India's First CPUs Are Ready for App Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/india-shakti-cpu-processors-sdk-risc-v,39781.html <comment><USER3> This is big news - open hardware backed by a major global power is going to have a real affect - and the fabs don't have to be the 10nm billion dollar versions. If the indian government can start using some muscle here - <USER2> government IOT devices must use this processor and this software stack and you can see a global standard emerge from the open standards. I think I might be dreaming too much

<comment><USER4> > all government IOT devices must use this processor and this software stack > and you can see a global standard emerge from the open standards

Why would India-specific anti-competitive restrictions result in other countries around the world adopting this processor as a standard?

Also, this isn't the first open CPU project. It's based on the RISC-V architecture and there are other RISC-V processors that you can buy today from companies like [https://www.sifive.com/](https://www.sifive.com/).

<comment><USER5> Brazil tried this tariff tactic, which resulted in some middling performance knockoffs. China also has some tariffs (hence the tariff bypass AMD recently did with the JV that rebranded 3 year old Zen for the Chinese market).

In terms of building up internal silicon design talent, tariffs have not been effective in other large countries. Allwinner and Mediatek are taking off the shelf designs from ARM, getting them fabbed, and writing basic BSPs for them. The only magic here is they generally do not care to have large firmware blobs, so their hardware isn't too terrible to mainline.

<comment><USER6> I would assume that the tariffs would be a temporary measure. At the moment, there is no semiconductor industry in India to speak of and allowing foreign businesses in would mean that Indian companies would not have a fighting chance. If the industry takes off, I think the tariffs would be removed and the Indian companies would be forced to compete or sell themselves.

<comment><USER7> Income tax was introduced 'temporarily' to the UK to fund the Napoleonic wars. These things have a habit of becoming permanent. If India's semiconductor industry does take off, do you think they'd want to risk sinking it (hows that for a mixed metaphor!) by exposing it to the rapacious global market?

<comment><USER8> I am not sure if you a Brit, you sure do sound like one.

You are ignoring 400 years of trade history here.

Britain was known for imposing unfair trade treaty on the rest of the world, ( so called 'unequal treaty' in the case of the China ).

In the case of India, Tata was forbidden from selling steel in india, causing the indian steel industry to collapse.

Same for textile, boats, ... shall I go on ?

If you are so found of free trade, allow indians free visas to travel to the UK ? let's watch most brits try to compete with your 1.4 billion, 2 dollar a day indian labour ?

So there is more nuance then "muh can't sell ARM chips !"

<comment><USER7> Read my comment again, it's got nothing to do with 400 years of trade history, it's about temporary measures having a habit of becoming permanent.

Where did you get the idea I was so fond of free trade? (disclosure: I am in favour of free trade) I described international markets as rapacious. Plus free trade is about trade. Freedom of movement is about people. You can be in favour of free trade, and against freedom of movement, ask any Brexiteer.

BTW not all Indians are on $2 a day, and most that would come to the UK would be on significantly more, and we have a minimum wage so they wouldn't be competing on $2 a day anyway.

"Tata was forbidden from selling steel in india, causing the indian steel industry to collapse.

Same for textile, boats "

Any decent write ups on this? Not something I'm really aware of.

<comment><USER8> > "Plus free trade is about trade. Freedom of movement is about people. You > can be in favour of free trade, and against freedom of movement"

Why ? Humans are a form of "good" so is capital and natural resources. You cant leave 1 out of 4 - the EU single market was created with this in mind. Some countries have excess capital, some have excess labour and some have excess natural resources.

Its awfully convenient for you to leave out the ONE thing that a country like India has a surplus in and leave in the thing India is deficit in.

> and we have a minimum wage so they wouldn't be competing on $2 a day anyway.

Says who ? it depends on enforceability, ask any Indian or any Brit who lived through the Empire. Minimum wage is just a form of price control.

> Any decent write ups on this? Not something I'm really aware of.

Sure !

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

If you turn back the clock 400 years ago

\- The Indian rupee used to be similar to the swizz franc.

\- people around the world used to hold on to the rupee since it didn't suffer from rampant inflation which even many european currencies did.

\- India was a major exporter of goods to SEAsia, Middle East, Europe and Africa, and imported very little.

\- All of it changed when the Brits arrived.

Which comes back to my original point.

You turn forward the clock 100 years and its quite likely every Brit would be singing a different tune, high tariff on Indian semiconductor, Indian medical devices, .... . They already sing a very different tune compared to just 15 years ago with Brexit today. Where are your open markets now ?

Its awfully convenient to sit atop 400 years of plunder and loot and claim fair treatment and 'free market'.

<comment><USER7> "Humans are a form of "good" so is capital and natural resources"

Exporting humans is generally a bad thing for the exporting country (brain drain), exporting goods is generally a good thing. Goods can have tariffs applied, how would that work for humans. Immigration is much more politicised than free trade. 3 reasons why they aren't the same.

"Says who ? it depends on enforceability"

You could say that about anything. Murder is illegal, that needs to be enforced.

"ask any Indian or any Brit who lived through the Empire" What has that got to do with anything? Did they have minimum wage legislation during the days of the empire? Because they didn't in Britain.

"Minimum wage is just a form of price control" And what's that got to do with anything. Why are you getting all Randian, when you were complaining about me being pro free market in your last comment?

"Its awfully convenient to sit atop 400 years of plunder and loot and claim fair treatment and 'free market'"

So Italians should be apologising for what the Romans did, and Mongolians for what Mongols did, and don't get me started on the Germans. I'm sure India has it's fair share of dark chapters, its history, I wasn't born, my Parents weren't born, and my Grandparents who were born when India was in the empire are now dead, get over it.

PS I didn't 'claim free trade' or 'fair treatment', try reading my first post again, and my explanation of what I said in my 2nd post.

<comment><USER8> > Exporting humans is generally a bad thing for the exporting country (brain > drain), exporting goods is generally a good thing. Goods can have tariffs > applied, how would that work for humans. Immigration is much more > politicized than free trade. 3 reasons why they aren't the same.

Goods are just one part of the overall economy, and an increasing small part of it. A large part of the economy is services that involves humans.

Would you consider there to be a goods drain ? or a petroleum drain ?

Exporting humans is fine if you have a surplus of them, they are just another input like capital, energy and iron. It's not the human that matters, it's the system that is capable of producing them. Your solution of nations restricting movement of its citizen is denying them their right of self determination. Would you rather keep them chained to certain countries against their will ?

> Immigration is much more politicised than free trade.

Who said ? its not as charged in many Arab Countries who are much more conservative. You could issue 10 year passport with limited voting rights. There are many types of visas you could issue based on what your society finds acceptable.

> So Italians should be apologizing for what the Romans did, and Mongolians > for what Mongols did, and don't get me started on the Germans. I'm sure > India has it's fair share of dark chapters

Who said anything about an apology ?

India is not some marginalized group in western society that is asking for handout. It's a nuclear state with the second largest standing army in the world.

It does not matter what I think or you think. Your original comment is ignoring what India is.

Imagine for a second if every African country joined and formed a single country, suddenly Africa would have a lot more leverage in trade. They can get things horribly wrong but they can still come out ahead and bully countries like Switzerland. Africa could introduce 100% external tariff while Switzerland could be at 0% and Africa would still come out ahead. If Switzerland went ahead and introduced 100% tariffs their economy would collapse, because Africa in total has so much buying power.

<comment><USER7> "Goods are just one part of the overall economy, and an increasing small part of it. A large part of the economy is services that involves humans"

We were talking about immigration not services, remember you mentioned visas?

"Would you consider there to be a goods drain ? or a petroleum drain"

No because I said they were different, if a 20 something emigrates, the country they grew up in has spent years educating that child, keeping it healthy, supporting the parents while they bring up the child, then just as the payback should be starting the child leaves. Its analogous to spending time and money drilling an oil well, and building a refinery, just to see the petrol walk out the door with no money coming back to you.

"Who said ?" I did.

"India is not some marginalized group in western society that is asking for handout"

I never said it was. You're the one whose got a Bee in their bonnet about British colonialism.

"Your original comment is ignoring what India is"

I've reread my original comment and its clear enough what I said. I've also clarified what I said, so why do you keep ignoring what I have actually said in favour of what you imagine I said?

<comment><USER8> > No because I said they were different, if a 20 something emigrates, the > country they grew up in has spent years educating that child, keeping it > healthy, supporting the parents while they bring up the child, then just as > the payback should be starting the child leaves.

See this is where we fundamentally disagree.

What if the private sector / government is unable to provide them jobs ?

India adds 1 million new white collar graduates to its workforce every month ! do you think the government would really care if 1 million of them just left ? there would be another 1 million added next month.

In fact the Indian government actively wants to send more young people to every part of the world - latin america, middle east and europe. Since those worker send back forex income.

Most of these young gradates end up working in call centers or their talent get wasted doing other low productivity work. The Indian economy cannot absorb so many graduates.

> I've reread my original comment and its clear enough what I said. I've also > clarified what I said, so why do you keep ignoring what I have actually said > in favor of what you imagine I said?

