Show HN: What do your customers "really" think? - <AUTHOR>

We have just launched an MVP for business to business customer satisfaction monitoring.
http://www.clientheartbeat.com
Our product helps identify at-risk customers and indicate trends with your individual customers that may need attention.  You can then anonymously compare your scores against others in your industry.  Awards in different areas of business can be earned to share with current and potential customers, or circulate among your team.
We've demo'd the app to our group of alpha testers and now we'd love to get your feedback.
Thanks in advance, The Team at projuce.com <comment><USER2> Neat app! So this is specifically trying to measure a customer's satisfaction with your customer service (not their satisfaction with a specific product or the sales process for example)? If you were trying to measure those other things, I wonder how this tool would handle it? And how do you make sure the results are focused on the customer service (rather than the other stuff)? In my experience with measuring customer satisfaction, folks can be very happy with the quality of service they receive but absolutely loathe the product or the process they had to go through to purchase it and then ultimately give you a low score on "Would you recommend this company?"

<comment><AUTHOR> We are trying to capture a customer's satisfaction within a few key areas an also overall. This is why customers are only surveyed every 3 months. We find this gets a much better idea of how happy they are with the service.

There are other tools for capturing feedback immediately after signup or a support incident, which would help identify signup or sales issues. This is an area we may look into in the future but for the moment the focus is on measuring change in their individual opinion over time. This lets us identity customers that still rate us well, but their opinion has dropped over time. (Or people who are rising advocates etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Slick design, I'm going to play around with this. Any chance you'd share what you're using to draw the gauges/graphs in the screenshots?

Right now I'm trying to do the same thing for my own customers with timed followup mails after signup, and a feedback form at the bottom of every page of the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are using gauge.js with an extra bit of custom javascript, hopefully we will get a chance to turn this into a jquery plugin soon.

<http://bernii.github.com/gauge.js/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable <http://www.clientheartbeat.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> Solid idea! Real value. Clear ROI for business. Great job! I look forward to seeing the progress.

</comment><comment><USER5> Suggestion: show me the actual 4 questions used! If they're not the same for each of your customers, at least show some example question sets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, some examples definitely make sense.

The questions will always be based on 4 key topics \- Promptness \- Accuracy \- Partnership \- Helpfulness

We are currently providing industry specific wording of the questions and will be letting users taylor the wording if they wish.</comment></comment>


Flipboard gives you a magazine just for you - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15571079?nclick_check=1 <comment><USER2> Who is doing PR/Marketing for Flipboard... They're everywhere I look in the last few days!</comment>


John Carmack reviews VR app "Just Relax" - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1950702748497566&id=100006735798590 <comment><USER2> The Oculus Home app (GearVR/S7 edge) recently received an update that has literally blown everything out of the water in terms of quality. I simply don't feel like launching an app now, just want to look at the scenery. I didn't see anything about it on HN, so here are a couple of links about the update:

[https://www.vrfocus.com/2017/03/carmack-on-oculus-home- updat...](https://www.vrfocus.com/2017/03/carmack-on-oculus-home-update-this- is-much-more-than-just-a-rewrite/)

[https://uploadvr.com/new-john-carmack-software-doubles- oculu...](https://uploadvr.com/new-john-carmack-software-doubles-oculus-home- resolution-gear-vr/)

<comment><USER3> > Static images with mip maps or proper prefiltering can go up to around 18 > pixels per degree if you really want the most detail in the center.

I'm not very familiar with VR. What does he mean here by "center"?

<comment><USER4> Mobile VR works by rendering both eyes to the screen. The result is then seen through lenses. As a result pixel density is highest in the center of each eye. So in this case center means the portion of the screen under the midpoint of each lens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title made me expect a well-worded post about the current state state of VR by Carmack. Maybe change the title?

<comment><USER6> "John Carmack critiques your VR bullshit he could code in 2 hours using less memory"

[https://twitter.com/SuperAnimoGIF/status/853641374419341313](https://twitter.com/SuperAnimoGIF/status/853641374419341313)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you like forest scenes, there's Speedtree.[1] Speedtree is a commercial terrain and vegetation generator for games. It can procedurally generate huge landscapes in real time, and has level of detail handling so the world will fit in memory. There are some Speedtree demos where you can walk around in a forest. It's like a game with good visuals, except nothing happens. Very peaceful.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Z142aOsm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Z142aOsm4)

</comment><comment><USER8> Did I miss something? Should you give someone feedback on a public post? Writing generically about something you noticed would be fine but to specifically talk about a project, I don't know, I would feel super uncomfortable if it was done to me.

<comment><USER9> It is a series of public feedback posts; the devs know it will be public. It is supposed to be able to help other people.

<comment><USER8> Ok, didn't know that. It's upto him how he wants to do it. But really a generic post without naming anyone would also get the point across, just my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's what the game looks like: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfz6_V5Ldyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfz6_V5Ldyw)

I could see this being a great product when combined with those guide meditation apps. Like [https://www.headspace.com](https://www.headspace.com)

I remember one of these meditation tapes I found on PirateBay which combine binaural beats and guided meditation. It had you climbing a lush mountain, coming upon an old looking door in the side of the mountain, and being in this relaxing room with pillows on the ground and you look up and see stars. That was my first exposure to meditation and it surprisingly put me in a very hypnotic/meditative state after the 30 minutes was over. Very good state to get in before starting creative design work. It would be a great experience to translate to VR with 3d sound.

</comment><comment><USER7> I mentioned Speedtree previously, and that gave me an idea. There's High Fidelity, which is a big, empty open source VR world, sort of like Second Life with few users but better resolution. High Fidelity starts with an empty world of a huge flat plane. Users are supposed to fill it up. Right now, it's very empty.

It should be initialized to be more like the real world. The terrain comes up as unexplored wilderness, with hills, mountains, valleys, lakes, trees, deserts, and vegetation. If you own land (which is a server-side thing), you can build it and clear it.

It would be a nice touch if moving around wore paths, so that paths and roads appeared naturally.

</comment><comment><USER10> He makes the point about UE having default large packages. Not a huge problem for desktop VR apps for vive and rift, but is a limiting factor.

This is however a major problem for mobile, using both unity and UE and I know it is preventing more mobile VR and AR apps from being developed. Given that carmack is really focused on mobile I'd think oculus would want to create a light weight development/graphics engine.

I'm wondering why oculus hasn't made one especially since they have the skills and capability. Maybe I missed it and they have one.

<comment><USER11> Building an engine takes years and a large(~30+) team if you want to match UE4/Unity in terms of productivity.

<comment><USER10> I'm very familiar with what it takes. We built a mobile AR engine based on OpenGL starting back in 2013 that launched in 2015.

I'm sure FB has more than enough fantastic personnel and resources to build a great engine.

<comment><USER12> Sure you made an engine, I doubt it has 1/50th of the real feature of the top engines. Can it import layers for photoshop or do you have to save as .PNGs. Can you import Maya, 3DS Max, Blender, and others or only some exported format like Collada. Do you have support for Right to Left text, All of Unicode? Do you run on 15 platforms including things 3DS, Switch, ... Do you have an IDE non-programmers can use? Does it have undo? Is it localized into other languages? Does it have a plugin system? Can those plugins be loaded and unloaded while it's running to do you have to exit, recompile, and restart to use plugins. Do you have shader editors? Animation Edtiors? Can you apply different animations to portions of a character? Do you have physics? How about phyiscally based animations?

I'm sure you're going to tell me "yes" to all of those but sorry, as someone who's made several engines myself NES, Amiga, 3D0, DOS, Windows, PS1, PS2, PS3/XBOX 360, I know from experience that just "making an engine" is like 3% of the real work involved in getting to the level of Unreal and Unity.

It's very easy to "make an engine", it's a lot harder to fill it out with features and tools.

<comment><USER10> Right which is totally out of scope of Facebook's capabilities right?

Give me a break. You can pile up an infinite list of capabilities for any kind of ide, engine, editor etc... Point is, if anyone can do it its Facebook and it would be great for the dev community.

Take that chip of your shoulder for a minute.

<comment><USER12> is it beyond facebook's capability? no. Is it beyond their will? Yes.

I was once naive, I joined Google to make a game engine. My belief at the time was like yours. It's Google, they're a giant company with infinite resources. There's no way this won't take over the game engine world.

it wasn't until about 14 months in I realized that competing with Unreal and Unity wasn't just a mater of 30 people building an engine. to actually succeed it would take more like 300-400 people and a mandate for those people to form an everlasting division within the company of support. people to make an IDE, people to continually update the engine and IDE, people to hand hold devs. people to make 100s of videos. people to run classes. people to organize conferences. people to organize game jams. people to do bizdev. people to woo the top devs. people in all the major game dev hubs in the world, people to localize docs, etc...

this works for unity and unreal because selling their game engine and services is their core mission. for Google (and for Facebook) all it would ever be is some open source code of some under featured engine they ship once and forget. Unity has about 1000 employees. Unreal has at least 250. Their entire missions are to make, sell, and promote those game engines. That will never be facebook's mission which is why it would never succeed.

<comment><USER10> All of what you say is totally reasonable and I don't disagree with any of the thrust. That said, I'm arguing that it's in Facebook's best interest to build the engine and further I think it would make it drastically easier for the dev community if something like it existed.

I talked with the Unity founders at GDC and they have very little interest in putting resources around mobile right now , so I think there is a hole in the market that will be really hard to fill by another startup. Hence, why I think these platform owners would be best to tackle it.

