Leaked S-1 screenshots show Palantir losing $579M in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/21/leaked-s-1-screenshots-show-palantir-losing-579m-in-2019/ <comment><USER2> Obviously, I don't know what's going on at Palantir besides what I've read, but I know a few things about Finance.

A tax loss isn't necessarily all bad news. If you have a tax loss in one year, you might be able to use that loss to offset profits in future years, to minimize taxes for your business in those years. This technique is called a tax loss carry forward because it takes a tax loss in one year and carries it into a future year.

So, what they might be doing is using this as an opportunity to "throw the baby out with the bathwater," as the saying goes. Show a bunch of losses prior to IPO (setting expectations low), then show gradually improving operating results. Investors love this kind of "story" because the potential for stock to go down is less then if they were to show a booming business right off the bat.

Finally, just to make a point about investors not necessarily being worried about a company showing losses, all you have to do is look at Amazon, who for years showed loses.

<comment><USER3> Had they spent the money on ops or DoD compliant hosting infra, I would agree the long-term gains offset the near-term losses.

But as an Investor, it concerns me they spent $900M on Sales and Marketing in the Gov sector over 2 years.

That is essentially a lobby-dependent business model with long-term success contingent on the currently elected administration.

<comment><USER4> If you grease up both candidates, your long-term success is not contingent on the current administration.

Since it's incredibly unlikely that an anti-surveillance, anti-warhawk, anti- police state candidate will ever become president, and it's incredibly unlikely that congress will be dominated by those sorts of folks, I think Palantir's business model is safe as houses.

<comment><USER5> Plus the party power brokers seem to stick around for a long time. It's really only the executive branch that changes often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IMO I remember interviewing there and my bullshit detector was at 10000%. First the interviewer went off on a tangent claiming that they're not evil (unsolicited) and second it seems like they're capitalizing on the whole "big data" trend. They'll find "insights" across multiple data streams without ever providing examples beyond license plate readers. I am surprised they haven't gotten enterprise businesses to sign on - although maybe enterprise business only trust certain brands, but am not surprised they've gotten the government to sign on.

<comment><USER7> > First the interviewer went off on a tangent claiming that they're not evil > (unsolicited)

They're a big data company that works mostly with governments and militaries, and they're named after evil (and unreliable!) magical spying technology from _The Lord of the Rings_. It's clear why they feel the need to try to convince you that they're not evil.

<comment><USER8> Palintir's weren't evil spying tech. They were originally Zoom for coordinating the far flung domains of the Numenoreans. Only when the Minas Morgul palintir fell into the hands of Sauron did they become instruments of his corruption.

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that the Numenorians were a cautionary tale of human pride, hubris and abuse of magical trinkets [1], that eventually led them to declare war on the gods, and try to invade Valinor.

They then got Atlantis'd.

There's a few recurring themes in Tolkien's work - one of them is that marvelous inventions, created by clever people for good purposes, can either be turned to do evil - or the struggle to possess them will turn good people to do evil.

[1] In contrast to the rest of the Silmarillion, which was a cautionary tale of _elven_ pride, hubris, and abuse/attachment to magical trinkets.

<comment><USER9> That is a very astute observation! I seem to remember Tolkien himself explaining that _The Silmarillion_ was from an elvish view, the middle tale of _The Hobbit_ was a virtually human view, and _The Lord of the Rings_ blends them. I think he meant in tone and style, but the subject material aligns with your view as well. To my mind, the Numenorean legends in _Unfinished Tales_ seem closer to _The Silmarillion_ than either of his other two main published works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everyone who looked into a palantir in Lord of the Rings got accurate data, but bad information. (That is, the images were real, but the context was misleading.)

<comment><USER11> Go on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> All these unicorns are staying private so long that the average Joe is not getting any opportunity to get in on the wealth creation due to draconian SEC regulations. WeWork, Theranos, now Palantir. Luckily Uber went public!

<comment> 1-more Well I thought it was funny at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does such a secretive company, mostly dealing with government, spend so much money on sales & marketing? (61% of revenue, "roughly $450 million for both years")

I mean, just bribing people to get the contracts should be an order of magnitude cheaper, right?

<comment><USER14> I left Palantir in 2014, so this may be a bit out of date, but back then, a lot of the sales of the product were done by engineers, which was effective but expensive.

The general approach would be "give us 2-4 weeks to integrate your data and give you a demo", and would give organizations a demo of the software using their own data.

There were some well known stories internally, of things like police agencies forgetting to ask about the product at all, and instead taking notes on suspects and investigations being shown to them in the demo for further follow up, because it was making connections and breakthroughs on stalled or cold cases. Those were the ones that they knew were hooked.

The flip side of this is the cost of deploying anywhere from 2-20 engineers into the field to handle the system setup and integration on the fly.

<comment><USER15> I used to work for an "AI" company, who claimed (and largely believed) that their main value-proposition was their proprietary secret-sauce (they didn't do anything especially evil like Palantir, but it sounds like the business was structurally similar).

However, most of the time the way they won over their (usually enormous) clients was just as you describe: they took a few weeks to pick through the client's existing data hoards, mapped out what were often dozens or hundreds of disconnected databases, found common identifiers for entities, hooked them all up into a unifying system and then just... queried it. Data unification on its own yielded really impressive results for the clients. To be fair, the company had built up some compelling experience/tech around _doing_ said data unification, but that stopped short of any of the "AI" and was never really how they marketed themselves. Some at the company always saw that part of the process as just a prerequisite for "the real product", but in practice it seemed to be the most useful part.

It's amazing how inefficient data-usage is throughout so many large organizations.

<comment><USER16> I work for a big organization, and the amount of "wow, you're a data wizard!" comments I get for generating combined keys inside disparate databases and then merging them in Excel is insane.

It's making me think that anyone who is not well-versed in at least the basics of database theory is crippled in the information economy. A lot of "tool- based" problems that people complain about are in fact user problems, when certain teams aren't maintaining their data with clear identifiers or internal standards.

<comment><USER17> Umm, I work for a big org and I get called a data wizard for cleaning up and merging two Excel trackers! I just copied your comment into my One Note so I can figure out what you're talking about re: combined keys and level up my wizardry. Any tips to get me started? I work frequently in disparate databases (EPIC, Veeva, Rave, Excel, Suvoda.....).

Any big org that is silo'd is gonna have a big problem re: clear identifiers and internal standards. Heck, once we passed 500 headcount even just file naming convention was tough to roll out!

<comment><USER15> People at my old company would do a lot of "data archaeology". They would find a table in a T-SQL database named "facilities", and a table in an SAP system called "units", and then would notice that the numeric "facility_id" column's values had a lot of overlap with the string IDs in "unit_id", if you remove the underscore prefix at the front, and then they'd email the client's data people to confirm that these were in fact the same entities, and then they'd associate them in their cross-database-querying tech, and ta-da. A huge amount of new data cross-pollination is available.

<comment><USER16> I'm starting to wonder if I should quit my job, buff up on SQL, and go into data consulting. Everyone on HackerNews talks a big game about FAANG and their copycats trying to leverage machine learning techniques to increase profit margins, but the bulk of legacy businesses seem to not even have the facility to make sure that client_ID is stored properly across their massive realms of siloed databases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How much is Palantir in the consulting business vs. a SaaS? Whenever I read something about it I get IBM vibes, of a company which is partly doing some software platform stuff with a mix of good ol consulting.

How off base is that impression?

<comment><USER19> One of their clever moves was calling their consultants "Forward Deployed Engineers". This let them hire better engineers than you normally could to be consultants (You're not a consultant, you're a "Forward Deployed Engineer").

This term also allowed them to book much more of their revenues as software licenses than services, which makes them look much more attractive to investors. With it, they were able to get a $20B valuation in the last round, where if they were viewed as a government IT services vendor they would've been lucky to be valued at $0.5B.

<comment><USER20> It's also a name that sounds familiar to military people - might have made it easier for them to sell contracts into that space.

<comment><USER17> That's pretty brilliant. Rebranding!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does Palintir even do?

It seems that they have consultants (that they called forward deployed engineers for some reason) who go into military, police & enterprise and set up some sort of bespoke data lake for all the docs and data flowing through the company.

Then they give users a tool to do investigation of the data using a tool that lets them build causal links between documents or maybe entities is a better name?

That seems useful - but the secrecy is weird. I saw some product videos from ages ago and it looked like software only an Enterprise could love. Looked incredibly slow, janky and overly complicated (I assume it's a convoluted interface so they can charge training fees!)

Can anyone yay or nay me here - is this what they do?

<comment><USER22> Only thing I've ever seen from them is a super handy react component library.

