Show HN: I taught my little brother JS, and he made this videogame in a week - <AUTHOR> https://s-poony.github.io/Ultra-Square-Catcher-USC-/jeuvideo.html <comment><USER3> Hasn't been mentioned before: try this on a phone. It uses the gyroscope for control and it quickly becomes second nature to balance/guide the square around the screen. Also a very nice and rewarding discovery process, as it starts out with squares speeding by, until you realize it's the tilt of your phone that is causing it. Congrats, super fun!

<comment><USER4> Kind of disturbing that Chrome just provides gyroscope data without any notification to the user.

<comment><USER5> What would one feasibly do with this data? I guess an app could tell if someone is holding their phone in their had, and maybe put together a pedometer bases on gyroscope input. Maybe a concern if a app has access to gyro input over a period of days.

But as long as it's only for actively open apps and web pages I don't really see much harm.

<comment><USER6> With sufficiently high-frequency gyroscope data, it is possible to infer what a user types in with moderate precision. In some cases, it has even been shown to be possible to recover coarse audio data from the surrounding environment.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=421691](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=421691)

Browsers have added rate limiting to mitigate this threat. (Prior to that, my former team in Google Ads added our own rate limiting to the gyroscope API we provided for ads.) The risk now seems pretty minor, but I wouldn't be shocked if someone clever still managed to find some way to abuse it.

<comment><USER7> > gyroscope API we provided for ads

Whaaaa?

<comment><USER6> Yeaaaaah. Our clients thought it was super-cool to add distracting battery- destroying parallax effects to their mobile ads. :|

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Look at the code guys [1]. I love it. This is simple. There is not a single line of bullshit. I hope he gonna become a great programmer and continue to make beautiful code like that.

[1] [https://github.com/S-poony/Ultra-Square-Catcher- USC-/blob/ma...](https://github.com/S-poony/Ultra-Square-Catcher- USC-/blob/master/jeuvideo.html)

<comment><USER9> Agreed. There are so many JS projects these days composed of a dozen abstraction layers and barely-used libraries all mixed together and spread out across multiple files with an insanely complex "build system" on top, that it's very refreshing to see simple, self-contained JS.

<comment><USER10> You don't need complexity until you do.

Our company needed an internal tool, and they wanted remote access to it, but it was basically just a tool to generate a file based on a few inputs. We already had a command line program for it, so I wrapped it up in a web server and had it take input as a form input without _any_ JS. It worked great for years, and then someone got tasked with updating it (mostly just combining it with other tools). He couldn't figure out how it worked, so he rewrote it to use a ton of JS, using Angular and other stuff. And guess what? He took longer to rewrite it than I spent the first time and made no functional changes besides some CSS and a _ton_ of JS.

With all these fancy new frameworks and browser features, it seems that many developers have forgotten (or never learned) how to do things simply. Frameworks and browser features have their place (I built an interactive HTML5 app as my first project at that company), but they're often completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, in my experience rewrites always take longer regardless of technology choices. You are often reverse engineering requirements which is really consuming both in time and energy. That said, I agree with the point you're trying to make though (I strongly prefer software with less dependencies/frameworks)

<comment><USER12> Also, he apparently had to update / upgrade the application, so it's kinda to be expected that he will take longer for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is... really impressive actually. Such a simple mechanic, but well executed. I like how the red block concept is introduced to you after the first few points are scored. The details of the implementation are really impressive for a first project, or even for a game project in general tbh.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone noticed that you can click the game board to go full screen. This kid is doing more with less than many developers do with years of training. I think he's got a career in programming ahead.

<comment><USER15> Actually based on the commit message, that's from the big brother.

That's not actually the impressive part of the code though so it remove nothing from him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That it? Presume I use the arrow keys OK, I pick up the other blocks.. Oh, I do like the inertia and the smaller points give me more points _wakes up screaming at 3am as the red terminator block endlessly hunts me down_

<comment><USER17> The red block reminds me of the monster in the film "It Follows". It very slowly but relentlessly heads straight for you wherever you are. Surprisingly unnerving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow... Thought I was going to play for 10 maybe 15 seconds... I've never played a game for that long... This is seriously good. If you released this game without "little brother" I would think this was one of those amazing minimalist games. Thank you so much for making this!!

<comment><USER19> I don't understand, am I missing something? You just pick up blue and teal blocks while a red block slowly chases you? Why are people so excited about this? I feel like I'm missing something.

<comment><USER20> Did you try it on the phone, using tilt? Other than that - yeah, that's all there is to it.

<comment><USER21> The red block gets faster and faster, introduction of smaller squares worth ten points, it became quite a challenge for me to keep a score above 100 on PC with arrow keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 Nicely executed game.

But looking at the source, the weird part is that it is half English, half French. It definitely doesn't look like the work of a single person.

I also looked at the commit history and I liked the teaching comments.

Clearly, there is a story behind that code. I suspect you did the first part together (moving square, ...) and that your brother played with it by himself later, adding the enemy, etc...

<comment><USER22> My code when i was kid was half english and half swedish, heck even today when i write simple "run once"-code they often have some swedish named variable.

Funny story from ~2005, a company developed a jvm for a special cpu and was aquired by a bigger company. After the aquasition 2 developers had to search the code base for two weeks after swedish swear words, they replaced them with the word of dandelion in swedish ("maskros").

What I want to say is that it is very common to mix english and ones native language.

<comment> GuB-42 Yes, I've done it too (I am a french native). Especially common is writing code in English and commenting in ones native language. There are other cases, like when the english word is not known or to stay consistent with a data source.

I've also seen the native word to avoid conflicts, like adding "2" at the end of a variable. That's bad, don't do it kids ;)

But here, the "hero" has a "speed" while the "ennemi" (french for "enemy") has a "vitesse" (french for "speed"). That's why I thought that the enemy is more likely to be a later, less supervised addition.

And BTW, I didn't notice any french swear word in that code. That kid is more mature than I was :)

<comment><USER23> It can also go the other way, of course (variables in native language, or just single-letter variables, and comments in English). I seem to remember that Linus Torvalds commented all of his code in English without ever thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In "taught" did you mean "write 80% of the code"? This follows coding conventions far too much for me to believe it's written by an complete beginner.

To me it smells like karmafarming. How is everyone buying this? Where's your reasonable doubt?

<comment><USER25> I don't believe either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's cool, also similar idea to a game I made some time ago for a lisp game jam

[https://orbaruk.github.io/](https://orbaruk.github.io/)

[https://github.com/OrBaruk/squares-lgj](https://github.com/OrBaruk/squares- lgj)

<comment><USER27> Your game is faster paced, I like it. One issue I noticed is that the red blocks can spawn right in front of your block, making it nearly impossible to avoid. Rage quit inevitable.

<comment><USER28> > One issue I noticed is that the red blocks can spawn right in front of your > block, making it nearly impossible to avoid.

...I'm having a strange amount of trouble describing what I'm doing, but there's a strategy to avoid this that I got the hang of after a few rounds. Basically, you can't move too fast at the moment you're collecting the green squares.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> ... that is seriously fun.

The red block turning up later was AMAZING.

<comment><USER30> don't forget the tasty light blue boxes

<comment><USER31> I stopped after about 60 points, but the fact that new block colors had shown up every dozen points or so made me want to get going for a while to see if there were any more mechanics.

This really is a fantastic little game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love that the red block doesn't understand the concept of wrapping. It reminds me of playing with my dog.

<comment><USER28> I was actually going to ask what the rationale behind this was. I found that because of this, the best strategy was usually to wrap around to distract the block. I personally felt like the game would have worked better without that, although hard to know without trying it.

<comment><USER33> I felt wrapping added a strategic depth for me to explore and a positive sensation of "outsmarting" the red block.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> That's a neat little game. So creative, simple and intuitive to play. Best of all I didn't have to read any tutorials to get started.

By the way, if you're interested in making your own tile based RPG game, I'm developing some tutorials to help you learn how: [https://codeorc.com/learn- web-development-by-programming-a-r...](https://codeorc.com/learn-web- development-by-programming-a-rpg/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Cool game, but am I the only one who's a little skeptical about the title?

<comment><USER36> exactly i call bs

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Simple, yet addictive. Great work!

Watch out for the red block ... took me some time to realize it's a 'bad' block which subtracts from your score when touched.

<comment><USER38> I thought it was a really clever way to "teach" you about the game without having an actual tutorial (which I personally always hate).

I especially like how it lets you build up enough of a score before introducing the red block so that if you hit it a few times you are still in the game and the only setback was some time!

I think with some additional effects on the score (like some red flashing and showing it remove the score) when hitting a red one and it would be a lot easier to understand very quickly that it's bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who founded a company based on javascript game development, looks like I'll be hiring your little brother within a few years :)

<comment><USER40> His little brother could be a 40-year-old for all we know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice game, shortly after I started it dawned on me... Because it allows wrap- around you can just hold down the up arrow key and it becomes more of a 1-D game and seemed easier to play. Then the red thing showed up and started getting in the way and I found it easier to use all the arrows again.

</comment><comment><USER42> So fun. I like the AI logic, if he wants a fun addition he should add more enemies as the score increases and implement something like the pac-man ghost logic so that they all behave differently: [http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding- pac-m...](http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man- ghost-behavior)

<comment><AUTHOR> He hasn't learned about arrays yet : every element of the game is its own global variable. But this is something I would love to implement with him !

