The 1980 Citroën Karin - <AUTHOR> http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/karin/karin.html <comment><USER2> It is difficult to look more late 70s/early 80s than this car :)

But interestingly, the blue car behind it in this picture looks almost like the design of a modern city car from today to me. So that's where the real vision was?

[http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/karin/images/005.jpg](http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/karin/images/005.jpg)

EDIT: I might be wrong, I assumed the photo was from the 1980 Paris Salon show due to the article text above it, but it's probably from later. Oops.

<comment><USER3> maybe that's a more recent photo from a Citroen museum...?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing out, I edited my comment to show the mistake. The article text above it and graininess of the photos really seemed to make them from 1980 :/

<comment><USER4> One dead giveaway are the A-pillars. Manufacturers back in the day didn't imagine we would have side curtains and double reinforcements in pillars today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's interesting about these concept cars, is that they sometimes get built if they generate enough interest. I believe this is how the new VW Beetle came about, and I suspect what nudged BMW to bring out the new mini.

One that is in the process of making that leap right now: [http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/volkswagen/98136/volkswagen- bos...](http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/volkswagen/98136/volkswagen-boss- confirms-id-buzz-concept-to-make-production)

I do wonder if the reason concept 'updated' models are more likely to be made is there is a huge amount of nostalgia at play in the market.

As an aside, having owned a new Mini convertible, I can confirm it was probably the most fun I've had in a car. Felt like driving a go-kart. The suspension is ridiculously hard. Completely horrible car to be a passenger in but so so so much fun to drive. Apparently very close to the original.

<comment><USER6> I borrowed my mother's (edit 1968) Mini for a week, after my Land Rover series 3 fell to bits. This was mid-1990s. The suspension was unpleasant and painful to anyone in the vehicle. It was hard as nails. Definitely fun, until you accidentally lose it going around a roundabout at which point your sense of mortality re-appears and you wish you were driving anything else.

<comment><USER7> The original minis are such death traps I am surprised when ever I see one on the road - firstly how is anyone foolhardy enough to drive one and secondly how did it manage to survive to 2017.

<comment><USER8> Say hello to Fiat 126, still a semi-common sight on Polish roads. When I was a kid my parents had one and I remember it fitting 5 people

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126)

<comment><USER4> My parents met because my father wanted to do sort of a Grand Tour(well, not so _grand_ given the vehicle) and my mother wanted to get to France, because she landed a job as an au pair, but she wanted to save on transport.

How they managed to get there(through _Hungary_ ) in this little two-stroke boggles the mind.

<comment><USER9> >in this little two-stroke boggles the mind.

Actually four-stroke (but two cyinders and air cooled, later a different water cooled version with a bigger and different engine was made in Poland).

The FIAT 126 is the "evolution" of the more famous (and older) FIAT 500 and uses almost exactly the same engine, with capacity increased from 500 cm3 to 600 or 650 cm3.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The last image on that page has text in Dutch, I took a few moment to have a quick translate. (P.S.: I have no idea what they meant with that last sentence)...

In the last 20 years, every stylist has met the forcing limits of designing a car, set by the cost, production methods and the ever growing regulation.

But this situation has had little consequences for the standardisation of cars, it's more due to market probes that there's a danger of all cars looking the same.

There's that many investments involved that the stakeholders don't dare create a car that deviates too much from the normal.

Currently in Europe cars increasingly look very similar and the public is taking notice.

This is an opportunity Citroën should take: its image has always been about creating cars that are different than the rest and that's undoubtedly what's the buyer is seeking these days.

At the Automobile Salon in Paris 1980, Citroën presented 'a dream car', designed by it's 'Design Bureau': the Karin.

This prototype is the first stage of research into the mid-range: 2 'wing'-doors coupé with 3 separate seats with the driver's seat in the center. The car is 3.70 meter long (145.7 inch), 1.075 meter high (42.3 inch) and 1.90 meter wide (74.8 inch). It has front wheel drive. The interior is also avant- gardistic. An electronic screen continually provides information about the condition and performance of several elements of the car. Though the esthetic design of massively produced cars has improved all these years, their style risks turning somewhat monotonous, since the designers get less playing room due to inceasing external demands.

