The economics of cheaper batteries - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/05/the-story-of-cheaper-batteries-from-smartphones-to-teslas/ <comment><USER2> Not sure where Boomberg is getting its digits.

Wholesale price for LFP cells in China has been stably below $100 per kwh for like 5 years.

The only problem is getting to those wholesale quantities.

All major LFP cell makers seem to run a cartel to cut off small distributors from preferential pricing. Anything you can buy in small wholesale is at least 2x the price of what companies making EVs are getting.

Once upon a time good offers like these [https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=599076665397](https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=599076665397) come up, and then vanish.

<comment><USER3> It's not a cartel or conspiracy but a simple matter of demand being consistently larger than the available production capacity. Right now owning a battery factory is a good business because there are a lot of manufacturers that are not able to secure batteries. Several car manufacturers are being blocked by this or have reduced their production ambitions because of this.

I think people are also confusing manufacturing cost vs. price here. Obviously, those are not the same. The article is mostly talking cost.

The packaged products that e.g. Tesla sells (cars, battery packs for domestic/grid usage, etc.) include more than just the battery cells.

In any case, Bloomberg is being a bit vague. On one hand, they are predicting mid 2020s for the cost to drop below 100$ and on the other hand you have people guestimating that Tesla is close to that right now. You could of course argue average price, i.e. other manufacturers are not there yet.

Demand for batteries is going to continue to increase for a while. Tesla is talking about TW factories now. The giga in giga factory used to refer to GW. That's a good indication of what they are planning to do. At that scale, the average industry cost and their cost are going to be very similar unless others also grow production capacity at the same pace.

<comment><USER4> > The giga in giga factory used to refer to GW. That's a good indication of > what they are planning to do.

Haha, I never thought about that. That's actually a really clever way of quantifying the output of a battery factory. Battery capacity can be measured in watt-hours, so battery factory output could be measured in watt-hours of battery capacity produced over time, and power*time/time just reduces back to power (measured in watts).

Therefore, you could say that a factory which produces an average of 1 Gigawatt-hours of battery capacity every hour is producing 1 Gigawatt of battery capacity. I like it.

And yeah, a TW factory sounds like it'd be operating on a pretty ridiculous scale if it lives up to its name.

<comment><USER5> Since world electricity production is about 3TW, a battery factory with TW capacity would saturate the world's charging capacity within three years? (In other words, way too big even for the world's entire battery needs...)

<comment><USER6> Musk is quoted as saying you need 100 Gigafactories. I think there's room for error, considering the batteries needed to replace all ICE vehicles with EVs, the amount of utility scale battery storage needed to go 100% renewables, and any storage needed beyond those two primary use cases. GF1 in Sparks is also producing above anticipated capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Vandium Redox Batteries [1] sound like they have a bright future, I recently came across a startup building home kits which have a significantly longer lifespan than Tesla Powerpacks (allegedly):

[https://www.startengine.com/storen- technologies](https://www.startengine.com/storen-technologies)

There's a huge plant being built in Dalian, China with 200MW/800MWh with Vanadium (for comparison Tesla Australia plant is 129MW/100MWh with Lithium- ion with plans to double scale this year, but currently only powers 30k homes which isn't much)

[https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/worlds-largest- battery-200mw-...](https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/worlds-largest- battery-200mw-800mwh-vanadium-flow-battery-rongke-power/)

Wikipedia has a nice list of largest battery deployments in the world:

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

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

<comment><USER8> Redflow of australia actually makes zinc bromide flow batteries now. It has not been a financial success to put it mildly... Much as I like the idea of flow batteries I think their window of opportunity may be closing.

<comment><USER9> You mean flow batteries in general or just vanadium redox? Because if it's in general, why would you think its opportunity window is closing?

Closed batteries have no inherent advantage on large scale stationary projects, only problems. The only gain they bring is that you can ride on the scale of mobile applications.

<comment><USER10> I'm waiting for the old car batteries to start coming online, I think that will kill anything else for stationary systems, and will just get bigger.

<comment><USER11> You can't discharge and recharge a lead acid car battery very many times before it loses capacity.

<comment><USER10> I didn't believe it was necessary to specify this, but I meant Lithium car batteries, not lead.

<comment><USER11> Ah, sure, that makes more sense. I have to retrain myself to think of "car batteries" as something other than a heavy, plastic box of acid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A kilowatt hour of car battery pack costs ~$150 now. I was looking at battery powered lawn mowers last night, and noticed that a 0.42 kWh battery pack costs $350[0]. I know that power tool batteries have different requirements than car battery packs, but that base .42 kWh should still be under $100.

I feel like this is the printer/razor model, where you sell the base item for cheap, but the consumables cost are extreme.

Although, for long lasting durable goods, you have to make money somewhere, as a good battery mower may last a very long time.

0: [https://community.egopowerplus.com/ego/topics/kilowatt- hours...](https://community.egopowerplus.com/ego/topics/kilowatt-hours-kwh- required-to-fully-charge-the-5-ah-battery?topic-reply- list\[settings\]\[filter_by\]=all&topic-reply- list\[settings\]\[reply_id\]=20372921#reply_20372921)

<comment><USER13> I think there's a combination of things here, but it's not the printer/razor model. You just don't have to replace the batteries frequently enough for that model. The battery pack should last for years. If you can cut your lawn in one charge and you cut it once a week, you should get around a decade out of it (assuming 500 charge cycles, LiIon batteries are usually 400-1,200 cycles).

The battery you're looking at isn't just shrink-wrapped cells. I've seen 1-kWh e-bike batteries around $150 on AliExpress (shipped from China) that are just shrink-wrapped cells with a cable coming out where you're supposed to be knowledgable enough about batteries to make sure you use it safely and not catch on fire and such. This is in contrast to nicely packaged batteries that cost significantly more (like $800 for 1kWh at Luna Cycle).

This battery is available when you want it (rather than shipped from China with a month wait), you're paying for the retail availability and service/support/returns, you're paying for knowing that the cells are likely reputable cells from a major manufacturer like Panasonic, LG, or Samsung, and you're maybe paying a little for the fact that it's a product-specific adaptation to fit the lawnmower.

However, it doesn't look like they're marking you up much at all. E-bike batteries are a good comparison here. E-bike batteries are a relatively competitive market and the pricing sounds about right for something that's supported, has US distribution, decent quality, not a fire hazard, etc. - $350 for 420kWh. It doesn't really sound like you're getting over-charged. If you want a battery from a well-priced but reputable source, it's not $150 per kWh for batteries of this size. It sounds like they're charging you about what batteries of that size go for. You can certainly search around for ebike batteries and see that despite their being a competitive market there, you're not paying $150 per kWh. Doing a little searching, I can see 1 kWh for $800, 850 Wh for $620, 900 Wh for $600, etc. On Alibaba, I can see some cheaper things, but we're still talking $230 for 600 Wh, $400 for 900 Wh and who knows when they'll arrive or what quality they'll be. The lawn mower company might have a little margin on you, but they aren't over-charging a lot. From what I've seen for US-source e-bike batteries, it's pretty much in-line with my expectations. I've seen 420 Wh batteries a little cheaper (like $275 is the cheapest I've seen) which is cheaper, but you're looking at a slightly more niche product (a battery for a specific lawnmower) and likely looking at a bit more retail markup (like a big box store vs. a no-name online retailer), etc. $350 is pretty competitive and you're going to need to spend it once a decade so the possible $75 margin doesn't seem like much at $7.50 per year.

