Xiaomi's first laptop is a Macbook Air rival - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/27/you-know-this-all-sounds-familiar/ <comment><USER2> The best thing about Xiaomi is that they support their products very well. Almost all of their phones get security updates each month. That is a rare thing in Android nowadays especially with Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security updates. [1]

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms- tha...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms-that-it-will- not-commit-to-monthly-security-patches/)

<comment><USER3> How did you go from _However, because of the amount of testing and approvals that are necessary to deploy them, it 's difficult to do this on a monthly basis for all our devices. It is often most efficient for us to bundle security updates in a scheduled Maintenance Release (MR) or OS upgrade._, which is a quote from Motorola, to _Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security updates._?

Keeping up with the monthly updates would likely be preferable, but batching them is still a long way off from how you've characterized it.

<comment><USER4> Because anyone who has watched Motorola after their acquisition from Lenovo knows they will stop updating phones very quickly. In under a year in some cases.

<comment><USER5> While I agree with you, it's still just speculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This quote from Jony Ive really made me feel for the guy:

"When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy."

Xiaomi have done this to others. Their new air filter for example basically clones a Japanese design and sells it for a fraction of the price: [http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/12/09/xiaomis-air- purifierbor...](http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/12/09/xiaomis-air- purifierborrowing-design-balmuda-airengine/)

<comment><USER7> I don't know if he actually said that but isn't all innovation incremental? I understand he put his heart and soul into it, but there has been tons of people who have worked equally hard before him to get to where he got (Apple itself copied it's UI from Xerox). Apple has also blatantly copied and consumed many companies in the past.

There is so much code copied around these days. This is all just the way it is and how we have decided to move ahead as a society. Making judgments on others is uncalled for.

<comment><USER6> > I don't know if he actually said that but isn't all innovation incremental?

He said exactly that: [http://www.vanityfair.com/news/tech/2014/10/jony-ive- lessons...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/tech/2014/10/jony-ive-lessons-from- steve-jobs)

And yes innovation is incremental but this is Xiaomi not simply borrowing design cues but literally cloning a design. See for yourself - here's their take on Japanese company Balmuda's air purifier: [https://www.balmuda.com/jp/airengine/](https://www.balmuda.com/jp/airengine/)

Xiaomi's version: [http://www.mi.com/en/air/](http://www.mi.com/en/air/)

<comment><USER8> We're talking about the Jony Ive who designs rectangles?

Meh. Him and Apple have stolen plenty! Isn't Steve Jobs famously quoted as saying "great artists steal"?

Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing.

(EDIT: A piece of something is still a whole piece that you've stolen. And Apple has also stolen entire apps, like Konfabulator. They get no sympathy from me.)

<comment><USER9> Apple literally redefined what a smart phone is. While he borrowed design cues from history, Braun in particular, applying that to the phone space and coming up with a design language that had durability was a big breakthrough.

Remember in 2006 Nokia, Motorola, RIM and others made literally everything _but_ rectangular phones. They were covered in buttons and other crap.

Ive's vision of a virtually button free phone was strikingly different at the time, a device even simpler than the Star Trek communicator pad.

>Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing.

It's very hard to strip something down to the essential components and integrate those into a package that becomes _obvious_ in retrospect. The steering wheel in a car, the magnetic seal on a refrigerator door, these are all obvious now but at the time were huge breakthroughs.

If you can't see the difference between copying and working to reduce something down to the fundamentals you're obviously unaware of how one is lazy and the other is crazy hard.

<comment><USER10> The Sony Ericsson P800/P900/P910 had a removable keypad making them effectively rectangular phones. The Neonode N1 had a touch driven interface, including the slide to unlock feature. Then there were PDAs like Sony Clie PEG-TH55. All this a couple of years before the iPhone.

The reason phones didn't look like rectangles wasn't because no one had the idea, but because screens were expensive and touch technology (and other technologies like data) wasn't mature yet. That's why you had something like the LG Prada come out at the same time (or even slightly before) the iPhone.

Just because you are first to adopt something (e.g. because your customers don't mind paying a premium and you've secretly developed it for years including controlling the supply chain) doesn't mean you should have the sole right to use a concept derived from evolution of components.

P910 [http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg](http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg)

Neonode N1 [http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg](http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg)

Sony Clie PEG-TH55 [https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c...](https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c5-11e3-a665-14feb5ca9861/thumbnail/770x433/7668c0c8969b4ad46849bf3676b17ea6/30733801-2-440-front-2.gif)

LG Prada [http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada- ful...](http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada-full-1.jpg)

<comment><USER11> This post should be marked as reference anytime some Apple-zealot brings the "Apple invented everything under the sun" argument.

Don't get me wrong: Apple deservingly got tons of credits (literally, in their bank accounts) for the combination of great hardware/software/ui design/marketing of the past 10 years. They still do.

But their success means that just like Jony Ive got "inspired" by Braun, Apple is not inspiring everybody else.

<comment><USER9> I use air-quotes on inspired because while it's obvious in hind-sight the way the Braun styling was adapted, distilling the design language of a blender or a pocket calculator made in the 1960s into a cutting edge product launched in the mid 2000s is not exactly a straight-forward exercise.

If you look at the mock-ups people made of the hypothetical and long-rumored "iPod phone" that Apple was working on you'll see how many of the design decisions Apple took were completely unexpected: [https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone- predict...](https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone-predictions- fared-in-the-face-of-reality/)

Apple didn't invent everything under the sun, and they didn't even "invent" everything they use. What they do is try hard to come up with a striking, simple design that they know will differentiate their products. They also get very upset when people steal their design without even _trying_ to make it their own.

Notice how Apple's been quiet about the Microsoft Surface device, and even though it directly competes with the iPad, they're still partnering with Microsoft to build Office apps. I think they respect Microsoft here because re-inventing the tablet and making a compelling notebook product of that sort takes a lot of bold engineering.

Apple's appropriation of the keyboard cover ([http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro- micr...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro-microsoft- surface-comic-prediction)) is one of those things that's inevitable. I'm not sure what else they could have done here, they were boxed in, so it ends up being 'theft' by some definition of that term. Microsoft doesn't seem to have raised this as an issue, so I'm sure there was some communication here between the two parties to make sure it didn't poison the waters.

<comment><USER11> It's stylistic exercise which may be (or not be) enabled by technological advances but it's no different than when 80s cloths coming back now. Understand that I'm not saying it's trivial to accomplish this exercise. Specially to achieve global cultural icon status. But I'm arguing that part of journey to achieve that status requires other's following your lead.

Xiaomi "thin, machine-metal" laptop looks as much like an Macbook as iPhone's 6 antenna lines look like HTC One M7.

Apple has been quiet about Microsoft (and vice-versa) because if Samsung v Apple design patent wars taught us anything is that it's pointless and expensive to engage in these fights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

<comment><USER13> What are you misssing in a Dell XPS 13?

<comment><USER14> I have both air and xps 13 and to me they are not even comparable. Yes, thin bezel looks cool at the first glance but that's about it. Instead of metal under your hand you have this weird something, keyboard works much worse, they did not even make reasonable handle to open the laptop like there is in macbook air. Also the power supply is chunky and you cannot fold it nicely.

Don't get me wrong, it's a really good laptop and I've chosen it over so many others on the market. I would probably still choose it for my linux laptop (lenovo x1 is neat but I'm done with lenovo with all the stuff they've done lately). It just looks poorly to me in a direct comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't trust their battery run-times. I was looking for a laptop and finally settled down for a Lenovo Thinkpad 13.

Thinkpad's battery is 42 Wh with a wifi surfing run-time of almost 7 hours [0], although it being sold as a 11 hours run-time. It hasn't a dedicated graphics chip.

Xiaomi's battery is 40 Wh and it sports dedicated graphics. Macbook Air's battery is 58 Wh and it has integrated graphics, lasting around 10 hours [1].

Assuming a similar consumption, Xiaomi's would last less than 7 hours for surfing. But it has dedicated graphics (NVidia 940M) with a consumption (30W) that doubles integrated options (Intel HD in Lenovo and Apple laptops). So, probably it will last 5 or 6 hours of just wifi surfing, even less.

[0] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-13-Ultrabook- Re...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-13-Ultrabook- Review.166559.0.html)

[1] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook- Air-13-2015-Noteb...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook- Air-13-2015-Notebook-Review.144375.0.html)

<comment><USER16> The battery claim may be for the smaller model, which uses a Core M (similar to the new Macbook). That wouldn't be comparable to the Thinkpad or Macbook Air at all.

<comment><USER15> 9 hours is for the 13.3 inches model. The smaller model is claimed to last 11 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was hoping Xiaomi would also launch a version with Ubuntu as the default OS. An i5, 8GB DDR4 Ram, 256GB SSD, backlit keyboard and 10 hours battery backup at $750 sounds like a sweet deal.

I know Ubuntu can still be installed on the Windows version, but I expect it to be a hacky path with installation issues, getting the hardware to play nice and the backlit keyboard to work, and finally maybe even battery life issues.

