Ask HN: How can we take the politics back out of HN? - <AUTHOR> Lately more and more discussions have devolved into ideological flamewars based on political opinions and rumors. This thread is a perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17488716
Someone casually mentions something inflammatory which "everyone knows is true", of course someone else needs to correct them, and then those of the original opinion need to correct them.
I've been guilty of this too, and lately have been deleting comments before I post them upon reflection. What am I gaining by trying to "fix" this person's worlds view?
Can't we all just be nerds talking about cool tech again? <comment><USER2> I've said it before and I'll said it again, I don't think one can decouple a professional community and politics. (or more appropriately, I don't think one SHOULD.)

Politics is the framework under which we go about our work. I'd say "cool tech" is rather reductionist for what YC encompasses, even the earliest discussions on this site were about fundraising, startup ecosystem growth, economic climate, of course cool tech is a part but just one facet. We were never "just nerds talking about tech", I'd argue we are something far more fascinating than that, in a similar way to how an emergent community of e.g. entrepreneurial accountants or farmers might be fascinating if it started to become a natural center of discussion and focus for a wider audience.

To try and ignore politics insofar as we have a hand in it (and especially given the current zeitgeist we absolutely do) is to abscond from our responsibility to try and guide policy in a better direction, to discuss topics as a community so that we _don't_ devolve into ideology driven filter bubbles or surrender these decisions to be made by a perhaps less benevolent group. I aspire to that we can hold this higher example and try to be a good force in spreading positive debate.

I'm always nervous to say "not talking about politics is how we got here" (although with such low voter participation rates that MAY be a somewhat fair statement) but not talking about politics at _this_ point seems like pushing the giant elephant in the room under the rug.

<comment><USER3> Not talking about politics _here_ isn't the same thing as saying that this community should not talk politics. I don't think anybody on HN wants to sweep anything under the rug, or ignore any elephants in the room. But I also don't think anybody wants to spend all day dealing with doom and gloom and arguing about inane partisan bullshit. It would be nice to have some place as a refuge from that crap, where we can talk about "cool tech" and _not_ have to deal with all the other stuff in that moment.

<comment><USER2> A few responses to that.

1\. I'd echo from my first point, HN _never_ behaved as a "Refuge" the way you describe. If you're saying you'd like to see it changed to function as such, I can simply disagree on a precedent of "that's not how it got to be the HN we know and love", but this will likely end up being a subjective disagreement. Politics may have become _more_ central, but unfortunately I think we're going through a period where that's true in many aspects of life.

2\. In that same vein, HN has become something of a town-square for things tech. The "you can discuss it, just not here" is like when people say "well you can find things on the internet, google will just block them." Sure, that's factually true, but if it in effect cuts 95% of people out of ever seeing that subject matter, are you still really allowing discussion?

3\. I fear that by not talking about it the "insane partisan bullshit" will become more normalized, because the adult voices in the room have stepped out. It's for us to make sure that the discussions don't become "Crap."

4\. re: doom and gloom, unfortunately, "we have to sleep in the bed we made." If the broader world seems to be doom and gloom, I'm of the opinion that should be faced down without flinching. I'm not one to try and sugarcoat, fundamentally, that's just my personality, and again, one can philosophically go about life differently, but the way I look at things, an "only positive aspects of cool tech" discussion board would be disingenuous to the true scope of our impact, and lacking in much of the subtlety and interesting depth of discussion that made HN so compelling to me over the last 5-10 years.

<comment><USER3> _I 'd echo from my first point, HN _never_ behaved as a "Refuge" the way you describe._

Speaking as someone who has been here from every nearly the beginning, my perception is that it was much closer to that in the past (compared to today).

 _I 'm not one to try and sugarcoat,_

I'm not talking about sugar-coating anything. I'm saying that (pretty much) no one wants to be immersed in that stuff _all the time_. And in years past, HN seemed to be a site where one could mostly focus on tech/business stuff, without so much of the political baggage. I'd like to see that again. I find that I can get enough political discussion on Facebook / Twitter / meatspace. But, "different strokes for different folks" I guess. The site will ultimately be what the community makes it.

<comment><USER2> _my perception is that it was much closer to that in the past_

(EDIT: On a second read of our discussion, we may even be just talking about slightly unrelated things, in that you're unhappy there's more politics period, and I'm trying to justify that by saying "it's the same subject matter, politics is just necessarily more a component". One could justifiably not care about that distinction; it just strikes me as meaningful)

I don't think you're wrong persay, and while I've only been here over the last 6-7 years I've read the first hundred posts thousands of times due to HN being my defacto "social scraping test", and with a sampling of the first 10 stories, I'd stand by my assertion that unfortunately politics has been taking a heavier hand in things that previously may have seemed uncorrupted.

to give some concrete examples (from the first 10 posts):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4) (Real estate costs in NY, still a common topic, but nimbyism/zoning is a central focus, largely political)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5) (Big-co aquisitions, now when discussed come alongside concerns re: consolidation, antitrust, etc)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6) (Forecasting software; while not specifically based off of private data, the discussion nowadays would likely pivot to that due to topical relevence)

tl;dr, I don't necessarily agree with how much you may be implying the content has shifted, I just think politics plays a much stronger role in said content, or in our awareness of it, but again, this is perceptual and I'm not going to tell you "you're wrong" in having been there yourself.

 _The site will ultimately be what the community makes it._

Yup, and I try to limit my corrosion of this to trying to sway opinion softly. This all comes down to, for me, being more scared about LACK of attention/action, than if some threads go sideways.

<comment><USER3> _tl;dr, I don 't necessarily agree with how much you may be implying the content has shifted, I just think politics plays a much stronger role in said content, or in our awareness of it, but again, this is perceptual and I'm not going to tell you "you're wrong" in having been there yourself._

Sure, and likewise I can't say that you're "wrong". It is somewhat subjective. In that sense, it's possible for us to both be "right" at the same time.

Anyway, it's not - to me - a huge deal. There's a sort of change that I would like to see (I think), but I'm not so unhappy with the current state that I'm going to quit posting or anything. I mean, I'm here now, and in the end I'm pragmatic even when being so is a thorn in my own side. :-)

<comment><USER2> Aptly, and to me more indicative of _actual_ change (and somewhat sadder) than the politics about "now HN" is the fact that both of us have been greyed for what was, I think, a very reasonable discussion. (the fact that it's both gives me a chuckle while being slightly fascinating) The flagging/downvoting communities seem to have taken on a very reddit feel as opposed to what I rose-tintedly remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I kinda like politics here. Current amount/level, not zero and not more. I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Can 't we all just be nerds talking about cool tech again?_

That would be amazing, and I hope it happens. Even though I'm guilty of getting into ideological debates as well. I always feel dirty afterwards, even when I believe I'm right. I really would prefer to keep HN focused on tech / business, and keep the politics out as much as possible.

<comment><USER5> Tech and especially business _are_ politics. Or at least so tightly coupled it's infantile to pretend like they exist in a vacuum.

<comment><USER3> _Tech and especially business are politics._

In a pedantic sense, sure. You can always play reductionist games like that. "Everything is just atoms", right?

If you actually can't see that there's a difference between "geeks talking about cool tech" and the kind of ideologically driven political bickering that goes on here, I really don't know what to say. And anything I could say would be uncharitable, so I'll just stop here.

<comment><USER5> Like everyone else in this thread, I'm of the belief you don't come to the conclusion that tech is 'cool' without some ideological underpinning. And, in an open forum those underpinnings will be debated.

I suspect, that by "political bickering" you really mean "ideologies I don't agree with" (much like most people clamoring for a past civility that never existed). If you want an echo chamber, plenty of sites are around from that; they'll welcome you.

<comment><USER3> _Like everyone else in this thread, I 'm of the belief you don't come to the conclusion that tech is 'cool' without some ideological underpinning._

I'm pretty sure not everybody here believes that.

 _I suspect, that by "political bickering" you really mean "ideologies I don't agree with"_

Your suspicion is incorrect.

 _If you want an echo chamber,_

Who said anything about wanting an echo chamber?

<comment><USER6> Well, "cool" tech is very subjective and often based in some sort of tech ideology. Is Golang "cool"? I don't think so, but a lot of people do.

HN is flooded with posts like "Show HN: I made a web server in Go/Rust/Erlang". Clap clap, good for you. I find these articles quite worthless but leave them alone because hey, it's not like disk space on HN servers is a particularly limited resource. If some people want to talk about someone else's web server or yet-another-js-framework, that's no problem by me.

However, much of this sort of cheerleading is motivated by what can only be called ideology. For example, "Java is uncool and Oracle is bad" \+ "Rust is elite and Mozilla is cool" is a very common sort of opinion on Hacker News but this is really nothing to do with the technologies themselves. It's more based on a feeling that overtly wanting to make lots of money by owning IP is dirty and immoral, whereas giving it away for free and claiming you're motivated by an inherent love of openess and webbyness is pure and moral. This is really just politics in disguise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everything is political.

The current level is very good. Yes, there are some ideological clashes. Easily ignored.

What I see here is a fairly significant number of us see ideologies as reasoning tools, not means to better ends.

Secondly, the call for means and to those better ends are well represented.

More please. And I mean let it continue, not so much escalate.

