Chrome is Ready for Business - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2010/12/chrome-is-ready-for-business.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome. Deploying Firefox is _still_ not simple for network administrators due to their lack of official MSIs. If I still ran a network, Chrome would be the default browser just due to the sheer convenience (and that's probably what Google are hoping for).

<comment><USER3> Agreed, as an Admin having alternate browsers available in in an environment can be incredibly beneficial. Security/patch wise it's a real pain to maintain Firefox so this is a big advantage for Chrome.

<comment><USER4> Applying updates is nearly painless in Chrome. Just hit "update google chrome" and the update is applied, the browser is restarted in a matter of seconds with all your previously open windows and tabs are retained. The only downside is youtube videos you had open might automatically restart. Firefox has a similar update process but it's so much clunkier that it eats up far more time and effort. IE's update process is a joke in comparison to both (sometimes requiring a full restart of your system).

<comment><USER2> I think he is specifically refering to updating it in a managed environment. Applications set up correctly (e.g. Microsoft Office) can have updates pushed out over the network to all users, automatically. This isn't so easy with Firefox, but it _should_ now be easy with Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing holding our organization back from adopting Chrome over IE is file:// links. A small thing, but we use it to quick link to shared project directories. Chrome considers these a security threat and disallows them. My boss used Chrome for a week but when I couldn't get a solution to the file links he swapped back.

<comment><USER6> You can create a custom protocol and protocol handler to process file links including UNCs.

This recently allowed me to deploy a web application into an enterprise space with extensive dependencies on creating and editing word and excel documents (as well as pdfs).

The web application generates highly customized rtf from user submitted forms and provides links for users which, when clicked, will open word with the rtf loaded and its working directory properly set within their network file system. Therefore, the user can modify the rtf, simply press save and exit.

This is vastly superior to download / edit / upload schemes or replicating the functionality of word through this web application.

The users can access the files through UNC based methods they already understand and through the new web application. Its glue to wean the enterprise from windows binaries and UNC paths everywhere towards a unified web application.

It also very simple:

1\. Name the protocol and generate links using it: myproto:/path_to_file

2\. Modify the windows registry to handle the protocol <http://kb.mozillazine.org/Register_protocol>

3\. Write a tiny handler as a binary, or even batch file, to be called by chrome when it parses the custom protocol

In the situation referenced above, the handler application just truncates out the protocol from the link and calls the shell with the resultant string. That means it properly handles all windows file associations. So, .rtf -> Word, .xls -> excel, .pdf -> acrobat, / -> file explorer.

To the user its actually quite seamless.

You do have to touch client machines once to setup the handler, but in this context its fine. This is not over the internet, but inside the enterprise.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd just noticed the other day that "Integrated Authentication" works on Windows out of the box in Chrome while testing a client's internal app. That's very helpful.

<comment><USER7> That's the NTLM support the post talked about. And you're right, it's very helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is fantastic.

I'm thoroughly impressed with the Chromium authors. From their continuous build cycle (<http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/waterfall/console>) to their very active developer community, it's clear that they are driven to make a better browsing experience for everyone. By getting themselves into the business world, the footprint they've created in the browser market can become even larger.

<comment><USER9> Why are you so impressed about a continuous build cycle? I think continuous integration (including full build and test runs for roughly every push) should be a given for a non-trivial and widely-used desktop application, especially one that is released on multiple platforms. I don't see how that's something to be "impressed" about.

<comment><USER10> He's probably impressed because while that _should_ be "a given for a non- trivial and widely-used desktop application", in reality it rarely is.

<comment><USER11> All major browsers do this.

Firefox: <http://tbpl.mozilla.org/> Safari: <http://www.publicsource.apple.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are still (long-standing) issues, which may prevent some businesses from using Chrom{e,ium}.

"NOTE: SSL client authentication with personal certificates does not work completely in Linux, see issue 16830 and issue 25241." (<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxCertManagement>)

<comment><USER13> Businesses that are using Linux for their desktops are already in a different situation, since corporate updates and lock downs can be managed through a custom apt repository easily anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From a personal and business perspective, the thing I find most appealing about Chrome is that it feels so much faster than other browsers. In practice, this means you can extend the life of old hardware which is primarily used for browsing the web, and save money from having to upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish Google would allow for downloading the installer via FTP like Mozilla does this with Firefox. I like it because it keeps me from ever having to launch Internet Explorer.

</comment><comment><USER15> this is the free crack to get em hooked before they drop chrome os on the enterprise.

in all reality, i have been on google apps deployments where chrome was being adopted and there was no easy way to push it to 1000s of users, let alone configure and manage. this will really make life easier for admins transitioning to google apps who choose to adopt chrome as well.

not to mention google is providing support for chrome to those who have google apps for business.</comment>


KDevelop 5.5 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.kdevelop.org/news/kdevelop-550-released <comment><USER2> I love Kdevelop so much. Since the integration of the Clang ecosystem, the C++ language support really improved a lot. Kdevelop just feels so much faster then, for instance, Eclipse.</comment>


Google Sued Over Google Sky Feature - <AUTHOR> http://www.enews20.com/news_Google_Sued_Over_Google_Sky_Feature_05900.html <comment><USER2> I say award him liquidated damages of $20 according to Sivers' Rule:

[http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> $25 million? When was the last time anyone got $25 million just for their idea? Not even a prototype, but an idea in a blog post? ...

since when was a blog post a patent?

</comment><comment><USER4> Critical sentence:

"Jonathan Cobb claims that _during his work for Google as contractor_ he posted a complete description of Google Sky in an internal Google discussion group."

Who knows what kind of contract work he was doing, but I'll bet there's a clause in his contract from Google that states "All your base are belong to us." Besides, it was posted in an internal discussion group. The ideas there already belong to Google by default.

<comment><USER5> "Besides, it was posted in an internal discussion group. The ideas there already belong to Google by default."

Fortunately there's no foundation for that claim for many reasons, the simplest of which is that ideas belong to no one.

<comment><USER4> I don't know where this "Ideas belong to no one" concept comes from, but I don't quite understand the logic behind it. Please explain. (This is confusing to me because by this logic the person can't sue Google because Google didn't take "his" ideas, since the idea doesn't belong to anyone.)

If it is an internal company blog, it is assumed to be used exclusively by Google insiders to collaborate and share ideas. If this person posted his ideas there, either as part of his contract work or not, it is assumed that Google has the authority to act on information presented there, unless poster didn't have the authority to post the information there.

<comment><USER5> derefr pretty much hit the nail on the head as to the reality of things. See [http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/smbusiness/patent_website.fs...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/smbusiness/patent_website.fsb/index.htm) for the quote from the US PTO. But he didn't explain the logic behind that reasoning. The theory is that patents are given for things that are non- intuitive: in order for a firm to recoup the "sunk costs" of R&D that led to the creation of the patent in the first place.

Second, you don't understand what constitutes suing. You can sue anyone for any reason (with rare exception). I'm just indicating that he'll lose, if all he said was, "Hey, we should have a Google Maps for the sky!" he doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Third, if he shared patentable information, that doesn't automatically become Google's. Some employers (Radio Shack, for instance) have you sign a contract when you're hired saying that anything you invent as a consequence of your work there belong to them as a result. Some schools require it if you do research there. But if I posted the draft of a patent application to a discussion group, it wouldn't then be available for anyone to try and patent. Even if it's a discussion board at work.

<comment><USER4> You're absolutely correct about the suing remark. I should have said "He can't have a valid basis for suing..."