As an aside, I think it would be more optimal if there were a third party focused on a mobile VR engine - but again, as we agree it's such a huge project, with really difficult distribution pathways, that I think it's too big of a mountain right now for an independent group. So we're gonna be waiting around a while for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _I tried to take a frame snapshot with Snapdragon Profiler to be able to make specific comments, but that didn't work because the app doesn't have the INTERNET permission listed in the manifest, which is required to communicate with the profiler._

Now that's a problem I would have never even imagined being possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks like Illusion's _Sexy Beach_ , only without the sex.

</comment><comment><USER14> I expected this to be an insightful post by Carmack about the current trends and concerns in the VR industry. It turned out to be what sounds like an entirely predictable review that could have been written by anyone with a bit of technical knowledge of a poorly designed VR app. Not very interesting. Don't really understand why this is getting so much attention.

<comment><USER15> I think it is awesome Carmack takes the time to do this. He clearly cares about VR and the experience users have with VR, even on seemingly trivial apps such as this one. I imagine most developers in this space would love to be peer reviewed by Carmack. Some of his comments seem to be nuanced rendering suggestions, I'm not sure anyone with a 'bit of technical knowledge' could provide this level of feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It would be nice if Facebook's register an account pop-up didn't occupy 1/4 of the screen.

<comment><USER17> You can use uBlock Origin to hide the pop-up frame. You won't be able to click through it, but it won't interfere with reading.

<comment><USER18> You shouldn't have to, Facebook is a poor medium esp. in the context of HN as it is a pain to browse/use on purpose if you don't make an account.</comment></comment></comment>


Are you an idiot? - <AUTHOR> http://code.angad.sg/f/test.html

<comment><USER2> Aww, I was hoping there would be some sort of prize for actually clicking the 'no' button...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I actually want to use it to ask out a girl. Any suggestions?</comment>


A Simple Plan to Dissolve Facebook, Google, and Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/8/18076440/facebook-monopoly-curse-of-bigness-tim-wu-interview <comment><USER2> Instead of breaking companies when they become too large, there should be automatic mechanism that works as disincentive for firms to grow into gigants. For example acquisition tax that starts to grow exponentially as the function of company revenue. After some point big companies would have to really innovate instead of buying innovation from outside.

At these sizes network externalities and market power of these companies dominate their growth and profits, not the internal innovation. Their internal 'moonshots' are not so good and companies are in constant startup acquisition spree. Microsoft had the same issue when it had monopoly power. Microsoft Research provided very little of value compared to various acquisitions.

<comment><USER3> A problem with publicly traded companies is that now they are an investment. Owners want them to grow faster than the competition or else they switch -- so there is an inherent, let me call it 'artificial', pressure to grow. Lets take the example of Twitter once they have everyone on the world on Twitter and lets say they are turning in a stable profit. For stock owners thats no good. So Twitter would have to figure out to expand and grow some other way and in my mind, at that point it is no longer Twitter, its something else and I would rather that be a different company. You can see this effect in Microsoft. Under 'normal' circumstances Microsoft's parts would be all different companies because they are so different from each other. They have no reason being a single company other than the pressure to grow.

<comment><USER2> Sometimes companies voluntarily split when there is not enough synergy. Stock owners get shares in both companies.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Fire Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOE0WKQ <comment><USER2> The market positioning here seems very un-Amazon.

"Your margin is my opportunity" is probably my favorite Bezosism. Given that perspective and Apple's very cushy margins, I expected Amazon not to approach the market with an expensive phone packed with new features, but to approach the market from the bottom, with a good phone that is free or nearly free. The problem, of course, is that Google seems to have that segment wrapped up.

Instead of competing with the iPhone, this seems to more targeted at Android -- only priced uncompetitively.

The features themselves seem slightly gimmicky. I tend not to want to move my phone physically as a way to interact with apps. (Doing that figure "8" when my GPS goes out for some reason is incredibly awkward.) Searching via photos is awesome, but the only use case it seems well suited for is shopping. The built-in Genius Bar is cool, but it seems targeted toward smartphone noobs, which is oddly coupled with features targeted to smartphone pros.

If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, this will probably be a novelty, like Windows Phone, for a while to come.

<comment><USER3> This is interesting I think...

iPad: Kindle Fire, Nexus 7

Apple TV: Kindle Fire TV, Chromecast

iTunes: Amazon Prime Streaming TV + now music, Google Play

iPhone: Kindle Fire Phone, Nexus 4

I think they're all playing for the same territory. The big difference seems to be that Apple really only sells the technology. Google sells the technology so that they can sell advertising for third party products. Amazon has the only complete end to end solution where they sell you the products and advertise for their own "other stuff" they sell. IMHO Amazon is going to be the big winner in the long run. Whether or not that's good for all of us is yet to be determined.

<comment><USER4> You make a good point:

       Apple: Sell at high price, modest tie-in revenue.
       Google: Sell at low price, modest tie-in revenue.
       Amazon: Sell at low price, high tie-in revenue.

It does seem like Amazon is bound to win in the long run, based on pure economics, if this trend continues.

<comment><USER5> Except it isn't being sold at a low price, and doesn't really offer anything valuable to the customer that differentiates it from the competition. The implicit deal was always the product is sold at cost so they can encourage sales on the store, why would anyone pay full price for this?

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, but I suspect the profit margins on this phone are pretty slim, given the hardware features. I think Bezos figured the high end hardware was necessary to initially break into the market.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. If they initially brand the Fire phone as a high-end device it will seem more valuable when they ruthlessly cut its price=).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like this phone does a good job of solving Amazon's problem of getting customers to buy more from them. I don't see how it makes my life any easier though.

3D? Ok, that is really cool. 2D hasn't really been a limiting factor for me though.

One-handed navigation and autoscrolling? Wow, that just sounds terrible. I'm trying to read and my kid bumps my arm. Now where am I on the page? And how do I quickly get back to where I was?

Mayday seems nice but then if the phone is that intuitive I can't see needing it much. Loss leader for them I guess.

Tangle-free premium headset. Finally, a feature I would pay money for. Seriously. Do they sell these separately? Because I want.

<comment><USER8> Mayday is actually a killer feature on a phone for Grandma. With 24/7 on- device tech support, relatives would never have to field tech support requests.

<comment><USER9> But would Grandma really want a phone like this?

<comment><USER7> If the original (non-Fire) Kindle is any indication; no. I gave mine a pre- Paperwhite Kindle and she loved it. Then someone bought her a Kindle Fire ("If you like that you'll LOVE this. You can play games!"). She hated it and went back to the regular Kindle.

Turns out, if she wants to play games she'll grab a deck of cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The compelling feature on this phone everyone's missing:

Let's say you have to browse through a bunch of stuff on your phone. The very moment you start doing this, you have a problem: There's a #%&! finger covering up the screen now!

The idea behind this phone is simple: All browsing of information is done by tilting the screen, leaving the display completely unobstructed... sure, other phones have tried to do this before. However, they were shit, because they didn't involve 4 years of AI research to develop the world's most sophisticated head positioning system ever, like Amazon apparently did. This is probably the only way to make the tilting accurate enough to not be annoying.

Only a company run by a fantically focused guy could put that much R&D towards such a specific and non-obvious feature.

That said, until I can hold the device in my hand and verify that this "tilt to browse information" is 100.00% perfectly implemented, this phone can still end up being a failure, like all similar devices that came before it.

<comment><USER10> I'm taking the opposite stance, this is a stupid gimmick until proven otherwise. Scrolling with my finger can happen on the very edge of the screen or area of interaction and it's easy to move out of viewing obstruction.

Tilt-based interaction has existed for years on iOS and Android using the accelerometers. It's not a responsiveness or tracking issue, it's that interacting with screens at oblique angles is annoying and many times tilt/rotation interactions require pretty large arm movements compared to finger movements, limiting when and where they're useful. Maybe Amazon made it so amazing these can be overlooked or they were solved, but I'm not buying into the idea just because it uses cool computer vision technology.

<comment><USER4> > this is a stupid gimmick until proven otherwise

I actually agree with you, I'm just saying "Hold on guys, a rational argument can at least be made that this isn't just a stupid gimmick"

...but we have to try the device to know for sure...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From my post in another thread: It's $199 with a 2 year contract with AT&T, meaning it's a $649 phone (now confirmed). It's priced with other 'premium' phones like the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5 (both $199 with a 2 year contract, $649 off contract at AT&T). Unfortunately, Amazon's other products like the Kindle Fire are anything but premium hardware and software-wise. On the software side this is partially due to the Amazon-first mentality for all media and partially due to the extremely clunky Amazon UI and app store. Then again, I wouldn't consider Samsung a 'premium' phone software-wise either due to my poor experience with the Galaxy S4's clunky setup after coming form 'pure' Android. It's still far better than the Kindle Fire, though.

<comment><USER12> How is this remotely competitive in a world full of $179 Moto G's? $219 Moto G LTE's? Or even a $350 Nexus?

This seems like a phone from two or three years ago where $650 for a non- premium brand would have been passable. I just bought a Moto G LTE for my wife and its a wonderful phone. I don't see what Amazon would bring to the table for an extra $420. That's almost 10 months of service right there.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it is. Except for people who buy on-contract and don't know better about the pricing and features compared to other phones. Heck, you're even stuck with Amazon's Silk browser... there's no Firefox or Chrome in the Amazon App Store... so most users can forget about syncing this with anything.

<comment><USER13> Aka the MitM browser.

