Ancient Nimrud Ruins 'bulldozed' in Iraq - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31759555

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to think about why it is that we are so much more incensed (as we are) by this wanton destruction of historical artefacts than by the destruction of human lives - beheadings, mass murders, etc.

I think both actions, the murders and the destruction, are designed to sully us all, to drag us down to their level of blind hatred. The reason why the destruction of historical artefacts is more effective at achieving this is, perhaps, because while we feel some distant sympathy towards "some foreigners that I don't know" being murdered, we feel personally insulted by what we regard (rightly) as our collective, human historical heritage being destroyed. We feel this affects us personally - I know I feel I do, anyway. It feels like a much more personal and intimate insult.

Ironically, the fact that this is such an effective way to get people upset (and thereby polarise them) guarantees that IS, the Taliban, and other extremist groups that depend on global polarisation will continue to destroy priceless historical artefacts everywhere they find them. They depend on the cycle of getting remote people to get emotionally enraged, getting those same people to mistreat muslims local to them, thereby causing more muslims around the world to feel disenfranchised by western society, thereby making ISIS's recruitment work easier.

As one article pointed out after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the major issue that ISIS has with the west is that the vast majority of the muslims here have zero interest in what ISIS is doing. By letting ourselves be provoked into making generalist statements about whole population (e.g. someone who reads this, gets pissed off, and then goes and votes on tougher laws against Islam in their country), we do ISIS's work.

I suggest responding to this with sadness rather than anger.

<comment><USER3> I always though the reason I found this more enraging than the beheadings was because human life, at risk of sounding callous, is 'expendable' in that there are billions of us, with new humans being born every second, but these artifacts are literally irreplacable.

I had a conversation with my SO with regards to the destruction without mentioning my view on why it affects us so much more and she pretty much came to the same conclusion.

<comment><USER4> And from a utilitarian point of view it teaches us that there are more points of view than just Islam. It might save a few lives in the future knowing that one group doesn't hold the monopoly on the truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm so revolted inside, and I can't do anything. Can I? They literally destroy history in order to bend it to their will.

<comment><USER6> We can work on digitally archiving everything, and distributing it to save the knowledge at least I hope. Maybe something like google books but for history.

<comment><USER7> Over 15 years ago, Stanford did a project to 3D scan statues of Michelangelo. [http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/)

Sad to see this isn't something common nowadays given the proliferation of the 3D ecosystem in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For context, I recommend [http://www.newstatesman.com/world- affairs/2014/11/wahhabism-...](http://www.newstatesman.com/world- affairs/2014/11/wahhabism-isis-how-saudi-arabia-exported-main-source-global- terrorism)

<comment><USER4> I fail to understand their conclusion. IS is not an atavistic return to a primitive past because it's based on Wahhabism, an atavistic return to a primitive past?

I also think she is severely underestimating their support in the ummah. It's easy to superficially condemn the destruction of museum pieces, because hey, museums are pretty neat and educational. But it's very hard to condemn on a deeper level IS' fight against idolatry when the prohibition on idolatry is such a central tenet of your faith, the Shahada.

<comment><USER8> I recommended it because it seems to cover the history well. It also seems to have less of an agenda than either <[http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what- isi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really- wants/384980/>) or the Intercept's counter <[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/20/atlantic- defin...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/20/atlantic-defines-real- islam-says-isis/>).

What's modern about ISIS, she argues, is mass killing. And then there's the GTA vibe, and the glamorization of mass killing. But destruction of idols is hardly unique.

I do fear that the Wahhabis have gamed the Infidels well. They used their petrodollars to proselytize the ummah. Then they incited fear and loathing through terrorist attacks. They sucked the Neocons into invading Iraq, and creating the chaos needed for expansion. Time will tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everything ISIS do seems designed to outrage western liberal sensitivities. And, indeed, I'm outraged.

When I think about it a bit more the question is: who's yanking my chain so perfectly?

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess Baghdadi doesn't just want to be the next Abu Bakr, but also the next Qin Shi Huang.</comment>


Device Can Hear You Talking to Yourself - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/device-can-hear-voice-inside-your-head-180972785 <comment><USER2> Really cool stuff.

Having said that, this is one of those things that sounds too good to be true, so I'll check back in an hour when HN has explained why this tech won't work.</comment>


NextMind is building a real-time brain computer interface - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/05/nextmind-is-building-a-real-time-brain-computer-interface-unveils-dev-kit-for-399/ <comment><USER2> I'm intrigued by the electrodes they claim to be having 4 times better SNR than conventional electrodes. AFAIK there has been numerous attempts at dry electrodes (electrodes w/o gel for impedance control), but due to higher impedance, SNR has always been worse than wet electrodes as a result. The main advantage of dry electrodes has been faster prep time & convenience at a cost of signal fidelity. I'd be interested in technical details, but information on their website doesn't really let on much. Wonder how they actually compare to market leaders in research grade electrodes (e.g. BrainProducts, Neuroscan).

The founder's previous research seems to be focused on topics related to consciousness and sleep. I was hoping if he published articles about electrode materials, but can't find any. Maybe it's a trade secret.. Anyone with more info on this?

Also, their electrodes seem to be mostly focused on the occipital area. I get the impression they'd be focused more on visual components rather than cognition and decision making (e.g. P300).

<comment><USER3> It doesn't even matter what the SNR is. EEG is an extremely low bandwidth signal that measures average activity of BILLIONS of neurons. It's not possible to do anything significant with it. These guys are just capitalizing on hype and they will be able to build some toy demos, but never anything really useful.

<comment><USER4> As an anesthesiologist working with EEG to monitor anesthesia, thank you for this comment.

I wouldn't say you can't do anything significant, it's a bit like listening on a computer with a stethoscope. You can certainly deduce something from fans and psu noise etc, but it's VERY crude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the best publications, journals, twitter feeds, etc to follow if I want to understand the state of the art in BCI? How closely does shipping hardware track the state of the art? Is the research mostly industry driven at this point or is it still blue-sky?

<comment><USER6> There are 3 serious companies - Kernel, Neuralink, Paradromics (Ctrl-labs does not make brain interfaces, per se).

If you want to look at what's coming next - check out what DARPA is funding through their NESD and N^3 programs.

The hardware currently being shipped is awful, including the original link.

I expect industry-relevant technologies to be showcased in under two years, with commercial products following shortly.

There is a HUGE gap in time-to-market between invasive and non-invasive technologies for regulatory reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imagine using this with CTRL kit wrist band

Because NextMind interaction seemed very slow, so would be difficult to move around with for example: the mouse, or writing text. This might be quicker in the future where you could imagine whole words and write it. But I think they need some timer safety so not random words or random actions happens.

This is something that I imagine CTRL labs wrist band could handle a lot better since it deals with the hand motions and seemed to be quicker in response.

So Nextmind is used for saying what I want to interact with while CTRL kit wrist band is used to how your interact.

</comment><comment><USER8> ...that communicates at such a low bitrate, it isn't even practical for the most interesting use-cases. When you see big claims like this and all they have is an EEG, you realize these guys didn't do their homework. EEGs are physically limited in their resolution. You'll only capture very large scale oscillations, hence the low bitrate.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. Even if you could record only a couple of bits (essentially being able to click with your mind), wouldn't this be useful already?

<comment><USER10> If you still need to point to right area of the screen using trackpad or mouse, and can only perform the click event with your mind, I can't see how is that useful.

<comment><USER11> This is assuming you are operating a computer and not any other kind of machine. It would be very easy to assign multiple actions to different click patterns. For example, while driving:

\- Click once to skip to next song \- Click twice to go back to previous song \- Click thrice to pause

While using any kind of industrial machine:

\- Click once to emergency stop

While doing anything that involves both hands:

\- Click once to perform an auxiliary action

Being able to click without having to physically perform anything can significantly reduce reaction time. If this system can be made reliable, there are a ton of dangerous or complex jobs that can be simplified and made safer with this technology.