<comment><USER43> For a reasonable number of enemies-- e.g., Pinky, Inky, Blinky, Dot-- global variables should scale just fine.

Maybe learn arrays if he wants to enter the realm of Robotron enemy count... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This thing is deceptively subtle and fiendishly addictive. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER45> Very nice. I had fun with it. Maybe a little description of the goals on the page underneath the play area would be good? Took me a while to realize picking up the red squares was actually reducing my score. I initially thought they were just meant to be more challenging to pick up since they moved.

<comment><USER30> I actually thought there was something really enjoyable about not have it super obvious and shoving pointers and instructions at you.

It felt fun to explore and learn what it is

<comment><USER10> It might be nice to have something like:

Move arrow keys or tilt your phone. When I pulled this is on my phone, I thought it wasn't working until I saw that someone mentioned that tilting it worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Finally, one of these stories that didn't make me feel like an utterly talentless moron. This feels like what someone might be able to learn how to do in a week, but so often it seems like what you see here are 10 year olds writing real time ray tracing engines that use deep learning for some reason, and have source code that just happens to be a radiation hardened quine.

<comment><USER47> FYI the code is visible with "view source."

How old is your brother? Has he programmed before? The code doesn't look like what someone with no programming experience could do in a week (unless perhaps working from a similar example as a starting point).

<comment><USER48> Right click and view source is probably the best thing about the web. You can learn so much. The source code for this game is simple and straight forward. I find it hard to come up with any critique - it looks like it's written by a pro! I like that he use objects instead of "classes". The game should adopt to window resize and aspect ratio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Very cool. Nice trick you guys did there with the lighter colored block, and the red enemy not being able to follow across the boundary. A lot of game developers I respect and whose games I've enjoyed started programming at a young age with simple tools which allowed getting their hands dirty. While javascript is a great language to do this, you might want to consider Game Maker Studio as well.

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow this actually kinda fun. Tell your bro props.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is a really fun game! I love how fast the player moves, it reminds me of my max sensitivity trackpad and mouse :)

</comment><comment><USER52> Maybe your brother would be interested in this contest?

[https://js13kgames.com/](https://js13kgames.com/)

Like most everyone else, I was impressed. Way more interesting than I first thought possible with such a minimal game. The little red guy made the difference.

<comment><USER53> This one could easily be an entry to js1k: [https://js1k.com/](https://js1k.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Impressive, I wanted to make an RPG type of engine in Processing[0] and did similar, just made blocks that could move around based on keyboard input. Didn't continue on with it though.

[0]: [https://processing.org/](https://processing.org/)

</comment><comment><USER55> Didn't expect something significant when I opened the page, but it was great!

</comment><comment><USER56> Super fun, your little brother did a great job!

Only criticism I would say is to add some directions if possible, even though for most people it's common sense it took me a little while to figure out I needed to use my keyboard :P.

<comment><USER16> Admit it - you were tilting your monitor!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Amazing work. Your brother should continue pursuing this :D super impressed!

</comment><comment><USER58> Wow I really enjoyed that! When I was still trying to "win" my eyes were watering like crazy because you just can't blink once the score gets high. Am I the only one who at some point got suicidal? You're like OMG I need a break and the only way is to start chasing the red dot. When I got back below 10 and the red dot disappeared I was like holy shit there is no way out! Felt like a great twisted ending to some intense psycho thriller. Also my right (arrows) hand is now aching.

Great job!

</comment><comment><USER59> Snowcrash mode :) (In console): setInterval(function() { hero.x = powerUp.x; hero.y = powerUp.y; }, 50); setInterval(function() { hero.x = reward.x; hero.y = reward.y; }, 100);

<comment><USER60> I did the same, but played around a bit more and made an "AI" mode:

      maxScore = 0;
      setInterval( function() {
      	if (score > maxScore) {
      		maxScore = score;
      	}
      	if (distance(hero.y, hero.x, ennemi.y, ennemi.x) < (vitesseEnnemi * 15 + 30)) {
      		hero.y += (hero.y - ennemi.y) * speedLimit / distance(hero.y, hero.x, ennemi.y, ennemi.x);
      		hero.x += (hero.x - ennemi.x) * speedLimit / distance(hero.y, hero.x, ennemi.y, ennemi.x);
      	}
      	if (spawn > PowerUpspawnRate) {
      		hero.y += (powerUp.y - hero.y) * speedLimit / distance(hero.y, hero.x, powerUp.y, powerUp.x);
      		hero.x += (powerUp.x - hero.x) * speedLimit/ distance(hero.y, hero.x, powerUp.y, powerUp.x);
      	} else {
      		hero.y += (reward.y - hero.y) * speedLimit / distance(hero.y, hero.x, reward.y, reward.x);
      		hero.x += (reward.x - hero.x) * speedLimit/ distance(hero.y, hero.x, reward.y, reward.x);
      	}
      }, 25);

It's oddly fun to watch the little green guy pull off some sick dekes.

If you want your green guy to flat-out avoid the enemy, just wrap the second set of conditions there in an else block.

edit: Formatting for readability/copy+paste

<comment><USER59> I love when the red square comes close and the green one jukes in a tight spiral around it, just thinking "Whoa nope nope NOPE ah it's okay"

<comment><USER60> LOL yeah, it's like watching a sport. By about a score of 300 the enemy is just too fast for our hero. =/

<comment><USER61> Interesting, I just watched it and for me the limit is around ~130.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> A great reflection on both the quality of the teacher and the promise of the student. And I really liked all the subtleties captured in such simple code. Refreshing!

</comment><comment><USER63> Simple game design really is a beautiful thing. You find a mechanic that is fun to noodle with (like the slippery control logic), throw in a hook to get people ("oh look! a green square!") and then you can refine and refactor into a billion different permutations.

My favorite part about this was how the red square would get faster in bursts. It was like the baddie was getting increasingly exasperated about his whole damn situation.

</comment><comment><USER64> That's impressive. Can you provide more info such as how old he is, did he have any kind of programming experience prior, and how did you go about teaching him?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I can. My brother is 15, he is smart and he had programmed before, but only on his calculator (in TI-BASIC, I think). He already knew the basics of programming. He got his first real computer for Christmas. I was with him at my parents house, behind his shoulder as we created the skeleton of the game together over a weekend. After that I left, and he kept adding features on his own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Nice job, just an FYI it looks like movement speed is tied to refresh rate. I was having a difficult time at 144hz but lowering to 60hz made it way more manageable.

</comment><comment><USER66> Congratulations to your brother and hope he continues to create and learn!

This demo reminded me of this tutorial livestreamed a few weeks ago: [https://youtu.be/Z3OnwkPOfY4](https://youtu.be/Z3OnwkPOfY4)

While your brother's demo adds more advanced input and gameplay elements, I'm just curious whether it helped inspire him.

</comment><comment><USER67> Should it have some type of timer, perhaps a countdown for accomplishing a mission, with time lessening each round?

</comment><comment><USER68> I played so long, I forgot I was at work.

</comment><comment><USER69> You should show him nibbles - this was something I made in C when I was 17 or 18 - could be the next step in his production of this game! [https://classicreload.com/qbasic- nibbles.html](https://classicreload.com/qbasic-nibbles.html)

</comment><comment><USER70> This is really nice, simple and fun game. Absolutely a great first project. I love how the physics feel.

</comment><comment><USER71> Seconding everyone else. I was surprised by how dope this was. I played until like the 70s or 80s.

</comment><comment><USER72> I thoroughly enjoyed the little distraction. Great job and keep on hacking it! So much potential.

</comment><comment><USER73> Brings back memories of Squares 2, a Flash game I was addicted to in high school: [http://www.officegamespot.com/freegames/squares2.htm](http://www.officegamespot.com/freegames/squares2.htm)

</comment><comment><USER74> Nice but damn long code block. Maybe ask if he can break it up into smaller functions. Better to get him thinking about quality and reuse. Like that comments though, better than most code out there.

</comment><comment><USER75> Pretty fun. Please make the score a little bigger so I can read it without my glasses :)

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm an old man and a bad programmer. I will learn a lot from this game. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER77> Toutes mes félicitations Noé ;)

</comment><comment><USER78> French variables names <3 So nice to see, it reminds me some memories :-D Good job! Big Kudos for your little brother!

PS: J'espere qu'il gardera cette curiosite et cette envie de creer!

</comment><comment><USER79> This is awesome. Straight-forward mechanics, engaging, and it could really just end there.

I hope to inspire in my own kids something you have shared with your little brother. A true gift!

Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER80> Why is this so enjoyable

<comment><USER81> The elegant game design is easily the most impressive part of this.

<comment><USER82> Seriously. This is like when 2048 was posted on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> When I was fooling around with JS, I made Conway's Game of Life.

[http://n5dux.com/life/](http://n5dux.com/life/)

</comment><comment><USER84> Let him know there is a minor bug with the brake.

If you hold an arrow key and then hold brake, the square will slow down but then speed up briefly and finally slow down for good.

</comment><comment><USER85> Surprisingly fun game.

Seems pretty basic enough in the beginning, but then turns into a serious predator/prey challenge and involves a lot of hand/eye coordination.

</comment><comment><USER86> this is awesome, and very similar to what got me into dev.

when I was 11 an online friend showed me a "game" he was working on using VB6. There was a little star you moved across the screen by clicking buttons for u/d/l/r. His end goal was a top-down RPG.