Your original comment states that India should open its market, you do not have to be an Indian to understand how deeply offensive it might be to people of the subcontinent ( China too ). It's like talking about 'states right' to African americans.

Let me break down the history behind your argument.

\- During WW2 the Brits used 'free markets' to argue taking rice from India to Britain during a famine where 3 million people died. They used British guards to protect grannies from civilians dying outside. I have spoken to people who were alive during that famine, how well do you think they will react if you made your argument about opening India to 'rapacious global market'.

\- The brits heavily taxed Indian merchant ships, selling of Indian boats - just to keep their seamen and dockworkers in london employed. While Indian workers in Mumbai couldn't sell boats to Indian merchants in their own country !

\- When the brits first came to India, India was the textile factory of the world. The arguments the brits make is that their superior 'technology' and 'industrial revolution' caused the collapse of the Indian textile industry. The reality was quite different that what British historian have been pedaling. Firstly, innovation in textile has been happening for 2000 years, there was no reason for India's textile industry to suddenly collapse just when the brits started ruling over India. The height of British colonial horror was cutting off the fingers of 300,000 textile workers.

So Britain's modern success has a lot to do with actions of its rule during 'Empire' ( which need I not remind you existed just one generation ago ).

> do you think they'd want to risk sinking it (hows that for a mixed > metaphor!) by exposing it to the rapacious global market?

The real 'rape' here was India's inability to protect it's interest.

How long do you think Britain will take to recover if some foreign power cut of the fingers of 300,000 bankers and coders in London ?

India needs tariffs since without it, a large number of its smaller manufacturing operations would collapse.

The best example is agricultural produce, India has high tariffs on foreign agri goods ( especially American ones) , because a country like America can just dump its large agricultural surplus onto India. This would increase rural poverty and increase rural unrest, (families earning 2 dollars / day would earn 0 dollars / day) - something India has been working towards improving.

We already know US has been subsidizing its agri sector for more than 100+ years. 100 years ago India was at the height of its colonial exploitation.

We can also examine Mexico where NAFTA increased Mexican rural poverty, increased inequality and made Mexico dependent on American food production ( something the americans would never tolerate happening to them ).

The price saving on buying American agri produce in India is also not extremely different that buying locally produced food. So its anyway a small subsidy from the well off to the peasant class.

Do you still think India should just abandon its 800 million farmers ? and introduce them to 'rapacious global market' \- when their families didn't even have one generation to build equity ?

Also, when India became independent the brits thought India would collapse within 10 years, it's been 70 years and India's economy is the second largest in GDP/PPP. It's sending satellite to space and doing mars mission, and also has lifted the most people out of poverty after China.

So maybe they do not need your advice ? maybe they are doing something right ? The Ministry of Finance in India are not run by idiots, maybe finally the democratically elected government of India is doing what is best for it's people ?

Tariffs, markets and money are just tools and should be slave to national interests. In this particular case, india need to develop its own semiconductor capabilities. If it means stealing IP, tariffs, industrial espionage then so be it.

We can clap at the Brits making ARM chips, but the Indian government won't allow Britain a perpetual monopoly to sell chips in India, especially if it harms it's balance of payment.

Having said that, India normally plays by the rule much more than China due to being a democratic government ( which I think was wrong, India should have done what China did, but that is my personal opinion ) - only exception being pharmaceutical and nuclear weapons in 1990s ( both were existential threats, one to it's trade deficit and ther other to the state itself ).

The only reason why I spent so much energy on this topic is because it always hits my nerve, its deeply offensive to ignore the legacy of colonization in India when discussing free trade. It's like me trivializing north sea fish quota to Brexiteers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good luck to them. A completely open system is my dream. I am looking forward to when the datasheets from $VENDOR are the same for every customer, rather than edited whenever you call in and say "wait, didn't you say XX does YY?" "Oh yeah, it can do that... let me send you a new totally accurate datasheet that you won't spend 3 months debugging for us."

<comment><USER10> I too would like to see completely open hardware at some point. Really open, none of this "it's totally, except for the closed GPU and binary blobs that is..." crap.

<comment><USER11> How much more are you prepared to pay for that, though?

<comment><USER12> Do we pay more for Linux than for Windows?

<comment><USER13> Well, Purism's Librem laptops are way more expensive than a similarly spec Windows laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am surprised this is not a bigger news. This project is open hardware and open source. It may be 180 nm tech, it is still nice to see open hardware being released.

Now I could not find anywhere to buy this processor. Anyone knows about it?

<comment><USER15> 180 or 18?

<comment><USER13> They have 2 prototype: 1 using 22nm, and 1 using 180nm

[https://shakti.org.in/tapeouts.html](https://shakti.org.in/tapeouts.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pity it is implemented in Bluespec Verilog for which the only viable toolchain is still closed source software. Some unsupported since 2013 toy compilers exist. Looks like the company behind the Bluespec pivoted to RISC-V implementation.

Bluespec HDL has seen its limelight in 2012 and died due to it being closed source with pricing similarly excessive as other HDL tools.

I remember being excited about the possibilities of a new, paradigm shifting HDL.

Sadly, now it is a fizzled remainder of how to run the good tech into the ground by keeping it closed.

<comment><USER17> > I remember being excited about the possibilities of a new, paradigm shifting > HDL.

2012 was a long time ago. There are plenty of RISC-V core implementations using Chisel and other "paradigm shifting" HDL tools.

<comment><USER12> Lava, Esterel, what else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At some point they didn't have the C extension, making them unable to run software compiled for "GC", which is the baseline targeted by most Linux distros. Has this been fixed yet?

</comment><comment><USER19> I browsed the SHAKTI repository briefly and found only the E and C cores, are the rest of the cores not open source? Did I miss them?

<comment><USER20> They are still under development

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems easy enough to set up the SDK: [https://gitlab.com/shaktiproject/software/shakti- sdk/blob/ma...](https://gitlab.com/shaktiproject/software/shakti- sdk/blob/master/sdk_info.md)</comment>


Honda will use GM's self-driving technology, invests in Cruise - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/10/honda-will-use-gms-self-driving-technology-invest-2-75-billion/ <comment><USER3> What's interesting is that Honda is a company that has always prioritized being in control of its own destiny. What made them interesting in the past is that there are many examples where they'd engineer their own solution to a problem, rather than license IP.

Quote from Mr. Honda:

"We [Honda] refuse to depend on anyone else. We will not copy foreign products nor pay royalties for the use of other companies' patents. We don't intend to get support from the government, either. I'm making it clear that we will do it our way." [1]

Notable examples:

\- Hondamatic transmission [1]. For better or for worse, it was only until recently that Honda started using transmissions from ZF like other automakers. Arguably because automatic transmissions are on their way out, and they're focusing on other drivetrains.

\- Honda's hybrid drive: They developed their own two-motor system rather than license Toyota's (Rather brilliant) solution like other companies. Their first system in the Insight (gen 1) not withstanding.

\- VTEC

It seems like there's going to be an inevitable commoditization of car manufacturers in the future. Equally interesting is GM ceding some ownership of potentially game-changing tech.

[1] [https://world.honda.com/history/challenge/1968hondamatic/ind...](https://world.honda.com/history/challenge/1968hondamatic/index.html)

<comment><USER4> Commoditization of self-driving tech, yes; I don't think car manufacturers will become (more) redundant, but eventually everybody's autonomous driving systems will either be hard to distinguish (like gasoline motor tech), or even completely regulated by legislation. Can legislators really allow that cars drive around with a system that is inferior to a competitor's? This will put eg every pedestrian's live at risk.

I'm pretty sure self-driving tech will not be a big differentiator, just like airbags - almost every car has them, they are a given.

<comment><USER5> > Can legislators really allow that cars drive around with a system that is > inferior to a competitor's? This will put eg every pedestrian's live at > risk.

They already do this with everything else. Vehicles like Mercedes and Tesla are significantly safer than some competitors. Legislation sets the floor, not the ceiling. Or at least it _shouldn 't_ create a ceiling.

And it's also the case that SUVs and other large vehicles pose a greater risk to pedestrians and other motorists than smaller ones, but legislators haven't done _anything_ about that.

<comment><USER6> > They already do this with everything else. Vehicles like Mercedes and Tesla > are significantly safer than some competitors. Legislation sets the floor, > not the ceiling. Or at least it shouldn't create a ceiling.

I think the difference is those are, for the most part, internal safety features for the car's driver and passengers, whereas self driving effects mostly people not in that automobile. Sure, there are some features in cars that aren't, but for the most part, a driver knows (should know) their vehicle, and someone driving a 1978 station wagon and someone else driving a 2018 Volvo won't make that much of a difference on the roadways. Driving a car with a bad autonomous mode vs. a car with a good autonomous mode could be a significantly bigger difference for pedestrians and other drivers than older and newer cars.

<comment><USER7> 2018 will be _much_ heavier, bigger, with poorer visibility thanks to huge crash and rollover resistant A, B and C pillars. It will also have passed the pedestrian impact tests and have enormously better brakes and handling. So even though heavier it'll stop a lot quicker, and do less serious damage to a pedestrian at town speeds.

