Testing Benford's Law - <AUTHOR> http://testingbenfordslaw.com <comment><USER2> Other fun I've had with Benford's Law.

1\. Spotting odd things in MPs' expenses: [http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/its- probably-worth-testing-mps.h...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/its-probably- worth-testing-mps.html)

2\. Spotting odd things in BBC executives' expenses: [http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/running-numbers-on-bbc- executive...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/running-numbers-on-bbc- executives.html)

3\. The Iranian election: [http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/benfords-law-and- iranian-electio...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/benfords-law-and-iranian- election.html)

4\. New Age mumbo jumbo: [http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/any-sufficiently- simple-expl...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/any-sufficiently-simple- explanation-is.html)

<comment><USER3> It's also interesting how you showed how Benford's Law breaks down, especially when prices are involved. There's lots of $10, $100, and $1000 limits, so you will get a lot of prices being pushed _back_ to something starting with an 8 or 9.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's why it's an interesting tool for spotting 'anomalies'. That doesn't mean it's spotting things that are incorrect, or fraudulent, or illegal etc., just it spots things that are out of the ordinary.

<comment><USER4> Well, a price that is specifically modified to dodge regulatory scrutiny is suggestive of some sort of corruption.

Cf. _Say Anything_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the history section of the wikipedia article:

The discovery of this fact goes back to 1881, when the American astronomer Simon Newcomb noticed that in logarithm books, the earlier pages (which contained numbers that started with 1) were much more worn than the other pages.

Can you imagine the sense of observation and curiosity that would make someone look at a book of numbers and say, "I wonder why these pages are more worn than those ones."

<comment><USER6> Before ever hearing of Benford's law I've noticed that many books are more worn at the beginning than further on.

I simply chalked it up to most people not being very serious about reading books in general and any given book in particular. It's a rare person who makes it all the way through.

I don't think my own observation was a particularly interesting or original one.

What made Newcomb's observation interesting was that it was about books of logarithm tables in particular, where (unlike a typical book) you'd think the lookups would be uniformly distributed.

The other interesting thing that did require an unusual amount of curiosity and dedication is the systematic testing of such a casual observation to try to figure out what the underlying reasons for it were and how they might apply to things other than books of logarithms. This desire and dedication to observe, test, and figure out the underlying workings of things is the hallmark of many a great scientist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a nice discussion of this from Terry Tao (outrageously smart mathematician; has a Fields medal) at [http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law- zipfs-...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-zipfs-law- and-the-pareto-distribution/) which contains, e.g., the following nice observation: if X follows Benford's law and Y is any positive random variable independent of X, then XY also follows Benford's law. (Tao goes a bit further than this and thereby sheds some light on why many things approximately obey Benford's law.)

[EDITED to add: Discussed before on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687241>. There have been quite a number of other discussions of Benford's law on HN, too.]

</comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting (from Wikipedia article on Benford's Law):

In the United States, evidence based on Benford's law is legally admissible in criminal cases at the federal, state, and local levels.

<comment><USER9> What does that even mean? Is there some special law that says "Benford's Law is admissible"? I'm guessing not, and that all it means is that it's a piece of evidence that can be used, similarly to any other statistical evidence.

Wouldn't it be stranger (and _actually_ interesting) if that evidence _wasn't_ admissible?

<comment><USER10> It probably means that the precedent has been established already -- so future courts are likely to just accept it rather than having to go through a re- hearing of Benford from the very beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Benford's law only seems strange until you realise natural phenomena tend to express logarithmic functions while our commonly used system of counting counting and measuring is not.

It's still a bit of a brain f--- when you first encounter it. I found it easier to _get_ using plotting tools, as opposed to aggregating lists of numbers and measurements.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. I immediately thought it's an artifact of our base-10 system.

<comment><USER11> except that it applies to any base-n system. It's an artifact of the underlying system, not the base value.

<comment><USER12> What about base-e?

<comment><USER13> That's just silly. On the other hand, base 2i would be very efficient: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quater-imaginary_base>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems to me that when you have a group of somethings that are constantly increasing in size it would be natural for the number 1 to come up in the first digit more often because in order to get to 2, you need to pass through 1 first and in order to get to 9 you need to pass 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 first. Therefore, you should get the distribution predicted by Benford's law. The way to test this theory, would be to run the numbers on values that are constantly decreasing. I'd expect the distribution would reverse itself.

If it proves itself true, then you could use it to test if a group of things is increasing or decreasing.

<comment><USER15> It depends on where you start decreasing from. If you start at 0 and subtract 1 at a time you'll still follow Benford's Law. If you start at 999 and go down, you'll see a reverse curve that begins the process of righting itself again once it goes into the negatives.

<comment><USER14> True, I was considering things like decreasing populations. Example, if you take all cities/countries on the planet with declining population and plot their current population, I would expect the reverse of Benford's law. Wish I had time to test this hypotheses :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My favorite explanation of it is that if there is a distribution to the numbers, then that distribution should hold no matter what base you're working in (for natural things, after all, there's nothing special about base 10), and Benfords law can be shown to be a) a law that satisfies this base-independent property, and b) the only law that does so.

<comment><USER17> s/base/units/

<comment><USER17> Seeing that people are downvoting this, perhaps it wasn't obvious enough.

Proof that the starting digit in numbers is not base invariant:

In base 10 not all numbers start with 1. In base 2 all numbers start with 1. Hence, the distribution is not base invariant. QED.

For an explanation why you get the right thing if you substitute "units", I refer you to the Wikipedia page on Benford's Law. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Searching reveals _lots_ of previous discussion on Benford's law on here, so I won't give all the links. Of course, it's an interesting observation, so it's worth advertising every so often.

Here are some hacker-newsers testing files in their home directories: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076534>

</comment><comment><USER19> As far as I can tell, "Most common iPhone passcodes" doesn't belong on this list, and I'm perplexed why it seems to follow the law. An iPhone numeric password (which I'm assuming it's referring to) is simply a 4-digit string, so all first digits should be equally probable, unless there's some psychological issue at work. Or are they discarding leading zeros for the purpose of this chart? I guess they must be (0 doesn't appear on the chart), but that's a weird thing to do to a password.

<comment><USER20> My guess is that people will be tending to pick "meaningful" numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Other discussions on Benford's law and related material:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=100540>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499405>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699202>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=731176>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076405>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1429336>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1569669>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653808>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1917514>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2089809>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375453>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400049>

<comment><USER22> Check out those post ids :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Imagine you threw a single stone into the desert and asked your friend to go find it. It would be hard. Now imagine you threw 2 stones into the desert and asked your friend to go find them. It is twice as hard to find both stones as it is to find 1 stone. Imagine you threw 3 stones. It is 3 times as hard to find all 3 stones as it is to find 1 stone.

Now imagine that numbers are built out of stones. To "build" a 1, you only need 1 stone. But to "build" a 2, you need 2 stones. Thus, if you wanted to write a 3, you would have to go in the desert and find 3 stones. It's 3x as hard, and so you'd expect people to "build" 1/3 as many 3's as 1's, 1/5 as many 5's as 1's, and so on. Just as you'd expect there to be a lot more single story buildings than skyscrapers. It's easier to build a single story building.

Thus, the distribution is exactly what you'd expect. While it doesn't actually take stones to build numbers, we don't write the number 3 unless we have 3 of something. Unless you are lying. Which is why this is a great method of detecting fraud.

UPDATE: What do I mean when I say "3 times as hard"?

Imagine the desert is a rectangle of 10 squares. Kind of like a mancala board or a ladder on the ground. You start by stepping in square 1, and to get to square 10 you have to step through each square.

If there is only 1 rock, what are the odds that you'll have to walk all 10 steps to find it? This is the same thing as asking what are the odds that this rock is in square 10. The answer is 1/10 or 10%.

Now, if there are 3 rocks, what are the odds that you'll have to step into all 10 squares? Well, what are the odds that there's a rock in the last square? 26.1%, or approximately 3x as hard. It's interesting that it's not exactly 3x as hard, it's 2.61x as hard. Which makes the data in the OP seem even more logical since you'd expect 30.8% 1's given 11.8% 3's--the 32.62% actual number is not that far off.

<comment><USER24> It is less than twice as hard to find both stones when you threw 2 stones than it is to find the only stone you threw when you threw only 1.

Suppose you are the guy looking for the stones. There are two stones in the desert. Everything being random but equal, you are twice as likely to run into a stone when there are two than when there is only one stone in the desert. Once you find the first stone, it is equally difficult to find the second stone as it is to find only one stone at the beginning (if you treat "finding a stone" as independent events where you don't learn about the location of subsequent stones).

So while the idea is interesting, the analogy is poor. I much prefer the wikipedia explanation which is similar to yours but much more logically rigorous: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law#Outcomes_of_expone...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law#Outcomes_of_exponential_growth_processes)

Response to update: Now I feel that you are convoluting your analogy. Can multiple stones occupy the same square? How is it appropriate to equate/compare "the number of squares you walk through in order to pick up all the stones" to "the number of times a digit should show up"? I apologize, but your illustration has become completely lost to me.