<comment><USER10> >there are a ton of dangerous or complex jobs that can be simplified and made safer with this technology.

Honestly, this is a good point. However, just to play a devils advocate, for emergency situations you don't need a real-time brain computer. You can just measure the adrenaline level or heartbeat rate (which is trivially easy with present tech) and on once it jumps, you shut down the whole machinery.

My point being, complicated brain link is not needed to send what is, essentially, a "SOS" signal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems aimilar to the Swiss startup Mindmaze - 2016 Intro article after their initial fundraise [https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/02/17/mindmaze...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/02/17/mindmaze- raises-100-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-for-neural-virtual-reality/)

And a more recent Wired article [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mind-maze- virtual-reality-br...](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mind-maze-virtual- reality-brain-stroke-patient-neuroplasticity)

</comment><comment><USER13> Any Brain Computer Interface needs to be locally hosted, non cloud dependent, and open source. A proprietary license can protect the code, but anything touching the brain should be open, transparent, and auditable.

<comment><USER9> From what I can tell, it will be locally hosted, and non-cloud dependent. Don't know about the open source though (we can guess not).

Regarding the second part of your comment, an EEG device like that will have access to _way less_ information (even with state-of-the-art signal processing techniques) than, say, an Apple watch or a FitBit, which have access to tons of biometric information (pulse, ECG, sleep data, constant geolocalization, living habits + much more if you also upload your weight and blood pressure measurements in the companion app), yet the vast majority of the public didn't seem to be too preoccupied when those came out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you aren't calm enough to listen to your own mind voice and it take it out,

Putting an interface in there ain't gonna make any difference.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised they didn't list testing the effectiveness of advertising as a use case.

<comment><USER16> They did discuss the case of an alarm becoming more insistent if a pilot didn't notice it. I think it's a small hop from that to "We will only charge you for the ads that people notice in our ad supported VR game" type stuff.

I assume you could also use this for ad targeting if you could get people to watch the right content with their brain reading VR helmets on. "This person focused a bit more on the Cadillac driving through the screen than is typical. Let's show them a Cadillac ad."

<comment><USER11> >I assume you could also use this for ad targeting

You could also use this for ad blocking, replacing ads in your vision with cute images of animals :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What would I need to know to be able to play with one of these?</comment>


Ask HN: Examples of great landing pages? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> I've been a senior product marketer at Heroku and Realm (AKA the person responsible for leading the creation of product landing pages), and I gotta counsel y'all: when you're looking at landing pages, what makes them great has a lot less to do with the visual design, and a lot more to do with the story and message they tell.

They're fundamentally narrative media: a landing page proceeds serially from top to bottom. What you see first matters most; like every good story, it also needs to give you a reason to proceed down the page.

It's great when they converge — where the visual design, structure of the page and the copy itself all come together in a beautiful statement of the brand's values and the product's value propositions. But none of that can happen without a story that resonates powerfully with the people who it should matter to. On a cursory examination of landing pages, it's easy to forget that they're speaking directly to a specific group, and miss the real magic simply because you aren't in that group.

edit: apparently HN disagrees

<comment><USER4> What are your thoughts about showing pricing on the landing page?

<comment><USER5> Be upfront with your price.

Price is a data point a customer needs to make the decision.

Give them all data points you can.

<comment><USER6> It's not that simple. Some businesses would lose a fortune if they started pricing this way.

Particularly if you sell to enterprises. Many companies will make more money by sizing them up and giving them an optimal custom price.

<comment><USER7> As long as your explicitly factor in the number of sales being lost in the calculation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://muzzleapp.com/](https://muzzleapp.com/)

Does a great job of demonstrating the value of the product.

<comment><USER9> Cute app but I have to share something I learned a week or so ago: you can silence all notifications if you click the Notification icon in the top right corner. Then scroll UP and turn on Do Not Disturb.

<comment><USER10> Actually you can Alt (Option) click that icon to enable Do Not Disturb without actually opening the notifications center :).

<comment><USER11> Mac pro tip: Option-click _everything_. It's remarkable how many secrets are lurking behind near every UI element.

And once you've option-clicked, also option-shift-click, command-click, control-click, etc.

An easy favourite is the Wifi menu bar item. Option-click to see all sorts of useful info about your current connection, including IP address, MAC address, connection speed (Tx Rate), the amount of noise, etc. And when you've option- clicked the menu, hovering over network names shows you the key info about that network.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, pretty much every icon in the menu bar has an Option-click alternative. I very often Option-click the volume button, which lets you select input and output devices without opening the sound preferences pane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nearly every release of a new Stripe product of feature has me amazed at what their frontend people can do.

</comment><comment><USER13> Analyzing examples of great landing pages (in terms of marketing, not just design) is the subject of my blog, Your Landing Page Sucks!

This article is quite popular: [https://yourlandingpagesucks.com/startup- landing-page-teardo...](https://yourlandingpagesucks.com/startup-landing-page- teardown-yc/)

I also wrote a "Landing Page Cookbook" that got to the top of Product Hunt, and that contains a bunch of examples for every element you might want to put on your landing page.

Don't hesitate to message me/email me if you've got specific questions about your landing page.

<comment><USER14> Uh, your landing page kinda sucks on mobile. CSS is all a-wonk and you have a gigantic email collector right at the top

<comment><USER13> That's odd, it's one of my best performing lead magnets. I'll look into it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I put together a browseable set of example high-quality landing pages here, ranging from startups to larger companies:

[https://design.crowdbotics.com](https://design.crowdbotics.com)

These examples were originally selected by Kesler Tanner over at the Stanford Institute of Design. They represent what's going on as of mid-2017 in landing page design. The one shift that I've seen since this collection was last updated is the migration to bolder, more contrast-heavy color palettes that make use of more illustrations. Intercom and Dropbox's current sites are good examples here.

<comment><USER16> All I see is an orange screen and "Crowdbotics"…

<comment><USER17> It's one of those silly damned things that could and should be a static page but is served as JS instructions for building it in the browser instead.

<comment><USER18> No, I too see a massive title header occasionally of you scroll up you can glimpse a page of tiny images very briefly as it scrolls under the massive header.

Request desktop site fixes it, though the loading screen is annoying AF.

FF 58 Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here are a few resources for you to check out:

[https://hyperpixel.io](https://hyperpixel.io) [https://verynicesites.com](https://verynicesites.com) [https://onepagelove.com](https://onepagelove.com)

And once you've finished design and build of your landing page, submit to [https://roastmy.site](https://roastmy.site) to get feedback :)

<comment><USER20> Ah, the idea behind roastmy.site seems really cool, but the comments it gained so far seem really non-constructive. I didn't see any comment _actually_ roasting the site, only compliments and one small suggestion (to add a comma somewhere).

I really hope that the idea will catch on, and that it will gain traction (and actual roasts as a result).

<comment><USER19> Hey, thanks for the feedback on Roast My Site!

It's actually my hobby project and I put it together in a couple days time. Its still in early development stages, a lot of things are missing and some are not working.

Also, since there was no official launch, there is no traffic or users to actually submit sites and/or roasts. But they are coming soon and I think its going to be fun :D

<comment><USER21> Has anybody ever submitted Roast My Site to itself?

<comment><USER19> I did! On page 2 or 3, no comments.

Interestingly, to my surprise, not many people actually post. Lots simply browse.

I should work more on engagement and commenting and make it easy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your landing page is going to depend highly on your target audience.

I worked at a place whose demographic was women aged 35+. Our landing page looked god awful -- super long, giant graphics and text, testimonials, autoplaying video, etc. But no matter how modern we tried to make it, the shitty eye-bleaching one always won out in A/B tests.

<comment><USER23> Anybody that's done a/b testing for a Japan audience can relate to this.