An out of the box solution like the XPS 13 at a lower price point might work.

<comment><USER18> There already is one. It is called the Dell Chromebook 13. I have posted about it here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11506203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11506203) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If the RAM is user-upgradable, this will make for an _excellent_ dev machine. Given it's a chinese laptop, it will surely not be locked, so Ubuntu will run well as well.

<comment><USER20> Ubuntu and batteries are not good friends :-( I tried few times and still using apple

<comment><USER21> Using tlp and powertop can significantly improve the battery life.

<comment><USER20> I didn't know powertop, I'll give a try. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been looking for a new laptop recently, but I can't seem to find a good.

My primary concerns are:

\- not to have open it up and clean from dust. That's what all of my laptops, except Air, suffered from. They get dust inside and then get hot and loud. I move around a lot and it's inevitable. I don't want noise and I want as little heat as possible.

\- Multitouch Trackpad like on Macbook Air. It's wonderful!

\- Long battery life with moderate to high power cpu.

\- Great 13" monitor that you can see what's going on in direct sunlight.

\- As much as possible of internal fast storage.

\- Lots of RAM.

\- Great typing experience. I'm fine with chiklet on Air. It's just fine. I write a lot, more than typical programmers - treatments, instructions, screenplays on a daily basis.

Currently, only Air fits the bill, but it's getting old.

So, a high(er)-powered Air 13" with longer battery life and more RAM and disk space and better screen with updated CPU and graphics would be great. I haven't found one. I don't care which OS it runs. They're all the same these days.

<comment><USER23> Why are you looking for a MB Air-replacement when you want a MB Air?

<comment><USER22> Because I have an Air, albeit an older model and I want to get a new laptop. Buying a new Air doesn't make sense since it's outdated a bit and doesn't fit most of what I want.

<comment><USER23> >Buying a new Air doesn't make sense since it's outdated a bit and doesn't fit most of what I want.

Um, this is what _you_ said -- "Currently, only Air fits the bill, but it's getting old."

Sorry, I still have no idea why are you're looking for a MB air replacement instead of upgrading to a newer model.

<comment><USER22> 'Newer model' was last updated year and a half ago.

<comment><USER23> Ah okay, that makes sense now! You're on a much shorter upgrade cycle than what I imagined.

<comment><USER22> Nah, I tend to upgrade every two or three cycles. It seems this last one is unusually long though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> After using few Xiaomi products, no thanks.

If I want a Linux dev box, there are other options too.

<comment><USER25> What's wrong with them?

I'm very happy with my Xiaomi piston earbuds, good sound quality, survived 1 year of use so far and only ~£10.

I've had one of their phones a few years ago and found it to work well. Just annoying that they'd skinned Android rather than providing stock.

<comment><USER24> I have the MiBand, and it drops hundreds of times. I had eventually lost it. Sure, it's only $10, but it doesn't make sense to buy anything just because it's cheap.

And I have the earbuds too. Sure another $10, but the sound is very mediocre compare to the stock headphones I got.

I also have one of their TVBox, bought it mainly for my Chinese parents. None of the channels work anymore oversea.

Sure, $10 who cares. But I would rather spend bit more on something that last longer than a manufacturer producing more electronic junk to this already- polluted planet.

<comment><USER25> What stock headphones do you have that are better than the Xiaomi Piston 3? I didn't specify 3 in the last post, but they're the model that I have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are laptops which are thinner, faster or has better graphics than MacBooks. But as much as I have checked, every one of them falls flat on battery run time comparison.

If there was anything that comes close to Macbook's 12 hours run time, I would have seriously considered switching.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why windows? Won't that add to the price? Why not a linux "version" for 100$ less?

<comment><USER28> Linux (as in Linux/glibc/X/whatever) doesn't have a lot of native apps.

Android though would rock.

<comment><USER29> Is that a troll? Linux has tons of native applications in just about every category. It is absolutely packed with alternatives. I don't use Linux daily anymore, but I almost never had an issue finding programs for what ever task I wanted to accomplish. More often then not the problem was a glut of choices.

<comment><USER30> Yes lots of alternatives, you can argue that there is an alternative for virtually everything that is available if you are willing and know how to find it.

This is the same argument that Windows Phone (ironically) make, but most people want the same programs that all of their friends run. Computers and most other electronics are appliances to most people they just want them to work without any thought.

<comment><USER29> It is fair to say that certain software doesn't run (or run well) on Linux. It is also fair to say that most people don't want to learn how to use new software especially when they already know something else that works.

I think however, it is misleading at best to say that it doesn't have many native apps.

<comment><USER28> >I think however, it is misleading at best to say that it doesn't have many native apps.

'well known' is implied by basic logic: users don't want apps they haven't heard of before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Macbook Air is more than just hardware. It's hardware and software working together to make the experience.

I doubt a $540 machine running Windows will match it.

I very much dislike Windows, but I realize that's just me. Linux on this machine would be awesome.

<comment><USER32> I dislike Windows but I dislike OSX even more, so software is indifferent for me, seeing as I will be installing Linux anyway. I suspect there are many people who think like me.

<comment><USER31> OS X nudges past Linux for me because it is much more efficient (this is what I was alluding to in my statement about hardware and software working together). If Linux could work out some way of being just as efficient with the battery as OS X, I would put Linux on my laptop instead of keeping it only on my server.

<comment><USER32> I don't know of any objective benchmarks on that regard, but I do know that Linux is famously erratic in conserving power, with results often varying a lot depending on the specific hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If it gets full Linux support, i.e. I can blow away Windows and use Ubuntu, then I'm in. This'll be my last macbook ..

<comment><USER34> Installed Ubuntu once, I can't help to notice that it tries too much to be macosx. I would rather keep using macbook, or use plain debian instead if installing wifi driver weren't a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER35> Give KDE a try!

[https://neon.kde.org/](https://neon.kde.org/)

<comment><USER36> Plasma is as brittle as always. Years in and still is half finished. Like the developer rushed to implement the mockup so it looks good in screenshots, but then polished absolutely nothing about it.

<comment><USER35> They've been through two technology changes, rebuilding basically from scratch every time. This (Plasma 5 and KDE Frameworks 5) feels like the final evolution stage.

It's gaining polish with every point release. Desktop search is finally quick. The UI stack (QML) is nimble and powerful. Breeze is the best looking flat design, both beautiful and clean. Even the default desktop wallpapers are gorgeous.

The only thing remaining is the Akonadi legacy, which is being replaced. The rest is details. KDE is the best desktop Linux has to offer now, and it's the best platform to build upon in the future.

<comment><USER37> If two technology changes is an excuse for unimplemented features, that sounds like some pretty unusable software to me. "The rest is details" was exactly the problem the parent was referring to. "Desktop search is finally quick"\--I think most users would want it to be quick first, and then the devs can do whatever "technology changes" they want.

I tried to like KDE, but every time I tried it, one of the first apps I tried would immediately crash. Plus it's default looked like a bad copy of Windows XP, which was a bad copy of the Mac, so it looked really bad. (That was a long time ago.) Unfortunately, GNOME looked nice, but had no features, so I just gave up and went to a bare window manager and realized I have no need for anything a DE offers. Then the problem became that sawfish became unsupported, and nothing else had the same customizability.

<comment><USER35> Actually it was always quick, just the indexing sometimes would be a little resource intensive.

I'm not going to claim KDE didn't deserve that reputation in the past. The architectural changes are to blame, but they weren't frivolous. You can't build on shaky foundation.

I also think it's not fair to criticize it based on some snapshot from the past. You've seen the beta. It's really good now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Every competitor for Apple is a good thing :)

<comment><USER39> As a full-time Apple user for the last 7 years or so (not counting my //e days as a kid), I completely agree with this sentiment.

When you have a captive audience and no competition, it is easy to become complacent.

If Linux had a compelling desktop UI alternative and a compelling seamless device integration, I'd be very happy to switch.

I realize there is a lot of subjectivity to what is pretty, but Apple has opened the door for competitors to come out with a more self-consistent UX and address the shortcomings that Apple has introduced in their UX. Such as reduced discoverability, the loss of at-a-glance comprehension.

<comment><USER40> Off topic, but have you tried Gnome 3? I personally can't stand it, but a lot of my friends who use macOS love it, to the point of saying it's on par with the macOS desktop environment.

<comment><USER39> I'll give it a whirl. Last desktop I used was whatever Ubuntu has... Unity I think or something like that.

A lot of glitz, but also very glitchy. I'd be happy with plain, consistent, discoverable, comprehisble. The animation eye candy is nice, but it's low on my priority list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When Windows Subsystem for Linux can run nginx, rails etc reliably, will seriously consider leaving behind MacBook Pro for something like this

<comment><USER42> Why not run Linux on the metal?

<comment><USER41> Because the power management never quite works as it should

<comment><USER43> Neither does Windows' power management come close to the hours/work you can squeeze out of OS X on a Mac.

