Comment by kfreds | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kfreds | Hacker News Reader

This makes me very excited but also a bit sad. I'm developing a similar product, so this is great validation. On the other hand, this is quite the competition.

Could someone share a link to the original presentation? I'd love more technical details.

Is this SDHC or SDXC compatible? If they support SDXC, how do they reconcile "fully open source" with the fact that SDXC requires exFAT which is proprietary and protected by patents?

Building something like this requires an SD Slave Controller. It would be absolutely fantastic if they open source that! Fully verified and SDXC compatible? This makes me drool. Unfortunately the necessary information to implement and verify is walled behind NDAs (SD Association), unless of course you have reversed it with a logic analyzer. I don't think that's what Google has done, which makes me very curious.

If the slave controller is not open source, that begs the question of how data is transferred to the RTOS. A closed source core with DMA to whatever you run on it will exclude it from certain privacy-sensitive use cases.

If anyone at Google is reading this, consider using cores from cryptech.is for your crypto. You're already a funder so you might as well reuse them.

If anyone is interested in what I just said and you think you can contribute I would love to talk with you. Email me at stromberg@mullvad.net.

Don't take this as a bad sign, just because Google is behind it doesn't mean they're devoting a lot of resources to it or that they'll hit the right mark.

Build your vision and be better than your competitors.

I've seen that happen before with a startup, they actually shutdown just because Google launched a superior product first.

Then less than 1 year later Google cancelled that project and now there is nobody to provide that service.

> Then less than 1 year later Google cancelled that project and now there is nobody to provide that service.

This made me imagine some poor, bright but new-hire Google PR employee realizing this popular (and quite correct) view of Google ("CANCEL ALL THE THINGS" [1][2]) frantically trying to figure out how to actually communicate to upper management (without getting fired) the blunt truth:

This ongoing strategy of announcing projects and promptly canceling them after a few years is incredibly damaging to the company. Google's "ADHD-like low attention span" to projects is anything but confidence-inspiring. :(

1. http://memegenerator.net/X-All-The-Things

2. HN likes numbered references and I do too

No one would get fired for saying that, but (clearly) the company has decided that the current strategy is the right one.

My take is that Google is less developer-friendly than Microsoft and Apple. Google does not rely on external developers as much, because so much revenue comes from web based, directly consumer facing products. Google is always trying new things, because they are looking for the next big user facing product. This might annoy developers who build against Google's APIs, but that is worth it because Google relies on users, not loyal developers. It is a fundamentally different approach from Windows or iOS.

I observed the same thing. Microsoft is the company who cares about developers more.

I can tell my odd experience about Microsoft: my company reverse engineered many of its products and offered APIs around products without APIs. One day someone from QA sent us an e-mail offering help if some of these products have issues with Windows 7!

The microsoft that's out there right now making using or reimplementing an api illegal?

What do you mean with illegal?

I disagree, Google constantly gives developers free resources and run a very powerful and cheap cloud network. I think they are at least on par with Microsoft. I am a developer and I don't use any ms products, but I use quite a few of the ones Google offers. Google's cloud is significantly cheaper than Azure as well (actually GCN is about on par with most others, its just Azure is very expensive), I have compared many times. About Apple, I love their products, but they aren't very developer friendly. Their eco system is very closed, they don't support many tools other than the ones used to developer directly to their platform. Their eco system is just very profitable, so we put up with it. I have always seen it as, Google is the developer's company, Microsoft's the enterprise company, and Apple's the consumer's company.

A few examples

>AngularJS

>AOSP

>Google Maps

>GCN

>Chrome Dev Tools

>Polymer and Material Design

>Go

>Dart

Doesn't MS rely on users too? Users of Windows, instead of users of browsers, but it's still in both of their interests to get developers using their platforms.

At the end of the day, all large companies have to dip their toes in new technologies, or die. Some of these projects will work out and others won't. Small companies do the exact same thing, except instead of announcing they are discontinuing a project they go bust.

My approach is not to get too tied to any vendor's technology, because if you do, you're setting yourself up for a fall. The rise of open source and standards has made this much easier than it once was, luckily.

Yea, exactly. But fan boyism runs deep in this industry, particularly on forums. It incredible to see my collogues get so caught up in one mega corp and then spend so much of their time trashing 'their' mega corps competition. I use each for what they are worth and I enjoy to watch them come, go, and compete.