At present, cool tech is no where near under threat. It is nice to get a look at politics here. That look is fairly unique. High value, so long as it does not break things.

I consistently read with great interest. Rarely comment. When I do, it is due to some take on the politics I find notable or resonant.

Also, I should mention ethics. That has come up here many times. Almost always good to read.

<comment><USER8>
         And I mean let it continue, not so much escalate.

With the moderation encouraging such thoughtfulness, I agree.

There may eventually be a point where the frustrations of seeing political inanities triggers a chilling effect on new insightful submissions/comments, but I'd be surprised if we are there yet.

<comment><USER7> Let us hope. There's a lot of people here with very interesting takes on politics.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Enterprise Software Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/669-why-enterprise-software-sucks <comment><USER2> Jason didn't dig deep enough on this one. _Why_ is the buyer not the user? Because enterprise operations are too big and complex for any one person to do the job.

Likewise, there is no one person that understands how the processes work or even why they all exist. This makes the job of enterprise software development incredibly difficult, it also means that individual stakes are smaller, and the law of averages makes it much more difficult for anyone to rescue the project and pull it above the fray.

Now consider the demand for qualified software developers, the glut of incompetent developers, the difficulty of identifying which is which for the non-technical hiring manager, the variety of world-changing and otherwise sexy jobs available out there for quality engineers, and it's no wonder enterprise software isn't as good as small boutique software like Basecamp.

I'm happy for Fried and company that they were able to dodge the enterprise software world even more deftly than they maneuvered themselves free of a different scourge of the creative persuasion--client work--but this article is a bit too self-congratulatory without offering any real insight or potential solutions to the very real problems that large companies face.

<comment><USER3> _Jason didn't dig deep enough on this one._

Jason Fried didn't author this article. It's credited to Zubair Hamed.

<comment><USER4> He did author the article, the latest by Zubair Hamed is the name of the latest commenter of Fried's article.

<comment><USER5> Ironically it's not as easy to understand (bad user experience?) - I would have been misled as well if you hadn't pointed it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think 37signals is half-right, but the other part of the dynamic is that enterprise software is "hidden," while consumer/web software is public.

Things suffer in the dark longer than they suffer in the light.

HP/IBM/BMC web interfaces for (intranet) products sold _this year_ would be laughed off the public web in five seconds (really bad frames, client-side Java applets, etc).

(Not to mention the poor organizations buying this stuff tend to have it for about 5 years post-purchase.)

That said, the dynamic is changing. Enterprise software/IT is getting consumerized. Sometimes unofficially (everybody uses their ipad at work, but gets/expects no help), sometimes officially (Google Apps has been adopted by some big organizations. Its enterprise product is slightly different from the consumer Google apps, but it's really dang close.)

Big business aside, I believe about 10 million students use Google Apps as their _official_ collab/email tool (not counting people's personal accounts. And Google adds a few big schools every month.). These students simply won't arrive at their jobs post-graduation willing to use Lotus Notes + .doc attachments.

Younger workers aren't the only thing leading to the consumerization of IT, there's a lot of influence coming from the Internet, and consumer hardware.

I don't want to hijack the thread, feel free to crawl my profile to find other places where I write about this stuff. Consumerization of old-school IT is my new pet area of research.

<comment><USER7> _Big business aside, I believe about 10 million students use Google Apps as their official collab/email tool (not counting people's personal accounts. And Google adds a few big schools every month.). These students simply won't arrive at their jobs post-graduation willing to use Lotus Notes + .doc attachments._

Haha, want to bet. They'll use whatever is expected because for some places Gmail isn't an option. Maybe in 10 years when some of these students have titles like SVP they can migrate to other platforms.

<comment><USER6> Heh. I should have been more clear.

I've "onboarded" (enterprisey word for orienting/registering/supporting/creating accounts for new hires) many new employees disoriented/frustrated by their new org's tools.

What often happens when a new hire really disagrees with his/her new tool for task is that they only use it for the "last mile" of the transaction.

So... say they have to turn in an expense report in Excel template. But they like some other app. They will take all their notes in $preferred_app, do all their editing in $preferred_app, and at the last step, export to Excel template.

You should see the machinations I've seen around mail. Convoluted downloading and parsing from Exchange servers with shell scripts... hah.

In any case... this is not ideal. What this does is make users absorb complexity for IT. IT can get comfortable wtih a platform, too leery to try something else. But users, often years into new generations of workflows (not just young people, so many older employees have been using Gmail for years in their personal life for example.), absorb the blow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps Enterprise Software sucks because it is really, really hard? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reduce the most complex of human institutions, which has processes beyond number -- many of which are documented only in the heads of the dozens of geographically disperse individuals carrying them out, or worse, actually _emergent behavior_ \-- into a CRUD app. That CRUD app will, by necessity, be orders of magnitude more complex than any other shipping product created by the human race. And everything changes so fast (emergent behavior, thousands of autonomous actors, etc) that it is unlikely to remain static for the duration of the planning meeting to say nothing of the multi-year timeframes often planned for (or stumbled into) in this type of development.

</comment><comment><USER9> I spent 25 years in a big company tolerating crappy software. Jason is absolutely 100% dead-on correct.

 _The people who buy enterprise software aren't the people who use enterprise software._ ... _[T]he software vendors are building for the buyers, not the users. The experience takes a back seat to the feature list, future promises, and buzz words._

Enterprise software is bought on marketing bullet points, as long as the budget can bear it (cost and quality for enterprise software are totally uncorrelated). The buyers have no ability to judge the _implementation_ of those bullet points, so a crappy implementation sells just as well as a good implementation.

The other observation I would offer is that the level of effort required to initiate and carry through the purchase of a new software package is _so high_ in a large company that nobody can _afford_ to make a mistake (time/effort- wise, mentally, and career-wise). Thus, only "safe" choices are made. Ironically, what appears to be the safe choice very often _is a mistake_ \- crappy buggy implementations of huge bullet lists of mis-features.

Sorry for venting. :-D I'm much happier in my new _small_ company where we are willing to make several small, recoverable mistakes (base hits, bunts, sacrifice flies which advance the runner) to score a run rather than swinging for the fence and being out on a fly ball every time.

<comment><USER10> Nah, that's not actually true, and only someone who knows nothing about how enterprises actually work would think that.

That SAP billing system you hate? The CFO uses it too, to run his dashboard. That crappy Exchange email? Drives the CEO's BlackBerry. The godawful IMS database? The CTO's bonus is tied to its uptime.

There is more to computing than Rails-driven websites, I don't think the 37signals guys get this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my experience, there is _one_ single point where enterprise software takes a nose-dive into an unusable mess, and it's _access control_. Access control ends up being all of a business' BS politics _encoded_. You end up with "requirements" like this:

        * Bob can't see Sally's actions
        * Sally can see Bob's actions
        * Jim can see Bob's but not Sally's actions
        * Jim can't do X, unless Bob says so
        * Bob can't do Y, unless, Jim *and* Sally say so

It's all about politics and procedure, not the actual work to be done.

There's a cure to this: Make every action in the system open and accountable and let people get things done. If someone does something they aren't supposed to, then undo it and discipline them.

Obviously there are some areas where (like transferring money or publishing content) where permissions are perfectly reasonable, since you don't want disgruntled employees siphoning off money or publishing disparaging remarks. But, then again, we hear about management (the super-users of enterprise software) doing that kind of damage pretty frequently, too...

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, to be fair, Jason does advise developers to just solve small, easy problems and let "someone else" tackle the big, hard problems.

I wonder if Jason has ever worked with real enterprise software, either as a user or a developer. The reality that he seems to miss is that the enterprise software arena is full of big, hard problems that have huge dollar figures attached to them. But I suppose that's why Oracle is worth more than $100 billion; they're that "someone else".

<comment><USER13> Yep. You can't chose which corner cases you're going to support. The answer is: "All of them." The difference is how gracefully you handle that, and the support that you provide for the end-user of your application.

Further, enterprise software sucks for casual users, but is often superior for expert users than consumer software that is less featureful and robust. I think that depth vs learning curve is a bit of a false dichotomy, but complexity geometrically increases difficulty in making "intuitive" software.

<comment><USER14> On the other hand, complexity also geometrically increase the payoff for successfully making intuitive software.

<comment><USER13> in some markets

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this is a lot of confirmation bias. Everyone has their story of cheese-head corporate IT managers making bad decisions. IT managers are like air, you only notice when they stink.

Unfortunately, I left a company with a good IT manager for an "opportunity to grow" elsewhere. Sure, I got a higher salary, and I got to move to a new city (this is the most compelling reason that I stay right now, I like my location a lot), but it's definitely one of the worst ad-hoc development environments I've ever been in.

But my previous position had a great IT manager. We took a very well defined, engineering approach to purchases and development. Identify need, research alternatives, implement, iterate. I learned a lot in a mere year and a half, more than I ever learned in college. It makes me wonder what I'm going to learn in the years to come.

<comment><USER4> You actually did development? In my current IT job, 90% of it is installing/upgrading vendorware (closed or open, as long as it's Java-based). The other 10% is writing the pieces of glue code needed to incorporate the new vendorware with the existing vendorware. That's not what I call development. It's closer to a web-centric, glorified sysadmin job.

