, Canada the quasi-government regional transportation authority is heavily subsidized by taxpayers and is still running in deficit. They are not exactly happy about competition from the companies like Uber.

<comment><USER7> You should know that Translink (aka the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority) has nothing whatsoever to do with Taxi's. That's regulated at the provincial level.

> quasi-government (sic)

aka, the corporate structure used by participating municipalities to operate a unified public transportation system in a metropolitan area

> heavily subsidized by taxpayers

That's literally what the "public" part in "public transportation" means (gasp! that's socialism!)

> and is still running in deficit

Like every public transportation project everywhere? A valid and important criticism of Translink but at least a robot drives me to work on a monorail every day faster than I could drive there on empty roads, never mind in traffic.

All of this is completely irrelevant to the actual story unless you think that Uber is in competition with public buses, but you don't seem _that_ confused.

> not shy to regulate it instead of looking out for consumers

You've clearly never lived somewhere with a booming unregulated taxi market. Do you take things like not getting extorted, scammed, robbed or raped when jumping into a strangers car in the middle of the night for granted? You can thank the people regulating the taxi industry.

Regulatory bodies, like any group of people given some power, public or private, will try to expand it's power base and will abuse that power but taxi regulation was brought about by people looking out for consumers.

I think this decision in particular is outrageous protectionism but your take on things made me think an adult opinion was warranted.

<comment><USER8> > but you don't seem that confused.

> your take on things made me think an adult opinion was warranted.

This is one of the most arrogant and patronizing comment I've read on HN, you should have read your comment before posting it, you really sounded prickish on this one.

<comment><USER9> Sometimes you need a slap to make you listen. I think his comment was spot on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would a long-term promotional deal for a $10-40 gift certificate to Indigo, Marks, BestBuy or somewhere else (or a debit card) of the customer's choice be a possibility to overcome this issue?

<comment><USER11> Likely not.

      "Certificates must not replace or interfere with the requirement
       that licensees charge Board-approved rates ..."

Source: <http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/ptb/operational_policies.htm#V_5>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What business does the Government have to fix the prices of a private company so arbitrarily like this? Surely this isn't constitutional?

<comment><USER13> Have you ever been in a taxi in Mexico City at night? Terrifying. I'll take my Canadian regulations, thanks.

Shafting Uber is not a problem of excessive regulation, but of purposely protecting incumbants.

<comment><USER14> Correct me if I'm wrong but _Mexico City_ is not in _Canada_.

<comment><USER7> Right. And the attitude that results in a taxi passenger bill of rights (<http://www.taxirights.gov.bc.ca/>) is what makes Canada so clearly _not_ Mexico City.

<comment><USER15> People who have read the Reglamento de Transporte del Distrito Federal would be astonished to learn that a taxi passenger bill of rights makes the difference between Mexico City and Canada.

Especially astonished would be those who've read Chapter 5 Articles 33 and 34.

<comment><USER7> "the attitude that results in a taxi passenger bill of rights"

Those extra words do actually make quite a difference in what was meant. I was unclear in another way though, it's the attitude that results in both the laws being written _and_ the laws being effectively enforced. That is an important part of the equation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Vancity- """ Mary Polak @MaryPolakMLA Passenger Transportation Board is an independent decision maker so gov't does not influence decision. #bcpoli #UberVanLove """

This makes sense, actually. At first I was angry because there was no system in place for the public to complain/appeal this, but this has nothing to do with public services. If it had to do with buses or other forms of public transportation, then there would be a way to publicly appeal.

However, this is a matter dealing with private companies- as such it makes sense that the PTB is outside the public domain. Unfortunately, this makes it much harder for anyone outside an UBER rep to affect things one way or another.

A cursory glance at <http://www.ptboard.bc.ca/> confirms this- the appeals appear to be for the user/company directly, and the only contact to the PTB appears to be snailmail, which nobody on HN is going to use for any reason.

As for the actual rates information itself: [http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/ptb/documents/rule_limo-min- rates.pd...](http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/ptb/documents/rule_limo-min-rates.pdf)

Best they could do is $75 * .15 discount, not enough to be viable.

UBER can appeal for the board to approve company specific rates, but I'm not sure exactly how they'd justify it or what's involved in the process. Worst case scenario is waiting until the rules end date comes (June 30, 2013) and see if a campaign to rewrite it is within the public domain.

<comment><USER16> For those still following, it turns out that Uber has nothing to appeal because they never submitted an application to the PTB. The PTB did not reject a request by Uber.

It now appears that the PTB barely knew that Uber existed until they started getting hate-mail from angry users.

(The same is true, incidentally of the City of Vancouver. Uber doesn't have the business licenses required to sell bicycle courier services in Vancouver, never mind limousine services.)

The limo drivers and companies who worked with Uber, however, are being hit with fines and other enforcement actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The law is a funny thing. It is set up not to protect taxi companies or drivers. I it is set up to make sure the public has a reasonable priced service that has to provide service to the entire community. The reason you have an hourly rate for sedans is to differentiate between the two services. The sedan business is lightly regulated and is open market. Uber has set up and illegal service and believes they can bully city hall. Problem is the city realizes that it will be destroyed the taxi industry who the city will expect to do all the unprofitable trips. So if you are bogging her about how you want uber - realize this is a skimming operation. The regulators understand this and the reason you have the 75 rate per hour to start. Uber is not a small company. I think is back by vc groups and wall street investors who do not care that much the taxi cab business is based on public need and necessity.

</comment><comment><USER18> For those still following, "#ubervanlove" and "Uber" are trending on twitter in Vancouver right now.

Mayor Gregor Robertson (@MayorGregor) says: "Getting lots of @Uber_VAN tweets. City Hall not involved, BC govt appoints Passenger Transportation Board. #UberVanLove"

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm sure it's easier to get people to email or tweet, it might help to also give addresses & phone numbers.

</comment><comment><USER20> And this will go on until somebody starts to do violence in defence of these kinds of businesses.

When enough taxi drivers gets shot, they will change their tone.