<comment><USER23> > Can multiple stones occupy the same square?

You're right I should have clarified. If multiple stones could not occupy the same square, the odds would remain as I first explained them (3x, etc.). I think in my stones analogy and real life, stones should be able to occupy the same square. In fact, there should be a positive correlation (ie, given that there's a rock in this square, odds of a second rock being there go up).

> How is it appropriate to equate/compare "the number of squares you walk > through in order to pick up all the stones" to "the number of times a digit > should show up"?

The odds of coming across 3 units of a quantity are 3x as hard as coming across 1 unit. When we write numbers, we are either:

1) writing a truthful description of how many units we see/own/ate/taste/touch etc. (I ate 2 bagels, I earned $5, I ran 10 miles.)

2) lying.

By "lying", I'm including things like writing a novel. Maybe a better word is "imagining". With numbers, we are either writing down true observations or we are imagining them. It's just as easy to "imagine" $9 million in your bank account as it is to "imagine" $1 million, while truthfully finding $9 million in your bank account is a lot more difficult :). This is why Benford's law doesn't apply for "imagined" numbers. By using Benford's law, you can quickly classify a number set into either "real" or "imagined".

<comment><USER24> Ah. But there's the rub. What I find unintuitive about Benford's law is the non-random distribution of the most significant digit regardless of base or unit of measure. You propose that it's the "largeness" of a number that enforces Benford's law. While that may be in some ways true, it does not explain the transparency to base or unit of measure. You ate 2 bagels? I ate 4 half-bagels. You earned $5? I earned ¥600 motherfucker! You ran 10 miles? I ran 3bf3e6800 micrometers, in base-16!

Again, your train of thought is not necessarily wrong, but I still find the wikipedia explanation much more robust and illustrative. I hope this is where we can agree to disagree.

<comment><USER23> The reason why it only applies to the most significant digit is that I can say for certain that quantities of 1_ will appear ~2x as much as quantities in the 2_x family. However, I can't say whether numbers ending in 1 are more common than numbers ending in 6, because although 11 occurs more than any number higher than it, it makes up a minuscule proportion of the numbers ending in 1, and 16 occurs more than 21, 31, etc., so there's no clear way to predict what number will occur most in any digit but the most significant.

Thanks for offering your views. My analogy may be wrong or weak and maybe there is a better one to be found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is this not common sense?

For the numbers 1-19, more than half of them start with 1. For the numbers 1-199, more than half of them start with one.

Change the examples to 1-299, 1-399, etc, and you'll get percentages of all digits matching Benford's law.

<comment><USER26> Benford's Law predicts the first digit will be 1 about 30% of the time, not 50% of the time.

Your method also seems to depend heavily on the choice of starting and ending points. If I chose 1-99, then only 1/10th of the numbers in the interval will start with 1. So why choose 199 and not 99?

<comment><USER25> It is not "my method". Just an explanation of why the law seems intuitive to me. I expected everyone to extrapolate out from my examples for other ending points, and which point, yes, the % for the digit of "1" would drop, and approach that 30% rate.

I just selected end points to illustrate the concept. I think this place is getting a little too literal. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cool stuff. However, something mostly entirely offtopic that I genuiunely wonder about: it seems everybody registers a .com just to make a HN post. What's the point of this? Why not post the same data on your blog?

<comment><USER28> I can't speak for everyone else, but in this case we were hoping to create something that could stand on its own and (hopefully) grow over time as more datasets are added. The domain wasn't registered just to get on HN - the idea lent itself to a simple site of its own, so why not use a fitting domain name?

<comment><USER29> Benford Law applies to anything where values appreciate or depreciate exponentially. Kind of weird to see it relate to passcodes (where it isn't really Benford's Law at all, but instead is simply numeric proximity), but for monetary values, forces of nature, population counts, etc, Benford's Law will always apply to a large enough set, for reasons that become very evident once you understand the reasoning.

<http://blog.yafla.com/Demystifying_Benfords_Law>

Best page I've seen on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Benford's law makes a lot of sense if you consider that many of the numbers are derived from counting up from 0. The scale of these things is exponentially distributed, and therefore the leading digits are more likely to be 1 than 9. This is related to social media -- once your userbase gets big enough it starts growing or shrinking proportionally to its size, i.e. exponentially. This is also somewhat related to the value of a social network ... Metcalfe's law seems to be too optimistic. THe value is probably more like nlog n

</comment><comment><USER31> I always liked: "Explaining Benfords Law" (<http://www.dspguide.com/CH34.PDF>).

</comment><comment><USER32> Whoah, check out the distribution of the leading digit in binary!

<comment><USER33> Generalized to base b: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/a/7/e/a7e38730abb9b29099d10...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/a/7/e/a7e38730abb9b29099d109d4e39f0055.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "If a set of values were truly random, each leading digit would appear about 11% of the time"

This kind of mathematically unsophisticated reasoning is exactly why Benford's law is so surprising to people. If you think of what it means for a value to be "truly random", the result is not surprising at all.

<comment><USER35> "random" is commonly taken to be uniformly distributed. There is no particular reason to expect unbounded support, even if you feel it shouldn't be a certain interval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps you should let some of the open data citizen groups know about this so they can add more data. Also, if you haven't already then take a look at CKAN[1] for datasets to add.

[1] <http://ckan.net/>

</comment><comment><USER37> 'Presenting Benford's law' would be a more fitting title. Nicely presented, and intriguing law for sure but I can't help to think "and?" At this point it lacks a more user-friendly way to submit data-sets.

</comment><comment><USER38> This one is interesting: <http://testingbenfordslaw.com/most-common-iphone- passcodes>

I wonder what influence the 'spatial' properties of a number pad password has on this data. For example "5" gets a nice little spike... and "5" is the center key on the 10-key iPhone number pad. The "1" is still the winner by far, but I wonder how many of those are the easy-to-remember "1234".

</comment><comment><USER39> great site, awesome design, i love benfords law, first heard about it on WNYC's RadioLab (best podcast in the world ever, im not even kidding).

<comment><USER40> Here's the Benfords Law snippet from the Radiolab episode: <http://www.radiolab.org/2009/nov/30/from-benford-to-erdos/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It seems to me there's a lot of interesting psychology elements to this, but it's also a simple reflection of relatively constant growth rates. If population of cities grow 3% every year, they will spend a lot more years in the 1 millions than the 9 millions, etc

Chart looks like this. <https://url.odesk.com/a7och>

</comment><comment><USER42> FYI, The text of the article is scrambled (Chrome 12, Windows 7 64 bit)

</comment><comment><USER43> >Imagine a large dataset, say something like a list of every country and its population.

How is that a large dataset? There aren't that many countries.

</comment><comment><USER44> Benford's Law seems like common sense to me.

Any time you are counting something it seems obvious to me that you'd have 1 more often than 2.

</comment><comment><USER45> I kind of feel that the initial data sets are selected just to reinforce the Benford's law. It seems too good to be true!

</comment><comment><USER46> My first time hearing about this law (sadly) and I'm stumped! This is amazing!!

</comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone else have trouble with the font on that page?

</comment><comment><USER48> Benford's Law has always been kind of fascinating to me.

</comment><comment><USER49> No black swan :P

</comment><comment><USER50> nice!</comment>


Shifd - Hack Day London Winner, Shift between your computer and mobile seamlessly - <AUTHOR> http://nytlabs.com/shifd/ <comment><USER2> That's so cool! Something that solves a problem--how do you leave your computer behind without losing track of what you were trying to do? And since it's based on HTML, it can support any type of data, be it medical tables, articles, notes, addresses, maps, contacts, phone numbers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks a lot for the compliment re: shiftd.com!

NYTLabs.com is the site for the R+D group at the NYTimes. We're going to start to profile some of the projects that we are working on at nytlabs.com....

-Michael Young (NYTimes R+D)

</comment><comment><USER4> Good job. What's the story about NYTlabs. How are they affiliated to the NYTimes?</comment>


The Small Worlds of Corporate Governance - <AUTHOR> http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/leadership/research/smallworlds

<comment><AUTHOR> Some background on the project:

 _".. an open source project in which people could join by contributing data, with the understanding that data and code would be posted. The topic was small worlds and corporate governance that resulted in a book by that name, published by MIT. The data are the names of directors and owners of firms in 20 plus countries; the code largely in C++ and some python is still at the frontier of network methods and includes simulation and matching coding. The final chapters in the book describe in detail the algorithms. We would love to see the data and code used by others. The data are approximately from two panels ~2000 & ~1990_"

From a book review, [http://asq.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/29/000183921559...](http://asq.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/29/0001839215595225.full.pdf?ijkey=vUjr6UHxeZcUMdm&keytype=finite)

" _Based on a series of conferences between 2004 and 2009, the project brought together more than 30 leading network scholars representing 22 countries. Combining state-of-the-art network methods with an explicitly comparative focus, this book is the most comprehensive work on corporate networks ever published. Along with a related collection edited by Thomas David and Gerarda Westerhuis (2014), Small Worlds represents a new frontier in the study of corporate networks, one that will be an obligatory starting point for researchers in this area for years to come. "_</comment>


The Warby Parker clones are imploding - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/why-all-the-warby-parker-clones-are-now-imploding-44bfcc70a00c <comment><USER2> Eyewear is a broken market, with atypical margins sustained by a monopolistic market leader [1]. The market leader's lock-in stems from its distribution power. Sidestepping it with DTC makes sense.