Now that I think of it, the real problem with enterprise software and the IT departments that rely on them is more about the fact that IT departments don't seem to actually create much software, thus they're not that good at it.

This means that when talented people start working there with the hopes that they'll get to create something interesting (or at least in an interesting way) and they find out that the organization won't allow them to do anything novel, they leave.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I was actually developing industrial crane simulators of various types for the company's product line, so a significant portion of original development was necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Enterprise software is bigger and clunkier and more awkward for the same reason that big shipping liners are bigger and clunkier and more awkward than speedy sailboats - it's designed to solve a different problem. Don't make the common mistake of assuming that everybody working on these kinds of apps is stupid and/or incompetent.

The more interesting question to ask is - are we solving the right problems?

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been doing _customer development_ this week, and one benefit to thinking in terms of separate economic buyers and end users is that it helps you to consider their relevant issues separately: usability and usefulness.

Because I use my own software, I'm very aware of how easy (or not) it is to use, and of course I'd really like to make it great to use. But in doing this, I tend to overlook _what_ it's doing. What does it _do_ that makes it worth buying? Separating these issues into different persons makes it easier to think about them clearly (especially when the usability one is so concrete, immediate and, well, personal.)

Also, when the user and economic buyer are combined, people will sometimes buy based on how beautiful it is, how it feels and so on. But I would like my product to actually make things better, not just make them feel better. Both are important (and of course it doesn't excuse enterprises who build/buy inefficient and unpleasant software).

</comment><comment><USER18> There was a point in time when 37 signals was inspiring with their anti- enterprise/ror/bootstrap ideas, but do we really need to hear the same thing repeated over and over?

Edit: didn't notice at first that this blog entry was from 2007. Anyway credit to them for making this point so many times that it is now a widely accepted belief in the startup community. But now there is just as much uninspired non- enterprise software out there too.

</comment><comment><USER19> I work for a company which develops software for airlines. Our product is bought simply because it makes them 1.8% more revenue per year. We could have the greatest user interface and it wouldn't matter at all. The users are ignored. I've seen customers replace users because they had a hard time to adapt to the interface of the new software. Sad but true.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good article, and there are lots of good comments.

Some things not said include:

* Some enterprises have nearly 50-year legacies.

* Existing systems are often complex enough that there isn't any one person anywhere who understands it technically, let alone from a cultural perspective.

* The people making the purchase decision aren't even the _users_ of the system. Imagine a company big enough that it is the legal team that makes the decision on which BFE package to purchase. The deciding criteria would not amuse you.

And there is the idea that what we, readers and writers of HN and 37 signals, don't always appreciate that a nice UI might actually be a green screen 3270 application. The CICS screens have the side effect of being keyboard navigable, and therefore are higher throughput than today's idea of mouse- driven beauty. (Not to go all Steve Yegge on you.)

Finally, selling the _same_ BFE software to multiple enterprises is usually a pipe dream. The technical input to the negotiating team can result in a line item in the purchase agreement that is "custom modifications", and which of the salesmen hired by Mr. You-have-to-be-an-idiot-to-not-read-the-resume in the last few hours of the negotiation is going to say "no" to that? So all of us in this particular negotiation--customer rep, technical rep (note that I did not say "development"), compliance rep, and legal rep buy into this, each with their own motivations. You can see how well that works out.

</comment><comment><USER21> He's right that the buyers not being the users is an issue, but there's far more too it than that. There are a lot of good answers already here, but to add a few more (and consolidate some others):

1) The developers often aren't the users either, which instantly makes things far more difficult. My company builds insurance applications; it would be 10x easier (if not more) for me to write an e-mail application with a good user experience than for me to write a policy administration system with a good user experience because I'm not an agent or underwriter. With consumer software, development or collaboration tools, and a lot of small business software, the developer might actually have to/want to use their own stuff. For most enterprise software, that's rarely the case.

2) As has been pointed out already, a lot of enterprise software is complex. It's hard enough to get everything to _work_ , let alone to have a really nice, slick UI. There are often endless numbers of non-optional corner cases to handle. If you're really unlucky, the process in question will be subject to lots of government regulations you have to abide by; if you're even unluckier, those regulations will vary by state (not to mention by country). It's hard to make something that complex user-friendly.

3) In addition to complication, there's the issue of surface area, which is somewhat orthogonal. It's much easier to polish a web application with 20 different screens that to polish one with 2000, no matter how simple those 2000 are; you often don't have the resources to devote huge amounts of attention to detail on an application with that kind of surface area.

4) Enterprises themselves are difficult to sell to. Extremely difficult. It's largely a self-inflicted wound, but it results in an increased barrier to entry in that market, which increases the cost of actually selling into that market, which leaves fewer resources for development (relatively speaking).

5) Enterprise systems often need to integrate to a bunch of other enterprise systems. Any way you spin that, it's difficult and time consuming to do that, which sucks up more resources.

6) Most enterprise solutions involve a lot of vendor lock-in. That's partially due to the storage of large amounts of highly critical data, partially due to general risk-aversion at most companies (since such changes, if they're botched, can be disastrous), and partially due to the integration work mentioned above. The cost of switching tends to be very, very high.

7) Everyone wants to be a unique snowflake. For core business processes many companies consider their process to be a competitive advantage; at the very least, it's a core part of their business. As a result, enterprise software often has to be customizable so it fits with what data the customer captures and how they do business. That dramatically ups the complexity factor and makes polishing things much harder.

8) Because of all those factors, enterprise markets have a high barrier to entry. The complexity of the products means that you need a decent amount of funding to even begin to enter the market, and the sales difficulties suck up more money and make it difficult to establish a consistent revenue stream. The relatively small market sizes combine with that to turn many of the markets into winner-takes-all sorts of games. As a result, you end up with two classes of companies: new entrants and incumbents. The new entrants don't have the resources to really polish their stuff; they're struggling to build stuff that's functionally complete, actually works, and to sell it without running out of money. They can't afford to chop their footprint in half in order to make sure it's really slick, or to spend twice as much on development. The incumbents, on the other hand, often have no incentive to not suck. They tend to have high levels of lock-in and they know their competitors have huge barriers to entry, so the competitive pressure to be good isn't there.

9) The most talented developers and designers often simply won't work on enterprise software. You're working on something you wouldn't use and have no personal connection to, and no one you know can use or see your work. At least in the valley, if you tell people you build enterprise software, people often react like they feel sorry for you, or like you're some sort of idiot-leper who simply isn't good enough to get a job building cool consumer stuff. Ask awesome developers if they want to work on a database, a social networking site, or a claims processing system, and I think we all know which option will come in third place.

10) Those are all reasons why commercial enterprise software written by software companies sucks. A lot of enterprise software, however, is written in-house. If a company that can amortize their costs across dozens or hundreds of customers has a hard time doing it, you can imagine what happens when one company attempts to build things themselves. They really don't have the resources or expertise to product anything thoroughly polished most of the time. And the hiring problem there is even worse: most good developers would rather work at a software shop than in the IT department of some massive company.

<comment><USER22> On your point #2 - it is true that enterprise software tends to be complex, but this problem is compounded by the fact that enterprises are unwilling to approach building/buying solutions to complex problems with a conquer and divide approach. In the consumer/small business world, small, lightweight tools that solve one problem well(think Redis for databases, Etherpad for collaborative editing, etc.) are easier to make good interfaces for.

When it comes to buying software, big companies don't like choosing small, well-designed tools that they can put together to solve a problem because the decision-making process of choosing technology is expensive and time consuming when you are risk averse. At a large financial institution that I used to work at, we spent months going through different third-party offerings of a new data platform. Everyone hates doing it, and it cost a ton of money in developer time (plus some companies actually charge you to do a lengthy demo). So people just tend to gravitate towards the products that are bloated with features and will solve all our problems at once, and we all know what kind of UX these kinds of products will offer.

<comment><USER23> Integrating a whole bunch of small, well-designed tools is just as expensive and time consuming. And the final results are often worse.

<comment><USER22> Maybe or maybe not - my point is just that this is one way you get tools with good interfaces, and it is less likely that you will take this path when you are a large company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Further, enterprise software often has less than a dozen customers. If you work on Word, you have millions of people paying a little bit of money, but that adds up to a large budget. An enterprise system with ten customers paying a million a piece? That's only a 10 million dollar budget. Further, each of those customers need slightly different applications to fit their business models. It's ugly, even with good architects.

The money just doesn't exist to obsess over UI in these products.

<comment><USER24> And yes, there's huge opportunity here for someone who figures out how to overcome this problem in multiple ways:

1\. Someone who develops a uniform beautiful interface and a great development kit. ExtJS is on its way.

2\. Someone who figures out how to solve that 10-very-close-but-not-quite appplication problem in a more elegant way than spring.

<comment><USER25> You still need to spend a lot of money on lawyers and accountants to get the local and international laws correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not exactly original. It would be less offensive if he labeled it something other than "My Take"

[http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2005-April/0...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2005-April/000772.html)

<comment><USER2> That's a massively superior article, but what makes you think that Jason read that?