//Legal disclaimer: the above is a disclaimer of fact and should not be read as inciting violence.

<comment><USER21> Violence begets violence. Violence doesn't solve anything unless you're an entity which can totally dominate another entity. And in this case, the entities we're talking about are (rather large) businesses. So applying violence in this domain is the surest way to undermine your own goals.</comment></comment>


Best Linux Distro Under 700 MB? - <AUTHOR>

I have about 75 gigs of unpartitioned space on my old laptop and I'm looking to burn a Live CDR to install a Linux distribution. <comment><USER2> You can download a netiso (net install / minimal iso). That kind of ISOs are between 80-250 MB (or even less) and contains a base system only but you can download the "rest" of the system from internet.

[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD) [http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/](http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/)

But If you are not confident enough with Linux perhaps you might consider other options.

</comment><comment><USER3> 75 GB is plenty for Arch: [https://www.archlinux.org/download/](https://www.archlinux.org/download/)

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide)

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_Installation_Media](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_Installation_Media)

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried booting from a live cdr but it loaded into a command line. Is there a way to get this with a GUI installer? I'm new to Linux and don't know the command line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Porteus runs in under 300mb and runs nicely off a cheap USB stick or CDR while having all the basics including a Desktop GUI.

[http://www.porteus.org/](http://www.porteus.org/)

<comment><USER2> I though in that. I love that distribution it's excellent but it has it problems. I wouldn't recommend to "install" it in a hard drive as probably wants OP.

<comment><AUTHOR> I ended up using 25 gigs to install Puppy Linux.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a site to help developers create their own portfolio - <AUTHOR> https://techstax.dev/ <comment><AUTHOR> TechStax is a free portfolio creator for developers and students! You can create and host a beautiful and simple portfolio for free. So far I've got a ton of positive feedback - I hope you like it!

Oh and btw: a lot of people ask if there is a possibility to host their portfolio on their own domain. Currently this feature is still under development but it will be available in the future. Stay updated!

<comment><USER2> Cool idea. We would like to feature your startup in our website, submit here: [https://www.startupjohn.com/submit- startup](https://www.startupjohn.com/submit-startup)</comment></comment>


Towards a fully reproducible Debian - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/757118/f2f894279576c348/ <comment><USER2> I would gladly set a "preproducible_only=yes" or whatever config option to exclude non-reproducible packages from a personal system. This would create a strong incentive to contribute patches. (I'm hoping someone can point out such a setting already exists! It didn't last time I checked.)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, such a flag would probably result in weird package install/update errors as part of the dependency graph would be missing.

<comment><USER4> Can a package even be considered reproducible if its dependencies aren't?

<comment><USER2> I would argue not, but that's the point, right? Do we have a large enough well-connected graph of reproducibly buildable packages, and if not, what should be fixed _first_?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NetBSD has fully reproducible builds [https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_fully_reproducible_...](https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_fully_reproducible_builds)

<comment><USER6> The scope here is much larger as it's every package in the Debian distro, not just the base system.

<comment><USER7> and pkgsrc has bulk package builds.

same pkgsrc checkout + reproducable base => essentially reproducable full package builds.

yes, some people will find some niggling way to make this not true because the binaries may be somehow altered due to timestamps, yadda, but for all practical purposes w/r/t the actual code and actual executables generated, this is true, and has been true for essentially the entire existance of bsd derivitaves using ports systems (1996).

<comment><USER8> > same pkgsrc checkout + reproducable base => essentially reproducable full > package builds.

I would be truly surpised if that were the case. Are there no packages in pkgsrc which embed, e.g. timestamps, or even download things while building[1]?

[1] JDK packages are a typical culprit in this type of situation because Oracle JDK requires an "accept license" prompt.

> es, some people will find some niggling way to make this not true because > the binaries may be somehow altered due to timestamps, yadda, but for all > practical purposes w/r/t the actual code and actual executables generated, > this is true, and has been true for essentially the entire existance of bsd > derivitaves using ports systems (1996).

Oh, so you're coopting "essentially reproducable" to mean "not reproducible". Ok then.

"Reproducible builds" is about _verification_ and isn't just about "close enough".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought NixOS solves the full reproducibility problem really well already.

[https://nixos.org](https://nixos.org)

<comment><USER10> It doesn't. NixOS doesn't do reproducible builds, it does reproducible systems.

Reproducible builds is essentially about compiling source code to a binary and always get the same checksum

Reproducible systems is about always getting the same system/behavior given the same configuration. Which is what NixOS does.

<comment><USER9> I thought that getting the same system/behavior would require reproducible builds too. Perhaps I am wrong.

<comment><USER11> If your build process always produces the exact same binaries, and you always use the exact same environment to run these, then yes, that's reproducible. It's not equivalent though, in that you can easily have a system that always exhibits the same behaviour (what NixOS does) but does not use bit-by-bit equal binaries. For example, some symbols in some library's .so file might be in a different order, or some padding bits that are never read might be zero or random depending on your compiler's choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So I'm glad this is being done, but the "attack surface" that's being resolved sounds like a bit of a joke...

"Alice, a system administrator who contributes to a Linux distribution, is building her binaries on servers that, unknown to her, have been compromised"

This is a bit of weird scenario.. so they're assuming the only build being compromised is the one that ends up in the repo and no one can confirm that easily. So just have two (or more) identical servers in separate locations under different people's control so they aren't both compromised? No need to fuzz the dates and paths and stuff. Or if you really want, you make a special Debian version (super-stable) with fixed clocks, file paths, etc. where things are easy to reproduce.

"Bob, a privacy-oriented developer, makes a privacy-preserving browser, but is being blackmailed into secretly including vulnerabilities in the binaries he provides. Carol is a free-software user whose laptop is being attacked by an evil maid called Eve, the third developer of the title; each time Carol shares free software with her friends, it is pre-compromised by Eve"

Do Debian contributors just upload a binary blob to the Debian servers and that's it? I though they were saying they have build servers for every package and the source from which it's built is available

How about even easier - a bribed/black-mailed Debian maintainer slips in a patch to some of the tens of thousands of packages they tweak, no one notices and it gets distributed to everyone. I'm not expert, but it seems the smarter solution would be to have a much smaller reproducible core/base system (with Debian patches when necessary). Something that can realistically get enough eyeballs on it. And then everything else is built by project maintainers into something like flatpaks/snaps with no patching.