[http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle- fir...](http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fires-silk- browser-sounds-privacy-alarm-bells/)

<comment><USER14> Or you can uncheck the "Accelerate page loading" checkbox.

<comment><USER13> How many consumers do you honestly expect to know, recognize, and understand?

I can tell you from experience 0 of the ones I've encountered outside the IT/Startup space were aware of that is what it does.

<comment><USER15> > How many consumers do you honestly expect to know, recognize, and > understand?

Probably around the same number who care that their traffic is going through Amazon first.

<comment><USER13> I bet if you went and talked to people if they were comfortable with all of their online banking being routed through Amazon...I suspect most would say No. Just a guess.

If you put it in terms they understand, they care.

<comment><USER16> Amazon says HTTPS is not intercepted

[https://www.eff.org/2011/october/amazon- fire%E2%80%99s-new-b...](https://www.eff.org/2011/october/amazon- fire%E2%80%99s-new-browser-puts-spotlight-privacy-trade-offs)

Also, Amazon has most of its customers banking information already.

<comment><USER13> Credit card != Banking Information.

And if they pushed an update to change this [even accidentally], how would you know?

<comment><USER17> Thats silly.

How would you know if any browser pushed an update [even accidentally], with this side effect?

<comment><USER13> 1) Access a page you control to check.

2) Silk is the only one I know of that a mere coding error could cause this. It isn't like Chrome and Firefox have a fleet of machines and code designed to act as an always-on proxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am always a little skeptical about gestures that involve physically moving or tilting or swivelling the phone.

Maybe it works well for others but I find it getting very much in the way when I use my phone in bed, or lying around on the couch, or walking even. On my iPhone 5, I have the screen rotation locked for about 99% of the time.

<comment><USER19> Remember this is paired with Dynamic Perspective. So maybe we'll see it detects the orientation of your face before deciding on what to do.

<comment><USER20> What is the power usage of running 4 different cameras to do this?

I can't imagine it's small, so they must be not "always-on", which means there is some tradeoff here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ... because a dedicated button to scan QR codes is what I wanted all along. At least CueCat was free. [http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/](http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know what actual mail and calendaring system this thing even uses? What about maps? All the other stuff aside, texting, mail, calendar, and maps cover about 80% of most people's phone use; if those pieces stink, it's going to be a problem, and I see absolutely no mention of where they're getting map data in particular.

<comment><USER23> uses Nokia Here maps apparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It weighs 160g! Only has 1280x720 resolution. They want me to buy it at 649$? Are they insane?

Google Nexus 5 is already huge, but it still weighs only 130g, and at least it has 1920x1080 resolution and only costs 349$.

For 649$, I might as well buy iPhone 5s, which only weighs 112g. Yet it probably has the exact same battery life, due to the more efficient software!

Keep in mind, both Nexus 5 and iPhone 5s are almost a year old now, and this thing is a brand new platform with such unappealing specs? Gimme a break!

<comment><USER25> +1, weight has a huge impact on the user experience of a smartphone and doesn't get enough attention in specs.

There is a significant comfort difference between light phones in the 100-150g range (latest iPhone, Nexus, Galaxy) and heavy phones in the 150-200g range (e.g. most Nokia Lumia phones, phablets).

720p for 4.7" doesn't bother me, as that's still full fidelity at 11". [http://isthisretina.com/](http://isthisretina.com/)

<comment><USER24> I think there's a big difference between 720p and 1080p in how much shit fits on the screen. I love 1080p @ 4,95" on my Nexus 5; the 720p @ 4,65" on Galaxy Nexus is clearly not as good to have as much shit fit on the screen.

It's not so much the fidelity as it is about the screen real estate. People tend to hold the phones much closer to their eyes than tablets, so, the extra pixels don't go wasted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Both the object detection and that 3D tracking seems to be focused on consumption. Consume more movies, more music, more books, more apps!

How sad. A phone is the most intimate piece of technology we have, and all Amazon can think about making it a machine of consumption.

I wish they would have focused more enabling people to create things. You know, help them be active. Help change the world.

There's just a slight hint here that Amazon considers its users more like mindless money-spending media consuming drones.

A new device very rarely push the human race forward. The Kindle Phone is clearly no such device.

<comment><USER27> Amazon can't make folks do anything. So they have to concentrate on what makes money. They can sell features to developers as ways to make more money, thus making their phone more desirable. Those are the creative folks anyway. So Amazon enables them, and makes a buck too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So, essentially, a high end Android phone, only with Amazon's ecosystem rather than Google's.

As others have mentioned, the price seems to be difficult to swallow. They'll be fighting against Samsung's flagship Android device and the iPhone.

What sells the Amazon phone at that price? I don't think 3d tilting gimmicks will.

Its primary differentiator versus other Android phones is that Amazon controls the ecosystem for this device, rather than Google, and while that will appeal to some, it will be a negative for others, and a non-factor to many.

I think the price needs to drop for this to be a real competitor, but I certainly am glad to see Amazon entering the game even if the initial offering doesn't seem to be a home run. More competition against Samsung and Apple is good.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems compelling if you're already sold on the Amazon ecosystem, but not terribly so if you're not -- especially at that price.

<comment><USER30> As an iPhone user, I already have access to the important parts of the Amazon ecosystem (books, music, movies, TV shows).

But I have a superior app store.

The only big feature I think could prove important is their live-chat help.

<comment><USER10> It seems like most of their Firefly feature is also available through Amazon's 'Flow' iOS app

<comment><USER31> Yep, it's also built into the default Amazon app. Hit search, then you'll see the regular text search along with barcode scan / flow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So hang on....are you telling me that $199 is the cheapest price WITH A CONTRACT??

Obviously things are different in the US,but in UK it's almost unfathomable to be paying anything for the phone if you are getting a contract. Sometimes the latest iphone will have an upfront cost of 29 pounds, but it's rare.

<comment><USER33> It is worth mentioning that they are including a year of prime which is worth $99 and a $10 credit on their store so the actual price compared to say an iPhone is $90.

<comment><USER34> And if you already have Prime? Do they refund a year of your subscription?

<comment><USER35> They extend your subscription by a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My two cents: First, I'm actually surprised as to how much they are selling the dynamic perspective, and I think I'm actually more interested in how well firefly works. Dynamic perspective may be very "cool", but I'm not convinced it's not just another fad --- will it change the way I work with my device? Will it empower people? I don't see it as a transformative technology, and it's almost as gimmicky as (if not as gimmicky as) some of the extra "features" you get when you buy a galaxy S phone.

Firefly has a chance though. I've spent some time with google goggles before, and I wasn't super impressed (have they updated it much recently?) --- on the other hand, I've had some success with Amazon's Flow app, in which you point your camera towards a product (in a store, for example), and it tells you the Amazon price for it. Will Firefly work well enough for people to rely on it on the host of use-cases that Amazon gave in its presentation?

Other quick thoughts: Amazon claims some great battery life on the page, but didn't mention it at all in their presentation today. Also, it's kind of weird to think I would have _6_ cameras on me at any point in time. Are those cameras accessible to developers, beyond their dynamic display apk? Lastly, how will this compare with google's "Project Tango" efforts?

<comment><USER37> 3P Android apps will not have access to the "other 4" cameras.

As for the battery life, there have been some amazing initiatives and innovations to squeeze every ounce of juice from it. I wouldn't be surprised if the stats claimed on Amazon.com were indeed right.

Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but I do not represent them, or speak on their behalf.

<comment><USER36> I hope the battery stats are right, but I would guess they probably aren't. Overestimating the battery life seems to be an industry standard thing =/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So who's the actual manufacturer? I had read at one point that Google has locked up most major cell manufacturers so they are prevented from offering handsets with non-Google-integrated Android. That and the somewhat lackluster screen leads me to believe it's a no-name OEM.

<comment><USER39> May have to wait for tear-downs to get a better idea.

<comment><USER40> No need, it is made by Amazon. Period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The trojan feature for Amazon is the eye-tracking. Tracking a user's gaze while they are shopping is the ultimate way to increase sales, and this extends to eye-tracking while a user is browsing. I imagine that even Google would want the information that Amazon is going to generate.

<comment><USER42> You shop while holding your phone in front of your face?

Mine's in my pocket when I'm at the store.

<comment><USER41> No no, watching where your eyes are looking on the screen itself. Where the dart to on a website or shopping app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They've always been uniquely talented at creating indecipherable URLs for important pages like this one.

<comment><USER43> Try [http://smile.amazon.com/firephone](http://smile.amazon.com/firephone)

<comment><USER44> Today, I discovered smile.amazon.com. Thanks!

<comment><USER43> Also check out this extension for Chrome that turns amazon.com -> smile.amazon.com

[http://www.smilealways.io/](http://www.smilealways.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Great phone for reading?" If they really cared about the reading experience, they would have put an AMOLED screen on it. AMOLED screens are far superior for night-time reading, which is when most people do their reading.

<comment><USER46> Agree - he said they were "lavish" in their attention to make it a good phone for reading and I'm like how much can you actually do? It's a 4.7 inch 720p LCD, there's your reading experience. Reading on a phone plain sucks for anything more than a couple articles. Autoscroll doesn't float my boat either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This phone will find a market amongst amazon addicts. While not bleeding edge, specs are somewhat solid[0].

However what set Kindle Fire apart from competition and allowed it to gain foothold in the market was competitive pricing, I see none of that here. Amazon is obviously making a bet that software they are shipping with the phone will be a killer feature that will overcome the shortcomings, I do not think broader market will agree.