<comment><USER26> A month earlier someone posted a link to the same email as a comment to a different 37signals post

[http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/define_enterprise_in_10_w...](http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/define_enterprise_in_10_words_or_less.php#c9633)

<comment><USER27> A link posted last month does not explain a 37 signals post from 2007. (Though I must say that it does seem very similar, and that email did get wide circulation.)

<comment><USER26> Not last month, a month earlier than the post in question. Check the timestamp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For some reason I had a sense of deja vu on this exact topic, so searched the archives and found this (from my earliest days lurking before I signed up for an account on HN)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72115>

</comment><comment><USER29> The article: because the buyers aren't the users

Nice comment below the article: because accommodating the long tail of user requirements is too expensive to be worth it, so they make a cut somewhere, get something good enough for 95% of employees and squeeze everyone else into the same box.

37 signals doesn't try to accommodate all user requirements either. They're free to tell people to go somewhere else if their tools don't suit. In an enterprise, they save costs by standardizing. People would no doubt be just as unhappy being squeezed into the 37 signals box as any other.

</comment><comment><USER30> There are a lot of reasons why enterprise software sucks.

The largest reason is because companies see it as an IT issue. When it comes time to select software to purchase most departments will not invest the time of their best people. The people who can most easily be spared for the amount of time involved are put on selection committees. Users don't see selection as an investment in the future but as work that doesn't help them today. So in answer to Jason's basic point: users don't select enterprise software because they don't see selection as an important use of their time.

The next largest reason enterprise software sucks is because people don't want to change. They want new software to work the same as old software so they don't have to learn anything new. It is the main reasons why there is so much customization work. Its a combination of people being lazy and managers not wanting short term efficiency ratings effected.

</comment><comment> ryan-allen Enterprise software certainly doesn't suck due to companies hiring mediocre programmers who cargo-cult vendor technologies (open OR closed source), hoodwinked by clever marketing, catch phrases and shallow promises of increased productivity?

</comment><comment><USER31> Enterprise Software is old, very old. And old software is hard to change, even from a UI point of view. There are already thousands of users trained, and changing the way of user interaction in the next upgrade is a sure-fire way to prompt the customer to look around at the competition. After-all, users might as well learn a brand new system.

Is change coming to Enterprise Software? I'd argue emphatically - Yes. However, change is in measured movement, at a pace where users are not overwhelmed. Conservatism is more valued than being on the cutting edge.

</comment><comment><USER32> Clifyt is the first comment on that article and I think he's got the right take. Honestly there is a reason at times for what might feel like a bad usability decision. I also didn't like the fact that enterprise software usability decisions are paralleled with filing an expense report.

Seriously - it's NEVER a pleasure to do that.

37Signals.com - Why does childbirth have to be a pain?

</comment><comment><USER33> Very well put. Enterprise Software fails to connect to the end user drastically. They are never made keeping in mind the requirements of the end user. The buyer poses with his/her requirements and this creates a lot of red tape associated with the whole process.

</comment><comment><USER34> The buyers were not the users when I last used BaseCamp.

<comment><USER35> The _creators_ were the users when Basecamp started out. They didn't want to be forced to use shit, therefore their philosophy was to not make shit.

<comment><USER34> Last time I used BaseCamp it couldn't help with obvious things (like moving all 3 parts of a 3 step project one day forward).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Remember: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

</comment><comment><USER37> tl;dr steaks and strippers.

<comment><USER35> I've gotten the steak but never the stripper. Maybe I don't quite want enterprise software to go away just yet.</comment></comment>


How To Change The World, Part 1: Have an agenda - <AUTHOR> http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/the-agenda-part-i-ask-why/

<comment><USER2> I wanted get a broad overview of the article's size and structure before investing my time to read it. However, as soon as I reached the comment section, without having read anything in depth, I suddenly got a nasty CSS pop-up:

 _If you enjoyed this article Then you may also be interested in ..._

... asking me to subscribe for a newsletter.

In that moment I didn't want to read anything from that site anymore.</comment>


Handshake: An experimental peer-to-peer root DNS - <AUTHOR> https://handshake.org <comment><USER2> Technical merits aside...

Why was this done as an alternate root project rather than an alternate tld? I get it makes the project more useful (ability to register .johnsmith rather than johnsmith.bit), but it's going to severely increase complications when interoperating with the ICANN dns root.

what happens if you register .foobar on handshake, and then a few years later, ICANN delegates .foorbar? If you let the ICANN registration take precedence, all the .foobar domain owners on handshake side will lose their registrations. The threat of that will keep most people from using tlds registered on handshake. Why buy a domain on .foobar (handshake root) rather than .foobaz (ICANN root)? It might cost a few bucks more, but honestly I'd be willing to pay a few dollars/year more knowing my domain is secure.

Of course, it's possible that operator of the ICANN tld would give an opportunity for the domain owners on the handshake side to migrate over, but then they'd miss out on all the revenue on those premium domains. why allow the old owners of pizza.foobar keep their domain when you can resell it for $$$?

The project mentions that they have pre-reserved certain TLDs, but all that does is delay the inevitable. The first conflicts are going to be with yet-to- be-delegated gTLDs, since they're not in the current root (obviously), and they're not in the alexa 100k (while they're some sites with generic words as domains, most of them are squatted, which means they're probably not in the alexa 100k).

The only hope of this project surviving is if they gain critical mass and overtake ICANN as the most popular root. The network effect is insane with DNS (maybe even higher than with social networks), so unless there's a good reason for _everyone_ to use this, I think this project will stay very niche.

<comment><USER3> This is a great objection. I nevertheless fail to see why making it a TLD would help any.

A particular TLD (.bit) would clash with ICANN the same, unless someone would keep shelling $185k/y for keeping it up. This does not look very realistic. Registering a TLD is the only official way to interact with ICANN in this area, and I don't see ICANN making any concessions to an outright competitor. Even if registered, such a domain would make little sense: now every Handshake user would depend on ICANN again, hoping it will not hand the TLD to some other registrar (e.g. due to a failure to pay the yearly $185k). This sort of defeats one of the purposes of the project.

Not having a single traditional TLD at the end does have upsides. Any name with a long TLD immediately stands out as a Handshake name. Any reasonable person would register a domain very unlikely to clash with ICANN's TLDs. The lack of need to belong to a handful of TLDs allows to e.g. use dashes instead of dots, lowering the chance of a conflict: not joe.crypto.exchange but joe- crypto-exchange. (Of course people who want to squat short common words likely to be made TLDs by ICANN may do it at their own peril.)

Explicitly being at odds with ICANN forces the project to handle this outright, add a conflict-resolution policy applied at the client side: on a conflict, prefer which source at which domain? How to indicate a conflict anyway? There are no one-size-fits-all solutions here, but reasonable solutions should exist.

In general, I think the technical merits outweigh the risk of name clashes significantly for almost any reasonable user. (Unreasonable users will always exist; they should not be paid too much attention.)

<comment><USER4> Tor doesn't pay ICANN $185k per year for .onion

A single TLD could reasonably be added to IANA's registry of special suffixes, since it wouldn't be part of the DNS hierarchy that ICANN is responsible for they'd have no claim on $185k or any other amount of money.

But a parallel hierarchy is never going to get that, so basically this choice ensures an up-hill battle, presumably mostly so that like other parallel hierarchies its proponents can make hollow claims about "owning" names that actually are meaningless, it's like buying land claims on Mars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Compared to other crypto projects, what really excites me is there is already a fully functioning testnet, SPV resolver, and C bindings available on day of announcement!

Main-net launch only 1 month away.

Other crypto projects should take note. This is how to prove you're serious.

<comment><USER6> This argument could have been valid 2 years ago, but now there are plenty crypto projects in both testnet and mainnet phases.

<comment><USER7> On a percentage basis, I would bet fewer crypto projects have working code now than two years ago. There are plenty of legit projects... and a huge flood of other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a neat idea but the economics are that of a for profit business, and I think we learned that handing domains to a for profit (NetworkSolutions) was a bad idea.

7% going to contributors and 7% going to financial backers is a pretty big incentive. [0]

I'd rather see this set up as a non profit foundation or a community driven trust and run in an OSS way for the financial elements. As it is, I don't think we should create a decentralized network with such significant financial incentives.

[0] [https://handshake.org/how-it-works](https://handshake.org/how-it-works)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I suppose it's only a matter of time until someone forks it and changes or lowers those incentives?

But they will have to re-build the user base and since handshake.org is literally giving away $10m to build it's user base, it might be difficult.

<comment><USER8> I think registries like this are hard to fork because there is so much buy-in required from a critical mass of users for any change.

I think we are better off with some sort of community consensus protocol and the only benefit of giving away "$10m" is to gain even more money for the developers. Standards should be open or driven by a commodity cost model, not a "inventor gets rich" model. Their plan accounts for plans when the chain value is over $50B. That is unlikely, but it means there's a model in the developers plans where $7B in value is held by the developers and investors.

DNS and other Internet standards never would have succeeded using compensation models like this. I can't think of any RFCs that would have such payouts for the main contributors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This definitely looks interesting!

(I hope a project contributor is reading/commenting)

Q: Let's say I'm a representative of a company that wants to buy their name "example.com" to be resolved via Handshake. Assuming things are live and running well, what's the process by which we'd get www.example.com resolving to 220.127.116.11? (keeping it simple, not worrying about mx and srv records yet) How stable and safe is our record, assuming we owned the trademark for example.com?