That's quite apart from any safety features like air bags or ABS.

<comment><USER8> The big A pillars make it harder to see pedestrians though. Wonder if net injuries are actually reduced?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With a post money valuation of 14.6 billion dollar, Cruise surpasses Dropbox as the third most valuable company that YC has invested in. The valuation of Airbnb is 31 billion, Stripe 20 billion, Cruise 14.6 billion, Dropbox 11 billion.

YC doesn't hold shares in Cruise anymore, since the company as a whole was sold to GM for 1 billion in 2016. After the acquisition, GM invested another 1.1 billion, Softbank Vision Fund invested 2.25 billion and now Honda invests 2.75 billion. So more than 7.1 billion dollar has been invested into Cruise. It's the best capitalised YC company. Airbnb has raised 4.4 billion, debt financing included.

<comment><USER10> That's a pretty insane multiple on the acquisition price in 2 years, is there anything you can read into that or is it pretty meaningless because of all the post-acquisition investment money being pumped in?

<comment><USER11> Almost exactly half of its value is represented by the money that's been pumped in (7.1B was the sum GP arrived at). The rest...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope they roll out augmented driving.

I don't need full autonomy everywhere, but there are a few things that definitely could be rolled out now.

Give me a virtual bumper. Never let me get closer than a meter to the car in front of me. If it stops, stop my car too. Get moving again? Go.

Stay in the lane at low speeds. Combine with above, get a far more relaxed experience in stop and go rush hour traffic.

Extend the virtual bumper to parking. Rather than video and beeping or full autonomy, just stop the car from hitting anything, 5cm distance control.

Or does this exist? Haven't seen it in my Tesla test drive.

<comment><USER13> >Give me a virtual bumper. Never let me get closer than a meter to the car in front of me. If it stops, stop my car too. Get moving again? Go.

This is Honda's Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Low-Speed Follow

[http://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/CR-V/featu...](http://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/CR-V/features/Adaptive- Cruise-Control)

<comment><USER14> I have ACC, and it's great. But adding the Low-Speed Follow makes it SO much nicer. I've driven a Bonda like that.

Otherwise ACC is only useful on freeways that aren't too crowded. Nice, but not nearly as nice as being able to hassle traffic jams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honda and Waymo have been 'in talks' for years, with the first formal announcement of a vaguely defined partnership arriving in April earlier this year. Supposedly they were going to build a purpose built delivery vehicle together.

The odds that that deal has gone up in smoke I'm guessing are high.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-02/waymo- isn...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-02/waymo-isn-t- slowing-down-pact-with-honda-could-include-delivery)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've noticed in SF at least Cruise seems to have removed branding from their cars (or I believe they are their cars). I'm curious what that implies -- either about the sentiment of self driving cars or future branding partnerships.

<comment><USER17> perhaps it's just about collecting more accurate test data - if self driving cars are obviously marked as such, the behaviour of other drivers around them may change.

<comment><USER18> The turret of sensors mounted on top still might be a bit of a giveaway.

<comment><USER19> Well there's many companies doing AV testing with sensors on their marked + unmarked cars. Not just Cruise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. If GM were super optimistic about Cruise's technology based on internal metrics, you'd think they'd invest their own money, or at least take on debt financing at GM's cost of capital. That they are taking outside investment from Softbank and now Honda suggests there is enough uncertainty that they want to limit their downside.

A quick search suggests that GM is mostly debt financed, with a weighted average cost of capital of only 5%.[1]

[1] [https://www.gurufocus.com/term/wacc/GM/WACC-/General- Motors-...](https://www.gurufocus.com/term/wacc/GM/WACC-/General-Motors-Co)

<comment><USER15> Bringing Robotaxis to market is very capital intensive. I don't know how much money GM has to throw around, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot less than their nearest competitor, Alphabet.

Waymo announced purchasing orders for 60,000 FCA Pacificas and 20,000 Jaguar IPaces to be converted into robotaxis. If we're to assume a crude ballpark estimate of $150K apiece for those vehicles, then we're talking a $12 billion just for that. GM can't go up against those kinds of capital investments without help.

Argo.ai, Ford's answer to GM Cruise, is also seeking partners/funding from outside Ford. Wish them luck.

<comment><USER21> > Waymo announced purchasing orders for 60,000 FCA Pacificas and 20,000 Jaguar > IPaces to be converted into robotaxis. If we're to assume a crude ballpark > estimate of $150K apiece for those vehicles, then we're talking a $12 > billion just for that.

You do know that GM _makes_ automobiles right? If GM wants 60,000 Chevy Cruises to use for robotaxis, they can just keep their lines running for a few extra shifts. Their cost for the same vehicles is COGS, which is something like half the MSRP of an automobile. Doing so would actual increase the profit margin on their products that are sold to outside customers. GM also has ~40% more revenue than Alphabet and could easily borrow $12 billion if it were strategically important.

Man people really don't understand the weight of traditional autos.

<comment><USER22> Also, if you buy 20k cars from Jaguar (mind, 20k iPace is more than a month worth of Tesla Model 3s) you will be paying a lot less than 150k per car.

<comment><USER15> There's a lot of extra hardware that goes into a robotaxi. Waymo doesn't just sprinkle pixie dust on them to make them drive themselves. The vehicles, their sensors, compute, adn the 100 miles of wiring needed to hook it all up is just hardware costs. There's all sorts of logistics and real estate that needs to be acquired. Every new area needs to be mapped and tested. They run call centres, and pay thousands of people just to do data annotation.

The plan for all these companies is to scale up to deployments of millions of vehicles, they won't see ROI for a decade or more, and that's only if everything works like it's supposed to, it's still technically and unproven business model built on an unproven technology.

And sure GM can raise funds if they really want to, but they've gone from 0 to $60b in debt in the last 6 years, with $20 accumulated just over the last year. They have to deal with converting their fleet to electric over the next decade. Very expensive. Lots of risk. GM needs to pick and choose which risks are worth taking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds good to me. I've heard VERY good things about Cruise. And I like their approach much better than Tesla's.

<comment><USER23> How is their approach different from Tesla's?

<comment><USER24> They use 3D sensors (lidar) and dense, 3D maps and scans of the operational area. Also they plan to own the vehicles and operate in a designated service area rather than sell a vehicle that works everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can somebody explain why GM would want to provide competitive advantage to its competitor for a fixed price?

Either GM has licensing fees in its future, or the project is proving to be too capital intensive. Or could there be an effort towards a consortium?

Most of the major talent in the field is gainfully employed. I simply do not fully understand the objective of all of this capital raising. I look forward to better understanding the strategy in the rear view mirror.

<comment><USER26> I think one issue is that, like VR, one bad actor sours the consumer appetite for the entire concept. I think a safer road for GM is to become the de facto A+ supplier of tech that works well than for 2/3 of the legacy industry to have janky half-working sorta-dangerous solutions in 2025.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting that American automakers are ahead of the Japanese automakers in the areas of self-driving and electric cars. Not really what I would have expected if you had asked me 10 years ago.

<comment><USER28> Why? We lead the world in software by a long margin. It's one of the reasons english is the lingua franca of software development. As for electric cars, it's only the US and the chinese who are heavily invested in it. The japanese have a presence in EVs but they are more heavily invested in hydrogen cars.

<comment><USER29> European manufacturers are heavily investing in electric cars. You're perhaps blinded by local news -- then again I'm surely too, as I don't know of US companies other than Tesla that are doing something with electric.

<comment><USER27> GM has the Bolt and Volt, and a Cadillac hybrid. Ford has the C-Max plug-in and a few other hybrids, and is going to build a hybrid F-150 and Mustang in the next few years. And for some reason Chrysler managed to beat Toyota and Honda to market with the first hybrid minivan.

Given that the F-150 is the bestselling vehicle in the United States, Ford might become one of the world's top sellers of hybrid cars when they release it. And the hybrid Mustang is supposed to be one of the fastest Mustang models.

<comment><USER30> I'm skeptical that a hybrid F150 would be much of a success, outside of people that probably don't need to have a full-size truck anyway.

It might be mildly interesting if any batteries were stashed in the rear - <USER2> the winter I have to put about 1000 pounds of sandbags to make it safe to drive on snow and ice.

<comment><USER31> The hybrid F150 will sell well based on one feature alone: using the vehicle's engine and electric motors to function as a powerful worksite generator. Of course most people won't use it for that but it gives them the excuse to buy it.

<comment><USER32> That and fleet sales are huge for f150 iirc. A more efficient, even if more boring to drive option exists, they will procure it en masse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Automakers use each others parts all the time. Dodge used Mitsubishi engines in the K cars and early minivans. Rolls Royce use Mercedes engines today. Nissan used Toyota's hybrid transmission in early-2010s Altimas.

This is a good sign for Criuse being a competitor in the self-driving space, and a sign of self-driving market health in general. Much better than Toyota investing $500 billion in Uber for self driving.[∆]

[∆][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17853248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17853248)

<comment><USER34> Rolls Royce is owned by BMW, they definitely don't use Mercedes engines today

<comment><USER35> Perhaps they are thinking of Aston Martin, who have fairly recently entered into an engine deal with Mercedes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Honestly this makes sense, and I hope the rest of the industry follows suit. I'd rather all car companies be working towards one, strong implementation of self-driving, than for every individual company to work on their own.