<comment><USER13> > So just have two (or more) identical servers in separate locations under > different people's control so they aren't both compromised?

Considering that you are a DNS spoof away from installing packages from a compromised server, how does your proposal tackle the underlying problem?

<comment><USER14> > Considering that you are a DNS spoof away from installing packages from a > compromised server,

This is false. Debian packages are signed. If the signature fails to validate the package will not install.

<comment><USER15> Read 'em and weep:

[https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2018/02/21/attacks- against-...](https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2018/02/21/attacks-against- secure-apt-repositories/)

[https://isis.poly.edu/~jcappos/papers/cappos_mirror_ccs_08.p...](https://isis.poly.edu/~jcappos/papers/cappos_mirror_ccs_08.pdf)

"GPG signing a Debian package does nothing because package signatures are not verified by default on any major distribution when packages are installed with apt-get install. See your /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg file for an explicit comment to this effect."

And:

"When APT software (such as apt-get, or reprepro) or folks offering APT repositories mention GPG signatures in their documentation they are typically referring to GPG signatures on repository metadata, not on packages themselves. Likewise, when you configure the SignWith option of reprepro (documented here), you are telling reprepro to sign your repository metadata with the specified GPG key; this does not sign any of the packages, though."

<comment><AUTHOR> > GPG signing a Debian package does nothing because package signatures are not > verified by default on any major distribution when packages are installed > with apt-get install

That's sliiiiiiightly misleading. :/

<comment><USER15> On both Debian 9.4 and Ubuntu 16.04 (what I have handy):

      # Do not enable debsig-verify by default; since the distribution is not using
      # embedded signatures, debsig-verify would reject all packages.
      no-debsig</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Picsi – My first iOS app (feedback wanted) - <AUTHOR> http://www.picsi.me/

<comment><USER2> Congrats on making and shipping something - that is always a good thing. A lot of these are to taste, but that's what feedback is:

* I hit no when I get asked for Push Notifications on first launch. Give me a reason to enable this later and I will, but on launch it just obscures the good UI you created and I hit Don't Allow

* You need to show something before asking someone to register or sign in. People will just stop here including me

* Coachmarks are pretty nice.

* Created an album, pulled to refresh, infinite spinner (bug)

* Doing some kind of work on the main thread for the photo capture that you shouldn't (makes capture flow jaggy)

* The app seems needlessly complicated between feeds, albums, friends, etc. Most of these things should be hidden when I just want to take, view, share photos.

Overall my big question about this app isn't related to the UI but to purpose: why trust your app to share photos with all my friends. I have to get all my friends on this service to do so. And there's no guarantee it will be around for any amount of time so why store my files there.

But seriously, good job on shipping this. Keep making the things you want.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey _Introduction slides are not responsive (they are cropped in iPhone 4 /4S screen) _When I try to create an album and choose from gallery 'Done' is not working.

</comment><comment><USER4> The landing page is a little annoying in Safari: no matter how I resize the window, the page wants to be a few pixels wider, so it always has a horizontal scroll bar.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you market this information business? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.deedeemicrowaves.com/
I met this woman randomly the other day. I found out she specializes in giving seminars on how to effectively microwave food and has been doing so for 28 years.  She's one of the best in this really niche market.  I think she's really got something but her website is horrible and clearly she isn't that tech savvy, she tends to make all her sales of her dvd in person by giving seminars and asking people to buy her dvd.
I would like to help her out to bring the business online.  If you were to advise her on how to promote her business online, what would be the right angle? Revamp the site, write guest blog posts and attempt to sell her dvd series online?
I would appreciate any of your thoughts. Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Just Google information marketing how to and you'll get tons of resources on how to go about doing this. There are lots of information marketers out there who make a good, if not great, living by selling e-books, DVD's and whatnot via their website. Their MO is simple. Build a landing page, offer something for free (eg. a free report) to your visitors and get them to opt into your mailing list. Then upsell, upsell and upsell. It's harder than it seems and is a full time job. A simple website with a nice landing page and an opt-in form will do just fine, but getting traffic to it is another matter altogether. You would need to do SEO, Affiliate Marketing (eg. through ClickBank), AdWords, Article Marketing, Press Releases, Guest blogging, YouTube videos etc. to get decent traffic and build up the mailing list. The list then becomes your potential customer database and then you have follow the usual sales process to get them to buy your product.

There are some very good training courses out there on information marketing too. Of course they follow the same MO and you'll have to become a paying customer to learn how to do it. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointers. You're right that it seems like it is a full time job. Probably if I really wanted to help her the best thing to do would be to hook her up with a information marker agent who would handle a lot of the strategizing for her while she provides the expertise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are hundreds of ways you could do this, but here are my initial thoughts.

First, look at how other information products like this are marketed and sold. A lot of use the traditional "long form" sales letter. Looking over her website, it's basically what she has now just laid out slightly differently. I'm not a fan of long sales pages, but they get results.

Second, help identify the online market she's selling to. My first thoughts are moms and parents of kids that are about to go to college. I can't see a college kid buying it, but I can definitely see it being given as a gift. Look for blogs in these topics and email them to gauge interest. Perhaps give copies as prizes for their readers.

Other ways to promote the site would be to take the recipes and convert them to articles and publish them on sites like ezinearticles.com (with titles like "how to cook healthy microwave pizza"). Then in the author bio add a link to her site.

It may be worth considering converting the video / book to digital products and offering the DVD & hard copy as an upsell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions and your thoughts Sodaware :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you considered that putting her DVD-oriented business online could be a bad idea? It is one thing to demo the technique in person and then follow up with a "hot sale" of the DVD. This is easy-peasy and works well. And it is a completely different thing to get random people look at the website and get them excited enough to order a DVD. This is an impulsive buy product if sold online. You see it, you get excited (IF that happens), you want it now. DVD in the mail translates not "no, thanks" at best and a visit to the torrents site at worst.