<comment><USER5> Windows power management is no where near as good as OSX, but that's always going to be an issue with horizontally integrated systems. However Windows PM is light years ahead of Linux.

<comment><USER44> In large part because the Linux devs have to keep patching around Windows-isms (useless ACPI tables for example), and outright bugs that the OEMs paper over with their drivers for Windows.

Frankly PC hardware is going through a drawn out second system period. First there was ACPI replacing APM, and now we have UEFI replacing the BIOS. In both case we have simple and straight forward systems that can hardly be implemented wrong being replaced with complex and convoluted systems where each implementation have its own quirks and gotchas.

On top of this we have the issue of most OEMs barely testing for Windows, and Microsoft is anything but good at getting their implementations right (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish anyone?).

<comment><USER5> So Linux PM sucks because OEMs implemented unnecessary and inferior replacements for perfectly functional standards because Microsoft?

Your argument ignores a number of truths.

Much of the original BIOS was being replaced with proprietary extensions by vendors to overcome it's limitations and it was in dire need a replacement. At one point Western Digital was shipping what was basically a boot sector virus to overcome the Hard Drive size limitations imposed by the BIOS.

ACPI doesn't just replace APM, but also PnP and MPS. None of which support newer buses or interfaces and would have to be patched or extended to do so.

Microsoft has no love for ACPI and even went so far as to disable ACPI by default and only enable it for a small whitelist of machines with earlier OSes. Vista was the first OS from Microsoft to actually require ACPI, that means it took them over a decade to come to terms with it.

UEFI was meant to replace both ACPI and the BIOS but hasn't replaced either. Unfortunately vendors have been using UEFI to just load BIOS and ACPI implementations. This isn't at all how it was intended.

You can't blame Microsoft for these standards because PnP and APM are the only ones they had a hand in implementing. It also sounds like they're the ones you actually prefer which is funny. If there's anyone you should be blaming then it's Intel because they championed all of them.

The whole setup is a house of cards and no one seems to like it. Why you choose to blame Microsoft for it is beyond me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> To me, Xiaomi means quality, I have a Xiaomi battery pack, it's very solid and feels high quality. So does my OnePlus3, it seems like Chinese (designed) is no longer synonymous with cheap _and_ low quality. They are ready to take over. They are removing the usp of western (designed) products. Admittedly they do it partly via copying. What is the next frontier for western companies? Responsible design? Environmentally friendly design/manufacturing? The robotic revolution can certainly bring parts of the manufacturing back here without increasing the prices. I'm curious to see how I.E. Apple responds to this trend.

<comment><USER46> Interesting. I also had a Xiaomi battery pack but after a few months of (irregular) use the outer shell started discolouring and the adhesives gradually became weaker, so much so that you can peel off the plastic at the bottom and top.

Yes they are ready to take over large segments of the market but not yet the high end segment.

<comment><USER47> There is actually counterfeit xiaomi battery packs. There's a great chance you got one of those. The one I have took a lot of abuse and travel and still looks new

<comment><USER48> That still qualifies as a hit against the statement "Xiaomi means quality." Brand protection is hard, but also really important. It'll probably become more evident over the next few years why Apple has always been so vicious about it.

<comment><USER47> At the same time its proof that xiaomi as a brand is good.. i.e. its a brand worth copying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The Techcrunch article reads more like a blog or opinion piece. For example: "...it'll be interesting to see how many units Xiaomi ships."

Also, no mention of battery life, which is the _sine qua non_ of laptops. Unless I missed it, and I read the article twice to be sure.

I'm always sorry when I click on a TC link.

Here's Engadget's take, and they do mention the 9.5 hour battery: [https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/27/xiaomi-mi-notebook- air-l...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/27/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air-laptop- china/)

</comment><comment><USER50> I dont understand why everyone is comparing their products to the Mac/iPhone and then they say "cheap" as $xxx.

You cant compare a KIA to Bugatti and say cheap as $xxx.

The point is create a product people speak about and has a value

<comment><USER5> If we're going to be using the car analogy, Vertu is the Bugatti of consumer electronics and Apple is more like BMW although they desperately want to be Mercedes.

Regardless, KIA's reliability and repair-ability ratings trump all three of them. So I'll let your original comparison stand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> What's the recommended way for US users to get Xiaomi devices?

<comment><USER52> I've purchased a Redmi Note 3 Pro and a Mi Max from Aliexpress without issue using resellers with lots of international feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I am very tempted to try to acquire one. Seems like it would be a great portable development machine.

For robotics work I always end up wanting a small but decent computer to run my ROS visualizations/algorithms and to make small code edits. This has a decent c/gpu, good battery, small form factor, ssd slot, and isn't ungodly expensive. I usually end up running a VM on my primary development laptop but that is very annoying, a dedicated and less valuable machine would be better.

</comment><comment><USER54> There has been a Macbook Air clone (13.3", i3-5005u, 4GB, 128GB) floating around on Taobao for 2400 CNY / 360 USD:

[https://world.taobao.com/item/528554912918.htm#detail](https://world.taobao.com/item/528554912918.htm#detail)

</comment><comment><USER55> When looking at laptop specs, the first thing I look at (almost the only thing) is the screen resolution. This is yet another 1920x1080 laptop, which puts it somewhere between "undifferentiated and uninteresting" and "outright disqualified".

</comment><comment><USER56> > boy does it look familiar to products belonging to a company that begins > with the letter 'A'

Hm? "Sony" doesn't begin with "A".

The colors, the squarish shape and the keyboard (Sony used that style before Apple) look much more like a Sony Vaio than any Apple laptop.

</comment><comment><USER57> This laptop takes a lot of inspiration from Dell XPS' small bezels plus a lot of (what seems like) other similar ID inspirations... I love my XPS, but this is more affordable. Would love to give this a test run. Is this laptop running Windows?

</comment><comment><USER58> Does it have virus in the firmware that works in both Windows and Linux?

</comment><comment><USER59> Will there be heating issues? Such a small form factor with an i5 and dedicated graphics card ought to have thermal throttling issues and with a metal body, become uncomfortable to hold.

</comment><comment><USER60> Aren't those arrow keys a bit weird? Left and right keys are implemented as standard size keys, while up and down keys are so small and tiny. How do you work like that?

<comment><USER61> It's less uncommon than you think, for example I know the HP Probooks do have that (and most likely many more)

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_Probo...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_Probook650_Tastatur_19d7e070bf.jpg)

That being said I have no experience with such a keyboard, so I can't say

Friend of mine has one, he is happy with it, never particularly mentioned the arrow keys as a negative

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Good on them, the more competition in the market the better both for the top and bottom end alternatives regardless of manufacturer or OS.

</comment><comment><USER63> looking at it I wonder how good the track pad is.

</comment><comment><USER64> Why does it need to be so thin? I don't really understand this fad of making every so thin that battery life suffers.

<comment><USER65> Go back and use an old slab of a ThinkPad and you'll notice how bad the ergonomics were and how much volume it takes up in a bag. Also battery life is better than ever now. Because of the gradual change it's hard to appreciate how much better computers have become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Looks really nice. Reminds me of the Surface Book (minus the tablet stuff). Can't wait for the rumored i7 model.

</comment><comment><USER67> I would buy one if avaliable through Microsoft's online store as a crapware free signature edition.

</comment><comment><USER68> Looks awesome, but the OS... There really is a huge market gap for a third, non-tech-savvy friendly OS.

<comment><USER69> Android?

<comment><USER68> Yeah, hopefully their desktop story will improve with time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> A bit expensive, considering you can get an $800 13-inch macbook air (the real deal).

<comment><USER71> It seems, spec-wise that the "real deal" sucks in comparison.

If you can run Hackintosh on it, I don't see why I wouldn't go with it instead of paying $2500 on Apple computer with similar specs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Way to expensive for that graphics card. Would expect better prices from Xiaomi

</comment><comment><USER73> Good artists copy, great artists steal.

</comment><comment><USER74> Making it thin does not make it closer to Macbook. I'm sure it even has standard bricky laptop charger and crappy display.

</comment><comment><USER75> How can Xiaomi is not sued yet?

<comment><USER76> for what should be sued? Squares with lightly round edges? Oh, using "Air" in a notebook's name to suggest that it's very light :).

<comment><USER77> Macbook Air... Notebook Air... I can definitely see that consumers might find the similarity confusing given that they're in the same category of goods and services.

<comment><USER78> Given how strong and prominent Apple logo is on their laptops, I don't think anyone would get confused about that.

<comment><USER77> If Burger King introduced a new burger called the "Large Mac", how prominent the "golden arches" logo is for McDonald's doesn't factor at all into whether or not this is trademark infringement. Same goes for this: is there the possibility of confusion between "Macbook Air" and "Netbook Air"? Let's say Joe Consumer heard a radio/podcast advertisement for the new "Netbook Air" (obviously there is zero chance of seeing a logo for such audio media) -- is there the possibility Joe would associate that product with Apple? That's the kind of thing a jury would need to decide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Ya, but it runs Windows....YUK

</comment><comment><USER80> xiaomi will destroy apple in just few years.