Seeing projects like this always hold a special place in my heart. Best of luck to your brother. I hope his passion grows and he does amazing things

</comment><comment><USER87> Sounds like my experience with BASIC in the early 80's. I made a cheesy Space Invaders clone. Although, I think I was longer than a week.

</comment><comment><USER88> I really enjoyed the "feel" of the movement!

</comment><comment><USER89> Putting the - you made a game in a week and you only just started - <USER2>

The mechanics in this are really well thought out! Great job!

</comment><comment><USER90> This is really cool. It could be the next Flappy Bird / 2048\. Do more enemies show up when you score 100? :-)

</comment><comment><USER91> Nice game! How old is your little brother?

</comment><comment><USER92> Amazing success story! The game is really fun! You should challenge him to add mobile support via accelerator!

<comment><USER93> It already uses the gyroscope in mobile!

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> This impressive!! I love the gameplay.

Are you guys from Québec or Europe? I noticed the french comments in the source code hehe

<comment><AUTHOR> we are from France :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I'm very impressed with how fun the game is. Your little brother has talent for game design.

</comment><comment><USER96> It's amazing how something so simple can be so fun. Really awesome accel/deceleration feel.

</comment><comment><USER97> This is a great start, and, if you want, a natural progression from here is an Asteroids clone.

</comment><comment><USER98> What I like about this project is that the game board is topologically a torus.

</comment><comment><USER99> there is a bug if you try to change direction by rolling over left and right at the same time or up and down at the same time. hitting uo/down together and left/right together when changing direction has a weird pause effect.

</comment><comment><USER100> How do I get this game working on my device. I have chrome on android lollipop.

</comment><comment><USER101> Nice job, deceptively simple, yet has the fun factor.

Also notice the GH repo, it has 43 commits.

</comment><comment><USER102> Your little brother ruined my day. Because I can't stop playing. :p

</comment><comment><USER103> Yeah dude! Love this. It got difficult at 33. I'm hooked.

</comment><comment><USER104> From a game design perspective this is a good game.

</comment><comment><USER105> Loved the Gameplay, haven't see anything like this. :)

</comment><comment><USER106> Very fun game! I cheered when I got my first square.

</comment><comment><USER107> This is really Really cool. Hats off to little bro.

</comment><comment><USER108> Somehow, I find it interesting, so not bad at all.

</comment><comment><USER109> Wow, the maths are more impressive than coding IMHO

Bien joué Noé :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Il est en première. Do not underestimate the french education system ;) What you need for such a game are Pythagorean and Thales's theorems. I gave him hints so that he poses the problem correctly, but he came up with the formula for moving the red square on his own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Surprisingly well thought out mechanic!! Good job!

</comment><comment><USER110> Good work. It's fun and has clean code too!

</comment><comment> Avi-D-coder Very cool. A high score counter would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER111> Fun! Wonder how high people will go. 69 points.

<comment><USER112> I think I got to around 65 points before the red square began catching up to me and taking away my points.

It's definitly a fun little game, I love the simplicity of the code with regards to dependencies. If you look through the code, you can also find that the shift key acts as a brake, definitly not something that is very discoverable.

I wish there were more ways to control the green square, the arrows keys on my touch bar macbook pro are pretty bad and my hand began to cramp a little bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Ha it's dope The best games are so 'simple'

</comment><comment><USER114> Played for a while and it's very good.

</comment><comment><USER115> i would have no idea how to make this game.

</comment><comment><USER116> You have taught him well, congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER117> The mobile version is oddly satisfying

</comment><comment><USER118> Pretty good fun/complexity ratio.

</comment><comment><USER119> so cool!

maybe dumb question - where's the link to the source code? adding that to the actual page would be great.

<comment><USER120> Source code: [https://github.com/S-poony/Ultra-Square-Catcher- USC-](https://github.com/S-poony/Ultra-Square-Catcher-USC-)

It's canvas based. Interesting choice as a starting point of a learning path.

<comment><USER121> HTML5 canvas was where I wrote my first game, it has a relatively simple API, once you've copied the boilerplate from somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> Very nice. Bounds detection please.

</comment><comment><USER123> That's really fun and simple!

</comment><comment><USER124> Nice work. Hope he keeps it up!

</comment><comment><USER125> Very, very enjoyable! Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER126> Ok, that was fun to play. Wow!

</comment><comment><USER36> how little is little? why didnt he post it here himself? feels a little suspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe because he is not on hackernews? I told him I did this post, and he reads your comments, though.

He is 15. I should have written younger brother and not little brother; english is not my native language.

<comment><USER36> If he truly did it, that's great and seems like you guys could start an indie studio and work part time on upwork or something until you get funded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> You're a good teacher :)

</comment><comment><USER128> isn't the game fun! :)

</comment><comment><USER129> Great!

How did you teach your little brother?

</comment><comment><USER130> Does he want a job?

</comment><comment><USER131> Pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER132> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER133> Nice!

</comment><comment><USER134> wow, great game!

</comment><comment><USER135> wow fantastic !

</comment><comment><USER136> this is awesome

</comment><comment><USER137> Cool game! Congrats to your brother.

Doesn't work on current Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should work on firefox :( Did you click on the page before using the arrow keys ? Do you have JS errors in the console ?

<comment><USER138> Works for me on latest Firefox!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How will the world change post pandemic? - <AUTHOR> What do HN members think will be the major short, medium and long term changes coming out of this? What are some good essays on the matter? <comment><USER2> I'm hoping that people will be eager to go back to the norm of going out and about.

I'm really not that keen of living in a future where a majority of people stay at home or use InstaCart to order groceries. That is just lame, and frankly I don't want that. We are social animals and we need to get back asap.

Long term I think that we will shift more towards self-sustenance. For the most part, people are listening to the authorities and I'm wondering if this will lead to a rise in CIVIC nationalism. This is the first time in my life that I've seen people actually work together for the greater good. I live in California and yeah it is a bubble here, but that's my experience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think a few things will change, at least for a while. I think there will be a shift towards remote work of all sorts, likely with an accompanied improvement in tele-presence tech. Maybe VR will benefit from this tail-wind. I think some types of business, like restaurants, gyms, theaters, professional sports will be hurting for a long time. I think there will be a backlash against globalization though I have my doubts that it will produce anything more than campaign slogans. I think there will be an exodus from great metropolis, particularly from NY, particularly from families. I think many people will burrow in: invest in improving their homes, prep, travel less, focus on their local communities.

<comment><USER3> > I think some types of business, like restaurants, gyms, theaters, > professional sports will be hurting for a long time.

There's another place where people are packed ever closer together: air travel. I think there will be a significant long-term decline in at least vacation air travel, and possibly a somewhat lesser decline in business travel. As a result of this, the hotel and tourism industries will also take a bit hit (including Airbnb). The cruise ship industry may take even longer to recover.

NYC will be particularly badly hit by this, since we get a huge percentage of our income from tourism.

<comment><USER4> > There's another place where people are packed ever closer together: air > travel.

Maybe one result will be to increase the seat pitch, then. (Hey, a guy can dream...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anti-Globalization/Nationalism will re-emerge. Countries such as Japan are subsidizing moving factories out of China and back to their own country.

Remote Delivery is the new paradigm. Instacart and Doordash delivery services to your door is the new normal. If you can afford it, why take a chance going to the grocery store only to get infected?

Political division and tribalism will accelerate. As more people are being cocooned in their homes and reading/listening only to their partisan news channel of choice, identity politics will become even more vicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really hope you are wrong on this last one but the way the virus is being so disgustingly politicized leads me to believe you might be right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Human beings are prone to forget... even the most traumatic experience...

<comment><USER3> If someone's relatives or friends die, they're not likely to forget it for a long time. If someone comes close to death themselves, they're not likely to forget that either.

<comment><USER7> That happens every day. Covid-19 or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mullets will make a comeback as a hairstyle, since we can't reach the back of our head when we're self cutting.

<comment><USER9> You can with clippers. I expect we'll see more buzz cuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think governments will be more quick to act and close down borders if virus breaks up somewhere else. Other than that - nothing much.

<comment><USER7> Or perhaps we will learn that the reaction to this was grossly over egged and completely unnecessary

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would you say that? NY, Italy, Spain suffered horrifically, do you think the reaction was exaggerated there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At first I thought people would be in general more afraid of debt, as the world could stop spinning at any moment but payments still had to be made. However, now with all these government aids it might point to the other direction as in "if the economy stops I know the government is going to give me a hand".

<comment><USER8> If by "people" you mean corporations, then yes. But actual working people who don't have enough money to buy food and are waiting months for a one-time $1,200 check... I don't think so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably not much? We humans are pretty easy to fall twice in a same rock.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this could be a turing point in tackling climate change. People will be more aware of how impending existential crises are real and can have an effect on our daily lives.

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt it. Just like nothing was done until the virus started killing people not will be done until climate change starts to really kick in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Humans are great in adapting to different environments, which is great for survival, but in this case, not so great because when we are back to normal, we will remember it as "wasn't too bad, next time we will be prepared" and move on.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd hope vanity projects like recycling and global warming are forgotten and we work together like in the post WWII era and dream of building a futuristic society again.

But, short term we will realise RL is better than digital life. There will be a backlash to digital while at the same time having integrated it into our lives even more. So a mixed model will come out.

Medium term: Nationalism has been accelerated and developing countries are 5 years poorer.

IE: China hate has now been legitimized, they are the new Russia along with Russia is the new Russia as we realise they also hurt us in this crisis. Elections might be funny to mess with, pandemics is more war like.