I just do not see this working at all. It would seem more logical to focus on promoting her seminars instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Trying food in person is a very different experience to seeing it online. Only problem is that it doesn't scale so well..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd guess that the owner's 28 years in business has given her an offline customer base that she should try to connect with online. Bring those people to her website to write testimonials, generate conversation and buzz via Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Most startups would love to have a fan club on Day 1, instead of shouting desperately into the void. Start there.

Also, consider seeding some video content on YouTube, eHow or the like.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the idea of starting from her fan base. Thanks percept! I like the idea of seeding some content on eHow and YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd cut the DVD into a bunch of youtube videos and give it away. Make the website really flashy and pump traffic like the previous posters suggestion: how to make healthy pizza. Use the traffic to sell the book and build a name for herself and her seminars. I'd bet some of her older clients could stumble onto a youtube video, say "thats cool" and _still_ buy the dvd.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. You can probably make that sales page _much_ better, and install some a/b testing software and then increase conversions over the course of a year or so.

2\. You can probably help her with tips around driving traffic (starting with her existing fans).

3\. Set her up with a mailing list and a newsletter.

That's plenty to start with.</comment>


Send SMS for Free via AIM on iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://db.tidbits.com/article/9690 <comment><USER2> Just tested this. It sends a text from 26950. If the receiver does not know your AIM screen name, the text will be very confusing. Also, if you have the Gen 1 iPhone, you get 200 texts by default with the data plan so this won't save you a ton of money.

<comment><USER3> And in the UK you get 600 free SMS a month so it's not really an issue here unless you spend your life texting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I try this it fails with a message stating: "Could not send because +1604xxxxxxx is not available"

Because I'm Canada?

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't you have to be online for receive the responses? If so, it's kinda silly if the person doesn't respond immediately</comment>


Is it just me or are interfaces overused? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/90851/526535

<comment><USER2> I think the most popular answer is sub-optimal. The problem example given is not an issue if you simply use method overloads. eg just add a new method to the original interface and you break nothing :

      interface ILogSink {
        Log(DateTime timestamp, string message);

        Log(DateTime timestamp, string message, CultureInfo culture);
      }</comment>


Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction - <AUTHOR> https://gchp.ie/2016/08/09/rust-compiler-walkthrough-introduction/ <comment><USER2> Does any one know if there is a plan for a GCC Rust Frontend?

<comment><USER3> There are two nascent alternative Rust compiler projects that I know of. One is [https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc](https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc), which does not aim to be a GCC or LLVM front-end, and seems aimed at bootstrapping rust on platforms with only C/C++ support. The author of this alt compiler says they're able to parse and typecheck libcore (the small OS independent part of the standard library). They are working on codegen so they can start making use of the rustc compiler tests. I don't think they aim to implement the borrow checker, though, because their goal is bootstrapping rustc on other platforms, and the borrow checking can be verified using a different compiler.

There's also a frequent user of the rust irc channels who is experimenting with writing a GCC front-end for rust. I don't think any code for that is public yet, and I don't know how far along they are.

<comment><USER4> I mean, I'm guessing here, but wouldn't simplest way be starting mid-way in the existing Rust compiler to port an intermediate language to GCC? Straight- up compile it to GCC C or whatever GCC does internally. That way, you get the parsing, analysis, etc for free plus any improvements they make. Lots of other languages used this approach.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure mrustc isn't targeting GCC as a backend, but I'm not sure.

I don't know what approach is being taken by the person working on a GCC backend, but it's entirely possible what you've described is what they're doing.

<comment><USER5> > I'm pretty sure mrustc isn't targeting GCC as a backend, but I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure your statement is somewhat paradoxical :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's a lot of passes in the compiler. Seems to do most pretty fast. I look forward to reading this series. Especially, how they handle safety stuff worth porting to other languages.

<comment><USER6> Yeah! I was surprised by the amount. When I read things now about compiler speed, I'm looking through a different lens now that I have an idea of the sheer amount of work it's doing. Pretty impressive.</comment></comment>


Hackers stole a casino's high-roller db via thermometer in the lobby fish tank - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-stole-a-casinos-database-through-a-thermometer-in-the-lobby-fish-tank-2018-4 <comment><USER2> One of the scariest things to me about IoT devices is people using them without really understanding the tech behind them. It feels like a lot of older companies are still just getting used to working with smartphones and having databases instead of file cabinets, and suddenly IoT means they have 20 new devices that they don't really understand, that often are set up to have more access than necessary (because that's probably the easiest way to set them up)...

</comment><comment><USER3> I was hoping this would be an elaborate side channel where the data was exfiltrated bit by bit over a few weeks by inducing temperature fluctuations that were picked up by the thermometer that was visible through a window from the building next door. But it's just another "IoT" device. These things should be considered backdoors until proven otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's no need for device to be made secure. Just configure your network so that the device can only talk through a specific virtual private network, or even better a separate physical network. It's not difficult, but it might be more costly. Car manufacturers do this. The entertainment system usually cannot talk directly to the engine control unit. There is a bridge device between the two that controls the conversation. Safety critical stuff is on the ECU side of the bridge not the entertainment side and the ECU side is not public.

I don't mean cars are perfect, just that the concept is well known and manufacturers do try to implement it (with varying degrees of success of course).</comment>


What's new in Python 3.8 - <AUTHOR> https://deepsource.io/blog/python-3-8-whats-new/ <comment><USER2> Relevant discussion from last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20463170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20463170)</comment>


What happens to your retina if you view an eclipse without protection - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/08/heres-what-happens-to-your-retina-if-you-view-an-eclipse-without-protection/ <comment><USER2> You see the eclipse? The human eye is pretty well adapted to the sun by now. This is pure FUD masquerading as science.</comment>


Watchsend (YC S13) records mobile screen interactions for user testing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/08/yc-backed-watchsend-records-mobile-screen-interactions-for-user-testing/

<comment><USER2> How can you take privacy seriously[0] when there is the option to capture full screenshots and send them back to the dev team? That is absolutely not an expected behavior of any app. Am I not understanding something here?