It would also mean liability could be diffused to the industry rather than companies.

</comment><comment><USER37> So GM bought Cruise for $500MM in 2016 and Honda just invested in Cruise, valuing Cruse at $14.6B. Therefore the value of GM should be an extra $14B, and yet GM's stock has been flat since the purchase. What's going on here?

<comment><USER38> It could be that the stock market doesn't agree with that private valuation. Also, that valuation is a little odd because some of the investment doesn't kick in until they launch a product, and in the case of Honda, some of it is in machines and other non-monetary things.

Or it could be that as Cruise's value goes up, GMs goes down. Look at what was Yahoo for an example -- for a while the stock was worth less than just the value of their Alibaba shares, meaning the stock market attributed a _negative_ value to what was left of Yahoo.

<comment><USER39> > Look at what was Yahoo for an example -- for a while the stock was worth > less than just the value of their Alibaba shares, meaning the stock market > attributed a negative value to what was left of Yahoo.

That _is not_ what the situation meant.

Yahoo was trading at less than their book value per share. The vast majority of their book value was the share of Alibaba the company owned. This asset was not generating revenue for Yahoo, nor was it a liquid investment that Yahoo could convert into cash whenever it wanted to. There may have also been other conditions on sale of the stake that meant, in at last some circumstances, the liquidation value of the stake was significantly less than the paper value on the books.

Therefore, it gets discounted by the market. Since it comprised such a large portion of Yahoo's book value, the size of the discount was greater than the value of Yahoo's operations, leading to a price/book ratio less than 1. Yahoo's other operations still had positive value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How does any autonomous driving startup compete against that pile of cash?

<comment><USER41> Lol, cash does not equal innovation. Comma.ai has only raised 8~ million and already has a product you can buy today on par ( or better ) with GM's supercruise.

<comment><USER42> Do you work for comma.ai? Because I can't imagine any other reason for the absurdity of your cheerleading. On par with Super Cruise? Gimme a break.

<comment><USER41> Lol no just a big fan and someone who ported one of their cars. Just most of the self driving car news lately seems scammy to me (by that I mean a lot of hype and no product), and I wish more people knew about the actual state of the industry.

Have you tried both systems? SuperCruise is really good at where it's able to drive, maybe better than openpilot but not by much. Openpilot is also getting really good and can be enabled anywhere, tho most of it's usage is still on highways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is interesting... GM bought Cruise for what, $2 billion? And now Honda buys a minuscule stake in Cruise company for the same price GM bought the whole thing for.

<comment><USER44> > And now Honda buys a minuscule stake in Cruise company for the same price GM > bought the whole thing for.

No. The Honda investment is $750M. The rest of $2B commitment are for Honda to implement/integrate with Cruise's hardware/software technologies - not really payments to Cruise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I figure that by the time this self driving tech makes it to Honda's vehicles, few people will be buying them, because Honda has failed to get on the EV bandwagon. Honda and Mazda may be victims of the surge of EVs soon to come from China, Europe and Tesla.

Other Asian carmakers such as Toyota and Hyundai are doing much better getting onboard the EV/Hybrid train though.

<comment><USER32> Honda is doing fine, and was early into the hybrid market. Whatever are you on about?

The only missteps was their zev hydrogen tech which doesn't make engineering sense (to me), and a black eye from bad v6 transmissions for way too long in the 90s thru 00s, and a departure from small, low-displacement, high efficiency, well handling cars with sla suspension for pigfat appliances with cheap mcstrut suspension and more wings.

Lucky for them, the world is a bit pigfat and risk adverse themselves, and still buy CRVs like crazy. While the 88-01 civic, and s2000 still somehow support their reputation in enthusiast circles thanks to those now purely nostalgic qualities.

But I digress. I think ICE cars will continue to serve a purpose. Mazda just announced a new rotary ICE hybrid engine design this week! If self-driving tech takes off, it will be applied just as easily to either tech. I see Honda at no major positional disadvantage here.

<comment><USER46> MacPherson struts are fine. Even the most ardent enthusiast has difficulty telling the difference between a MP setup and a double wishbone.

BMW uses them and Porsche uses them on their GT# 911s. You'd think if there were a case to be made for the performance demerits of a MP setup, Porsche wouldn't be using them on their halo cars (or their class-winning race cars).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I thought GM bought Cruise. Is that not the case?

<comment><USER20> GM did buy Cruise. Then GM sold stakes to SoftBank and now Honda. Cruise is structured as an independent entity with, as of now, three owners. GM remains the majority owner.

<comment><USER44> IMMO, this is a good strategy from GM. The more big autos to adopt / invest in Cruise, the better.

<comment><USER48> Especially since it's on track to being a commodity technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What does these kind of investment mean for a company like Cruise? Does it provide them with more financial liquidity or does this only fatten up GM's numbers since Cruise was an investment after all? I've been stalking their NYC career opportunities but nothing yet even after the Softbank investment :/

<comment><USER50> I saw an interview with the GM president Dan Annman (sp?). $750mill in cash... Who doesn't like cash?

$2 billion in other resources. Honda has a good European and Japanese market to sell cars.

He said timetable for initial launch is same... 2019, all depends on safety. But the investment is more for after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Makes sense since Honda went in with GM on On-Star. I guess they view it as needed, but better as a partnership with a company they have dealt with before.

</comment><comment><USER52> Why doesn't anyone do a deal with comma.ai? They actually have a product that kind of works with just handful of people.

Edit: Why all the down votes. Go check out some of the videos. It works pretty well. Its a level 2 system so the user still needs to pay attention to the roads which is true with any lkas system out now days.

<comment><USER53> They have built a single, forward looking, camera system on an Android platform and are using python for the control system. No serious auto manufacturer would trust a system like that for vehicle safety.

It's a less reliable version of the lane keeping systems that the automotive manufacturers already have and nothing close to the autonomous system that George Hotz was promising would be easy a few years back.

I also doubt automotive manufacturers want to deal with the drama around comma.ai and its publicity given they have a reputation to maintain as serious, safety conscious, organizations.

<comment><USER52> For all current LKAS systems you need to pay attention to the road including the Tesla. The LKAS most manufactures use aren't that good.

<comment><USER53> Comma.ai has the same constraints. No monocular camera system works without careful user supervision. Even lidar based systems are not that reliable yet that you could trust them to the point of not paying attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Anyone know whether it's too late to join Cruise?

</comment><comment><USER55> The great boondoggle continues

</comment><comment><USER56> Masayoshi Son strikes again.

</comment><comment><USER57> 2030 for full autonomous driving? That is much later than all the hype. So is Honda being pragmatic, and most everyone else is blowing smoke? Or has self driving had a big setback in the last year?

<comment><USER58> In my experience, American companies tend to be overly optimistic, and Japanese companies tend to be overly cautious about timelines.

See uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation: [https://www.hofstede- insights.com/country-comparison/japan,t...](https://www.hofstede- insights.com/country-comparison/japan,the-usa/)</comment></comment>


Apple Boots Bang With Friends From The App Store - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/apple-boots-bang-with-friends-from-the-app-store/

<comment><USER2> Based on the recent news about Cupid With Friends, I would not be surprised if Zynga claimed trademark infringement on Bang With Friends.

<comment><USER3> I think it was trademark infringement, since other apps, like Tinder have been allowed.

<comment><USER4> Bang with friends seems crass... Not to mention randomly fucking your friends is usually a stupid idea. It makes social relationships awkward and complicated.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't aware it was random – I thought some communication/negotiation was required. How advanced is this technology?

<comment><USER6> IIRC from reading about it, you just tick a checkbox next to all of the friends you'd like to bang; if one of them is using the app and ticks your as well then you're both sent a message. Presumably then a really awkward conversation occurs.

Also I don't think the kind of people who use an app like this are going to be aware of the fact that banging friends leads to less friends and weirder connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And here's why you should exercise caution in signing up for services using Facebook Connect:

[https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=17...](https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=178205172320915)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't use ios for couple of years now, can anyone tell me what happens to apps installed in user's device once its removed from the app store?

As a matter of fact, I don't know what happens when an app gets removed from play store either, does it happen often, what happens to the installed apps?

<comment><USER9> It still runs fine, but you cannot obviously reinstall it

<comment><USER8> Thanks! That makes sense, I would be pretty pissed if they removed apps from user devices too without their consent.

<comment><USER10> Both iOS and Android have app kill switches.

Probably not the best links but ...

[http://www.macworld.com/article/1134930/iphone_killswitch.ht...](http://www.macworld.com/article/1134930/iphone_killswitch.html)

[http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk/blogs/index.php/android-has- ap...](http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk/blogs/index.php/android-has-app-kill- switch-too)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> so upon further thought, if Zynga could trademark apps with the phrase "with friends", could someone like Marco Arment have trademarked apps that start with "insta-"?