C19 doesn't allow us to see the future anymore than before. So long term is unknown as always.

</comment><comment><USER16> As an Asian male, dating prospects in the US for us weren't ever good anyway, but this pandemic may be the death sentence/nail in the coffin for us.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think society will remain largely the same on the surface. Underneath, we'll see some interesting changes from an American perspective. Here are a few off the top of my head:

1\. The Cat's Out of the Bag

\- So many things can't really be taken back. The myth of "you need to be in the office" is destroyed. There are benefits to being in the office, but many people are continuing their jobs as normal -- and perhaps even performing better! We'll see a shift in the workforce as remote working becomes more palatable and almost a necessity going forward. This will have more subtle ramifications on the global economy as jobs no longer need to be local to be acquired. (To be clear, most businesses will force their employees to come into the office, but the WFH option is going to be much more attractive after this, and successful businesses will have to adjust.) Because of this, we may see companies eliminate physical offices altogether, and there might be a small decline in corporate real estate. I don't really think this last bit will happen, but it will be interesting to find out.

\- Movie distributors have started to allow "in-theater" movies to be streamed via Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. It's 20 bucks for a movie, which is expensive for a digital rental, but it's far cheaper than going to a theater. Those of us who only went to theaters for big releases might still go, but we'll see a shift in people staying home with their families and friends watch a $20 movie and free(ish) popcorn and candy on a giant TV screen, rather than spending $50+ just to see a movie in theaters. The physical movie theater experience will have to shift to something more special, like Alamo Drafthouse or something along those lines.

\- In the education space, most parts of the United States have the concept of "snow days", which are days in the calendar that are provided in case of weather-related emergencies such as hurricanes or snow, where schools have to be shut down or are otherwise inaccessible. The cat's out of the bag on this one. No more snow days. Your classes will be taught virtually. If your local schools don't do virtual classes now, you can bet they'll be preparing those for the 2021-2022 school year and beyond. This may or may not have ramifications for the idea of "school districts" as well. Private schools may go virtual. Homeschooling rates may skyrocket. Not sure what exactly to expect here, but at the very least, snow days are over.

2\. Industries and Businesses

\- Whoever cracks the code on virtual socialization will make billions. Zoom and Skype are designed for businesses: 1 person talks and the rest listen. They don't work for groups socializing or party atmospheres. Whoever can figure out how to make that work... well, let's just say I wish I were them.

\- Along those lines, virtual entertainment will skyrocket. Virtual board games, "pub crawls", movie nights, you name it.

\- Just as a lot of companies in the software development industry have pivoted to "mobile first" development, we'll see businesses and restaurants rethink their business models to be "delivery prepared". Gourmet restaurants will have to come up with cheaper delivery menus. Who's going to pay $40 for three pieces of ravioli with caviar on top to be delivered to their house? Nobody. But we will pay $40 for a good pizza, some garlic bread, and maybe some wings. BYOB, of course. Bookstores, shoe stores, board game stores, vinyl record stores, Gap, West Elm, IKEA, and any other store that relies on foot traffic will have to come up with backup plans in case foot traffic disappears. If they can't do this, they'll go out of business. Worse than that, many of those kinds of businesses will just never have newcomers because it may be too difficult or expensive to have a backup plan. (Gamestop, for example.)

\- Just because we can start going back to work in July doesn't mean this is all over. We'll still need to social distance on some level, wash our hands constantly, wear masks, and be careful. Concerts, airplanes, bars, gyms, and other places where people get tightly packed in will have to have alternative business models to survive in that new reality. Not only that, but for the near term there will still be fear of those places. How do they cope when people are afraid to come to a concert? How many people can you fit into a bar on Super Bowl Sunday and still maintain some semblance of social distance? Long term? They'll probably go back to normal. But for the short-to-medium term, there will be a number of changes there.

3\. Social, Economic, and Legal Change

\- It is highly likely that we will lose protections out of fear, just like we did post-9/11 with the PATRIOT Act. Things that seem innocuous and necessary on the surface, but over the long term have devastating consequences. States, counties, cities, and other municipalities now have precedent for ordering everyone to stay at home. Not quite martial law, but close enough that the slippery slope has started. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I can see governments shutting down businesses or venues for "reasons" that may or may not be true.

\- Divorces and breakups will go up in the short term, as people are cooped up together in ways that they never had been before. There will be a ton of babies in 7-10 months. Population demographics will change.

\- The recession will have longer lasting financial impacts in certain sectors. I'm not an economist, so I can't go into much detail here, but housing prices, imports/exports, transportation, and hospitality downturns will have ripple effects across everything else. We might see investments diversify even further into new sectors, or maybe double down on tech. Who knows?

\- Hospitals will (hopefully) be better staffed, especially with emergency equipment like ventilators. On the flip side, ERs will be overwhelmed for the short-to-midterm future, with patients flooding it out of fear that their cough might be coronavirus or whatever the next big pandemic will be. This will have an impact on city budgets, tax revenues, and more.

\- The FDA, OSHA, and other health and safety organizations will introduce new regulations designed to prevent the spread of another pandemic. More red tape. Maybe it's worth it, maybe not, but it will almost certainly happen.

\- The unemployment numbers will cause a shift in the country's economy. A lot of these people won't have jobs to go back to, so entire sectors of industry might disappear overnight, and others might shoot up out of nowhere. The gig economy will see a boost in the short-term.

\- Social programs like unemployment insurance, universal basic income, and some flavor of Medicare for All will become immensely popular, even more so than now. I'm not confident that anything progressive will come out of it in our current political climate, but we'll almost certain see public support for these things increase to new levels.

\- Not a prediction, but I'm a little curious as to how (or if!) the anti-vaxx movement changes as we emerge from this pandemic.

I can think of a few others, but I'll leave it there for now. To sum it up: in the short term, the changes will be drastic, medium-term things will be rocky, and long term things will largely return to normal but the fundamentals shifted with long-lasting but subtle (or not) implications. Most Americans' day-to-day life won't appear to be that different in a year.

<comment><USER18> Long post so won't comment on all of it. Many could happen.

Disagree on WFH change though. Many of us have had WFH power for a long time. A huge percent of tech workers use laptops and have the raw tech to WFH. A lot of developers (like me) still enjoy having an office to collaborate in. A lot of business owners (like me) will continue to require in office employees when this is over.

This isn't like some shock that proved to us how good WFH is. I have worked years of my life remote. I know the pros and I know the cons. I will continue to have a local office and hire local developers.

<comment><USER17> I agree with all of that, honestly. What I think is going to change is the belief by the company that WFH is undesirable. Most companies, even those that allow remote work, would prefer that everyone be in the office. There are tons of companies (my own included) that discouraged WFH policies, but given that we've been 100% remote for the last 3-4 weeks and the sky hasn't fallen, I can see a lot of companies (and a lot of employees!) warming up to the idea that WFH is not only palatable, but even a good idea and a nice perk for attracting new employees. My company would never have allowed this many people to WFH in a pre-COVID world, but I can definitely see that changing in the future.

Yes, there are very good reasons that people can and should work in an office. Absolutely. I 100% agree with you. But I think that businesses will start to realize that there are just as good alternatives to a lot of those reasons -- and especially if, as I mentioned, someone can crack the virtual social problem. If it's as easy to hop on a video call and sort something out (virtual whiteboarding?!) in a minute or two, then that's just as, if not more, efficient than being in an office. If we can virtually socialize similarly to how we do in an office, have water cooler moments similarly, hold meetings similarly... then a lot of those reasons fall away.

To be clear, I'm not saying that businesses will move to 100% remote. That's obviously not going to happen no matter what for 99% of companies. But I think the _idea_ of WFH is going to become much, much, much more palatable and desirable to both companies and employees out of this.

<comment><USER19> Be careful what you wish for. Once an employer discovers your job can be done remotely, it's only a small step to discover it can be done cheaper by someone living somewhere else...

Of course some jobs are a hybrid, where you only come to the office a couple times a week (which then limits the savings to the business anyway) but for the genuine 100‰ work from home expect serious job insecurity.

Live in LA? Wfh to beat the traffic? Well someone living in Ohio,or elsewhere can do the same work for less money. Live in Ohio? There's someone in Canada that can do it for less...

<comment><USER17> I think that's the future, whether we want it or not... We've already been seeing that with respect to call centers and outsourcing tech stuff for decades. It's only a matter of time before we become a truly globalized economy where any white-collar job can be done regardless of location.

I think a more interesting dynamic that would arise out of this is how compensation works. Right now, someone in San Francisco makes a bajillion times what someone doing the same work in Kalamazoo makes. If businesses can seamlessly hire someone in Kalamazoo for a fraction of the price, why wouldn't they? They would! and should! But then what happens to the person in the San Francisco Bay Area? Not just the person, but what happens to the entire area?

Will all the techies in SF start moving to cheaper places to live? Or will they try and stay in SF? What will happen to housing prices or food prices? Will gentrification start reversing itself?

This sort of leads into an off-topic conversation, but I'll mention it because I'm personally fascinated by it. Right now, I get paid X dollars per year because the business has decided that I generate more than that in revenue somehow, and some value of that $X is due to my geographic location (San Francisco). If I were able to work remotely and then decide I don't want to live in SF any longer and move to, say, Jackson, Mississippi, then what would happen to my pay? The company would likely try and cut my pay as a "cost of living" adjustment. But that's absurd, right? I was worth X dollars/yr in SF, and I'm still worth X dollars/yr regardless of whether I'm in an office in SF or in a cabin in Alaska or a coffeeshop in Vietnam.