<comment><USER36> By copying them? That's hardly a good long term strategy.

<comment><USER81> Exactly, this moment reminds me of the same time they did that with the first "Miphone" as they branded it. If I remember correctly, Didn't Apple try to sue them for that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> It does not run macOS, it's literally oranges to apples.

</comment><comment><USER83> Hackintosh, please.

</comment><comment><USER84> Dear TC: The word's "knockoff" not "rival".</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone tried 'hacking' their eyesight? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if anyone who is longsighted or shortsighted has tried any methods to improve their eyesight such as spending more time outside, trying to rely less on glasses/contacts, any kind of eye excercises or any other methods? Has anyone had any success? What have the results been? <comment><USER2> I don't know about making my sight better, but I have found that if I take a moment a few times per day to exercise my eyes by shifting focus quickly from near to far for a minute or two, I've been able to prevent the headaches I used to frequently get.

<comment><USER3> This is a good technique. It was recommended to me, too, a while ago, and has proved useful ever since.

Eyes can get RSIs too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This interocular lens implant is really doing the trick, but after 7 surgeries, my eye's feeling hacked to bits.

Seriously, though... You're not going to be able to correct for most refractive errors. There are exercises you can do to strengthen eye muscles, but the amount of benefit you will receive from this is limited. There's only so much range of motion there to work with and that range decreases with age and the natural hardening of the lens of the eye.

That said, some people who do a lot of close work (such as working at a computer all day) can benefit, because their eyes get so used to seeing at one focal range that it becomes difficult to quickly focus at other distances, just because the muscles aren't used to doing it.

If you're really serious about it, see an ophthalmologist. There are a number of different types of vision therapies, from exercises to refractive lenses to laser treatments. Tell them your daily routine and your goals and they'll be able to help you find a combination that works best for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, visit an ophthalmologist. Eyesight can be improved but there is no reliable, do this, get that, way of going about things. For me patching an eye helped drastically improve the other but that was because I had Amblyopia which you don't necessarily have. There is also a lot of wrong facts out there so be sure to weed through the bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great question! Do a search for 'the Bates Method'. I am short-sighted and stopped wearing corrective lenses about 10 years ago when I discovered the Bates Method of natural eyesight improvement. I very soon experienced what he describes as 'clear flashes' i.e. 20/20 vision for a brief moment. When you have worn glasses for 20 years, it is a magical experience. I don't practice the exercises religiously but nevertheless my eyesight has measurably improved (from about -2.5 to -2.0). I still get the clear flashes, sometimes for appreciably longer periods of time e.g. 5 or 10 seconds. I hope that I will some day regain 'normal' vision and I only wish that someone had told me about this when I began to go short-sighted at about the age of 13.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used these for about 10 mins and I went back to my old prescription lenses.

[http://www.rawganique.com/Organic-Bodycare/natural-vision- ey...](http://www.rawganique.com/Organic-Bodycare/natural-vision-eyewear- pinhole-glasses-bates-method.htm)

I think there are a few brands of these pinhole glasses.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_glasses>

I should really wear them more often as I want to rid myself of glasses. I think it's possible.

</comment><comment><USER8> This might interest you. I remember the TV ads that were all over: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_Clearly_Method>

</comment><comment><USER9> Flax seed , oil and cod liver oil, sorts out my dry eyes</comment>


Show HN: Straightforward way to manage your sales pipe - <AUTHOR> https://ivyleads.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, founder of Ivyleads here. Feel free to ask me questions and give me feedback. And thanks for checking out Ivyleads :)

</comment><comment><USER2> very clean and clear presentation a couple questions:

\- I noticed you had a pretty simple sales pipe flow ( New, Lead, Op and Close ) which is nice but do you plan on extending it or allowing customization? \- Do you think you will embed a MEDDIC methodology into the flow ? \- Mobile app / API ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we are in the process of rolling out customization of Lead states. MEDDIC is an interesting strategy and stay tuned for some stuff in that sense ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bad grammar on the website turned me off.

<comment><AUTHOR> did we miss something? Can you elaborate?</comment></comment>


The Bathsheba Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~uzimmerm/Notes/Ludwig+Longenecker,%20The%20Bathsheba%20Syndrome.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> In the military, we are expected to read a fair amount of ethics, this is a representative example and it strikes me as a good read for founders to meditate on as you look forward to the eventuality of success.

Just came across it today in the context of reading up General Petreaus: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/petraeuss- resignation-h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/petraeuss-resignation- highlights-concern-over-military-officers-ethics.html?hp)</comment>


The first release candidate of Redis 4.0 is out - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/110 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13090524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13090524)</comment>


BSD and Linux Differences  - <AUTHOR> http://www.rootbsd.net/blog/2009/freebsd-and-linux/

<comment><USER2> Strange article -- half polemic half unnecessary (anyone who spends 5 minutes reading up on BSD would have heard of ports).

For a more detailed take on BSD vis-a-vis Linux: [http://www.over- yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4lin...](http://www.over- yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php) . BSD user's point of view, target audience Linux users.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the first part, they are comparing apples and oranges, and in a very meaningless way. Compare FreeBSD to Debian or Redhat or Suse or Ubuntu or anything, if you want to. What sense does this make? If you were going to use Linux, you would use some distro, so compare FreeBSD to that distro.

Performance part doesn't really say anything. It's far too vague and incomplete.

And ports could be easily compared to, say, Gentoo system, or something similar. Just describing them doesn't make much sense, given that you are targeting mostly current FreeBSD users. I wouldn't even rule out a possibility that there is some Linux system using NetBSD pkgsrc, as it should be quite portable (and comparable to the ports).

In summary, the article is quite bad :-)

<comment><USER4> There's some technical inaccuracies too - eg, FreeBSD has ACLs, implying that Linux doesn't in Linux-based OSs. RHEL/CentOS and Fedora have had ACLs by default for years now and they're easily enabled on Ubuntu/Debian if you need them.

'Since both the kernel and the provided utilities are under the control of the same release engineering team, there is less likelihood of library incompatibilities. ' is just as true of Linux OSs too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an avid FreeBSD user, I must say that the article didn't really provide an unbiased comparison of Linux to FreeBSD. It didn't offer any of the advantages Linux may have over BSD.

Linux has an amazing community with better application support. Linux also has an optimized C library. For example, you should take a look at BSD's strlen() versus GNU's strlen().

<comment><USER6> BSD implementation of strlen() is handwritten in assembler for most architectures, and _is_ optimized. The misunderstanding about it not being optimized is probably because someone read the fall-back non-optimized C implementation and missed architecture-specific directories.

This was discussed in this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510832>

Edit: glibc also doesn't use the generic optimized version in C on some architectures, see for example: [http://sources.redhat.com/cgi- bin/cvsweb.cgi/libc/sysdeps/i3...](http://sources.redhat.com/cgi- bin/cvsweb.cgi/libc/sysdeps/i386/strlen.c?rev=1.8&content-type=text/x-cvsweb- markup&cvsroot=glibc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is comaring FreeBSD to Linux in general (not BSD-in-general vs Linux-in-general as I had thought from the title).</comment>


jQuery Lock Plugin – prevent some users from changing content in your page - <AUTHOR> http://cnova.github.io/jquery-lock/ <comment><USER2> Welcome to the rebirth of the "right-click blocking" scripts. Please, take a trip with me down memory lane, to the glorious days of DHTML in 1998, when there were serious attempts to use JavaScript to "prevent people from stealing your images and code!" [http://www.java-scripts.net/javascripts/No-Right- Click.phtml](http://www.java-scripts.net/javascripts/No-Right-Click.phtml)

What is old is new, what is new is old.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, just yesterday I ran into an image that I couldn't right click and save and so I just grabbed the src href out of the source.

<comment><USER4> The most interesting methods I've seen to prevent image downloading is to slick up the image into multiple parts and put them together using HTML.

That means, you have 10+ parts to each image. If you want to download it, you'll have to grab each part individually and put them together in an image program.

That, or you can just take a screen shot but you'll lose out on some resolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can remove the DOMSubtreeModified event listener first, then you are free to modify "locked" content as desired. I hope to not see a day where the Web Inspector lacks proper facilities to inspect and modify a page.

<comment><USER6> I recall when early developers would make it so you couldn't right click and view the source. You'd get some silly alert() dialog saying hey your not allowed. You even had users who would attempt to "obscure" the html by converting it to a encoded string that anyone could easily decode because it had to be for your average browsing user to actually see the page.

If this trend were to come back I would hope to see it quickly fade away because it'll just become a game of cat and mouse in which ultimately if you want your average user to see the content you have to give them the keys. Hopefully this type of locking becomes a thing of the past like it has before.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, since the W3C caved on EME and DRMs apis for videos (i.e. plugins), there is a possibility of seeing that scheme being extended to images or text content. They caved once, there is absolutely no guarantee they wont cave again in the future and put the interests of a few companies before the idea of a free web.