If he shared _Patented_ information, Google would not have free access to use it. A great deal new ideas are patentable (though I hear the process can be a nightmare), but whether or not the Google Sky concept was patented is not the issue.

Like I said before, I am pretty sure Google would have had some sort of clause that allowed them to use anything this contractor came up with as a consequence of working at/with/for Google. And if he used an internal Google discussion board (presumably used by those working for Google to share information) to discuss the concept, then Google should and probably does have a legally defensible right to use those ideas for its own purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't say when he posted, but his idea sounds a lot like celestia <http://www.shatters.net/celestia/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I emailed Google the same idea a few years ago and never heard back. It's pretty obvious.</comment>


He saw it coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/newbie/102155-web-terminal-browser-only-os-possible.html

<comment><USER2> I remember a distro called something like LiveFirefox (can't remember the name exactly) which came with RatPoison and Firefox only. The .ratpoisonrc file disabled all key bindings, and somehow they managed to disable all text ttys, so it was effectively a browser-only disto.

</comment><comment><USER3> I still wonder how much of an advantage you could get by building an OS that really is only the browser layer. iirc Chrome OS still have a linux layer. Wonder how much "junk" you could get rid of architecture-wise if you just look at browser-needed stuff.</comment>


Obama Inauguration speech as a TextFlow - <AUTHOR> http://www.textflows.com/ObamaInaugurationFlow

<comment><USER2> I really like the idea of this software. Using time and pacing for public speaking purposes, using certain transitions to emphasize the speed at which something should be spoken. Great idea.

The only thing I think that needs to be added is punctuation. It can be hard to know when a sentence is going to end, and what inflection to use if you think a sentence is continuing on the next transition when it's not, so your audience might get wrong impressions.

Otherwise, awesome appplication.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks iamdave (Dave?).

Our contention on punctuation is that its an artifact of text annotated for display on a static medium. With a TextFlow on an active display device, timing and white space can be used to convey those same aspects, as well as others.

Tony</comment></comment>


Computing 10,000X more efficiently (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.media.mit.edu/~bates/Summary_files/BatesTalk.pdf <comment><USER2> Singluar computing have built a chip based on this tech, and deployed in a military UAV. It enabled tracking of objects(which ws impossible before due to power constraints), at 6400x the performance/power of other best known methods.

[http://www.defensetechbriefs.com/component/content/article/1...](http://www.defensetechbriefs.com/component/content/article/17021)

[http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?ar...](http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1693583)

From the paper: "The hardware is designed to perform high dynamic range arithmetic with roughly 1% error per operation. Singular has developed and studied varied algorithms for producing high quality results despite the approximate hardware. These studies use a perfect simulation of the accelerator's arithmetic. Tasks that have been explored include summing thousands of numbers without accumulating error, k-nearest neighbor classification (KNN), foreground/background separation using Gaussian mixture models, iterative reconstruction tomography, deblurring using the Richardson- Lucy deconvolution algorithm, FFTs, radar processing, neural net learning, and other tasks. Most of these algorithms need slight adaptations to prevent cumulative effects of the 1% error, but with those adaptations all perform as desired."

<comment><USER3> And these are precisely the things, which we know little, that the NSA may be exploiting with extreme effectiveness that scares the shit out of me.

I recall an article from ___2005_ __that described a system that could track __ _BULLETS IN MID FLIGHT_ __over a vast swath, in-the DARK, which provided detailed view in all ballistics in a fighting theater....

<comment><USER4> It's probably not of much use to the NSA where breaking encryption requires precise math that will fail quickly if operations are off by 1%.

<comment><USER5> I can however see lots of application in various pattern analysis techniques based on machine learning. There's lots of places in those that a bit of fuzz won't really matter, at least for first pass filtering.

Similarly voice recognition would probably have to deal with far larger errors from the transmission and capture of sound anyway.

Just because it's not good for decryption, doesn't mean it isn't good for the overall set of NSA operations.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, even human _brains_ can do voice recognition, and they're noisy as fuck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This topic was already discussed albeit satirically in another publication. Namely the, "The Slow Winter."[1] Which while comedic makes good points about hardware architecture.

[1] [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1309_14-17_mickens.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1309_14-17_mickens.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Off-topic: if an integral is an approximation of a physical process, then that process is an approximation of the integral. I.e. we could in principle have a "chip" running a miniature lab experiment (like water flowing) with sensors that would output "an approximate solution of the Navier-Stokes equations". Numerical analysts would then write new versions of their algorithms assuming "an efficient hardware solution of N-S". Has this concept ever been used anywhere? I guess quantum computing would qualify.

<comment><USER9> We used to use a carefully biased diode in the feedback loop of an op-amp to create logarithmic signals. I was expecting the article to dispense with digital electronics (in the core of the machine) and use tuned physical properties to actually do the calculations.

What a disappointment that the first few slides imply such a break-through and then we find that the research is simply about reducing precision to the minimum needed. And it's patented? (rolls eyes)

<comment><USER10> it's patented? 16 bit floats have been a thing for a long time.. :/

edit: never mind. somehow convinced myself that this was just 16 bit floating point arithmetic. it is not.

<comment><USER9> I wrote an IEEE single-point compatible floating point library for embedded 8088/8086 processors in the mid-to-late '80s ... my employer was very cheap!

On the other hand, I learned a ton about efficient ways to implement various algorithms and remember a great way to do square roots that involved an initial multiplication (using normalized binary FP numbers) and then converged in about six iterations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think human brains are probably wired for speed over accuracy too. This might have a lot of potential in machine learning and eventually AI, where information processing speed is often more important than accuracy.

<comment><USER12> If you believe in evolution and natural selection, then your functionality is just fast and accurate enough to keep you from dying before mating. That's as good as the optimization gets, except by random accident.

<comment><USER13> My genes are more likely to be passed on for multiple generations if I survive long enough to mate AND care for my children. If thy die at age five, my mating did nothing.

<comment><USER14> True, but his point still stands - if you believe in evolution and natural selection, your brain is designed for "good enough fast enough" rather than "truly correct" reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is probably an efficiency reason the human brain has 85 000 000 000(85 billion) neurons that operate with lossy compression operate in parallel drawing less than 20W of power.

<comment><USER16> Probably more relevant is the greatly reduced clock speed (ignoring that the brain doesn't so much have a centralized clock - neurons only fire at <1k Hz compared to the ~2k Ghz processors used in clusters).

The technology also seems somewhat incomparable. The purely chemical signal processing at the synaptic cleft presumably saves a lot of power.

<comment><USER17> maybe it's more a throughput thing, if the brain is massively parallel, it's a giant pipeline with many things in flight all the time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this guy successfully patented half-precision floating point. No really, look:

[http://www.google.com/patents/US8150902](http://www.google.com/patents/US8150902)

What a troll!

</comment><comment><USER19> This guy went on to found a company as I recall, which I think was then acquired. Its a pretty clever way to make fast floating point.

<comment><USER2> Who did squire them ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be nice to see where he is with this now - that was 2010 and it appears nothing has been written since about it.

<comment><USER19> An update from 2013 apparently : [http://www.bdti.com/InsideDSP/2013/10/23/SingularComputing](http://www.bdti.com/InsideDSP/2013/10/23/SingularComputing)

<comment><USER21> It would be funny if a technology pioneered by "Singular Computing" were a primary contributor to reaching the Singularity.

<comment><USER22> It wouldn't be funny, it would probably be the intended point of the name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can anyone explain what page eleven, "Tomography," is supposed to mean? The example on the previous page seemed straight forward, when I got to page eleven I had no idea what I was looking at.

<comment><USER24> radon transform is used to produce tomography images. just take a look at the wikipedia page... s/he's talking about that...