<comment><USER23> this one right? [https://blueprintjs.com/](https://blueprintjs.com/)

I had never heard of it before until very recently I saw it mentioned on reddit. It looks interesting

<comment><USER22> Yeah that's the one. We make pretty extensive usage of it, it's been great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do we have any idea where the big expenses stem from?

It's hard to form useful judgements on a single data point.

> In relative numbers, operating expenses changed from 157% of revenues in the > first half of 2019 to 107% of revenues in first half of 2020 [while revenue > grew 49% yoy].

Seems to suggest that a lot of the expenses were elective, or non-elective but have a sub-linear correlation to revenue growth. Honestly, these numbers are not as bad as the opinions interspersing the numbers makes it out to be.

Sounds to me like a private company that's tightening the belt while leaning into being a public company and continuing to grow.

<comment><USER25> Serious question: If they were "tightening the belt," wouldn't their expenses go down? Why would they lose over a billion dollars over two years before going public if they weren't showing hockey stick growth?

<comment><USER24> Not necessarily. Expense is an important figure, but the ratio (operating expense : revenue) is more important, IMO.

They need to demonstrate they can grow revenues without a proportional growth to operating expenses, and that they can sustain this trajectory until revenues > operating expenses.

An operating expense:revenue ratio of 107% (i.e. you spend 1.07 for every 1.00, which is their H1 2020 numbers) is bad in isolation.

But when it was 157% at the same time last year? The fact that they could move from 157% to 107% while _significantly growing revenue_ is a very positive signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The bizarre part to me is that Palantir was founded in 2004. How have they survived _16 years_ with constant large losses? There is no way they've had that much funding.

<comment><USER27> With enough of hype and right people behind your company, it's very easy to get money in silicon valley.

<comment><USER28> Not just in silicon valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> quoting top comment under the article:

So let's break this down: A 17-year-old software firm (they are not a startup) has Has only 125 paying customers Generates 742MM in revenue Raised between $2.6 - $3.0 billion dollars in venture capital to generate that $742MM Has never broken even in 17 years Lost $580 MM Concentrates nearly a 1/3 of its revenue in 3 customers (avg rev ~$67MM per those top 3, a staggering amount for a software company of this size) Grew revenues by 25% YoY, that's good, but 91% of that comes from existing clients, that's bad Valued at $20 billion by private investors And the coup de grace, the founders want to keep 49.999% control in perpetuity regardless of their stock ownership. I expected a lot more given the hype and aura this firm has had for so many years. This company is being valued at 26x its revenue, which is insane even in SaaS land. Good luck to anyone who purchases these shares on the open market. I would highly recommend against it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Palantir throws people at big data problems. It seems that they have some tech but a lot of critical work is done by their highly paid consultants.

<comment><USER26> All their out-of-the-box products have been failures. They are a 100% consulting company.

<comment><USER31> I interviewed there for a product management position. It was clear they were not a product company, but they badly wanted to be one.

Being a product company is so much better in Silicon Valley. Revenues scale. Engineers work on general problems. Skills are reusable.

At the time (2014) they were building Gotham and Metropolis. There was a small team of product evangelists in the team, whose role was to find commonalities between projects.

I could feel they were conflicted. It looked like the platforms were not valued by the customers. Customers valued answers to their operational problems. And problems across companies and industries get solved very differently. Crossing data between license plates wasn't the same as extracting data from credit card statements. Platforms may provide foundations to speed up implementation and save money, but nothing customers could value directly.

I could tell they wanted to be a product company. Palantir is structured like a regular Silicon Valley company. They have a CEO, a COO, and product roles. They give stock options and now are forced to go public. And they never never present themselves as consultants. One of my friends there took offense at describing the company as 'Tech McKinsey'.

Compare it with firms such as McKinsey and BCG. They are private partnerships. They pay junior consultants higher than any other company at equivalent positions, they give no shares until partners. The partners at these firms possess the network. They do the selling, and that's all they are focused on. Answering customers' problems. It might scale less, but it provides a 100% tailored solution to the customer.

The only question is that what customers value. Do they value Palantir platforms with high recurring fees? Or did they like the first data joins, but eventually thought it was too expensive, or they should build it themselves? Which would mean Palantir has to constantly generate new contracts, much like McKinsey and BCG. Only Palantir knows.

<comment><USER17> Why are they being forced to go public now after 17 years? Is that just the lifecycle of a consultancy firm their size? Or are they running out of funding?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's losing money but it's slowing that loss relative to revenues. I don't understand what the story is here?

<comment><USER33> That yet another "Unicorn" is actually just smoke and mirrors, isn't profitable and has no realistic path to ever being so?

<comment><USER34> Perhaps that's an incorrect assumption, that a unicorn needs to be profitable. All they need is to be growing, and show a potential for future upside. If they make net zero, or even keep losing money, doesn't matter as long as the growth continues because there is always going to be someone else further down the road willing to buy into the story. In theory.

<comment><USER33> > there is always going to be someone else further down the road willing to > buy into the story.

This doesn't point to a successful value adding business but rather mass market delusion...

<comment><USER35> I mean... if you buy it and flip it in a year for an extra $300 million or a cool billion, who cares if it's a bigger fool theory in effect.

<comment><USER36> You, when you're the bigger fool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 16 years of losses for a company that does not appear to have compelling operating leverage does not seem like something which would get an enthusiastic Wall Street reception.

</comment><comment><USER38> No screenshots in the article.

<comment><USER39> Presumably TC would like to avoid a Reality Winner situation. Can one be certain that an image has been processed enough to avoid all watermarking etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't see the market being very favorable toward floating another "geriatric unicorn" with this sort of financial profile.

I also continue to not understand what their product really is and if it's actually valuable. They seem to just throw armies of people at data problems which might produce some results but is hardly a scalable or valuable business model.

</comment><comment><USER41> What do you want? Keeping the chairman's Blood Bar stocked up isn't cheap.

</comment><comment><USER42> I know there is a lot of controversy around Palantir but I don't understand what they do. From their site it seems like they're just another data analysis company. What does Palantir do?

</comment><comment><USER43> "Leaked screenshots," like this would be really funny to bait some TSLA shorts, but I think that's where trolling crosses over into market manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER44> Palantir has pretty clever shtick positioning pretty much run of the mill consulting operation as a very advanced software company.

</comment><comment><USER45> Best investments of the 21st century:

1\. Peter Thiel, Facebook, $500k

2\. Peter Thiel, Donald Trump, $1m

No matter who wins the next election, Thiel and his buddies are guaranteed more contracts. Welcome to the new American plutocracy!

</comment><comment><USER46> Palantir, the virtue signalers' rally point.

</comment><comment><USER47> Palantir slow walked their IPO because it is, by nature, a very secretive business that sells to law enforcement, military, banks, etc., and the transition to opening up its books and talking about their customers is inherently difficult. They were able to raise privately for a long time so they felt no reason to hurry to go public.

At same time they've raised so much money that being acquired by a PE firm or basically anything else other than going public would likely be detrimental to common shareholders given liquidity preferences.

And now given all the backlash that police department funding is getting and the possibility of a Biden presidency looming it's very possible that the type of "surveillance policing" that Palantir enables will be severely cut, and in fact some cities have already begun to ban these practices.

</comment><comment><USER48> I must point out that it is not uncommon for any tech company to lose money for a long time, especially if they are being bankrolled on the other side.

<comment><USER49> It is uncommon to the successful ones. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple - all profitable at IPO time. Look up old S-1s.

<comment><USER50> > _It is uncommon to the successful ones._

Exactly. People love to point at Amazon as long unprofitable, but don't realize the company was generating massive cash flows for reinvestment, too.

There's no inherent reason startups or tech companies should lose money endlessly.

<comment><USER51> Softbank is responsible for spreading that assumption, no? Fairly recently? (Uber, et al.)

<comment><USER52> I mean, there are two things here a) even Softbank doesn't assume indefinite losses/ unknown profitability, they have an exit horizon in mind that just happens to be larger than that of most other funds, and b) a lot of tech startups that have IPO'ed in the recent past have all been unprofitable when going public, and Softbank isn't responsible for most of them. A notable exception was Zoom ( I'm talking about last year ) who were profitable before the IPO, as far as I remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It would be nice if these losers stopped naming crap used to violate civil rights and murder people after Lord of the Rings and other beloved fictional stories. Just call it PusGuzzler 20202 or Venomous Butt Spiders so people can recognize the company and product for what it is, ugly and terrible.

</comment><comment><USER54> There are lots of people who fit the description of "a Palantir shareholder", and of course faking a screenshot is trivial. What has TechCrunch done to confirm the reliability of their source or otherwise verify the leak?