I'll never pretend to sympathize with the nation's need for ten million characters of 8pt font spaghetti sprayed over every page, but I have long ago accepted it.

<comment><USER24> Could you give us some examples of those? Since I don't browse websites in Japanese, I have no clue what that looks like. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER23> Hah, YES! This will be fun :)

So, it's calmed down a bit, but here's the homepage for rakuten, the biggest ecommerce site in japan. Nothing too out line, except the very Japanese block- ads on the top of the page and running down the right side: [https://www.rakuten.co.jp/](https://www.rakuten.co.jp/)

See also the "superdeal" page (this may expire) [https://event.rakuten.co.jp/superdeal/?l-id=top_normal_flash...](https://event.rakuten.co.jp/superdeal/?l-id=top_normal_flashbnr_10_160&l-id=ppf_pc_s2_pc_web_t2_102783)

Notice the quick scrolling banner, the word "DEAL" in english sprawled everywhere (with SUPAAAAA!!! in Japanese before it) lots of different color background blocks with white/black/red text over it. Very much the "assault the senses" style of Japanese advertisement.

The watch ad, for example. "50% OFF!" "ONLY UNTIL 4/2 9:59!!!" "GET 20% POINTS BACK!" "SUPER DEAL!!!!"

Here's the relatively more calm website for book-off, the largest retailer of books in Japan. I think reading is more popular in Japan as a hobby though I don't have empirical data as evidence, just my personal observation. Maybe I only think this way because the cities are more dense. Anyway: [https://www.bookoff.co.jp/](https://www.bookoff.co.jp/) scrolling banners with many colored backgrounds and different font colors, lots of "ZERO YEN!" kind of stuff, lots of different font stylings, sizes, etc. Controlled Chaos.

Notice also the prototypical "block style" ads all down the page. We probably think of them as "grids" or "cards" in the web dev world these days but they've been doing this on japanese internet since the 90s and it harkens to Japan print ads, magazines etc.

Ah, here we go, I knew Don Quixote (or Quijote) wouldn't disappoint. Right down to the url: "donki.com" lol [http://www.donki.com/](http://www.donki.com/) not https note

GIANT banner ads scrolling at the top, as of now we've got a black and white one, sliced through with angled images. Simple model photo after that, another one but with a very blue background, then fourth one BOOM that classic Don Quixote eye assault, complex golden background with streamers, Japanese equivalent of comic sands with tilted font in all sorts of colors and sizes, the Don Quixote... penguin? screaming at you. Scroll down for more madness.

Thanks for asking me to do this, I haven't taken a peek at Japanese ecommerce sites in a while. In-person ads have hardly changed in Japan (I was there last week for the sakura) but it's clear to me that the web design styling has calmed down remarkably. If you ever get a chance to pick up some Japanese classifieds, you can get an even better sense of what we used to deal with :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Quick question. Where do the designers / developers find assets? Or do they create them from scratch? One such 'assets' I've manage to find recently is [https://mockuphone.com](https://mockuphone.com) (no affiliation), but apart from that there isn't much besides the usual. Fontawesome, pexels and the lot.

<comment><USER11> A bit of both.

Lots of designers/devs will use existing assets to save time. They often pull materials from asset packs that other designers publish, as you mentioned (The Noun Project also comes to mind).

On the other hand, a lot of designers make it a point of pride to make their own assets from scratch. I'm certainly in the later camp, though I have friends in the former. It's nice to be able to say "I made _everything_ on the site", but there's a definite cost in time and effort and pain.

<comment><USER25> That's a nice project. I'll have to take a deeper look into it. Is there a central place where these types of projects pop up?

<comment><USER11> Most of the things I'm aware of just came up on HN, reddit, twitter, or in podcasts.

The best approach I've found is just to follow popular designers (on twitter, podcasts, etc). When they talk about something cool, dig in and learn who made it, and follow that person to see what cool things they talk about. Repeat.

Maybe start with @brad_frost and @vlh.

<comment><USER25> Added. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://framer.com/](https://framer.com/)

[https://www.figma.com/](https://www.figma.com/)

The first impressive landing page I saw with video/gif screencast was SublimeText: [https://www.sublimetext.com/](https://www.sublimetext.com/)

</comment><comment><USER27> If you're looking to build a great landing page, I found this resource suuuuper helpful when designing our landing page: [https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/landing- pages](https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/landing-pages)

"I want you to think of landing page optimization from the perspective of desire:

Conversion = Desire (Increase this) - Labor (Decrease this) - <USER2> (Decrease this)

It's less work to reduce a visitor's labor and confusion than to increase desire."

And here's our landing page: [https://www.loopsupport.com/](https://www.loopsupport.com/)

<comment><USER28> Some criticism: I don't really like the buttons style, but more objectively, you should center text and take a look at their size, it made me super uncomfortable when I opened the page. Also, the "Try us for a week" at the bottom is shifting the page in the background to the left, leaving 20px of white space or so in the right side (Windows, Google Chrome). The "Start Trial" button that appears after clicking on "Try us for a week" looks much better.

<comment><USER27> Thanks man! Really appreciate the feedback... sounds stupid, but we had trouble repro-ing that 20px whitespace bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For me, it's all about the copy:

[https://sweep.cards](https://sweep.cards) [https://basecamp.com](https://basecamp.com)

<comment><USER30> I'm a 'copy' guy too, and those are the first ones I thought of when thinking about 'great landing pages.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is this one site that lists a lot of great Landing Pages:

[https://land-book.com](https://land-book.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://hyperpixel.io](https://hyperpixel.io)

[http://pages.xyz](http://pages.xyz)

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://are.na/toby-shorin/only-good-startup-landing- pages](https://are.na/toby-shorin/only-good-startup-landing-pages)

</comment><comment><USER34> Look, here is my question: how is it that startups make such great websites? I try to make a website for my products, and they always look crap, even if I start with a template from themeforest, or use a single page site builder.

Is it necessary to pay to get someone to design it to make something look good, or do I just have naturally really bad skills at making things look attractive and convey a clear message?

What's the secret?

<comment><USER11> It takes a lot of practice. The beautifully-designed work that surrounds us was largely created by people who have spent years and years honing their craft. When you start off, there will be a gap between what you want to do and what you're able to do. It's important to just keep pushing through that, and especially to keep iterating. Iterate on your websites — take a moment every now and then to clean up some part of it, and after a few months or a year it'll be worlds better. Iterate on your process — find sources of inspiration, learn new techniques, try different ideas. I have seen people who were terribly unskilled, who felt like they were artless or inept or without taste or untalented, grow over the years to the point where they could make great work. It hurts a bit when you see people who are "naturally" good, but at best, that only means they had an easier go of things. It doesn't mean you can't eventually get that good too.

<comment><USER35> "It doesn't mean you can't eventually get that good too." I respectfully disagree. I'm an anesthesiologist. I can teach anyone commenting here — in 5 minutes — how to give a general anesthetic. To wake a person up without damage? That'll be three years of your life (after you finish medical school).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://snerx.com/](https://snerx.com/) Minimal, in-line CSS, pre-formated HTML, etc.

</comment><comment><USER37> This one's just beautiful

[https://sentry.io/welcome/](https://sentry.io/welcome/)

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://www.instapaper.com/](https://www.instapaper.com/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm heavily biased but I think that Mozilla Firefox's landing page is pretty great. (I had nothing to do with designing it, but I do work for Mozilla.)

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/)

<comment><USER40> Actually, that's downright terrible. I've used "Firefox" since it was called "Phoenix," but I know a lot of people that would click that link and go "huh? What _is_ Firefox?"

The firefox homepage shouldn't be about advertising Quantum (which only applies to people _already using_ Firefox _and_ acutely aware of a new release (as it doesn't even introduce _what_ Quantum is before diving in)), but rather about advertising _Firefox_ itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Concept for a New Zealand Surf Company.