<comment><USER23> I guess(??) I could have been clearer.

I understand what tomography is. I am curious how to interpret the three images and the differences. What does this page demonstrate to the reader? To me they look almost exactly the same. The one big difference is that the original has the the intersecting arrows. (I am also not really sure what the arrows are supposed to convey.)

<comment><USER25> It's a simulation showing how 1% FP error doesn't have much effect on the result. They look almost the same...that's the point.

If you don't know what the arrows represent then you maybe don't understand what tomography is after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I understand the speed and energy efficiency of the proposed design can only be reached with specially designed hardware, but couldn't some of the expected effects be achieved on existing cpu-core-hardware designs by using the lower precision requirements?

Also this could be nice code golf idea: solve algorithm xyz only with a strictly limited cpu instruction set, which could be chosen to be those operations which are very quick resp. very energy efficient on a target platform...

<comment><USER27> specifically it would be interesting to compare GPU (instead of classic CPU) vs. proposed imprecise approach

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of Albert Edgar and Samuel Lee's paper in CACM in 1979, "FOCUS Microcomputer Number System".

</comment><comment><USER29> 1% error is, in some sort of half-assed sense, comparable to a signal-to-noise ratio of -40dB which strikes me as a lot of noise to be adding to a problem.

</comment><comment><USER30> This HW is a lot like [the Parallella's]([http://www.parallella.org/](http://www.parallella.org/))

</comment><comment><USER31> This guy is totally stupid. I just read 4th slide.

1% error - what that means? Error in mantissa? Shorter mantissa? Simplified IEEE?

He writes O(5K) and presumes it to be "better" than 500K ... wtf? Does he know what O() means?

So, he basically "rounds" the values in images, mentions some recent technologies and says "if we had better engineers, we would have flying cars blah blah blah ...".

<comment><USER32> This design is utter computational tripe that completely ignores Amdahl's Law or any notion of data-parallelism.

His 1% error comes from relying on 7-bit logarithmic floating point used in a task-parallel manner. This is a non-starter for HPC. While most theoretical models certainly have 1% or greater underlying errors in accuracy, a 1% or worse error in precision is going to doom these algorithms to numerical instability without Herculean additional effort that would obliterate the computational advantage here.

Neural networks? See The Vanishing Gradient Problem.

Molecular dynamics? It's numerically unstable without 48-bit or better force accumulation as proven by D.E. Shaw.

NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have invested a huge sum in manycore processors that are already too hard to program for most engineers. These processors are a cakewalk in comparison to what's proposed here.

Finally, even if you did find a task amenable to this architecture (and I'd admit there may be some computer vision tasks that might work here), where's the data bus that could keep it fed? We're already communication-limited with GPUs for a lot of tasks. Why do we even need such a wacky architecture?

<comment><USER33> Computational approximation has been shipped en masse very successfully.

You mention GPUs but did you know that GPUs already do a lot of approximate math, for example, fast reciprocal and fast reciprocal square root?

You mention how approximation must be impossible in all these applications (because REASONS) but all methods that numerically integrate some desired function are doing refined approximation anyway. If you have another source of error, that lives inside the integration step, it may be fine so long as your refinement is still able to bring the error to zero as the number of steps increases.

Your diagnosis of "utter computational tripe" and the accompanying vitriol seem completely inappropriate.

<comment><USER32> Really? I don't know about GPUs? That's news to me! Did you know that the precision of the fast reciprocal square root on NVIDIA GPUs is 1 ulps out of 23 bits? That's a world of difference away from 1 ulps out of 7 bits. I wouldn't touch a 7-bit floating point processor. Life is too damned short for that.

And that's because I have spent days chasing and correcting dynamic range errors that doomed HPC applications that tried to dump 64-bit double-precision for 32-bit floating point. It turns out in the end that while you _can_ do this, you often need to accumulate 32-bit quantities into a 64-bit accumulator. Technically, D.E. Shaw demonstrated you can do it with 48 bits, but who makes 48-bit double precision units?

I stand by the computational tripe definition (with the caveat that Hershel has now posted an app where this architecture is possibly optimal). My objections to the broad extraordinary claims made in the presentation above.

And hey, you're a game developer, let me give you an analogy: would you develop a software renderer these days if you were 100% constrained to relying on mathematical operations on signed chars? It's doable, but would you bother? Start with Chris Hecker's texture mapper from Game Developer back in the 1990s, I'm guessing madness would ensue shortly thereafter. Evidence: HPC apps on GPUs that rely entirely on 9-bit subtexel precision to get crazy 1000x speedups over traditional CPU interpolation do not generally produce the same results as the CPU. If the result is visual, it's usually OK. If it's quantitative, no way.

<comment><USER34> > who makes 48-bit double precision units?

IIRC Cray did (but they called it "single"). =)

Snark aside, I agree broadly with the points your making here. This isn't especially groundbreaking; this is using the fact that logarithmic number representations don't require much area to implement if you don't need high- accuracy and are willing to trade latency for throughput (something that FPGA programmers have been taking advantage of since forever), and then going shopping for algorithms that can still run correctly in such an environment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We need JavaScript to fix the web - <AUTHOR> https://www.christianheilmann.com/2016/10/14/we-need-javascript-to-fix-the-web/ <comment><USER2> This is a really long blog post that takes until the very, very end to make its point: that Javascript support must be assumed on the client for the web to move forward (ie. progressive enhancement is dead). It doesn't even clearly state this point, so I'm paraphrasing.

There's some other tangential points here and there, like suggesting to not "to blindly use" it, and how new form factors require new thinking, or whatnot, but these are pretty generic claims that are fairly noncontroversial and usually a given.</comment>


Scribd job posting (using scribd) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/11439198/Scribd-job-posting

<comment><USER2> They should get WebKit running in that Flash widget. Now that would be seriously redundant.

<comment><USER3> It's funny you mention that. In flash, text can be formatted with simple HTML markups for styling (tags like <bold>, etc..). It also uses CSS styling for components, although it's a fairly limited form of CSS.

The AIR runtime already has an HTML component*. All Adobe would need to do is stick it into the flash runtime and you could make it work with Flex :)

[http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/mx/controls/HTML.ht...](http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/mx/controls/HTML.html) )

<comment><USER4> But can the AIR HTML component run Flash?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> you should have displayed it in book mode -- then its a real job posting!

</comment><comment><USER6> It says I have to download some program called Adobe Flash to view this.

<comment><USER5> Scribd is great because rather than using PDF like most browsers, it uses flash

<comment><USER7> The world is still awaiting a good use for Flash.

I am, I suspect, much older than most HN readers (early 30s) and I remember a thing called RTF. It amuses me to see it constantly reinvented. And not improved.

<comment><USER5> I think YouTube is the best use of Flash.

Do you mean Rich Text Format? It's used by OS X a fair amount. Didn't know Microsoft invented it, neat.

<comment><USER7> The point being that a standard format for documents is a solved problem and has been for years.

<comment><USER3> It's not that simple. You need a format that can represent any kind of document. Good luck trying to convert a powerpoint with complex shapes and background images into a RTF. There are only two formats that can really do that, while being viewed inside a browser - swf and images.

<comment><USER8> Does anyone want a PowerPoint with complex shapes and background images?

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1)

<http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/>

<comment><USER3> Nobody is stopping you from using latex,beamer,and emacs and taking a weekend to finish your slides. But if you want something done in fifteen minutes that looks good, use powerpoint.

<comment><USER9> I am faster using TeX's beamer classes than fighting Powerpoint's UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> is there a second page or am I missing something?