I mean, you could maybe buy an e-bike battery and get it to work with the lawnmower, but I don't see e-bike batteries that are that much better for pricing. I mean, if you buy the lawnmower and it lasts you a decade and you love it, I don't feel like a $75 markup for a second decade on it feels like taking advantage of you. That just feels like retail markup and, frankly, I'd probably trust Luna Cycle more than the retailer I'd never heard of with the $275 420Wh battery. Luna's $460 650 Wh battery would cost the same as a $298 420 Wh battery, assuming the same price per Wh. $50 just doesn't seem bad.

<comment><USER14> I can look at a tool store catalogue right now, and for a 18V 4Ah lithium battery the cheapest brand is half the cost of the most expensive brand. In that case, factors like retail availability are identical - but the price difference persists.

It's pretty well known that power tool buyers have to watch out for battery prices.

<comment><USER15> I can tell you as someone who sells products to the public that price is one of the primary drivers of sales. If there was a way for the higher quality manufacturers to cut their sell price in half, they would do that. But that they have decided to go into the market with a price that is 2x the cheapest competition tells you that they have very good reason for doing so.

<comment><USER16> I've also served on company boards which believed "if the product is cheaply available then it will be considered low quality by the end user regardless of how much better it is in comparison to the competitor, so we must not drop the price and keep our margins high, take out more in profits".

They also say, "competing on price is for losers, it's race to bottom and at the end we'll have no margins left"

<comment><USER17> You can only charge more if your product is actually better in some way. However, a lot of companies are willingly sacrificing their trusted brands for a quick buck by lowering the quality that made the brand attractive in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd say home storage is about $750 a kWh in the UK. Plus installation. What do you think, is the future a domestic 50kwh battery in every house or will they be fewer giant ones owned and run by the power company out of sight?

<comment><USER18> Well, Tesla currently sells a 50kWh battery that also happens to have a really nice car attached to it for $35000.

That's $700 per kWh. It stands to reason that home charging systems will soon come down in price, even if they don't end up largely being eaten by BEVs with bidirectional charging ;)

<comment><USER19> They sell a 13Kwh powerwall for $6500. That is down to $500 per kWh. Still not great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Higher demand causes lower prices? From the article:

> "But a battery electric car needs so much battery capacity—40 to 100 kWh, > thousands of times more than a smartphone—that they've significantly > increased the global demand for lithium-ion batteries. That has helped drive > additional price declines, which have started to make it cost-effective to > use batteries to improve the electric grid."

You need to know both demand and supply to forecast price effects when either or both change. The simplistic assertion that higher demand leads to lower prices is wrong on its face.

I'm no expert, nor an economist, but I think it'd be more correct to say that higher demand inspired investments that resulted in more supply, which grew faster than demand, thus driving price declines.

EDIT: Another inconsistency that bugs me:

> "Frith told Ars that a common battery technology in the last decade was "NMC > 111" batteries with equal parts nickel, magnesium, and cobalt. Now companies > are starting to move to NMC ratios of 811—with eight times as much nickel as > manganese or cobalt. Nickel is two to five times cheaper than manganese or > cobalt, so a formula with more nickel is cheaper to produce per kg."

So does the "M" in NMC refer to magnesium (as stated first), or manganese (as stated second)?

<comment><USER21> _Over the long run_ , higher demand can absolutely lower prices.

In the short-term, obviously higher demand increases prices if production is held constant.

But if there's no obvious constraint on production (e.g. on resources/land/employees/etc.) then yes, over the long-term higher demand usually generates larger-scale businesses/factories which can invest in more efficient production and produce lower prices, and pay off initial investments.

Of course, this won't apply if there aren't further economies of scale or investments to recoup.

The article seems to be quite clear that this is what it's talking about. I don't think it's making the "simplistic assertion" you're assuming it is -- it's just referring to the concept of economy of scale which most people are familiar with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, there is still potential in lead-acid battery technology. Ecoult [1] is combining them with supercapacitors to try to get the best of both technologies for grid-scale storage.

[1] [https://www.ecoult.com/](https://www.ecoult.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> That article was somewhat disappointing, but maybe I've been watching too much Tesla battery investor day hype.

Between the tabless design patent, the maxwell dry electrode, and other chemistry improvements, I'm interested to see what the battery presentation boils down to in terms of improved density from the dry cathode and cost improvements from tabless and the various chemistries discussed.

That million mile reliability is nice, but I'm really hoping for under 100$/KWhr at pack level with improved density to enable 400+ mile ranges.

The Tesla prototype around the Nurburgring had me speculating about really dense batteries that enabled a much lighter racing car than what the Taycan was limited by.

<comment><USER24> For cars, price and density are very important, and Tesla will certainly improve in those specs too. But for energy storage, longer durability directly translates into an effectively lower price. As power companies often invest in the scales of several decades - a power plant often can be run for 5 decades - the costs are calculated over those time spans.

<comment><USER23> Reuters is predicting an $80/KWhr pack cost announcement.

Probably the cobalt-free ones that don't have great density, but still, for the 200 mile range car that's doable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is the durability of batteries also improving?

Having a significant improvement in this area would have a magnificent effect on some industries. Making batteries last twice as long (e.g. from 2000 cycles to 4000) would basically reduce battery cost by a factor of 2 for trucks, public transport or grid energy storage (6y to 12y lifespan if cycled once per day).

</comment><comment><USER26> >"In 2010, a lithium-ion battery pack with 1 kWh of capacity—enough to power an electric car for three or four miles—cost more than $1,000. By 2019, the figure had fallen to $156 [...]

Forecasters project the average cost of a kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery capacity to _fall below $100_ by the mid-2020s."

</comment><comment><USER27> 60 Minutes once did a segment on batteries made from seawater and dirt. They were large (low power density), but very cheap, and perfect for grid storage.

Haven't heard anything about that since.

<comment><USER28> Neither seawater or dirt sound like they address the anode or cathode, which seem to be pretty major challenges when it comes to rechargeable batteries.

BTW, speaking of seawater and dirt forming a battery, I recently needed a way to measure underground corrosion of buried copper pipe, and it went down a great little rabbit hole uncovering documents such as this [0]. It was fun to go put a voltmeter across various ground-coupled conductors in my home to see what, if any, voltages were present, with the earth serving as part of a battery.

[0] [https://archive.org/details/CAT78694105](https://archive.org/details/CAT78694105)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Li-ion… meh

</comment><comment><USER30> > Batteries have already gotten six times cheaper within the last decade,

Pedant here:, but you can't get "six times cheaper." You can get one-sixth as expensive, but "six times cheaper" implies some sort of relative comparison being made about rates, not absolute values.

The same issue is apparent in the HN title ("costs fell six-fold."

<comment><USER31> IMO In colloquial English six times cheaper means 1/6th the price. What a phrase means is very much dependent on how the speaker and the listener interpret it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As far as I know so far most of the lithium used has been from existing copper mines, where there's a lot of lithium, so that's made pinpointing it and extract it fairly cheap. I remember reading there's 5-10 years worth of lithium left in these mines. It will be interesting to see what happens once we need to start looking for new sources again.

<comment><USER33> The next "iron ore boom" in Australia is supposed to be lithium. There's a lot of deposits waiting to be commercialised apparently.