None of the above apply to mattresses or suitcases. (It more-closely applies to razors.) There is limited fat to trim that would overcome incumbents' economies of scale and distribution advantages.

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

<comment><USER3> Mattresses were a notoriously opaque and user-hostile market. A decade ago I was working at a startup aimed at helping people make better purchasing decisions, and that was one of the top categories people mentioned struggling with.

Things are at least a little better now, in that at least the DTC companies have a clear set of options that get sold at reasonably clear price points.

<comment><USER2> > _Mattresses were a notoriously opaque and user-hostile market_

Based on the data, I think we can conclude that opacity and user hostility are insufficient criteria for a DTC play. (Unless consumers are willing to pay a premium for the removal of said opacity and hostility.)

<comment><USER4> Maybe just a little before Casper was founded, I bought a memory foam mattress off of Amazon that was well-reviewed and could be delivered with Prime. It's been a great mattress. That's still an option today -- and at a few hundred dollars cheaper than the main DTCs, I'm not quite sure where they can really provide a ton of additional value.

<comment><USER5> You have some assurance that you're buying a consistent product.

Buying a foam mattress on Amazon sounds like inviting some sort of toxic mess of outgassing junk into your bedroom. No thanks.

<comment> blaser-waffle Yeah I got an "egg crate" mattress topper off of Amazon and had to let that thing sit in my garage for a week before it didn't reek. I can only wonder how much it off gassed after that, but my bedroom has decent ventilation so hopefully I didn't breathe in too many carcinogens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >"Buy mattress at $400. Sell at $1,000. Refund/return 20% of them. Keep $400, on avg. Then spend $290 of that on ads/marketing and $270 on admin (finance, HR, IT). Lose $160. Repeat."

The unit economics of most of these companies just don't add up.

<comment><USER7> > >"Buy mattress at $400. Sell at $1,000. Refund/return 20% of them. Keep > $400, on avg. Then spend $290 of that on ads/marketing and $270 on admin > (finance, HR, IT). Lose $160. Repeat."

I don't know much about the business side of things but asuming the $290 on marketing and the $270 on admin don't scale less than linearly (preferably much MUCH more flatlined), then the $160 loss could be closer to a $300 profit. Even if you lower the sale price by $299 (extreme scenario), you still get a dollar in profit.

At the end of the day, I think the product has to be consistently good enough and the branding will "stick". I imagine the goal is to gain enough market share.

I'll share an anecdote: I bought an InstantPot for a decent discount a few years back on Black Friday. I've personally "sold" at least three since to people I know. I'm sure the cheaper brands are likely almost as good as InstantPot but for me to take a chance on them, I'd need to trust they have a no questions asked return policy.

<comment><USER8> Same with Warby Parker, I've "sold" my entire family and 3-4 friends on buying a frame, and everyone's loved them. If you have vision insurance it's typically ~$50 after reimbursement for a fantastic set of frames and great customer service. I've gotten frames fixed a year after buying them for free with no appointment or anything. I'm not interested in trying anything else or hearing about in-network frame allowances, it's just not worth my time. I'll be a Warby customer as long as we're both alive.

<comment><USER9> Wait until you find out about Zenni Optical... they're so cheap I don't even bother with vision insurance anymore. My prescription hasn't changed in decades, and at Zenni prices I can buy a new pair of glasses (frames + lenses) every month for less than a single pair from Warby. I've had my favorite pair (that were originally <$20 with lenses) for about 5 years, so durability isn't an issue. Their customer service is similarly good in my experience.

After being a Zenni customer for years, Warby Parker's prices seem really high. I've tried their glasses on at one of their retail stores, and I don't see much of a difference in quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Step 1) come up with decent idea for $10million company Step 2) get offered funding for a $200million company Step 3) accept it, because, money! Step 4) spend money, attempting to get bigger than you can get Step 5) implode

<comment><USER11> 4a) Cash out

<comment><USER3> I'll be very interested to learn how often this happens. Certainly Kalanick and Neumann managed to walk away billionaires from companies that have never turned a profit. But I'm hoping that is a rare outcome.

<comment><USER12> Just because Uber hasn't turned a profit doesn't mean they aren't worth $xxB.

If you actually believe Kalanick cashed out his shares at an overvalued price, go short Uber and make tons of money. That said, you're probably wrong.

<comment><USER3> It depends on what you mean by "worth". Market price is market price, after all. But it's perfectly plausible that Uber will never turn a profit. It's indisputable that Uber was severely overvalued for a long time. And when thinking from a systemic perspective about whether Kalanick should be a billionaire, we have to reckon with the externalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I never thought that what made Warby Parker unique was that it was direct to consumer. I thought it was that they shipped you a bunch of glasses to try on for free.

I work for a direct to consumer lifestyle brand company but I've never thought or heard anyone mention Warby Parker in any conversation about us or our business model.

<comment><USER14> I went to buy new glasses from a classic optometrist and was horrified by the prices. I also tried the more corporate Lenscrafters. Both wanted to push $2-300+ frames with Nike, Gucci, et cetera branding that I didn't care about. Finally tried WP. Cheaper glasses with pretty solid customer service. Sure it doesn't have a little swoosh on it but I buy glasses so I can see good, not so I can flex.

<comment><USER15> Warby Parker's purchasing/CS experience is incredible and I've been buying from them for at least 8 years now. But I think I may try one of the more corporate brands next time because I've just never been very satisfied with their lenses. Supposedly they use an anti-glare coating but in my experience I still get pretty bad reflections from screens and have to wipe them down multiple times a day because of how easily they smudge.

As much as I hate the idea of giving money to Luxottica, I'm more than willing to pay a premium for nicer lenses.

<comment><USER16> I have been buying from ZenniOptical for years. I'm pretty nearsighted and use bifocals. As a test I purchased $1,500 specs from my local optometrist and $39 bifocals from Zenni. No difference except the Zenni frames lasted much longer. Also I'd swear the Zenni lenses were clearer, which makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Highlighted quote:

> Perhaps the original mistake of the DTCs wasn't in their vision, but in > their decision to take the venture capital in the first place. Now under > pressure to grow even faster and at greater scale than they otherwise would > have had to naturally, they are being confronted with what happens when > growth slows down, the cash starts running out, and investors are expecting > their returns.

The same story keeps playing out, doesn't matter what industry.

<comment><USER18> The other side of it is that none of these companies would have been remotely competitive in the first place had it not been for venture capital. All these industries (mattresses, taxis, fashion/eyeglasses) are monopolistic and anti- competitive in nature, and the current players have been entrenched for decades, some even longer. The only way to make inroads is by burning cash.

The growth might not always be sustainable, the business model might not always make sense, and that's fine. VCs are looking for 1 in 10 of them to be successful.

<comment><USER19> VC giveth, and it taketh away. Don't the VCs deserve at least part of the culpability, if they had imposed terms that were unrealistic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every investor wants an instant monopoly and the ROI to go with that. It's just not possible. Can't say I'll ever shed a tear over my VC subsidized Uber rides.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how this will affect podcasting. I don't do Instagram but I do know some of the products in this article from supporting podcasts I listen to. I've even gone out of my way to buy some of their products. (Harry's makes fine razors that last too long for the company's own good.)

I've been shifting money to Patreon campaigns, but I don't know well that will work for them.

<comment><USER21> Sucker born every minute?

I don't know how much money it takes a podcast to support itself but I imagine it's still heaps cheaper than, say, your average billboard or 30-second TV spot.

<comment><USER20> I figure that a basic podcast probably needs around $50,000 per year to support itself, if a single full-time person is doing all of the research and engineering (including coordinating ads) and paying for the servers. That comes to about $1,000 per episode of a weekly podcast. Harry's would have to sell a lot of razor blades to justify $1,000 per episode -- or even $250 an episode, if there are four ad spots.

A higher-end podcast with a real engineer, research assistants, producer, etc. could easily double or quadruple that figure. Some podcasts are undoubtedly cheaper, being done in somebody's spare time, but most of the ones I listen to (and I listen to a lot of them) involve significant research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what the second order effects are of everyone wising up to DTC.

Casper is a mattress company, not a tech company. The same can be said for Warby, Away, Allbirds etc.

I think it is likely for the ad revenues of Facebook and Google to slow their growth in response to VC financed commodity companies throwing around ad dollars.

<comment><USER23> _Casper is a mattress company, not a tech company._

Casper is a mattress _marketing_ company.

<comment><USER22> That's what makes it unlikely VC will continue to finance growth commodity manufacturing companies.

People are learning the only differentiation between these companies and older brands are slick copy, whitespace, and sleek colorways.

<comment><USER23> VC money will always be available to a startup that has identified a market that hasn't been disrupted yet. It doesn't matter if the business is just some ad copy and whitespace, if there's a good margin and hockey stick growth there will _always_ be investors waiting for you to execute.