[https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/688456/screenshots/4273785/at...](https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/688456/screenshots/4273785/attachments/975882/surf_fullsize.mp4)

<comment><USER42> Hm ... I like the design and it's cool maybe for a product video or commercial, but I don't think it's a good landing page - not much information and too many moving parts.

People can also get disengaged by too much distraction I would guess (at least I do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> shameless plug, I think you'll like it!

[https://www.launchaco.com/](https://www.launchaco.com/)

Also I enjoy [https://onroadmap.com/](https://onroadmap.com/)

<comment><USER44> Love the iconography and simple animations of the Roadmap landing page! The on-boarding experience of launchaco is phenomenal though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Here's some good ones in crypto: [https://www.streamr.com/](https://www.streamr.com/) [https://melonport.com/](https://melonport.com/) [https://0xproject.com/](https://0xproject.com/) [https://keep.network/](https://keep.network/) [https://republicprotocol.com/](https://republicprotocol.com/)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm so impressed by the design of

[https://www.magicleap.com/](https://www.magicleap.com/)

It is so amazing and beautiful. I wonder what technologies they use to build the front end.

<comment><USER47> Dang. I have an MBP with an i7 and 16GB of RAM, and a _landing page_ lags?! Hells no.

Also, I think it ate 1% of my battery in the blink of an eye. No thanks.

Update: 8MB for a landing page. Wait, waaattt?

I'll give you the first animation is somewhat cool, but a _lot_ of visitors will definitely be turned off by the slow and sluggish experience, and I don't think it's the impression I want from a company (apparently) banking on Virtual Reality. I like my reality fairly instantaneous, thank you, so the goal would be to have my VR to behave in kind.

<comment><USER48> That's strange. I'm on a 4 year old Dell with integrated graphics and unimpressive specs and it runs perfectly smooth.

<comment><USER49> Probably a 'safari' thing.

I have an i3 with unimpressive specs and it runs perfectly smooth on chrome.

<comment><USER47> I'm in Chrome65. I didn't say anything about using Safari.

In any case, even w/o the lag, the page is still way too slow to load and quite heavy. Not really the best approach for conversion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Presuming it's OK to share own site: after countless iterations and lots of suggestions and feedback from HN and others, we're pretty happy with ours: [https://neosmart.net/EasyRE/](https://neosmart.net/EasyRE/)

Tells you what it does, tells a story, and then takes you right to the action. And it converts well for the market it serves.

Feel free to tell us what you think still sucks about it, constructive criticism > positive feedback.

<comment><USER50> I like the landing page. Its got the right balance between text and whitespace/images etc. Its a shame though, that when you click the links, you navigate to pages that adopt a different theme entirely. It would be better if all the site were themed the same.

<comment><USER40> Thanks for the reminder. We were seeing how the LP converted before updating the rest of the site.. several months ago :)

That goes with the job when you're marking a non-web service - the website is quite distinct from the product and so doesn't see the same kind of attention or have the same kind of urgency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I don't know if it has been mentioned already but I couldn't find it...

I really like Notion...

[https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Shameless promo: I made a gallery that curates great landing pages, and sorts them according to section for easy reference.

[http://www.goodweb.design/](http://www.goodweb.design/)

As a designer who sometimes works on landing pages, I've found it really helpful get a horizontal cross-section of what the best people are doing for a specific page section like pricing, feature overview, or hero.

Hope you find this useful too.

</comment><comment><USER53> To supplement a landing page, consider an "About Us" page with this article's approach: [https://kopywritingkourse.com/how-to-write-an-about-us- page/](https://kopywritingkourse.com/how-to-write-an-about-us-page/)

(Not my blog and I have no affiliate relationship - just a reader)

</comment><comment><USER54> My favorite was the New York Times from the early 2000's. Lots of information all concisely represented. [https://web.archive.org/web/20010202075200/http://nyt.com:80...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010202075200/http://nyt.com:80/)

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://www.canva.com/](https://www.canva.com/)

is probably my favorite I've seen? It has very little information I admit but I like how a site made for designers has a very unique design itself. I am not a designer myself but I was impressed enough that I still remember seeing it.

<comment><USER56> Looks OK but it does suffer from the same problem as a lot of other sites. It wants you to commit before telling you what you are committing to.

Tell me what you offer and give me a rational as to why I should be interested. That's all I'm asking yet no one seems interested in answering those questions on a landing page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Good article on how to improve your landing page (with some great examples): [https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/improve-your- landing-p...](https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/improve-your-landing-page- by-learning-from-the-best-ddb431aa1c04)

</comment><comment><USER58> I imagine it's okay to share our own - we've gone through lots of iterations for ours at [https://www.recapped.io](https://www.recapped.io).

There are a lot of improvements that can be made (as with most sites), but we're pretty happy and get a lot of compliments.

</comment><comment><USER59> Shameless self bump but I worked pretty hard on this.

[https://caratz.io](https://caratz.io)

Also took me awhile to design the forum thread [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3220677](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3220677)

<comment><USER60> Not sure if it's because I'm viewing it on a 1440p display, but the node garden animation in the background is super laggy. When I shrink it down to mobile size it looks nice though.

Edit: the scrolling is also janky, I think as a result of the node garden rendering/processing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think it depends what you mean by landing page, and what you're hoping it'll achieve. Most of the pages listed in this thread so far are just good home pages. If you sent ad traffic to them, them will never convert as well as a page with no leaks other than the primary focus of your funnel.

</comment><comment><USER62> [http://goodweb.design/](http://goodweb.design/)

Here's a great resource I reference often.

I prefer this rather than looking for inspiration on sites like Behance / Awwwards, which don't tend to tell design stories applicable to B2C / B2B audiences.

</comment><comment><USER63> Here's ones I saved

[https://zeit.co/](https://zeit.co/)

[https://www.whatruns.com/](https://www.whatruns.com/)

[https://www.cointracker.io/](https://www.cointracker.io/)

</comment><comment><USER64> [https://land-book.com/](https://land-book.com/)

</comment><comment><USER65> [https://flypigeon.co/](https://flypigeon.co/)

<comment><USER41> Basically perfect. Any way to find out who this designer is?

<comment><USER65> Follow the comments in the OP [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310265)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> [https://www.gov.uk/](https://www.gov.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER67> Apple.com before any product launch is probably the gold standard here.

<comment><USER68> I actually dislike their use of whitespace and scrolling animations. Usually those landing pages are way overdone IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Landing page of the month [http://icelandingpagedesign.com/#blog](http://icelandingpagedesign.com/#blog)

</comment><comment><USER70> [https://anyshortcut.com/](https://anyshortcut.com/) A great productivity Chrome/Firefox extension

</comment><comment><USER71> [http://collectui.com/challenges/landing- page](http://collectui.com/challenges/landing-page)

<comment><USER71> [https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/improve-your- landing-p...](https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/improve-your-landing-page- by-learning-from-the-best-ddb431aa1c04)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I've always loved [https://webflow.com/](https://webflow.com/)

Simple, explains the product well, looks beautiful!

</comment><comment><USER73> Take a look at [https://onepagelove.com/](https://onepagelove.com/) if you haven't seen it.

</comment><comment><USER74> This one is more focused on storytelling: [https://www.heynishi.com](https://www.heynishi.com)

</comment><comment><USER75> Not a landing page but generally good advice here: [https://goodui.org](https://goodui.org)

</comment><comment><USER76> [https://webflow.com/ecommerce](https://webflow.com/ecommerce)

Our landing page for our new launch!

<comment><USER77> Some feedback for you: this is dreadful on mobile. Scrolling is broken, page took like 20 seconds to render what I assume was the main content (coloured blocks with text).

<comment><USER76> Sincerely--thanks for that feedback. Lots of different posts getting downvoted here and so little useful feedback. That's what we're here for, after all.