<comment><USER5> This provides a replacement for the root zone and not does not directly include subdomains. In DNS terms this is like registering a TLD. So if you own "companyx.com" domain, you could register "companyx" on handshake. Once you own this domain you can use your private key associated to set your name servers / other DNS settings, so subdomains could fallback to using existing DNS resolution, or this could resolve directly to a website.

With your private key you can also do interesting things like verify your subdomains with signatures ala DNSSEC or verify your own SSL certs without CAs.

The paper also mentions future improvements that could see each TLD using a side-chain (like plasma) to manage and possibly sell their own subdomains. This could also give each TLD owner more control over their own "consensus rules" for their particular TLD.

There are a lot more possibilities here, some are covered in the paper, many more are still to be explored.

Super excited for this project!

<comment><USER11> I'm curious how this would work out at scale. Would everyone just get a long descriptive TLD and then use that directly? While that would technically work I imagine it would confuse people who are used to treat the address bar of the browser primarily as the search box. So I'd enter "flowers" and expect a Google search for flowers, but since the TLD flowers exists and resolves to something you end up on some dude's blog. The alternative would be to use the www subdomain, but apart from looking odd (www.flowers? Something my mom could accidentally come up with, forgetting the .com - so maybe not that bad after all...) since we're not used to that now, it also reverses the current trend of dropping the www.

So of looks like this could also mean some changes in how we actually use the web, not just how DNS is managed.

<comment><USER12> Chrome already handles this: if you want the domain enter in the protocol - [https://](https://)

If you want to search leave it off.

On top of that Chrome already has the ability to redirect you straight to the domain if it is well defined. I can't imagine it difficult to move that logic to google redirects instead.

e.g. "test.vm" goes to a google search despite being url format. "test.dev" goes to domain.

<comment><USER11> The point is not whether there is a technical solution to that or not.

"I'll prefix the domain with [https://](https://) so I will directly establish a secure connection because leaving it out implicitly means plain http, which makes me vulnerable to mitm attacks" \- nobody outside tech, ever

And it wouldn't be any different here. Over the last decade we've been so focused on dumbing down tech enough so that it's accessible to pretty much anyone on the planet. It will be very hard to reverse this trend. Even just adding a trailing slash is cumbersome. I can only imagine how many million man hours we'd have to waste worldwide to explain that to the average Joe and their mom. Just remembering how many times I've seen people type a backslash instead of a slash in URLs, this will be fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really cool! Rather than make the same mistake every other DNS tries, they include the ICANN domains already. I ran the client and started resolving hostnames against it immediately.

Its also mined, so give it a try!

<comment><USER14> Just mining testnet coins though right? I imaging you won't be able to use what you mine now when they go live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How do you get coins if you're not an open source project? Is the idea that, when the mainnet launches, private individuals and the for-profit sector will buy coins from open source projects?

<comment><USER5> or you could mine your own

<comment><USER16> what happens when one of these large mining operations in China/South pacific/etc target this network and begin accumulating all the handshake "coins".

How would someone 3 years from now have access to generate coins/tokens after the protocol increases the difficulty and stops generating coins so easily?

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to run a normal DNS server? What's the use case?

<comment><USER17> Even better, what happens when a mining operation decides to mount a 51% attack and take over a root resolver? If I'm understanding the point of this correctly (big if...), then they'd be able to route any TLD anywhere they'd like. Combined with DNS caching for extended chaos.

<comment><USER18> They wouldn't be able to _immediately_ route _any_ TLD anywhere they'd like, but they could certainly screw with the network.

They would have to expend hashing power solving a previously solved block puzzle while continuing to build the blockchain off their new branch and ensure that its total difficulty is greater than any competing chain.

So suppose you immediately buy up TLD "foo", get a single confirmation on it, and publish it to your fanbase. The 51% attacker would be able to a) use their hashing power to publish their different solution to the block where your TLD got included, b) include their own purchase of "foo" in their alternate block, and c) continue building on their alternate chain to make it the canonical state of the transaction db. So your fanbase would look for "foo" and get the attacker's zone.

However, if we're five years into Handshake's existence and you hold one of the very first TLDs published in their blockchain, the attacker cannot immediately take over your TLD. They'd have to go back to the block where you made your purchase (or I guess when you renewed) and solve puzzles all the way up until the total difficulty of their chain exceeds the current canonical chain. Which they can do with 51% given enough time.

Also note that an attacker can begin/develop a 51% attack without publishing anything at all to the network.

<comment><USER4> > They wouldn't be able to immediately route any TLD anywhere they'd like

It seems to me that this can only be true if it's also impossible for the legitimate owner to change this. If it can be changed, then the 51% attacker can change it.

The actual DNS contains names with hugely long cache lifetimes and very little practical agility, and it also contains "fast flux" names whose RRs change constantly. If this experiment is only interested in the former it should highlight that, as a shortcoming.

<comment><USER19> I don't think anyone has a short TTL for a record in the root zone.

<comment><USER4> 24 hours seems to be common for the TLDs I looked at. That seems fairly short compared to this idea that a 51% attacker would need sustained capability to do real damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Whoah they have a fully functioning stub resolver that queries their testnet

</comment><comment><USER21> How does this compare to namecoin?

<comment><USER22> And how to avoid squatting?

People started buying up tons of obvious namecoin names while they were cheap, as speculators.

<comment><USER14> Why is squatting a problem that needs to be solved? Serious question.

<comment><USER23> Because names are scarce and squatting produces inefficiency. Someone who wants to make productive use of the name has to pay a middle man in order to do it, which reduces their resources available to do the useful thing and unjustly enriches the middle man who has provided nothing of value to anyone compared to the situation where nobody registers the name until they have a use for it. (Or, if multiple legitimate users want the same name at the outset, compared to having an auction where money goes somewhere meritorious like paying the cost of maintaining the naming system instead of to the jerk with the fastest computer.)

Although one of the best ways to discourage squatting is to reduce scarcity. Have hundreds of TLDs (.cars, .bank, .farm, .repair, .plumber, .housing, etc.), or if you're not ICANN and don't want to pollute the global namespace with multiple TLDs then second level domains (.cars.bit, bank.bit, etc.)

Then a squatter has to register hundreds of times as many names and each name has hundreds of times fewer prospective buyers. Combine this with some nominal cost ($10/year) to holding a name, irrelevant to normal users but prohibitive to someone who wants to hold trillions of names hostage. And which you want to have regardless to be able to reclaim names that have been abandoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How does it bootstrap its own P2P network? Resolve a name with a DNS to find seed servers?

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is money (coins) necessary for this?

<comment><USER16> Why is a Proof-of-Waste blockchain necessary for this?

We already have [https://www.eff.org/observatory](https://www.eff.org/observatory), and anyone can run a DNS server for free.

<comment><USER19> "anyone" can not run a root zone server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This project is really exciting.

If I could make a suggestion to the maintainers - I think it would be helpful to put the "project paper" in an additional format besides just the text file.

The handksahake.org site is really easy on the eyes but I found reading through a text file of this length quite a slog.

</comment><comment><USER27> This looks like a really cool premise. Decentralized signatures for certs seems like a no-brainer solution to cert/DNS hijacking (maybe I'm missing something?).

<comment><USER28> Cool technical premise. Not the first implementation of the idea. My guess? Business is hard.

<comment><USER26> What are the other implementation of the idea?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Awesome project! Check out the website for more information. [https://handshake.org/](https://handshake.org/)

</comment><comment><USER30> This looks very interesting indeed. I would be interested in contributing, so time to go read up on how I do that.

</comment><comment><USER31> They should partner with Let's Encrypt! This is great.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sounds interesting - how can I actually use it?

<comment><USER29> You can use Handshake as your DNS resolver now: [https://handshake- org.github.io/guides/mac-install.html](https://handshake- org.github.io/guides/mac-install.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Unclear in what way existing DNS and certificate attestation is not peer-to- peer. DNS authority lies wherever you want it to lie, and root certificates are yours to honor or ignore. I don't see what real material benefit this has.

</comment><comment><USER34> About damn time.

</comment><comment><USER35> We changed the url changed from [https://github.com/handshake- org](https://github.com/handshake-org), to the project page, which points to this and also provides more of an overview.

</comment><comment><USER16> It looks like the dev team has already anticipated a SHA3 based ASIC design as a threat to monopolize control over the Handshake protocol.

Guessing an insider on is hoping to exploit this for financial gain and control of this isolated DNS pool.

and why would users want to participate in a protocol which inherently relinquishes centralized accountability and responsibility, in favor of a security model that allows any of these mining warehouse operations run by anonymous robber barrons with enough excess capital to fill up an entire building with random number generating electricity wasting heaters?