At no point in the past, and at no point in the future, will a VC be put off by the fact a business is just a thin, shiny new veneer over an old model. If there's profit to be had and a founder who can take it that is all VCs want.

This is a good thing. It's how markets work. If it ever became impossible to disrupt a market because VCs decided it was too boring the startup world would fall apart. No incumbent business should be allowed to rest. Innovation is everything, even when that "innovation" is just better marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a good piece on DTC:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/potentially-unpopular- opinion...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/potentially-unpopular-opinion- future-dtc-luke-weston/)

This is a good podcast on it by Ben Thomson and James Allworth:

[https://exponent.fm/episode-182-scale-scale- scale/](https://exponent.fm/episode-182-scale-scale-scale/)

The key takeaways are attack super high margins, do something that is harder in the real world, scale as fast as possible without paying too much rent to "Facebook/Google/Instagram/Influencers" to establish yourself.

</comment><comment><USER25> Conjecture and poor reasoning.

> There are now more than 400 DTC brands

So a sample size of n=5 is sufficient to define an industry-wide trend? On top of that, those 5 examples are not very convincing - see below.

> How could [Away] possibly be able to meet the expectations for investor > returns?

No actual figures, just a theory that Away couldn't possibly be a good investment because it has only one product.

> Away now has many adjacent venture-funded expansions in the works

In the very next paragraph, the author debunks the basis for her earlier skepticism.

> Harry's... cut a $1.37 billion deal to be acquired by Edgewell. Edgewell > backed out of the deal after the FTC sued to block the sale... Particularly > in the wake of the Casper IPO, it's difficult to imagine Harry's ever > wanting to expose its numbers in an S-1.

All of Harry's criticism is based on a competitor's performance and a buyer backing out of a deal after it was blocked by the FTC.

I don't know if the DTC companies will do well, but I certainly didn't learn anything useful from this article.

</comment><comment><USER26> Been waiting for Backdrop to implode. Paint for people that don't know anything about painting. Retail prices without the retail experience. They'll have some one-time customers, even if you like the product and your project is successful its not like you paint very often. Backdrop needs a continuous stream of new customers.

</comment><comment><USER27> Warby Parker worked in the DTC space because they received an inordinate amount of PR which drives down customer acquisition cost due to relatively cheap traffic. If that goes away, so does much of their business and any hope of profitability. Much like the rest of the brands mentioned.

<comment><USER28> Yes and facebook click costs nearly 10x'd for ecommerce during the time period the article discusses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Now under pressure to grow even faster and at greater scale than they > otherwise would have had to naturally, they are being confronted with what > happens when growth slows down, the cash starts running out, and investors > are expecting their returns.

Are we near the beginning of an anti-VC wave in public opinion?

<comment><USER10> I believe that started around the time WeWork's IPO imploded. We're well past the beginning.

<comment><USER19> It's going to be real interesting if YC's HN becomes the destination of disgruntled former employees of startups that get their VC-inflated bubbles burst in the upcoming recession

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Now, everyone is armed with the same millions of dollars in funding; they're all targeting the same users, and they're all driving each other's marketing costs up. (Marketing software company AdStage analyzed its Facebook impressions data and found that the median cost-per-click for Facebook news feed ads has risen from $0.43 during the second quarter of 2018, to $0.64 during the second quarter of 2019.)"

Seems pretty expensive given very few clicks would result in any sale

</comment><comment><USER30> Is Warby Parker doing OK? Last time I bought glasses WP just looked expensive compared to zenni, glassesusa, 39dollar, glassesdirect, framedirect etc etc

</comment><comment><USER31> 1\. You need the script. Thankfully state laws allow you to request it from your doctor and they have to give it to you. 2\. You need to do that weird eye alignment thing. I think there are apps for that but not sure if they work well though. 3\. You need to pick a frame.

These three things really hinder online eye glass purchases.

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't say anything definitive about why they are imploding, but I can say that exactly zero of the many sites I tried offered any frames at all that I could use. Every optometry shop I stopped in had at least three or four.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've seen this kind of story on the front page of HN for what seems like at least a decade (probably a lot longer, but I'm relatively new to the site).

I'm not actively rooting for the VC world to implode on itself, but based on the way they behave they're absolutely not spending their own money. I want legislation in place that will prevent VC firms from investing in a project / startup unless they've put a certain percentage of their own money at stake.

Maybe at that point we'll start seeing a lot less "pump and dump" and a lot more efforts toward building sustainable businesses.

</comment><comment><USER34> No one sells pince nez glasses for nearsighted people.

<comment><USER35> try talking to a jeweler?

<comment><USER34> I know. I just want a Zenni of Pinces.

<comment><USER36> A quick look on eBay turns up a ton of results. Lot's of very cheap ones, but not exclusively.

For $60 shipped, these[0] ones are made in France and have Hoya lenses. I know nothing about lenses, but Hoya seems to be respected from a quick google.

I think they are out there, just not being aggressively marketed by VC-funded lifestyle brands.

But hey, there's a startup idea. You just need to make pince nez fashionable by getting some retrosexual hipsters on Instagram to adopt them. Then, profit?

For some reason I associate wire-framed pince nez glasses with eugenics, not sure why. I'm sure that's just me, but maybe run a focus group just to be sure.

[0] [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Reading-Glasses-Filao-Pince-Nez- Ace...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Reading-Glasses-Filao-Pince-Nez-Acetate- Brown-Beige-35-mm-Hoya- Lens/124108978951?hash=item1ce578bb07%3Am%3AmAPILPa7XeG4ms61s8TWMAw&LH_ItemCondition=3)

<comment><USER34> I'll look into it. Don't know where to get custom lenses. I figure it out. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Canary in the coal mine for digital advertising.

<comment><USER38> What do you mean? Is it that digital advertising, as an industry, makes a large amount of money from these DTC startups, and the implosion of these startups will mark a dramatic drop in said advertising revenue? Just clarifying. And that does seem like a real possibility, I'm inclined to agree.

I did not realize what "DTC" was until I read this article, and it's pretty much every single ad I see if I install Instagram on my phone and scroll through it. Dozens of brands that I've never heard of selling sustainable shoes, protein cereal, etc. Just a bunch of weird, esoteric, lifestyle products that you can't find at a normal store.

<comment><USER37> Yes. DTC takes in money, digital advertising prices rise, DTC go out of business, digital advertising prices fall.

Obviously, there are other factors but these DTC brands provide a very blunt perspective on whether digital advertising is effective (most of these companies don't manufacture, they are just advertisers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So little time, so many people wasting it taking money from VCs

</comment><comment><USER40> Just how big a market do these companies have? It seems like the target demographic for most of them is rich college kids and marketing/mba/tech yuppies in 4 or 5 cities.

<comment><USER41> Online eyewear is maybe 5 to 10% of all eyewear, but rapidly growing as consumers realize they can pay $7 for glasses instead of $200 (e.g., zenni.com).

<comment><USER42> With my kids, it's nice to buy 3 pair at $13 each rather than one deductible of $40 with vision insurance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Funny things is, Warby looks a lot like Fielmann, a German "low cost" chain for glasses. Ehich used to be a startup like 20 years ago. Eho said copy cating can't go the other way!

<comment><USER44> Copycating is based on who gets their brandname favorably mentioned first in Techcrunch/Buzzfeed/Vox etc, then the rest become copycats.

<comment><USER43> Or when you are a Rocket Internet company.</comment></comment></comment>


Dart is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richardeng/dart-is-dead-aedced9fd3d1 <comment><USER2> I'm still using it. It's a nice language.

Just because something isn't super trendy, doesn't mean it's not a useful tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I started reading this small article (as a piece of opinion, not sure what to call it), and suddenly Touhou. Not something I expect in a rant about a programming language.

But back on topic: I believe Dart was doomed to die as a JS replacement for the sole reason it was not the joint work of all mayor browser vendors, but an attempt of dominance of a single one.

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

\- CoffeeScript came from the JS community (the author also writes underscore, the most popular JavaScript module)

\- Many frontend web developers are also Ruby or Python developers

\- Typescript came from Microsoft, who use it to do big apps like xbox music. Seperately, C# has beautiful ideas about inline-async via generators that are similar to yield in ES6. They get async, and Typescript is still more popular than Dart.

\- Although not browser/DOM related, Swift shows what Apple considers valuable in a language.

\- JavaScript now has the largest package manager of any programming language thanks to npm

Whatever succeeds in replacing JavaScript should come from all of those. Dart had a great DOM API, but bared very little resemblance to the languages web developers actually prefer to use.

<comment><USER5> > C# has beautiful ideas about inline-async via generators that are similar to > yield in ES6

Dart also has async/await, and synchronous generators using yield.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have written apps in Dart, CoffeeScript, and JavaScript. CoffeeScript is a definite improvement on JavaScript, but I find it still lacks a lot compared to Dart. I still hope Dart takes off, and any new language needs at least 10 years to gain any amount of significant support.