[0] "We take privacy seriously. You can choose to hide sensitive information, only record certain sections of your app, or even pixelate out all text entirely."

Edit: added source of claim

Edit 2: To clarify: I don't mean to diminish the hard work of the team. I know how hard it is to put your work out there and I'm sure there was a lot of interesting technical work that went in to it. That said, I really think the premise is troubling, especially if it is intended beyond a "beta tester" group. Even with the best intentions, this is a really powerful tool that could be easily abused.

<comment><USER3> Cofounder here. We're a service that helps app developers understand their users in order to make their apps better. Like almost any other service that collects and stores data, it's possible to intentionally misuse Watchsend in ways that grossly violate users' privacy.

What we mean by "we take privacy seriously" is that we work really hard to make sure that devs who care about their users' privacy can use Watchsend to make their apps better without infringing on their users' privacy. At the end of the day, if a developer wants to spy on their users, there's very little we (or anyone else) can do about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could be really great. Watching users interact with your product directly provides a whole different level of insight.

A few things that I can think of that they may already be considering:

1\. Asking the developer to specify explicitly which screens should be recorded. From the article, it seems like it's opt-out (the developer specifies which screens should _not_ be recorded), rather than opt-in.

2\. Showing long recordings at high speed, slowing down/pausing at "interesting" portions

3\. Data aggregated across multiple users: for example, a report of places in the app where most users pause the longest

4\. Displays of multiple users' interactions with a single screen, overlaid on top of each other

5\. Dealing with user offline scenarios where data may need to be locally stored and then uploaded when a connection is available

They must be doing some sort of frame delta on the videos to save bandwidth, I'm assuming.

Very cool idea!

<comment><USER5> Agreed on 2-5, the state of how we collect data on in-app activity seems to totally miss the point of context.

Something where we collect visual data on live user sessions seems like it may open the door to getting a deeper understanding of what users are actually doing in our apps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Woah. This is going to change the game.

Rapid iteration on mobile is tough enough...as long as this doesn't have too big of a hit on performance, this is about to change the way we develop mobile apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't think of a better way to understand your users than to watch them use your app in real time. Implementing this in all my apps right now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks neat! I'm wondering how big is the market for this kind of service? Seems very valuable for early startups/products imho.

</comment><comment><USER9> The first paragraph was all it took to convince me to send this to our design team.

</comment><comment><USER10> Works skippingly for identifying users' reasons for app failures.

</comment><comment><USER11> Congrats on the launch! Sharp team and great product :)</comment>


Show HN: polkadot - a different way to browse Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://gistpoint.com/polkadot?u=http://news.ycombinator.com/&days=5&above=50

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this during the weekend as an experiment for my gistpoint app and open sourced the js code as a Raphael plugin here: <https://github.com/mquan/polkadot>.</comment>


CEO - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/ceo <comment><USER2> "As a CEO you are obliged to keep the company on the right side of the law."

This advice is akin to "don't do drugs." The devil is in the details. And the details aren't always black and white.

The hardest challenge in being a CEO isn't in knowing your obligations. The challenging part is making compromises in order to make good on _competing_ obligations...without letting shit hit the fan.

<comment><USER3> It's not really within the premise of the post, but focusing too much on the law side without much regard on morals & ethics isn't that great either.

Some CEOs do think that it's OK to cause environmental damage, outsource to sweatshops or conduct mass layoffs - as long as it's a lawful act.

<comment><USER4> But there's no shareholder value in acknowledging externalities, so most professional CEOs appointed by a board won't challenge immoral acts if it would contradict their mantra to "increase shareholder value".

As a recently arrived member of the "C-suite", I find that the cult of maximising shareholder value leaves me cold. But ultimately, the shareholders pay the piper, so they can call the tune.

<comment><USER5> It goes even beyond just upsetting some shareholders paying for it. The CEO has the fiduciary _duty_ to ignore such externalities.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an oft repeated un-truth.

<comment><USER5> Would love to be corrected with evidence.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are- cor...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations- obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

Will that do?

<comment><USER5> Sure, "shareholder values" is not the same thing as bottom line profit and it might be subjective depending on a number of factors, but it is also not the same thing as value to the broader society; it can be at odds with it depending on who the shareholder is. The duty might be vague to define in practice, but it still is very much in existence.

I don't think that article claims this is untrue, just that the fiduciary duty is broader than the dollar amount in the financial statements.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I don't think that article claims this is untrue

"There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and "shareholder value" — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: "Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.""

How much clearer could it be?

Note that shareholders can and will sue companies, the board and the executives for whatever reasons they feel will hold water, but suing is not the same as winning that suit, and that the final interpretation of what your required course of action was in a given situation is in the end up to a judge, not up to a shareholder.

<comment><USER6> Jacques, I actually didn't know this. It is a claim that has gone around and is often repeated, I'm pretty sure I've heard it used in "expert" interviews in financial & political documentaries, so I guess I assumed it was true.

This might be important enough of a point to include in your post? The actions of a CEO facing difficult decisions might hinge on which of several competing responsibilities they feel most bound or affected by, and removing the belief there's a profit requirement could push Some situations out of gray areas. I'm guessing there also are plenty of other people who also believe that CEOs are bound by law to pursue profits and shareholder values.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will probably do a separate blog post on that one of these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of peace-time ceo vs war-time ceo [0]

I'm no CEO, but that's some decent advice on the blog, I'd want the CEO of my employer to read it. A question beckons...where would the likes of Amazon/Uber be if they followed rules and regulation? Microsoft, famously trampled its way to success.

My hypothesis is that out of some hundereds of CEOs that do break the rules, only a handful get caught, so the incentive simply isn't there, compared to accelerate growth that could be had by bending the rules, as it were, and acquiring enough wealth or importance that then you can lobby your way through and change the rules to suit your business or motivies.