I don't work for Microsoft, and it's sad that you assume anyone with a different opinion from yourself is a fanboy.

I said "But fan boyism runs deep in this industry, particularly on forums. It incredible to see my collogues get so caught up in one mega corp and then spend so much of their time trashing 'their' mega corps competition." Where am I generally calling people with different opinions than mine fan boys. I agree and disagree with many fan boys. I am a fan of the products I use, but I am quick to move to new products if I have the means and my experience with the other products is superior.

Google search, GMail, Youtube are not platforms. They don't rely on an ecosystem of external developers. Android is, but it is generally considered less developer friendly than iOS.

Any reference on it being "generally considered less developer friendly"?

I get the impression that MS these days are trying to depreciate Windows in favor of their cloud services.

In a sense it is a return to the MS that was before the IBM PC, when they were supplying office and development tools to all comers (MS Office got its start on Apple computers after all).

For a long time Google Drive for the desktop didn't exist and a company name InSyncHQ built a desktop client. I thought for sure that spelled doom for them. Nope, they've been chugging along ever since. In fact GDrive has ceased to innovate so heavily that I've personally switched back to Dropbox. Don't let Google's involvement deter you...Google fails a lot and is not immune to the innovators dilemma. Chances are you'll find something they miss and you'll win.

To this day, Insync is still infinitely better than the real client.

> Could someone share a link to the original presentation?

The presentation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbWQbkl8_g&t=47m23s (starts around 47:23).

> quite the competition.

Understatement of the century. However, I see it as great news for you. If you're far along enough, and this proves to be something people want, you're a shoo-in for a buyout. Good luck and keep up updated.

But – as shocking as this might be for some people here – a buyout might be not what people strive for. Some people just want to have their own small company, thinking more long term. Others want to actually improve the world.

Eh. I mean yeah there are companies designed from the ground up to be bought out in just a couple years, yes, but there isn't anything wrong with doing great work and getting bought out by people improving the world too, right? It seems like in that case you're both trying to "improve the world" and you're teaming up.

In a recent episode of Silicon Valley, the billionaire president of a company said to his employees "I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place, better than we do."

Aiming for a buyout doesn't mean you don't also want to improve the world.

Your tone is pretty offensive. It would shock almost no one on this site that someone would like to build their own business without an aim to sell it or that someone would have philanthropic life-goals in general.

Many business owners who are bought out turn to philanthropic pursuits now that they've become fiscally stable.

My tone is aggressive because someone was working on a project, a larger company picks up the same idea, and the first suggestion is to give up completely, and accept to be bought out.

Instead of considering any of the other options, or that the small company could actually compete with the larger company (hint: Google doesn’t operate most of their services outside of the US at all), the only real suggestion is "you’re in for a buy-out".

GP doesn't want to improve the world via philanthropic pursuits - they want to improve it by offering an alternative via something they've built. With that in mind, it seems that the suggestion that a buyout by the competition would be a better way to improve the world via (non-thought-out) philanthropy is itself a somewhat offensive suggestion.

This is true, but when one if that competition is too great, it might be a viable exit strategy to consider (rather than just closing up shop).

Here's the RTL BTW: https://github.com/ProjectVault/orp/tree/master/hardware/mse...

The testbenches in that directory are supposedly too basic to have been used for development (a few directed test cases per module). I wonder why they wouldn't release the proper testbenches?

Eh, a lot of industry doesn't write as many test benches as they should. I've worked for companies that have written no test benches.

I had a similar thing happen when I found out one of my competition got funding from Mark Cuban and the another competitor got a pretty big round (fresh from their graduation at YC).

But then I thought about it. What a wonderful validation of our idea. And we think we can do it better.

Look at the angles and if you have to reshape your idea then do so. Maybe some competitive advantage you have will stick out or you'll develop it after seeing their offering. But think of this as a good thing. Investors love competition. It means there's a market.

I would not worry one bit. I have successfully competed against multi-billion dollar companies. If you have a better product and are good at marketing there's nothing they can do to stop you. Small startups can move like Neo, while large companies can't get out of their own way.

Google doesn't make products, but tech demos.

Keep on going, the world needs more of people like you.

Are you affiliated with mullvad?

Yes, I'm Fredrik, one of the founders.

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