I also find that JavaScript developers _love_ their spaghetti code. Bad code proliferates in the JavaScript world. Many may disagree with me, but the empirical evidence does not. Just look at the codebase for any major product, like jQuery for example. I have encountered JavaScript developers with years of experience encourage practice that in any other language would be considered a "hack."

Edit: By this, I mean some JavaScript developers will not like Dart because it's too different and restrictive compared with JavaScript.

<comment><USER7> cant this be said about any language as popular as javascript?

<comment><USER6> That depends significantly on the language. All languages have lots of bad code of course, but I think the JavaScript community (and the language) itself promotes bad code. Or, at least un-intentionally fosters it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When Dart was released, I was curious to see if they'd position it as an alternative to Java on Android.

They hired kevmoo (a pretty well-respected Seattle area engineer and game dev) as a PM, which again led me to believe they were perhaps looking at game dev on Dart on Android. I fully expected them to start shipping Android with the Dart VM, open up a new set of Android packages for taking advantage of existing/native stuff, and boom: suddenly the Android ecosystem benefits from a new set of developers coming at it from the web angle. That's what Ludei and others have been trying to promote. This goes deeper into solving perf issues, however.

Now that Chrome tabs are represented as individual windows in Android 5.0, the line between "app" and "web app" on mobile is ever more blurry.

</comment><comment><USER9> The only use of Dart I've seen in the wild is Notch's Ludum Dare work... Although it's a good language, it's not great and doesn't offer much more than what's in the wild. So, Google should use the good pieces and merge them in other projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> Personally I believe that once Dart development is finished, Google will roll the good parts of the server-side pieces to Go and frontend into ATScript/Angular 2.0.

<comment><USER11> Supposedly one of the reasons ATScript isn't just a small fork of TypeScript and instead is an oddly reimplemented TypeScript built on top of Traceur is so that ATScript can still compile to Dart, so apparently at least a few people on Angular 2.0 still like Dart...</comment></comment>


Project Loon - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/loon/ <comment><USER2> There's a lot that I don't like about Google, but I do like that they're fucking insane.

<comment><USER3> Is it really a good idea to use Google even on the lowest layer, meaning the network itself, for the transportation of your data?

In light of the surveillance state that the US has become and the collaboration of government agencies with the tech giants, I say:

Support the _small_ guys!

<comment><USER4> What makes you think the _small_ guys will protect your data _better_?

<comment><USER5> Because they are minor targets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I love those who yearn for the impossible." -Goethe

I wish other large companies showed such ambition. Telecoms like AT&T can't even be bothered to roll out the network upgrades they promised in the early 2000's.

<comment><USER7> Minor nitpick: AT&T has done a shit-ton of research: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs)

edit: apparently a different beast than today's AT&T

<comment><USER8> Minor nitpick: The company now known as AT&T is essentially Cingular wireless; they bought the remnants of AT&Ts cell network and the rights to the name.

<comment><USER9> Actually that is the company now known as AT&T Wireless. The company now known as AT&T was one of the 24 'Baby Bells' that were created when antitrust regulators broke up AT&T (the one that created Bell Labs) in 1984.

The company used to be known as SBC Communications but changed it's name to AT&T after acquiring what was left of AT&T (mostly long-distance phone services) in 2005.

Through a long series of acquisitions AT&T now owns 11/24 Baby Bells.

Sources:

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T#History)

[2]My grandfather worked for AT&T for his entire career and I've involuntarily listened to a minimum of 100 hours of company history throughout my life.

<comment><USER10> Colbert explains it in detail: [http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/955486/](http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/955486/)

<comment><USER11> ebaumsworld is still slapping their watermark on anything that moves?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's fascinating to see how well Google has branched out. It started as just a search engine competing with Lycos, AltaVista, & Yahoo and yet they didn't just stop, they kept going. They built all these new services & products around their core product (search) and it's paid off tremendously.

It's definitely something to model future companies off of.

When you win the race, don't stop, keep running.

<comment><USER13> Almost everything they're done is centered around ads and getting more data on their users to sell more ads. Even this project, in the end it's about getting more people online to look at their ads. (not sure how much ad revenue you can get from poor places, but whatever)

EDIT: To those saying they're playing the long game; Playing the long game doesn't make sense. The long game is being fully wired. By the time poor areas become economically important enough to be advertised to, they will have traditional telecoms servicing them.

<comment><USER14> I feel bad for people like you.

I fee bad that you can't believe that some people or company with money just wants to make the world a better place.

You said it yourself. Google probably won't make money. Maybe, just maybe, they just want to do something good.

<comment> mh- without addressing the remainder of your comment..

 _> I feel bad that you can't believe [..]_

the same could be said for naiveté.

<comment><USER15> Contrast their behavior, with other companies sitting on mountains of cash.

They don't need to do this. Yet they do. That's good enough for me.

Though opening up their index and creating a search marketplace might seal the deal.

<comment><USER16> Whoa, they'd rather do a thousand as many baloons as whatever amount they're doing now, than that last part of your post. That's, you know, core business.

<comment><USER15> :)

But think about it...right now they have a _random_ bunch of 10 or so tabs (flights, recipes, patents etc) above the search box. Is that it?

To expand search to its full potential that list has to expand.

What better way to do it than create a marketplace? It would be a good experiment to run a pilot in some small country or city and see what happens. Unlimited API access to google search...any app built on top of that platform that gets X number of hits becomes another tab above your search bar...for a price...or advertisers could make it free cause domain based search can get them better targeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's odd, I'm looking at my calendar and it doesn't say April 1st.

<comment><USER18> That's the first thing I thought as well!!

<comment><USER19> [http://www.google.com/tisp/](http://www.google.com/tisp/) :)

<comment><USER20> [http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/google-gets- message-...](http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/google-gets-message- launches-gmail.html) :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's so encouraging to see a Hacker News comment section that is almost overwhelming informative and positive. I get varying amounts of flak for constantly posting about the quality and nature of HN comments, but as an unabashed optimist it means a lot to me to me.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I'm looking for a discussion about technology and maybe somebody have an idea how latency would be. But all I see is typical comments you find in any social network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Eric Brewer, who joined Google a year or so back, has been working on Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions. He had similar ideas.

I wonder if he has been involved with this project.

[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/) [http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/](http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/)

<comment><USER24> Eric is an altruistic guy and a great scientist. I'm sure he's building great stuff at his Google sabbatical!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really enjoyed the subtle design / aspects of the loon landing page.

Starting with the darker background of the thermosphere and progressing into the twilight of the troposphere was a really nice touch. I also just noticed the small altimeter on the left of the page.

Also the whole phonetic wordplay with "loon" and "lunar" was cute. Coming from New Hampshire, I naturally immediately thought of the aquatic bird:

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

But the "lunar" aspect wasn't lost on me.

Kudos, this type of subtle design is refreshing in the wake of the iOS7 release.

<comment><USER26> I immediately thought of "loon" as part of "balloon" and also "loon" as in insane or ridiculous. It's a perfect name for something so ridiculous with the potential to be ridiculously awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is an awesome idea.

However, in my mind, there is a potential issue that the article doesn't seem to mention.

How do they keep the balloons up for a long period of time, fighting all of the different variables of weather, gas leakage, temperature variances, material degradation due to being outdoors?

Fiber and copper stays in the ground undisturbed for decades, because it's cheap & low maintenance, barring from breaks.

While this seems cheap and easy to deploy, keeping it running is another thing entirely

<comment><USER28> I'm assuming there's some sort of monitoring onboard system and when they need new parts, they'd just land at one of these predetermined stations and be refitted. There weren't a lot of details in that video but it seemed to me like they implied they were inexpensive and easy to swap parts from.

<comment><USER29> More likely they will not even bother to fix broken balloons and just launch new ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow....this is mind-blowing.

The potential impact of a globally connected internet is crazy. No longer can a country fully filter/control all internet traffic.

This could be a major boon to democracy.

I wonder if Google did this, partially to piss China off.

This seems like an awesome way to get around the 'Great Firewall'.

<comment><USER31> I wonder how long it'll be before reports surface of authoritarian countries deploying anti-Loon lasers.

In all seriousness, I'm curious how difficult it would be to jam this network.

<comment><USER32> It's low power in known bands, but coving a very large area. Maybe somebody could launch their own jamming balloons. In the short term Google says they'll abide local laws so I suspect no jamming will be needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5775324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5775324)

The amazing thing is this has been a rumor[0] tossed around for years (2008).

[0] [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/123009308.shtml](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/123009308.shtml)

<comment><USER18> Luckily it's not a rumor any more, Look at the article's url!

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure what you mean. The previous conversations, and history of stories, offer insite into the technical, cultural, and legal issues that everyone might find valuable. News without context is just hype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Loon balloons are superpressure, which enable them to stay aloft for 100+ > days at a time. This is far longer than typical weather balloons, which last > for a matter of hours. Loon balloons are also unique in that they are > steerable and entirely solar powered.

It's like they are putting up cheap, disposable, steerable satellites up in the stratosphere! Genius.

Would be pretty interesting to understand the monitoring and control system for the balloons - not sure if they can bring back the failing balloons to a maintenance site to refurbish and relaunch them or they just dump the debris along with the failed balloon. I suppose at least the electronics aboard must be reusable for a time longer than the 100+ days the balloon stays afloat.