What mobile device and browser do you use? I'm on Safari on an iPhone 7 and it loads pretty quickly for me. We do have a CDN in front of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Landing pages are awful. In 5 years we're going to be as embarrassed of them as we are now of the mid-oughts' "Skip Intro" buttons.

Landing pages fail at the Big Red Fez[1], and will eventually disappear with all the other attempts at giving the user "an experience" rather than a hypertext document.

1: [https://www.amazon.com/Big-Red-Fez-Make- Better/dp/0743227905](https://www.amazon.com/Big-Red-Fez-Make- Better/dp/0743227905)

</comment><comment><USER79> What do you guys think about having no landing page and taking the customer directly to the product !? If it's a web app.

</comment><comment><USER80> dribbble.com comes with really lovely designs. You'll have to look for something fitting your product though...

</comment><comment><USER81> Personally I like landing pages that are pretty. It makes me confident that some care went into the product too.

<comment><USER82> It should only make you confident that they either paid a designer to make something pretty, or that they have design skills. You can put a lot of care into a technical product and have no design skills or expendable income to make something "pretty."

Likewise, if you spend 40 hours on the landing page and only 10 hours on the product you're selling...

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Have a look at [http://lapa.ninja](http://lapa.ninja)

<comment><USER84> Was about to suggest that, good source

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I don't have any specific examples but it really isn't all that difficult... anything you probably think is important...no one gives a shit about.

Simply explain why I should want to contact you with a unique selling proposition. Why should your customer care about talking to you. That is a single sentence. What are you offering and why does it have immediate value?

</comment><comment><USER86> [https://dlang.org/](https://dlang.org/)

<comment><USER87> Their forum is the fastest one I've ever seen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> For us less technical user, what do y'all recommend for creating great landing pages?

<comment><USER13> If you're mentioning "less technical" I assume you're talking about tools? You can make good landing pages in Wordpress using a page builder like Elementor (just drag & drop).

You might need a bit of HTML/CSS here and there to customize things, but you should be able to get by without it.

<comment><USER88> Thanks! Yes, referencing tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Where can I find top notch designers who can create high quality landing pages?

<comment><USER90> I run a freelance web development company, if your interested i could shoot you a template of what your's could look like

<comment><USER89> I'd love to learn more about it! How can I reach you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> google.com ? At least when it came out first. Simple, intuitive and efficient.

</comment><comment><USER92> For e-book sales, Superhi's page is effective. The market is saturated, but design is their USP. And they acquire your email for TOC...

[https://www.superhi.com/learn-to-code-now- book](https://www.superhi.com/learn-to-code-now-book)

</comment><comment><USER93> I learned a lot about landing pages through Justin Jackson. See for example his videos on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roMpTWmhD6k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roMpTWmhD6k)

</comment><comment><USER94> [https://cushionapp.com](https://cushionapp.com)

Everything about their product and design is great, but they also have an informative landing page.

(Also, props to the Seinfeld references)

</comment><comment><USER95> [https://blog.klm.com/how-to-perform-a-good- landing/](https://blog.klm.com/how-to-perform-a-good-landing/)

</comment><comment><USER34> What is the definition of a landing page?

<comment><USER96> > _In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture > page" or a "lander", or a "destination page", is a single web page that > appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result > or an online advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed > sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement, search result > or link. Landing pages are used for lead generation. The actions that a > visitor takes on a landing page is what determines an advertiser's > conversion rate._

> — > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page)

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> [https://www.awwwards.com/](https://www.awwwards.com/)

<comment><USER98> I love the irony of them showing their best website of the day with marks set to "0.00", unless Javascript is enabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> Arena. www.are.na

</comment><comment><USER100> www.typeform.com how's this post-rebrand?

</comment><comment><USER101> ipfs.io ipld.io libp2p.io protocol.ai

All rock

</comment><comment><USER102> [1] [http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro)

[2] [http://stripe.com](http://stripe.com)

[3] [http://airbnb.com](http://airbnb.com)

[4] [http://dropbox.com](http://dropbox.com)

<comment><USER103> I feel the Dropbox redesign was horrible. The look & feel just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER28> The colors, the fonts.. It's like they asked an eccentric fashion designer to make the webpage. Really, does anyone like it? o_o

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> [https://ninite.com/](https://ninite.com/)

You get the explanation, the selector and the recommendations all in one page.

<comment><USER104> I disagree, that page is way too crowded. I wanted to click off immediately. It still took me a minute to figure out what the offer was because of all the other stuff on the page.

That is the beauty of airbnb's landing page, you get a sense right off the bat of exactly what it is they are selling.

<comment><USER105> Chocolatey is better anyway

<comment><USER56> I had a look and can't really see why. Why would you want to type out the names of all the apps you want? With ninite you tick a box and that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> I personally love [http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro) those guys seem to understand design

</comment><comment><USER107> Shamelessly plugging my product: [https://archbee.io](https://archbee.io)

</comment><comment><USER108> [https://aprl.la/](https://aprl.la/)

Simple, and conveys the meaning. Also provokes the curiosity.

<comment><USER20> It's simple alright, but their Twitter bio is more descriptive of their actual product than their entire web page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> I like this one: [https://ohdearapp.com/](https://ohdearapp.com/)

At a glance, it looks like that horrible browser error message about insecure SSL certificates, which is an interesting choice given the tool focusses on _fixing_ SSL related errors.

Simple, flashing red, it stands out imo.</comment>


Designing and Producing 2FA tokens to Sell on Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://conorpp.com/2016/09/23/designing-and-producing-2fa-tokens-to-sell-on-amazon/ <comment><USER2> Case. Must have case. A bare board is not a consumer product. Consider just dipping the thing in Plasti-Dip, without submerging the connector. For a better feel, put the button on the solder side side, and put a thin piece of plastic U-channel sized to fit the board over the component side to give it a flat surface. Then Plasti-Dip. No custom injection molding, and the user can still push the button through the Plasti-Dip.

Other than that, great idea. It's how PayPal started.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. The problem is trying to do this at scale. I don't want to do it myself as it would be too time consuming and messy.

Without having the funds for injection/pressure molding, I haven't been able to find a good solution. Maybe there are cost effective services that would work like PCB potting or overmolding.

One service that I found that looks promising is Cavist:

[http://cavist.com/](http://cavist.com/)

But I haven't gone down this route or found someone that has. I might do this later on.

<comment><USER2> Here's an option. There are companies in China which sell standard enclosures for USB plug-in devices. They'll even throw in a color of your choice and a sticker. You'd have to redesign your board to fit their case, but that may be a lot easier than dealing with encapsulation.[1]

[1] [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-pcs-szomk-white-small- usb-...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-pcs-szomk-white-small-usb-flesh- drive-enclosure-80-32-12mm-electronic-USB-card-outer/32454070479.html)

<comment><USER3> The problem is that the U2F specification requires users to approve authentication requests by pressing a button and none of the existing enclosures have a space for one. Entirely coincidentally, the company behind it (Yubico) already had a design with a button because their original second- factor proposal had no other way of knowing you want to authenticate. It's a little pointless on U2F but the spec requires it.

<comment><USER4> You could quickly drill a small hole in each case, in order to fit a tall button like this one:

[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8605](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8605)

Also, there's some U2F devices that trigger the approval simply when they are plugged in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _I am not actually concerned with financial success or growth. The nice > thing about this project is I can just let it sit and I don't need to > maintain anything – leaving me time to move on to the next project._

You should pursue this product -- you have _huge_ possibilities here.

You heard of a company called Security Dynamics? They invented the little token with ever-changing 6-digit numbers that you have to enter to login to your remote office computer. You probably know it today as the RSA SecurID[1]. They created a billion-dollar market and made the founders fabulously rich.

I know that there are other U2F products out there, but you can make yours unique, different in some way, or targeted to different market. Or just compete as an alternative to the larger companies making U2F keys (which are not really that large yet anyway).