I have counterparts in an office on the other side of the country that make half what I make for the same work, all because they live in a particular geographic area. But that's dumb. We generate the same amount of revenue from the company (theoretically) regardless of our geographic area. But because they live in a place with a lower COL, they get paid less and the company makes more off of them. The whole idea is absurd in a number of levels.

I digress, but to turn this back to your point: if this suddenly _does_ happen, what happens to "COL adjustments"? Are they still a thing?

Wouldn't I be able to say that I'm worth X dollars whether I'm based in Iowa City vs NYC? Wouldn't everyone be able to do that? Is it a foregone conclusion that it's a race to the bottom, or would wages and jobs stabilize into some sort of equilibrium? Maybe $500k salaries go away, but they wouldn't necessarily fall down to $50k salaries, and in fact might stabilize somewhere closer to $150k, and that's more than enough for most people in the USA to live decently. (I made up those numbers totally out of my ass, but it's the point that matters, not the numbers.)

Anyway... interesting things to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A few items I've been thinking about that come to mind at the moment: * Companies will see the benefit of WFH, and some significant portion of them will make that a long running option (performance pending), some smaller percentage will 100% make the leap

* A significant amount of individuals will demand WFH options for their current/future companies

* Companies will view the strategic vulnerability that is centralized manufacturing in China, and a large portion of companies will diversify, even at higher cost

* Assuming we get a vaccine in 12 months, vaccine development will likely take a higher percentage of medical research funding. Previous iterations of vaccines took 5+ years to make, so if the cost and effectiveness of mapping the genome so quickly have really had such a large impact, this will be a more utilized tool in our toolbelt.

* (US) Some portion of individuals will spend a long time out of the work force intentionally, due to the increase in unemployment benefits. This will drive up the effective minimum wage, and may well pave the way to a true minimum wage increase depending on how the next election goes.

* (JP) We might see a shift in work/life balance amongst the Japanese

* (Globally) I think there is a good chance that, on the other end of the, the WHO has large scale changes following investigations.

* (US) There seems to be an increasingly likely chance that the president loses support come election time, but there is also an increasingly likely chance that our elections have some degree of fraudulence to them (voter suppression for instance).

* (US) The president has already taken many large power grabs in the wake of this pandemic, removing the oversights for the 2 Trillion stimulus bill, removing supplies from states that are blue and giving them to states that are red, etc. You can argue whatever you like about this, but whatever your politics are it's abuse of power in the open. Get out and vote.

<comment><USER21> You had me until you got to the president paranoia.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is wrong with the online networking scene? - <AUTHOR>

How do you feel about online networking? We (i.e. my startup team) have mixed emotions.
We feel that "social" and "professional" networking should not exist as separate entities.
Facebook recently disabled a LinkedIn app for their users. One Facebook user commented:
"Yep. All my profile tabs are back to the default. I really liked this app, and it came in useful on more than one occasion. Seems the more FB tries to make itself "social" the more it limits the way people can interact (Or punishes them when they do)..."
(You can click on the tab near the top that says, "Just My LinkedIn Profile," to see some of the reactions: http://www.facebook.com/applications/My_LinkedIn_Profile/6394109615)
Any thoughts on this?
What other problems need to be addressed? <comment><USER2> Hmm, my linkedin and facebook networks are almost entirely separate and I really want to keep it that way. now having said that I wouldn't mind my facebook peeps getting near my linkedin stuff, but wouldn't want my linkedin crowd going near my facebook page. i actually just decoupled my twitter feed from my linkedin account, because i didn't think it was appropriate... some tweets wouldn't do my chances of getting hired much good.

hope that helps. maybe that's just me.</comment>


How to lose and recover your blog in 30 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/65 <comment><USER2> Damn... After I think I've got all the knobs set "just right", I'll always reboot just to see what happens.

This usually catches various common problems not quite as serious as this one... daemon doesn't start, kernel panics, more updates required after boot, etc.

The last time I had something like this happen, needing to restore from a weekly backup, Google or Archive.org had already cached everything new and I was able to recover it all without much hassle.

</comment><comment><USER3> And a blog requires a Redis back-end because?

I've hosted my blog on S3 & CloudFront for a while now without issue. Comments are hosted by Disqus, and the static files are generated using Pelican.

Seriously, unless you're using your blog as a massive CMS, why not use static files?

<comment><USER4> this is the blog of the guy that wrote Redis.

<comment><USER3> Well then that's somewhat acceptable. Somewhat.

<comment><USER5> Oh, admit it. Antirez wrote a hell of a blogging platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Wayback Machine has numerous caches of his website, dating back over 7 years. This should be good enough to restore all the timestamps to within 24 hours of their original values, as well as catch anything that Google's cache might have missed.

[https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://antirez.com](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://antirez.com)

<comment><USER7> That is helpful, thanks! I'll recover the dates...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the comments are outsourced then why have a backend at all? Just pop all of the posts into an S3 bucket and update the index when creating a new one. No server needed.

<comment><USER9> Dogfooding his own project I would assume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funnily enough, just yesterday a friend of mine just told me that a few years ago the database of a blog community he runs got corrupted and had to be recovered. Unfortunately, the server where he was sending his backups got full like 3 months prior and he didn't know, so he had basically lost 3 months of data. He recovered most posts checking Google Cache too. And yes, now he has all the systems properly set up with alerts, proper backups and such :)

</comment><comment><USER11> So really ... google cache to the rescue...

</comment><comment><USER12> I got distracted and was looking at your other posts, when I noticed that the 5 or so I had looked at all said "1 day ago". I thought you must be a lunatic until I actually went back and read this post and saw that your dates had been lost. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's funny, for all the work that goes into some things simpler is so often better. I've had a lot of value out of the content antirez has posted on his blog - all along it was just a block of unformatted text.

</comment><comment><USER14> What I love about Jekyll and Github pages is I get all the backup that git provides. The likelyhood of me losing my hard drive data and Github losing my data at the same time are nil.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have lost a couple blogs over the years, mostly out of laziness, letting them expire. I got an itch to write some posts recently and wanted to set up a new site. This time around I decided I would do it with something git friendly, so that I could throw it on github and forget about it if I lost interest. I wrote a "from scratch" site with this in mind and it was working well, so I open sourced the core engine today. It runs on express and is about as bare bones as it gets. [http://morganherlocker.com/post/badblog](http://morganherlocker.com/post/badblog)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised he isn't using a static website

<comment><USER16> Salvatore (antirez) had a nice pithy response to that:

      oh, static systems are for people that don't have fast databases ;-)

[https://twitter.com/antirez/status/407184116275503104](https://twitter.com/antirez/status/407184116275503104)

<comment><USER17> My database is called ext4. It is plenty fast for a blog. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "simple systems are really better than complex systems when something bad happens"

isn't that super ironic? that by configuring something in a stupidly elaborate way you had a problem...

redis may be super stable but cosmic ray neutrons are a thing and they will screw you one day eventually. :)

surely the real saviour here is the internet and its ability to keep crusty old data alive for you through caching and such...

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty fulfilling recovery ? Well done maplebed, lesson learnt and problem resolved.

My least proudest moment quote a while ago was when I realised I just binned a directory I had been writing some code in few files in it, But had them all open in an editor. Recreated the directory and hit save in each tab. _phew, disaster avoided_

</comment><comment><USER20> I love his conclusion "Without to mention that now I know I don't have to enable backups as I can recovery everything."

</comment><comment><USER21> So those distro packages are looking quite appealing after all...

</comment><comment><USER22> mmm. I have 242 posts published on my blog, with over 3000 moderated comments. I'd rather not have to copy-paste all that back in.</comment>


Why Is the Shiller CAPE So High? - <AUTHOR> http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2014/08/capehigh/

<comment><USER2> Because central Banks have been buying up securities to avoid bankrupting the government during the 4st 4 years of their party's president. Then they had to extend this to avoid hitting 15% unemployment by hitting the next recession when unemployment was already at 9-10%.

Then those %$##@$$% "job-creators" only went halfway : they hired people, but not enough and only temps. So now the Fed is buying securities, pushing up Schiller's P/E, to create employment pressure before hiking rates back up and presumably create the mother of all crashes by selling 2+ trillion in securities on the open market.

Now is the quiet before the storm. Best guesses seem to be dollar will appreciate for half a year or so, stock market stalling or at least slowing down, then stock market will crash, then another 3-4 months of dollar appreciation, then the Fed will crash the dollar again.

Interesting times ahead.</comment>


Zappos great customer service - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitelead.com/blog/zappos-live-chat/2009/06/01

<comment><USER2> Summary: Someone goes trolling Zappos' customer support with stupid questions and is supprised when he receives a polite reception.

Flagged for being useless.</comment>


From RSS to sharing on social networks - phantomjs? - <AUTHOR>

How would you automate posting the title / description / short url of your blog posts to your Facebook / Twitter / Google+ / ... pages? The sites we are sponsoring or helping with have 10+ RSS feeds and 30+ possible social network page destinations.<p>Does someone have a good collection of PhantomJs scripts? <comment><USER2> I use CasperJS - it's a wrapper with syntactic sugar around PhantomJS. Posting to social networks is almost trivial (couple of lines). Just run it with your cookies file, and it'll login automatically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the lead!

I've found bing login for casperjs, but otherwise most example out there assume anonymous access. I wouldn't use my cookie files, especially because it limits automation.