<comment><USER6> That is worrisome but as always it's a standard thus not all browsers will implement on top of most browsers now have some way of configuring deeper settings like this to be disabled.

In the end the data goes to the user so a way would be found with or without Chrome or any of the other big wigs. What they should do is focus on how to brand it better so users know where it comes from - this would create a way to spread free idea's while giving credit where due and hopefully pushing the idea of the free web further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Visited the page and ran this in the console:

        $("code.locked").after($("I circumvent you!")).remove()

Clearly this doesn't prevent scripts from changing it, nor does it prevent users from deleting the locked elements and replacing it with something else.

What's the point of this cat and mouse game?

<comment><USER9> I'd agree that this provide a false sense of security to the developer. Here's another example of how to modify the text:

        $('h1.locked').clone().replaceAll('h1.locked').text('sucka')

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's cool, but I guess I don't see the point because I'm not sure how big the intersection is between users that can use Chrome developer tools, and those who can't disable this [0].

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/jvExNWT.png](http://i.imgur.com/jvExNWT.png)

<comment><USER11> Yah... it took me all of 30 seconds to get past. Those doing this without understanding what they're doing are likely following an online how-to, and this wouldn't be that hard to explain in one.

This sort of brings me back to the days where you would obfuscate your javascript or entire page by hexing it (or even AES in one of the scripts I've seen!) and writing a javascript interpreter. One of the more clever ones I've seen was just inserting a tonne of newlines so that the actual page contents was way below the view-source window fold. I felt mighty stupid when I fell for that one.

EDIT: tone =/= tonne

<comment><USER12> Anyone who knows better won't use this, as they know it offers no real protection. Anyone who thinks that can protect their site using this probably won't understand why it won't work, creating a false sense of security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of the comments here are bashing this for ease of defeat and not having a useful reason for it's existence.

While I agree that it's easy to defeat, it could be interesting in test cases to make sure there aren't any DOM side effects to an operation. You could also use it to ensure that there are proper side effects. Probably not the best way to do it, but still a cool idea in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER14> For those wondering, you can get around this globally by listening during the capture phase and stopping propagation.

        document.addEventListener('DOMSubtreeModified', function( e ) {
          e.stopPropagation();
        }, true );

<comment><USER15> This also works for stopping a NYT article from locking you out of the article when you over the limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So we can safely assume anything these people build doesn't validate their inputs server side?

<comment><USER11> That would be a good Google dork for finding soft targets. Combine a search for the jQuery Lock plugin and PHP extensions and fire SQL injections at all forms on it.

<comment><USER17> Or don't bother, since a lot of sites that actually buy into this sort of thing don't bother doing any server side validation. Want to be somewhat alarmed? Look up those old 'Javascript HTML encryption' scripts, and Google the sites that use them. Some of them didn't even bother to do anything more than a Javascript prompt for 'security'.

<comment><USER16> alert("stop hacking us please");

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So it's like those old scripts to stop right clicking/content selecting/other stuff then?

The ones that were (and still are) completely useless because the scripts are client side and trivially easy to 'bypass'? Yeah, I think I'll pass.

Funny enough, uBlock Origin doesn't seem to like this very much, since I just waltzed in and edited the 'protected' elements without so much as an alert:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67216205/jqueryunlocked....](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67216205/jqueryunlocked.png)

What's next, a jQuery marquee plugin? Or maybe jQuery blinking text...

</comment><comment><USER18> It might be more useful to silently report modifications to sensitive elements.

I could only really see this being useful for malicious browser plugins that aren't targeted at the specific site.

</comment><comment><USER19> The `.lock` function takes two optional parameters: `alertMessage` and `customHandler`. `customHandler` is a callback invoked when a content change is attempted. `alertMessage` is a convenience function that calls `alert`; it could be trivially implemented by the client programmer using `customHandler`. The author is ostensibly suggesting that `alert` is a common use case. I think he's trolling us.

EDIT: Just saw that the author is a company. There goes my theory.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does this not work on Firefox? I expected to not be able to change anything about the two "locked" elements, but I seem to be able to change the text, class, or even delete them with no issue.

Edit: Interestingly if I click "Edit as HTML" I can change them to my heart's content, but if I try just double clicking the text it won't let me make changes.

</comment><comment><USER21> But why?

<comment><USER22> Banks? Any order system? Screenshots are very often used in customer problem resolution.

<comment><USER23> If you're looking to fake a screenshot you can certainly defeat this plugin to do so.

<comment><USER24> or just use photoshop...

<comment><USER19> Why use photoshop? The browser will make a pixel-perfect forgery with almost zero effort.

<comment> nommm-nommm It was a hypothetical "even if this wasn't trivial to bypass..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "The idea of the plugin is to prevent users without technical background from changing the page HTML. For example. many eCommerce customers change the price of the product using dev tools and send a screenshoot."

Yeah, good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER26> well, didn't lock anything for me... uMatrix didn't allow it to run the JS

</comment><comment><USER27> I feel like this is a band aid for core design flaws.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The idea of the plugin is to prevent users with no technical background from changing the page HTML. For example. many eCommerce customers change the price of the product using dev tools and send a screenshoot trying to get free discounts.

<comment><USER28> If they have no technical background, they wouldn't be using dev tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe that is not true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just blacklist the site from running javascript. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER30> bug : after locking 'body' \- i tried appending an element to a p tag and hit an infinite loop/maximum call stack exceeded error

</comment><comment><USER31> Sure, it won't actually stop people from changing content. But I can see myself leaving some fun easter eggs with this.

<comment><USER3> I really don't see any other use. The page doesn't even mention an intended use; most of the comments make good points but I'm not sure if they are exactly germane or not. What was the author really trying to accomplish?

<comment><USER19> I think prophesi is suggesting it would be fun to use for something non- professional such as a single-player browser game. You could, for example, make it possible to hack the game by hacking the DOM, or unlock godmode by changing your player nametag to say "God".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> some users = the ones that cannot find F12</comment>


Ask HN: How much weekly time you spend managing imported open-source - <AUTHOR> How much time does your company spend every week managing imported OSS, upgrading their dependencies, tracking licenses, etc. <comment><USER2> Interesting question. It's a cost most engineers consider when evaluating dependencies, but I doubt many actually track time lost keeping them up-to- date.

"Weekly time" is probably not the best metric, because it's spikier than that, dependent on release schedules / vulnerability discovery. Personally, I try to keep dependencies minimal and limited to established projects known to follow semantic versioning. That eliminates most _surprises_ , but there is still the issue of upgrading when the time comes.

I try to keep within one major version of latest, usually only upgrading when it is absolutely necessary. For example, maybe I need a feature in the new version, or maybe I'm about to write a bunch of code that touches the dependency and now is a good time to upgrade. In reality, what that means is I have a slowly building list of chores in the icebox to "upgrade X to 3.0, upgrade Y to 2.0, etc..."</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way for a 16-year-old to guarantee their success? - <AUTHOR> Hi there HN. I'm a 16-year-old who isn't quite sure where they need to go next.
I'm a confident web developer working with the JavaScript stack (Node.js/React). Though I've been moving towards Rust these days because I don't like the ecosystem.
I am doing an apprenticeship in webdev but am not really learning anything, but I'm okay with that. I am very lucky to be in this position.
I don't really have any ideas for something to develop and sell. Actually, that's a lie. I have a few, but I don't think they would lead anywhere. It feels as though the SaaS market is heavily saturated and almost everything that money can be made from, already exists.
I was thinking about going into cryptocurrency, but it's difficult for someone my age to get into, highly volatile, and I prefer the technology side to it rather than trading anyway.
I also enjoy learning about netsec. I've executed some common attacks in the past such as deauths and MITM attacks using open source tools, but haven't been able to do anything especially impressive with what I know. But again, I feel like this would just lead to a 9-5 job, albeit well paying.
If I had to define a goal, it would be the same as most peoples. Retire early. Perhaps I'm just asking the same question as they are.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> IMO, don't optimize too much, especially right now. You are not building things because you feel that the market is saturated and hard for someone your age to get into. I would drop that line of thought and do what you are interested in.

Take this time to learn and become the best in the world at something, it is unlikely that you will have this luxury in the future.

Note: -Some of the largest companies were built in industries that were thought to be heavily saturated (eg. Uber, Facebook, etc..) -Vitalik built Ethereum when he was 19 (I think)

</comment><comment><USER3> If your goal is early retirement, you will likely benefit from reading [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/).

</comment><comment><USER4> Good news: You're a very impressive 16-year-old. I mean that sincerely. You sound like you're going to be able to do just about whatever you want.

More good news: You don't _have_ to know what to do now. You're 16. Spend your time learning how to do more things, and getting better at the things you already know. In Paul Graham's term, spend some time learning what the options are. (There are far more of them than you know about yet.)