<comment><USER55> I'm guessing this is intentionally leaked by Palantir to test the waters for IPO. No one with access to that document will risk the legal ramification of leaking it just for fun

<comment><USER54> I agree that's plausible speculation, but it's still speculation. It seems like a pretty serious failure of media literacy to assume that these screenshots are authentic without any concrete knowledge of how their authenticity was confirmed.

<comment><USER56> I'm not sure it's in TechCrunch's interests to tell us how credible their leakers are. Leakers probably have repeat value and they don't want to poison their relationship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> They own the UK now, however the process that led to this tanked the UK economy so it's not worth as much as expected.

<comment><USER58> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER59> I wonder if they're referring to this? [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/peter- thiel-palantir-nhs-dea...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/peter-thiel- palantir-nhs-deal.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Someone invest in my startup. It's genius. I'll sell $1 Bills for $.50, I'll never make a profit but my user growth will be off the charts! Me, my cofounders and any VC stupid/genius enough to invest in us will make millions when we IPO, cash out and go bankrupt all within 5 years!

<comment><USER60> How do you monetize?

<comment><USER61> The plan is to start charging $2 once everyone is already on the platform.

<comment><USER33> Haha no that's so 2012. To buy the $.50 dollar you have to use our app, that also happens to be a high end privacy invasion tool and we'll sell all our user data to the highest bidder!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ouya Breaks Kickstarter Records - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/ouyas-big-day <comment><USER2> I was one of the earlier folks to put down a pledge for this thing, because it seems like something I'd like to develop for. However, I pulled it back today because of the lack of a dev story for it. I was told by the Ouya official twitter account to just "develop on another Android device", which is a very shallow answer given the huge differences in gameplay between a touchscreen device and a gamepad device (and that gamepad-api isn't really viable yet). That suggests that they don't take the craft of game development seriously, and to me that doesn't bode well for the platform.

When they have development resources that show me that they're taking developers seriously, I'll revisit it (and doing so is fairly cheap for me; I'm using the always-awesome libgdx, which has Android support already). But my initial experience has been pretty bad, and I'm questioning their competency right now to the point where I can't give them money.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty telling. You're right on all points from a developer's perspective, and their line seems to be nothing more than "we're leveraging the big, wide, Android game ecosystem!"

I think anyone with hardware or Android game development experience should be healthily skeptical of the tall promises and minimal explanation coming out of this Kickstarter. I love a good chunk of optimism as much as the next guy who loves games, but the fervor seems to really be distorting reality and setting up an inappropriately adversarial tone to these HN discussions.

<comment><USER2> cpuspin: You appear to be hellbanned, though I'm not sure why.

But to reply to you--their pitch may be "working" in the sense that they're getting pledges, but the amount of the pledge totals is pretty clearly not going to generate a profit. Without the app store, they're not going to be making money. Without developers, they're not going to be selling anything in their app store, which you need to have populated with games _by early 2013_. Six to nine months is already not a lot of time to put together a game, so you really, _really_ want to get developers excited for and working on your stuff _right effing now_.

That's where they're falling over. And it is literally-literally as important as getting the consoles to consumers.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is what worries me too. If they wanted to reel developers in on this what they should be releasing like _right now_ is some documentation for developers.

Since the hardware is not released yet they should be showing developers how to emulate as-close-as-possible to this on a regular PC (including which commodity joypad you should be testing with) so they can be confident that their game will only require minor tweaking when the final hardware is released.

OT: It seems to be very easy to get HellBanned from HN which makes it seem pretty cruel. You only need a handful of people not to like your first few posts to effectively kill your chances of contributing to the community and potentially wasting a lot of your time.

Perhaps a system like , you can only downvote comments from users under a certain karma threshold if you also flag them as trolling/spam

<comment><USER5> Its ingenuous how they talk about indie developers. If the founder is as knowledgeable about the gaming industry as she claims to be then she knows that game development by indie developers is great and a couple lucky ones will emerge but the big player come in quickly and take up most if not all of the profit so any gaming platform that pitches to indie developers is just creating smoke and mirrors

<comment><USER4> They are advertising this as a platform for existing indie games because these will be the easiest to get ported over.

I'm sure their wet dream for this is to get an exclusivity deal for a big juicy AAA title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate to be a hater, but can we start taking odds on how big a disappointment this will be?

I am just going to come out and say that the vast majority of the backers are going to be really disappointed, this is far too ambitious a project for that budget, even three times that budget.

If I was Kickstarter I would actually be worrying about this type of project actually damaging the brand itself.

<comment><USER7> I'm absolutely baffled at the HN negativity revolving around this product. If they deliver what they're promising, I think it is going to be a smashing success.

I have had a bunch of a neat, simple console game ideas kicking around for a long time. I want this console to succeed simply so that I have the opportunity to make them a reality. This console does not need PS3-level graphics to succeed. Even if Ouya only matched the graphics performance of a Nintendo N64 I think it could still be a massive success based on the games that will get created for it.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that this space gets oversaturated easily and the fallout is quick and brutal. Remember the Jaguar? 3DO? Dreamcast? The Phantom?

All of them had fan support and all of them failed in the marketplace (and the "open source" Phantom never even made it to market).

There's less vendor lockin with consoles now. Fewer titles are platform exclusive. Online services are much important than they used to be (notice there's little to no mention of this in the promo video). The question becomes bigger than, "How does this console compete with the Xbox?" (which is already a HUGE question), it becomes "How doe this console compete with Xbox Live?".

This product is going to be openly competing with big, established players with lots of cash and decades of experience. And it's not just the big 3 console makers. They're competing with SmartPhones and iPad gaming too, basically any electronic gaming experience you can having sitting on the couch in your living room.

Fans of hackable linux boxen and hardcore gamers are always super enthusiastic, but I don't think that demo is large enough to help a company succeed in the way this company needs to succeed.

<comment><USER9> "All of them had fan support and all of them failed in the marketplace"

But the people who are most likely to buy it day one just did, _on Kickstarter_. Ouya just crowdsourced the customer, the product message, and the marketplace.

"The question becomes bigger than, 'How does this console compete with the Xbox?' (which is already a HUGE question), it becomes 'How doe this console compete with Xbox Live?'."

How does Steam compete with Games for Windows or EA Origin if it is orders of magnitude smaller than both? How does the iPod Touch and iPhone compete with (and dominate) the _dedicated_ gaming devices PSP/Vita and 3DS? How did the Wii compete with the 360 and PS3?

Smaller players with cheaper devices that require no initial player investment or outlay can be adopted en masse. Think about where HTC or Huawei or LG or Vizio were before they became near the tops worldwide in consumer electronics. Vizio wasn't even on the radar 10 years ago, now they are the #1 maker of TVs in the largest market in the world.

<comment><USER10> > How does Steam compete with Games for Windows or EA Origin if it is orders > of magnitude smaller than both?

Did you swap this around? Steam is much larger and more profitable, and has been around longer than either.

> How does the iPod Touch and iPhone compete with (and dominate) the dedicated > gaming devices PSP/Vita and 3DS?

The iPhone competes because the hardware as a gaming device has an effective cost of $0, because you already bought it for it's phone functions.

> How did the Wii compete with the 360 and PS3?

And it seems weird to compare Nintendo with Ouya, Nintendo is a large game company with a lot of experience in this field, and competes due to a cheaper console that is innovating in a new and novel way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, this is way cool. Not so much because I care about a gaming platform per- se, but because it shows that people care about hackable / open hardware, and that crowdfunding is a viable way to fund development of such hardware.

Given the sentiments expressed in articles like "The Coming War on General Purpose Computing"[1] - and the debate over UEFI / Secure Boot - it's very encouraging to see this kind of thing happening.

The availability of things like Raspberry Pi[2] is also encouraging on the same front.

Here's to the continued development of general purpose computing hardware and open/hackable systems that anyone is free to use as they see fit!

[1]: <http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html>

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi>

<comment><USER12> I impulse purchased one because it's a $100 Android console. The "hackable / open hardware" aspect was honestly irrelevant in terms of the purchase decision, as a $100 closed hardware console by Sony (Android-based) / Apple (iOS-based) / Microsoft (WP7-based) would have received the same "shut up and take my money" response (at least in my case, and that's said as a person with a Galaxy Nexus phone). It's likely that this view is not unique, so be careful about mistaking the market as validating a "hackable open hardware $100 gaming console" and not simply a "$100 gaming console."

<comment><USER13> It's a $100 gaming console _WITH_ and SDK!