It is so stunning that nobody tried to solve this before / nobody published the scripts.</comment></comment>


64-Bit Chrome for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/06/64-bit-chrome-for-windows.html <comment><USER2> Chromium blog (the actual source) explains why 64-bit windows version is interesting: [http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit- windows-...](http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows- canary-and.html)

TL;DR: This version improves on speed (processor optimizations related), security (windows features only available in 64-bit) and stability (they don't say why, could be related to windows itself).

<comment><USER3> _crash rates for the the renderer process (i.e. web content process) are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome_

I wonder how many of those crashes are due to running out of memory, because it otherwise seems quite odd that the 32-bit version would "crash more", unless they (accidentally?) fixed some bugs in the porting process.

Realistically, this means a browser that can use more than ~3GB of RAM, and that has its advantages and disadvantages.

<comment><USER4> If you can actually measure something like a 'crash rate' then you're doing something terribly wrong.

<comment><USER5> I think you're misunderstanding the context. A percentage of users opt in to crash reporting, and from that we see all manner of crashes on user systems. The biggest causes in Chrome tend to be: third-party software (i.e. plugins and injected hooks), intentional termination of web content to prevent resource exhaustion (e.g. out-of-memory), and unstable hardware (e.g. bad memory).

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but that this included third party software, intentional termination to prevent resource exhaution and unstable hardware was not evident in the sentence:

"crash rates for the the renderer process (i.e. web content process) are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome"

That sort of implied (to me) that this was a measure of instability of Chrome, not of the surroundings.

<comment><USER5> Users generally don't know or care if the issue is a bug in Chrome or not. To them the problem is just that Chrome is not working. So, we try to fix it where we can. We have code in Chrome to block third-party hook DLLs that we've identified as making the the browser unstable. We have watchdog code to prevent excessive resource consumption and hangs caused by misbehaving web content or plugins. And while we can't fix bad hardware, we do have signals that attempt to narrow it down as a cause.

That's not to say that some portion of crashes in Chrome are not caused by our own bugs that slipped through our various QA and testing processes. Certainly, those do exist, but in terms of crash rates they are dwarfed by the causes I listed previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nitpick correction for many of the comments here: if I'm not mistaken, Chrome already does/can use more than 3 GiB of RAM with the 32-bit binaries in Windows. Because of how its process sandboxing feature works, it is _each helper process_ (ie tab) that is restricted to 3 GiB, plus the master process that manages (but does not render) them. That's why they've been able to get away with not making the jump to 64-bit for all these years.

<comment><USER7> Very interesting, I wonder what kind of tab could be 3GB?

Do you know why they had a 64-bit Chrome for Linux since 2009? Why wouldnt they want to switch for Windows/Mac sooner. I bet the user base is greater.

<comment><USER8> 1\. It's not always single tab. JS heap may need to be shared between multiple tabs due to sharing of objects via `window.opener` and other leaky cross-frame hacks.

2\. The process will sooner run out of _addresses_ in the 3GB space rather than actual memory. After running for a while a process may end up with objects allocated all over the address space, so that there isn't enough contiguous address space free for new allocations, even though there's still plenty of free memory in small chunks between live objects.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't surprise me if Chrome defragments individual tab heaps

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is huge for us. Desktop 3D applications were one of the first to move to 64 bit. We have been suffering with 32 bit limitations with [http://Clara.io](http://Clara.io) and while it works, getting access to more than 1 GB of ram for JavaScript would be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER11> What would be great is if Google supported other 64-bit browsers on windows. Mozilla doesn't really officially support it, but they've provided 64-bit nightly builds for quite a while now. For example, the current nighly 64-bit can be found here: [https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late...](https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest- mozilla-central/firefox-32.0a1.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe)

Flash, Java, Silverlight, and so on all have 64-bit variants which work, but there's just no way to get the Google Talk and Hangouts plugin to work on those builds of Firefox.

Seeing the title gave me a bit of hope until I thought "No, of course, Google just bundles the plugin anyways... not like they'll publish a download link for a 64-bit build". I wouldn't even care if you had to click through several "Other system / Select custom download" links, if only it were available at all.

I feel like we have a chicken-egg problem. Firefox isn't offering 64-bit prominently because plugins have terrible support for it, and plugins don't support it because it doesn't exist yet... But, unlike Firefox, plugins can offer 64-bit compatible versions without angering a large number of users. Really, the ball should be in their court, Google included, to provide the options.

</comment><comment><USER12> How is NaCl going to fare in the 64-bit version, given that segmentation isn't available in x64 mode?

<comment><USER13> Why is segmentation important to Native Client?

<comment><USER14> Native Client uses segmentation on x86 32-bit. Quoting from the paper: [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html)

"The main contributions of this work are: ... using x86 segments for ... reduced overhead."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought the main problem with porting software to 64-bit was the bad practice of developers assuming the sizes of types. Since this was Google and the project is relatively recent, I'm assuming that is not the reason.

Why couldn't you take the chromium source (and dependencies) and compile them for x64 months ago?

<comment><USER16> As the blog post says, the linux version has been 64-bit since 2009. So the problem must be windows API, not type sizes.

<comment><USER17> A bit of history: osx [0] and windows [1]

IIRC most issues revolve around plugins and performance (notably V8), possibly not directly because of type sizes but similar low level stuff that hampers JS-to-the-metal optimisations.

Still waiting on OSX though.

[0]: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606)

[1]: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm guessing they finally did it now because ARMv8 hardware is coming, and they wanted to have Chrome for Android with 64-bit support for the improvement in performance and crash rate. So they decided they might as well do it for all operating systems now.

<comment><USER5> There were numerous factors, but that wasn't one of them. The biggest delays were things like the build toolchain and logistics. For example, Microsoft's toolchain couldn't even build a working, optimized, 64-bit Chrome binary until sometime last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> offline version URL, DEV

[https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devch...](https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devchannel&standalone=1)

</comment><comment><USER20> Kind of ridiculous how late this comes. Also with Chrome not working well with Windows' HiDPI settings, I am not sure why folks on Windows would go with Chrome over Firefox frankly.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a Linux enthusiast, I cringe every time I read "year of the Linux desktop". (Bear with me, this is on-topic)

Linux is a very usable OS _today_. Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable OS. USB drivers that need 3 minutes to set up every time I plug my mouse in a different port. More issues with sound than there are with Pulseaudio. And, yes, this is a huge peeve of mine: Only a tiny fraction of windows software is ever ported to 64 bit. WTF?

Almost all linux software is readily available on 64 bit, as 64 bit; this includes Chrome/Chromium from the very, very early days. So now, a major web browser was released as 64 bit on Windows. Congratulations. Maybe 2014 will be the year of the Windows desktop.

<comment><USER22> _Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable_

I wouldn't call it _much less_ usable, depends on what you're used to I guess.. Actively using both, each for their own task, I find them on par with each other. But I don't expect Windows too give me a super easy to setup server with a mighty commandline, and I don't expect Linux to give me a super smooth Desktop UI that can be used as a digital audio/video workstation, for instance. Cause they both suck at those tasks equally as it's far from their target experience. And I also don't have the WTF feeling you have as I never had the problems you talk about: _three_ minutes? Really? _More_ issues than Pulseaudio? Almost sounds like you try to run Windows 7 on an old pentium with crap drivers :P

<comment><USER21> I'm running Windows 7 on a current top of the line box.

Speaking of that, when I swapped out my old motherboard for a new one, Windows refused to boot, giving me a bluescreen every time. I googled around and found that this was, in fact, a very common issue and the only solution is a full reinstall. Woah.

More issues than Pulseaudio, yes. In fact, I have zero issues with Pulseaudio and plenty of issues with Windows. Not like stuttering, but devices not being recognized and a terribly confusing UI when it comes to, for example, switching sound playback devices (getting sound to work on my TV has been an awful experience).

Every time I have to boot into it it's an awful, awful experience. Here is just ONE reason why: [https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace- inserts-...](https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-a- small-box-instead-of-erasing)

<comment><USER23> If you sysprep generalize the machine before you swap the board it'll work afterwards. It's like moaning that your brain transplant resulted in you not being able to move your arms or something similar.

<comment><USER24> The analogy is unsound, you can do this with any Linux/BSD/Solaris system just fine. It's Windows who requires a more complex procedure here.

So yes, it's user's fault, but the point is that in this particular instance Linux _is_ more user friendly compared to Windows. The user needs _more_ knowledge and expertise to do the same operation with a Windows machine compared to a Linux machine.

<comment><USER23> I disagree.

If you take the disks out of a Dell and stuff them in an HP machine with the same chipset, Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup.

It's just different and you see the differences as misfeatures.

<comment><USER21> > Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on > startup

Systemd does.

<comment><USER23> a) Debian stable, Ubuntu, rhel6 don't have systemd. So no our servers don't.

b) it can't assume heuristics like that if the vendor changes so no it can't. This was based on a complete data transplant.

<comment><USER21> When I complain about Windows, I'm expected to complain about things that are still present in the latest version of windows (8.1 currently), not things that are no longer an issue since XP. In return, I expect you to do the same when complaining about Linux.

This is a solved problem and systemd is coming to debian as well.

<comment><USER23> In that case that would be complaining about windows 9. There are no mmainstream distributions shipping systemd yet.

<comment><USER21> Windows 8.1 is not mainstream either, compared to 7.

<comment><USER23> I'm sitting in an office with 120x 8.1 systems at the moment so...