[0] Until you look at the price and AT&T only lock in, considering that, specs are mediocre at best.

<comment><USER48> _Amazon is obviously making a bet that software they are shipping with the phone will be a killer feature, I do not think broader market will agree._

If the barriers to get users to spend money are lower on Amazon's phone, then this is _exactly the right move_ to capture developer and content producer mindshare for their ecosystem!

<comment><USER47> Good point, made the edit to clarify that I meant that I do not think that software alone as a killer feature would be enough, considering the price of the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> /sigh

I really wish Amazon would just make all of their obviously Android devices into actual, Google-approved Android devices. Google Apps and all. I get that they want their own market for apps, etc. But yuck.

Also, I wish things like Amazon Movies would just stinkin work on Android devices, like a normal app. I mean, come on... I have like 6 Android devices, 1 Kindle Fire, 1 TiVo, and 1 Roku. Why are the 6 Android devices left behind? Ug.

/whine

</comment><comment><USER50> Maybe someone can enlighten me; but why does AT&T seem like a popular launch partner with new mobile handsets?

The only reasons I can come up with are a) money (AT&T taking a smaller cut of subsidies/paying the manufacturer more for the device) and b) "portability" between the US provider and International providers.

Are there any other reasons? Or is it really that simple?

<comment><USER51> I'm guessing it's cause they're bigger than T-Mobile and Sprint and less inclined towards crippling phones than Verizon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Kinda unfortunate for Firefox OS guys. Amazon's Fire Phone OS is called Fire OS... definitely gonna confuse some folks...

<comment><USER53> Sounds like a trademark case waiting to happen but looking it seems neither "firefox os" nor "fire os" is trademarked in EU or US.

<comment><USER54> Firefox OS is trademarked with the USPTO. [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/foundation/trademarks/list/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/foundation/trademarks/list/)

<comment><USER53> It didn't turn up in a TESS search (at [http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4802...](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4802:8drgag.1.1)), perhaps it's an image mark, not words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone know what version of Android this is based on?

<comment><USER56> Compatible with Android 4.2.2, API level 17

[https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-p...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire- phone/docs/fire-phone-specifications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Slightly off topic regarding the phone, however still related to Amazon: As an e-reader enthusiast, I was scanning the news this morning hoping there'd be a new Kindle e-ink / e-paper reader announced. Alas, there's no news on this front yet?

Currently I have the old DXG and the first Paperwhite, having also had the unit preceding the Paperwhite. Whilst the Paperwhite is fantastic for novels, the DXG whilst nice and big is dragging its heels now with no software updates in a long time.

I am wishing for an even higher higher resolution screen with colour for reading technical books (some illustrations tend to become unreadable in grey- scale), and reintroduction of side buttons.

</comment><comment><USER58> All of the features they demoed in that video seem pretty gimmicky at best. The kind of stuff that you show off once in a while, but never actually use. Tilt to scroll sounds like it would be maddeningly imprecise compared to finger scrolling. With so many functions apparently tied to various gestures, it seems like you better be real careful using this phone when doing anything but sitting still and devoting your full attention to it.

Meanwhile, where's email, photography, calendering, web browsing, contact management and sync? Who's their map data provider? You know, all of the stuff that you actually depend on a phone to have day to day?

</comment><comment><USER59> I'll definitely be interested to see what compelling applications people find for Dynamic Perspective. Currently most of the applications that they previewed look like they aren't very far off from what could be accomplished with accelerometer data. It's mostly people tilting the device and seeing a different perspective which isn't too hard to simulate with an accelerometer... Still excited to see a new player in the space that will hopefully help push innovation.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm always surprised by Amazon's lack of fanfare. Even for such a huge release, their product page is literally the same as that of something as random as a blanket

</comment><comment><USER61> When will people stop building map apps that are reacting to gestures or the device position in a confusing manner? I love my paper map so much! When it lays on the table I can touch it with my finger and it won't wiggle or wobble. I can just use it without fear that one subtle movement from my side will obscure everything I see and I'll have to search the place I were looking for from the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER62> What sucks about this, and Android in general, is that if you have an app that uses Maps or Push or a bunch of other basic features, you have to write tricky duplicate code to make it work with both Amazon and Google's systems and jump through hoops to make it work on both devices. And it's getting worse with Google's moving more functionality into their proprietary Play Services lib.

You would think that Android's vaunted Intent system would be perfect for this, but Intents are basically dead for cross-system functionality, there few open Intents published with android.intent.action. _, a lot of the good stuff is published by google as com.android._ (which should really be com.google.*) so you can't rely on it unless you know you're running on a google phone.

Google is not really working towards the interest of AOSP, it should be taken from Google's full control and placed under a neutral body so its full potential for developers can be realized.

</comment><comment><USER63> The gestures, especially auto scroll, seem to lend themselves to phablets especially well.

Market fit is really interesting and confusing (see nostromo's comment at the top for great discussion).

I'm a little tired of the tech giants trying to convert every digital thing I do in my life to their platform. I like my iPhone with my Amazon Prime with my Dropbox thank you. I realize they're trying to include more people on the platform and just want another point of entry, but I hope people still standup for their own choices instead of going all in on one of the big players.

Lastly, what does this continued push on custom android oses mean for Android development? You already have a host of operating system versions and screen sizes to deal with when developing for android, now there are more and more custom OSes with different features. You'll submit to different stores and have different apps? Blagh..

</comment><comment><USER24> BTW, it's not even released yet!

> Pre-order Now

> This item will be released on July 25, 2014.

E.g. even [http://oneplus.net/one](http://oneplus.net/one) will likely come sooner than this! And at half the price, plus much better specs!

I still think that 4.7" Fire @ 160g and 5.5" OnePlus One @ 162g is way too heavy for a phone. At least OnePlus One has a much bigger screen, comes at half the price, and has more DYI OSS under the hood.

iPhone 5s is only 112g, Google Nexus 5 is 130g, iPhone 5c is 132g, Amazon Fire Phone is 160g.

The extra 30g to 48g is very noticeable in your pocket, and you're not even getting a bigger screen, plus if you compare with iPhone, those extra 48g don't even seem add extra battery life, since iOS is just so much more efficient.

</comment><comment><USER64> Well at least that preview video makes sense now with the dynamic perspective. Curious how functional that really is. I cannot think of an immediate use of why I would want that on a communication/media device but would love to be wrong.

<comment><USER65> I could see it being interesting for games or for Augmented Reality type stuff. Without an actual compelling use though, it does seem a bit gimmicky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> A tilt UI is ridiculous. In many environments, there will be horrible glare at many angles due to overhead light sources. If you want to solve the finger-in- front-of-the-screen problem, put a capacitive touchpad on the back.

<comment><USER67> not a bad idea. having your index finger do all the scrolling or mouse-like movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The 3D capability of the phone has a lot of potential in terms of shopping. Imagine not this generation, or the next, but the one after that, being able to just lay the phone down flat and swipe through holograms of different products for sale on Amazon. You could draw your hands outward and that would scale the item. You could flip your thumb like there's an imaginary coin on it and a coin would appear next to the item your shopping for to show scale.

I'm not interested in making any predictions as far as how the phone will fare against Apple and Android, as this is literally a few hours old.

</comment><comment><USER69> How does the _Mayday_ on-device tech support work?

      Amazon expert will appear to help you via live video

Will it be a Siri/Cortana like AI agent or a human from a Amazon call center?

<comment><USER70> They've already got this on the Fire tablets. It's a real person.

<comment><USER71> Should have called it SnapFire

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> "One-handed reading" —at last. A phone designed for mobile porn.

</comment><comment><USER73> The Amazon Phone seems to capitalize on content consumption of text, audio, video, and the abstract (through purchases). In my mind, this is what the smart phone should be all about.

<comment><USER74> Well timed after prime music imports your itunes library.

no hairy workarounds to replace an iphone in your mac ecosystem, which is something google has not achieved.

(yes, other than apps, but that will follow)

<comment><USER75> For music, I agree. But there is other content - TV shows, Movies, books, etc. My iTunes purchased video aren't going to play on an Amazon Fire unless I remove all the DRM from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> The price will clearly come down over time and the hardware will improve just as they did with the Kindle. The value proposition for Amazon is very similar to the Kindle: sell a device that adds further value to the Amazon ecosystem and drives demand and ad-hoc purchasing. They also have more room to experiment with a phone vs. a book reader since there is less focus on the reading experience.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn If this is as smooth as my Kindle Fire (newest one), I might want one in 2-3 versions. I keep finding things on my first Android phone that could have been fixed with a little more polish. My Kindle Fire is perfect in every way. Amazon seems to understand how important it is to get expensive consumer electronics right and not leave a lot of rough edges.

<comment><USER77> Try a nexus 7...

<comment> mkr-hn A Kindle Fire was the only tablet I could afford at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> One thing I find annoying with my sony z1 compared to an iphone 5 is how the camera just dies half of the time whenever I try to take a picture from a locked phone. In iOS it's never a problem. Lets hope amazon doesn't screw it up with their phone. Another annoying thing is how it refocuses between each photo, decreasing burst speed.

</comment><comment><USER79> It doesn't seem like this phone offers enough to differentiate itself from what's already on the market. Bezos warned everyone though that previous Amazon products started out with underwhelming reviews and later were successful.

If anything I see this phone getting cheaper/better very quickly, much like they did with their tablet product.

</comment><comment><USER80> Good show by Amazon. The "gimmick" poised to be a sure hit in Asian, African and European markets.