With this in mind the 'Bureau de Style Citroën' has undertaken this 'design exercise' to reasearch the impact of a body with really clear lines on the car buying public. With designing this car an attempt is made to describe an offer for the future.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can someone explain to me why these incredible concept cars never really get built, even in small batches as a limited edition?

<comment><USER12> So many reasons, but the two big ones are:

1\. Cost vs Reward.

2\. Regulations.

1) Many concept cars are non-functional or only partially functional. Making them fully functional and production ready, even at prototype levels would be extremely costly.

2) Many features in concept cars are not evaluated against FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) and other standards, they are not crash tested, they may not meet EPA regulations.

There are a lot of other reasons, but they all basically boil down to cost vs reward.

\---

There is also the backwards case, where many modern "concept cars" are actually just pre-production teasers with fancy cosmetics.

Disclaimer: I work for GM, but not on concept cars, sadly =(

<comment><USER13> Are Ferrari models crash tested?

<comment><USER12> [http://blog.dupontregistry.com/news/crash-test-2-million- hyp...](http://blog.dupontregistry.com/news/crash-test-2-million-hypercar/)

[https://www.carkeys.co.uk/news/do-you-have-to-crash-test- sup...](https://www.carkeys.co.uk/news/do-you-have-to-crash-test-supercars- and-how-safe-are-they)

Yes, usually at least once. Part of the reason supercars are so expensive is that the engineering costs are only amortized over a small number of vehicles. The crash test can be considered part of that cost.

The actual incremental cost to produce a supercar is a fraction of the price tag.

In addition to official government crash tests, non-governmental groups such as IIHS also crash test mass market vehicles, but they actually have to purchase the vehicles they test - hoping to make money by selling back the information they collect. It's pretty much never cost effective for IIHS to buy supercars for crash testing.

[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings)

<comment><USER13> Interesting. The other thing I was curious about: aren't there regulations in term of maximum noise emitted by new cars? If that's the case I wonder how these supercars are roadworthy.

<comment><USER14> A bit off topic, but I've especially wondered this about large motorcycles (both superbikes and choppers). Many of those models are so incredibly loud in everyday traffic, I can't believe they passed those tests.

I mean, supercars are rare enough and usually not that loud unless you push them (I guess this could be a way to stay within regulations), but some of those bikes can drown out other noise even when accelerating normally from a stop.

<comment><USER13> They may be rare but I live close to a place with many owners of these supercars, and it's a big nuisance. My flat has a very good sound insulation and I can't hear a large truck going through the street, but I hear these supercars (and large bikes) very well.

<comment><USER15> To be honest, that sounds awesome! I'd love to be able to see and hear supercars without even having to leave my house...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The designer, Trevor Fiore, also created another great concept car, the Citroën Xenia, info and pictures here: [http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/xenia/xenia.html](http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/xenia/xenia.html)

<comment><USER17> Why does anybody need _two_ calculators on the driving wheel?[0]

0\. [http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/xenia/images/xenia12....](http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototypes/xenia/images/xenia12.jpg)

<comment><USER18> My parents had a late 80s 5 series that had something similar looking to a calculator/phone. It was used to control the computer in the car.

<comment><USER19> Mercedes used to have a "calculator" in the center console on all their models up until a few years ago.

2014 E-class: [https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/originals/97/23/d7/9723...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/originals/97/23/d7/9723d7b0476d796c5919a1692f9b6569.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Citroen always has built different and innovative cars. And they brought them to market.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_DS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_DS)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV)

A lot of their cars had pneumatic suspension and other interesting tech.