Who thinks this is seriously a good idea for anything other then exploiting greater fools to sell digital beanie babies to?</comment>


Ask HN: Selling Software, How? - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I am developing and working on a side project I would like to monetize, RediSQL (RediSQL.com)
The point is that sales are extremely slow.
The software is an SQL database that works on top of Redis (it just use Redis for the connection layer, the data set are completely distinguished) and the SQL engine is implemented by SQLite.
I really believe that there is a market for this, I needed it years ago when developing my own app and people are using it in production (or at least are keeping instance up).
But still I cannot sell it.
I don't understand what I am doing wrong.
I get in touch with users and they are happy and don't ask for features.
I rank extremely high for keyword terms on Google (like "in-memory sql", or "fast SQL engine") and indeed I get an healthy stream of people on the website.
There are things that could be improved in the product, but I don't know what to prioritize.
Moreover I want to avoid to just work in the tech without any marketing... But I don't know what kind of marketing I should do.
I am definitely doing something wrong, but I don't know what.
Please help! <comment> chupa-chups I visited your site and, to be honest, to me it is unclear why I would should choose your solution over for example PostgreSQL.

* "Fast": up to 130.000 TPS (inserts apparently) sounds a lot, but I'm not sure it is, see for example [http://akorotkov.github.io/blog/2016/05/09/scalability-towar...](http://akorotkov.github.io/blog/2016/05/09/scalability-towards-millions-tps/). Maybe I'm comparing apples with oranges, but since your statement is not backed up by anything I can verify myself this does not stand out as a feature to me. It also sits in a spot where it is too high for startups to be relevant and too low for potential global players since it seems to be the limit, and as you can see in the link, even PostgreSQL provides a way to scale way beyond that number. Maybe your solution can be clustered, but I see no mention of this.

* If I need an in-memory DB, I usually need it for caching or for tests. The first use case is mostly covered by Redis (but I admit being able to use SQL for cache retrieval has some appeal), the second use case (tests) is questionable, since I either use your DB all the way or I'd have a separate DB for tests, which is a not very inviting thing to have to me.

* You state that your DB is not only in-memory only but also can?(is always?) be persisted via Redis. How is that working, what are consequences for conflicts, transactionality etc.? I don't find much about this topic, just a reference that it is "[on] par with incumbent databases such as Postgres or MySQL".

* Lastly, you should mention that the SQL dialect is SQlite. I'd hate having to learn another SQL dialect and I guess many of my peers would do the same.

I'd suggest you switch the focus from "fast in-memory DB" to "Run SQL queries on cached data to allow more leeway to your real SQL database". This sounds appealing to me, provided there are some real-life examples how this can work (e.g. a demo project).

If you go this way, I'd also probably also drop (or not focus) "being able to persist cached data" to automating cache-refreshes consistently, since this would probably be needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for your feedback! It's very valuable!

How would you market RediSQL? Who you would talk to? In what kind of venues?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hi, 1\. Not a developer so please forgive any tech mistakes; 2\. I looked on ahrefs on some of the keywords you mentioned and some more (e.g. "how to query redis with sql") - there are some searches but very limited (I would say up to 300-400/month in the US total). That's not a lot, but I don't know if it's the beginning of a trend or the end of it (devs can say that). 3\. Regardless, I understand you do have users (when I say a user I mean retained users). If so, you need to talk to them, understand exactly what problem you are solving them. You can incentivize them with gift-cards or just sweet-talk your way to have a phone call with them; That's the most important thing. 4\. Once you are on the call, do everything to understand what problem are you solving them + what they want you to add to the product. 5\. That's the process. I did it with a social app in which I texted any user who did a meaningful action. It wasn't fun, but that's the way to do that. Get them to talk to you. Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I want to avoid to just work in the tech without any marketing... But I > don't know what kind of marketing I should do.

It sounds to me like you need to find a partner who is into doing that sort of thing. That's what I did. As a bonus, someone who is into this sort of thing likely will be able to give you solid information about how to change your product in order to appeal to a broader audience.

Don't forget the first law of business: be totally honest with yourself about what you can't (or don't want to) do well, and fix that gap by finding people who are good at and enjoy those things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very wise words, thanks!

The point is that I am an "heavy engineer" myself, the kind that go and build databases or filesystems.

With this project I wanted to expand my horizons and learn the business as well.

I could work for FAANG if I just wanted to do engineering, but I want something different. I force myself to don't refactor the code base or add features. I don't want to build stuff (even if I really enjoy it) I want to sell it.

Maybe I should look for a mentor on this space, but I have no idea how to find one...

Any volunteers?

<comment><USER3> > Maybe I should look for a mentor on this space, but I have no idea how to > find one...

I don't know where you are, but in the US it's worth looking into the SCORE program (Service Corps of Retired Entrepreneurs). This program is specifically intended to provide experienced business mentorship to entrepreneurs. Here's their website: [https://www.score.org](https://www.score.org)

In my earlier days, I found SCORE to be incredibly valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Europe, unfortunately...

But thanks for the link, maybe I can find something similar :)

<comment><USER3> I hope you can!

A lot of the resources SCORE provides on the website may be helpful regardless of your location. You might not be able to get a real-life mentor through them, but they do provide a lot of online instructions and advice.

It might also be worth contacting them to ask if they know of similar services in Europe. They might!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go read the book "Way of the Wolf" by Jordan Belfort. Thats all you need to get started. Read it twice.

Also, disregard any opinion that gives feedback on your site or product. Talk to real customers (after reading the book).

<comment><USER5> > Talk to real customers (after reading the book).

That's good advice if you already have customers. OP seems to have the problem of _not having customers_.

<comment><USER4> That is the only advice if you have customers or not. Talk to the market. Find out if they will buy. That is why OP needs some basic sales skills (clearly lacks them).

Sales is the solution to the problem of not having customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [random advice from the internet]

"Get in your car" and go see your users instead of sitting at your desk. Seeing is the best way to really understand context and understanding the context in which your customers operate is important for B2B sales. If you can't afford to visit potential customers then it is likely that either the project is under-capitalized or that the project is not economically viable. Under-capitalization and economic viability don't matter for a hobby project. But they matter greatly for a business venture.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the means to visit people in real life, but it seems like an huge waste of effort and resources.

I definitely understand the idea of knowing how my clients work and operate in real life, so I keep asking them via email. Unfortunately, every time, they are all quite reticent to share more about their business.

I might be asking wrong...

<comment><USER3> > I might be asking wrong...

Asking people how they work in real life is not usually that productive. People often don't really know how they work -- they just work -- and will tell you what they think that they do rather than what they really do.

If you have identified a target market (and if you haven't, then that's what you should do first), then the best thing to do is find a way to watch your target market work in their native environment. This is ideal, but can be hard to swing.

For instance, if your target is narrow enough, you could land a short-term contract gig with a company that fits it, then you'll learn first-hand how things really work and what the pain points are. A bonus to doing that is that it adheres to another principle I believe in -- to the greatest degree possible, each of your activities should generate income in at least two different ways. In this case, you'd get a paycheck as well as free market research.

There are other methods, too. For instance, take members of your target market out to lunch and talk shop. Don't try to sell them on anything at all -- in fact, don't talk about your product. Instead, get them talking about their daily work routine. They may not open up at first, but they'll probably start telling you valuable things on the second or third lunch, or after a cocktail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd join YC Startup School, or at least watch the previous sessions videos. Lots of good stuff in there.

How big is the problem? Is it in your potential customers' top 3 pains? Or is this just a nice to have feature for Redis?

> I really believe that there is a market for this, I needed it years ago when > developing my own app and people are using it in production (or at least are > keeping instance up).

What evidence do you have that a market exists? Do you know how much your users are using the product?

</comment><comment><USER5> I visited your site. You're not selling software. You're selling support.

Why would someone buy support from you rather than someone with a track record with a popular database? Do you know what people that make those purchase decisions look for? I'm not going to speculate, since I don't make those decisions, but your post makes it sound like you haven't figured out what you're selling or why someone should buy it from you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true.

I still need to figure out the best way to monetize the project, PRO version plus support seemed the most straightforward way, but maybe it is not the only one.

I was hoping to lure the engineers with a good technology and finally sell to whoever has budget with the hope that the engineers would sell the product inside the organization.

But somehow this is not working.

Maybe they don't need it?

Maybe I have to find a specific niche...

Any idea is welcome...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant question: how to start a custom software development company? i.e. scale the work to several [hired] devs - ensure the constant flow of new projects/clients, etc... Does setting up a nice website help a lot? Will it bring new costumers?

</comment><comment><USER9> Please stop spamming.

<comment><USER10> Just to clarify: This was posted 4 times in a row. The other versions are now flagged and dead. Let's keep this version alive.

Edit: There are more exact repost than usual. Can it be a software glitch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, HN kept saying that the submission didn't work.

I deleted the others!</comment></comment></comment>


Physicists attempt to prove the Riemann hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170404-quantum-physicists-attack-the-riemann-hypothesis/ <comment><USER2> This article was also discussed here near its publication, at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14040885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14040885) .

</comment><comment><USER3> I found the HN title misleading. The articles title says they attack the question. Which to me has a different meaning than attacking a hypothesis, which would imply trying to disprove it.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I would expect to see the word "tackle" or —perish the thought—a simple phrase like "try to prove"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks remarkeably like a 3 Dimensional wave function inside a sphere the size of the universe</comment>


Show HN: React Rich Text Editor – Built on DraftJS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sstur/react-rte <comment><USER2> Cool.

Somewhat tangential (though similar WYSIWYG to markup), you might be interested in the VisualEditor extension for MediaWiki. They need a lot of help improving the performance.