When you see a goal that makes you say "I want to do _that_ ", instead of "that might be a way I could retire early", that's a decent sign that you should seriously consider chasing that goal.

</comment><comment><USER5> None. There is no way to guarantee success.</comment>


America's flyers can't expect both cheaper fares and more legroom - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/04/how-squeeze-your-customers?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/howtosqueezeyourcustomersamericasflyerscantexpectbothcheaperfaresandmorelegroom <comment><USER2> The title and the article are in conflict. The article reports on a survey which shows America's flyers want both cheaper fares and more legroom. Then article's author says _Passengers can't expect cheaper fares and more legroom without sacrificing, well, something. (Lavatories? Flight attendants? Aisles?) They are trying to have it both ways. It won't happen._

Problem is, flyers expect both reasonable leg room, reasonable seat sizes, and reasonable prices. Airline management, in the quest for profits, seem to have aligned themselves with an _unreasonable_ view of customer service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny that they say america (but wrap it in the language of economic determinism) because flying is cheaper and more pleasant everywhere else.</comment>


Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/international/2019/07/18/space-law-is-inadequate-for-the-boom-in-human-activity-there <comment><USER2> Law doesn't come from (or shouldn't come from) unqualified legislators guessing about what the future will be like and what problems will be there. Law comes from when somebody has a grievance against somebody else, and society steps in to resolve it.

Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise, and then wrote laws banning and permitting things that they thought would lead to trouble? There is no way somebody back then could predict which situations would lead to trouble decades later.

The best way to deal with space would probably be to let judges stretch earth law (property rights, whatever) to produce as much justice as possible, and then modifying the laws once the lessons had been borne out.

<comment><USER3> _Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise, and then wrote laws banning and permitting things that they thought would lead to trouble? There is no way somebody back then could predict which situations would lead to trouble decades later._

You mean like everyone who's talking about AI policy right now?

<comment><USER4> There have been people who have predicted exactly the direction we are headed like Richard Stallman.

I think though that the number of people with that kind of vision and foresight are few.

<comment><USER5> > I think though that the number of people with that kind of vision and > foresight are few.

It also often comes from domain experts, and almost never from politicians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty sure as soon as there is permanent human habitation in space, any "Space Law" as determined by Earth lawyers is going to become wishful thinking really quickly. Good luck trying to enforce mining rights or even copyright on Ceres, using Earth law.

<comment><USER7> Its pretty easy to enforce if the disputes are between two parties that are at all Earth based. There will be a significant period of permanent habitation before there is self sustaining habitation. And you really cant afford to tell earth to screw off until you're self sufficient.

<comment><USER8> I hope you won't be the lawyer who delays a food shipment to mars/moon because of some petty copyright dispute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >is space mining even legal?

Who's gonna stop you?

It is for all intents and purposes wild west...except constrained by which geopolitical relationships the launching country/company is keen to maintain.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Space_Launch_Compet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Space_Launch_Competitiveness_Act_of_2015) USA recently allowed it for their citizens

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's send a copy of _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ to members of legislative bodies contemplating space legislation ;-)

</comment><comment><USER12> At least, we still have to wait a few decades for the "boom in human activity" there

</comment><comment><USER13> Boom, how many people are in space?

<comment><USER14> Only about five people. But there's also an economy almost unrelated to those people that brings in $330,000,000,000 a year via satellites of various sorts. And if more of the internet starts getting routed through LEO that number is likely to go up a lot.

<comment><USER15> Satellites and rockets have a lot of regulation. SpaceX for example needed FCC approval before launching test satellites for it's internet project.

Satellites seem largely unregulated because they impact such a small number of things. It's not not like the FDA is relevant when it's all photons being sent back and forth.

<comment><USER16> >Satellites seem largely unregulated

Also, because when a company like Swarm launches even after their licenses are denied, all they get is a slap on the wrist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Exactly. See, marslegalcode.org.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't read the article due to a paywall, but don't laws need an ability for someone to enforce them (police, military, etc.)

<comment><USER19> There are means to enforce things in space. But they all constitute an act of war, under current agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Start by banning plastic straws in space.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah as if Earth doesn't have any other problems right now than putting million of super-rich people into space lol. What a stupid waste of time and resources. Maybe there should be some laws indeed for Earth orbit, for instance, banning densely populated, orbiting space craft, for starters. Or fixing or problems on Earth before spending hundreds of billions on useless space projects. We might not be around long enough to populate space otherwise. Now is not the time...

<comment><USER22> Ban stuff because.... well, because bah humbug. Humanity can apparently only do one thing at a time. Also you get to decide what people should or shouldn't be allowed to do, and when. Nice.

<comment><USER23> Interesting comment. So your style of commenting consists of creating arbitrary statements that were not present in other people's comments, ignoring the valid claims they had and sprinkling it with a touch of stupidity of your own?

Anyone who thinks populating space and space governance at this point in time should be a priority, obviously has no idea about where our planet is heading right now. And judging by the utter uselessness of space exploration at this point in time, it's not too hard to realize that these billions spent for landing even just a rover on Mars, would be better invested in any other project that improves the place where we actually live...

<comment><USER24> You're doing the same silly thinking. Want to 'save the earth's, why not divert the _trillions and trillions_ we waste on military spending? The billions we spend in space have and will pay off a thousand fold.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you articulate yourselves so well? - <AUTHOR> How do you articulate yourselves so well? <comment><USER2> Read books, lots and lots of non-fiction books. Dial down your consumption of mass media (television and internet blogs) and social media especially. Expand your understanding of written exposition, make yourself receptive to others' arguments (which means: feel free to change opinion if somebody else's logic convinced you, and don't always consider convincing others to be the point of the exercise), expand your vocabulary, and perfect your syntax.

<comment><USER3> Why only nonfiction? Some nonfiction is among the worst writing I've read, and some fiction is among the best. Metaphors and other literary devices work well in any writing, and some can be learned best from fiction.

I also strongly disagree with expanding your vocabulary, unless you're a non- native speaker. "Big words" have been shown in studies to make your writing harder to understand and seem more pretentious. Good writers can express themselves in a way that an average person can follow.

Same goes for perfect syntax: language is fluid and evolves, and breaking the stricter rules can be very effective.

<comment><USER2> A broad vocabulary with plenty quasi-synonyms allows one to understand and express subtler concepts. Likewise mastering syntax, particularly less- conventional forms, can allow one to shuffle around words to place emphasis where one might not usually expect it to be, if the need arises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ben Franklin thought, wrote, and practiced a lot on this subject, you might want to see what he had to say about it.

My two cents: know what you want to communicate, don't deviate from it. Organize your writing or speaking like this: 1) tell them what you're going to tell them, 2) tell them, 3) tell them what you told them. In other words, have an intro, subject, and conclusion, even if you're only writing or speaking 5 sentences. Speak slower, allow pauses, that way you can think through things.

<comment><USER2> I remember the basic essay plan our English teacher had cajoled us to adopt in High School (which I graduated from almost nineteen years ago, frighteningly enough, at the tail-end of the typographical era of text).

1\. Introduction: Tell us what you're going to say.

2\. Body: List your facts, create a sub-list of those facts that you are going to argue from, argue from them, undermine yourself by introducing the facts you weren't going to argue from and explore how adopting those changes your conclusion, explain why you chose to exclude those other facts to begin with and thus invalidate the counter-argument (while have shown yourself to be receptive to it).

3\. Conclusion: Tell us what you said, and tell us how one could go about settling controversies that arise between yourself and somebody else who reached a different conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I listen to audiobooks all the time(while jogging in the morning, while doing chores, while eating, during the commute, every free minute I'd waste otherwise), write my thoughts down in a journal, write articles for a blog.

I'm still not excellent, English is my second language and I often do make mistakes, but I've made huge progress simply by reading and writing a lot.

Also, some people will disagree, but I think that tweeting is a very fun and productive way to practice concisely articulating your thoughts.

You can also combine these ideas: listen to audiobooks, take notes, and share the most insightful things you've learned on twitter or blog.

</comment><comment><USER6> I attribute my writing abilities to having read a ton of books as a kid.

I read most of those books in middle school, but prior to that in elementary school, I was already reading at a 12th grade level according to some reading test we took in school.

As to why my reading comprehension was advanced for my age? No idea.

I don't nearly do as well with public speaking, but I've tried Toastmasters for a while, and think that helps. At the minimum, you'll meet some great people, have some fun, and listen to (and share I hope!) some great stories.

<comment><USER2> Likewise, through Middle School., High School. University, and my first three- and-a-half year work experience in China, I read incessantly. I probably averaged two or three books per month (typically nonfiction, initially popular science but increasingly technical, with several textbooks of various subjects thrown in for good measure) for... about fourteen years. That leads me to estimate about 420 books in that period, which roughly matches with the size of my "read" bookcase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't feel compelled to answer immediately. I have got a task for you:

Next time someone asks you a question, think "When is that true? When is that false? What are the ddpendencies of true? What are the dependencies of false? Is true and false the only option? Under what conditions?"