Anything that competes with Apple, Samsung, Google is by default good. There is definitely space in the market for a phone like this. Amazon phones set to sell much more than Amazon tablets.

</comment><comment><USER81> Finally a solution other than thumb removal! High four to Amazon!! (I already had my thumbs removed).

</comment><comment><USER82> Can someone explain the real reason why the kindle fire phone has six cameras? All the articles say it's for tilt scrolling and similar features that are already easily accomplished without using any camera data. Are they trying to do some Google Tango style stuff?

</comment><comment><USER83> Eye tracking that works will be useful for yet-unimagined augmented reality apps. Or at least Mission Impossible: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydIPKkjBlMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydIPKkjBlMw)

</comment><comment><USER84> This very much seems like a v1 entry into the market for them. Improving the ease of 3D photos will probably be their biggest focus, as the "take a picture and buy" feature is the key for them being able to eventually reduce the cost.

</comment><comment><USER85> Looks like it has features only designed for use in the right hand? That's poor accessibility, providing severely degraded behaviour for around ⅒ of the population, the left-handed people.

I wonder whether they would sell a left-handed version…

</comment><comment><USER86> Multiple cameras are interesting. It would be neat if the phone could use eye- tracking to auto-scroll content as your eyes reach the bottom of the screen (books would be good use-case - perhaps they are already doing this)

</comment><comment><USER87> I would think that constantly tilting the screen will consantly change the view. And the reflections of the suroundings. Just when you have a good view of the screen, you need to change it in order to navigate.

</comment><comment><USER88> The SDKs are exciting, but being an ATT exclusive really limits the ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER48> How about a stand that makes it easy to use the phone as a game console? (HDMI output for TV) With all of those front cameras, would it be workable to have motion sensing games?

</comment><comment><USER89> "For a limited time, Fire phone comes with 1,000 Amazon Coins (a $10 value) for apps, games, and in-app purchases. Plus, save up to 10% anytime you use Amazon Coins."

<comment><USER34> Is there any consumer who actually desires virtual credits/currency in lieu of hard cash?

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Honestly I preferred it when Amazon just delivered physical items to me.

This bullshit tie-in with Prime and some stupid streaming crap I don't want has just left a sour taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER91> There's a lot of info, but I can't find what the phone is made of. Using nice metal phones has convinced me never to buy a cheap plastic piece of junk again.

</comment><comment><USER92> Dynamic Perspective: _Perhaps both less accurate and slower than today 's alternatives, though nice if you're one-handed browsing or need the full screen visibility during scroll. Real world use cases? Reading porn. Conclusion: pretty gimmicky._

Firefly technology: _Advertising wet dream, in reality a cheap OCR meets keyword database (pay to be listed?). Not indifferent to certain Firefox plugins re: post-OCR recognition, not indifferent to other phones re: OCR capability. It 's just a wrapper. Real world use cases? Limited. Conclusion: gimmicky._

Mayday: _Video support? Totally gimmicky._

Bonus US-market centrism. Unimpressed.

</comment><comment><USER93> Peek? Seriously? We have to tilt the device in order to see certain things? We have to look at the device sideways? That can't make it easy to read things.

<comment><USER11> It'll be great in the sun :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Most of the features are really new. However, they are one little step ahead, well designed and fit into a nice looking ecosystem. I like it. I really do.

</comment><comment><USER95> What's amazon angle here? Why are they doing this?

<comment><USER96> To make it easier to buy stuff from Amazon. Right down to the "press dedicated button, get picture of arbitrary product you're looking at, get Amazon.com product page for it". Just like Apple making a closed ecosystem that deeply persuades users to buy apps from the App Store, music & video from the iTunes Store, store data on iCloud, buy more same-ecosystem devices, etc.

<comment><USER95> Hmm.. This makes sense. So they would offer suggestions on what to buy based on what your general interests are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Cant wait for day when you get to use all the new fancy press conference smartphone features and not recharge your phone multiple times in 24 hours.

</comment><comment><USER98> Interesting. Did you see that they replaced the Google App Store with their own? That means an additional revenue stream from app purchases. Clever

</comment><comment><USER99> I was hopeing the Amazon phone would do something really novel like lower digital rates? I saw AT&T and the steam was gone.

</comment><comment><USER100> I wonder how the hardware (esp. camera) compares to the other high-end androids and whether you can run stock android on it.

<comment><USER36> I'm convinced it's actually a very hard problem. Cameras on android have been subpar across the board for years now, but it's a feature everyone looks for in a smartphone. There's no way manufacturers aren't dedicating some focus on them but just not succeeding much yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> It's nice to see Seattle being promoted. 'cuz, you know, maps and photos are almost always of SF. Go Seattle!

</comment><comment><USER89> With 24/7 on demand video support I'm wondering if this could be a good 'phone for Grandma'.

</comment><comment><USER102> Weeee it a phone... like any other, but with it's own currency (Amazon coins) so I don't know the value of anything.

If Amazon build a phone that they believe is better than other smart phone on the market, wonderful, I hope they sell a bunch of the an make a profit. Honestly though: It's a smart phone like any other, but with a gimmicky feature and similarly priced (over-priced).

</comment><comment><USER103> Why are they showing off auto scroll lag at 1:30 in the "See what customers have to say"?

</comment><comment><USER104> Amazingly ambitious move by Amazon, which I have to respect. Yes, it will be extremely hard to take market share from Samsung and Apple, but there also hasn't been much innovation in the smart phone market recently, so the opportunity exists if Amazon takes a novel approach. Or maybe they just compete on price, as they have so many times before.

<comment><USER105> The funny thing is, they're not competing on price. Sans contract, this phone is a hefty $649.

When I heard Amazon would have a phone, I thought for sure it would be very cheap, possibly even free with Prime membership. That would be a game-changing move.

Now, it's just another Android phone, albeit with a couple extra bells and whistles. But with an inferior app store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> Can't get the videos to load, guess their site is overloaded...pretty rare for amazon

</comment><comment><USER107> Does anyone worry about the privacy implication of being constantly watched by your phone?

<comment><USER108> No more than I'm worried about the front-facing camera on all of my devices.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget the open mic. ;)

I don't care if they can see I'm ugly. I know that already as does everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> This will be great for people driving and reading a book on their phone with one hand....

</comment><comment><USER110> I can already see on the cover of the magazine that it's the Elle of April 2014.

</comment><comment><USER111> What's with the negativity? If I lived in the US I would buy it immediately.

</comment><comment><USER112> Bezos did not talk about the basic phone functionality of call/text.

<comment><USER113> Those should just be expected to work.

<comment><USER71> Or the texting capabilities are in fact sub-par. Both Apple and Google have had to double down on messaging UX/functionality because they are used so much, plus Facebook, Whatsapp, and Snapchat.

Messaging is really important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Introducing a phone with some fancy options as an innovation! seriously!

</comment><comment><USER115> Nice Amazon affiliate link

</comment><comment><USER116> Unfortunately that thing looks terrible. Looks like a generic iphone with ugly android wrapper. They really need something flashy to somehow pull it over rather than have any new features. Afterall smartphones are still status symbols for a couple more years.

</comment><comment><USER114> Bezos is the new Jobs, except that Jobs introduced his phone in 2007

</comment><comment><USER117> i still dont understand why someone hasn't put a sensor to scroll on the back or the side of the phone- i would prefer that you tilting since thats so imprecise

<comment><USER34> It's clearly not implemented due to the phone case lobby :)

Seriously though, implementing hardware features that make cases unworkable would put a damper on sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> Looks like every other generic 'droid smartphone. Yawn.

</comment><comment><USER119> No Youtube in list of apps...interesting.

Not cheap either...

<comment><USER120> none of the kindle fires have a youtube app either. you browse the youtube mobile site and the videos play in the default media player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> For all developers who want specs, etc. Check out their site here: [http://bit.ly/1yjPpkA](http://bit.ly/1yjPpkA)

<comment><USER122> I'm guessing you were downvoted because of the URL shortener. It goes to [https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx2SBWI72...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx2SBWI728CPXHZ/Announcing- the-Amazon-Fire-App-and-Game-Experiences-Never-before-Possible)

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> I'll wait for the B&N Nook Phone

</comment><comment><USER124> I am very impressed with the phone. The technology is a giant leap from the current Android phones. Kudos to Amazon and the design team.

</comment><comment><USER125> 'Fire' Phone? seriously? That would have sounded better if was by Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER126> This feels like an April Fool's joke. Wonder how well it will do.

</comment><comment><USER127> mayday seems like someone's wet dream.

</comment><comment><USER128> fire phone? fire OS?

what are they trying to do? put nails in the firefox phone/firefox OS coffin?

</comment><comment><USER129> The only smartphone with...

Emma Watson

was my first reaction.

</comment><comment><USER130> [http://goo.gl/GPrHx8](http://goo.gl/GPrHx8)

</comment><comment><USER131> I wonder if Mozilla will put up a fight over the name now that they could be directly competing.

FireFly also sounds very similar to FireBug.

<comment><USER54> ... and Fire OS to Firefox OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> Dynamic Perspective thing... The shake to undo is possibly the most hated interaction on iPhones. I don't know if I would want to have to do physical stuff to the phone itself to reveal information that should be accessible via touch (or visible at all times).

<comment><USER133> Not sure why you're downvoted, I also hate Shake to Undo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> From the "About Fire Phone" video:

 _" It's almost like the world is a hyperlink."_

That right there is gold! That is UX victory and low friction for users in a nutshell.