Ben Horowitz (ironically a partner at A16Z, that's a major investor in Zenefits) wrote: "Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it interferes with the prime directive." And I tend to agree with that, too. But I never managed a fruit-stand in my life, so what do I know?

It's tough being a CEO. You need a team to make your way through, I guess.

[0] [http://www.bhorowitz.com/peacetime_ceo_wartime_ceo](http://www.bhorowitz.com/peacetime_ceo_wartime_ceo)

</comment><comment><USER8> I respectfully disagree. Some laws are better broken, like taxi medallion (read: state enforced monopoly) laws. Uber has improved the lives of millions of people by breaking laws.

I sold my car and save money thanks to uber.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great for you. But for Uber to wilfully decide to attack certain laws they decided were unjust was a conscious decision and in some places that caused real trouble for drivers and others. Of course if you are aware of all that and you _still_ decide to go through with it then that's ok with me.

But there are other laws than just the taxi medallion ones (which are locally quite varied) and those other laws for the most part are better left unbroken. In other words, for every rule there are exceptions, better be aware of when you feel that you are entering that exceptional territory and better be in the possession of very deep pockets in order to deal with the resulting fall-out.

For the vast majority of start-ups it would be a very bad decision to go and break laws willy nilly without understanding fully what the consequences could be.

<comment><USER9> It really depends on what you believe about the legitimacy of man-made law. Large segments in the world population do not consider it be legitimate. Even the papacy openly questioned its legitimacy in 1937, quite before Hitler became truly obnoxious. Therefore, the issue is rather about laws that are enforceable. If the law is really enforceable, you may indeed want to refrain from breaking it. Otherwise, it is your own call.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen a couple of people that tried to put thoughts such as these into practice. Personally I think this is a very dangerous course of action and given how they ended up I feel that my position is backed by some hard to refute evidence. What you believe should be right is of little or no importance if that conflicts with the law of the land.

There are vast fortunes to be made for those that manage to successfully challenge the law but _most_ \- not all - ordinary businesses are not set up for that purpose.

<comment><USER9> Uber and airbnb are doing absolutely fine in my impression! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That post seems strangely specific, am I missing some context?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are spot on, email in your inbox.

<comment><USER11> um id like same in my email.....

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure you would but I don't have yours and your profile doesn't list one.

edit: found your email address, sent.

<comment><USER12> +1 ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant post, but gave me the shivers that he had to write some of that. If the desire (or concern) to write this is legitimate—and I can't find much of a reason it wouldn't be—then there are some scary folks running companies out there.

<comment><USER14> There are _definitely_ some scary folks running businesses out there. Like Jacques I cannot specify any names but the number of companies who think it's ok to omit paying their taxes or their suppliers is... well, there are quite a few of them (source: I work with a lot of UK tech companies through my business, GrantTree).

This is not just as a short-term cash flow loan, which would be at least somewhat justifiable ("we're in the middle of a raise, it's cheaper to get an implicit loan from HMRC by paying the payroll taxes late than to negotiate a loan with a loan provider" is at least something I can imagine myself thinking under a lot of pressure). Over the years I've met a good number of companies who seem to think it's ok to do this consistently, year after year after year.

Unsurprisingly, a consistent neglect of paying your taxes is very much inversely correlated with the success of the business. I guess they also neglect many of the other things that Jacques mention.

<comment><USER15> Never ever short the tax man. They get very angry, and then seize your bank accounts. All of them. Even the secret one you didn't think anyone would know. Even the bank accounts that are for your kids, or anything that is remotely attached to you.

Better to drag out terms with a supplier than the tax man. Suppliers have to go to court, get a judgement, hire a sherrif - the tax man just decides on his own to take the bank account (don't make him angry, you wouldn't like him if he was angry)

Source: I know 3 business people (in last 25 years) that shorted tax man, got caught, bank seizures and then almost immediately go out of business. Scary how quick it happens too.

<comment><AUTHOR> And if you do ever find yourself in a position where you really can't pay the taxman go to them before they come to you and try to make some kind of deal. If they _do_ come to you they will seize _everything_.

<comment><USER14> In the UK, they won't - at least not if you're a relatively small business. I've found HMRC surprisingly accommodating. Which I guess is why some people consider it a valid way to extend themselves some extra cash flow funding. It's still a very bad sign and generally correlated with the business remaining small, failing, defaulting on other debts, etc. But it's the CEO themselves who's sinking their business there, not HMRC (at least I've never observed HMRC going after a small business in this way and "seizing everything" \- even though I've frequently observed entrepreneurs who were chronically late with their taxes for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jacques the one thing that makes this advice complex is when you are both the CEO and also the major shareholder. I do agree with you that you need to know what the legal and moral limits are and don't cross them. Everything else is hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, conflicts of interest are hard to resolve, especially when times are tough.

<comment><USER16> When times are tough getting out of bed in the morning is hard.

Having lived the tough experience the best advice I can add is don't do anything you will be embarrassed about looking back 10 years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great write-up, Jacques. Bookmarked it. :) Nice reference to Interface CEO, too. I like what he did. His presentation style is so good I can never tell if he genuinely cares or just wants us to think so. Just has that kind of smooth delivery. Could've been a politician if he wanted.

Back to your article. You seemed to cover unethical dealings with a warning not to do them. Then, comments here contradicted that where you chose to scheme for survival of business. This brings me to a topic you didn't cover much: competition, esp pricing or service, in many industries can force a CEO to use unethical practices of competitors to achieve parity. For instance, selling cheap clothing to people will almost inevitably end with manufacturing done in low-labor countries if not sweatshops. Likewise, in INFOSEC, one can't build a secure system using certain popular components but demand side forces their inclusion in "secure" or "security" products. Invalidates the whole claim but you fail otherwise.

So, it seems that unethical behavior might be a prerequisite to success in established industries where the inputs or certain value-adds specifically rely on unethical behavior to exist. I would suggest people avoid those industries as a result but many are critical. It might be more ethical to compete with a differentiator, a bit more honesty, and better working/environmental conditions even if still kind of horrific. One is still exploiting and doing damage within the operating constraints but reducing overall damage.