I'm a huge fan of open hardware, but honestly, it doesn't matter if this thing has open hardware or not, if the SDK is available and they encourage independents to build games, that's what matters. It's like the Raspberry Pi, it's open in the sense that they tell you a little about it, I doubt you'll get schematics and data sheets on all the parts, but that's not the point. The point is the price and the SDK and the attitude of the company promoting independent developers.

<comment><USER14> I think RPi released schematics, see link. On a side note, I bought two of em, not because I have any idea of what to do with them, but because a)open, and b)cheap. Just got my first one today!

<http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1090>

<comment><USER13> I said _I doubt you'll get schematics and data sheets on all the parts_

Was in reference to OUYA, not Rasp Pi.

Regarding Rasp Pi, you don't get a data sheet on the SoC though, as you do for Beagles or Arduino. So, calling it "open" is a bit of a misnomer. Rasp Pi is only "open" till you want to know what all the register addresses are or similar, then you need an NDA which is rather "not open."

But now I'm digressing from the point. Being open doesn't matter for OUYA, just like it doesn't matter for the Rasp Pi. Even without schematics, Rasp Pis would sell like hot cakes, it's a $30 computer for crying out loud. Same thing with the OUYA. It's a $100 game system _WITH_ and SDK. That's an unheard of price the same way $30 for a computer is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This post says just as much about Kickstarter as a platform as it does about Ouya. It looks like the time required to raise $1m for a worthy cause is quickly approaching zero now, which is simply astounding. If I were a VC, I'd think long and hard about what value proposition I can offer to entrepreneurs over just raw capital. Because in the (near) future, it doesn't look like money will be the differentiating factor.

<comment><USER16> I don't think VCs should be worried about Kickstarter, at least in the near future. A VC can see the long-term value of a business idea, whereas Kickstarter supporters are just excited to get their hands on a shiny new toy.

I think it's a lot harder to get crowds of people excited enough about your unreleased social app to raise significant capital than it is for a handful of VCs, who will then have a vested interest in your subsequent success.

<comment><USER17> > A VC can see the long-term value of a business idea

> Kickstarter supporters are just excited to get their hands on a shiny new > toy.

Every kickstarter project I've supported is always about a product in the _future_. Including this one. Frequently, that shiny toy is years away.

The only difference between kickstarter and a VC is that consumers are deciding if the company will eventually deliver a product they want. You just cut out the middleman. The VC.

<comment><USER18> >The only difference between kickstarter and a VC is that consumers are deciding if the company will eventually deliver a product they want. You just cut out the middleman. The VC.

I don't know if that's necessarily true.

The biggest difference is that VCs have an interest in the continued success in the company because they are looking for a return on their investment, not just the product in question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can somebody give an example of a complicated electronics Kickstarter project that has shipped successfully?

I don't mean to imply anything, I always enthusiastically back these things. I'm just curious. In one year of Kickstarter pledging history I've only received two T-shirts (for well over $1000 worth of "purchases"). Some pens I ordered a year ago are on their way now ;)

<comment><USER20> Could you give examples of Kickstarters you've backed that never shipped? How far behind are they? Do you believe they ever will?

My little project today is researching the Million Dollar Kickstarters, seeing how they're doing.

The Elevation Dock has had some production issues, seems to have some QA issues. Has a few very vocal critics. But then anything of any size does. It looks like their main mistake has been lack of communication.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hop/elevation-dock- the-b...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hop/elevation-dock-the-best- dock-for-iphone/)

<comment><USER19> Come to think of it most of them are in the last 6 months and aren't much delayed. There's Pen-Type A, Ubooly, Pebble, Remee, Blink/Steady, Hickies, Backpacks by MHM and the Bosavi Headlamp. The only one with a real delay is Pen-Type A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This one is screaming for a google acquisition, especially with the new google play brand.

The support from indie devs is pretty nice too, since people have proven they'll pay for quality indie games with the humble indie bundle, and sony's co-op with indie devs on games like journey (<http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/>) is a big vote of confidence.

Ultimately, what draws people to a platform are the games, so it's good to have a bunch of proven games already, and more coming. Now, all it needs is a few killer exclusives.

<comment><USER22> I would be afraid of Google or any other big company acquiring it since it would result in locking down of the system to satisfy the lawyers. I remember when certain Little Big Planet levels were not allowed to be distributed because they contained copyrighted materials: <http://www.1up.com/news/big- planet-levels-deleted-due>

I want the freedom to load any content from anywhere I want.

<comment><USER23> > I want the freedom to load any content from anywhere I want.

This is completely compatible with preventing the distribution of material which infringes copyright.

<comment><USER22> Please enlighten me with more detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd love to know which Tegra3 variant they're using - some of them (T33 specifically) have much higher clockspeeds and memory bandwidths:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6036/asus-transformer-pad- infi...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6036/asus-transformer-pad-infinity- tf700t-review/3)

As it's a plug-in device, battery life isn't an issue.

Going with the fastest memory/CPU combination would likely be quite attractive to gaming developers dealing with HD resolution screens, assuming that it would fit in the budget.

<comment><USER25> Since they are planning on launching in the first half of 2013, I would _love_ for them to go with Tegra 4 instead, or at least Samsung's Exynos 5, both of which have new GPU architectures with unified shaders and support for OpenGL ES 3.0. Tegra 4 is rumored to have 64 GPU cores compared to the 12 Tegra 3 has, and it should have "Kepler DNA". If the GPU cores are at least as good as the current ones (and they should be), then we're looking at a 5x+ graphics performance increase, plus the extra features of Open GL ES 3.0 over the 4 year old OpenGL ES 2.0. Plus, it will have a quad core Cortex A15 CPU. It would be great if OUYA could start directly with these new GPU and CPU architectures, especially if they don't plan on renewing the console every year (although I think they should).

Exynos 5250 would also be a great alternative that should be available as early as this fall with a dual core Cortex A15, and a new architecture GPU Mali T604, which should also be at least 3-4x faster than Tegra 3, and should also support OpenGL ES 3.0.

<comment><USER26> Every indication seems to show they are committed to the Tegra and it's way too late to change hardware spec other than adding an extra port.

Barring something like Nvidia stepping in and deciding they'll personally help out and give them a deal on Tegra 4 for the publicity or something... I can't see that changing.

It is a bit sad to see that there are 50 dollar Android 4.0 TV sticks selling from China right now. And they are using Mali 400s which are actually faster than the Tegra. [http://www.alibaba.com/product- gs/581994032/hot_sale_mini_HD...](http://www.alibaba.com/product- gs/581994032/hot_sale_mini_HD_1080P_android.html)

There will probably be 5 more, all faster, by the time this thing launches in Mar 2013.

<comment><USER27> While that mali gpu is very nice the extra cores, codecs and ram with the tegra makes it much more of an all around solution. While the cheap single core + mali socs that are doing such high volume are damn impressive performers don't overlook the advantages they get with a bigger name design including dev boards, long lifetime parts, better qa&docs and the nvidia developer outreach programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _With all our technological advancements, shouldn't costs be going down? > Gaming could be cheaper!_

Costs _are_ going down. Does anyone remember plunking down $50 to $60 for an 8-bit NES game in 1980s dollars? You don't pay much more than $60 (in highly inflated dollars) for any game today, and yet you get so much more _technological_ advancement for your buck.

Whether you get more _value_ is up for debate, of course.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's interesting to note that Kickstarter openly admits that 20000 people _ordered_ the console. I was under the impression that all the money going into Kickstarter projects were officially _donations_ due to legal concerns.

<comment><USER30> My thoughts exactly. With that wording, why did Ouya need Kickstarter to do this?

<comment><USER31> I think the difference is, Ouya doesn't have to actually deliver a product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I note some enterprising soul added "ouya" to their KS description today so they show up in searches for the word.

Hop on the bandwagon!

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wizardbox/fall-of- eterni...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wizardbox/fall-of-eternity)

</comment><comment><USER32> It seems that even though kickstarter will not fund companies (only "projects") this is an example of how a company could spin off a stealth division to organize around a project to get it funded and to prove the market and pre-sell.

The video done here is very professional and the whole thing just has to much shine on it.

I'm wondering if projects like this will end up clouding out the original intention of kickstarter.

The founder (Julie Uhrman) has nice credentials but is described as a "digital media executive":

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/julieuhrman>

Added: And at least on linkedin ouya is presented as a company and it appears from here background that that is what she is building.

<comment><USER4> You could also pitch to a VC , "We need $X million to make an awesome video with an all star cast. We will use this video to raise the remaining $Y on kickstarter"

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They are lacking credibility IMHO. Where's this company located? Whats its name? Who are the initial VC/Angel investors? Who is on the board?