Just waiting for some other country to start building enough battery factories. Because actually making anything in Australia seems to be impossible.

<comment><USER34> > Because actually making anything in Australia seems to be impossible.

I keep hearing that. Could you expand on this bit? For those of who are are far away and have zero idea why. While I know labour cost and protection are high. I would have thought battery factory is now highly automated.

<comment><USER33> More a mindset than economics. Mining is what Australia does. No-one really knows how to set up a manufacturing base. Investors aren't willing to invest in it. There's no end of stories about how it's too small of a domestic market, and too far from export markets (all of which are true for lots of other countries with thriving export markets), or that the labour costs are too high (also true for Germany, which has a thriving manufacturing export industry). And everyone's rich from mining, so why bother?

Same for the solar industry. If there was ever a place to build enough solar to power the planet, it's Western Australia. We could build the batteries, too, from local ingredients. But it's all too hard and too complicated and why do that when we can make enough money from just mining the lithium?

<comment><USER31> Wouldn't you be killed in this distribution part of the solar power for the world story?

What form would you be shipping the energy in?

<comment><USER35> > What form would you be shipping the energy in?

One option is hydrogen. There's some amount of government & think-tank produced research arguing for australia to pursue a "hydrogen economy". E.g. [https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/aust...](https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/australias- national-hydrogen-strategy.pdf)

From skimming through the report, there are also applications to use directly use hydrogen as an input to produce ammonia, and also an argument that existing means of shipping ammonia could be used to ship hydrogen, conditional on research that can extract hydrogen out of ammonia with low energy input.

I don't have a handle on what kind of policies would be needed to encourage private investment in hydrogen vs coal, gas, oil (assuming it is even a good idea). There's a graph of estimated prices of hydrogen vs alternatives in various uses in the report (search for "breakeven"). It does not look price competitive in many applications, but I assume the comparison does not include price adjustment that account for the externalised environmental costs of one energy source versus another.

Regardless of hydrogen or solar or batteries or whatever, a carbon tax with a price set to help internalise the externalised costs of greenhouse gas emissions would be a great way to push activity in a better direction, regardless of if that is hydrogen or anything else that strikes a good combination of efficiency & low greenhouse gas impact. Perhaps the carbon tax could be rolled out nationally with tariffs put in place to penalise the import of goods & services produced in other countries that did not yet have an comparable carbon tax installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> We have a systemic problem, our economic system is based on productivity and that is a opposite goal to efficiency. Every time we gain efficiency we have a choice of keep our consumption and pay less for electricity but we choose to increase consumption, for instance any improvement in phone batteries is counter by more powerful chips. Home appliances have improved but we choose to have more appliances instead of less energy consumption. This is called jevons paradox [1] and it needs to happen otherwise there is no profit or job creation.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)</comment>


Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup - <AUTHOR> https://thinkfaster.co/2016/02/7-lessons-from-a-failed-tech-startup/ <comment><USER2> > Lesson 7: Letting Your Startup Rule Your Self Esteem Is Dangerous

Seems obvious, but there's a reason it happens so often. If you live and breath your startup, you're better prepared to take on opportunities. Even if you're only at your desk "working" for 8-10 hours a day, you can find a lot of serendipity by talking about it with friends and family. Wait, you know somebody who could be a customer? Wait, you made money on your last job and want to invest? Wait, you want to work with us? It's easy to get into a mode where you're forever pitching, networking, and being your company, because there are real benefits.

That said, I've talked to a weirdly high number of people who had a kid while founding a company. Their tongue-in-cheek logic: "This is something that's obviously more important than my company. If I'm going to have my self-esteem wrapped up in anything external, it's better to be my child than my company. My business may fail, but I will not fail to raise this kid."

Me, I got a dog. It's working out!

<comment><USER3> Or, younger people tend to be the ones that create startups. Younger people are the ones who have kids. Simply correlation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this to be a great article and can identify very closely with it. I created a webservice back in 2010. Fortunately I am still operating, although certainly not "killing it". At least not enough to go full time.

Lesson 1. Sales and Marketing. So true. I think every entrepreneur greatly underestimates sales and renvenue growth. It's easy to create "top-down" market share spreadsheets and imagine the opportunities. It just never works that way. I am starting to learn that Sales is a major part of any company. People tend to think that just because there are fewer and fewer brick and mortar stores, and face to face meetings for that matter, that sales isn't an integral a part of a company.

Lesson 2. Indeed money is important. But at the same time how necessary is it for a lot of what Silicon Valley is producing these days. Hardware and development tools are the cheapest they have ever been. You certainly don't need a ton of venture backing to create a web service. That is the approach I am taking.

Lesson 3. With my web service I never created spreadsheets with forecasted user growth. But at the same time can say growth never really took off the way I had hoped. More important to me is year over year growth.

Lesson 4. I am still running this as a sole founder... Anyone out there interested in sales/marketing?

Lesson 5. Great point. Always a difficult decision knowing what features to add. More and more I add features and have the requesting customer at least partially fund the development of it. And more often than not don't release them as a "public" features. Sometimes you have to resort to "consultingware" until your fully self-serve web serivce takes off on its own.

Lesson 6. Indeed. Never be afraid to reach out to people who sign up for your service and ask them more. Stackoverflow is a great site to "find peoples pain".

Lesson 7. Yes - you always have to keep your chin up, especially on days where you feel

It would be interesting if Ross could share some indicators on his revenue. If not, other metrics like how long it took to get the first sale, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sales is pretty important.

I read an article where Peter Thiel said that most startups fail because of difficulty in Sales and distribution.

I read over and over again the value of Sales and the need for a founder to focus on "the business side", but then I still marginalize the role of sales.

I'm I broken or do we all do that???

<comment><USER6> A lot of startups are founded by programmers, who know a lot about programming but not much about sales. This makes them able to see all the upcoming problems in the technical bits of the company, but not the upcoming problems in sales. Most effort is then spent on the technical side because "that's where the problems are."

Kind of related to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

<comment><USER7> > This makes them able to see all the upcoming problems in the technical bits > of the company, but not the upcoming problems in sales. Most effort is then > spent on the technical side because "that's where the problems are."

ugh. this is 100% me. spent 6 years working on a hard problem. Why? Because ironically people wouldn't pay large sums of money for it and I figured that if I made it 1000% more innovative than the market I'd surely justify the price.

I sometimes look back and see how fucking naive I was. I'm a totally different mentality now. It's figuring out how to get paid and making sure you are able to CHARGE people for it. You just need to get to the absolute MVP. If it's something nobody has seen before then you don't even need to build it. Just try to sell the god damn thing before you even build it. However, if there are already established markets and competitors you can't do it without risking looking like a snake oil salesman but what this is the problem of many engineers, we view making money as evil and negative because we devalue our work, we just don't see the business value and so highly possible we end up working for free at some point our careers.

For example:

Marketer: Our software that will boost your sales by 50%.

Developer: It just scrapes data from other companies and resells you public data. You can find it on github.com

VP of Sales: Shut the fuck up.

Anyhow, I can't stress enough. Startup is 80% people and 20% coding. I've learned my fucking lesson the hard way.

<comment><USER5> "I can't stress enough. Startup is 80% people and 20% coding."