</comment><comment><USER35> Trying to do an "Energy Budget" with my low-power research background. Please help with the balloon angle.

.1 - 1W Balloon height adjustments

.1 - .5W Flight tracking, control and management

.5 - 2W RF power and conversions (balloon-to-ground)

.5 - 2W RF power and conversions (balloon-to-baloon)

1 - 2W Packet routing, processing and baseband processing

Essential missing insight: how to they lower/rise the balloons and deflate/inflate them? With 100days service time you cannot simply vent gas. So a pump and compressor is needed?

<comment><USER36> Did it say somewhere that they last 100 days? That number sounds familiar, but I couldn't find it just now when I went back to the site. I wonder how far the balloons would travel during those 100 days. As you can tell from the video, they're going to spend most of their lives drifting over the ocean.

Edit: there are more details here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330) Apparently they circle the Earth every 14 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is fucking nuts. I feel weird. So this is what real innovation feels like.

</comment><comment><USER36> This sounded like a great idea to me at first. But,

Each balloon provides coverage to a 40km diameter area. That's a lot of balloons to cover rural Africa. It would help a great deal if the balloons could be made to stay in precise locations, like geostationary satellites. I thought maybe they had solved that problem (which would be amazing). But, I guess not. They said in the video that the balloons would follow the wind all the way around the Earth. Meaning, at any given time, the overwhelming majority of balloons are over the ocean. The difficulty, then, is not merely putting enough balloons up to cover the ground in 40km increments, but covering the ocean as well, in a solid band around the entire Earth. It's not hard to imagine that a stupendous number of balloons would be required to provide any meaningful level of coverage.

I think this is more Google hubris than technical innovation.

<comment><USER38> The balloons are not going to move in one direction though. The video also mentioned you can steer the balloons, which means, there is way to keep them above the ground and not the ocean.

<comment><USER39> Just cover the continent will require a lot of balloons. The world has 148,429,000 sq km. If you cover 1600 sq km per balloon, that is 92768 balloons. Just cover Africa will require around 20k balloons. It will only work out, if Google can increase the coverage area per balloon.

<comment><USER40> 20K ballons doesn't seem like that many unless each one costs a ton of money. From an industrial production point of view it barely seems like a drop in the bucket given how many cars/phones/planes we produce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've always wanted a near-live satellite image for Google maps.

If this takes off that'll be possible. I could find a parking spot from the sky. :)

<comment> Kilo-byte Loon has no such capability.

[http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#tab=technology](http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#tab=technology)

Q: WILL THE BALLOONS HAVE CAMERAS OR CAPTURE ANY IMAGERY OF THE GROUND?

A: No.

<comment><USER39> It does not have it now, because they want to focus on the basics. Once that is done, adding a camera is not a big deal.

<comment><USER42> But I feel like that would make the media -- followed by average people -- go crazy. Consider the current NSA news combined with "Google puts hundreds of cameras in the sky".

<comment><USER43> And what happens when "Google puts thousands of cameras on our faces" ?

<comment><USER44> Well like if you didn't have a camera in your pocket for years. Or like cameras hidden in pens weren't available cheaply for years. Seriously, the time for people to be scared of others recording things is has already passed (mostly unnoticed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Can someone explain why this is more cost effective than other alternatives? The need for specialized antenna's on the ground seems to be a negative.

Also, does Google just subsidize the entire thing? How is this paid for long term? How is it so much cheaper than the alternatives that not only can they roll it out to 5-6 billion people, but also allow people living on cents a day to purchase the service?

<comment><USER46> If it's _very_ cheap, it could pay itself just with the legions of potential costumers (or eyeball pairs, to be cynical) it brings google.

<comment><USER45> Do you have some back of the envelope calculations of cost of this versus satellite or extending copper wire? I'm fairly ignorant on the subject, but would love to hear more.

<comment><USER46> No, I'm also fairly ignorant on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Unless of course it is a trade secret, how wonderful would be if the engineers at Google would release more detailed diagrams of the balloons, circuits, and how it is supposed to work (the pump, antenna and everything, not the simplistic version). Maybe they are having some challenges which can be crowd sourced for ideas too. They have obviously done a lot of research and this idea can certainly spawn other awesome ideas or help other indie projects.

Project like these can be a really nice experiment on teaching and getting ideas from bored internet hackers.

</comment><comment><USER48> Any news about other "moonshot" projects that Google[x] is working on besides self-driving cars and Loon?

<comment><USER49> I think Google Glass started out as a Google[x] project as well. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in their division.

<comment><USER50> Seconded. I think it would be just as interesting to see the projects that they've killed. They've said before that one of the goals of Google[x] is to fail fast. I imagine they've already accumulated quite the graveyard of crazy proposals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Very well in line with their mission statement. I love it because it's so much "ah screw it we'll just try this crazy sounding idea"

[I wrote a paper during my university time that was a thought experiment on the availability of cheap internet for everyone...time to dig it up :D]

</comment><comment><USER52> They are testing it in New Zealand hinterland.

I wonder what implications this is going to hvae for NBN in Australia. They are spending tons of money to launch two satellites to provide access to remote towns. Google is showing they can do it for cheaper, possibly, and with Fiber they are showing gigabit FTH can be done cheaply...

<comment><USER53> I'm actually more concerned about what happens to the NBN if there's a change in government (looking more likely as each day passes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Project Loon to bring NSA Spying to Everyone :)

<comment><USER55> While the geek in me acknowledges this is an awesome project and I'm really glad to see them giving it a try, the sarcastic cynic in me had the first thought that this was a great way to bring the the remaining 2/3 of the world under NSA surveillance.

<comment><USER44> Wasn't "NSA's free access to Google data" debunked, like, 3 days ago? Why people still keep talking like they give away all the data?

That's the problem with mass media. Not only a lie spreads faster than the truth, it's also the only thing remembered after the dust settles.

<comment><USER54> Has not be debunked in any way. As far as I understand it's far from clear what the NSA can actually do. Declaration of officials who are under oath to protect secrets is worth nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm more excited about this than Google Glass.

<comment><USER55> In some regards, so am I, though this comment made me think that in some regards, Loon is a necessary component of Glass's success. There are huge areas of even just the U.S. which don't have cell/wireless internet coverage and Glass would be fairly useless, or significantly less useful, there currently.

<comment><USER57> Yes, but do you really think those rural areas are going to want to walk around lie cyber dorks? The corp I work for has already banned glass on premises.

<comment><USER55> Whether people in rural areas will or not, someone not from a rural area who does use Glass may want to travel outside of cell coverage areas and keep using it. Furthermore, far in the future it's fair to presume such devices would be miniaturized and likely become more acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> My back-of-the-envelope first-approximation math suggests you'd need "only" about half a million of these things to cover the entire surface area of the Earth. To me, that seemed a surprisingly low number.

</comment><comment><USER59> This could also be used to achieve low-latency network access in passenger aircraft over the oceans.

</comment><comment><USER60> Personal opinion: sometimes Google is just simply awesome.

I really hope every word they've written in there, reflects some of what their top management feels at a high level.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wondering how the routing is working.

If my neighbour and I are 30km apart, and covered by the same balloon, does our traffic get turned around on the balloon, rather than hoping to the base station and then back again? I have to assume yes.

If we are 30km apart and we are actually connected to two neighbouring balloons, will they route traffic between them, and again, not via the base station? Again, have to assume yes.

So do I get a single IP address, or do I keep changing when the balloons are overhead? I assume I get a single IP address, but my home router is actually going to have to do some intelligent next hop routing.

Mesh networking is a challenging area when the base stations are fixed, with weather effects and moving end users an issue. Even more challenging when your "base stations" are moving, weather effects are significantly greater, and you're super limited to the amount of onboard processing you can do.

Assume it has to be something like BATMAN. [http://www.open- mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/BATMANConce...](http://www.open- mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/BATMANConcept)

</comment><comment><USER62> Remember late last year, when there were rumors about Google being in talks to acquire Dish network?

I couldn't imagine that Google would actually use Dish's spectrum to build a traditional cellular network. Building all those towers is a huge investment and I didn't think that played to Google's strengths. But, assuming that Loon needs licensed spectrum, maybe Loon (or something like it) was the plan?

</comment><comment><USER63> Well then, wireless internet escalated quickly. In all seriousness tho', this was unexpected. They said that it will be working with an antenna of sorts that you attach to your house? Fast forward 10 years and it will be an integrated wifi replacement in every machine - giving internet to you even in places where there's no electricity. That's the future I'd give my liver to see.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm not sure they've thought through the effects of creating that many more consumers and producers to compete with - especially when service industries, services that can be delivered at range, are becoming so dominant. This seems like the sort of thing that's going to force down the price of labour again.

I don't see the percentage for developed countries - seems maladaptive.

</comment><comment><USER65> I find stuff like this awe-inspiring, particularly w/r/t how it could be used to protect internet access for not only those who are underprivileged but also for those being denied internet access by autocratic governments. Think back to Egypt, Libya, Syria - how different could those have gone if the authorities had been unable to shut down communication networks?