<comment><USER11> Here's the original:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=451733></comment></comment>


A First Look at BankSimple - <AUTHOR> http://banksimple.com/blog/BankSimple/a-first-look-at-BankSimple/ <comment><USER2> As someone who have worked a lot for banks and actually already done some of this work let me offer a viewpoint.

Last year my company managed to get a large Danish bank to implement tracking into their netbank. This is no small accomplishment, which anyone knowing just a little bit about how the IT departments in the banking industry normally works, the systems they work on are arcane.

It took us 18 months from getting the bank to like the idea into actually getting it launched.

The results have been nothing but extraordinary everyone loves it.

The reason they love it is because it's automatic. They get insights into their economy that they could not previously get. There is something quite amazing about seeing your spendings categorized for the first time without you having to do anything.

The banks have a unique identifier on each transaction that can be measured up against a category list. This is something Mint and Wesabe can't do because you can't export that unique identifer from the banks.

The big advantage of BankSimple and why I think it's going to be huge is because they don't have a legacy system to deal with.

In other words BankSimple can potentially be anything you could ever dream of a bank being, because BankSimple will be able to cross reference the data in order to provide not just cost reduction but service improvement.

The banking industry are just waiting to be disrupted by someone like BS. There are thousands of ways to create a better banking experience. BS is a good first stab at it IMHO.

<comment><USER3> I've said this here before, but when I worked at a big bank all the visionaries weren't worried about other banks, they were worried about Google and Ebay. The core business of a bank is built on hardware and software. They knew that a bank built on distributed systems instead of mainframes could beat the big banks on features and cost. It'll be interesting to see if BankSimple can scale up fast enough to compete or if it'll attract the attention of someone with even deeper pockets who can catch up by simply outspending them.

<comment><USER4> There are lots of banks that could easily outspend BankSimple, what they lack is vision, which is far more scarce than money these days.

<comment><USER3> Banks are in a rough spot, actually. The big ones have a _HUGE_ installed base which makes any changes very, very difficult. My division of the bank had tens of thousands of cobol jobs that ran daily or weekly. (We also had thousands of ETL jobs, web apps, etc. that depended on those cobol jobs.) Trying to shift the core functionality away the mainframe would have been a decade-long boondoggle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody actually think this way? As in, do people actually go to their bank's website because they'd like to spend money and want to find out how much they have to spend?

Described this way, this just seems like a tool to facilitate a fundamentally unhealthy way to think about your money. If you're thinking in terms of "How much can I spend today", you've already lost. (Unless, of course, you're 23, in which case your entire goal in life should be to sock away enough money that you never need to ask that question again in relation to food/rent/etc.)

I like the transaction searching capabilities shown in the demo, but I was hoping to see more info on how to do actual "banking" tasks. Can I initiate a wire transfer from an internet cafe in Laos? Can people send a check to an address in the US that automatically gets deposited in my account? That sort of thing. When these guys came on the scene, I got the impression that that was the kind of thing they'd be doing better than other banks. Frankly, sorting my past transactions just isn't a problem I desperately need to have solved.

<comment><USER6> This is the myopia of the affluent. Many people, not just 23 year olds, do live paycheck to paycheck, and need to know on any given day how much they can spend without overdrawing. The answer to this question is hard to find from most banks, who make money from fees and have an interest in their poorer customers overdrawing their accounts by a few bucks so they can charge an overdraft fee. This is a problem that, for instance, Elizabeth Warren has talked about a lot.

Banksimple is trying to build a bank that doesn't suck, and banks suck for a lot of reasons. These features will be helpful to anyone who is living on a low income, either due to misfortune or choice.

<comment><USER7> That's a reasonable response and I'm very sympathetic to Elizabeth Warren's mission. I hold the greatest innovation the financial industry could come up with, over the long run, is a better educated consumer.

But is this a product that is aimed at low income customers? I struggle to see, from what's presented here, how that particular demographic will benefit from on online bank, iphone mobile banking app, or whatever else BankSimple has to offer.

Has BankSimple cast away deceptive or exploitative fees and the diabolical legalese of the small print? Have consumer advocates endorsed BankSimple as an example of a new more consumer-friendly bank? That would be great, if so, for that strikes me as a core part of Warren's crusade.

<comment><USER6> I think a bank aimed at providing a good service to consumers, with a great user interface and features that are beneficial to low income customers, has the potential to be truly useful to that demographic.

The two things that could get in the way are marketing and access. I agree that, so far at least, it does appear to be marketing to... well, a hacker news croud. This may change as they open to the general public. Certainly, HNers probably make better beta customers for just about any business. Let's hope they start making themselves known outside the tech field, for their sake and ours.

As far as access, obviously the poorest of the poor probably don't have access to an online bank, and if you make the bank unusable to people without a smart phone, you're limiting it even further. On top of that, it's not clear yet whether they will have stringent credit rating requirements that could shut a lot of people out who need a service like this.

My hope is that BankSimple will keep in mind how important they could be to people who really do need a less malevolent bank. They certainly could end up appealing only to an affluent crowd, but I get the feeling that they have a certain amount of zealous righteousness that could translate good user experience into a truly new type of bank. I do think they are that ambitious, and I think they have the opportunity to fulfill that ambition. But it's still up to them to prove that their heart is in the right place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is where I _hope_ / _pray_ /etc BankSimple is going:

I want a personal financial API for myself. If you want to bill me for something, you don't write down a bunch of text on a piece of paper, stick that inside of another piece of paper, and then pay somebody to put it through a slot in my door (along with all of the coupon mailers, prepaid credit card offers, and VOTE FOR ME! envelopes that I get), you call up blhack's financial API and request a payment from it.

When this happens, I get an email, or an SMS, or whatever else telling me:

"USBank has requested a payment of $347 from you. They have requested payment by October 20th, 2011 -- Note: Car Payment"

or

"City of Tempe has requested a payment of $60 from you. They have requested payment by October 8th, 2011 -- Note: Water Bill"

etc. etc.

I can log into BankSimple and approve these payment requests (just like paypal, except [hopefully] BankSimple makes it affordable for my city, or my auto loan provider to do use).

It's an accountant for me. Except it's in one place, and it doesn't cost anything. There are companies that have tried this, and failed miserably, mostly because they appear to lack the technical expertise that something like BankSimple is bringing to the table.

The banking system, right now, is a disaster. The things I'm describing are all possible right now, but they're an enormous pain in the ass to use.

BankSimple: if you're _not_ doing this, do it.

<comment><USER9> I've had exactly this idea! It's sort of like a credit card, except a "swipe" just gives the merchant an end-point to send bills to. You still have to authorize each bill, but your bank could automatically pay any bills that you haven't contested by their due date (or whatever policy you prefer).

I am TERRIBLE at paying bills on time, even though I always have the money to pay them. There's way too much diligence required.

<comment><USER10> I used to be terrible with these, until I sent up a lot of automatic payments. For the most part this is just logging into the various provider's websites and setting it up. The one I can't do this for is rent, so my bank has a bill- pay function that just sends our landlord a check for the rent every month. It has been very convenient and when he comes by and claims we didn't pay we can point out it was already mailed and he's the one who lost it (he is very disorganized).

<comment><USER9> Not all bills are periodic. For example, I've paid a lot of late parking ticket fees.

<comment><USER10> I have missed paying a few parking tickets myself. I guess I don't think of non-recurring payments as bills. That is probably just due to the way the term is used in popular culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> US consumer banking is archaic and can't be fixed with just another bank. The whole process is broken and it requires an industry change.

I applaud BankSimple for what they are doing but in the big picture it doesn't solve the major problems.