<comment><USER21> And I'm sitting in an office with over 200 Fedora and Arch Linux machines. What's your point?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In-fighting over Mir on Non-Unity Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM5MTE

<comment><USER2> My bet is that long-term Mir will be a mere Weston alternative simply implementing the Wayland protocol and using the same kernel APIs.</comment>


Show HN: Vim Haskell IDE - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/begriffs/haskell-vim-now?hn=2 <comment><USER2> While it is nice to see the haskell community put some effort into this area, is it really necessary to blow the user's current vim settings away and make them start from scratch with your setup?

Why not make this a standardish plugin that pulls everything in and can be added to an existing vim config. Work with non-haskell languages two so I wouldn't want to swap back and forth between a haskell config and a non haskell config.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thing seems to be built on top of Stack.

Nice to see the Haskell community aligning itself so fast around a package manager/build tool created first and foremost for ease of use and convenience.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is actually perfect, I've switched to neovim anyway so treating old vim like a haskell IDE is fine.</comment>


'Pardon Snowden,' one tech exec tells Obama, report says - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57616044-38/pardon-snowden-one-tech-exec-tells-obama-report-says/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title <comment><USER2> This is a self-serving opportunity for Mark Pincus to look like the good guy, after years of acting like a tyrant when he was in charge of Zynga. I'm not just talking about pushing games designed to exploit users in various ways. Remember the incident where Pincus "demanded certain employees surrender some shares or be fired"? (1) He also laid off more than 500 people earlier this year,(2) managed problems by "address(ing) the symptoms rather than the root causes"(3) and padded his own nest while loyal investors who stuck with Zynga stock got roasted.(4)

Appearing in a photo opp with Obama and saying "free Snowden" is a low risk way for him to improve his image among his peers (rich Silicon Valley people) and the public.

1\. [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020462190...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204621904577018373223480802)

2\. [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/03/zynga-l...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/03/zynga- layoffs-mark-pincus/2385291/)

3\. [http://www.fastcompany.com/3007544/where-are-they- now/mark-p...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3007544/where-are-they-now/mark- pincuss-clowns-are-still-haunting-zynga)

4\. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/07/01/the-fall- of-m...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/07/01/the-fall-of-mark- pincus-from-billionaire-to-zyngas-former-ceo/)

<comment><USER3> There's a big fat line between being a dick of a manager (it's not illegal to say "surrender shares or be fired", simply asshole-tinted capitalism) and imprisoning someone for life for performing a heroic act (involving sacrificing his own personal freedom) to uphold some of the most important ideals of our society.

Please learn the difference between "asshole" and "evil".

You can be a stark raging asshole (e.g. Pincus, or weev) and still not be criminal, such as the activities of Obama, the DNI, and the NSA.

<comment><USER4> I think the average man on the google shuttle bus or any SV employee would consider "surrender shares or be fired" to be evil.

<comment><USER3> And it's exactly that that I suggest they learn not to do. It's a dick move, but it's not evil or criminal. It's within the rights of the person doing it, distasteful as it may be.

<comment><USER4> In my book its breach of contract between the employer and employee and that is illegal.

<comment><USER3> No, that's breach of contract. It has nothing to do with criminal law or legality.

You seem to be conflating civil and criminal law.

(Also, there is no employment contract in the world that gives up at-will, so ", or be fired" sentences aren't even breaches generally.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Obama administration has stated that if Snowden were to return to the United States, he would receive protection under due process laws."

That sure is nice of them.

How did it get to a point where this is actually up for debate? It sure sounds to me like that's a statement from somebody who thinks that they have options in how Snowden should be treated by the government.

<comment><USER6> Was Manning's treatment due process? Because it seems she was stripped naked and kept in isolation for several years.

I think I'll take the exile, thanks Barry.

<comment><USER7> Manning was in the military, and the operating interpretation of Article I is that Congress and the President have the power to regulate the Armed forces, the rest of the US Constitution and civilian law largely notwithstanding. Draconian punishment and treatment, while concerning, is nothing new for those subject to the UCMJ, even if the code itself appears to prohibit it[1].

The scary scenario would be the classification of Snowden as an enemy combatant, who would then be subject to military justice. I hope that all three branches of the US government consider that to be a ridiculous stretch of the imagination.

[1] [http://uscodebeta.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC- pre...](http://uscodebeta.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim- title10-section813&num=0&edition=prelim)

<comment><USER8> Would you put money on the fact that they wouldn't do that?

<comment><USER9> I would. They would gain nothing from doing it, and everything to lose (especially in the court of public opinion). Plus the case is already pretty clear, he's gone and admitted everything anyways. Literally nothing to gain from trying to put him through a military tribunal.

<comment><USER10> There's 158 guys in cages in Guantanamo that would beg to differ...

<comment><USER9> There might not be strong enough cases against some of the prisoners in Guantanamo, so holding them there, under their special status, allows the gov't to hold onto them without having to go through all these bothersome limits on detention. Plus there's the argument that people in Guantanamo could be especially dangerous if re-released (not defending this).

There really isn't that sort of problem with Snowden. A videotaped, non- coerced confession? Hundreds of articles sourced by him? How could the facts be clearer-cut? Trials could begin immediately, the worst he could do is pull an Assange-style blockade in some embassy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> With all that's being said about the NSA, and how we should add self- restraint, with all that the government is admitting about the current state of the NSA being bad, why not?

If it's that clear that Snowden did the right thing, why not pardon him? I feel that not pardoning Snowden is roughly equivalent to making a statement that people should be in the dark about the government's spying programs, and that the government should be free to spy on its people, unchecked.

<comment><USER12> This is the United States government. By pardoning snowman they set a dangerous precedent.

Let's say they pardon snowden, in the future, if more whistleblowers appear, all they have to do is say "but snowden was pardoned!" And then what?

<comment><USER13> If more people do what Snowden did, and reveal the kind of violations he has, then they too should be pardoned for the same reason he should be.

The proper response by the government to future cases is to judge them each case by case.

<comment><USER12> None of this is going to happen. The moment they open that door all hell breaks loose.

I really wish, but it won't. The system is solidified.

If they open this door, and then do anything against people using Snowdens precedent, the white house will be in a much worse position than now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is the list of people who Obama _has_ pardoned:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bara...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Barack_Obama)

It looks like many of them were just erasing the record of those who committed minor crimes a long time ago. I wonder how you get to be so lucky.

<comment><USER15> I don't know, but Obama's been pretty stingy with the pardons compared to past presidents.

<comment><USER16> wait until his last day in office

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pardoning Snowden has practical upsides for the President and NSA apart from morals, ethics, or scoring popularity points with tech execs. Namely, by pardoning Snowden, there's a good chance they can get him back on U.S. soil and possibly prevent more leaks that are damaging in other ways.

It strikes me that much of Snowden's original leaking was protecting civil liberties for U.S. citizens--let's call that patriotism. And it seems that reasonable people and federal judges agree that knowing about and fixing these abuses is a Good Thing.

As it stands now, the heavy handed government rhetoric / smear campaign, combined with the threat of legal (or worse, extra-legal) penalties at home, might make anyone skittish. And a skittish guy with a whole lot of government secrets seems like a Bad Thing.

So, let's bring this guy home and throw him some parades before Russia, China, Iran, and everyone else knows everything about our cyber warfare capacity-- i.e. "legitimate" spy stuff that all nations take part in.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kind of strange that in a discussion that is ostensibly related to the disastrous Healthcare.gov, that you'd invite the CEO of a gaming company that thrives off of manipulating users through gamification. I know Zynga has been successful in many ways that most could only hope to emulate...but really, there weren't more relevant CEOs to bring to the table?

But good for Pincus for asking the question. How embarrassing it is for Obama to equivocate on morality and principles with a CEO whose gaming company is often criticized for having neither.

<comment><USER19> To remain off topic:

It's not just him. The full quote:

"Obama met Tuesday with 15 tech executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, with the official purpose of discussing how his administration can improve its Healthcare.gov Web site."

None of these people seem particularly good candidates for a discussion on how to make healthcare.gov better. It's also highly questionable that only highly ranking executives were invited. It feels to me this was more of a face saving publicity stunt or a talking point. It would've been more useful and cheaper for Obama to just have Google or Yahoo build a replacement healthcare.gov website, or open source the task and ask them for contributions.

Where's the "let's get shit done" focus?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My first reaction was, "Cool!"

Then I got to thinking about it a little more, and I can't figure out why this is the _least_ bit interesting.

"Pardon Snowden" is a pretty common sentiment among the tech crowd. And tech execs _generally_ follow the same sort of opinions as the rest of us. I'm sure there are substantial differences, but there's no surprise that there would be tech execs who think Snowden should be pardoned.

So then what _is_ the supposed surprise? That the guy was brave enough to actually voice his opinion to the President? This is not the USSR and you don't get thrown in the gulag for expressing an opinion that the President disagrees with.

</comment><comment><USER4> The last thing Ed Snowden needs is a shady character like Pinicus vouching for him what next will Donald Trump get in the act or gorgeous George Galloway MP.

He needs some higher quality supporters if he does want to negotiate a way out of his predicament

</comment><comment><USER21> Until that exec is willing to state their support for a pardon in public, this is all just a bunch of PR for Obama and the big tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER22> Now wait and see how top tech execs will be gaining cheap karma points during this "call for reform" campaign.

</comment><comment><USER23> Obama cannot pardon somebody who's not a criminal, in any case he may be a witness or a liar.

</comment><comment><USER24> well, if a tech exec says it...