So, what's your thoughts on this part of ethical CEO activity?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's tricky. If someone is actively working against the company I don't mind putting on some pressure to ensure survival, even if that's not the most ethical thing to do. But that's one individuals discomfort balanced against the continued employment of a whole pile of people. If it were actually illegal or if that person was not a party to generating the problem to begin with I would never do it. It all revolves around the particulars of the situation so there is no 'one size fits all' advice in this particular respect.

Exploitation, damaging outsiders, generating net negative value while increasing your own capital, all those are well outside of what I would consider acceptable behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _As a CEO you set the rules your company operates under and you determine who else has what kind of powers within the company. For instance, you could delegate some of your work to others that you feel are more qualified or that can help you lighten the load. Even so, you are still responsible for whatever it is that they do and even though it is great to work with others and to be able to trust them because the end responsibility is yours you are still required to check up on them to make sure that they actually do what they say they do._

This is an issue that trips up companies that get into legal trouble; oftentimes the CEO or senior management suggest that they are not responsible for the actions of a "rogue employee" or a scheme that was carried out by underlings without their knowledge. In the U.S., the company (and its officers) _are_ liable for the actions of employees.

There is a book by Constance Bagley called The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law, 4th Edition (ISBN 9780538466462) that covers this and other issues (contracts, incorporation, fiduciary responsibility, etc.). It's a great resource for anyone running their own business.

</comment><comment><USER19> Given the sheer amount of laws and regulations, how easy is it really for first time CEOs (or even experienced CEOs) to avoid breaking the law completely?

We often criticize users for clicking "I accept terms" without reading through them, but how many of us have actually read through a law passed by congress?

Having strong legal advisory helps, but very few companies can hold on to huge legal departments just to deal with regulatory compliance. How many times have we heard lawyers talk about a "Legally grey area"?

Its one thing to intentionally break the law. But do we really want startup founders afraid to even begin their company and try to disrupt existing monopolies because they don't want to risk ending up in jail?

<comment><USER20> I'm sure it's worse in common law countries, because precedence cases hold legal weight there, but in civil law countries, it's not really hard.

In Germany, all the laws are only in multiple formats (including on GitHub with proper history in markdown), and all the regulations are freely available, too.

Additionally, the laws here are written in normal language — so anyone can just read them.

I personally have read quite a few laws in the original text, and I'm just a normal CompSci student, not even a C-level exec.

So, at least in Germany, there's no real excuse.

<comment><USER21> While laws in civil law countries are indeed usually more straightforward than in common law countries (that distinction becomes more blurred though anyway with common law countries enacting more statutory laws and civil law countries adopting practices from precedence law) they in many case still allow for interpretation.

A notable example is the German bankruptcy law, which in theory outlines pretty clear and simple conditions that constitute bankruptcy. In practice, however, determining if and when those conditions are met isn't quite so simple, particularly when it comes to assessing liabilities vs. assets.

Legally, a German CEO (Geschäftsführer) is obligated to file for bankruptcy within 3 weeks from knowing that his company has more liabilities than assets, otherwise committing a criminal offence.

The result of this assessment is just a snapshot that depends on both the point in time it was taken and on more specific regulations, which aren't part of the law itself and whose interpretation can vary depending on the local jurisdiction.

This often results in rather unfortunate situations where a CEO might be held liable for not filing for bankruptcy in time although the actual situation of the company wasn't quite as bad and not filing for bankruptcy was justified at the time.

Moreover, a German CEO can be held accountable for not filing for bankruptcy for up to 3 years after the fact, which is often used as leverage to put pressure on the CEO when the company tanks at a later time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to read more advice like this, especially about how the execs can be effective leaders and lead an organisation to a good culture. I have worked my way to a point where I can now call myself a Chief Something Or Rather, and I'm terrified that the Peter Principle is in play. While I am undertaking some training on governance and finance (which is really aimed at board of directors rather than newbie executives), it's overly formal and doesn't cover the implicit leadership challenges.

<comment><USER22> The Frontiers of Management, and The Practice of Management, both by Drucker, are excellent and inspiring. Especially the former.

<comment><USER4> Cheers mate!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cleaning a wound hurts but is necessary for the healing process.

But it can be very difficult to know how to clean the wound.

I think the most important lesson from this article is to always acknowledge a wound exsists and that a CEO is always responsible for taking care of the wound.

Sometimes I got the feeling that shareholders also like to eat meat from the corpse so they don't mind a living or dead body.

This is a strange conflict.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great post.

"You are not allowed to cause the company to break the law."

With spam, growth hacking and whatever someone calls it these days, I see a violation of this rule multiple times a day - done by startups, small businesses and even large corporations. Every single unsolicited mail is breaking those anti spam laws.

And yes, I know the laws where I conduct business about spam, UCE, UBE and whatnot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Spam is a real problem. The background is that the law now centers on the sender of the message, rather than the beneficiary of the spam, so spam services simply pop up in places that don't have such laws. Having the law go after the beneficiaries is also fraught with danger, it would be tremendously easy to do a joe job on a competitor.

Spam is not a simple problem, filtering and education so far seems to be the most effective ways of dealing with it.

<comment><USER24> My post was not so much about spam services, more about companies, from startup to large, listed companies who simply ignore current law (opt-in) in the country where I conduct business. In these cases, the sender is mostly the beneficiary too.

Such spam mostly gets through filters which makes it costly in terms to handle.

Most folks don't even care when I tell them about current legislation - I am thinking about starting to sue these companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah right, yes I understand now. Such spam I simply forward to the local anti- spam watchdog (OPTA, in my case) with a form letter I made for the purpose and a CC to the sender. Very very rarely do they reply (both the OPTA and the senders), _never_ have I seen another email from a sender that got that treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like this article is an angry criticism on a situation which I am unaware of. If he knows a company breaking the law then I propose he whistle- blow, rather than right a legal guide on a blog and hope law-breaking CEOs stumble upon it.