My biggest gripes with the banks:

\- Can't wire money to someone else without going into the bank and paying ridiculous fees (Last time I checked, $25 for domestic, $45 for international). INGDirect attempts to make this better but the receiver still needs to have an email address and go through a procedure to receive the money. It's also slow, average is 2-3 days.

\- It's easier and cheaper for me to use checks. It costs me nothing to deposit it but I have to pay a fee to receive a wire transfer. Wires have a lot fever errors than checks and a wire of over $5k doesn't have to be put on hold because the bank has to verify a check. The banks punish you for using wires instead of checks.

\- When you go online and use bill pay the bank will pay a 3rd party to print and mail a check!! How is this electronic payment. (This does not apply to large firms like the phone company which will receive the payment electronically but small business can't utilize this!)

\- Why no IBAN? Swift requires intermediary banks which charge a fee on your international wire.

\- No chips on debpit/credit cards. In Europe most banks issue cards with chips on them. This would eliminate the risk of getting skimmed if only the US would also start using chips instead of the magnetic stripe.

I just don't understand why the banks do this. Someone enlighten me.

<comment><USER12> > When you go online and use bill pay the bank will pay a 3rd party to print > and mail a check!! How is this electronic payment.

Is this true? That boggles my mind.

<comment><USER13> It depends on the payee. Many payees do support electronic payment; banks will print a check for those that don't. Encouraging people to use bill pay for everything allows them to collect fees from the payee for those who collect electronically, and/or save their own processing costs. If they didn't support _all_ payees, however, people would be more reluctant to use the bill pay system. So it's a marketing decision, to support payees that aren't capable of receiving electronic payments yet.

<comment><USER11> The whole issue is that payees have to pay to receive electronic payment but can receive check payments for free. That makes no sense to me. It should be the other way around. Even if a small business wanted to receive payments electronically the fees are too high for small volumes.

<comment><USER13> It might make sense in some cases; it takes less labor to accept electronic payments than paper-check payments. If the fees cost less than paper-check processing labor, it makes sense to pay the fees. I agree that it might not make sense for smaller businesses though - but that's why there's the check fallback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some questions I never bothered to actually ask of my current banking system probably because I've known people that had accounts with them and have seen several branch locations but I'd like to ask of BankSimple.

BankSimple is a bank account yes or no? I mean a real certified banking system? Are they required to meet governmental guidelines of official banks?

What guarantee (if any) do I have that my money will be there in the morning? Is there some guarantee that if I go to login to bankSimple tomorrow morning and the domain doesn't resolve emails get bounced etc, would there be any recourse for me? [again, never bothered to ask that of my real bank but I suppose a brick and mortar institution instills more confidence]

Visa, MasterCard, Amex... Is the bankSimple card backed by any of these institutions? Can I walk into to some random QuickStop gas station and pay using your card like I could with my current bank card?

What kind of development and testing infrastructure do you guys utilize? Are you able to roll out updates to limited groups of real users so you can test changes on a small scale before rolling them out to every one? I'm more curious as to this aspect because I attribute to BankSimple more of a website or new software company [which I envision bugs and glitches that get worked out with feedback] rather than a traditional bank [which surprisingly even though I know is capable of making mistakes, I don't really worry about bugs]

Will BankSimple eventually if not at launch do other bank-y things like consumer loans, offer savings bonds, etc?

What about fraud protection? What if some one steals my card and buys a bunch of stuff with it? [Ok, I've asked my bank about this one at least]

<comment><USER15> They answer a few of these questions on their FAQ: <https://banksimple.com/faq/>

* They are not a bank. They are essentially a web frontend for wholesale banks. Thus they are regulated differently.

* You do have the benefit of FDIC insurance, but it's unclear what ability you have to access your funds directly from the wholesale bank, or whether you are limited to BankSimple.

<comment><USER16> That's correct. We're also using Visa for processing.

You can read more about our partners here: <http://banksimple.com/blog/BankSimple/partners-funding/>

<comment><USER17> How is BankSimple different from mint.com searching through my Bank of America account statements? Alerts? Goals? I can do all that in mint.

<comment><USER16> We're a substitute for your bank, i.e. you'd use a BankSimple debit card, use our website or mobile app for payments and deposits, speak with our customer service representatives and so on.

<comment><USER17> My question is what does that buy me? Switching from an established bank to a mint.com like interface + an unknown bank that holds my deposits. There's no killer app to sign up for your service. Killer apps that I could think off are, (Holding deposits in multiple currencies, Savings account like interest on my checking. Right now the funds I park in checking for immediate expenses don't accrue interests till I move it to savings, Free payment gateway integration, so I could transact with anyone having a credit card like paypal, Free money transfers to any third-party bank in any currency in any country(you could kill western union with this)). Saying that I could grep through my statement more efficiently and visualize the data doesn't cut it as a market disruption.

<comment><USER18> I think the killer app is that this is a bank that actually cares about their customer's experience (because they know it's one of their big competitive advantages), and is coming at it from the standpoint of techies who understand what should be possible. In itself, that's not a checkbox on a feature list that you can line up against the other banks, but it should show itself in myriad ways as they rederive what a bank is from first principles. They're obviously not done. If they keep pushing, that's exciting.

Also, since they're likely to be run much more cost efficiently than most banks, they should be able to do a lot of things without the normal gotcha fees.

<comment><USER19> I get all that from First Republic now. Great web tools, no-fee access to any ATM, and fantastic phone support.

<comment><USER18> I'm not just looking for a bank that does the standard stuff somewhat better, or is nicer to me. There is a _lot more_ that could be done. Wealth management related startups like Mint have scratched that surface, but with an end to end implementation of a bank and all the tools and data that brings, a lot more becomes possible.

Also, First Republic's site looks like something made with a table layout in the 90s and left alone since, so I doubt that they're doing anything innovative on the consumer facing side that requires any amount of tech expertise.

<comment><USER19> Admittedly my finances are pretty simple, but my bank is something I really don't want to think about much or spend a lot of time dealing with. Maybe if someday I have a _lot_ of wealth to manage I'll feel differently. The most important thing is that I can always get somebody on the phone right away that is informed and helpful.

First Republic's web tools aren't going to win any design awards but they do the job and have never given me any trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't get it. I don't get the point of it. Searching through a list of things? How is that making my banking simpler?

It seems to have turned into a credit card statement search & visualisation engine.

<comment><USER21> After watching the video, it reminds me of the iPad. Doesn't do anything you couldn't do before, but it does it faster and in a more attractive and pleasing way. These improvements are so great that it becomes a qualitatively different experience. This looks about as much nicer than Mint as Mint does than my bank website, and that counts for a lot to me. I'm eagerly awaiting a chance to try them out for myself.

<comment><USER20> Let's compare it to the iPod, for example. Before the iPod, I played music. After the iPod, I played music - but in a more convenient way.

After this app, I can search my statements in a convenient way. The problem is that right now I am not searching my statements at all. They seem to be solving a problem that I have not had so far.

<comment><USER22> I liken it more to a smartphone: before I had high-quality internet access in my pocket, I didn't care about it. It wasn't a problem I was looking to solve or a want I had.

Now that I can search Wikipedia or Google at a moment's whim, I find myself confused when I don't have it.

BankSimple may turn out like this: hardly anyone does this kind of searching and organizing of their bank statements because it simply hasn't been easy enough for anyone to care. Once it is, you might not want to go back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I haven't followed news about BankSimple, and the firs few minutes of the demo I watched didn't help me understand what it is. Is BankSimple an actual bank (with ATM card, routing numbers, etc.)? Or is it a PayPal competitor? Or is it just a front end that interacts with Banks? Going to BankSimple.com, it seems like it's trying to be an actual bank. But the demo on the website made it seem more like a Mint competitor. So, BankSimple is just another bank but with a potentially super-awesome website? So far, I'm not convinced.