Agreed. I have recently come to that revelation :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google Cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZcdIAx...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZcdIAx0jJIAJ:https://thinkfaster.co/2016/02/7-lessons- from-a-failed-tech-startup/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER9> This post completely resonated with me as a former Googler making the leap into startup founder. It's been drinking from a firehose learning what it takes to get a product off the ground. What I've found is that the entrepreneur community is extremely supportive of each other.

For other Xoogler Entrepreneurs out there, a couple of us have started a Xooglerpreneur community with over 600+ Xoogler/Googler entrepreneurs. The group has been hosting monthly tech talks, founders lunches, and other networking events. We have active local chapters in LA and NYC with additional groups growing in Chicago and London.

There is an active Slack channel and the group is organizing an Xooglerpreneur Demo Day later this year as well as setting up an Xoogler Angel Fund.

Sign up here: [http://www.xooglerpreneur.com](http://www.xooglerpreneur.com)

<comment><USER10> Sorry, what do you call yourselves again? Didn't quite catch that.

<comment><USER11> It's quite clever actually , it's a combination of X for 'ex' and then ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think my lesson was

"Don't go off to the races, solving difficult problems for people who won't pay for it"

and

"To us its a bunch of tables and CRUD generated on top of it. To them, its whether or not theres a free plan."

and

"Recognize when there is a poor market fit and CHANGE the situation. Falling in love with your own creation tends to blind you."

gg startups, hello drudgery

<comment><USER12> Yes, there isn't much money in solving non-problems. Instead, find people in pain, and sell them band-aids.

In the 1980's I worked for an Electronic Design Automation startup (during the go-go years for EDA). Our CEO said: "If you asked customers to give a letter grade to their current EDA tools, most would give a "D" or "F". If we can get a "C" we will do great."

He was very right. People in pain open their wallets easily, even for a stop- gap solution. That gives you money to do the solution that eventually gets graded "B" and even comes to define "A" if all goes well.

<comment><USER7> Is my product a vitamin or a pain-killer? Excellent question.

<comment><USER12> I like that question. Keeping with the health metaphor, it forced me to think up this: "Hunt like a shark, act like an ER surgeon." Go where the customers are losing the most blood, then when you get there get them patched up and stable by the end of your shift. Eh... needs work. Another forgettable quote from the half-bakery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just have a lower risk tolerance than a lot of people. I am totally down with creating something new, I just refuse to leave a job that pays the bills to do it. If you work 40-50 hours a week at your real job, that still leaves 10-50 hours per week to work on your own thing, depending on how driven you are, how much stuff you scheduled that week, etc. Startups are so risky that it's way better to reduce your risk any way possible.

Of course, if you go the VC funded route and want to be huge, then go for glory and quit your job. But if you want to build a smaller, steadier side business that you grow over a longer time, don't quit your day job.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Who knows where that drive comes from, but I know that many people have it, > just like I do.

Ego. Nothing wrong with it as long as it's kept in check but let's not pretend we don't know where the drive comes from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: and I agree. I just didn't want it to turn into a big spiritual discussion :).

<comment><USER14> I understand. Thanks for sharing your experience btw, I found it valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was an interesting read in particular to contrast with other startup letters. The focus in the first point on sales and other roles is interesting because I've noticed before these posts focusing on the product (such as [http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)). The idea that the sales and business will come naturally seems to stem from this kind of advice. It's clear that there needs to be some kind of balance that is usually not talked about.

</comment><comment><USER16> > At least I didn't go into debt. I can't imagine the stress of founders who > start by living off credit cards. I further can't imagine the stress of > people trying to support a family while starting a company.

I can't relate to this at all - there must be a _tiny_ portion of entrepreneurs that can. I've been blessed to be in a position where I've never (as an adult) been hopelessly poor, but I've absolutely been in a place where I've worried that I'd have enough money to last until pay day. I've been in a position where I've sold anything I could think of to have enough money to buy food, diapers, or enough fuel to get to work and back for the rest of the week.

</comment><comment><USER17> Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.</comment>


Why is it so hard to back up and restore Signal? Why do you lose your keypair? - <AUTHOR> Hey, so I seem to have reached a dead end here, Signal appears to only offer plaintext exports, adb backup doesn't work, and importing a 29MB plaintext backup causes the new phone (an H631) to hang (sitting at the 35min mark waiting on Signal to import the backup).
I don't understand why I can't do a normal encrypted backup, I remember it working fine most of the time when I used to rerom, and when it didn't I could always do another backup and it'd be fine. Now, my father has changed keys due to changing phones & he has no SMS history and a few dozen Signal contacts who have to click a button before they can read new texts from him.
Why can't there be a checkbox in Settings to say something to the effect of "This feature may be broken, I understand and wish to try it" instead of literally no options when it comes to moving mobile devices?
Also, on another note, why no opus support? I've enabled it on a few hundred of our deskphones, and Linphone & many others support it. The voice quality improvement is tangible and more useful than GIPHY, to the point that I can't get other Signal users to call me via Signal due to the poor call quality.
Overall, it seems like Signal is getting harder and harder for myself and others to use over time, people want something where they can mail their <fill in the blank> a new phone, point them at a 3 step process to move their Signal data over, and that is it!
My father should be able to do this, just:
* Press Export encrypted backup * Move MicroSD to new phone * Press Import Encrypted backup
And that should be it! This is a baseline feature, even PGP does better by miles with this than Signal does, and I started out using Signal because it was easier and better than PGP, only to watch features slowly disappear. Its like feature atrophy. <comment><USER2> fwiw, [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal- Android/issues/4577...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal- Android/issues/4577#issuecomment-228627416) lists a workaround. Not usable for mere mortals unfortunately :(</comment>


SSD Failures in Datacenters - <AUTHOR> http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2928275.2928278 <comment><USER2> I worked at a company that migrated to SSDs on hundreds of HP ProLiant servers. The performance was great, it really improved our DB latency. Unfortunately the RAID 1+0 setup that was carried over from the spinning rust setup didn't work for our most common failure case; corrupted writes.

The HP RAID controller failed to detect corrupted writes on what I seem to remember were Intel SSDs. The only way we learned about failed SSD drives is when we started catching large numbers of DB page checksum errors, and by that time it was too late to do anything about it.

Operationally it sucked, swapping out drives is a lot easier maintenance than having to rebuild a DB from backup.

<comment><USER3> So based on this, should filesystems include a "verify-writes" mount option?

Or would this functionality somehow be counteracted by a cache inside the SSD?

Perhaps filesystems should include a "ssd" mount option, because there might be more things to worry about (for example frequent writes wearing out the device).

<comment><USER4> "So based on this, should filesystems include a "verify-writes" mount option?"

They do. You can, for instance, mount a UFS filesystem "sync", which means that all writes are synchronous. I assume extX has a similar option ...

<comment><USER3> Afaik, "sync" means that the writes are immediate. "Verify-writes" would mean that the writes are not necessarily immedate, but that they are verified.

Also be careful with sync on SSD media; this is what the mount manpage says about the sync option:

> In case of media with limited number of write cycles (e.g. some flash > drives) "sync" may cause life-cycle shortening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested, Google published a similar report a few months back.

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical- sessions/presentation/schroeder)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11188445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11188445)

</comment><comment><USER6> All or most of the ssds used in this study are used as a cache in front of hdds, so take results with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER7> Another interesting paper on the issue of using parity RAID with SSDs: [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kadav/new/pdfs/diffraid- hs09.pdf](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kadav/new/pdfs/diffraid-hs09.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> "An error occurred while processing your request.