<comment><USER21> Their last great car is the C6 imho. Got to drive one for a number of long distance trips. So incredibly luxurious. Looks terrific too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Like Gibson's story "The Gernsback Continuum", I see cars like this and, I see that, for a moment, the future we dreamed of is finally coming true... then it fades back to reality, where instead we have... [http://www.caranddriver.com/bentley/bentayga](http://www.caranddriver.com/bentley/bentayga)

<comment><USER23> Yeah, there's a retro-future optimism in that car that's very attractive and playful but ultimately sad. It represents a future that "could have been".

Reminds me a little of the work by the designer Luigi Colani ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Colani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Colani)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of the good old Matra Murena! [http://petrolblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Matra-Muren...](http://petrolblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Matra-Murena-Europes-forgotten-sports-car.jpg) A french three seater although mid-engined and regular lefthand drive instead of center the look quite alike. They were built in the early 80ies as well, looks like sharing of concepts :)

<comment><USER25> Awesome car, I saw one still driving around in the south of France last year.

<comment><USER24> I owned one for almost 7 years. Great fun to drive although not as sporty as it looks, especially lack of power. The handling/cornering is just impeccable though and makes it a real good fun car which does _not_ cost a fortune

<comment><USER25> They're getting pretty rare now. I remember being glued to the window of one as a kid, mind blown about how this spaceship had landed in the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's so amazing how design trends evolve. What drew people to think about car shapes this way, why did they thing it would be "better".

A little bit later, this time by Peugeot [http://www.carstyling.ru/en/car/1988_peugeot_oxia/images/634...](http://www.carstyling.ru/en/car/1988_peugeot_oxia/images/634/)

<comment><USER27> Perhaps they were doing computer analysis of aerodynamics on machines that were only capable of modelling a few flat surfaces? A lot of '80s cars have that flat/angular/boxy styling, and I see some continuity between that and the F-117 where I know computer analysis is the reason.

<comment><USER26> I don't buy it. 60s car had rocket like shapes for the sake of aerodynamics. The flat/angled look comes from somewhere else. .. Maybe even a counter reaction to the rounded everything of the 60s / 70s.

Kinda like flat design not long ago.

<comment><USER28> In the 60's manufacturers didn't care about aerodynamics, and they made big cars with big engines and terrible mileage. After the oil crisis, car and engine sizes shrunk and aerodynamics mattered.

I do find it always very odd how ugly the late 70's until early 90's period is. Fashion, architecture, product design, even hair styles. Almost everything looks awful. It's not just fashion, because you can pick designs from any earlier period and they look ok if dated, but that 20 year period from the mid-70's onwards is just so ugly. (Although undoubtably someone will be by in a bit to tell me how wrong I am and how beautiful that period is...)

<comment><USER29> I think it's a side effect of the baby boomers. In the 50s and 60s they were young and learning the ropes, so style tended to be fairly similar to the old. By the time the 70s roll around the old guard is retiring and these designers are now free to experiment wildly. Stuffy and boring is out, flashy and exciting are in. There is a whole generation of young adults driving the market.

Then the 90s roll around and those designers are getting older and realizing that most of the experiments didn't pan out and that there is some value in the old and boring.

<comment><USER26> I do think this is one big reason. Waves of people getting to act on the world. Also I'd add another factor, society feeds on drive, and younger people are hungry by default, so new projects will benefit from having them. I can see that in all new real estate work in Paris; it's all very very weird design (too sophisticated, too shiney, discontinuous, unintegrated) that I'm pretty won't age well at all. But that's how new buildings were done.. people needed the "escape valve" of youth to let the energy flow somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There's a nice Tumblr blog about cars like this:

[https://wehickles.tumblr.com/](https://wehickles.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I would be surprised if this wasn't inspiration for the car Homer Simpson built in the episode _Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?_

</comment><comment><USER32> The central steering wheel is ... different. It's the worst of both worlds. I saw another 80s concept car which had a steering wheel that could be moved from left to right hand side, presumably for people who very frequently cross the Channel.

<comment><USER33> Ha I remember that, and i remember that tomorrows world (or whatever show it was) was mind blown by it. 2/3 of the piece was about how the steering wheel moves. I recall the car looked pretty nice at the time though.