<comment><USER24> Yes, it is an actual bank. With an ATM card (and no fees). You are right the demo on the website didn't hint to that too much, but perusing through the site it becomes a bit clearer.

I also emailed support a while back wondering if it acts as a layer on top of my existing bank, or whether its a replacement: their answer was "its a complete replacement".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems like Wesabe hooked up to the bank network.

Search and categorized transactions are cool, but does the categorization require manual tagging? I'm pressed for time in my day, and I am not going to spend more than 5 minutes to look at my bank statements, unless I'm specifically sitting down to budget. My biggest concern with a service like this is the time it's asking from you. So many services designed to "make my life simpler" actually require spending more time than just not using the service at all. For that reason, your mobile app needs to be killer.

<comment><USER26> I came to say the same thing - Wesabe had a similar concept of "safe to spend" and for me it made it a great app. I was disappointed to see them go under. Bank Simple doesn't appear to bring a whole lot new to the table.

<comment><USER27> > Bank Simple doesn't appear to bring a whole lot new to the table.

BankSimple, unlike Mint/Wesabe, is an actual bank* (*ok not techincally for regulatory reasons, but you will store money with them). You will keep/deposit your money there, and be able to spend it via BankSimple-branded debit cards. Its a whole additional level of integration over Mint/Wesabe, which are just web frontends to existing bank accounts

<comment><USER2> And this is actually very important to realize before you will begin to understand the completely different paradigm this allow for. It's a very big thing that it's not "just" a frontend. It means access to completely different kinds of data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a beautifully clean design. I like the simplicity of it.

What I worry about is the security behind the scenes and the sharing of sensitive information between BankSimple and the banks.

And trademarking "Safe-To-Spend"? Come on... It's a math equation that shows how much running profit you have. You don't need to trademark such a thing unless you intend to use it in advertising or throughout the website, yet I only see it used in one place. Next thing you know it'll be patented.

Maybe I missed it in the video, but what I would like to see from any of these types of websites is a consolidated view of multiple accounts and banks. So if I have chequing and savings accounts at 3 different banks, I would like a dashboard of my entire spending and saving. It's easy to lose sight of this when you look at individual bank statements.

<comment><USER29> > And trademarking "Safe-To-Spend"? Come on... It's a math equation that shows > how much running profit you have. You don't need to trademark such a thing > unless you intend to use it in advertising or throughout the website, yet I > only see it used in one place. Next thing you know it'll be patented.

That's rather extreme. For one thing, they're not advertising and they haven't launched their website yet. It's also not a math equation: it's a _name_ which is what trademarks are _for_.

<comment><USER28> What's extreme? I expressed an opinion about a selling tactic used on a website.

I realize that one trademarks a name, which is why later in the sentence I used the word "patent" for the process (of the math equation).

Everything in that video was an advertisement. That was the point of it, and good on them for doing so. The simplicity of the design, words used, and the trademarks and imagery of the product. The whole point of the video in the link is to drum up hype and future business.

What I disagreed with was their use of Safe-To-Spend without further explanation on why it was being trademarked. Otherwise it's just a waste of money. They could have called the result anything and leave the silly trademarks for later, unless they specifically had something to sell the consumer on with that name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love it. It works just like my brain does.

Sadly (for me) it also works just like my iPhone App "Payday" does (without the live bank ability) that was released last year and then sank without a trace (albeit partly due to a silly bug).

Being able to earmark money for bills in advance and set yourself saving goals is really cool (and was also the core feature of Payday).

If anyone would like to try these features before the release of Bank Simple you can find it here:

<http://toccame.com/>

and here

<http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/payday/id351013628>

Just beware of a small bug that makes the calculations go off if you choose the last day of the month as Payday. _(Yeah. I know. Sadly the talented programmer I worked with has had to move onto other projects. Maybe one day we can fix it. sigh)_

</comment><comment><USER31> Safe-to-spend balance is great but will it be enforced? I currently calculate my safe to spend balance but nothing stops me from over spending. I don't have the willpower. It would be great if the bank simple card will only let me spend my safe-to-spend balance. So if my safe-to-spend balance is $20 and I go to an ATM and try to withdraw $50, it will decline.

<comment><USER32> That's exactly what we're doing. If you tell us about your savings goals, you can then "lock" the goals that you really don't want to dip into if you're overspending. We'll prevent transactions from going through, in that case. We keep you honest :)

<comment><USER13> Your presentation mentioned that goals may be allocated to CD ladders and the like - if so, what happens if you 'dip into' this? Wouldn't you be hit with an unexpected CD early withdrawal fee then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am excited by the 'how much can I spend' feature and NLP search. And this is the first bank that I would consider moving to. However, my current bank, rather a credit union is absolutely phenomenal in terms of online banking. I have had quite a few different banks accounts in my young life and am very impressed by the level of innovation from a relatively small institution.

My credit union is UW Credit Union. They have recently launched an updated version of their site as well as previously included Mint like features. It is great. I feel as though that as soon as UW Credit Union gets wind of BS, if they haven't already, will incorporate some of what BS is doing.

Banking is definitely an industry ready to be disrupted.

</comment><comment><USER9> So I'm getting more interested in banking and accounting, largely because a friend and I are starting a business for the first time. When I saw "Accounting for Computer Scientists" on HN ([http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for- comput...](http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer- scientists.html)) it was a revelation to me, because I didn't realize that accounting could be so cleanly modeled as a graph structure.

Ever since then I've been itching to create some git-like software for accounting, where you have a repository of accounts and transactions. I feel like there is so much unexplored territory here in terms of analysis and visualization. For example, I want a way of saying "this insurance bill is for six months of coverage" and then seeing my bi-weekly breakdown of expenses include two weeks worth of that insurance bill. I want to be able to tag expenses as non-discretionary (taxes), periodic (mortgage), or discretionary (latte) as an easy way of understanding my overall cash flow. I want to be able to amortize my vacations over the whole year. etc.

I want to be able to view what my hypothetical cash flow would be if I cut out certain periodic expenses or added others.

A lot of this is probably more complicated than what most people would want to do -- that's why I think the important part is having a standard repository model that's easily programmable.

<comment><USER34> You might find this interesting: <https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is something that people would want. But I have a question about business model choice here, because I'm curious why they chose to become a front-end to various banks in this way.

Why choose to be a middle-man here (with all of the pain/cost of providing customer service, etc.) when they could be an enterprise software vendor or a SaaS provider? Banks don't actually make that much off of depositors, right? I'm not saying they made a bad choice; I wanted to see if anyone could rationalize it for me.

Surely banks (especially smaller regional banks and credit unions) would pay good prices to have this software power their banking websites so that they could care for their customers in a more sophisticated way. Right now my credit union, in the Bay Area, has a functional but very ugly e-banking and bill-pay platform which has clearly been purchased from a third party vendor and customized (checkfree, I think ([http://www.checkfreecorp.com/cda/corp/L5.jsp?layoutId=51501&...](http://www.checkfreecorp.com/cda/corp/L5.jsp?layoutId=51501&contentId=140&menuId=47774&pId=50062)).

I guess I don't understand where significant revenues will come from in a model like this.

