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Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

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Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#151

Post by vxNsr »

goatinaboat wrote: post #51
chris_wot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I now work for has decided to separate out admin accounts in Windows. Fair enough, except it's not like a Unix system where you can quickly context switch. Trying to administer Office 365 with two separate Office 365 accounts is an absolutely nightmare!

The company I now work for has decided to separate out admin accounts in Windows Do they know that doesn’t work? If you do a run-as then you are as vulnerable to PTH as you would be if you just logged in with the admin account anyway... you need to go full PAW these days.

Could you expand on this? we have a similar set up for our domain admin accounts and I heard it was the safest way to do things. What do you mean by PAW?

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#152

Post by amix »

kfrzcode wrote: post #135
keithwhor wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bold negotiation tactic. I'm a fan. I've often found myself at Best Buy explaining that I'd gladly buy a new computer if they can ship all of the hardware components to me for free and I'll assemble them myself. That way, Best Buy doesn't make any money and I spend hours of my day (which, by the way, I bill my employer hundreds of dollars per hour for during the work week) assembling something that I'll have to do al…

I'm not sure I agree with your analogy. I enjoyed the Todoist client when I tested it, but if there exists a hackable, self-hosted version with even a subpar UX, I'll choose it over the freemium/hosted option du jour. Point being, even if the cool CEO who's in the comments says he won't sell out, he still is YADS (yet another data shepard).

Todoist is fully hackable via our API https://developer.todoist.com/sync/v8/, and your data isn’t locked in.

The self-hosted solution isn’t an excellent option for a todo list as integrations, plugins, and apps are critical. E.g., we actively maintain over ten apps and plugins and integrate with 100s of others (e.g., Zapier).

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#153

Post by amix »

md5wasp wrote: post #124
amix wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the company are working on Todoist, and we have a big update coming in October. For the past two years, we have worked on an initiative called Todoist Foundations, which is redoing and rethinking some of the design and tech debt we had (e.g., the web app has been rewritten to use React and Redux). I understand the frustration, but it was critical for us to spend time on improving the core.

Hey, thanks for being active in the comments! I really love Todoist, and I used to be a paying subscriber except I had a bug that I couldn't quite get support to even understand, let alone fix! I like to leave Todoist open in a permanent/pinned tab. Often, when I open that tab, the pre-filled date for "today" in the new-task-entry area is stale, yesterday or a few days ago (right now it's 5th September). I assume bec…

I hope this gets improved in the October release. If not, please feel free to reach out over email (it’s in my HN profile).

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#154

Post by amix »

bachmeier wrote: post #144
amix wrote: post #65

If you are looking for an alternative todo app that is in it for the long haul, check out Todoist. We have been at it longer than Wunderlist (12+ years), and we will never sell out. As I like to put it, death is my exit strategy. For more thoughts about this, check out https://doist.com/blog/no-exit-strategy/

Todoist is currently the best option out there. I have a Premium subscription and recommend it to everyone, in spite of the free alternatives (which on my campus includes MS To-Do, since Office 365 is provided for free). Having said that, it's not perfect. You need to be prepared for some frustrating bugs in the web app. That includes having been unable to log in on my laptop for several days. Todoist gets updated to…

Hmm, these are some serious issues, and they should not be common at all. I hope you have reported them to our support team (support@todoist.com).

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#155

Post by amix »

ztjio wrote: post #148
amix wrote: post #65

If you are looking for an alternative todo app that is in it for the long haul, check out Todoist. We have been at it longer than Wunderlist (12+ years), and we will never sell out. As I like to put it, death is my exit strategy. For more thoughts about this, check out https://doist.com/blog/no-exit-strategy/

Hard to accept this as an alternative given the terrible UX. Admittedly been about a year since I last demo'd it but at that time, most platforms still lacked basic drag and drop, even for ordering. This whole "we'll pretend every platform in a web browser from 2005" approach to UI is very debilitating. My personal recommendations are OmniFocus and Things. Obviously this is going to favor Mac users and people who car…

I am unsure what drag and drop you are referring to, but Todoist should have full support for this. E.g., you can drag a file and add it as a task on both our Mac and Windows apps.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#156

Post by sabarn01 »

vxNsr wrote: post #126
maklu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wunderlist still runs on AWS. To-Do runs on a Microsoft back-end, including all security features needed for their enterprise (O365) customers..

This would make a great case study for migrating a full stack AWS app to Azure. They're constantly trying to convince their customers to migrate to full stack Azure, here's their chance to prove it's doable. Dog food and all, I'm sure they'll find some pain points they could fix.

Not doable. Most azure services are not "compliant" for o365. Especially not in gov clouds. Exchange has its own totally separate backed which existed before azure. The port of wonderlist is to exchange.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#157

Post by ian0 »

sergiotapia wrote: post #15
taksintikk wrote: post #9

Did he sign a non-compete? Rebuild something new/better.

This is what the guy from meh.com did. Sold his woot com to some large corporation saw they turned it into junk and he launched meh.com

meh.com is glorious, first time ive seen it.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#158

Post by wickedwiesel »

vxNsr wrote: post #151
goatinaboat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I now work for has decided to separate out admin accounts in Windows Do they know that doesn’t work? If you do a run-as then you are as vulnerable to PTH as you would be if you just logged in with the admin account anyway... you need to go full PAW these days.

Could you expand on this? we have a similar set up for our domain admin accounts and I heard it was the safest way to do things. What do you mean by PAW?

A PAW is a "privilged access workstation", i.E. a dedicated, hardened machine just for the purpose of admin tasks. Due to the specialized tasks it needs to run, the workstation can be

- cut off from general purpose Internet etc.,

- a non-mobile device,

- etc....

See for instance Microsoft's documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/sec...

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#159

Post by goatinaboat »

vxNsr wrote: post #151
goatinaboat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I now work for has decided to separate out admin accounts in Windows Do they know that doesn’t work? If you do a run-as then you are as vulnerable to PTH as you would be if you just logged in with the admin account anyway... you need to go full PAW these days.

Could you expand on this? we have a similar set up for our domain admin accounts and I heard it was the safest way to do things. What do you mean by PAW?

Pass-the-hash is a common attack on Kerberos - it doesn’t care if you are logged in as an admin or have merely done run-as an admin. See https://microsoft.com/pth for more.

For PAW see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/sec... conceptually I like to explain it as a client-side bastion host

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#160

Post by seapunk »

duxup wrote: post #24
seapunk wrote: post #16

I think that it's a good sign that we see more and more founders who publicly admit that their creation is not between good hands after acquisition. Let's hope Microsoft makes this thing happen.

Call me cynical but if they wanted it to be in good hands ... maybe don't take the money and run? Dude in one way or another cashed out and now wants to have his cake and eat it too. We get so many "founder sad about how things turned out after it is sold". If the founder hands over the keys IMO to some extent they're "responsible" for what happens next.

Every founder has personal reasons to accept to be acquired, example here: https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/117064572184398233...

Also I don't think you are cynical. Don't take the money and continue to push the product seems to be a better solution, especially for users. I just appreciate that founders are more transparent about the fact their service is failing after being acquired. And yes, they have a big part of the responsability, but according to me it's a better signal than just heard the typical story of celebrating an acquisition, join a tech giant and remain silent. I like to see that people keep the bounds with their product even after this. Also it's more honest for other entrepreneurs in the same situation that becoming rich will be at the expense of your creation.

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