</comment><comment><USER66> When you've taken over the internet, what's your next move? Make the internet bigger of course.

I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder if Google are working with the Serval guys in Australia on this. They are turning Android devices into wireless meshes and have been sending up balloons with device + high gain aerials for quite a while... With the same project motives in mind: disaster recovery (with ground and pole based setup, including voice calls and txt messages with higher QoS over the network), and extending coverage to less populated parts of the world. Australia is a huge place. Wireless is the only sane option for large large parts of the country, and towers, with power - you have to get it there somehow , are expensive. Yes solar is often an option (though it makes the base station in the middle of nowhere a very attractive target for thieves) and I'll be very interested to see how Google will solve that one (assume balloons will be semi covered in panels plus quite large batteries, and possibly small amounts of wind generation?).

<comment><USER61> Doh. Reading the FAQ. Many q's answered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'm curious as to the commercial viability of this. Will Google offer access for free or will you require a subscription? As a throwaway account mentioned, Space Data Corp. already offers this kind of service, but to large industrial companies, that can afford to pay a lot more than people in currently disconnected regions.

</comment><comment><USER68> What kind of technology are they using to send the signal from the balloons to the ground? Though there were succesfull attempts to establish succesful WIFI links from the ground to stratoshpere(even 25 miles as I recall) this was achieved using precise DIRECT antennas (impossible when balloons are in constant movement)

???

<comment><USER68> Ok:

Project Loon currently uses ISM bands (specifically 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands) that are available for anyone to use.

Still doesn't explain how they achieve good quality link

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Awesome. There are probably alot of things you can do with metrics on usage, availability, even mapping/weather and some fun camera views and more beyond just a line in the ground. So many more informational uses with it being airborne.

</comment><comment><USER70> I love how google has so much money they can spend money on pet projects like these. No wonder they attract people with so many "impossible ideas" that sometimes turn out to be pet projects worth spending come money on.

</comment><comment><USER71> If this could bring the INTERNET to places like China (where there is only INTRANET)!

</comment><comment><USER72> Awesome idea!!! This will eventually provide alternative to the current telecom carriers.... In the long run they could provide the service free for Google Wallet users... They'll make profit on Wallet transaction...

</comment><comment><USER73> Can anyone involved in this project shed some light on how altitude is controlled?

</comment><comment><USER74> Could servers be put on these, too? Like that drone idea the PirateBay had?

</comment><comment><USER75> Next up, Loon servers? I can't wait having my torrents served from the stratosphere. I believe TPB was already considering having drone-based servers - balloons just seem so much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER76> So the balloons just float on the air channels 20km up and presumably circulate around world? I can imagine problems coming up with some countries objecting to these being over their airspace.

<comment><USER77> So the question, then, is how high do you need to go before you're no longer in a country's airspace?

<comment><USER78> As far as I know there is no international agreement on this. Altitude can vary from 30Km to 160Km.

Most countries seem to claim somewhere between 70Km and 100Km as their airspace.

If someone has more details on this, it's very welcome.

<comment><USER79> This master's thesis from 2005 ("The Vertical Limit of State Sovereignty") has a fairly comprehensive account of the history and present state of international law in this area:

[http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA436627](http://www.dtic.mil/cgi- bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA436627)

<comment><USER78> I'm familiar with that. And the guy proposes 22Km as the limit.

Besides, a lot has changed in the use of airspace and space in the last 8 years.

Yet, I don't know of any authoritative source for the actual current claims of most countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> After the communications platform goes up, then the other payloads can hitch a ride.

Imaging getting real time video from the stratosphere to everywhere all the time. The weather data alone would be awesome. The traffic data would be great. The IR imagery catching forest fires or amazon jungle burning would be great. An almost real time collection for finding illegal logging or toxic waste dumping.

When there are clouds of these ballons going overhead, who will notice an extra one or two that happen to have militarized payloads.

</comment><comment><USER81> On first reading this, I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't April Fools because I thought it sounded a little silly... The more I read it though, the cooler it sounds...

</comment><comment><USER82> Plenty of pictures on their G+ page: [https://plus.google.com/+ProjectLoon](https://plus.google.com/+ProjectLoon)

</comment><comment><USER83> There are quite a few technical challenges here (weight of cables, stability at 20 mi, erosion by much intense radiation etc). Details on one of the previous efforts which was considered revolutionary but never became main stream can be seen here: [http://www.spacedata.net/news040108.htm](http://www.spacedata.net/news040108.htm).

</comment><comment><USER84> In the first video, yeah having a freakin kid tell you why the world needs to be connected and explaining concepts that he/she is having problem even pronouncing does make me wanna support this lunatic loon project so google can whore out the rest of the planet with their ads. Can't stop imagining how useful this will be to the #nsa

</comment><comment><USER85> Wasn't Page about to focus? Shutting down small, useful and used tools because Google should only do a few thngs, but all of them well?

So will this litter the countryside, and even worse, the oceans with electronic equipment incl. highly toxic batteries? will they maintain and retrieve every single one of those balloons? who pays for that?

<comment><USER86> I find it odd that you assume they're going to take these highly advanced routers and litter with them.

<comment><USER87> I share the same concerns - what about the batteries and other products that aren't as expensive as the routers?

<comment><USER88> (from [http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#pilot](http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#pilot))

Q: WHAT STEPS IS PROJECT LOON TAKING TO BE ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE?

A: We are taking several steps to ensure Project Loon does not negatively impact the environment:

\- We're working to guide all balloons to collection points upon descent, so we can reuse, recycle, or dispose of the parts responsibly

\- When balloons do not make it to one of these collection points, we will be offering a reward for reporting the location of the balloon so we can collect it

\- We can track where the balloons land and we have a team of people who focus on recovering the balloons

\- We'll have a boat for recovering balloons that go into the sea close to New Zealand

\- We've started looking into using biodegradable films for our balloon envelopes

\- Our balloons' electronics are entirely solar powered.

<comment><USER36> "Our balloons' electronics are entirely solar powered." I wonder if that means there won't be batteries. But no batteries would mean no service at night. Also, no navigation at night.

Pulling them out of the deep ocean would likely be infeasible. They might be able to make them float, though, and get them when they wash up on a beach somewhere.

Edit: there are some answers here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330) They do have batteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> It somehow reminds me of the fictional Aquinas Protocol:

[http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Aquinas](http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Aquinas)

It gave people free bandwidth in exchange for being a part of a global survelliance system. I hope Project Loon doesn't have such a dubious second nature.

</comment><comment><USER48> Any details about bandwidth and latency? Where are the gateway stations out of the balloon network? In the local region?

</comment><comment><USER90> Google has mentioned that they had this sort of internet infrastructure in mind, right? Awesome to see it move forward!

</comment><comment><USER91> I've often thought something like this would be good for providing internet access to the people of North Korea.

<comment><USER92> Until they shot it down ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Although I think this initiative is nothing less than totally awesome, I wouldn't want Google as my ISP.

</comment><comment><USER94> Sounds cool, but there is one issue: latency. I remember using the Internet in the mid-1980s, specifically using servers in Norway and other locations from my office in San Diego. Because of a few satellite hops, the latency was about 2 seconds. It made remote use of Emacs interesting :-)

</comment><comment><USER95> Amazing idea, but then the rest of the world (non-americans) are still worried about the implications of this for PRISM. Getting the rest of the world online is cool, but then the NSA gets to have access to their data,that's not cool and I was beginning to like Google!

</comment><comment><USER96> Yes, everyone in Africa is waiting for internet to use with their smart phones.

Evading the censorship is a better idea but I am pretty sure China wouldn't allow such a thing to fly over their country. Or at least make it suffer with network attacks or DDOS or something.

</comment><comment><USER97> What is "loon" about this? We've been flying stuff outer space for over 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER98> Is really that impractical to use stationary WiMax access points instead?

Last time I checked range was around 30 miles, couple of stations will blanket a good area without the hassle these balloons bring (you need to pick them and relaunch every couple of weeks, etc...).

<comment><USER99> Some benefits over stationary towers is that you can easily move the balloons based on different things like natural disasters, political unrest or even to just improve bandwidth under heavy load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> "Never mind about the NSA, here's this wacky project for the public good!"

</comment><comment><USER101> How fast will the connections be?

<comment><USER102>
        Each balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area about 40 km in
        diameter at speeds comparable to 3G. For balloon-to-balloon and
        balloon-to-ground communications, the balloons use antennas
        equipped withspecialized radio frequency technology. Project
        Loon currently uses ISM bands (specifically 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands)
        that are available for anyone to use.

From [http://www.google.com/loon/how/](http://www.google.com/loon/how/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> With all the PRISM & NSA news coming out, I can't discard that this might be yet another tool to go after remote 'Jihadists' and people of interest. Whether Google is doing it wittingly or not is yet to be determined.

</comment><comment><USER104> I went to the Project Loon event in Christchurch today. Here are details: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330)

</comment><comment><USER105> I wouldn't vouch for it until the complete tech stack is open-source, and the devices are manufactured and deployed by someone else than Google. I expect them to be shot down eventually if that doesn't happen.