<comment><USER134> I can't tell if you're joking or not - personally, I cringed and felt like I was watching an episode of Silicon Valley for much of that video.

<comment><USER48> Take it both ways at once. That is the essence of reducing friction. Amazon does better at that than at marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> "Phone" Such an anachronism.

When the device is used for phone calls <1% of the time, can we now call this something else? Maybe:

"Pocket Internet System"? PIS?

If you use your phone for actual phone calls more than 5%, let us know.</comment>


On Jony Ive Leaving Apple - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2019/06/jony_ive_leaves_apple <comment><USER4> To me it seems like somebody is afraid to make a tough decision. There have been indications that Ive wants to get out for quite a while. So they offered him more and more to make him stay. As the article says, they promoted his C-level job to a A-level one. They gave him ever more freedom, power, and probably money. Now came the point where his willingness to leave became too big. The obvious choice would have been a full divorce. Of course that is hard. But now Apple is basically outsourcing one of its core competences, product design. That is both dangerous and embarrassing for such an iconic company.

<comment><USER5> > But now Apple is basically outsourcing one of its core competences, product > design.

The leadership of the design team is still in place. All Jony has been in recent years is essentially a Creative Director overseeing them. It's not like all of Apple's product design is now being handled by an outside company.

<comment><USER6> Yes, although IDEO could probably do a better job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone is talking about the keyboards, but I want to know about the Mac Pros. I'm assuming Ive is responsible for the cylinder, but is he involved in the return to the cheese grater, or did that happen while he was off designing glass doors at the Apple building? The keyboards aren't the first stinker on Ive's watch.

<comment><USER8> Learned helplessness runs wild at Apple. If you listen to them, they say that with the trashcan they had "designed themselves into a corner", and that's why it took them six years to design a new enclosure. As if it is beyond the capabilities of one of the world's richest and most powerful corporations to design a new enclosure every year.

The trashcan Mac Pro was OK. The design was perhaps uninspired but it did provide adequate cooling for the 2013 Xeons that they were using. It so transpired that the design did not provide ample cooling for Intel's recent CPUs. But so what? Just change it.

The actual problem with the 2013 Mac Pro was operational. They decided to build it in the US. They made a big, high-tech factory with a large degree of automation. That's a great way to build a high volume product. It's a terrible way to build a $3000 niche computer.

<comment><USER9> >The actual problem with the 2013 Mac Pro was operational. They decided to build it in the US. They made a big, high-tech factory with a large degree of automation. That's a great way to build a high volume product. It's a terrible way to build a $3000 niche computer.

Which is why I think the recent Apple has Tim Cook's operational focus all over it. They couldn't close it down but they had to sell it as long as they could trying to amortised the cost. Same with MacBook Pro Keyboard, they were stubborn and cost focus to try and itch out another generation. Just because of the cost involved.

You could see Steve Jobs doing it differently, bring an MBP home to use it, ( As he used to call himself low cost Beta Tester ) saw the problem himself, demand it be fixed within 4 weeks, or get a new team to design a new Keyboard.

I think he cares about product quality way more than numbers on balance sheet. He might publicly dismiss it, ( very likely ), but quietly he would have the team working on a new keyboard and ship it, only to sliently provide extended warranty to MBP at a later date.

<comment><USER10> This cost minimization seems quite strange when every year people were anxious for a new Pro. How hard it is to make the trashcan bigger and put in more airflow? (Bigger fans with the same RPM.)

And sure, it might cost some, but Tim should count lost profit (opportunity costs) too.

<comment><USER9> >How hard it is to make the trashcan bigger and put in more airflow? (Bigger fans with the same RPM.)

My guess is that because they tried to manufacture and assemble in US, so they had very high automation for the TrashCan, which also meant these automation are likely not flexible enough to change the design. I don't think the Mac Pro was about cost though. Because Mac Pro unit shipment would not have made up for that investment anyway. I think it was merely an exercise for Apple's operational supply chain. And Apple's design team had lack of time and had to focus on many other more important issues. That was why it took so long. Basically the design department in Apple were not scaleable.

<comment><USER10> Design bandwidth limitation is pretty plausible. (I have no idea how hard it is to change automation, but my guess is not _that_ hard/expensive. After all assembly robots are not custom built, they are probably programmed like the simpler CNC machines.)

Plus on top of that probably in Apple's hivemind the cost of coming out with something bad is more than the opportunity cost of missed profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Suppose you're Jony Ive, and you've designed so much for Apple-- computers, fonts, even Apple Park-- what would entice you to leave?

I speculate his reason must be to design something massively popular, that so many people in the world touch every day, that blends computers and architecture. And that his reason must a project so big that it can't reasonably fit inside Apple Park, both in terms of physical space and in terms of manufacturing partnerships where the team must be on site.

I speculate he's leaving Apple to design the Apple car.

Replies: 1) If Ive wanted to retire, I'd expect he could; he has mountains of money, and has achieved tremendous success in the marketplace. 2) If Ive were forced out, I'd expect an announcement akin to "will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook", not "founding an agency with Apple as a client". 3) Why leave now? Because Apple just bought a big piece of the car project, Drive.ai.

<comment><USER12> > _I speculate he 's leaving Apple to design the Apple car._

If you think Gruber is correct ("You're either at Apple or you're not" rings very true to me), Ive is done with Apple. The completion of Apple Park represents the culmination of his transition to architecture.

<comment><USER13> The problem becomes where he would go (that is, what he would build) next. He's designed the HQ of one of the biggest companies in the world down to the smallest details. A company so deeply intertwined with his own persona and DNA. Bizarrely, I can see him somewhat disappearing off into the sunset - <USER2> might still do some design work when he chooses and have some passion projects, but outside of Apple, it's deadlines, limitless budgets, ability to acquire anything it deems necessary, etc. maybe he's achieved all he wants to?

<comment><USER14> > _Bizarrely_

Why Bizarrely? The guy is probably worth millions if not tens of millions. He can probably live a lavish life off of 4% gains for the rest of his life and there is nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER13> I would guess hundreds of millions, if not way more. I'm sure his salary was reported as being $30m base + $25m stock per year back in 2011.

I said bizarrely because in these situations the media & general public seem to always think that people like this can't survive without work. The guy is undoubtedly incredibly passionate about design and almost certainly a workaholic. The grandparent is talking about him going on design the future of automobiles - maybe, maybe not. It felt like I was suggesting something against the grain, which was why I prefaced it with "bizarrely".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I share his concerns about not appointing a C level design executive. You need design (at Apple) to not be cost driven

<comment><USER16> Jony Ive had been the CDO for years and the results weren't great. It's not that Jony Ive isn't a great designer. It's just that it's difficult to judge your own work, no matter how good you are.

What they need, more than a CDO, is someone who they have to run every design by, someone (EDIT: with an impeccable eye) who is not afraid to say no. In other words, someone who can fill the role Steve Jobs used to play.

I, for one, nominate the great John Siracusa, for this job.

See [http://hypercritical.co/fatbits/2009/05/06/hypercritical](http://hypercritical.co/fatbits/2009/05/06/hypercritical)

<comment><USER17> Why isn't that Cook?

Without knowing Apple internally, the point is that the staff under the COO (if the "C"s have their own divisions) are the back office, the accounting, HR, IT, and other shared services accross an organization. There isn't necessarily creativity as a mission.

<comment><USER15> Cook doesn't (and recognizes that he doesn't) have the necessary design eye.

I think I agree with @UIZealot that there's a need for a design approval that isn't directly involved in the design process, e.g. the SJ world would presumably have SJ saying yes/no to Jony, but in the post-SJ world it was Jony saying yes/no to essentially just Jony. I assume those decisions would be fairly one sided :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Today's MacBooks are worse computers but more beautiful devices than the ones they replaced. Is that directly attributable to Jony Ive? With these keyboards in particular, I believe the answer is yes.

Until now design was king at Apple. Will his departure bring balance back, or will design lose out to the other teams?

<comment><USER19> >Until now design was king at Apple.

Was it? Design is "how it works" and Apple products have been "working" a lot less lately (cylinder Mac Pro with no room for future processors, laptop keyboards, two different kinds of Pencil depending on which iPad you have, etc).

<comment><USER20> In this situation, design is not "how it works" IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Gruber is trying to read the tea leaves, but I think he's overconfident in his read. Also, I really don't get the Monday Night quarterbacking that's evident throughout his whole piece. Maybe he's upset, maybe he's held back and now feels free to offer opinion --but I think it's just that. An abrupt opinion.

That said, I wonder who Apple will try to snatch? Who are some other good designers out there? MS has some nice HW design. Google to me does not. Nokia? I'm sure there are some others, but can't think of any ATM.

<comment><USER22> I'd don't really agree with what you and many other commenters seem to be saying that Gruber is "Monday Night quarterbacking" or bashing Ive. I mean, he says Ive is a "preternaturally talented designer" but that post Jobs that "software design has declined and hardware gone wonky." Does anyone really disagree with that statement? Ive is amazing but Ive and Jobs were magic.

I think the bigger thrust of Gruber's piece is his closing sentence, with which I wholeheartedly agree: "I don't worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry that Apple is in trouble because he's not being replaced."

<comment><USER21> I have a different take. How can he on the one hand say he's supernatural but on the other imply he's quite replaceable (but Apple's mistake is not replacing him).

I don't get the abnormal bashing _now_. He's had some mild criticism before but now suddenly there have been intractable issues since Jobs died. It comes across as opportunistic and makes me doubt him.