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a huge risk when you develop an app on top of Android /iOS/Facebook.

One day they can shut you down...

<comment><USER13> That's 2/3 correct ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They had a bang with Apple, but she was disappointed afterwards

<comment><USER12> You made me laugh... Putting just a ':D' in here made my Karma fall to -2 :(

WTH ?!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Understand today's crypto news in 5 minutes in a daily email - <AUTHOR> https://cryptotickerr.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> So a friend and I recently launched a crypto newsletter: we curate the top stories of the day, summarize them in 400 characters news bites and email them to you once per day. No bias, trading or price action talk. fundamentals only.

Here's today's newsletter so you can see the style and type of content we're curating: [https://us17.campaign- archive.com/?u=6fd84371154acc769ed5664...](https://us17.campaign- archive.com/?u=6fd84371154acc769ed5664bc&id=41a56a8799)

Would love to hear your feedback, suggestions, thoughts & questions. Hope you all find it valuable <3

<comment><USER2> I disagree with the premise your newsletter on two counts:

1\. that you are perpetuating this misuse of "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency", when there is already a long history of "crypto" being an abbreviation of "cryptography"

2\. that you are encouraging people to gamble their money on cryptocurrencies, which are rife with scams and fraud and unsubstantiated grandiose claims</comment></comment>


Postmortem: Azure DevOps (VSTS) Outage of 4 Sep 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vsoservice/?p=17485 <comment><USER2> Long story short they give no indication as to why their data center cooling systems were unable to handle voltage changes caused by the storm and their systems are not designed for speedy restoration into another region.

<comment><USER3> Seems like there's more information in the preliminary RCA on [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/status/history/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/history/)

<comment><USER4> > Initially, the datacenter was able to maintain its operational temperatures > through a load dependent thermal buffer that was designed within the cooling > system. However, once this thermal buffer was depleted the datacenter > temperature exceeded safe operational thresholds, and an automated shutdown > of devices was initiated

<comment><USER5> Total failure of a data center's cooling apparatus seems to be a very rare occurrence to me, perhaps limited to simultaneous failure of utility and genset power (example: electrical switchgear and fuel pumps underwater due to flooding).

Anyone have any data around how frequently such a failure occurs?

<comment><USER6> I had the same thought. The only thing I could come up with is that it wasn't a failure of power supply, but that a surge took down enough cooling systems that they couldn't maintain temperature. A lot of DC's I've seen are N+1 with cooling (or even 2N), but they all run at the same time and are the same units. Or the control system went down, and they weren't able to get it back up and running, although I would think they would have redundancy in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, it's understandable, freak events happen.

> The primary solution we are pursuing to improve handling datacenter failures > is Availability Zones, and we are exploring the feasibility of asynchronous > replication.

This I do not understand. I was also amazed when I saw that Azure AZs are not available on all regions. In AWS, the bare minimum is 2 AZs (except for one odd region). Same thing for Google Cloud.

<comment><USER8> From what I understand and I can't find the reference anywhere, each region has at least three availability zones. Some regions only have two user selectable AZ's.

For instance, S3 promises that it is replicated between 3 AZ's in a region. That guaranteed is available in regions that only have two publicly available AZ's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At the end of the day, Azure and AWS are monocultures with considerable amount of centralization and interdependency within their services. Their scale undermines the original purpose behind the Internet.

It bothers me that increasing number of large companies dump their own data centers to jump into The Cloud. Thia means future outages (which will undoubtedly happen) will have wider and wider impact on end users.

For example, if your email is hosted on AWS and it goes down, you loose access to your email. No big deal. However, if your email, VOIP and IM/chat go down at the same time, you may loose all ability to communicate electronically. This can be a very big deal in certain situations.

<comment><USER10> The original purpose behind the Internet was to build a robust layer-3 network based on packet switching technology. The designers weren't focused on the application layer.

Source: [https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history- internet/br...](https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history- internet/brief-history-internet/)

Separately, I think we have enough history of working with the cloud at this point to demonstrate that major providers' availability is on par with, or better than, the availability of the typical small entity. Sure, the impact is potentially wider spread (although this can be mitigated with a cellular architecture, which first-class providers do employ), but there's a perverse advantage that when outages occur, they tend to get fixed a lot faster because the complaint volume is much higher.

<comment><USER9> _> when outages occur, they tend to get fixed a lot faster because the complaint volume is much higher._

On the other hand, they can be much harder to fix, because the sheer scale of failures and complexity of the infrastructure. There is a higher probability of complex systemic issues, as demonstrated by this very outage.

There are plenty of smaller providers that beat Azure VMs in uptime. Plus, smaller websites/services can employ much simpler failure mitigation strategies.

<comment><USER10> The "complex systemic issue" here is that Azure is only now rolling out availability zones, and the product in question hasn't yet been able to take advantage of them to mitigate a serious DC fault caused by an Act of God.

The necessity of low-latency-but-decoupled-physical-plant AZs is well known in the art by now, and these issues will no doubt be addressed as Azure matures. Remember, they're 5 years behind AWS.

<comment><USER9> _> The "complex systemic issue" here is that Azure is only now rolling out availability zones,_

Availability zones are a _mitigation_. The issues is the sequence of events and dependencies described in the postmortem. The description has six paragraphs.

<comment><USER10> I'm not precisely sure what you're referring to. Can you cite the precise problem discussed in the postmortem, and how, specifically, you think it could have been better designed?

And how could your perfect model, whatever that is, survive a similar catastrophic DC failure without availability zones?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's an extremely roundabout way of saying there was a lightning strike and they had inadequate surge protection.

</comment><comment><USER12> Really not the worst post mortem I've ever seen

</comment><comment><USER13> just use AWS. simple.

<comment><USER14> Comments like this are counter productive for the discussion. Competition is always good and some of us like that AWS has competition in the form of Azure and GCP. AWS has had its own share of outages so its not perfect either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > VSTS (now called Azure DevOps)

Not again.

<comment><USER16> What's the point of even mentioning that when they just use the old name for the entirety of the article anyway

<comment><USER17> The point is that the headline should've been "Azure DevOps Outage…" but they're afraid that other outlets will take that over as "Azure Outage..." and they don't want a headline like that making the rounds. So they use the old name for bad news and the new name for good news.

TBH I'd do the same.

<comment><USER18> But is _is_ an Azure outage. It took out a DC. VSTS is one of the services affected, but other services were also affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this what we have to look forward to as GitHub will be forced onto Azure?

<comment><USER20> No service is perfect and github has had plenty of outages. They will only become more reliable with the resources of MS/Azure at their disposal.

<comment><USER21> Having worked in big Azure customer I wouldn't say resources equals stability. The reality is more resources + quality engineering + failure testing.

As this case tells, Azure, isn't spending a lot on failure testing. Also, having experience with being an big Azure customer, I can tell you that things look better than they are.

<comment><USER22> Small Azure customer (five figures a month), but can co-sign all of this.

Azure looks shiny from the outside but we've had way, way more problems, from uptime to bad APIs to _awful_ language SDKs to bad user interfaces to licensing hell, than I've _ever_ had on AWS or GCP. It's so bad that I am currently weighing whether or not to advocate for a migration off of it, at nontrivial expense, because I cannot pretend to provide reliable services for our customers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PG Casts – Postgres Screencasts - <AUTHOR> https://www.pgcasts.com/ <comment><USER2> So good. I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I'd love more beginner videos about how to build a simple CRUD app that lets PG do the heavy lifting.

Most web frameworks focus on routing/validations/sessions and new programmers like me tend to write the data storage logic around the library, even though SQL is so much nicer and intuitive for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER3> This sentiment is part of what inspired PG Casts. The database can do lots of powerful things that framework ORMs tend to keep in the shadows. We want to make the DB more accessible!

<comment><USER4> An important part of this (that I've still not really figured out) is, if you're pushing much of your validation in the DB, how & where to interpret the different validation errors you might receive, and pass back through your application for turning into friendly messages, highlighting formfields, etc, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the creators here.

We'd love feedback on the screencasts and suggestions on topics that you'd like to see covered!

<comment><USER5> PostGIS would be amazing. Followed by JsonB. Then migrating from JsonB to relational. Hot standby might be interesting too.

<comment><USER6> +1 on PostGIS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A guide on setting up on a popular Linux distro/optimization/maintenance would be nice. Also maybe a guide on setting up Postgresql to use with a RESTful API? And one on window functions as others have said. If you know any good reporting tools that connect to Postgresql then that would be nice. I know, I don't ask for much.

<comment><USER8> For this, I highly recommend this tutorial by Christophe Pettus from PyCon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knUitQQnpJo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knUitQQnpJo)

It covers the basics of setting up Postgres as well as other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. Keep it up! I don't mind the copy/pasting at all (I'd rather have the video progress than watch someone type something out). Looking forward to future shows (and 30 Rock references).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. Seems like a happy medium would be to copy and paste from an editor that is on screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The screencast in which a guy just copies and pastes statements doesn't help at all. If it is just copy and paste I can copy myself.