In their video they show shiny, happy developers, sitting at nice desks etc, showing prototype boards. This logically means there was a first financing round to get this far - develop hardware, rent offices, hire people.

The official domain name (ouya.tv) is anonymously registered via dreamhost - again, no information on the company backing Ouya.

I understand the stealth part of startups, but publicly asking for money withot any background information is a risky proposition IMHO.

(I did order one though, call me crazy ;-)

</comment><comment><USER34> Is it mentioned anywhere that the actual planned pricing (after the product releases) will be $99? The "$99 Android console!" headlines are great for publicity, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual product (if it ever goes on sale) might be in the neighborhood of $250-$300 while the pledgers are the only ones that will actually get a $99 console "sold" as a loss for the sake of generating interest.

<comment><USER35> They've moved up to 80k consoles available at $99, so either they have serious funding to cover the loss or they are selling them at cost or with a bit of a profit.

They are taking 30% from all games sold, so it is in their best interest to get as many consoles out there as possible. I would bet that the retail price is at or very near $99

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only one who doesn't own a TV anymore?

It isn't because I'm pretentious or don't believe in TV, it is just that when my television broke, I realized my laptop had replaced it for almost everything already.

I can easily imagine a day when other people won't own one either for the same reason. The idea of buying a television just to play games strikes me as... expensive.

That said, I do know of someone who bought a TV just for her xbox.

<comment><USER4> A TV now is more like a large monitor to hook other things upto, whereas in the past the TV set itself was responsible for decoding the broadcast stream etc.

A TV still has it's advantages however, they are cheap for their size because the resolution can remain relatively low (imagine how much a 42" retina display would cost).

There's also a big social aspect that a laptop does not address, you wouldn't want to bring your friends round for a movie or a friendly game of wii sports and all crowd around a laptop would you?

<comment><USER37> A TV is actually worse than a monitor for most purposes, especially if you want their output to match a video signal: <http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/8705.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if this will light a fire under Apple's ass to finally pull whatever Apple TV play they've been planning.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've ordered one, even though I only do occasional casual gaming on my phone and don't even have a TV plugged in.

I'm wondering how they are able to put all this stuff in a box, with a nice controller, for their price point. It seems like it would be really hard to make money on this.

<comment><USER13> At $100 each for just the systems, I doubt they're making any money from the Kickstarter. They will make a few $100k from the higher levels, though. What they're doing is funding the initial build (fixtures, test rigs, plastics molds, etc) and build hype / excitement.

I assume retail prices will be higher, probably in the $150 range, when they'll make decent margins on the hardware. Their volumes will be much higher (probably 2 orders of magnitude) than Panda / Beagle boards (Pandas sell for $182, Beagle xM for $150, both are profitable). They'll also probably offer "services" consulting with developers to help them get the most out of the SDK which will be an alternate revenue stream.

No screen, no battery, no mobile phone radio, no requirement for physically small size. All allow quite lower hardware BOM costs than equivalent phones / tablets.

<comment><USER20> It's something like $90-$95 after the Kickstarter and Amazon fees come out of it, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't it seem like a group might be able to use Kickstarter to "speedup" the something like the process Github used to get to it's Series A? You know, start a generally profitable business and then work with a very knowledgable investor to take on a huge piece of pie?

Just seems like a VC might even prefer a group that knows what it wants and how to get things done. They might be more ready to disrupt. And they might have a great culture with the right priorities.

I wonder if we'll ever see "Pixar in reverse". A company that can deliver an entertainment product turn into some kind of revolutionary hardware product manufacturer.

<comment><USER41> If a Steam console does come out, we'll get to see that for ourselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't really see how their hardware is at all better than the modern smartphone. Any manufacturer targeted at the same user base and a phone device designed to support its gaming needs to boot will beat this.

The only way they can spin this is by creating a gaming community around it which, admittedly, is what they're trying to do. Successfully for now.

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't it be possible for Google to take the Q, add more of the Android experience including the full Google Marketplace, create a nice bluetooth controller for it, and completely squash this thing? They'd probably need to come down in price about 100 bucks, but I bet that's doable.

</comment><comment><USER44> Just bought one. The technology listed makes it totally worth the money alone. Not to mention that if this thing has as many developers making (partially free) games for it as does the Android market now, it seems like this won't be outdated for quite a while.

</comment><comment><USER45> Look at how long it took them to actually talk about the product...wow! Kickstarter has an amazing ability to talk about themselves as if they create everything that sells there.

I pledged the $99 level on this one, with limited expectations. I hope they deliver.

</comment><comment><USER46> Did this thing just shut down any interests with the Nexus Q? I would assume that it can do just about everything the Q does except the NFC stuff right

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how successful this will be _beyond_ the kickstarter.

I think this will partly depend on who has been donating. How many of these are developers who want this to develop on, how many are hackers who want some nice open hardware to build something else on top of and how many are general gamers who just want a new console?

It's possible that they ship the kickstarter units once they have finished development but that is more or less it and actual orders0 drop quickly to almost nothing.

The incumbents have several advantages over this:

They have deep wallets and are able to subsidize their consoles heavily (and already do). For example they could offer a sale price for an XboX at around the time that this is released so that the price difference becomes negligible.

They have retail space, even though many would say that retail is dying. Walking past a high street shop that advertised a particular product will certainly increase the perceived legitimacy of that product in the public eyes. They can also use this hook to wrestle things like this out of the physical retail space.

It's going to be hard to persuade AAA developers to develop for this, partly because it is so "hackable". If this does gain some popularity then it's likely that neighbourhood teenage geeks will do a nice business in taking these consoles, putting custom firmware on them to bypass whatever DRM and installing hundreds of torrented games on them, for some ridiculously cheap fee like $30. XboX gets around this problem by deliberately making this difficult and risky (having to do a hardware mod, risking loss of XboX Live service , voiding warranty on a device with perceived reliability issues).

As an example of this a PayTV service was launched in the UK some years ago but the hardware was made very easy to hack so it was possible to make it able to subscribe to all premium channels without paying for them. They eventually went out of business because the majority of their customers had hacked boxes.

All the titles they are gunning for appear to be indie titles, the problem is that most successful Indie titles will end up on Xbox etc anyway since MS , Sony etc are enabling digital distribution. Unless this can get a massive install base it's likely that Indie devs will only target it as a secondary platform and will concentrate on XboX etc first.

It's difficult to think of a way to sell this device on it's merits to an "average consumer" beyond being slightly cheaper than an XBox (but not cheaper than a second hand one). The only pitch I can think of would be "you can run pirate games on this". Piracy is also a big part of the reason that the PC was such a successful games platform, I remember the arguments at school between console and PC gamers and one frequently trotted out in favour of the PC was "the hardware costs more , but the games are free because we just copy the disks".

<comment><USER20> The biggest question I have-

Say it goes crazy and they sell 100,000 units via KS.

Is that enough of an install base to make it work? Would developers target a platform of only 100,000 users? How would they get more users?

<comment><USER47> Are all of you guys missing the whole point that this is on Adnroid? They specifically chose to build it on Android precisely because of this problem. You're not developing for a platform with OUYA users only. You're developing for the fastest growing platform in the world with over 1 million new devices per day.

And on top of that. If you add gamepad support (which will be trivial for most games, and those which are not won't even bother). And take additional 5 minutes to upload to the OUYA store. Now you're also supporting the OUYA devices, in addition to all other Android devices.

The OUYA is not just its own single thing. It's just a tiny part of a huge ecosystem. And this tiny part is helping shape the direction that the rest of the ecosystem is going. (meaning you'll see more gamepad-friendly games in the future) You can be sure that the OUYA won't be the only Android console-like device we'll be developing for. Many more will come to compete with it in the coming years.

One really big sign of how innovative this is. Is that even many of the HN cannot grasp what they're doing. Watching the critics argue with each other here, reminds me of watching the MPAA discuss anti-piracy measures. No offense intended :)

<comment><USER4> I would disagree that adding gamepad support for existing games will be "trivial" especially if you care about the game experience at all.

Changing the input type for a game in most cases fundamentally changes what the game is. It can also mean that the difficultly curve has to be adjusted significantly because things that used to be hard suddenly become easy and vice versa.

For a good example of this , look at the original Unreal Tournament on the PC. The maps on this game take huge advantage of the vertical space and allow for precision shooting over large distances thanks to the mouse.

Now look at popular FPS games on consoles, most use way less in terms of the vertical space and typically incorporate some form of aiming assist to make distance shots possible.

Having the OS based on android will provide some advantage is re-usable game code but I think this overstates the issues when it comes to porting to different platforms.