<comment><USER36> The user experience, from the website, mobile to device to phone calls, will be a big part of people signing up. There are a lot of people out there who are unhappy with their banks. If they get enough users to sign up with them, the actual banks on the back end (which will probably be a collection of smaller, unknown, entitities), wield less and less power, cause in theory BS would be able to switch over from one bank to another and the user wouldn't know, or care. This may allow them to force certain banks to provide revenue sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> One of the reasons I ditched Mint was because it was 2-3 days laggy due to having to scrape and process the data from my bank. I have yet to find anything that beats simply recording all my expenditures in a spiral notebook and reconciling it with my bank's online account once a day. That, plus "When I get paid, I pay my bills first". How simpler could it be? (Frost Bank in Texas, here)

<comment><USER38> BankSimple is a bank, so there's no delay (beyond however long it takes your actual bank to get the data).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nice looking site! Why did you not use any green in the UI? For example the direct deposit of $100 is black and doesn't stand out too much, whereas if it was a nice green I immediately can make a correlation. For the users emotion's, seeing a sea of green transactions could evoke more happiness compared to black. A green background on the "Safe-To-Spend" section seems more intuitive than a red one, perhaps it can turn red as it gets close to a 'danger zone' of spending (Calculated based on their spending habits/frequency).

Lastly, everyone keeps mentioning that categorization is very important, yet categorization isn't that noticeable. I did not notice it until you demoed it. I might have found it on my own fairly easily if I wasn't being demo'd though, so its somewhat unfair to say. Rather than having users create very common categories (food, rent, transportation) make those default and more visible whether it be adding inset icons, or changing position/color of that section.

Great job! :)

</comment><comment><USER40> I had thought that BankSimple was slimming down the traditional banking model and passing the savings (in the form of interest) to customers. I still love that they're tackling Goliaths but they need to be a little clearer on their vision and value proposition.

<comment><USER41> _slimming down the traditional banking model and passing the savings (in the form of interest) to customers_

That's ING Direct's business model. It was hard to beat until the recession started and interest rates crashed, but even now it's pretty great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Very interesting. I like the concept of having only one account. The goals tab looks very useful.

The video states that the "safe to spend" feature calculates recurring bills and such. Is there a way to view and manage these?

</comment><comment><USER43> IMO

Banks should be good at doing one thing. Holding my liquid assets. However, history has proven to us that even that is a challenge for banks. Where banks thrive in size, most banks lack in vision. I believe that banks are not software companies, at least not in spirit. Some banks are better at utilizing technology and others are not.

My challenge to BankSimple: prove me wrong.

We have to remember what a bank traditionally is, break that down, and build it from the ground up without the walls that immobilizes it today.

</comment><comment><USER44> Love the design! While I think there is quite a ways to go, I will most certainly give BankSimple a shot when it is publicly released.

Upon seeing the video though, specifically when he was searching through for the bar that he went to, I started wondering how long it'll take before we can actually see precisely what we paid for at said location rather than having to dig through receipts.

I have no idea when that time will come, but when it does, I'll welcome it with open arms.

</comment><comment><USER45> I imagine this is a US only Bank?

<comment><USER46> The guy in the video sounds Australian, but for some odd reason he says 'math' instead of 'maths'. So you're probably right... boo. Looking forward to the day when people don't stay in one place and startups begin catering to us itinerants.

<comment><USER47> Not some odd reason - he's an ex-pat in the finance industry. It's like how I had modified my pronunciation of 'cache' (although I refuse to change how I say 'data').

BankSimple are based in Portland, Oregon (so yes, US).

<comment><USER48> It's also interesting to note that in the U.S., companies are thought of as a standalone entity, and referred to in the singular, rather as a group of people.

So, it'd be "BankSimple is based in...", instead of "BankSimple are based in...".

When I first started reading things from the UK, I initially thought the writers simply used poor grammar :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm quite happy with my bank's customer service, interest rates and fees. And I use Mint.com to get a view of all accounts including retirement, investments, etc.

So, from my view, BankSimple just does not provide enough value. Hopefully for BankSimple's sake, others are not satisfied like I am.

</comment><comment><USER50> Now that I'm getting a better feel of what BankSimple is about, I don't think it's that revolutionary an idea. I'm not even sure I will use it. Most of what they showed, and more can be accomplished using Mint. And, Mint offers more choice by being an aggregator.

<comment><USER51> And Mint lets you pick a bank like USAA, that has great service as a core competency, rather than trusting a web company like BankSimple that is good at sleek-looking tech.

<comment><USER38> Then again, BankSimple's _only_ purpose is great service. They delegate the actual money to a partner bank. So... Yeah. It doesn't really get much better than that in terms of motivation.

<comment><USER51> Am I wrong in thinking that BankSimple outsourced phone/email support to their partner banks?

Because as far as I can tell, BankSimple has no interest in service at all. They're just a shiny tech company.

<comment><USER38> As far as I know, yes, you are, in fact, completely wrong. The only thing partner banks handle is the actual money. You never talk to them. <https://banksimple.com/faq/#whatthedealis>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Shouldn't the Safe To Spend have changed when you scheduled 20 buck a payment to adam?

</comment><comment><USER53> One thing I love is that I can have checks mailed to Bank Simple, and they'd automatically deposit the monies in my account.

I get quite a few checks, but not enough that I'd want to get a check scanning machine for.

I'm on the beta list, and hope for an invite.

<comment><USER13> Most banks support this I thought - just mail a deposit slip and a check (signed, with a "FOR DEPOSIT ONLY" endorsement) to the right address. I've done it before with ETrade Bank and ING Direct at least, and I imagine brick- and-mortar banks would do this processing if you mailed the check to a nearby branch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Looks awesome. I would love to see a clone of BankSimple in India. The bureaucracy will be a pain but if you can successfully navigate it and create a simple no-frills online only bank, it will be a great success.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wake me up when they have the deposit-from-phone working on Android phones.

<comment><USER51> USAA meets your needs today.

<comment><USER38> Unless you're not related to a ex-military person. Then it meets none of your needs, since you can't use it.

<comment><USER56> I'm not a USAA member, but that's a complete myth. See this link for the facts: [https://www.usaa.com/inet/pages/why_choose_usaa_eligibility_...](https://www.usaa.com/inet/pages/why_choose_usaa_eligibility_main)

"USAA's investment products, most checking and savings products, credit cards, life insurance, and shopping and discounts are available to other individuals. USAA auto and property insurance is not available due to membership eligibility requirements."

<comment><USER38> Touché sir. I had looked at their insurance in the past and very unfortunately extrapolated to the entire organization. My mistake and thank you very much for correcting that misconceived notion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Neat. Now gear up for some honest feedback on your blurb :)

>A First Look at BankSimple

FB: Ok, though "Sneak Peek" is easier to relate to than "First Look".

>Joshua Reich, Wed September 21, 2011

FB: Ok.

>We've been very cautious on our blog and website about >talking about what we've been building.

FB: Redundant. Why are you telling me you've been "cautious"?

>Instead, we've focused on our vision.

FB: What vision? Mention it. Mention the key value proposition.

> Today that is changing: Below is a first public sneak peek of BankSimple. We > think it's far more powerful to show than tell.

FB: Check capitalization. Focus on what the user is getting is getting, rather than what you feel("we think it's far..")

>And now we are ready to show. We've been testing the product for a few months now, and it has been awesome. >The product isn't finished. It will never be finished. We're constantly improving. But we've now reached the >point where we've learned as much as possible from testing internally and in a few weeks we'll be shipping > >cards to our first real customers.

FB: Mostly redundant. Only thing that's relevant is "We've successfully tested the product for a few months now, and are looking forward to ship it to our first customers over the next few weeks. (Click here to request a beta invite.)"