<comment><USER23> A differently/less gifted replacement is better than no replacement. My understanding is that now, the software and hardware design teams both report to the COO. Gruber rightly points out that this structure is not like Apple under Jobs, who famously bashed companies led by salespeople as opposed to designers.

<comment><USER24> Has it occurred to anyone that Tim might have pulled off something amazing and no one is even aware of it? Given all the hardware/software design getting a bad rap, Tim has made this Jeff's problem. If Jeff can pull it off, he is worthy of becoming a successor, otherwise he will get booted out in the next scandal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I respect John Gruber but on this one I find it a bit too easy to lash-out (rightly or wrongly) on Jony Ive only when the man stepped-out of his job at Apple. It would have been a bit more courageous to have said these things when he was still there.

More on the point though, I'm not in the camp of those believing that in this day and age in a company as big as Apple you can assign all the mistakes (or successes) to a single man. For instance, to think Jony Ive being even remotely responsible for the keyboard debacle seems preposterous to me.

<comment><USER26> Gruber has not been shy about bashing Apple's design decisions with either the keyboards, or the prioritizing of thinness over battery life.

The keyboard debacle was a direct result of Apple striving for thinness.

<comment><USER27> > or the prioritizing of thinness over battery life.

Apple's current MacBook lineup starting in late 2017 (i.e. the thinnest laptops and with butterfly keyboards) have the best battery life of any Apple laptop ever made.

I don't recall Gruber ever complaining about the battery life of Apple's thin devices. Do you have a link?

<comment><USER28> Huh, you mean late 2016, right? I have late-2016 MBP with a Touchbar

<comment><USER27> Yes, you're right. I meant late 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would go John Gruber one further and say that Apple needs not just a chief design officer, but a chief PRODUCT officer. Steve Jobs was not just a design guru, he was a PRODUCT guru. Design is an integral element to Apple products, but product strategy is more than just design. The obsession with thinness that Gruber cites is one way in which Apple's design - and product - <USER3> has gone off the rails, but there are many others. What is the Macbook product strategy and segmentation strategy anymore? Why did it take FIVE YEARS to get a redesigned Mac Pro out? I could go on..

<comment><USER30> Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis? This is in the site guidelines:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why is this article attributing the San Francisco font design to Ive?

<comment><USER32> He singed off on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > I've never been an "Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs" person. But...

Ah, pundits believe Apple Is Doomed!

The sentiment is reassuring. All seems well.

</comment><comment><USER34> > I don't worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry > that Apple is in trouble because he's not being replaced.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why out of all of the skill sets that go into creating a product, "design" should be the only one with a dedicated C-level executive. To me it seems much healthier for the needs of the mechanical engineers (for example) to have equal weight with the needs of the designers.

<comment><USER35> Because design is extremely and uniquely important to Apple's success compared to its competitors. It's why you know who Jony Ive is and have no idea who is responsible for mechanical engineering at Apple. (I say this as an engineer myself.)

<comment><USER34> The importance of design at apple is completely irrefutable. All I am saying is that Apple should avoid more butterfly switch fiascos, and one way to do that is to put the designers on a level playing field.

<comment><USER36> Industrial design includes functionality. Ives' problem wasn't that he put design over other things; it's that he put form over function in his design decisions and had a very narrow set of design principles (minimalism, thinness) that he followed too religiously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I remember reading somewhere that Jony said if he weren't designing computers he would like to be designing cups.

<comment><USER38> Sounds hyperbolic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Damn. This is not good. But I understand. He has other interests. And it's time to check those out. That the other remaining design people will report to the COO sounds like design by committee which could be terrible. But then it could be great. Time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER40> I ain't John Gruber. But here was my take a few years ago and I stand by it today:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234)

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't understand the unnecessary tone John Gruber uses in this article.

> Fuck this "sir" shit. We don't have titles in the United States.

The US isn't the only country on the map (surprisingly enough, I know). And who cares if Jony Ive is starting his own thing? Why would that be "pure spin"?

Apple is not in its renaissance days anymore - whilst Jony Ive might have been critical back then - Apple is just not the same company anymore. There are a lot more people responsible for the "magic" these days (which is a good thing).

<comment><USER42> He's not saying that Jony Ive starting his own thing is pure spin. He's saying that Jony continuing to be substantially involved in Apple design is pure spin.

And regarding addressing people as 'Sir so and so'. As an American, it's always really jarring when I come across this in print. America has a lot of problems, but one of the most hopelessly idealistic things we ever did was opt to forego a formal aristocracy. But anyway, I think Gruber perhaps didn't realize that the reason the Financial Times was using Ives' title is that they're an English publication.

<comment><USER43> All I ever see is people in US TV saying "sir" and "ma'am", is this inaccurate? I'm from the UK and similarly don't believe in titles and I have never used or heard these words used in my life

<comment><USER42> We add those terms to the end of a phrase in lieu of a person's name. As in, "How may I help you, sir?". But the usage referenced in the article was putting the word before the person's name to indicate that they've been titled by the British government (or the crown, perhaps?). As in, "Sir Jony Ive has announced that he will be leaving Apple."

Very different things.

<comment><USER44> Well he is British, so it's reasonable to respect his title, no? Just as I might respect an American general or president's title, or a vicar's reverend even though I am an atheist. All replace a simple Mr or Ms just like Dr does. Not that I'm likely to meet many generals or presidents... :)

<comment> lame-robot-hoax Exactly, people are making something out of nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Fifth: Fuck this "sir" shit. We don't have titles in the United States.

That's pretty disrespectful and ignorant to other cultures and customs.

It made me realise that this whole article is really spiteful and negative. It doesn't contribute anything to making things better.

<comment><USER30> Please don't pick the most irritating point in an article to comment on just because it's so irritating. This is the most minor thing that he had to say.

<comment><USER45> If it's so minor, why commit a whole point to it?

I'm surprised point 6 didn't defend into playground name calling.

Grow up.

<comment><USER30> The original point was minor, if provocative. Unfortunately, though, posting an HN comment about a minor provocation can actually have a major effect on a thread—especially if it gets upvoted to the top, as indignant comments often do. That's why we moderate those and why I replied to you. The fault lies more with the upvoters and repliers than the original commenter, usually—but it's a co-creation. We all need to resist it because it leads to much shallower and less interesting discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER45> I'm glad you pointed out your authority and the guidelines that you have adhered to otherwise your point may have been missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Fifth: Fuck this "sir" shit. We don't have titles in the United States.

The Title of Nobility Clause prevents the federal government from granting titles of nobility. That's it. It doesn't prevent other countries from granting them to their citizens, and Ive is British.

There are plenty of titles that aren't of nobility in the US. Here's a few: Mr. President, Congresswoman, General, Colonel, and Mayor.

<comment><USER47> Indeed. Plus some people think the United States is the only country on this planet.

<comment><USER48> Or, perhaps, Gruber was just adding in some humor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Could you DREAM of a world where DaringFireball posted an article disrespecting and demeaning Sir Jony Ive this time last week?

What use is a pundit like this when they are on rails to just spin any and every piece of Apple news to protect the mothership, at this point any words from Gruber have lost all objectivity.

</comment><comment> 1-6 The title should have been, "Jony Ive left Apple" You've missed a sweet opportunity...

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow this website is bad. Almost as bad as HN

</comment><comment><USER51> > Fifth: Fuck this "sir" shit. We don't have titles in the United States.

The 1 second it took me to google revealed he is British, and apple is all about showing off your "class".. so yeah.

<comment><USER52> This baffled me as well. The US may not grant titles of nobility, but it has an awful lot of other titles that are given and used similarly; in my experience typically military ranks, or former political office titles.

Also, Ive's title may not have been awarded by the US, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be acknowledged in what is an official piece of communication from one of the worlds largest companies.

To be facetious, one could also say that it is a surprise to hear outrage at the use of 'Sir' given that everyone in the US seems to call everyone else 'sir' or 'ma'am' all the time.

<comment><USER53> There is a tradition of anti-nobility sentiment in US culture as old as, well, the US. It is literally written into the Constitution[1]. How much you were exposed to it probably depends on where you grew up; I think it is louder in the north east, and I don't hear it much in California.

Personally, I am more annoyed at being sir-ed constantly. I much prefer to reserve it as a genuine term of respect, not a generic form of address.

[1] Article I, section 9.

<comment><USER54> > I think it is louder in the north east

Loud in the South, certainly. That's how I was raised, and it's used as a _respectful_ , though somewhat common/generic, term of address. I don't know that I or many Americans would be comfortable with the social implications of referring to some one as "sir" out of respect the way you describe it; it implies superiority rather than respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > _Ive is, to state the obvious, preternaturally talented. But in the post- > Jobs era, with all of Apple design, hardware and software, under his > control, we've seen the software design decline and the hardware go wonky._

These two sentences don't make sense when read together. If Apple design -- hardware and software -- declined during Ive's rein that, to me, is evidence that Ive is not preternaturally talented. The moment iOS 7 was unveiled at WWDC I knew Emperor Ive is wearing no clothes. The number of basic design mistakes iOS 7 was astounding.

<comment><USER56> I gotta _eyeroll_ pretty hard when some internet expert points out the basic design mistakes in something.

None of those things were mistakes, they were choices made as a result of tradeoffs that people agonized over.

I think it makes perfect sense to me, Ive seems like he's got a big personality and a laser focus on a set of things he has a deep deep understanding of. Without Jobs maybe there was nobody to challenge Ive and thus the balance was pulled too far toward his vision and the greater picture has suffered.