</comment><comment><USER25> Edward Snowden is the Martin Luther King Jr. of my generation. History will vindicate this man and hail him as a hero. It's great to see at least _one_ tech exec with the courage to speak up for him.

<comment><USER26> But why did it have to be Zynga's Mark Pincus...

<comment><USER27> I was kind of surprised Pincus was in that room. Are our virtual farming habits being analyzed by the NSA too?

<comment><USER28> He was another CEO's 'plus one'

<comment><USER29> Well if you send "Mark Pincus would like to play Presidential Advisor with you!" to enough people, someone will click it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just a note, the president cannot pardon someone who has not been convicted yet I believe.

<comment><USER31> Have you heard of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford? What about Jimmy Carter and the Vietnam draft evasion pardons?</comment></comment>


Square Raises $27.5 Million - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/10/square-raises-275-million/ <comment><USER2> Also, we're hiring: <https://squareup.com/jobs>

Square is a great place to work. It's an awesome team that's working on solving a big and real problem. On the server side we're mostly writing Ruby and practice pairing, TDD and aggressive refactoring. We're also looking for talented iOS and Android developers for the client side. If all this sounds interesting, feel free to email me: zach -at- squareup.com

</comment><comment><USER3> All smartphones will have NFC chips in the next year or two which will allow payments from your phone. I see a much bigger future in small merchants using that than a card swipe via audio port, but maybe Square will have an NFC solution as well.

<comment><USER4> Credit cards are going to be the best form of payment for vendors for another decade.

Even if next year all smartphones have NFC built-in, it will take many more years before there are enough users with NFC to make it worth supporting for a small vendor. Besides, just having the capability doesn't mean a user has created an account -- and connecting to your cell phone bill doesn't count.

<comment><USER3> Magnetic cards will surely be around for a long time, but the second NFC comes out on the iPhone 5 (or 6), which Apple has hired a lot of NFC engineers for, I think it will be the thing to have for all merchants. And many do already - my BofA card has an embedded rfid which I have used at a lot of places with non swipe readers. They have been widely used in Japan for the last decade.

My point is the playing field will be much more open, because it will be only a software solution, not a hardware+software solution which has more barriers to market - There could essentially be a Visa merchant app that accepts payments from other phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can somebody tell me who the target market for Square is: \- For brick and mortar stores, obviously this is not the answer. \- For payment to friends online transfer is far easier than carrying hardware in my pocket. \- For online stores obviously there are many choices and many of them better. Is there some other advantage to Square that I dont understand?

<comment><USER6> As a Square customer through the non-profit cooperative I help run, I can tell you that we chose Square because they are a quick and inexpensive method of accepting swiped card payments from our members at a monthly meeting. Many providers offer mobile payment solutions, but at a cost of $25-50 per month in addition to the discount fees. Square's lack of a monthly charge (even with the slightly higher discount rate) is a big deal for an org with a sub-$1000 budget.

Plus, they accomplished something PayPal couldn't: Creating an account for us that didn't result in a subsequently-frozen account and reams of paperwork being faxed to an abyss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Square is setting themselves up as an absolutely prime acquisition.

Square is innovating the features that small businesses care about, building a dead simple interface around it, and expanding the traditional definition of "small businesses" that can do this affordably to babysitters, dog walkers, etc.

EDIT - Sorry to ramble but I am lit up by all that we can learn from Square's biz-plan to build an incredible business that's a no-brainer $1b+ aquisition target:

a) Find an entrenched, old school market like merchant processing.

b) Show up with such compelling technology and such a simple billing model (that is still wildly profitably) that you get incredible free press to drive aquisitions.

c) Prequalify the market by understanding that winning or making a DENT means an easy $1B aquisition target for said entrenched monsters.

END EDIT

I wish I had $25m to have led this round myself :)

<comment><USER8> The problem they face is that their technology is simple enough and they have no real barriers to entry. If their model proves successful expect to see a lot of other competitors with similar hardware all competing on rates with them. That will seriously drop the margins.

I like them as a company and wish them well, but I could also launch a competitor to them if I felt so inclined. And that has to be a problem for them.

<comment><USER9> "but I could also launch a competitor to them if I felt so inclined."

Do you have the experience to make the card-reader hardware? The iOS software? Do you have the cash to have the device produced for sale?

Perhaps you do have all those things at your disposal, but the vast majority of people don't. I would say that simply by virtue of being hardware, the barrier for entry is at least high enough to eliminate most of the "garage hacker" types.

<comment><USER10> Anyone who is already in the card payments market can answer yes to those questions. And they have the advantage of already having the back end payment processing heavy lifting AND existing relationships with real customers.

Sure, none of the existing players wanted to get into this space and be disrupted - or perhaps even able to come up with this creative alternative mechanism for taking benefits.

But we're now seeing them take notice, switch gears and offer rival services. I'm hoping Square does well, but I think they face some stiff competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The funding is also the latest sign of the optimism around Silicon Valley start-ups, with many companies garnering large funding rounds at high valuations recently." Yeah really. Good timing. If it is in fact a bubble, nice to have the money in the bank ...

</comment><comment><USER12> Did they get their payment via Square? That would be a hilarious way to eat you own dogfood.

<comment><USER13> No, by wire. No need to pay those kinds of credit card fees for such a large transaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Square does seem poised for success/acquisition but m confused.

Square makes money on credit card processing right? So they have a revenue model. What exactly do they need $25m for?

I'm 100% sure they have a plan. I guess what I'm really saying is there must be more than meets the eye.

<comment><USER15> Having a revenue model isn't the same as having revenue. The $25M is a runway until either A) their next financing, or B) the point where they're _actual_ revenue will pay for all the brilliant engineers, other salaries, hardware costs, overhead, marketing, etc. will ensure they have more than $0 in the bank at all times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also- see <http://feefighters.com/square-calculator> if you haven't... pretty good calculator to see if it makes sense to switch to square... Surprisingly it actually makes sense for a lot of small businesses - if they can capture the long tail of the market that's pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER16> Intuit is competing, and they have a huge small biz network already... [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/09/intuit-takes-a- swipe-...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/09/intuit-takes-a-swipe-at- square/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your bookmarks?  - <AUTHOR>

I recently developed a bookmarking extension for Chrome that uses a google app engine app as back end. I am trying to find out how people who do a lot of research online manage their bookmarks and if my extension may be useful to them.
The main idea is to save a bookmark with minimum interruption and later find it easily. When I want to save a page, I click on the extension's icon on the browser bar and when I need to find the bookmark I search for it in the back end. Both saving and finding bookmarks is fast and my research is not interrupted.
I uploaded my extension to Chrome store to be used by invitation only but I don't know how to find people who may be interested in this extension and be willing to beta test it.
I placed questions in google app engine and chrome extensions groups but so far no replies. I thought I ask here too. How can I find technically savvy test users who are willing to share their feedback with me? Thanks. <comment><USER3> Since the New Delicious lost the 'Networking' feature (the ability follow groups of selected users' link activity) I'm looking for a new home - <USER2> anyone know of a good alternative?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Pinboard has the feature you are looking for: [http://groups.google.com/group/pinboard- dev/browse_thread/th...](http://groups.google.com/group/pinboard- dev/browse_thread/thread/67a4cc662c9342a5#)

After reading your comment I also added the same feature but I haven't pushed it to production yet. Please let me know if you want to try it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pinboard: <http://pinboard.in/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Much better than delicious and closer to my selling point.

I built this extension for my own use. When I am doing research I don't want to spend time about tagging or writing notes. My extension creates the tags and writes the first paragraph of the page as the note. The only thing that you do is to click on the icon. This way of saving a bookmark appeals to me but it seems that it is not a value for others. This was what I was trying to understand.

<comment><USER4> I think it's cool that you've built something useful. As much as I like Pinboard I know that it's not perfect for my needs. There's plenty of room for innovation (and profit!) in this space :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Pinboard looks good and my extension is not nearly as polished as that but you don't mind stopping what you are doing and enter tags and notes in order to save a bookmark?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> remember the delicious

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the difference is that no need to add tags my extension add the tags for you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you getting screwed? - <AUTHOR>

Say someone joined a  company at a very early stage, just when it secured its seed funding and there were only 6 employees. Today out of those 6 first employees there is only 1 more that has stuck around, meanwhile the company has grown to over 100 employees and has raised enormous amounts of funding and are planning to be very profitable.
Now say you have generated the company millions upon millions, have been an integral process in making this company the success it is today and you are not recognized nor promoted for your work, hired over and feed the left overs of those hired from the outside
Is it worth sticking around for 2 more years to let your options vest when you know the most you will ever  make is half a million to a million?
What would you do if you were this person? Is having a job alone good enough in this economy? <comment><USER2> _Is it worth sticking around for 2 more years to let your options vest when you know the most you will ever make is half a million to a million?_

No, you probably won't make any money at all. Early stage employees get screwed the hardest. You either want to be a founder or a "key hire" after the company gets series A.

 _What would you do if you were this person?_

I left, twice. Was it the right decision both times? Yes.

 _Is having a job alone good enough in this economy?_

Well, that's a different story. Probably. It truly is a shitty job scene out there right now. I can't tell if you hate your job or you're just bummed about how the politics and finances have played out. It's probably worth locking in something else before you quit.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Is having a job alone good enough in this economy?

Don't leave unless you have something else lined up.

</comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely. Keep the job, 9 to 5, and work on something on the side, waiting for the vesting.</comment>