Reference #50.d66d717.1467850467.45a102d"

I supposed their ssd failed

<comment><USER9> Akamai failed

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2928275.2928278](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2928275.2928278)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone summarize the results? Should I continue using my SSD, or no?

:-)

<comment><USER11> A typical annual failure rate near but under 1%, so use it like any drive by having regular backups and expecting to have to use them at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did a large production SSD deployment a few years ago on a db fleet backing a large video hosting site (probably the first one you think of).

tl:dr the benefits were astounding. The failure rates were super low. We saved something like 2 million dollars by significantly increasing the I/O performance of the fleet preventing the need to re-shard.

Choosing a drive We went with an Intel MLC (consumer class) drives. No other drive had such low DOA rates and good match between performance and price. We set the max lba to 80% of available capacity. (Actually recommended by Intel) This change eliminated the pathological case where a full drive continually overwrites the same sectors. The consumer drives suddenly had a lifespan comparable to enterprise drives (though a slightly slower read speed- which was fine because we needed balanced reads and writes) We also exported and monitored the wear leveling stats (available via a SMART value) so we won't run into the case where they all unexpectedly wear down at the same time. The projected lifespan looked really good and in most cases exceeded that of the servers. (in retrospect this turned out to be true)

Raid config We ran in Raid 0 (because I love to live on the edge- No, actually because we split the boot, data and bin log volumes and data integrity was preserved by redundancy within the the fleet.) The conversation I had with the dbas about this was one of the most eye opening conversations of my career. Turns out if a replica failed or lagged too much they simply tossed the data and started a new one. They didn't actually need or want RAID10 and that changes the economics of the picture significantly.

This would have been 4 years ago now. We deployed several thousand drives. Of that only one ended up with abnormally high wear level. (I proactively threw it out when we decommissioned the hardware to prevent a problem for the next guy). I had a handful of drives which didn't pass the pre-service checks and a another handful that failed in production.

Compare that to 10k spinners which appear to have an annual failure rate of 1 in 20.

SSD Failure profile: We would typically see a drive failing to respond properly (announcing a crazy size, not showing up at all, failing to save its max LBA). Most of this happened in the pre-production check phase. Post deployment failures you can count on one hand (I have the normal number of fingers ;-)

Qual process We qualified 6-8 different manufacturers, high end enterprise to the dirt cheap vendor with a three letter name now synonymous with garbage (I won't even say the name here). The cheap drive had high DOA rates, and the unsettling tendency to spontaneously reset itself causing a several second pause (not so good for our uses, but might be tolerable in other circumstances)

</comment><comment><USER13> slides [http://www.systor.org/2016/slides/ssd_failures_systor2016.pd...](http://www.systor.org/2016/slides/ssd_failures_systor2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Summary?

<comment><USER15> Compared to HDD SMART yields quite a lot of false negative/positive hence it is proving harder than HDD means to detect failures.

Failure rates seems to not fit the models and be a tad higher than expected.

Most SSD are reliable, the only problem is they are failing in a way that is tough to detect leading to consequences we may ignore. (falsely positive functioning SSD in operations and we may experience silent corruptions)

Given the "too many knobs" of the SSD they can defect in non predictable snowballing effects (chaotic and dramatic).

Basically this study confirms that IEEE standards for rating MTBF are to be reconsidered drastically and that our models of failure for SSD are far from totally being well understood and that SSD is in production while all costs are not totally yet known. The Cost of SSD specific failures is not yet known and they urge SSD makers to begin studying the effects of their "knobs" on reliability

Even though it is written in a very scientific neutral tone trying not to scare people, it basically can be used as a strong evidence to ban SSD from critical systems.

It basically is an heavy blow to SSD industry since it attacks it on the costs model that is based on its expected reliability and says that these drives are basically still an unknown territory when it comes to failures.

<comment><USER16> You start from the common but misguided assumption that "unknowns" are an absolute evil, whereas they are just another risk factor to weigh. You offset the costs of worst-case scenario readiness with the productivity and financial gains of using the tech.

If SSDs make your business 2x as productive or 2x as remunerative, the cost of an extra backup or two is simply a blip.

 _> ban SSD from critical systems._

That's an over-reaction if I've ever seen one. I guess it depends what a "critical system" is for you. If it's something that has to guarantee high performance under massive load, SSDs are what you _need_ , period. If it's something that has to guarantee 100-year data storage under a mountain, then there might be better choices, but they might not involve spinning drives either.

<comment><USER17> > You start from the common but misguided assumption that "unknowns" are an > absolute evil, whereas they are just another risk factor to weigh.

> > ban SSD from critical systems.

> That's an over-reaction if I've ever seen one.

No, it's really not. SFJulie's point is that we don't know enough about the way SSDs fail to build a good failure model for them, and that we currently don't seem to have a good way to even detect that they are failing. If you can't build a failure model for something, you can't build a good risk model including it. That's kinda her point.

FWIW, I don't know that I fully agree with that point: it seems to me that cryptographic integrity checks and backups would suffice, but … maybe not?

> If it's something that has to guarantee high performance under massive load, > SSDs are what you need, period.

We seemed to do alright four years ago, no? SSDs are not a requirement: one can get equivalent system performance, with predictable failures, by spending more money on more hard drives and CPUs to talk to them.

<comment><USER18> > SSDs are not a requirement: one can get equivalent system performance, with > predictable failures, by spending more money on more hard drives and CPUs to > talk to them.

Lots more money. Many, many more hard drives, with failure rates to match. And you're still not going to get there.

We started running a 240TB all SSD array a few months ago and we get sub- millisecond latencies on most reads and writes. When we see an excursion to 10ms that's cause for concern; 50ms and we do a root-cause. We can peg multiple 16GBit fiber channels and it's okay. And it fits in half a rack; try that with disk.

I cannot imagine doing this with spinning rust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bad URL?

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be working for me, anyway this is the url

[http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2930000/2928278/a7-narayanan...](http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2930000/2928278/a7-narayanan.pdf)

<comment><USER20> That link seems equally dead. You might have it in cache still?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, might be because my institution has the acm subscription. This is the paper [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2928275.2928278](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2928275.2928278).

<comment><USER21> Thanks, we updated the submission link.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steambirds: How handcrafted levels prevent game design iteration - <AUTHOR> http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/12/steambirds-survival-goodbye-handcrafted.html <comment><USER2> For some genres, procedurally-defined levels are fine, but when handcrafted levels are done properly there's a pretty substantial difference. I'm reminded of an interview[1] with Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata discussing the first level of Super Mario Brothers:

      "But if you avoid the first Goomba and then jump and hit a block above
      you, a mushroom will spring out and you'll get a shock. But then you'll
      see that it's going to the right so you'll think: 'I'm safe! Something
      strange appeared but I'm okay!' But of course when it goes against a pipe
      up ahead, the mushroom will come back.

      At that point, even if you panic and try to jump out of the way, you'll
      hit the block above you. Then just at the instant where you accept that
      you're done for, Mario will suddenly shake and grow bigger! You might not
      really know what's just happened, but at the very least, you'll realize
      that you haven't lost the turn."