<comment><USER47> Jiggy, it's very clear from your posts on this thread that you are clueless about both game and android development. You jump from flawed argument to a different flawed argument after the first flaw is pointed out. You seem to be more worried about criticizing the ouya out of criticizing's sake, instead of being worried about the merit of your arguments. Why are you doing this? What is your motivation to continue with this?

I've already answered your argument in the very post you're replying to. I wonder if you're even bothering reading. Some games already support d-pad, others don't. For the ones that do, it will be trivial, the ones that don't, won't bother porting.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the Ad hominem.

I often post on HN from somewhat of a devils advocate position (and assume others do the same), since that's more interesting than the sort of "+1 I love this!" type posts I see on other forums.

In reality of course I would love this console to succeed and in principle would prefer something like this to a closed console such as the XboX.

Regards the point about controls: The fact remains that the most popular games for android currently are designed around touch screen controls since the overwhelming majority of android devices out there are phones or tablets.

Sure , there are a few Android games that seemed to be designed for gamepads and were somehow shoehorned onto a touchscreen (the series of COD clone games who's name escaped me springs to mind). Sure, some of these could be salvaged into something playable on this console but I would think the difficulty would still need adjustment since people now have a proper gamepad rather than a touchscreen pad. Also I would doubt many of these games are particularly competitive with equivalent games for the XboX etc even with the controls fixed.

Historically having some impressive launch titles has been an important precursor to success for consoles. The combination of the release timescale combined with the lack of concrete information for developers means that it seems unlikely that such titles will appear in time.

In other words, whilst I personally love this idea, I have no idea how I would encourage less geeky friends to get one, saying "you can play the games that you can already play on your mobile phone" doesn't seem like it would cut it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ouya = Indrema 2012?</comment>


Thoughts from the Ringside: Ringside Winding Down - <AUTHOR> http://bobbickel.blogspot.com/2008/09/ringside-winding-down.html <comment><USER2> What would the downside have been with following through initially with a Series A while the acquisition talks continued? The acquiring company would have had to pay at a higher rate, if at all?

I guess the question is: Could they have seriously moved forward, simultaneously, on both tracks? Was an either-or choice at that stage necessary?</comment>


Show HN: Entora – Your entertainment covered - <AUTHOR> http://entora.com

<comment><USER2> Looks great, very fast & lots of features.

Could you let us know some technical details? What's it made with? Any interesting challengers you faced?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! These are just core features we have launched. We will continue building more useful features, like lists, reviews, concerts etc. around your follows.

Entora is built using Python/Django, PostgreSQL database and ElasticSearch for search and cache layer.

For static files: Amazon storage and Cloudflare as an image proxy. Linode hosting (8x instances).

The biggest challenge is merging data from different open source databases and validating that musician John Smith is same person as actor or writer named John Smith from totally different data source.

Entora CTO, Kaspars Sprogis (darklow)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How frequently is the search index on hacker news updated? - <AUTHOR>

I was searching for the hn discussion around Zipkin, a google search lead me to
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4077645
However searching for zipkin on hacker news was showing 0 results at least as of Jun 8 9.50am PST.
http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Zipkin <comment><USER2> The crawler is out of date due to an IP change from a move to an AWS VPC. We're working on getting the crawler up-to-date ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER3> They are upgrading their servers, I was told.</comment>


Show HN: Plug, the best way to discover new music on Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.plugformac.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A year ago I approached a designer on Dribbble about using his design ([http://dribbble.com/shots/595176-Hype-Machine-Mac- App?list=u...](http://dribbble.com/shots/595176-Hype-Machine-Mac- App?list=users)) to learn Objective-C and maybe create a cool way to use the Hype Machine on OSX.

We've come a long way since then. Glenn (@glennui) has done some incredible work on the design (check out the iterative improvements: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/1O1Z193I0i0J1y0R2a3X/...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/1O1Z193I0i0J1y0R2a3X/progress.png)) and we think it's one of the best ways to find new music out there.

If you're not familiar with the Hype Machine, here is a quick summary of what's going on [http://blog.plugformac.com/post/63340578035/introducing- plug...](http://blog.plugformac.com/post/63340578035/introducing-plug-a-great- way-to-listen-to-the-hype).

We just released a public beta. It's free during the beta, so check it out and let us know what you think.

<comment><USER2> This is the first app you made to learn obj-c? Not bad! Congrats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is amazing. The UI is absolutely gorgeous. A few minor things I noticed:

-Scrolling seems very laggy when scrolling with the mouse wheel, although dragging with the scrollbar seems fine. This only seems to be happening in the Popular (Now), view. This is under 10.9.

-When I favorite songs, they don't show up in the favorite section although they did after relaunching the app.

-It would be nice if when you moused over a song in the list if it scrolled the full song name into view - at the moment they get cut off and you can't see the full name.

-The song list scrollbar on the right is obscured by the controller at the bottom. I like what you've done with having the songs scroll underneath the slightly transparent controller but the scrollbar should really end where the controller starts.

-I don't seem to be getting notifications from the app even though it's listed in the Notifications app list under the Notifications section of System Preferences.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Scrolling seems very laggy when scrolling with the mouse wheel, although > dragging with the scrollbar seems fine. This only seems to be happening in > the Popular (Now), view. This is under 10.9.

OK, we'll check it out.

> When I favorite songs, they don't show up in the favorite section although > they did after relaunching the app.

The app doesn't auto-update favorites yet. For now you can manually update via pull-to-refresh.

> It would be nice if when you moused over a song in the list if it scrolled > the full song name into view - at the moment they get cut off and you can't > see the full name.

Agreed, we're working on this one.

> The song list scrollbar on the right is obscured by the controller at the > bottom. I like what you've done with having the songs scroll underneath the > slightly transparent controller but the scrollbar should really end where > the controller starts.

Good point, i'll have to look into that.

> I don't seem to be getting notifications from the app even though it's > listed in the Notifications app list under the Notifications section of > System Preferences.

If the app is out of focus you should get a notification popup. We don't store notifications in notification center though, since it doesn't seem useful to keep a history.

Thanks for the feedback. Hit us up @plugformac if you want to get in contact with us in the future.

<comment><USER4> > The app doesn't auto-update favorites yet. For now you can manually update > via pull-to-refresh.

Just to let you know: I favorited a song (using menu bar) and then pulled to refresh in my favorites view. The song was shown twice on the list. Same after another refreshes. After restarting the app the song is shown only once, but after pulling to refresh it's doubled again. The second copy appears slightly after the first, so it's probably some list populating launched twice.

The app is awesome and I loved it at the first sight. Thank you! I didn't know Hype Machine before, but they seem to serve some good music.

You should provide links to iTunes & Amazon to allow easy purchases if someone would like to add songs to their music library.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen this before. If you can, shoot us a screenshot @plugformac or email@example.com.

If you click the share button and go to the hypem.com page for a track they have the option to buy the track. We'll have to look into it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just started using this, I have never used the hype machine before. The app interface is beautiful and intuitive. This is awesome and I love it.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome — I, like another commenter, too had not used the Hype Machine before. Plug is a beautiful way to explore music.

I'm an iOS developer, and notice that they have an official iOS app; do they have a public API? If not, what did you use to get the music data?

<comment><AUTHOR> They do have a public API [http://hypem.com/playlist/popular/3day/json/1/data.js](http://hypem.com/playlist/popular/3day/json/1/data.js). Though if you want access to the mp3 url's you need an API key. We've worked closely with them to make this happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> First time using Hype but that UI is awesome. Really makes me want to pick up Cocoa again.

</comment><comment><USER8> FWIW hypem does not support SSL so you must turn off your https everywhere or make an exception in order to sign up for an account.</comment>


Pure CSS FizzBuzz - <AUTHOR> http://joseph.mx/blog/2015/05/12/Pure-CSS-FizzBuzz.html

<comment><USER2> You can use css counters to output the count on non fizz, buzz or fizzbuzz iterations

[http://codepen.io/anon/pen/QbNLxO](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/QbNLxO)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Count...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Counters)

<comment><USER3> If you don't mind the dots you can do: [http://jsbin.com/resihe/1/edit](http://jsbin.com/resihe/1/edit)

<comment><USER4> Took me a moment to see how you were doing that. Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I could be wrong, but I believe the post that he's referring to as inspiration is this one: [https://css-tricks.com/tales-of-a-non-unicorn-a-story- about-...](https://css-tricks.com/tales-of-a-non-unicorn-a-story-about-the- trouble-with-job-titles-and-descriptions/)

A pretty interesting story about job titles and descriptions that are not representative of the job they're trying to hire for.