Surely continuing this product is better than the "working in government" job you're seeking.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/RSA- Secu...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/RSA-SecurID- Tokens.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I didn't know about Security Dynamics.

I think there's a lot of neat improvements you can make on 2FA products for different markets. But it's kind of at the point where if I wanted to continue working on a better 2FA token, I would have to get funding and do it full time. Although it's always tempting, I'm not sure I want to "cash out" of school and regular life just yet.

Also if I don't work in government I'd be in a lot of debt to pay back school. So that's an additional hurdle.

<comment><USER6> Great work, Connor. I have spent considerable time thinking about the federal student loan forgiveness you're referring to. I'd love to share. Email me at mike at medcrypt dot co if you're interested.

<comment><USER6> Why is a comment offering help for someone else battling massive student loan debt getting down-voted?

<comment><USER7> Honestly, you probably got downvoted because federal student loan forgiveness (which I didn't see Conor mention anywhere) sounds an awful lot like like spam and off-topic. However, your email with 'crypt' in it seems that you're at least partly on topic and your addressing the OP by first name shows that at least you're not a bot (or perhaps a very smart bot) :) I upvoted you for the benefit of the doubt anyway.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Definitely not a bot. Although if we are all living in a simulation, I guess my counsiousness could be resulting from a hacked CCTV cpu. Difficult to disprove.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks good. Consider applying a conformal coating at the end. It will provide a lot of protection from general handling and riding around on a keychain, and preserve the 'raw PCB' look.

Something like: [http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/conformal- coatings/acryl...](http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/conformal- coatings/acrylic-conformal-coating-419c)

<comment><USER9> Conformal coating also has the bonus advantage that it fluoresces and looks awesome under UV light (and sometimes even just from the UV from sunlight).

It also waterproofs the board too, which is a bit more useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is fantastic, very useful stuff. I literally just finished writing a similar post:

[https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-gsm- board/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-gsm-board/)

Conor, can you detail how the assembly is done a bit? I've made a few boards with KiCAD but I have no idea how to go from bare PCB to assembled PCB, especially for such low cost as yours.

I went to PCBcart but counting all the items on my board was a hassle, and I got a cost of $38 per board for a run of ten, which sounds too expensive. Besides that, how do you even export the BOM from KiCAD? It doesn't come with a plugin by default.

A few details or a post on how to go from PCB design to assembled board would be very useful, at least to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Assembly depends on the service you end up using. For PCBCart, I think I just ended up filling out their template BOM manually. Not much of a hassle since I only have 8 parts. I just had to match the component references on the PCB to the BOM, count the number of pins, provide part number, etc. They figured everything else out, just a question or two on part polarities.

Yeah getting boards assembled for small volumes will likely not be cost effective. You can mess around with online quote tools to get an ideal if it'd be worth it or not. Using parts with pins that extend out from the package (rather than underneath) will always be more cost effective. Less pins is cheaper too.

<comment><USER10> Ah, thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At the risk of sounding like a complete schmuck - how do I actually use this?

It look like it's a dev board, the kind of thing I'd get on SparkFun or whatever, but I get the impression it's a consumer product. Do I plug it into my computer, and it runs software? Do I press the button, then it blinks out a password via LED at me? Does it connect via bluetooth to.. something? Who writes the local software? You? Google? Me?

I love your write-up and I dig your hustle, but I think the final 10% "polish" is the missing piece here! Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha good question.

Yubico has a good explanation:

[https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- hardware/fido-u2f-se...](https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- hardware/fido-u2f-security-key/)

It's the same as any other U2F token. You register it with a service that supports U2F (Google, Github, Duo, etc.) and then present the token and press the button upon logging in later.

No software or drivers needed. It's an HID device so all normal operating systems will support it.

<comment><USER12> Ummm... can you please include an explanation on your website that makes sense to non-developers who haven't heard of either Yubico or U2F before?

"It's the same as any other U2F token" is meaningless to a rather significant proportion of humanity.

<comment><USER12> Could I use this if I want to access apps on my Android phone?

<comment><USER13> It's a keyboard so otg will work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If a coating of plasti-dip is an option check whether it's possible to add glitter to it as tamper-proofing, similar to [https://www.wired.com/2013/12/better-data-security-nail- poli...](https://www.wired.com/2013/12/better-data-security-nail-polish/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I am doing something similar but much more powerful and versatile (and more expensive):

[https://sc4.us/hsm/index.html](https://sc4.us/hsm/index.html)

I actually have a new batch of prototypes and I'm just putting the finishing touches on my e-commerce code (I'm using Stripe and Easypost rather than Amazon). The plan is to finish that tonight and start taking orders again on Monday.

<comment><USER16> I had a look at the link, but I don't know yet what are the use cases for your device.

Care to explain why would I want one?

Thanks!

<comment><USER15> Think of it as an Arduino for security. I can be programmed to act like a U2F token, a bitcoin wallet, secure storage for ssh keys, etc. A future version will have a second USB port so it can turn a regular USB thumb drive into an encrypted drive, act as a "USB condom" between your computer and a suspect USB device, or turn a regular keyboard into a smart keyboard that can generate and play back secure passwords. Because it has local I/O (a display and two buttons) it can do all of these things while remaining secure against an adversary that pwns the machine it is plugged in to. And because it uses stock hardware and is user-programmable you can be fairly confident that it doesn't have any back doors built in to it.

Of course, it doens't actually _do_ most of those things yet (working on getting the bugs out of the U2F code right now) which is why right now it's just a toy for hackers and devs. But the apps are coming.

<comment><USER16> Sounds awesome. I would personally use some of these if it was fairly easy to setup.

Keep us posted on your progress please ;)

<comment><USER15> The manual is pretty detailed. You can read it and decide for yourself if you think it's easy or not.

[https://sc4.us/hsm/manual.html](https://sc4.us/hsm/manual.html)

Personally I think it's pretty easy by DIY standards.

Will definitely keep HN posted as things progress. You can also sign up for our mailing list to be sure not to miss an update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _I 'm by no means an entrepreneur but I'd like to keep trying to be one._

Your imposter syndrome is showing! Designing and building a tool like this and selling it qualifies you as an entrepreneur.

Get a low-cost marketing channel going (or improve your margins to make other marketing options feasible) and see how far you can run with this.

Thanks for the interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like it's basically this: [https://www.amazon.com/Yubico-Y-123-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/Yubico-Y-123-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00NLKA0D8) but $8 instead of $18, open-source, and far more "stylish".

Cool.

<comment><USER12> Hmm, this product may be more practical if you're okay with closed source for this purpose: [https://www.amazon.com/HyperFido-K5-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/HyperFido-K5-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00WIX4JMC/)

Still, cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started soldering one of these one night (ordered enough parts for 9 of them) and realized that these things are really, REALLY tiny. Even with a magnifying glass, it's hard to even tell where the pins are, but I got about half of it soldered.. looking forward to the other half. :)

Huge thank you to Conor for building this whole thing and open sourcing it and even providing links to pre-fab PCB's. Incredible work. Also the PCB's look really cool.

I think I'll buy a few to go along with the one I just made.. :)

<comment><USER10> You hand-soldered a QSOP package? How did you manage that? :)

<comment><USER18> It's not too hard if you have a proper PCB with solder resist. The surface tension of the solder causes it too glob onto your part's pins and the pads below them. The solder resist is really key here, or else it's essentially impossible.

You will have to test for solder bridges between pins, and maybe use some solder wick to get any excess out.

It's not super fast, but it's absolutely doable with an hour or two of practice. Solder paste and a heat gun is the next step up, which I find more difficult to get right (I'm bad at applying the paste).

<comment> jon-wood If you're using solder paste the trick is to get a stencil along with your PCB. It has holes where solder should be applied which you place over the PCB, smear the whole lot with solder paste, and then drop the components into place. You've now got solder exactly where you need it and nowhere else.