<comment><USER3> Would it be an improvement if we jumped back and forth between Vim so that you can see the syntax highlighted SQL before each statement is executed?

<comment><USER11> Or perhaps use pgcli?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Generating JSON from SQL episode is cool but i'd really like to see an advanced follow up. For instance I've written a query to serialise a collection of records that have many relationships embedded, that conforms to the jsonapi 1.0 standard. Works great but very messy with deeply nested subqueries - hard to read, hard to reuse or alter. I'd really like to see an episode demonstrating a more composable way to craft a complex query like the aforementioned.

</comment><comment><USER13> Would be sweet to learn how to get the PG indexed search engine to work. And how to interface with it in Php or Ruby

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh, so this is about Postgres and _not_ about Paul Graham doing screencasts? I totally failed to understand that from the title and skipped it. :) I see the clarifying "Postgres" there now, but didn't before. D'oh.</comment>


Dart vs Java — the DeltaBlue Benchmark - <AUTHOR> http://bonovox.be/blog/dart-vs-java-the-deltablue-benchmark/

<comment><USER2> There are many problems with this benchmark, as discussed here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1e2jhr/dart_vs_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1e2jhr/dart_vs_java_the_deltablue_benchmark/c9wloq3)

IMO DeltaBlue is a terrible benchmark typology anyway. Benchmarks have to be localized for them to mean anything; and even then, they don't mean much 90% of the time. Dart's pretty neat (editing a book about it atm), but this kind of language zealotry is just silly. Dart is hardly a silver bullet. And many of the truly _interesting_ features (mixins, isolates, fancier mirrors) are yet to be implemented or incomplete. Definitely keep an eye out for Dart, but don't fall all over yourself thinking that it outperforms Java (whatever that even means).

<comment><USER3> Why do you think this is language zealotry? I am very interested in a language that gives benefits of dynamic languages and speed of statically typed ones. So benchmarks like this are important and I wish more of the octane benchmark was also ported to Java and pitted against dart for comparison.

Also check this one: [http://dartogreniyorum.blogspot.ch/2013/05/performance- optim...](http://dartogreniyorum.blogspot.ch/2013/05/performance-optimization- and-dart.html)

and later with Simd:

[http://dartogreniyorum.blogspot.ch/2013/05/dart-beats- java-i...](http://dartogreniyorum.blogspot.ch/2013/05/dart-beats-java-in- numerical-computing.html)

Btw, I think even with the modifications made to Java version mentioned in the link you gave, I think latest version of dart now beats Java.

Edit: Author of blog post also compared Richards and Tracer benchmarks: <http://bonovox.be/blog/dart-vs-java-richards-and-tracer/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This video (<https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/324431687>) is from the V8 guys. Its mainly about V8 and the massive complexity of their codebase because of all the tricks they have to do to work around the problems with making js performant (even if its still unpredictable and memory intensive). At the end they cover a bit about the dart vm.

For anyone who has worked on a large codebase with a fundamentally unsound architecture or inconsistent requirements you can feel their pain and understand their motiviation in making dart. Basically they are trying to show that if they just change the architecture of js a little bit to make dart then they can get twice (currently) the performance and a lot less complexity. They knew they could do this because they used to work on smalltalk vms. (I think that in another way dart is actually an algol-like trojan horse for the invasion of smalltalk because there's a load of ex-smalltalkers on the team and you can never cure those guys).

What's a little tragic about it is that they can't figure out why people aren't jumping all over dart (yet). The tragedy lies in the fact that they are partly responsible for it by hiding just how bad js is in terms of performance through their heroic efforts on V8. Then again the video is titled "Web Languages and VMs: Fast Code is Always in Fashion". The last word in the title shows that they probably do have their suspicions as to why people aren't immediately flocking to dart.

<comment><USER5> I won't lie. I'd love for JS currently to be replaced by version 2.0 that starts mostly fresh. Hell, I'd love for AXR to replace current HTML+CSS. However this is impossible, given the way Internet functions (still got those sites from 1995 there, good luck migrating that to JS2).

That said Dart isn't that JS2. Perhaps that languages will never exist at all. I assume that what web might need is a VM that can run various languages on. And Javascript as web bytecode just doesn't sound right to me.

<comment><USER6> > _That said Dart isn't that JS2._

To me, it is. Dart fixed everything which was wrong with JavaScript. There is proper lexical scoping, a lexically scoped `this`, no type coercion, build-in classes/inheritance, built-in dependency handling, built-in annotations/doc- comments, and good tooling is also possible.

It really does scale and it's very nice to work with. Plus, there are a bunch of nice features like lambdas, mixins, and named arguments.

> _Javascript as web bytecode just doesn't sound right to me._

Yea, it's kinda icky, but there doesn't really seem to be a way around it. Fortunately, dart2js' output is reasonable in terms of size and performance. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in IE8.

<comment><USER5> To each his own I guess. I guess for me Dart doesn't capture a lot of JavaScripts good sides I guess (the homoiconity of JSON and JS). Also Google being the main sponsor just makes me slightly wary of it, thought its probably just my own paranoia.

<comment><USER6> > _the homoiconi[ci]ty of JSON and JS_

There is a package for making interacting with JSON more seamless and JavaScript-like:

<http://pub.dartlang.org/packages/json_object>

> _Google being the main sponsor just makes me slightly wary of it_

In that regard, I clearly prefer Google over Oracle or Microsoft. I was also happy with Sun back in the days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a newcomer to web dev and Dart, all I can say is Dart rocks! It actually makes sense as a language (versus js). But that's just my opinion. I highly recommend checking it out if you're tired of Javascript's idiosyncrasies.

<comment><USER8> I agree! I am also a new DART'ster. I don't get the same warm fuzzy feeling as using Clojure, but Dart seems to be a very practical language. I have been experimenting with very simple REST services and front end apps and like it so far. I am converting a small Clojurescript + Clojure app to DART to get a better feel for the language and frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Much more interesting than the benchmark was the ease with which the author seem to have translated dart to java. I'm still new to web development, but each line of javascript I write makes me long for a more java-like language.

<comment><USER10> really? It's the opposite for me.

When I write Java I always feel like I'm using bigger tools than needed. Like anonymous classes, when I just need a anonymous function etc.

<comment><USER11> When people say they like/long for Java I usually understand that they like the tooling support and robustness of language/api/libraries and ecosystem in general.

I think Dart looks very promising in that regard especially when you compare it to JavaScript without feeling as heavyweight as Java.

Dart is actually a very terse and expressive language. Less ceremony and feels much more like other dynamic languages like Python or Ruby. Yet having optional typing and simple semantics it is one of the dynamic languages with extraordinary tooling support.

In a way Dart gives you the best of both worlds. It takes the good parts and leaves out the bad :)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the tooling of Java is nice. But it kinda seems like Java would be not usable without them. Also the code-generators are giving me the willies D:

<comment><USER12> It depends on the style of Java code being written.

There was a period from 1995 until around 2001 or so where much Java code was developed without using IDEs. It was generally simpler, with shallower class hierarchies, and much less emphasis on design patterns. Such code could be easily written, understood and maintained without using extensive IDEs and other tools.

Things changed once Eclipse and other IDEs started to become more widespread, and some people went overboard using design patterns that are impractical to work with without the use of IDEs, or otherwise introducing complexity that just didn't arise earlier.

It's still possible to write the simpler, sensible style of Java code. It's just that most people who lean that way end up using C++, Go, Python, or some other language instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nikolay has also ported the Richards and Tracer benchmark.

<http://bonovox.be/blog/dart-vs-java-richards-and-tracer/>

</comment><comment><USER14> I suggest google employees should write "work for google" everywhere they comment or blog or say something about google projects. I bet half of the hype will just go away then

<comment><USER15> How about discussing on merit, not finger pointing? (not a Google employee)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hardly an apples to apples comparison.

Porting code written for VM a to VM b by some rubric hardly seems like a fair comparison.

<comment><USER13> Yes - benchmarks need to be ported very carefully to make sure they measure something meaningful. What makes you think that there are problems with this port?

It is an old well used benchmark, used for benchmarking object-oriented code with polymorphism.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to grow your career reputation after spinning your wheels so long? - <AUTHOR> As a software engineer, I have about 10 years of experience in the industry, and working for 7 different companies.
But zero promotions or pay raises within any company. I have no experience managing or training others. I only get pay raises when I change companies, but not by much.
I don't know if always being contractor has anything to do with the above. Since my very first job out of college was a contractor job.
You see, I was offered a contract-to-hire job at a web agency as a Junior SWE but the W-2 "hire" part never happened. I think that part of the contract was broken and my boss just said, you're now a permanent contractor.
Ever since leaving that job it's been contract after contract job for the next 9 years. So I always feel less visible compared to employees, on the sidelines never really in tune with company politics or what their goals are.
I get told a lot that I do good work and I'm a good communicator. But they never follow-up to give me future contract work.
It makes me feel very alone in this career world, and I don't mean in the "I have trouble making new friends after college" sense. I mean that with workplace relations I don't feel a sense of camaraderie. Especially when I work as a remote contractor.
I lack the career wisdom and maturity of a typical 10+ year engineer. Nobody really thinks of me as someone as a skilled expert in a topic, someone they could forward jobs to, or refer me to.
Any ideas of where to start? Build up a network and a reputation that is expected of a 10 year software engineer? I started going to meetups more, though not always easy to go to the downtown ones due to parking and time constraints. But I'm going to a few of the ones I can.
I already have built several personal projects online, as a result of the boredom of unemployment. So that's already an ongoing process.
Other ideas to be "known" in your local circle of professionals? I feel almost as lost as I was when I just graduated. <comment><USER3> You are contracting and essentially a business. Your next career move is to find more clients.