<comment><USER106> What? why? Most networking and routing hardware is proprietary, what's different about balloons?

<comment><USER105> Well, Google owned global balloon network is just too scary. I guess it doesn't have to be open-source if there's means to reverse engineer these things, and be sure that there's no way for Google to gather information or intercept the traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Perhaps I'm pessimistic but my immediate thought is how much Google is involved, i.e are they providing the backbones the balloons connect to? The last thing I'd want is Google knowing every URL I visit.

</comment><comment><USER108> I recall a month or two ago some rumors about Google preparing to launch airships & blimps to achieve this same purpose.

Now I wonder if that was a misinformation campaign intended to keep competitors and Wall Street guessing.

</comment><comment><USER109> I can see bunches of ballons floating above the planet. If you ask me, google should support [http://brck.com/](http://brck.com/)

</comment><comment><USER110> How long before they abandon the idea? Google is well known for creating projects for shits and giggles and abandoning them when it turns out giggles don't make money.

<comment><USER111> Have the abandoned any of the moonshots?

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> This is what makes Google different from the other enterprises.

</comment><comment><USER113> In light of the whole surveillance issue, how to approach the matter of foreign balloons drifting in and out of the airspace of many different countries? Can they steer around countries that want no part of it?

It doesn't take too much imagination to envision balloons doing things like taking high-res photos and videos, collecting all manner of signals from communications equipment, radars and other military equipment, or even carrying onboard weapons. Basically the same things drones do.

How can they assure skeptical people and governments that these balloons aren't carrying something extra in addition to their statued misson?

</comment><comment><USER114> I wonder if they have any plans to move away from helium as a buoyancy gas.. I can't help but feel we need to save every atom of that stuff for MRI machines

</comment><comment><USER115> It would be great if it didn't take a company project to overcome the fear of being harassed at 2:30 AM because someone misused my open WiFi.

<comment><USER116> Why would you be afraid of that? Is it a frequent occurrence where you live?

<comment><USER115> [http://news.cnet.com/Wi-Fi-arrest-highlights-security- danger...](http://news.cnet.com/Wi-Fi-arrest-highlights-security- dangers/2100-1039_3-5112000.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> I suppose Google will be hiring a lot of meteorologists! This would be a very fun project to work on.

</comment><comment><USER118> This reminds me of the "swivel eyed loons" of last weeks episode of The Now Show

</comment><comment><USER119> It's a really cool idea.

But given Google's history of late, I wonder how long it will last?

</comment><comment><USER120> We are living in the future.

</comment><comment><USER121> A worthy project, to be sure, but the networking guy in me hears "space" and immediately starts worrying about the latency. Does anyone know if there's technical data available on the standard network metrics of this solution (latency, packet loss, jitter...)?

</comment><comment><USER122> _Mind Blown_ again.

</comment><comment><USER123> Will these balloons also be feeding data to the NSA via PRISM?

<comment><USER124> No need. Why climb in through the window when you have the keys to the back door?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I wonder, how project team member call themselves .... :)

</comment><comment><USER125> I'll be honest, I _did_ double-check the date...

</comment><comment><USER126> I wonder how cheaper it is to conventional landlines ?

</comment><comment><USER127> Mind boggling!

</comment><comment><USER128> I like innovation but Google is getting too powerful and I don't want to see an Umbrella Corporation in the next 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER129> "But two-thirds of the world's population does not yet have Internet access."

Those two-thirds can't see Google Ads then :).

</comment><comment><USER130> Has no one noticed that this is a super-governmental network? Like, including the US government and its NSA?

</comment><comment><USER131> I can't help but thinking, bring internet to everyone, so we can spy on everyone.

</comment><comment><USER132> Yeeeeeahhhh buddy

</comment><comment><USER133> All your data are belong to us. PRISM 2.0.</comment>


Announcing TypeScript 2.0 RC - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2016/08/30/announcing-typescript-2-0-rc/ <comment><USER2> Looks good!

I don't do too much front end development but I like Typescript for another reason: the language is very readable and I have started to use it as executable easy to read 'pseudocode' when I write, specifically for many of the examples in a new book I am writing on cognitive science. Concision and readability are important. I have started using Julia for the same reasons: the code is very concise and readable.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of other new features as well that were introduced in the 2.0-beta release: [https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/What's-new- in-T...](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/What's-new-in- TypeScript#typescript-20)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish it were easier to gradually convert a codebase from JS into TS. You'd think it'd be straightforward, what with the claim that TS is a superset of JS, but the flag that makes the TS compiler accept regular JS files was only added in 1.8, and mixing and matching is still much clumsier than I'd like.

TS is also a bit too strict about requiring d.ts files for everything.

I've been on the fence about switching to TS in my project, but it's a bit passive aggressive towards plain JS code.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this a release candidate in the traditional Microsoft sense or the Angular 2 sense?

<comment><USER6> I don't know but I found your comment funny given the .NET Core RC1 debacle...</comment></comment>


Stop using "Nerd" to describe people who like computers - <AUTHOR> http://thewebivore.com/stop-using-nerd-describe-people-like-computers/

<comment><USER2> I'm a huge nerd, and I used to be afraid to admit it. I'm not afraid anymore, I don't think the word has negative connotations anymore for most people.

The definition I prefer: An intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit

</comment><comment><USER3> "Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you." \- Tyrion. Pretty much sums up how I feel about this.</comment>


Hyperloop raises $80M Series B to build Elon Musk's future transport vision - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/hyperloop-technologies-becomes-hyperloop-one-pulls-in-80-million-and-announces-global-partners/ <comment><AUTHOR> So great to see entrepreneurs and engineers with vision take on the stodgy, stone-age California High Speed Rail Authority. I hope that Hyperloop's tests embarrass and shame them into dropping their politically-expedient, geologically-complex[1] compromise "high speed" rail that meanders way inland through the dessert in a very circuitous linking of LA to SF.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bullet-train- sou...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bullet-train-southern- california-20160123-story.html)</comment>


How Apple Put Everyone In an App State of Mind - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/04/13/how-apple-put-everyone-in-an-app-state-of-mind/

<comment><USER2> It's impressive to see them hit this mark because they've emphasized quality over quantity. (To a point. Of course, their filter criteria are pretty arbitrary, and they've let questionable apps through anyway.)

If they'd simply wanted high volume, and let a bunch of garbage into the app store, they might have hit a billion downloads quite awhile ago.</comment>


Show HN: I made a 3D display by mounting my phone to a fan - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPzAbH-HN3w

<comment><USER2> This is sick</comment>


Why we never need to build another polluting power plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficiency/?source=newsletter

<comment><USER2> >Since the next president will put in place a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases

He will? Since when? I mean even if it's a good idea, who said that will happen?

But other then that it's a pretty good article, but not great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both candidates favor a cap-and-trade system, and with the president's backing (and signature) it will pass easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> paywall (login?)...

<comment><USER4> no, just click the 'Enter Salon' link on the top right corner.</comment></comment>


Study: Keyboards Are Influencing Baby Names - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/94945/keyboards-baby-names/ <comment><USER2> I think this study fails to give serious thought to the phonetic differences of the left-side and right-side letters, and the possibilities for co- correlation there.

The right side has 4 out of 6 of the vowels and 3 out of 4 of the other sonorants, which could easily be argued to be the more sonorous or pleasing sounds in a word. 7 out of the 11 right-hand letters fall into one of those categories.

By contrast, the left side is only 3/15 sonorants. Further, the left side has all the sibilants and a strong majority of the stops.

Pointing out that right-side letters correlate with agreeability is an interesting finding. Claiming that which side of the keyboard the letters are on is the _causal_ factor for agreeability strikes me as lazy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be very interested in seeing the stats. I am much less interested in reading the hand-wavey pseudo-explanation which feels like speculative rationalisation instead of science.

"i lack imagination. At least, that's what my two children 'qwerty' and 'F12' tell me" \-- Milton Jones.

<comment><USER4> True, probably not truthiness without statistics. However, I think a richer vein of correlation is probably to be found with internet nick names and email names. Here very few people go for very long nick names that are variants of their surname (however I am sure that 'firstname.lastname@example.com' probably exists).

P.S. This is the internet, not Saturday afternoon on Radio 4 - _they_ won't get the Milton Jones reference, and if they did, _they_ would not get the humour.

<comment><USER5> I don't know who 'they' are, any more than I know who Milton Jones is, but _I_ got the humour.

Anecdotally, all of my children have names with more letters from the right side of the keyboard - but I'm left handed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Little Bobby Tables [0], anyone?

[0]: [http://xkcd.com/327/](http://xkcd.com/327/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am right handed and for me the left keys are the positive ones because they come first; in other words the writing system makes the left side dominant for everything writing/reading related.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone for Qwerty? Tyuiop? Qaz? I prefer Wert myself.

<comment><USER9> Just so long as no one starts using Asdf as a first name. I've always found it irritating and overly pretentious on the part of the parents when surnames are repurposed as given names.</comment></comment>