<comment><USER18> I find stencils hard to use ... I always end up smearing them when removing the stencil.

Mind you, I have pretty minimal experience, so maybe I just need to try more and get the hang of it. Unfortunately without owning a hot air gun or reflow oven, I'll just keep avoiding bga parts and doing everything else with an iron.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like the price is too low, if your actual margin is only 25%. As a customer I would also be concerned about how to carry it without damaging it, given that there's no case. Do you have any recommendations?

You might also want to add some keywords like "fido usb yubikey" to your product page too.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool, I love how this is an end to end FBA business with (it sounds like) very little upfront cost.

Is getting the 2 day shipping a function of just price of the item or something else?

I wonder because the most direct competitor

[https://www.amazon.com/HyperFido-K5-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/HyperFido-K5-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00WIX4JMC)

gets the 2 day shipping and is only a few $'s more.

The difference between $8-10 is nothing really, if I was shopping for one of these and saw yours for the same price I would buy it because I _like_ the exposed/no case design (and I think a lot of the "early adopter" people buying these tokens for personal use would be the same). So maybe you should bump the price up a bit.

<comment><USER21> Not really sure exactly what you mean, but unless I'm mistaken, all FBA items have all shipping methods Amazon offers, since they're being shipped from Amazon's warehouses just like all of Amazon's products.

<comment><USER20> Right, maybe it's location based but from my account I see Prime (2 days) for the linked product, and Prime (5 days) for the zero

<comment><USER22> It'll be location. I'm guessing these are just in one fulfilment center, so if you're on the other coast you won't get 2 day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Really great writeup man, and for a good cause too. I've done something remarkably similar but solely for myself, and it's great to see someone going one step further.

Best of luck, hope you make your money back and get a nice kicker in the end to fund a few late night college parties.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How hot does this get? If I just put this in a putty-epoxy will I "cook" it?

Edit: Can I also use this as 2FA for SSH/Desktop login on my Arch install? I've never done 2FA but I've always wanted to.

<comment><USER25> For my yubikey, I've got a couple of scripts that kill and boot my i3lock when I plug and unplug it. I haven't setup desktop login on it though, because that would be too risky for me.

If this stores GPG, then you could do SSH as well. Edit: Reading the comments, looks like it only does core U2F, so no SSH for sure. I'm not sure if there is a U2F module for PAM yet.

<comment><USER26> Generally U2F widgets don't run code or have any extra functionality unless they specifically mention it.

The OP key looks pretty barebones I wouldn't expect it to generate/store/use ssh or pgp private keys. That's more like a yubi key 4 or similar more expensive widgets that are basically smartcards and/or HSMs.

There is a U2F pam module that can allow you to use a U2F widget for screen unlock, login, sudo and the like. If you are worried about the U2F dying/being stolen/lost then you could always authorize more than one U2F widget and keep one in a safe place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could use a comparison to e.g. a yubikey [0]. At this price, I can afford to just order one and see what happens, but still it would be nice to know what features I'm sacrificing for the cheaper price.

[0] [https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- hardware/yubikey4/](https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- hardware/yubikey4/)

<comment> jon-wood You're sacrificing everything the Yubikey does beyond U2F. Yubikey can support U2F, but also generates one time passwords, and appears as a smart card to your operating system allowing you to keep PGP/SSH keys on it.

<comment><USER22> A better comparison is the Yubico Fido U2F key, which just does U2F. [https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- hardware/fido-u2f-se...](https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- hardware/fido-u2f-security-key/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting -- I (incorrectly?) assumed this would need to be approved by several regulatory bodies in order to be legal to sell...

<comment><USER8> Well, _technically_ , since this device contains a clock, it should go through FCC Part 15 Verification before being sold. However, the FCC doesn't really have the budget to go after every board produced, you have to REALLY mess up to get on their radar...

Since it is USB based, it should _technically_ go through USB-IF interoperability testing, if he wants to use the USB logo. Though actually it looks like he has a VID/PID allocated from SiLabs for this, which is already way better than a lot of inexpensive USB products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'm not sure about the legals and just figured it would be fine. I did get a VID/PID from SiLabs which has already done USB certification for the chip.

FIDO U2F also has a $10k certification process to allow you to use the FIDO logo. I don't think it's worth pursuing for me.

<comment><USER8> Though, if you can budget to go through FCC Verification testing (class B), maybe around $1000-1500 depending on your test house, it can sometimes be quite a useful learning experience for a board of moderate complexity. It is surprising where RF leaks out of these days. For a device that is this simple, it is probably fine. Officially, my opinion is that you should always have all the proper certifications in place.

Unfortunately, the $10k U2F certification is not that unreasonable compared to other similar certifications I have seen... As the fees don't just cover interoperability testing, but also legal fees if the trademark or specification must be defended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love this. Great article/read/product.

One thing to note, on your site [https://u2fzero.com/](https://u2fzero.com/) there's around 50 line break tags at the bottom. Shows an entire screen of white space for me :|

</comment><comment><USER30> Pricing things well is a dark art, but I think you could stand to raise the price some.

</comment><comment><USER31> Love it and want to buy one, can I buy direct from you? (I have a thing against Amazon).

Edit: For auth on a phone / small device, could you make a version with a miniusb plug?

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a question about these tokens - what happens if they break? Are you effectively locked out? Is it possible to have two identical tokens so that if one breaks you can use the other?

<comment><USER33> You can often times have multiple different keys registered to a single account. I have a yubikey nano stashed away as my backup key if the one on my keychain breaks or is lost.

<comment><USER32> Thanks. I have quite a few services that only let me register one key. I always worry that if I lose my phone (or break it) I am going to be locked out.

<comment><USER34> Are you sure? I think you might be confusing OTP codes (what you get from an authenticator app on a phone) with U2F (a device like this that communicates via USB or NFC). Most services I know of only support one OTP seed (you can use it with multiple devices, though - just scan the QR code with all of them, the entire secrets are encoded in it. Of course, this makes it very cumbersome to add or remove a device, as you have to re-enrol all of them). But only allowing one U2F token is a bad idea, as losing (or breaking, depending on construction) it is very easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ordered 2 of - great write up.

Just pondering - did you disable JTAG on these devices before distributing them?

</comment><comment><USER36> BTW, Amazon seems to think they're storage devices, and is offering data recovery plans.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been interested in building hardware-for-crypto too, great write up!

</comment><comment><USER38> How cool, just ordered a few!

<comment><USER39> I was going to:

"This item does not ship to Australia"

<sad face>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm naive and didn't realize Amazon wouldn't ship internationally by default. I just updated the listing to enable international shipping which should take effect in a couple days. Thanks!

<comment><USER40> Thanks heaps! It means a lot. Amazon is mostly a horrible place to shop for us Australians.

Congrats on the write up/production too. Looking forward to ordering one ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky Isn't mobile phone 2FA more advantageous?

<comment><USER41> If you leave your U2F key in your laptop or PC, I find it to be much more convenient than mobile 2FA. Just one tap and you're in... versus pulling out your phone, unlocking, and typing in the code.

Btw, all U2F services allow you to fall back to phone 2FA if you're on an unsupported device.

<comment><USER26> Better smartphone auth setups doesn't require typing in the code. Like Duo Push.</comment></comment></comment>


Enpass, password manager that lets you sync over various cloud accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.enpass.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Enpass can sync with cloud accounts of your choice: gdrive, onedrive, icloud, dropbox and your own webdav. It also supports TOTP even though I don't like the idea of storing TOTP in the same place with the password.</comment>


Show HN: AR Sticky Notes for iOS with local peer2peer - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Just released this today and looking forward to making it even better with feedback. I wanted to make something a little bit more productivity oriented than most AR apps and was inspired by some of the latest developments in ARKit2 i.e. world saving /sharing

Thanks in advance for checking it out!</comment>


Butterlylabs.com (Not butterfly labs) - <AUTHOR> http://www.butterlylabs.com/ Obviously a scam on a scam... <comment><USER2> planning to phish?</comment>


Bad as Shit - <AUTHOR> http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/JOLLYROGER/152.jrc <comment><USER2> I had a similar situation when I was 14 years old making prank phone calls. It was 26 years ago and I stumbled on a block of numbers that contained every phone company error message. You know... You have to dial 1, Don't dial a 1, deposit a quarter, etc. Most of those numbers work to this day - 215-257-0012 to 215-257-0017.