Once you have answered all these questions in your head, then you may answer

You'll get faster and faster at it

<comment><USER2> Basically, get a feel for the _ontology_ of knowledge and knowledge systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I treat this similar to the way I treat giving a speech or presentation. I practice and practice. I build 'material' that I can refer to again and again. This is how standup comedians and people who give talks for a living do it!

For example if I know I need to explain Blockchain to someone I would sit down before-hand and write a simple explanation, rehearse it until I memorize it, then I would explain it to the person, the first time I explain it I might be slow and rusty, but if I have to explain it to another person I will be a bit better, etc. etc. so by the time someone else asks me to explain it, I sound like a genius :)

This can apply to Technical, Scientific, Personal, and any kind of content/concepts really. You can use this practice to improve your social skills too and tell interesting stories!

</comment><comment><USER9> Meta-answer: Asking the question that way, you're asking to hear from those that _think_ they 'articulate themselves so well', which may not be those that actually do. Most people, I've noticed, who think they do anything particularly well, don't.[0] I'm far too modest to have a stab at answering. :-)

Also, not clear what you mean exactly. In writing? speaking? Two entirely different things. Some can do both, neither, or one of those well. Well, more than two; there are a wide range of forms of both.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

</comment><comment><USER10> We might have a difficult time telling you _how_ we do it, but I suspect that the _why_ of that we do it is that we've been in situations in which thorough and clear explanations significantly helped us and/or others, and we hope to have a bit of that for ourselves at the ready at all times.

With that said, practice writing down thorough explanations of things, then play with the way that you've structured or presented the statements. Think about how a reader/hearer might respond to what you've said. Then practice what you've learned by communicating with friends/contacts.

</comment><comment><USER3> The writing that has most helped me improve my writing has been top-tier journalism (NY Times, Atlantic, Quartz among my favorites), science fiction, Marcel Proust, Jared Diamond, Will Durant, and Robert Penn Warren. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER11> I've gotten better at articulating myself after listening to podcasts, namely those in an interview or journalistic format.

Also, speak slower.

</comment><comment><USER12> I know it sounds contrary and cliché but listening and digesting others comments is valuable.

</comment><comment><USER13> Having an inner skeleton helps a lot.</comment>


Exponential growth devours and corrupts - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/exponential-growth-devours-and-corrupts-c5562fbf131#.l1ctrlhlr <comment><USER2> First thing I thought of when I read this was the article by Sam Altman where he calls businesses valued at $100M "really good airplanes."

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/navigating-mid- success/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/navigating-mid-success/)

Something is awry in our understanding of moral capitalism at large for statements like that to be met with anything other than derision, and DHH is getting at the heart of why: We've all become obsessed with growth. When the way to get rich in the world is capital gains, as opposed to value creation, the abnormalities in behavior and ethics, which are glorified elements of Silicon Valley culture, fall out as a natural consequence. Having real, powerful values that help evaluate whether something legal is actually ethical means saying "no" to certain kinds of work. God forbid you do that though, lest your investors punish you.

Where your treasure is, your heart will be also. It comes as no surprise to anyone tarrying long over the facts that SV's treasure is gold.

<comment><USER3> ^This. The idea that I'm a failure if my company "only" sells for $100M is a recipe for perpetual depression and disappointment.

<comment><USER4> Yes, even if you only get 0.3-3% of that 100M exit it's going to completely change the equation if you ever try again. Or just do something else with the rest of your life. Further, if you have another exit of that size again your likely to end up with a much larger chunk of the second company. To the point where it's possible to be better off with 2 x 100M exits than 1 billion dollar exit.

<comment><USER5> Most startup fail. So though yes that's true, the chances of it happening twice are quite small. Even the first chance is quite small, so maybe... dunno have not seen numbers to back up hypothesizing.

<comment><USER4> The odds are much better that you can repeat after your first success. Most startups fail before gaining significant funding, if you have enough capital to skip the seed stage and a good relationship with investors and have experience with running a startup then you have much higher odds. To use some famous examples, Apple/Next/Pixar, Paypal/Tesla /Spacex/Solar City they both had a weaker startup such as Next and Solar City but leveraged past success to avoid failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> During the dying days of calling myself a libertarian (I think the last permutation was "realistic geo-libertarian") I read a blog post kinda like this, but less concrete. It was by a guy who made up a word, something like "Mazolith", and he was trying to describe how letting these forces unchecked was this hyper system that we were failing to recognize.

One of the lines was

I got to about there ^ in the comment before I remembered more of the quote. The article I trying to find was this:

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on- moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

It is extremely good and it plays well after DHH's intro. I know some of the arguments there against libertarianism are strawman arguments, but overall it's a great article and about a day after reading it and thinking about it I started just calling myself a Liberal (it's more complicated than that, but it's the closest fit).

DHH touches on exponential growth specifically, but more generally what is needed is to recognize the world as a system of forces and feedback functions, and to take actions to limit the consequences of those systems.

For example, democracy is a system to establish which people run our country. If media is allowed to be funded by foreign forces unchecked then it can subvert our democracy. We must now make a choice, do we do something or allow it? For a time we allowed it because our propaganda works better than theirs (mostly because ours is the truth and we live in free societies) but with the advent of social media we may need to make a different choice or change our systems to adapt.

It is this type of thinking. It's a superset of what the Canadians and others call "good government". It's a way of managing systems to enact our ends: a more peaceful, prosperous, sustainable existence.

Capitalism and growth have a place, but that place needs to be carefully considered and guarded.

It's that or we perish in a nuclear holocaust or melted, polluted planet.

<comment><USER7> > if everyone hates the current system, who perpetuates it?

I have a pet theory that is slowly becoming a personal religion of sorts. (Disclaimer: only accreditations are a biochem degree over a decade ago, and this armchair.) It involves a belief that at each level of organization -- atomic, cellular, organismal, societal (which in itself has something of an interesting fractalness) structures try to arrange themselves such that they have "access to the maximum possible future opportunity space"[1][2]. When each structure at every level is operating in such a way, structures tend toward centralization as some parts of the whole become more powerful, and the whole at the next higher level of organization becomes more effective. And so we tend to create hierarchy and oppress our fellow man, for the same reason that our brain cell oppresses and rends subordinate the skin cell of the finger. And so oppression is systemic, almost a law of nature. Decentralization and equality is not what the universe tends toward.

But we can perhaps be clever, and create the society we want and value. It would be a rare organism, in many ways crippled, like a slime-mold among eukaryotes.

So if perhaps centralization and growth (ie control of largest possible future opportunity space) is expected as a physical law of sorts, then the trick would be to create a niche that preserves our value system -- we'd need to engage in systems design that allowed our society to exist is a "test harness", where we get to /feel/ like we're fulfilling desires for these things, but are somehow prevented from engaging in the behaviour that we have subjectively decided (at a societal level) will lead to bad outcomes. I dunno, just riffing here ;)

[1]: [https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_for_intelligence)

[2]: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170126-information- theory-a...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170126-information-theory-and- the-foundation-of-life/)

<comment><USER8> Interesting hypothesis . As far as maximization of opportunity space is concerned its not very different from selfish gene theory suggested by Dawkins . But I guess you are wrong about need to centralized being inbuilt in nature . You are confusing unification / alignment with centralization . If you look outside of any abstraction level ( molecular ,cellular ,organismal ) its hard to tell if the underlying harmony is attained by centralization or coordination of independent autonomous entities. thats why a lot of well meaning people tilt toward the intelligent design and can't bring themselves to believe that Evolution was self organized .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"_ \- Upton Sinclair

Selling advertising space rather than selling one's purported product is the epitome of the dark forces and banal moral failure that DHH talks about. But most YC and SV startups owe their existance to advertising, and they are psychologically resistant to admit such moral failure, no matter how obvious the costs to society.

More detailed arguments against the ad-supported "business model": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)

Also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510227)

<comment><USER10> I think the idea is to use advertising and finance to capture all the profits from brick and mortar corporations. Similar to a comment I saw from someone that worked at a stodgy old fabric manufacturer. They paid Oracle more in the last ten years for licensing than profits in the last 100.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell"

\- Edward Abbey

</comment><comment><USER12> >And this new world order is being driven by a tiny cabal of monopolies. So commercial dissent is near impossible. Do you want to be the weirdo without a Facebook account?

The obvious solution is antitrust law. Why is Microsoft no longer the competitive boogeyman of the 90s? Because it was prosecuted under section 2 of the Sherman Act in 1998 [1]. Everyone would be using Bing, Zune and Internet Explorer otherwise.

But the last two administrations haven't prosecuted anyone under section 2. Just imagine spinning off Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome etc. and letting them survive on their own merits.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Settlement)

<comment><USER13> How would you go about applying antitrust laws to companies like facebook, google, uber, and airbnb?