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems like great advise :-)

I do have a question: if you get outside legal advise, can you show these people confidential legal documents if they are your _own_ lawyers?

<comment><AUTHOR> In all jurisdictions that I'm familiar with you can, but of course since you're already talking to _a_ lawyer it would be best to open the discussion with that question if you are unsure.

<comment><USER27> Importantly... You can make sure this is a stipulation of your employment contract: That you can confidentially share material with your own personal attorneys for advisement purposes. How unjust would that be if you weren't permitted to get unbiased legal advise when you're personally liable for any actions you take!?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point and worth including, I'm totally out of time for today but I'll make a note and update the text at some point later tomorrow. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a good thing for CEOs to not break the law, but I'm not sure telling them that multiple times in a blog post will have much effect......

<comment><AUTHOR> In many cases these are not things that people do consciously, and in some cases they do it because they are pressured to make the wrong decisions without fully realizing the consequences. For instance, shareholders could push a CEO to expand the company when the financial situation does not actually allow it.

I agree that if someone willfully breaks the law that no blog post will stop that from happening, but quite frequently when and if it happens (especially in smaller companies where CEOs tend to be younger and less experienced) it is actually not intentional and rooted in incompetence rather than in malice.

<comment><USER29> Somehow this reminds me of estimation in software development and developers who give estimates they are not comfortable with if a manager pressures them hard enough: "So long? Come on, don't be so pessimistic, we need it on xyz, you can do that, can't you?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are definitely some parallels. My personal approach to this is to point blank refuse to cave in to any kind of pressure whatsoever. Stuff happens on my time-table and with what I feel is achievable or not at all, no matter whether it is as a hired hand or as the CEO of a company under pressure from shareholders.

Of course that's relatively easy for me to say, I'm a pretty hard person to push forward in a way that doesn't sit right with me but I think that in a management role you can't afford to be timid about this. It goes with the territory that you exhibit some degree of independence, otherwise you are just an extension of the board or the shareholders to take the blame if things go wrong.

<comment><USER28> I actually just wrote a post on that topic: [http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/estimates.htm...](http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/estimates.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These advises inspired me an educational simulation game like the rat race.

</comment><comment><USER22> Readers may be interested in knowing where the legal requirement to maximize shareholder value comes from. Then it won't seem quite as evil anymore.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_prob...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

Essentially, when owners appoint a manager (CEO) there is the risk that this manager will make decisions that enrich themselves and their friends (corruption) at the expense of the company, its employees and shareholders.

<comment><USER31> There is no requirement to maximize shareholder value, as you yourself explained. the requirement is to not steal.

You even snuck "the company" and "employees" in your paraphrase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Inaction, or postponing a decision long enough that a situation spirals out > of control is generally speaking not an option.

Can you please send a link to your blogpost to EU leadership and some EU nations' leaders? Right now we have probably 3 situations that have spiraled out of control. And getting worse by the hour.

<comment><USER20> Well, that's not something the EU can fix.

The EU itself can not do any action, just approve or deny one.

The competence to suggest laws or executive orders lies with the national governments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm always amazed with the capacity and skills American have to write so many words without any actual content. Just words, ramblings, perfectly synchronized sentences. I remember when I first read "Getting things done". You'd get 1 valuable lesson/advice every 30 pages. Same thing here. 1 valuable piece of content every 5 (giant) paragraphs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that if you believe that I'm American that's probably the best compliment I could get. Writing is hard for me, and this is not my native language, but I'll take your criticism to heart and I'll try to tighten up the text. Thank you for your feedback, greetings from NL.

<comment><USER34> Hey Jacques, reading your post, I initially have a piece of advice: Use more commas, it helps the flow along. Currently it reads a bit urgently, here are some examples:

> what bothers me is that in many of these cases the company is much sicker > than it has to be, the wounds are to a large extent self inflicted and if > only someone had had the presence of mind to change direction when it was > still possible the company might have survived

Better punctuation:

> what bothers me is that, in many of these cases, the company is much sicker > than it has to be. The wounds are, to a large extent, self-inflicted, and, > if only someone had had the presence of mind to change direction when it was > still possible, the company might have survived.

Also, I, too, would appreciate an email with context, as something feels missing now.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I think the proposed second example is too many commas, and does not improve the text. It adds a halting and pedantic feeling style to put 'and' in a clause by itself, for example, and arguably bad to separate 'self- inflicted' from 'largely'. It's not wrong, can be useful on occasion, is used frequently by some literary writers, but best avoided for general writing. You are making a purely stylistic suggestion, so this is completely subjective, but in my subjective opinion, the proposed fix is a net negative.

The writing in the article is very good, and generally speaking, the usage of commas is spot on throughout, in my opinion. But FWIW I did actually have to stop to parse one sentence that needed a comma to signal the intended meaning of the sentence. I wouldn't have even considered posting on the topic of commas were this thread not here, so, apologies.

I read the whole thing again twice, and couldn't find the sentence I tripped on, but I found a couple of examples to make my point, which is that the main reasons to care about commas are the non-stylistic scenarios where adding a comma changes the meaning of the sentence.

> Even so, no matter who advises you and no matter how insistent they are in > the end the decisions are yours and yours alone and if there is a conflict > between the direction that you think the company should go in or if there is > second guessing of your decisions in the end your word is the one that > matters.

This could easily be read:

> no matter how insistent they are in the end, the decisions are yours

But you probably were thinking:

> no matter how insistent they are, in the end the decisions are yours

Another one:

> If you are both a shareholder and a CEO note that these are two different > roles

Since there's a condition followed by a suggestion, I would expect a separator between the clauses.

> If you are both a shareholder and a CEO, note that these are two different > roles

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed those, thank you!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I Made An App In Under Five Hours - <AUTHOR> http://flax.ie/an-app-in-under-five-hours/

<comment><USER2> Cool stuff. FYI the link to the app in the first paragraph is dead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that, I hadn't realised. Fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> it isn't</comment>