[1] <http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp>

</comment><comment> T-R The author makes a good point that randomly generated levels significantly affect the way that a game is played, but they shouldn't by any means be considered superior to handcrafted levels - players have different preferences for playstyles, and game designers should consider which playstyles they intend to appeal to when deciding on a genre and a level design strategy.

Consider the Megaman series - players are encouraged to master each level, and speed runs are a major draw and source of replay value. Similarly, part of the brilliance in the level design in Sonic 3&Knuckles (that disappeared from later Sonic games) was that it encouraged the player to try different paths to find an optimal route for finding special stages. Exploration and speed runs are a draw for the Zelda, Mario, and Metroid series as well - the quality of level design is a major selling point for the core audience of these series.

Randomly generated stages certainly have their advantages for replay value, but they also remove incentive for exploration and speed runs, which means you're potentially forfeiting the audience that prefers those play styles.

To go a step further into the realm of "video games as art", consider the RPGs and survival horror games like Fatal Frame - cinematography is a significant element, as is the player's emotional connection to certain areas. Randomly generated levels don't create as strong a connection with players, which diminishes the designer's ability to use locations as a significant story element. It would be difficult to create such strong storytelling without a high level of control over the environment.

Some genres, like Arcade Shooters, RTS, and FPS may lend themselves less toward these play styles, but it's certainly not restricted by genre, either - Bullet Hell shooters, like Ikaruga, for example, are designed with players who favor level mastery in mind. It all depends on the audience you want to appeal to and the game elements that you want to focus on.

<comment><USER3> Sonic 3 & Knuckles was a beautifully crafted game (and one of the few popular platformers of the time where there were multiple routes through levels). Its still one of my favourite games to this day.

" _consider the RPGs and survival horror games ..._ "

Speaking of survival horror games, the Left4Dead procedural editing of levels works quite well (though the general layout is handcrafted). I think a similar mechanism would work quite well for games where completely procedurally generated levels aren't desirable.

<comment><USER4> One problem with Left 4 Dead is that you rapidly run out of levels (even though each level is very well designed).

I think random levels would work very well, especially for online gaming. If a team didn't know the level, it would really feel like exploring a dangerous zombie infested world.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I agree. I just meant that its a reasonable intermediate level of procedurally generated levels. I think for a future version they could ramp up how much is randomly generated instead of hand crafted.

I like the idea because you get a nice mixture between replayable random levels and nice and well designed human designed levels.

Theres definitely a lot of room for future improvement though and I'm excited to think about what we may have to play with in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't stress how fantastic it is being free from the chains of handcrafted levels. You can really iterate and refine the core mechanics all the way up to end of production. It's liberating!

For some genres interesting levels are a must though. My own current project is looking at how to generate platformer levels that are both interesting and possible to beat. I've got a pretty powerful algorithm up and running, with a pre-trailer up at <http://www.pwnee.com>

<comment><USER6> I'm sure you already know about this, but people interested in randomly- generated platformer levels may well be interested in Spelunky:

<http://www.spelunkyworld.com/>

<comment><USER5> Awesome. Great to see some more procedural stuff out there! And they made it on to XBLA, that gives me a lot of hope =D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an insight here and a fallacy.

The insight is that behavior is more interesting and flexible than content.

The fallacy in the title is the idea of a "level" entirely encapsulating the gameplay opportunities. The point is that the game developer needs to trade off static content vs. dynamic behavior. Some "behavior" may look like content.

Or next we'll argue than randomly generated graphics are equally liberating,

Still, as always, an interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the opposition of lifelong hobbies to disposable media.

Next time someone asks if games are art, dismiss art as disposable media. But seeing art as a consumer product is sterile. It's healthier to consider it a lifelong hobby. In the end, conclude that the artist is the one who plays the game, not the author.

I wasted so much time playing the first Steambird, it's great, a masterpiece! I really hope the second one won't become my lifetime hobby.

<comment><USER9> s/like/liken/ ?

<comment><USER8> I was referring to this sentence:

 _Deeper, more meaningful systems yield lifelong hobbies, not disposable media_

I like how he opposes lifelong hobbies to disposable media. It's completely natural coming from a game designer, but to me it also sounds like he unintentionnaly questions the meaningfulness of art. This inspires me sentences that are not entirely clear, late at night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This difference is plainly visible if you look at games you're still playing over and over again after you've 'won'. I have a copy of Master of Orion that I've been playing since 1991.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just a quick note, this guy did the art for my absolute favorite game of all time, Tyrian. Definitely worth some play on dosbox at the least ;)

<comment> T-R Interesting. I was actually thinking about Tyrian as an example of a game where random level generation would work well (in contrast to those mentioned in my above comment), and wouldn't detract from nostalgia replay value. Another example would be X-COM. Both excellent games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Minecraft is the best example of this so far I think.

</comment><comment><USER13> Please make this game full screen !!!</comment>


How Wolfram Alpha's Copyright Claims Could Change Software - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/30/2055221/How-Wolfram-Alphas-Copyright-Claims-Could-Change-Software?from=rss <comment><USER2> Er, what? So if I ask Wolfram Alpha to calculate 6 x 9, they claim copyright on the answer of 54.

Also, Mrs Browl wants to know how they can claim sole ownership given that their output would not exist without your input.

Way to make your service radioactive. Is it International Corporate Stupidity Month or something?

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried to submit the original article last week, but infoworld.com is on the ban list because "People always complained the articles were so empty"</comment>


Open Letter to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos - <AUTHOR> Climate change will kill our children.
We need to "Electrify the Town", a nationwide campaign of plans towns can adopt to replace
ALL use of oil and gas with electric by 2025.
Elon, you have the technology to develop town vehicles such as police cars, trash trucks, and other construction vehicles run by electricity. You have the solar technology.
Bill, you have the financial ability to draft boilerplate proposals that towns can adopt to move to electricity. Fund an effort to develop "town consultants" to visit towns and propose local solutions based on general plans.
Jeff, you have the ability to move your whole transport network to electric vehicles. You can create "town discounts" on electric conversion, battery and solar solutions, and education.
All town facilities should be electric. All gas stations should have charging stations. All town heating should be electric. We need this changed by 2025.
The change needs to be nationwide. The change needs to start now. Only you have the funding
and technology to make it happen in every town everywhere.
"Electrify the Town". Local change. Global results.
Tim Daly <comment><USER2> I suppose that each of these gentlemen must be thinking -- if they know of this post -- "Well, man, when you become a billionaire, you can decide how to use your money. But in the meantime..."</comment>


The coming of Apple File System (APFS) will mark the end of disk imaging on Macs - <AUTHOR> https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/imaging-will-be-dead-soon-ish/ <comment><AUTHOR> In the comments section, Bob Gendler shares:

 _" We recently met with our Apple Systems Engineer and he mentioned basically this same thing, that there will be a time in the near future when imaging is dead. He seemed to think that the MacOS will be going to more of an iOS model where you really cant change much of the system. He also seemed to hint that all configuration would be done through Configuration Profiles."_</comment>


Show HN: InstaTake – Download anyone's Instagram photos in one click - <AUTHOR> http://www.instatake.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just an experiment with few lines of js :) No signup required. No downloads. Just a click!

The best way to backup your account.