As a remote contractor, you really won't feel like you are part of a team. I've been contracting for the last 10 years and I don't expect to be part of a team, because it's only a way for me to fund my other businesses.

You need to find a 9-5 job where you can go into an office every day and interact with your co-workers.

"I lack the career wisdom and maturity of a typical 10+ year engineer. Nobody really thinks of me as someone as a skilled expert in a topic, someone they could forward jobs to, or refer me to."

Why wait for referrals? I found all of my contracting jobs by reaching out on Linkedin or various job sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Why wait for referrals? I found all of my contracting jobs by reaching out on Linkedin or various job sites.

Do you have a system in place for choosing people on LinkedIn to reach out to? I don't know what's a good starting point- seeking in local companies first or with companies that are just related to my developer niche. In job boards I tend to email blast a lot of applications.

And yeah, I haven't really felt part of a team since 2010. Contract jobs can wreck your visibility if you're not skilled in tailoring your connections.

Like I have been told I do great work but they never want to re-engage for more work. Not in six months, not in two or four years.

<comment><USER3> "seeking in local companies first"

I find this too limiting. Many contracts are remote.

I don't have any special system. I just look for contracting gigs that might interest me and make my introduction. It's definitely a numbers game.

Before the new year (in December), I probably talked to 50 potential leads. Narrowed it down to about 10, and finally found two that I thought would be a good fit.

One of them ran out of money/changed their mind, and I'm still working with the other today. It's a multi-year contract and it keeps me busy.

"In job boards I tend to email blast a lot of applications."

It also depends on when you make the contact. The closer you can get to the time it was posted, the more likely you will get a response.

I then get their phone number and setup a phone call. You need to get good at selling yourself/services and not be afraid to talk to people.

Most business owners want to talk on the phone first before making any major decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I don't feel a sense of camaraderie. Especially when I work as a remote > contractor.

This seems to generally be a hurdle of remote work. It's hard to feel that sense of camaraderie when you are far away. There's a lot of reasons for this that aren't about you or them: like lack of face time, voice communication, out of sight out of mind, hard to get to know a remote person personally without "watercooler" talk, etc. It's also pretty common that remote people are left out of promotions and exciting projects for these reasons.

I'm a bit nervous on the 7 jobs in 10 years. One phrase that comes to mind is "10 years of experience vs 1 year of experience 10 times." Maintaining/operating something you've built is a key step in improving your skills, since you can see your own mistakes and learn from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Missing out on promotions is a concern for me. I don't think promotions exist in the context of contract workers, do they?

And I'm also concerned about the 1 year 10 times experience. The longest I have maintained a single project has been 2 years but again that was from working remotely for a startup. I'm supposed to be able to make a big impact at tiny startups but I didn't get that feeling there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Start simple - print visit cards and come up with catchy motto. Go to any local IT event and make contact with people - in the end business is people and their problems, tech is just a tool to solve them. I personally found meetups and networking a skill on its own rights, more you practice better you become. You need to be a salesman of your own self. You will get your name known to people who make business decisions, that's the easiest way to find yourself meaningful career and coin your own brand - even if you do not want to contract anymore.

</comment><comment><USER6> > I get told a lot that I do good work and I'm a good communicator. But they > never follow-up to give me future contract work.

> Like I have been told I do great work but they never want to re-engage for > more work. Not in six months, not in two or four years.

That is strong signal of some problem to me. Either your niche is screwed or you have some issue they don't want to tell you about. Did you ask them enough feedback about your performance during your work time?

Maybe you need to be more proactive?

Be proactive with pay and role. Foremost it is unusual to get any pay rise or promotion as contractor, you should explicitly ask for it before renewal, but you need to also have confidence you have grounds to do it.

Be proactive with discovering the company and people there. During your work term if you smell the project dries out you should proactively seek what else you can work on there - this is often easiest way to jump into a new competence.

Be proactive with asking guys from past companies how is the stuff going and that you are available to help them with it if there is any need.

You are remote, right, but can you arrange frequent on-site visits to show up and gain human trust which you can later turn into Slack chit-chat?

> I already have built several personal projects online, as a result of the > boredom of unemployment. So that's already an ongoing process.

Be proactive! Certifications, trainings. Don't become unemployment victim, say you run planned self-development time now.

> I started going to meetups more, though not always easy to go to the > downtown ones due to parking and time constraints. But I'm going to a few of > the ones I can.

Be proactive! Give presentation, share some knowledge, experience, how-to. Politely tell on your contact slide that you are currently available for hire.

Be proactive with job channels too. Improve your LinkedIn profile, buy month of Pro package for exposure. Reach out to local recruiters and agencies - <USER2> have vast networks for sure. They will tell you how to improve your CV and pitch to get foot into the door.

And finally if your niche doesn't serve you, find a new one.

</comment><comment><USER7> The best way to get ahead is to stay someplace a long time

Advance through attrition mainly

It's boring and not challenging but...

</comment><comment><USER8> For your next gig apply for something with a bit more seniority. Maybe an architect role? You are less likely to get it, sure, but it's not impossible. If you persist you will get it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you tried applying for jobs that are straight up full-time instead of contract-to-hire?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I apply to a higher proportion of full-time jobs and get some interviews (say about 10% from applications) from them.

I don't get offers from full-time jobs. I only get a few from short contracts. And if I apply to full-time jobs exclusively I would get no offers at all.

RIP.

<comment><USER10> I think thats your problem to focus on. Why are not getting these jobs? If you have ~10 years experience as a software engineer you shouldn't have so much problem getting a job. Even if you are not a "skilled expert in a topic".

Maybe you are applying to jobs which are above your pay grade? Perhaps you need to take a small pay cut to get a job at a company where you can grow your skills and learn the career wisdom that you say you lack?

<comment><AUTHOR> All my past jobs underpaid, so even $65K or $70K (the average for a entry level job in my city) is higher than I've made.

Being simultaneously under-qualified on paper and over-qualified in practice is a thing with me. People must think I expect high salaries but I actually don't. I've always been paid roughly in the lowest 25 percentile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What do you want to do?

</comment><comment><USER12> Do you have a comprehensive git repo? What about your side business or blog showing your passion? If neither you really are just a tool - a function if you will - for others who want to be in front of the pack.</comment>


He was certain technology would save the world. Here's what changed his mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/06/03/he-was-certain-technology-would-save-the-world-heres-what-changed-his-mind/

<comment><USER2> "A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that."

</comment><comment><USER3> > Toyama believes it's foolish to think education is about having content > available to study. [...] "we have fed it to them online possibly through > some fancy interactive graphic"

It's hard to tell whether the author is engaging heavily in quote-out-of- context or whether Kentaro is truly just amazingly narrow-minded.

Of course having online-access is not a panacea. How useful it is to any given person depends on what kind of person that person is in the first place.

However, to those people who _would_ go to a library and dig through books to learn knowledge, who _would_ try and gain some knowledge before making a decision, the internet works as a massive force multiplier just by providing basic access to text. I can say this because i grew up in the depths of eastern germany, in the poorest part of the country, and having only minimal resources available to me for the first 15 years of my life, and then moving over the course of a few short years when the wall fell to being able to rely on the internet to provide reliable information on all manner of subjects ranging from simple things like gardening to personal health.

Frankly, the way people who grew up in the lap of luxury try to disparage the internet disgusts me.

</comment><comment><USER4> _"...For example, what if a low-income person is given a lottery ticket every time he or she deposits a certain amount of money in a savings account? That might be an effective way to use the inclination to believe in luck to teach the value of saving money."_

Or what if we just paid decent wages?

If the OA is a true reflection of the quality of thinking in the book then I'll save my £18 I think. A poor school will be a poor school whatever technology you install.

</comment><comment><USER5> He: Kentaro Toyama, Harvard physics PhD and Microsoft researcher.

What changed his mind: _"I saw this sort of thing happen over and over and over where the technology worked as advertised, and we could even do research on it that showed in certain conditions it outperformed not having the technology," Toyama said. "But those special conditions in which it worked, turned out to be exactly what was missing in those places that we wanted to roll it out in."_

</comment><comment><USER6> linkbait title. I suggest "Technology is an amplifier of human intentions, not a cure-all for human problems.", which is a paraphrased quote from the text</comment>


95% of Managers Follow an Outdated Theory of Motivation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.idonethis.com/management-maslows-hierarchy-needs/

<comment><USER2> I don't see how the article and the described experiment refutes Maslow's hierarchy. In fact, it validates it! The workers were motivated more by the important things at the peak of the pyramid.