<comment><USER6> More like a story of someone that applied for a job that asks for Javascript skills without knowing Javascript and then blamed the company, and made a blog post/rant about it, because they hired someone else that probably fits that particular position better.

<comment><USER4> I thought so too at first (and its not like FizzBuzz is hard), but if you read the post you'll see the job advert was for design, only listing JS as "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript" after talking about design up until then (and then only listing further JS stuff as _nice to haves_ ).

The person made clear that they can do all the design stuff and can use JS to add basic interaction to the frontend.

The job post didn't ask for a programmer. I don't see how its the designers fault for not being a programmer.

<comment><USER6> The job advert asked for someone that knows Javscript. This person doesn't know JavaScript. The person that got the job probably knew Javascript.

I don't think this deserves a blog post ranting against that company because they asked you a Javascript question in, I repeat, a job listing that specifically asked for Javascript knowledge.

<comment><USER4> The advertised job was for a "UX Engineer/Interaction Designer".

The responsibilities listed were:

        * Create low and high-fidelity mockups to effectively convey interaction and design ideas (e.g. wireframes, sketches, 'pixel-perfect' mockups, etc).
        * Deliver engaging, innovative prototypes, and contribute to front-end development of our products.
        * Collaborate with and synthesize feedback from other members of the team.
        * Evaluate the usability of new and existing products, apply user research findings, and make constructive suggestions for improvements.

The minimum qualifications:

        * B.S. degree in Design, Computer Science or related technical field or comparable practical experience.
        * 2 or more years of designing clean, valid, and compatible websites and applications.
        * Knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
        * Clean and elegant visual design aesthetic.
        * HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript.
        * Passionate about creating responsive and delightful interfaces and experiences.

Everything except the _HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript._ scream visual/ux designer. Nowhere does it say _programmer_. I don't think its a stretch that if you came across that job post that you would assume that Javascript is needed in a small way to tie bits and pieces together, like the author assumed. _EVERY_ thing else in that post[1] is about UX or visual design. They didn't say they wanted a programmer, they said they wanted a designer who knows a small bit about technical things. I think the author fits the bill, especially since most job posts are now completely inflated with impossible requests (ten years experience in a technology that's only existed for five? I've seen it done!)

[1] I'm ignoring the "preferred qualifications", since that heading makes it sound like _nice to have_ not _must have_

<comment><USER6> Minimum qualifications: "HTML5, CSS3, Javascript". I think it's pretty clear. You can question why the company needs a JS programmer in a design job. I don't know. But it's clear in the requirements that Javascript could come up in the interview. Knowing Javascript means you can code a loop and some conditionals, which is all FizzBuzz requires. They didn't ask her to implement a red-black tree or the Dijsktra's algorithm.

And besides that, who told her the rejection was about the FizzBuzz or JS issue? Maybe another designer had a better portfolio or whatever. Again, a blog post that got more attention it deserved to rant about something that happens every day and has happened to a lot of us: a job interview that doesn't go well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like it must be possible to do the numbers using CSS's counters: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Count...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Counters) If I didn't have a whole bunch of work to do this afternoon, I'd have a go myself.

<comment><USER7> And, seconds earlier, someone else had already done the hard work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is kind of brilliant. I think if I were interviewing you, and asked you to do a FizzBuzz (which is unlikely, but let's ignore that), and you said "Oh, cool, can I do it in CSS," I'd have probably laughed at you.

This is clearly an academic exercise, but one that I would never have even thought to attempt, as I probably would have chalked it up to probably waaaay more trouble than it's worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm grinning more than socially okay at work right now, thanks a lot! It's really appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this mean that CSS is now Turing-complete, or does it just mean that Turing-completeness is not required to implement FizzBuzz?

<comment><USER10> Turing completeness is not required to implement FizzBuzz. But CSS + HTML are turing complete since Rule 110 can be implemented in pure CSS + HTML.

EDIT: I'm not entirely right. Here's a good answer: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing- com...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-complete)

<comment><USER9> OK, and I see the Pure CSS Fizzbuzz is likewise not Turing complete, because it would still require a Javascript client to append divs to the document in a loop (or when called) in order to pump the automaton.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty cool. Slightly different than the one posted three years ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3939294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3939294)

</comment><comment><USER12> Can anyone recommend some intermediate resources for learning CSS. I have gone though css dog, and I kind of know most of that stuff already. Everything seems to be beginner or expert level.

And not csszengarden. It has some wonderful examples, but doesn't really explain how they work.

<comment><USER13> Honestly you should get a book. After you go through enough web resources you realize a pattern of dropping off after only scratching the surface of a topic, and books really help you to solidify the knowledge.

I've heard great things about this book ([http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS- Design-Build-Websites/dp/1118...](http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS-Design-Build- Websites/dp/1118008189/ref=zg_bs_379357011_1)), but it is geared more towards beginners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a mistake in that code:

.fizzbuzz:nth-of-type(3n)::before{ content: "buzz"; }

Should be "fizz".

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's the solution with numbers in the non-fizzbuzzy boxes: [http://codepen.io/kylf/pen/zGqOjy](http://codepen.io/kylf/pen/zGqOjy)

</comment><comment><USER16> Shorter version of pure css fizzbuzz :)

[http://codepen.io/livingston/pen/xGVbGd?editors=110](http://codepen.io/livingston/pen/xGVbGd?editors=110)

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I missing something on how this is CSS only when you are using jQ...?

<comment><USER18> jQ is only used to generate enough divs that serve as input data. You can remove jQ and add the divs manually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love how declarative style makes the important part of the code practically trivial.

If anyone needs an example to show how functional style is more concise and expressive than procedural, this could be one.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice! I am going to use this concept to solve problems "that can only be done in Javascript." Can't wait to confuse and delight the designers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Without the JS:

[http://codepen.io/anon/pen/NqNKYv](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/NqNKYv)

<comment><USER21> With HAML :) [http://codepen.io/anon/pen/MwyYey](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/MwyYey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> display: float; indeed

<comment><AUTHOR> Embarrassing! I'm not sure how it happened, sorry

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> but how well does it scale?

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice idea.

</comment><comment><USER25> BTW i loved your honest CV. No exaggerating.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why is this on hacker news.

<comment><USER27> Why not?

<comment><USER26> it's not particularly interesting or inspiring... maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER27> Each to their own I guess. I wouldn't say it's the most incredible hack in the history of computing. Still a fun experiment IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Oh, now you're a REAL programmer. Congratulations.</comment>


UPR Mash - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/danwills/uprMash <comment><AUTHOR> The main thing that's maybe interesting about this weird old project (I have learnt a bit more python since back then) is that it can correctly decode compressed UPR-strings as commonly copy-pasted on the UltraFractal email list (a string containing a UPR in a special format, see decodeAndUnzipUPR() in uprMash.py)</comment>


Ask HN: What's your blogging platform?  - <AUTHOR>

There are so many new blogging platforms. What's the platform you're using? Do you still use blogger? Or use a newer platform?<p>Is it self hosted or hosted by the blogging service? <comment><USER3> Managed Wordpress with WP-Engine. It's more expensive than self-hosted but it saves me days in not-having-to-fuck-with-my-server time.

( I wrote about this in some depth a while ago: [http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2012/03/wpengine-review- after-1...](http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2012/03/wpengine-review- after-1-month-and-250k-visitors-is-this-the-best-wordpress-hosting-money-can- buy/) )

Why Wordpress? Mostly for the It Just Works factor. I've done my time in the CMS trenches - I've written my own several times back before there were any decent hosted solutions. Nowadays, if it's reasonably easy to use and not too slow I'm good with it.

Plus, Wordpress has the advantage of an absolutely massive ecosystem around it, meaning that any features I want to add rarely require custom code, and usually just require a Google search. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Jekyll, hosted on AmazonS3 and auto deployed by wercker: [http://born2code.net/blog/2013/05/27/simplify-your-jekyll- pu...](http://born2code.net/blog/2013/05/27/simplify-your-jekyll-publishing- process-with-wercker/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Jekyll - GitHub Pages (w/ custom domain) - Lagom theme - GitHub issues for brainstorming ideas - No comment system

It is free, super fast, works great for Markdown/plain-text editor. I _never_ have to dick around with anything (security, caching plugins, spam, etc) - <USER2> can just write. And sometimes nice people send me pull requests to fix typos :)

[https://github.com/swanson/swanson.github.com](https://github.com/swanson/swanson.github.com)

[https://github.com/swanson/lagom](https://github.com/swanson/lagom)

</comment><comment><USER6> I use my own. I spent about 3 weeks making a nice one with rails. It took so long because I was learning rails and also ruby as I went.