Any feedback is welcome!</comment>


Transforming Code into Beautiful, Idiomatic Python [video] - <AUTHOR> http://pyvideo.org/video/1780/transforming-code-into-beautiful-idiomatic-pytho

<comment><USER2> Slides: [https://speakerdeck.com/pyconslides/transforming-code- into-b...](https://speakerdeck.com/pyconslides/transforming-code-into- beautiful-idiomatic-python-by-raymond-hettinger-1)

Notes: [https://gist.github.com/JeffPaine/6213790](https://gist.github.com/JeffPaine/6213790)

</comment><comment><USER3> After a while, he shows the example of a find function

      def find(seq, target):
        for i, value in enumerate(seq):
          if value == target
            break
        else:
          return -1
        return i

Can't you just remove the whole break and else thing and just do this?

      def find(seq, target):
        for i, value in enumerate(seq):
          if value == target:
            return i
        return -1

<comment><USER4> Your second example looks fine to me.

EDIT: My best guess as to what's going on is that they want to display the for-else idiom which could be useful in other contexts (e.g. if you don't want to return anything from inside the loop and can't break out that way.) It's a kinda surprising idiom; I had forgotten you could even do that in Python and at first thought it might be a misindentation until I realized the logic would be wrong if the else paired with if.</comment></comment>


TPP banning requirements to transfer or access to source code of software - <AUTHOR> http://keionline.org/node/2363 <comment><USER2> These are rules for States. It has no bearing whatsoever on the GPL.

This prevents a country from forcing somebody like Microsoft or Apple to give up their source code for "inspection" in order to access their market. It also helps to prevent States from demanding and acquiring encryption or other private keys (there's a separate section that also explicitly forbids mandating backdoors be added).

Not everything in the TPP is bad.

<comment><USER3> So, as an actual lawyer i actually think i disagree with you in practice.

Imagine for a second that the US gets tough on GPL violators, and says "well, if you want to sell android devices in the US, you have to produce the GPL source code".

Or something even simpler, along the lines of "products marketed in the US must comply with all licensing obligations of software that it contains".

This one _actually_ happens behind the scenes sometimes _right now_ , though you don't see it.

I believe they would not be allowed to do that under this provision.

It clearly falls into:"1\. No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory."

3 is no exception:

"3\. Nothing in this Article shall preclude: (a) the inclusion or implementation of terms and conditions related to the provision of source code in commercially negotiated contracts;"

The GPL and other open source licenses are arguably _not_ commercially negotiated contracts.

So yeah, it doesn't stop private citizens or parties from doing whatever they want. It _may_ stop you from being able to create laws and enforce them at import/export time around actually complying with OSS licenses.

Which is really not great, since it in practice means free reign.

You will never get state supported companies in their own countries to comply with licenses. Generally, your only course of action is to try to enforce elsewhere, or ban import/export.

Here, in the case of the US, you will not be allowed to ban import unless all of that open source software is completely US written.

(since the provision limits requiring "source code of software owned by a person of another Party". Of course, what it means by "software owned by a person of another Party" is also up in the air, since most open source software has many copyright owners , so does it mean complete ownership, partial ownership, or what?)

<comment><USER4> Why would the GPL not be considered a commercially negotiated contract?

<comment><USER5> If the TPP is ratified, would it be worth updating the GPL to say "You agree that this is a commercially negotiated contract"?

<comment><USER6> The FSF says that GPL is not a contract [1] [2] [3].

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/200104_seminar.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/200104_seminar.html)

[2] [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing- gpl.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html)

[3] [https://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs- fsf](https://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs-fsf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "parties" of a treaty are governments. This has nothing to do with GPL. This is saying that a government can't say "you aren't allowed to sell software in the country of Frain as a non-Frainian unless you provide the source code for that product (whether to the end user or to the government)". They leave an exception for "critical infrastructure", because it was hard to argue that the government of Frain shouldn't be able to require that nuclear control software come with source code. Essentially, I don't see why this clause is concerning. It is clearly a form of pandering to the interests of software developers reliant on intellectual property rights, but only in a way that seems to me mostly about forcing capitalism on nation states that might disagree with its premise.

<comment><USER8> I can't see how this about capitalism. Showing source code to anybody (government or end user) does not make you loose your rights to that source code or the compiled application.

This is about freedom and the right to self-determination of governments/citizens (and thus also about democracy).

I would like to point out that our patent system is basically something like this: We as a society will protect your intellectual property rights for your machine only if you show us your blueprints.

<comment><USER9> >Showing source code to anybody (government or end user) does not make you loose your rights to that source code or the compiled application.

You lose control over your own property. That's enough. Similar to police officers entering your home without a warrant.

<comment><USER10> One big difference is that you're distributing the binaries (or devices containing them) anyway, which makes them reverse-engineerable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So in short, if I understand this correctly, the US government (and any other government party to the treaty) will for example be unable to insist that Volkswagen (or any other manufacturer) open source their future emissions control software (as a condition for regulatory compliance) ?

<comment><USER12> They can still do this. However VW can later sue them for damages equal to their lost profits in a secret court.

It will certainly make it a lot easier for VW lobbyists to kill legislation intended to regulate them this way.

<comment><USER13> I don't think you've read the investment chapter [1].

It isn't a 'secret court':

* 9.23.1 Documents from the complainant are submitted and they should "make them available to the public"

* 9.23.2 "The tribunal shall conduct hearings open to the public"

Of course there is a section (9.23.4) detailing that complainants can withold any 'protected information' so perhaps in practice the process will not be as transparent as proponents would have us believe.

There is nothing about 'damages equal to their lost profits':

* Awards (9.28.4) "the only damages that may be awarded are those that the claimant has proven were sustained in the attempt to make the investment, provided that the claimant also proves that the breach was the proximate cause of those damages. If the tribunal determines such claims to be frivolous, the tribunal may award to the respondent reasonable costs and attorney's fees"

I think there is much that's disagreeable about the TPP but detractors relying on falsehoods opens TPP opposition up to easy attacks relying on the fallacist's fallacy.

[1] [http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade- agreement/transpacif...](http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade- agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/9.%20Investment%20Chapter.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Party" here means party to the treaty, right? So, governments can't require source disclosure (except for critical infrastructure), but this specifically exempts contracts about such from this rule:

> [Nothing in this Article shall preclude] the inclusion or implementation of > terms and conditions related to the provision of source code in commercially > negotiated contracts

It seems like this wouldn't affect licensing at all, given that licensing is supposedly a contract. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER15> It prevents the government from saying "You can't sell your software in our country unless we can see the code."

And that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An interesting side effect of this would be the invalidation of the Nevada law requiring the source code for all electronic gambling machines be disclosed in order to operate in that state.

It seems like it would also apply to new or existing laws requiring the disclosure of code inside proprietary voting machines, medical equipment, and of course, the Volkswagon ECU. Then again, could those things be considered "critical infrastructure"?

The Department of Homeland Security considers the entire "Information Technology sector" as "critical infrastructure":

[http://www.dhs.gov/information-technology- sector](http://www.dhs.gov/information-technology-sector)

</comment><comment><USER17> I can only think of TPP/TIPP as Protectionism... how can this go well?

<comment><USER18> That's what I've been wondering. They say these treaties facilitate trade between countries. But it actually looks more like they just shakes things. The result being a new, wild west trade environment in which the rules the players abide to are yet to be found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would this prevent us from requiring VW make available it's source code? Not a lawyer.

<comment><USER20> Why would you want VW to make available its source code?