>This is only the beginning, but it is a tremendous step forward for our company.

FB: This line might be good for boosting the morale at a company internal meeting, but it means nothing to the customer. Also it seems to reinforce the idea that you're not ready yet to grab my attention.

>We will be sharing more important updates with you soon,

FB: Maybe be a little more specific than "soon"? "over the next couple of weeks"?

> but in the meantime,

FB: OK

>we hope that you enjoy this first look at our product –

FB: Redundant. What's there to enjoy?

>we'd love to hear your feedback.

FB: This looks like a call to action, with no visible action button. What should the user do to provide feedback? Maybe turn the "feedback" word at the end of the sentence to a hyperlink that points to a feedback page? Or better yet, use something lightweight like <http://webengage.com/> (disclaimer: it's made by a friend of mine).

</comment><comment><USER58> I was surprised to see that they put so much emphasis on the searching in the demo. The real value is in the "Goals" interface - which is well designed.

</comment><comment><USER59> BankSimple is as someone else pointed out, just a simpler, sleeker interface to banking.

Brett King's Movenbank tries to reinvent banking.

</comment><comment><USER60> sure, there's some cool stuff in here. but is it really enough to make anyone but a geek go through the hassle of adding yet another banking service? probably not, imo.

<comment><USER61> You don't add yet another banking service, you switch from your existing bank to BankSimple. The fact that they're not really a bank but partner with existing institutions is a behind-the-scenes thing that you never come into contact with as a BankSimple customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The value proposition doesn't appeal to me... Slick GUI, and I'm sure you guys work your asses off, but there's no compelling reason for me to switch to another bank.. that's a huge cost.. I am get off my ass to another bank, tell them to close my account, write a huge check to BankSimple, change my direct deposit, buy new checks, etc... Do you guys replace the checkbook? If so, I'll sign up. That's my main problem with the entire banking process. I hate writing checks and signing checks. When I write a check to the IRS and somehow get a single number wrong, I have to rewrite the whole thing. It seems strangely ancient that we still have this process in place today.

<comment><USER2> I guess it depends on how you use your bank. I never use my bank for anything but netbanking. In Europe checks are more or less obsolete. I haven't had a check book since I lived in the US back in the late nineties and early zeroes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> My two words of advice to BankSimple (well, two acronyms):

API and CLI</comment>


Ask HN: Any hacker meetups near Philadelphia? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of any periodic hacker meetings in or near Philadelphia?
If none exist yet, let's organize one. We could meet, say, twice a month at a local Borders to discuss the projects we're working on, startups, technology, business, etc. Anything that would fly on HackerNews would fly at our meetings.
If you're interested or have info on an existing one shoot me an email (see profile) and we'll go from there. <comment><USER2> The Philly On Rails group is a good place to start:

<http://www.phillyonrails.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Americans have become much less positive about tech companies impact on the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/29/americans-have-become-much-less-positive-about-tech-companies-impact-on-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> Even more interesting than the title is what's going on in the other categories surveyed. If you look at the charts half-way down the article, it's pretty clear that there's an increasing partisan divide on positivity ratings for higher education, large corporations, the finance/banking industry, and churches. This seems to echo pretty closely a lot of recent political rhetoric going into the election cycle.</comment>


Nerds Are Taking Your Lunch Money - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/nerds_are_taking_your_lunch_money/

<comment><USER2> I do find it fascinating that every time someone tries to use historical evidence to show the dangers of a current trend, they are inevitably accused of making light of the historical event and people ignore their actual statements. We seem to be actively hostile to learning from the past as a society and just operate on faith that the injustices and atrocities of our collective past will never happen again.

Obviously anything to do with Nazis or the Holocaust triggers this reaction faster and more severely, but it can happen with any subject. Every argument of "Currently A is happening. When A happened in {time/place} it led to B and then C, and we all agree B and C are really bad" will be met with "How dare you compare yourself to {time/place}! B and C aren't happening now and will never happen again" (with no explanation for what will prevent B and C from happening).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's the equivalent of the middlebrow dismissal we so often see here in HN, rather than any faith in humanity. As you mentioned, it is just too easy to come up with a generic "how dare you" response, which is guaranteed to draw in existing prejudices and pitchforks. I don't think the intent is to drown out rational debate of the original statement -- it just happens to be the victim in the race for clickcounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So because I think the rich don't pay nearly enough taxes, I'm part of some idiot mob? I don't know anyone who actively hates rich people. The whole thing seemed like a giant straw man to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree about the tax issue as well, but I thought this post was particularly articulate about analyzing an issue from a perspective that was unusual to me. I didn't have a good enough counterpoint to his argument, so I submitted the link here to get some discussion going. I don't think the intention here was advocacy or judgement.

You and I may be moderates, but you have to agree, there definitely are more than enough people who would support mob justice (to take a mild example, the attacks on Google's buses recently... the entire situation seems like a powder keg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Guys, it's just a HUGE COINCIDENCE that the Dilbert guy is a big fat conservative who already believes that the rich are literally persecuted.</comment>


RescueTime (YC winter 08) raises $900k to expand - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/22/rescuetime-proving-useful-for-the-enterprise-raises-900k

<comment><USER2> Since using RescueTime, My productivity has increased many orders of magnitude. I love it, especially on tuesdays and fridays when my focus fails me! B)

</comment><comment><USER3> Alaskamiller, I noticed your comment at the top of the TC post: "Chris Sacca = Google buyout within a year."

I agree. If I founded a YC Company, or any other startup, I'd look at Omnisio's story and think about duplicating it. Clearly Chris Sacca was an important part of that acquisition. I think it's a very smart move to get him to invest.

It's just so incredibly important to take money from people are in the position to help you reach liquidation (if that is what you want). I know that sounds really obvious, but I'm sure some founders struggle with the decision to take money from the first person who offers, no matter how un-connected they are.

<comment><USER4> "I agree. If I founded a YC Company, or any other startup, I'd look at Omnisio's story and think about duplicating it."

I'm not saying I don't envy Omnisio's trajectory, but YC (and any other investor) has a vested interest in investing in companies that DON'T follow this path. They want empire builders, not build-to-flip folks. Not that Omnisio built with that in mind-- I heard them talking about a lot of long- term stuff, so I'm pretty sure they were building for the long term and just got a great early offer.

"It's just so incredibly important to take money from people are in the position to help you reach liquidation (if that is what you want)."

I've heard many times that companies get bought-- they don't get sold. In practice, I think having experienced folks in your corner helps (especially with setting price and terms)... But not nearly as much as having a company worth buying.

<comment><USER5> Just 'cause it's not obvious from the comment: webwright is one of the RescueTime founders, so he knows what he's talking about here. ;-)

<comment><USER4> Heh, I wouldn't go THAT far. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You got Tim Ferris! That is good work,

how many hours did it take him to close the deal? (jk)

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't that your old logo? Might be a good idea to shoot a new media packet over there to TC, especially at the rate you're growing it'd be good to keep the brand wrangled.

Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations! I lurk on the STS list and didn't see an announcement there yet.

And I agree with dustineichler, I haven't used RescueTime long, but it is already helping.

</comment><comment><USER9> talk about smart money, with 2 ultra connected web celeb investors on board things are looking good. Plus, $900k is a fairly small chuck on cash, leaving things wide open for whatever opportunities emerge. Deftly played guys, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats a ton to your team!

</comment><comment><USER11> dupe?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=311926>

<comment><USER10> Your comment's a dupe as well.

<comment><USER12> as is yours

<comment><USER13> this could go on forever

<comment><USER14> this could go on forever</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>