I use it over managed solutions because I've set it up to easily integrate into any site, it loads insanely fast and has a lot of modern features you would expect (split pane live preview with markdown, auto saving without creating a million drafts, user login to handle authors, etc.).

Most managed solutions lack 1 or 2 important features in some way or another and that ruins the experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jekyll, GitHub pages, and a custom domain.

Using Markdown means no constraint on what software you use to edit your posts, which is really nice.

Another advantage to using a static site generator is your blog will be (generally) fast to load, secure, and it will be really easy to find somewhere to host it for a low cost (or even for free).

</comment><comment><USER8> I switched from wordpress to Jekyll on AWS S3 last year: [http://www.dirktheman.com/tech/2013/05/12/i-switched-my- blog...](http://www.dirktheman.com/tech/2013/05/12/i-switched-my-blog-from- wordpress-to-jekyll.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I build one myself. Liked the workflow in some PHP blogging software, but didn't want to have PHP on my server and the node.js blogs (before ghost) were unusable compile-to-static-html crapware or tutorials on learning node.js while building your own blog haha...

</comment><comment><USER10> I was going to start on Ghost but then just used Medium. Curious to know why people would choose Ghost over Medium considering that you will have to host that yourself?

<comment><USER11> Ghost will have a hosted solution similar to Wordpress where Ghost will host it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Self-hosted Octopress[1], but I'm working in migrating to Ghost.

[1]: [http://octopress.org/](http://octopress.org/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Just switched to nanoc[1] deployed to GitHub pages via Travis.

[1] [http://nanoc.ws/](http://nanoc.ws/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Self hosted WordPress. Manage a few dozen of them so keep my own the same to keep things simple.

Definitely want to play with Ghost soon though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Custom, built with Scala, deployed on Heroku. Posts written in Markdown. Linked in my profile. Code hosted on Github (public).

</comment><comment><USER16> Jekyll and GitHub pages. What can I say? I'm cheap.

</comment><comment><USER17> Octopress + github pages.

</comment><comment><USER18> octopress on github pages with prose.io, cheap and effective

</comment><comment><USER19> Wordpress and jekyll.

</comment><comment><USER20> Jekyll.

</comment><comment><USER21> Jekyll</comment>


Startup Stack: tools to help get your idea off the ground quickly and cheaply - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/my-startup-stack-865da79b9adb#.mhyigg9rk <comment><USER2> Hey folks, some of you asked about Dev Tools, so I wrote a response here: [https://medium.com/@samrye_enspiral/good-point-shihab- uddin-...](https://medium.com/@samrye_enspiral/good-point-shihab-uddin-and-it- was-something-i-didnt-really-touch-on-well-in-the-article-b6fd15a3ebfd)

</comment><comment><USER3> Went to the article expecting more of a technical stack but found instead lot of side tools, some quite common but some I did not know. I'd like to add some we use at our startup which we found quite useful as well to integrate:

Chargebee - good merchant api, quite cheap for startups

Intercom - quite pricey for what it does but the filtering and automation features cannot be found on competitors yet

Ritetag - good social analytic api if you need to integrate keyword scoring for some reason

Quu - to use on top of buffer to pad your content if in need

We are working in the space of one of the named services so I'll refrain from naming ours ;)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing Alanna!

LoSboccacc thanks for your comment and for adding those services - I think for maximum visibility, if you have a medium account - why not 'Respond' there and others will see it linked?</comment>


Virus disrupts pregnancy plans, raises anxiety and questions - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/3a1716b6795dd06a38722a53a492a86c <comment><AUTHOR> I am actually worried about this issue from a slightly different angle: I think having a sufficiently large population being effectively home-bound for quarantine will result in a larger than expected amount of unplanned pregnancies later in the year. In addition, I am not sure if pregnancy tests and contraception will be considered to be an essential item with respect to timely delivery and restocking. Pharmacies remain open, but if people get worried all at the same time, then the just-in-time supply chain for these items may not prepared. Finally, there is the issue of having sufficient clinic and hospital beds for abortions and pregnancies respectively together with strained and overworked medical staff.

As a slight aside, is there a resource / subreddit for people like myself to raise these sorts of issues with people who can investigate and affect change?</comment>


Seaborg Technologies (LFTR) invested heavily in by Unity founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/moonshot-investment-landed <comment><USER2> I am curious. Is there specific regulations that apply to software on nuclear energy? Since, we are dealing with the "N" word.

</comment><comment><USER2> This could be a game changer...</comment>


Ask HN: Low level multiprocessor implementation? - <AUTHOR> I was reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8798799 about what languages to learn. I was interested in how Terra leverages lua, a technique I learnt on BBC basic to develop ROMs for the BBC micro. Sort of like a super assembler.
I've been programming for over 40 years, and thought I'd build a framework for the parallela board. I don't see why we have great hardware coming along yet there's no vision in the tool chains. Just C/C++ and openCL. Don't get me wrong, I've done C++ programming since late 80's, it's just I know I can't put a clojure or JavaScript run time on nodes in an epiphany chip.
I'm aware of various activities. As much as I enjoyed my time working with Forth (Jupiter Ace) I'm not sure that developing solutions for the greenArrays chips in ColorForth will become mainstream.
I know there are 'technology clusters' but they are mostly academic talk shops. Here I expect pragmatic answers. I want to do something.
So, my question:
What small systems should I consider to load onto 64 nodes (4 boards) that could enable embedded development with visualisation? <comment><USER2> Take a look at XMOS: [http://www.xmos.com/](http://www.xmos.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> ColorForth?</comment>


Interstellar object 'Oumuamua covered in 'thick crust of carbon-rich gunk' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/18/interstellar-object-oumuamua-covered-in-thick-crust-of-carbon-rich-gunk <comment><USER2> To a certain kind of alien, "thick crust of carbon-rich gunk" could describe Earth as well.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the aliens ARE the "carbon-rich gunk"?

<comment><USER4> You're carbon-rich gunk.

<comment><USER5> A co-worker of mine, upon reading this, opined that my face was carbon-rich gunk. He's not wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally, I'm strangely happy that this is turning out to be "just" an ordinary piece of space rock. Imagine if it looked more like a spent booster or a probe from remote observations. We would have no realistic way of intercepting it to learn more about it. It would forever remain an open question whether it was just a strange rock or a once-in-a-life-time missed opportunity to explore an artifact from an alien civilization.

<comment><USER7> If there was solid evidence that it was of alien manufacture, we would go get it. No question. Access to something like that triggers 'national security' type responses. Projects under that heading have bottomless budgets and high risk tolerances.

<comment><USER8> We don't have the technology. The fastest object we have ever made is Voyager 1 at 17 km/sec. It got its speed by flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. Oumuamua is going 26 km/sec.

<comment><USER9> We didn't have the tech for nuclear bombs until we decided we wanted to blow up cities. We didn't have the technology to go to the moon until we decided we wanted to go there. A little more than ten years ago the Motorola Razr was the height of mobile phone design.

Stuff like NERVA or Project Orion stayed proposals not because they're impossible, but because there's nowhere we really _need_ to get that fast to justify the risks/expense/fallout.

"We need to get to this interstellar starship" would change the cost/benefit ratio of developing the tech needed.

<comment><USER10> NERVA was actually prototyped in the 60s, right? Dirty, but something that was known to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Undoubtably the accumulated corpses of explorers from the sundry solar systems it has passed through during the past several billion years.

</comment><comment><USER12> > organic ices – such as frozen carbon dioxide

I'm pretty sure that CO2 isn't classified as organic.

<comment><USER13> Organic has a specific meaning in chemistry: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry)

<comment> a-priori Yes but in some cases, astronomy uses slightly different definitions of key scientific terms: "metal", for example, means anything other than hydrogen or helium.

<comment><USER14> Nonsense. Nickel-iron asteroids are called "metallic," because they're largely made out of, well, metal. Stony asteroids are called "carbonaceous" because they've got a lot of carbon. They're very definitely _not_ called "metal". And astronomers believe that the core of Jupiter is both hydrogen _and_ metallic -- hydrogen compressed to the point where it acquires the property of a metal.

So: there are many things that are neither hydrogen nor helium nor metal, and a few things which are both hydrogen _and_ metal.

<comment><USER15> I think GP meant "metallicity" as a property of stellar objects:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am just happy that it doesn't have a reflective mercury like surface

</comment><comment><USER17> Which is completely normal.

<comment><USER18> Sorry you're being downvoted. I thought this was pretty cool, too. How often do we find interstellar "carbon-rich gunk"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This sounds like my cast iron pan. It takes so long to build up the perfect seasoning. I hope the owner is reunited with it.</comment>