<comment><USER21> I believe the implication is that, if they were forced to release their source then either:

a) they would have been less likely to deliberately subvert the emissions tests in the code or

b) they were more likely to have been found out earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://web.archive.org/web/20151106020038/http://www.keionl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151106020038/http://www.keionline.org/node/2363)

</comment><comment><USER23> The "Party" here refers to a political entity; a Party to the agreement among states.

This is a rule which basically says that _governments_ cannot impose laws that say "thou shalt not sell closed-source mass-market software in this country".

It doesn't translate to "thou shalt sell nothing but closed-source software, and may do so even if it is derived from a copyrighted work whose holders forbid that".

It's a good rule because it _reduces_ government interference in business by a modicum.

</comment><comment><USER24> If a government wanted to give out Linux PCs to children. Then, the students could require the government to provide the open source software as it part of the copyright condition of Linux. But the government couldn't require the distributor of the Linux PC to provide the source code. What happens? Would it be illegal for the government to buy Linux PCs for civilians? Note: a Linux PC could be a smart card used for identification, voting, a licence, etc.

<comment><USER25> Those who use those machines have standing to ask for the source code, as per the GPL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This might be good news for open source: No competent government will use software with classified information if it can't audit the code.

</comment><comment><USER27> Software that is critical for public safety (and it is a lot) should be required to be one file as part of the product certification. If you have coded a safety interlock in software, that software should be viewable by the public. Toyota should have been required to submit their source with NHTSA.

</comment><comment><USER28> This TPP is such bad news. I've never been politically active enough to want to "run a campaign" but honestly, this thing is really motivating me to take time out of my busy schedule ... I feel like it's such an uphill battle to get this thing defeated.

</comment><comment><USER29> Could anyone rewrite cited part in plain-English? I have troubles understanding it.

<comment><USER30> Are you the fine article's author?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone know anything about the authors, Knowledge Ecology International, or their predecessor Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech)? They look interesting but their about page doesn't tell me very much.

</comment><comment><USER30> Judging by the stark lack of intelligence displayed by these attacks on TTP, it is probably a fine treaty.

</comment><comment><USER32> Actually this should (and I believe some day will) be mandatory. Everyone who wants to take money for software should be obliged to disclose full source code to purchaser. In case of mass market software it would be just publishing the source code.

As products grow in complexity and corporation grow in power the only way to secure safety of the public would be to prevent corporations from profiting from secrecy.

</comment><comment><USER33> Will this impact governments' efforts to move to open source?

<comment><USER34> No. This just makes it unlawful to force a company to open it's closed-source software as a condition of entering a market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> TPP is no double political union instead of economical partners.

</comment><comment><USER36> Doesn't this prevent Nevada and anyone else from demanding source code for slot machines and other gambling machines, to audit it for backdoors and other flaws? The last I heard, they're not even allowed to use off-the-shelf video drivers. Every line of code has to be (theoretically, anyway) audited by gaming authorities.

I suppose those are usually delivered under a "negotiated contract."

<comment><USER27> Too bad this isn't actually done for voting machines and ECUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So once this becomes law ( and surely it will ) how do these finer points of the law get decided, will it be done by the arbitration panel, ie the high paid lawyers who take turns being plaintiff, defendant, and judge?

</comment><comment><USER9> This shows how the TPP could've been something great.

Sure, TPP uses the power of governments to impose interest of certain corporations.

In the other hand, TPP gradually weakens national governments by limiting their power over the individual.

Had it been restricted to providing economic cooperation and freedom between countries, it would have been amazing.

<comment><USER38> If it had hooves and a tail then it could have been a horse.

Seriously, it's difficult to imagine that the process that produced this could have produced _anything_ else. Everything was done in secret. The few admitted to the proceedings were required mafia-style to agree to their generally corrupt direction and total secrecy ahead of time. The later one got in, the fewer scraps one could beg from the head table. The officials responsible are all looking forward to comfortable corporate positions after the whole mess goes into effect.

These observations typically inspire scores of well-informed "this is simply how it is _done_ in these modern times" rejoinders. As if that weren't an even bigger indictment of these modern times. The comparison that comes to mind is NSA-supplied curve constants in cryptography. Sure NSA _might_ not have derived the constants in such a fashion that would leave them able to break cryptography. At this point, however, why would a thinking human being _assume_ their innocence? When rules for the public are created in public the motivations of the rulemakers can be scrutinized by the public, before the public is subject to those rules. Take for example the just-defeated Ohio pot initiative, which was billed as simple legalization but was in fact a permanent pot-growing monopoly for the few farmers who had paid for the advertising. Those rules did not withstand public scrutiny.

From a giant secret proceeding like this, we can be sure that the problems identified so far by EFF, etc. are only the tip of the iceberg.</comment></comment>


Show HN: We Love Icon Fonts - A free & open source icon fonts hosting service - <AUTHOR> http://weloveiconfonts.com

<comment><USER2> :D</comment>


Ask HN: See only important submissions from previous days? - <AUTHOR>

I've started using Hacker News to stay up on the latest trends. However, I find that if I don't check the site daily, I miss some big stories.
I feel like I'm missing something basic. It would be great if there was a way to narrow things down to all 100+ point or 100+ comment submissions.
How do you make sure you don't miss important submissions from previous days? <comment><USER2> I use Hacker Newsletter (<http://www.hackernewsletter.com/>) to catch up if I miss stuff during the week.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try <http://hckrnews.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> What a great site! Thanks a lot.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can Tesla's Powerwall Replace a Generator? - <AUTHOR> Given that many in California will have to deal with unplanned blackouts. Is a Tesla Powerwall a good option to use during a blackout? Can it be installed without a solar installation? <comment><USER2> Sure to both, but it won't stand up for long I would think. Obviously completely dependent on your usage, but it seems like these outages could potentially last for a long time (weeks even?)...

Power walls are expensive. You may be better off looking at a NG generator and then doing an on-site reserve tank that feeds off the utility line. That could keep you online for weeks if it's designed right and if you're savvy, the cost for this could be about the same as a powerwall.

That's kinda how a friend of mine built his house here in CO. It's solar as well, and typically generates enough power in a day to recharge his 2 x power walls 1.5x. He then has an NG generator that's linked to an underground tank that fills off the utility line.

Pretty smart. House basically takes care of itself and in the event it doesn't (say during a week or two long snow storm), the generator is there. And if the utility kicks off, the tank can feed the generator for more than a month. More than enough time for any weather to clear and sufficient solar to kick back in.

I think in your case, since you don't have solar, just the same idea around the generator + tank could work well without breaking the bank too much?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't realize there was an NG alternative for the home. Thx for the info.</comment></comment>


ITA by Google and MileWise let you search flights in cash, miles and points - <AUTHOR> http://itasoftware.blogspot.com/2012/10/ita-by-google-and-milewise-let-you.html

<comment><USER2> I want to see the other way around: Search for flights with either "I want to earn X miles" or "miles are worth X cents to me" criteria added. Often the cheapest flights I find are worse deals because they don't have the frequent flyer miles "kickback".

<comment><USER3> Yup, I go on lots of "Mile Runs" and it's actually quite difficult to do this with ITA Matrix as-is.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I wish ITA had the Google Flights speed and interface for browsing multiple cities and dates but still allowed the advanced routing rules. Unfortunately, I doubt people like us doing MRs are their target audience.</comment></comment></comment>