The best trick I ever did with them was to record the message, "We're sorry, you must first a dial a 1 to call this number" message onto my answering machine when I was 21. People would call me, get my answering machine that told them to a dial a 1, hang up then dial a 1 and then get the real phone company error message, "We're sorry, it is not necessary to dial a 1 when calling this number." I didn't get a single message for two weeks since people were basically caught in an infinite loop.

I thought it was pretty funny until I came home from work one day and the phone company was digging holes around my house. Apparently my mother reported a problem on my line to the phone company who couldn't figure out how the hell my line got mixed up like that so they just started digging.

<comment><USER3> Back when the registrar at Penn State could be accessed either directly (standing in line), or via phone dial-in, my roommate and I recorded the registrar's welcome message as our answering machine message. His mom was not amused, but everyone else on campus who regularly called us enjoyed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed scanning BellSouth's 780 oddball exchange (amongst others) as a kid. It was their exchange to provide services to customers as well as linemen. Sometimes you'd find a modem, sometimes an operator, sometimes an automated service like ringback or ANAC. Some of these numbers would allow you to control other lines or listen in, and abusing them resulted in jail time.

I would have a little black book with a number and what I found on the end of the line, with pages and pages filled with weird unknown uses. Here's a similar list of them compiled by someone else: <http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/bigbossnms/exchange.html>

Funny now that I look back on it; apparently they transitioned these to 1800 numbers. [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0vLlaOY...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0vLlaOYd06UJ:www.psc.state.fl.us/library/orders/03/01971-03.PDF+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading this when I was a teenager. I'm embarrassed that I ever found it credible.

<comment><USER6> There's a category I have for this sort of thing, which I don't have a good word for. The stories from the Daily WTF also generally get slotted in here. It's "crazy stuff really _does_ sometimes happen in the real world, but you'll never be able to verify this specific story either way".

Did this specific story happen? I'll never know. But there's equally crazy stories that have happened. Not necessarily a lot, but non-zero. Much moreso for the Daily WTF; every story is obviously not pristine, unvarnished truth, but I've seen dozens of people pile on to how impossible a particular story is when I've witnessed the moral equivalent in my own experience, so....

(Fortunately the truth value of this story doesn't matter.)

<comment><USER5> I think we can be pretty confident that nobody called "The President's Secret Bomb Shelter" from a pay phone, and nobody's uncle got in trouble for asking about a phone number.

<comment><USER7> Its a good way to check if your bullshit meter is working properly...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems made up to me. A bit too much like the movie Sneakers or something. Plus the resolution with the uncle being able to get the answer seemed too convenient. Is this a confirmed story?

<comment><USER9> I'd say the second half is probably false. I wouldn't doubt that somebody managed to find a weird number where the owners were evasive, but this sound a lot like "My uncle works at Nintendo and he told me there's a secret level if you can get Mario to jump into the sun".

If the number was such a big secret, how did his uncle, working at a random federal agency, find out what it is? Need to know should have kept it from the uncle, and goddamn common sense (and the threat of prosecution) should have prevented him from blabbing to his idiot phreaker nephew.

Edit: this guy watched too much X-Files as a kid. Replace the caller with Mulder and the uncle with A.D. Skinner, you've got something straight out of an episode.

<comment><USER10> There is a -1!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8GOytc32RE>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you like these kinds of stories, here is the ultimate classic: [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5iZB7A31G4Ic1VNS05TN3Zxa0k/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5iZB7A31G4Ic1VNS05TN3Zxa0k/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER12> If you prefer not to use Google docs and just read the text, it's also part of the JRCB, so can be found here: <http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/JOLLYROGER/150.jrc>

I remember being passed files from the cookbook on floppies at school, I thought it was the greatest sources of information at the time, along with the "Book of Forbidden Knowledge" that you used to be able to buy from ads in the back of magazines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For some reason it reminded me of "The Electronic Money Mill". Original site is gone but The Internet Archive has a copy: [http://web.archive.org/web/20080412233535/http://www.msen.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080412233535/http://www.msen.com/fievel/mmill/index.html)

Fun (semi-fictional) read about Electronic Funds Transfer, crypto and the FBI.

</comment><comment><USER14> As soon as the operator hung up without verifying the number I was expecting a "World War III phone" style punchline to this.

</comment><comment><USER15> "However, if he dialed 804-840 and four rather predictable numbers, he got a ring!"

What are those predictable numbers? Is this a US thing? Thanks!

Super exciting article btw, what year is this from?

<comment><USER16> ___What are those predictable numbers? Is this a US thing? Thanks!_ __

Probably '1600' for the street address of the White House.

(For those non-Americans the White House is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, DC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember reading this in the ACB many years ago. Thanks for digging this up.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anarchist cookbook classic</comment>


The Right to Read (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html <comment><AUTHOR> Someone cited this in discussion of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11556053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11556053)

I thought it was interesting that in 1997 RMS said:

> free kernels, even entire free operating systems...had existed around the > turn of the century...you could not install one if you had one, without > knowing your computer's root password

So he basically predicted UEFI ~15 years before it was a thing.</comment>


Website speed and its effect on the Google rankings - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@avemflyamit/website-speed-and-its-effect-on-the-google-rankings-29bca0e47c7f#.cxk6iwke0 <comment><USER2> One more speed vs. rankings factor is the geolocation of the host vis-a-vis that of the traffic/visitors.

A recent case in point:

Late last month, I was commissioned to speed up a (WordPress) site that has predominantly Indian traffic. (Banking jobs)

The site was hosted at some GoDaddy shared server in the US. I recommended migrating it to Digital Ocean. Their data center closest to India at that point was Singapore and I setup a droplet with LEMP etc. and migrated the site there.

Within a few days, the daily page view count jumped from a long-term average of ~15,000 to 17,000. Then, in the 2nd week of this month, they activated a data center in Bangalore (India) and I immediately migrated the site there.

Since then, the traffic has been rising steadily and today, it has crossed a new high of 25,000 page views. No other changes made to the site (no SEO work either) other than the two successive migrations, and the traffic grew from 15k PVs to 25k PVs!!

I attribute most of this to a general ranking boost owing to the change in the geolocation of the host.

<comment><USER2> My contention here is that Google (rightfully) assumes that host close to visitors = faster speeds = better UX, so give it a ranking boost.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My weekend project: Reddit 9Gag style. - <AUTHOR> http://flipmeme.com/reddit9gagstyle/frontpage/

<comment><USER2> It's suprisingly horrible, which I suppose actually shows how succesfull it is!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it was a weekend project ;).</comment></comment>


DailyBooth Conga Line - <AUTHOR> http://chaircongaline.com

<comment><USER2> Youtube video set to hidden is playing the conga(music). Maybe I was the only one wondering that but Firebug answered my question.

<comment><USER3> Actually I did wonder how the music was played (though I didn't start Web Inspector), since I have ClickToFlash installed. YouTube is not on my whitelist, so I'm a bit surprised it did start…

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, I have a bit of a grudge, but I'd just like to point out that the photo URLs had to be hard-coded (instead of referenced by a tag or album) because DailyBooth has neglected to provide standard feeds or an API.

<comment><USER5> there is an API coming "very soon" I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That clamor just ruined Harvest Moon by a real musician.

</comment><comment><USER7> scrollamount="30"</comment>