[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor)

<comment><USER2> Although, kind of similar to [DraftJS][] in terms of demonstrated functionality...

[DraftJS]: [https://facebook.github.io/draft- js/](https://facebook.github.io/draft-js/)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps because it uses draft.js?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool, and exactly what I need for my project.. thanks!</comment>


Show HN: A lisp-to-js translator, and a pong game - <AUTHOR> http://www.seanmcbeth.com/pong/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there. This is a little side project I put together this week. It's a pseudo-lisp-to-javascript translator, plus a pong game to demonstrate it. Check out the source on the page. This is mostly for fun, actually more a learning experience in Regular Expressions more than anything, but I've kind of come to like it.

EDIT: Github Links:

Pong source, highlighting a class syntactic form that takes the leg work out of Javascript prototype inheritance: [https://github.com/capnmidnight/betty- boop/blob/master/index...](https://github.com/capnmidnight/betty- boop/blob/master/index.html#L28-L79)

The Loosp translator: [https://github.com/capnmidnight/betty- boop/blob/master/loosp...](https://github.com/capnmidnight/betty- boop/blob/master/loosp.js)

EDIT EDIT: I call it "Loosp", because it's loosely a lisp.</comment>


Ask HN: Best place to buy domains? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I'm looking for a place better than godaddy to buy a new domain. Preferably a place that has a lot of ccTLDs. Any advice? <comment><USER2> Namecheap doesn't suck as much as the others I have tried. I like it.

<comment><USER3> I agree.</comment></comment>


Airbnb Product and Engineering teams now hiring in Portland - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/airbnb-product-and-engineering-teams-now-landing-in-portland-3a0bf4bf58fe#.kj2dwro5b <comment><USER2> :+1 woot woot!!! LGTM</comment>


Moz.com Traffic Data Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://moz.rocketmill.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Those pie charts are basically useless.

They might be better represented as a _tag cloud_ [1], with the most popular keywords given the most prominence.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I will change that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Data goes all the way back to 2009 and is limited to SEOmoz's blog section alone as I couldn't extract the remaining.

Paints a rather interesting picture if you look into their rebrand period etc.</comment>


Why gmail should have a reddit-like social news service - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems we are beginning to see people use social news services as a complement to their email so they don't receive so much email from people they don't know.

SearchMob and Y Combinator Startup News can be seen as examples of this.

Of course, this is also true of blog comments. But social news allows you to use lots of people to collaboratively filter your email from unknowns.</comment>


Manifest Destiny - <AUTHOR> http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/manifest-destiny/

<comment><USER2> At first I thought the thing in the design's canton was a hurricane, and that the shirt was trying to make some kind of environmentalist statement. Please tell me I'm not the only one with that initial reaction.

Then again, given "Manifest Destiny", I'm still trying to puzzle out whether this is actually positive or negative. That phrase isn't one that history has looked upon kindly.</comment>


Ask HN: Does owning a patent increase your startup's chances to get funded? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone has personal stories about the pros and cons of investing in their IP portfolio for their startup?</comment>


A simple example of Huffman coding on a string  - <AUTHOR> http://en.nerdaholyc.com/huffman-coding-on-a-string/

<comment><USER2> It's nice when things are explained well for novices, and I think this article does it very well. However, I found this one to be a bit incomplete near the end:

 _The input string : beep boop beer!_

 _The input string in binary : 0110 0010 0110 0101 0110 0101 0111 0000 0010 0000 0110 0010 0110 1111 0110 1111 0111 0000 0010 0000 0110 0010 0110 0101 0110 0101 0111 0010 0010 0001_

 _The encoded string : 0011 1110 1011 0001 0010 1010 1100 1111 1000 1001_

This makes the encoding look much more effective on small strings than it really is. Namely, just like you need an ASCII table to convert the first byte (0110 0010) from the input string to a "b" (but virtually every computer has an ASCII table - or a font - somewhere!), you need the huffman table, stored in some efficient way, to be able to interpret the compressed string. Storing (and reading) a huffman table size-efficiently isn't perfectly trivial either, and no matter what it would blow up the "compressed" string to be bigger than the original.

In other words, IMHO this article only explained half of what Huffman coding is about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also worth studying is adaptive Huffman coding. See:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Huffman_coding>

Using adaptive coding, you either begin with no tree or you begin with a tree in a known state and change the tree with each character processed. This allows for one-pass encoding of a set of data.

</comment><comment><USER4> If anyone is interested in a basic Python implementation of Huffman coding for pedagogical purposes, I put one up on GitHub: [https://github.com/ajtulloch/Utilities/blob/master/HuffmanCo...](https://github.com/ajtulloch/Utilities/blob/master/HuffmanCoding.py).

</comment><comment><USER5> hi from Bucharest :)

</comment><comment><USER6> In the next installment of this series we will show you how to format your output with printf.</comment>


Covid-19 is causing a wide range of disorders in the nervous system - <AUTHOR> https://english.elpais.com/science_tech/2020-07-17/over-half-of-coronavirus-hospital-patients-in-spain-have-developed-neurological-problems-studies-show.html <comment><USER2> People seem to have a naïve view of what "cured" means: someone "gets sick", is treated, and then returns to the _status quo ante_. Thus there is little concern about catching the disease (or any disease) when you are not in an "at risk" group.

But hospital discharge just means the treatment you get stops being worth the time/money. Ideally you finish convalescing at home. But any consequential damage isn't ignored, as if you just had had a dented panel replaced on your car.

Once I understood this error some of the discussion about dealing with the virus made sense.

<comment><USER3> Did you see the parts of the article where they say that the most severe, "consequential damage" is predominantly found in the elderly and most severely ill? You're implying that people who have mild cases (>99% of all cases; remember: _over 40% cases are so mild that they're considered "asymptomatic", and for every one case we detect, 10-20 others never even bother to be tested!_ ) have some kind of neurological damage. That isn't what this article says.

Aside from a very tiny group who had strokes (again, mostly elderly), this research shows predominantly mild symptoms that (e.g. headache, insomnia), which would not be expected to persist.

If you read past the headline, you will see that even this article makes it clear that the vast majority of patients have minimal symptoms:

 _" Another large-scale study, this one with 909 coronavirus patients in Madrid, showed that 90% of cases simultaneously experienced changes to, or the loss of, the sense of smell and taste. In most of these cases, these changes were the only clinical expression of coronavirus or were accompanied by other minor symptoms."_

<comment><USER4> The headline was indeed more inflammatory than the facts of the article. It seems like the media wants people to panic.

<comment><USER5> > The headline was indeed more inflammatory than the facts of the article. It > seems like the media wants people to panic.

I wouldn't conflate a clickbait headline on a single article by a single website into a widespread conspiracy by "the media" to spread panic.

<comment><USER6> It's not a conspiracy, but anyone that has worked in or with a newsroom will tell you that panic and fear sell newspapers (or clicks). Reporters get judged on article engagement and being humans, they optimize for the metric that they get judged on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My family got corona positive last month, around the same time my brother started having some neurological issues. The doctors after seeing the MRI did not detect any issues. The same was confirmed by other radiologists and multiple other MRI scans over the month. Yet he faces these issues: nausea,headache,confusion,weakness,ataxia (unsteady walk) sensory changes, including numbness or tingling,trouble with vision (one eye doesn't move / change focus as much as quickly as the other eye ). All these issues point to a brain infection yet none is detected.

<comment><USER8> I tested positive this week. My symptoms are flash headaches and nausea along with persistent ear ringing. No other flu symptoms are present.

I've never had headaches like this before, both in feeling and duration.

I've been careful since the end of February. Always wearing a mask, social distancing, hand washing with soap and disinfectant wipes. I've had limited exposure to other people except delivery people, my GF, my mom. I've only been to stores 3 times since the end of February.

I knew it was just a matter of time when I saw the massive increase in numbers of infected in this county. People almost have completely stopped wearing masks or social distancing.

Luckily, the worst is already over for me. I'm getting better by the day, and it was a short illness too.

I will still use best practices after my self quarantine is over.

<comment><USER9> So where do you think you caught it? Seems strange that some people take all precautions and still end up getting it.

<comment><USER6> > some people take all precautions

The problem is that "some" isn't enough. Everyone needs to work together. _sigh_

<comment><USER10> Fine people who do not; they do it here, it is effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This story is possibly the very last thing I wanted to read today.

Nonetheless, I read it and upvoted it because I like to think of myself as a reality-facing optimist, as opposed to a wishful-thinking optimist. (The landscape of history is littered with the dead bodies of wishful-thinking optimists; I don't want to be one of them.)

After reading this story, along with recent evidence that a substantial portion of covid-19 patients exhibit cardiac anormalities [a] and that herd immunity to covid-19 may be infeasible [b], I realize how little we actually know about this new disease.

\--

[a] [https://academic.oup.com/ehjcimaging/article/doi/10.1093/ehj...](https://academic.oup.com/ehjcimaging/article/doi/10.1093/ehjci/jeaa178/5859292)

[b] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-53315983](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53315983)

<comment><USER12> Your conclusion about cardiac abnormalities is wrong, that's not what the study measured.