<comment><USER55> Let's consider Jony's performance on software design first. This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7: The Verge wrote in their review: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: "If iOS 8 can't remove any of these options, it's a design failure." (And iOS 8 didn't.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction."

And what about Jony's other responsibility, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed.

Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. Then they released some ads for the 5c, and I kid you not, one of the ads had sounds of bleating farm animals. (It was titled "Every color has a story", published on tumblr.) That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't surprise anyone.

<comment><USER57> > Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add > those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a > device an executive would want to be seen holding.

But it wasn't for executives. It was supposed to be a downmarket phone. You may think the colors were horrid, but I think they added much needed character to the iPhone line, much like the XRs.

<comment><USER58> Yeah i often look at my iphone SE and think it really needs some character.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Manage Money as a Techie [YouTube] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXgm1vvqgfQ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, this is an article + video describing a simple 3-legged investment strategy for techies (bonds + index funds + real estate). All the terminology used are described with quotes from Investopedia.

If you want to read or contribute, you can the article version of the video at: [https://quanticdev.com/articles/how-to-manage- money](https://quanticdev.com/articles/how-to-manage-money)

Outline of the article/video:

• My Wealth Distribution as a Software Engineer

• Why I Invest as I Do?

• Real Estate

• Index Funds

• Bonds

• Cash and Other Liquidity

• Others

• My Failures

• Conclusion</comment>


Zuckerberg Smile - <AUTHOR> https://terkelg.github.io/zuckerberg.smile/ <comment><USER2> Another FB security failure - they never should have left this control exposed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so dumb it's amusing.

</comment><comment><USER4> The overflow: hidden on <body> made the slider not show up on my computer :(

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this just frame-by-frame stepping? Or is there some sort of magical interpolation generating the middle steps?

<comment><USER6> Based on the other stuff changing in the background, it is probably the former.

<comment><USER7> See also [https://sambambam.github.io/zuckerberg.ears/](https://sambambam.github.io/zuckerberg.ears/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I definitely trust that natural smile.

</comment><comment><USER9> Who leaked this integration test from the facebook codebase?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm uncomfortable with this public mockery of a person, even if he is a public figure.

There are better ways to disagree with someone than ad hominem attacks.

<comment><USER8> It's only an attack if you see it as one. I didn't notice commentary on the page.

<comment><USER11> lol, I don't disagree in this case, but that makes ZERO sense in general

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why was this flagged? Good thing I am using a 3rdparty site to read HN, otherwise I wouldve missed.

<comment><USER13> which site

<comment><USER14> not OP but I use and love [https://hckrnews.com/](https://hckrnews.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's weird how his eyes don't change at all, but his elf-ears go up up up.

</comment><comment><USER6> I could only get this to work by zooming out to 90% (Chrome 73). Suggestions:

      1. Give the slider some bottom margin so people can click it.
      2. Put your vanity note somewhere else because it is currently covering the slider.

</comment><comment><USER16> Got a laugh, but I'm uncomfortable with this type of content being posted

</comment><comment><USER17> That's hilarious, stop.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you been forced into entrepreneurship? How did you react? - <AUTHOR>

Hello world (literally).
There isn't much detail to add here. I don't want to give any background stories.
You have probably been forced into entrepreneurship because:
lack of job growth no job opportunities Retrenched Unhirable (I'm thinking jack of all trades, master of none)
So if you were forced into being an entrepeneur, how did you react to your situation?
Any millionaire success stories? <comment><USER2> Depends on your current situation.

If you are a young professional, I think its a great step, because now you are really forced into doing/finding something you are passionate about. Or going to solve a problem you will develop a passion for.

I am currently in this situation. Didn't get a job after college. Because I prefer to be jack of all trades. This perspective helped me dive into something I really want to work on, the Enterprise space.

Now I am in a job with a big company. I am unfit because I think too entrepreneurial. But I am absorbing all the information here, and taking advantage of the position to learn about the enterprise.

I think its a calling for me to work harder, double up on developing my product on the weekend, after work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being a jack of all trades seems to diminish the value of people like that.

Although I can understand it from a companies point of view, how many regular folks are even experts in their desired field that a jack of all trades couldn't match?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am in a similar situation although lately I have been forced to become a freelancer on the side as well.

I was forced into entrepreneurship for the same reasons cited. Being burnt out from past jobs and no longer being able to find work, where software developers were treated like laboureurs, ready to be tossed out at a moment's notice when they can no longer perform well due to the excruciating hours already exploited thanks to the political party who protect nurses and plumbers but not software developers who obviously can freely negotiate their wage in the free market that they keep fantasizing about and telling people so they can get the votes, that employers will not exploit the sparce job space in BC and that somehow raising the living cost is more important than retaining the tech industry which is slowly bleeding talent to other provinces or United States.

It's a shite state of affairs but I'm far from just giving up. I don't need to be holding a nine to five just to pay the bills. We developers have technical skills that needs to be treated with respsect and if one cannot find a fair open and free market without government interference, one must find it on the internet and rest of the world where it operates more efficiently.</comment>


HTTP Header Injection in Python urllib - <AUTHOR> http://blog.blindspotsecurity.com/2016/06/advisory-http-header-injection-in.html <comment><USER2> The blog post briefly touches on this, but it's been fixed for more than a year, its just that some linux distros are very slow to get updates (read debian-stable). Initially I thought this was a new vulnerability.

<comment><USER2> Python 3.5.0+, 3.4.4+ and 2.7.9+ are not vulnerable. edit: typos

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found this part the most enlightening:

> I find it irresponsible of the developers and distributors of Redis and > memcached to provide default configurations that lack any authentication. > Yes, I understand the reasoning that they should only be used only on > "trusted internal networks". The problem is that very few internal networks, > in practice, are much safer than the internet. We can't continue to make the > same bad assumptions of a decade ago and expect security to improve. Even an > unauthenticated service listening on localhost is risky these days. It > wouldn't be hard to add an auto-generated, random password to these services > during installation. That is, if the developers of these services took > security seriously.

Also this:

> Notified Python Security that full details of issue would be published due > to inaction on their part. [After half a year of inaction]

If you've never reported a security bug before this is generally par for the course for situations like this. Now with obvious holes like heartbleed, everyone understands the stakes really quickly and it gets patched fast. But for these types of problems where it's a multistage attack there is just a complete lack of resources to fix this type of thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Remember, kiddos. Sanitize your input!</comment>


Facebook to Introduce Three Tier App System  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/23/its-facebook-day-say-hello-to-the-three-tier-app-system/ <comment><USER2> The TFA:

"Facebook desperately wants to find a way to help application developers make money beyond advertising, and the iPhone App Store has shown that people are willing to pay for quality applications."

Praise be to the iPhone AppStore! No one had thought of charging for applications before. Who knew that people would pay for software?

<comment><USER3> I still don't think it's likely that people are willing to pay for Facebook applications. Facebook is too limited. It doesn't give you mobile opportunities, not like the iPhone does. It really doesn't give you anything new that you can't find on other sites. Facebook is grasping at straws.

<comment><USER4> People are already willing to pay facebook to give a "panties" icon to another member of facebook--I don't think it is nearly the stretch you are claiming it is that they might also be willing to pay for apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Who in the hell cares what Facebook does anymore? Are we going to see a repeat of the last year, where every monkey in a marketing department wants to jump on the Facebook App bandwagon again? Sorry, but we've had a year of biting vampires, useless applications, and too much hype.

How much investor money has to be poured down a hole before people will start building businesses that have actual value?

I personally couldn't care less about Facebook/Myspace/<insert name of social network> anymore. I doubt I'm alone.

<comment><USER6> Imagine the endgame, where web apps handle all user accounts, collaboration features, sharing, and permissions through Facebook. It's not this year or next year, but Facebook could become the equivalent of what Microsoft Windows is on the desktop (although much less valuable, since the Web is a more anarchic environment than the desktop).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this blog post should be titled differently. While it has interesting info, it barely mentions any details about the tier system that's advertised in the title.

</comment><comment><USER8> The case for a Facebook app store based on the iPhone analogy is severely flawed. Nobody would pay for a Facebook application.

1) iPhone users pay a small fortune to buy and use their devices. This selects for people with relatively high disposable income. Facebook profiles are free.

2) The iPhone is a platform in a way that is analogous with a computer. Facebook isn't. (e.g. there is a Facebook application for the iPhone. There is no iPhone application for Facebook).

</comment><comment><USER9> a somewhat late response to all the application-tire/dread, perhaps?

<comment><USER3> Facebook innovates quickly, polishes late. Look at how they handled the Newsfeed. It's the same thing here. Though judging from the current redesign, it would seem they're running out of ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This could be great if implemented well- kill off the Vampires and Werewolves insanity and promote legitimately useful applications. We'll see.

</comment><comment><USER10> equally good and bad, now your app is dependent on facebooks grace, i would rather see a quality score type system, where its a install to unistall ratio. 85 percent and above and you start getting warnings etc..

<comment><USER11> Judging by the number of zombie/pirate/vampire/werewolf invites I get, I think the majority of people don't give a shit about the usefulness of the apps. Even if 95% install FacebookCthulu, I still don't care.

In fact, as was mentioned before, I don't think I care about Facebook apps at all. The only one I installed was iLike, back when it was pretty much the only app available. I installed it solely because I liked the aesthetic of having all the images of all the bands I like tiled in a square. Facebook apps are a dead platform now, if they were ever even alive to begin with.</comment></comment>