I think this would be a difficult fight because they all can claim serious competition. For instance, probably your best case could be against Google and their search engine advertising, but they could easily say that they are competing against all advertising mediums in the world. Airbnb could say they are competing against hotel chains. Uber says they are competing against taxi's. Facebook is competing against 100's of social networks. While I agree something should be done to help business compete in these new mediums they are not defined enough to draw a line in the sand.

To your point though you look at a situation where a single company, Google, could shutter a businesses website on a whim... that seems like a valid antitrust case. I'm just not sure how you would make the case though.

<comment><USER12> >How would you go about applying antitrust laws to companies like facebook, google, uber, and airbnb? I think this would be a difficult fight because they all can claim serious competition.

It depends how you define the market, right? If we allow substitutes then Standard Oil was not a monopolist because it was competing against the electric utilities for illumination etc. If we define it by "similar business model" it's hard to see how Google doesn't dominate search engine advertising, Facebook social network advertising, Uber the space of apps used to call transportation etc. Doctrines such as product tying [1] and essential facilities [2] seem ready-made for Google and Facebook respectively.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)#Tying_of_Micr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_\(commerce\)#Tying_of_Microsoft_products)

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

<comment><USER13> The EU case that's spinning up seems interesting in relation to product tying. It seems like they are going to get them for some minor stuff around email installation on Android and some pretty egregious advertising decisions. If Google loses I think it will still have little affect on it's monopoly.

While Google's products do work together I would argue they also work with competitors. Google is pretty open in this way. If you want to move over to MS Office you can export all your stuff to office files. That's unlike what Microsoft was doing. They were making it difficult for competitors. I think Google was very purposeful in this strategy to at least seem open to competition.

<comment><USER12> > While Google's products do work together I would argue they also work with > competitors.

I think there are two ways in which it can be argued that Google's auxiliary products destroy competition. On the one hand Google uses its domination in one market (search engines) to subsidize products that end up dominating other markets (online maps, web email etc.). On the other hand these auxiliary products are making it difficult for other search engines to compete with Google. If your search engine has similar (or even slightly better) results to Google, you still have to break into its being the default search engine on the most used web browser and mobile OS, and integrated with maps and other products. If Altavista had been similarly entrenched in 2000, Page and Brin would have likely hit a brick wall despite having a better algorithm. Even Microsoft with all its resources has failed to make a dent in the search space now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if the tax rate is the root cause, but they certainly came close to hitting the nail on the head saying "What sucker wants to earn $10 million/year at a 52.5% tax rate when you can get away with hundreds of millions in one take at just 15%?"

For decades we've valued the growth of capital over salaries, we are living the results of this policy, and need to see a reverse to a position where the result of salaries grow faster than capital.

</comment><comment><USER15> Where do benefit corporations and b corps ([https://www.bcorporation.net/what- are-b-corps](https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps)) miss the mark?

Benefit corps have the specific purpose to increase prosperity for all stakeholders - not just shareholders. They are indeed a proposal for a "new operating system" for companies, and it is adopted by many companies (some very well-known) already.

The basic idea is to put a statement of public benefit in corporate bylaws, then sign up for an assessment that audits that your company actions are indeed aligned with public benefit.

This effort, nominally, would seem to address many of the problems laid out in the post, but benefit corps are not mentioned once. I'm not saying its _the_ answer, but seems like a more collaborative, concrete starting point for a solution than "some mass infusion of the 1960s spirit."

<comment><USER16> Private companies without investors also elude the problems in the post, of course. (Though in both cases you may have to deal with an Uber-type competitor willing to subsidize its operations for long periods - something of dubious legality, but it still happens.)

Note that if you begin as a public benefit corporation, raising funds will be obstacle number one, since you must compete not just in your market with current-model companies, but also compete with them for funds. So no wonder it's more common for successful private companies to pay back their investors and then transform themselves into public benefit companies. This is still useful as an option, but hardly more than a start at a solution. Unless laws are changed, of course. If the law allowed public companies to change to a public benefit corporation without warning regardless of investor's opinion that would be a huge change - but might thoroughly discourage investment, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." -Abbey

</comment><comment><USER18> Really a nice article and I especially liked the finish when he mentions Douglas Rushkoff's latest book 'Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus' that is largely a prescription for building new types of companies and organizations with more stability and robustness - similar to advice offered up in Nassim Taleb's book 'Antifragile'

Edit: a short video where Rushkoff summarizes the big ideas in his new book: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAOyOULWKUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAOyOULWKUo) \- recommended!

</comment><comment><USER19> Exponential growth is a joke, you hit the first limiting factor and you end up at best on a sigmoid. Or probably nowhere.

Running Twitter on Wikipedia budget is trivial, we have IRC networks that handle similar volume of traffic on volunteer budget. Distributed open equivalents of Facebook and Google also exist. The problem they face is always marketing. On a shoestring budget you cannot afford that.

<comment><USER20> What's the best open competitor to Google?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When he brought up Uber, I naturally wondered if I should stop using it (and not start using Lyft or anything similar). But perhaps that's a bit like wondering if we should stop using Google, or Facebook.

On further reflection, I think we passengers might be able to make things less bad for the Uber drivers. DHH mentioned putting on headphones and not interacting with the driver at all when he uses Uber. I've never done that. More often than not, I chat with the driver at least a little during the ride. Once or twice, I used the ability of the Uber app to put my choice of music from Spotify on the car stereo. But then I felt uncomfortable doing that, because I was imposing my choice of music on the driver. So now, I'm happy to let the driver play whatever music he or she wants, or none at all. And I've never rated a driver anything other than five stars, since I know their ability to continue getting work depends on ratings.

So we need to remember that our Uber drivers, AIrbnb hosts, etc. are humans, not machines.

<comment><USER22> That still doesn't help as much as not using Uber at all.

<comment><USER21> But would an individual's choice to not use Uber actually help anyone? Or is it just a knee-jerk over-reaction? If my choice to not use Uber wouldn't actually help anyone, and it would limit me quite a bit (I'm visually impaired and can't drive), then the correct moral choice (at least according to utilitarianism) would be for me to keep using Uber but go out of my way to be nice to the drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is weak and inconsistent. You can't blame _growth at all costs_ \-- costs including postponing profits indefinitely, and _milking customers_ via in-app purchases, in the same sentence. It's one or the other.

If you dislike the former you should kind of like, or at least respect, the latter.

Or you're just rambling.

<comment><USER24> Not really. Milking customers is exactly "growth at all costs", only they're working on growing income or profits rather than growing number of customers or some other metric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The problem is that I can't use the 'nice' app in every city I visit that has Uber. It's the aggressive growth and VC that allows it to be everywhere. And at least where I travel, the existing taxi corporations are far worse than Uber. So yes, in an ideal world, I'd rather use open-source app to hail my sustainable eco taxi, but such an app does not have the funding to upend the existing taxi rackets.

<comment><USER26> Travelers are not a big chunk of ride-sharing company user base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I dont know how you build a startup that "leaves money on the table". Maybe as a coop?

The infinite growth trap is what leads to Marx's critique of capitalism. Since that is on the list of verboten ideas we need to come up with a new language that says the same thing so that people can hear it without freaking out.

</comment><comment><USER28> Silicon Valley is awful, of course, but my company is different. It actually provides value.

</comment><comment><USER29> This reminds me of a scene from the popular TV show Silicon valley.

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

Smartphones, youtube, facebook and many other success stories had exponential growth. Once a product/idea goes big, there will always be people who do not like something about it. Thats the cost of making a product that everyone can use. A better example is the idea of money itself. Its an invention used by almost everyone in the world, We still have people who absolutely hate money with passion based on their own principles that are right for them. Overall it did more good to humanity.

We have created an economic world, where good ideas travel faster and share the rewards with everyone. Its a good thing. The alternative would be a hierarchical society where some other parts of the society will always be left behind.</comment>


Great design is failing to get real app traction - <AUTHOR> http://mokriya.quora.com/Designer-Duds-Losing-Our-Seat-at-the-Table?srid=h1hP&share=1

<comment><USER2> If it's not getting any traction, then is it good design? Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Reddit and Craigslist seem to be doing OK....</comment>


Codepad.co – Online Code Editor - <AUTHOR> https://codepad.co/ <comment><USER2> This is really cool. I've been using various tools for quick demos, but have really been looking forward to something that makes use of webpack and npm (in the browser).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fantastic, thanks for sharing it!

On another note, I'm a huge fan of small utilities like this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know if there's any data on how frequently people use this website?

Do you guys use them?

<comment><USER5> Yes, there are many web developers, you can follow them on this page [https://codepad.co/developers](https://codepad.co/developers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Free Codepen version? I see snippets here, a website for front-enders and back-enders?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's free! Just for front-end stuff, but you can add your back-end code here - [https://codepad.co/snippets](https://codepad.co/snippets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks like a great fit for online job interview code exercises.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice! Would be awesome if you could add more playgrounds!

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome work with this one—will definitely try to use it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks nice, a lot of useful snippets here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome! Love it.</comment>