I think workers would be motivated by threats to the bottom layers only if those threats were credible. For instance, a threat related to job security is only real if the worker believes that he cannot easily get a similar job elsewhere. Someone who is being actively head-hunted will hardly fall for that.

Yes, base needs will motivate people to work. For instance, if you're in the woods somewhere, and you sense that bad weather is coming, you will scramble to build your tent, whereas if the weather is great, you might take your time.

People are obviously motivated by money, too: for instance, they line up for hours to take advantage door crasher deals on Boxing Day. They have to believe that there is an opportunity to get something that will only come once.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is wrong. The reason pay and job security are no longer powerful motivators is because of the way society evolved in the past few decades. It used to be common to work for the same company your entire life, forced separation from that social structure causes a lot more pain back then than now.

In addition, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a generalized framework, it's not a guide on how to day to day manage your employees. Saying it's "outdated" because its previous misinterpretations no longer apply to today's world is irresponsible.

</comment><comment><USER4> _> 'The most important motivator for employees at work is what Amabile and Kramer call "the power of small wins": employees are highly productive and driven to do their best work when they feel as if they're making progress every day toward a meaningful goal.'_

I thought Dan Ariely's TED talk _What makes us feel good about our work?_ [1] did a great job of demonstrating this idea.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho)

</comment><comment><USER5> Reid Hoffman is writing about peoples/teams basic needs:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/management-advice-from- linked...](http://www.businessinsider.com/management-advice-from-linkedin- founder-reid-hoffman-2014-7)

I think this was also posted on HN in the last few days.

</comment><comment><USER6> Among that 95%, some are actually malevolent and _do_ understand that punishment doesn't motivate in the long term.

There are neutral-intended but incompetent managers who think "pressure makes diamonds", but there are also the political adepts who take out talented subordinates to pre-empt future competition, and the sadists who know that they're crippling the people under them, but because they "manage up" well, they can get away with anything.

The sadists (rare) and malignant politically-minded players (less rare) use "pressure makes diamonds" as a rationalization, and a much larger set of clueless people (without bad intentions) copy it. And that's how you end up with Theory X management.

Also, I don't think this contradicts the Maslovian theory. If you start fires on someone's lower need levels (security, physical health) then those trump their higher need levels (creativity, esteem). The thing is that, even though the baser needs are more "foundational", that doesn't mean they drive people to do better work. Creativity drops, and fatigue sets in, and you get really awful work because pain and fear rarely motivate; they paralyze.</comment>


Facebook shelved a feature intended to promote civil political discourse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/23/18154111/facebook-common-grounds-feature-conservative-bias-concerns-shelved-joel-kaplan <comment><USER2> Weird article. Gives the impression that a conservative operative sunk a perfectly reasonable initiative for political reasons, and yet has absolutely zero analysis of how the feature would have worked.

<comment><USER3> Right. This article, as well as the Wall Street Journal story, have zero real description of what "Common Ground" would have done.

I also thought it was odd that the WSJ used this story, and the fact that he was present at Kavanaugh hearings, to label Joel Kaplan as the sole conservative on Facebook's team. Seems like quite a presumption, though I have never heard this guy's name before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been advocating similar feature before, while I was in and since I left the company and I'm happy that Facebook is trying (because it wasn't always the case, even when the problem was clearly identified internally). My version was "the smartest person who disagree with this" (which was essentially my way of having a permanent link to remind me of George Will's name; can't get it to stick somehow).

A leak to the WSJ is interesting: I can't imagine that who opposed what feature could possibly come from anyone not inside (and high up) the company. Even internally, those arguments rarely leave the product review, and that's at most a third of the executive committee, the product owner, maybe a couple of members of the team and some directors in between. Leaking features before release, or worst, cancelled features, that was _extremely_ frowned upon years ago. With the current tone in the media, I can't imagine it's imaginable. Either someone committed career suicide, or it came from higher up. I don't know how to read the media to understand if that could help Facebook within an "us Facebook vs. Kaplan" narrative.

On the merit of the case, Joel Kaplan probably had a reasonable point: if the feature mostly flags conservative sources and not the NYTimes, it could incense the current pro-Trump movement further — even if one source is factual and the Daily Stormer is… well, far less so. I can't imagine there were no ways around that, always offering a "correction" that might not contradict one but would clearly challenge far more point in the other, trigger it progressively, trying to understand the impact on far-right and more reasonable people etc. (Facebook recently published paper able to detect and automatically adapt a model to subtle controls like that.) A product like that would not be scrapped, not after the first product review, but asked to tweak some aspects. Either Kaplan has been consistently pushing against any version of it (and that would be mentioned more clearly) or there's more to it.

<comment><USER5> > even if one source is factual and the Daily Stormer is…

I think it's disingenuous to use the Daily Stormer here as an example. I have definitely come across publications on the left that play loose with the facts or have unlikely explanations for directly observable facts.

It would be more fair to use something like PragerU:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45247302](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45247302)

<comment><USER4> Oh, I certainly don't think it's a black & white situation. I was just taking the point of view of someone who needs to make a decision from a situation where it's unbalanced. Actually, pretty much every product Facebook has launched had a well-known unbalanced impact: "get out the vote" efforts get more young people out and they vote more to the left; detailing right to vote drives a subset of potential voters (younger, recent citizens) which isn't balanced either; same for informing about candidates' Page, or their program. I suspect that getting a Hans-Rosling/Steven-Pinker-like effort to counter-act spurious arguments with actual statistics would also not be neutral. All are on principle laudable efforts; all don't have a neutral impact on the vote.

I am able to name a right-wing rag because that one is in the press; in general, I stay away from the nastier stuff. As I mentioned in the first paragraph: I care about the smartest of the people who disagree with me and contextualised, nuanced, balanced information. Neither PragerU, the Daily Stormer or other come close to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be nice if people would submit the original story instead of another web site's re-write of the original report.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-lonely- conservative-t...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-lonely-conservative- takes-on-a-power-position-11545570000)

And people wonder why the journalism industry struggles to make money.

<comment><USER7> That's paywalled...</comment></comment>


Open Source - Coke & Lemonade way - <AUTHOR> http://vineetkumar.net/blog/?p=4 <comment><USER2>
        ^You may replace coke with any proprietory beverage of your choice. (I chose
        coke because the word "coke" has less characters than "pepsi" or "thums-up".
        Thus I saved a few KiloBytes of a costly resource known as computer memory)

I wonder how much extra memory/bandwidth is used by having that note.</comment>


Facebook's 'Deep Learning' Guru Reveals the Future of AI - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/facebook-yann-lecun-qa/ <comment><USER2> Wired actually ran a decent deep learning article! Just doing an interview with the researcher seemed quite a bit better than their normal approach of doing the standard zero-depth pop-sci overview of the topic. Lecun gave solid answers, and the questions didn't suck. I particularly enjoyed the answer about the "conspiracy" between Hinton, Bengio, and Lecun.

</comment><comment><USER3> | But the goal is really long-term, more long-term than work that is currently taking place at Facebook.

I know a lot of discussion takes place that it's a shame that so much work goes into increasing page views, click through rates, etc. But maybe in this case we can think of facebook as more of a "patron" of this technology, where it will benefit directly but also move the field forward.

</comment><comment><USER4> So we can expect some NSA layoffs since Facebook will be doing more and more of their work for them?</comment>


Another reason Prince Andrew is a disgrace - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richpwilson/another-reason-prince-andrew-is-a-disgrace-3222c1145226 <comment><USER2> As an American, I simply do not understand why England let alone Europe suffers from the scourge of royalty in the 21st century. Just expropriate everything those motherfuckers have and be done with it.

<comment><USER3> Tourism. We have no manufacturing and soon the finance industry will all leave due to brexit. The rest of us will be Harry Potter, Whisky and Palace tour guides.

<comment><USER4> Tourists would continue to flock to Buckingham Palace even if the residents had been taken round the back and put up against the wall.

In fact I'm willing to bet rich Americans would be willing to pay a fortune to stay there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like you can discover the sneaky bits of a contract by searching for and skimming sections with the $ and % characters.</comment>


Why Gun Control Can't Be Solved in the USA - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146307088451/why-gun-control-cant-be-solved-in-the-usa <comment><USER2> Probably the most balanced, level-headed article on gun control I've seen recently. I am fairly biased on this issue in favor of maximizing personal freedom, I am and always have been very Libertarian minded. I don't even own a firearm, but have several friends and family that do. My father is retired PD (narcotics undercover), and my mom still works as a dispatcher.

I do hope that people can simply be more civil, and that we can come to some sort of consensus on revisions to allow for forced treatment of mental illness. All the watch lists in the world do effectively nothing, as they aren't proactive. If someone is truly believed to be dangerous, then they should be actively removed from the country if they're resident aliens or under psychological evaluation and/or treatment. Restricting travel and other rights is problematic to say the least. Either be proactive, or drop the thing.

I don't know what the next 8 months will hold, let alone the next few years. It'll be interesting to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently Scott Adams is persona non grata on HN these days...</comment>