They only looked at male patients aged 52-74, who were bad enough to be in hospital, and who had already been given an echocardiogram because there was an indicator, i.e. it's the subgroup that doctors deemed in need of a heart check because they were exhibiting symptoms like chest pain. The study indicates prevalence of abnormalities within _those_ echoes - echoes from very ill people with symptoms of heart failure. They didn't take echoes _for_ the study and they didn't run echoes on a random population.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. Corrected!

<comment><USER12> No worries. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This virus is uncommonly indiscriminate in how many organ systems it damages. This may be due to its ability to deoxygenate a patient, systemic auto-immune response, systemic inflammation or vasculitis in organs, stroke like events with blood clots in multiple events, etc. What a beast of a virus!

<comment><USER14> Other coronaviruses can infect the nervous system. In fact, there were papers out in 2018 describing neural infections by "human coronavirus".

Cytokine storms and their associated effects (like clotting ,etc.) are also present with other viral infections, like with the original Spanish Flu H1N1 strain (during the infamous "second wave").

"Regular" pneumonia can severely weaken you for months or a year, even if you have antibiotics.

This virus is absolutely not a magic virus. It is novel, but it is still a coronavirus.

<comment><USER15> The problems could be related with the fact that pangolins have an unique and strange immune system. Reduced in comparison with most other mammals (but I'm speculating...)

<comment><USER14> Immune systems are fairly differentiated across species, even for common mechanisms. Source: I worked from 2009 to 2011 in a project aiming at reconstructing part of these mechanisms in certain immune cells, and the differences between human and mice, where some models were made, were significant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that similar effects have been observed with other critical illnesses: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301372](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301372)

<comment><USER17> Indeed, and as someone who is familiar with the condition often described as "we can't exactly work out what it is but I guess you could all it CFS/ME [1]", this is often linked to common viral infections including Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus.

CFS/ME sufferers often exhibit some of the neurological symptoms mentioned in the article (though not the more extreme/terminal ones like stroke).

Lyme disease sufferers also often exhibit these kinds of symptoms to some degree, which is why, in the absence of serology evidence, it can be difficult to distinguish from CFS/ME.

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

<comment><USER18> I just want to point out that in the US at least, infections are often treated with flouroquinolones and the side effects can result in fibro/cfs diagnosis. Symptoms can show up even at 12 months. I have met numerous people over the years, who were given cipro/levaquin just in case while they were waiting for blood test results and started having odd neurological symptoms lasting months or years. Later results turned out to be normal and no infection.

The medical community has been failing most of these people and I am among them. Many report symptoms during their course and doctors rarely report the issue to the FDA. I have been to Mayo and other popular hospital systems and honestly sometimes I feel like there is a big conspiracy to protect the drug, it seems quite surreal.

In Europe during EMA panel a few doctors spoke out and mentioned the issues their patients are dealing with. Some patients also described their symptoms: neurological issues, widespread muscle/tendon pain, insomnia. It sounds very similar to CFS/Fibro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Associated papers:

[https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2020/06/01/WNL.0000000...](https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2020/06/01/WNL.0000000000009937) [https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/doi/10.1093/brain/awa...](https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/doi/10.1093/brain/awaa239/5869424)

</comment><comment><USER20> Something to consider and also something not discussed in the article: it's very possible that sars-cov-2 can directly infect neurons directly considering the expression of ace2 receptors across them.

[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.030650v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.030650v1)

So beyond the risk of kidney failure stemming from damaged cardiovascular tissue debris jamming up nephrons (as well as potential direct kidney infection by the virus) and beyond the risk of stroke from the uptick of platelets and the redistribution of the marrow cells which produce them across the body (somehow. I can't find the research that identified this), there's also the risk that the virus is actually directly attacking neurons.

Not really a surprise considering how common ACE2 receptors are.

\---

I'm not a doctor. Not an epidemiologist either. Please fact-check me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER21> That paper answers my first question, does neurological tissue have ACE2 receptors. The damage can also be a side-effect of oxygen deprivation. The existence of ACE2 receptors in the brain begs the question of how the SARV- CoV-2 virus crosses the blood-brain barrier. IIRC, dental surgery has been correlated to pathogens crossing the barrier. I wonder if that is a key factor here as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Observed blood clotting and prolonged low oxygen could explain much of this. Then add in the known toxic drugs being used in many cases. It could quite easily be that disease progression and treatment explain this without any direct action from the virus.

</comment><comment><USER23> Same can be said of the media's coverage of Covid-19.

</comment><comment><USER24> Replace Covid-19 with flu than you are right. Fever and T-cells can do a lot of damage. But thankfully they do mostly good things, killing the intruders.

</comment><comment><USER3> ....most of which are mild, and which accompany _any_ virus:

 _"According to Segura, who co-authored the study, the most common symptoms experienced by coronavirus patients were myalgia, headaches and dizziness."_

And the truly killer quote:

 _"Another large-scale study...showed that 90% of cases simultaneously experienced changes to, or the loss of, the sense of smell and taste. In most of these cases, these changes were the only clinical expression of coronavirus or were accompanied by other minor symptoms."_

<comment><USER25> There is a reason we get so concerned when there is evidence of CNS infection. It's not as simple as "loss of smell."

<comment><USER3> No, the reason you "get so concerned" is because you are scared, and intent on spreading fear to others.

You downvote factual comments simply because you don't agree with them, and don't want others to see them.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you drive organic (unpaid) traffic to your MVP? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Previously I used free pr (it's not free because you invest your time) successfully, but wouldn't do it today. If you are with this project in the long run, I would do SEO (use tools like ahrefs): Find content that is relevant to your domain, look at sites who linked to that content and reach out to them offering them to link to your product or relevant blog post. FB, Insta, Reddit, HN, PH etc. are all places you can post your product once or twice. If you are testing the demand for your product, that might be enough (as long as your target market sees it). But if you are here for more than just testing, SEO is key imho. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Mostly by writing a blog posts and driving SEO traffic. But this takes a long time and may not succeed unless your blog posts are discoverable. You solve this problem by writing guests on other people's blogs (usually blogs that are in your product's niche).

<comment><AUTHOR> I've done a bit of blogging. Have you experimented with driving traffic through newer forms of social media? I'm played around with FB groups and Instagram. It doesn't feel familiar, but I've seen some results, after experimenting with content; though, I'm still experimenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a side project where the content is automatically created (product descriptions), in addition there is some hand written content and we did some manual backlink building, both by finding places where you get backlinks such as forum profiles, and also asking people to backlink to us. 150 visits a week at the moment.

This may not be a good strategy for you, it depends what sort of audience you need.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which platforms are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using FB and Instagram, starting to look at Tiktok. There is also a blog on our main page. All of the content is different and unique to each platform...and each platform has different user expectations / behaviors.</comment></comment>


Evomail is here - <AUTHOR> http://evomail.io

<comment><USER2> So, there are hundreds of mail clients... How is Evomail different? Seems like you're trying to tie together multiple email sources, but I don't know if I would consider that "innovation", it's been done</comment>


What Would You Do if Google Web Services Stopped Being Free? Internet marketing - <AUTHOR> http://boldendeavours.com/news/100.html Analysis: Google's introduction of its Chrome Operating System is causing a lot of debate in the high-tech sector, with some pundits mulling whether Google has taken its free software model to the edge in its attempt to battle Microsoft. eWEEK asks readers what they would pay for Google's Web services. Read more... <comment><USER2> Compete with them! And I'm sure I wouldn't be alone in that.</comment>


Startup Juicero Shutters Operations and Seeks a Buyer - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-01/startup-juicero-shutters-operations-and-plans-to-seek-a-buyer <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151012)</comment>


Google vs. iPhone: Is Steve Jobs Reliving His Past Mistakes?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1843813,00.html <comment><USER2> _The key to the PC's success and Apple's downfall was that the open-standards- based IBM-compatible PC created a platform for third-party hardware and software makers to ply their stuff._

This is just false. The Apple II didn't fail in the business market because it was a closed platform. It was one of the most open platforms in the history of personal computing -- it shipped with a ROM listing and a _schematic_. It was possible to clone the Apple II hardware -- check out this huge list of Apple cloners:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_II_clones>

The Apple II's rise in the business market was halted because IBM had unbelievable corporate marketing clout and, at the time, better operational management. During the Apple II boom Apple was not the best managed company in the world. It famously ran _without a budget_ for a long period. Apple's problem was that the Mac didn't arrive until well after IBM had established their hold on the market, and in the meantime all the company had was the Apple III and the Lisa.

The IBM PC "smashed" the Apple II first. [1] _Then_ the cloners appeared. We remember the PC cloners and not the Apple cloners because the PC cloners were just more successful. Indeed, they were successful enough to essentially drive IBM out of its own business -- partly because IBM quickly caught up to Apple in the "corporate sluggishness" metric, but mostly because IBM didn't realize until too late that their core asset was the operating system, which _they didn't own_.

[1] I find it hard to say with a straight face that the IBM PC "smashed" the Apple II, a platform which lived on for another decade and which was ultimately "smashed" by _another Apple product_ , the Mac. All the PC did was drive Apple out of the sweet spot of the business market, which was admittedly a big loss but obviously didn't destroy the company. Indeed, while IBM's PC _platform_ has been a big success, Apple is the _company_ that's still in the PC industry.</comment>