<comment><USER33> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY1Ka1BlNwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY1Ka1BlNwQ)

I think this was it! OK, it looks terrible, but at the time it looked amazing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Somewhat reminiscent of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_DMC-12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_DMC-12) which actually made it into (limited) production.

</comment><comment><USER35> Surprised to find Dutch text at the bottom of an English site about a French car.

<comment><USER36> It's all Indo-European. What's a few vowel shifts between friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Reminiscent of the Countach ([https://assets.hemmings.com/blog/wp- content/uploads//2014/08...](https://assets.hemmings.com/blog/wp- content/uploads//2014/08/1974LamborghiniCountach_01_1280.jpg)) and Lotus Elise ([http://momentcar.com/images/lotus- esprit-1980-9.jpg](http://momentcar.com/images/lotus-esprit-1980-9.jpg)).

<comment><USER38> That's a Lotus Espirit, not an Elise.

<comment><USER37> Ah, apologies; confirmation by Google SERP was my ruination!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Being from Brazil where Citroen has decent market presence, it saddens me that I can't buy them here in the US. They have such nice-looking, modern vehicles, and I would love to be able to buy them in the US. Same goes for other french manufacturers like Peugeot. I used to drive a 207 during grad school. Loved that little car.

<comment><USER40> Both are slated to return to the US market, with limited models and over the nex few years. Time will tell, but both have announced plans to do so.

<comment><USER41> There is an individual in the NYC area who has managed to acquire and register (get NY plates for) a late-model Citroen C6, which was to my great disappointment never officially imported to the US. Very, very jealous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Good find. Looks like a good amount of the interior ergonomics did make it to production cars: it reminds me a lot of the early 90s Citroen BX. Very similar steering wheel, wrap around buttons on the driver's binnacle. And the hydropneumatoc suspension of course - a Citroen signature and a brilliant piece of engineering.

</comment><comment><USER43> Meanwhile, I'm STILL waiting for someone to build Gordon Murray's T.25 / T.27 3-seater cars. Last I checked, Shell bought the idea & rebranded it to "Project M" [http://shell.com/projectm](http://shell.com/projectm)

</comment><comment><USER44> "alfa can I copy your work?"

"yes but don't make it obvious"

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

<comment><USER45> Straight lines ruled back then:

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

<comment><USER44> that 70s retro futuristic style [https://it.pinterest.com/soulgarage/70-s-architecture/?lp=tr...](https://it.pinterest.com/soulgarage/70-s-architecture/?lp=true)

<comment><USER45> Let's hope it's a long time before that comes back in style again.

<comment><USER46> 100% disagree, I think those houses look amazing. The brutalism ones aren't always my thing, but that second house (labeled 70's prefab) looks great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why cant i buy this? You can buy a i8 today- but you cant, why?

</comment><comment><USER48> The exterior makes no sense, it's like a kid building a lego car. The interior is pretty rad though.

</comment><comment><USER49> Engine before the front axis, making the engine weight work against the rear- axis, ouch! That's a recipe for poor driving dynamics.

This could have legs as an EV though.

<comment><USER29> Just like most Audis? One has the feeling that Audi would mount the engine in front of the headlights if they could get away with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Straight from a sci-fi movie.

</comment><comment><USER51> That instrument cluster!

</comment><comment><USER52> When people talk about electric cars.. this is what I picture.. ..Where's my hover-board dude?</comment>


Google - A company in mid Life Crises... really? - <AUTHOR> http://nainomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-company-in-mid-life-crises.html

<comment><USER2> I am quite amazed at this PLAGIARISM that you are doing on your blog. Why is it so hard to simply give us (here on HN) a link to the original article which is actually: [http://www.slideshare.net/beingpractical/google-in-its- midli...](http://www.slideshare.net/beingpractical/google-in-its-midlife- crisis) ?

Why do you have to copy the entire article on your blog word for word and then give us a link to your blog? Adsense-greedy?

I asked you the same question in a different thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283447> but you simply deleted your thread instead of giving a proper response and attribution to the proper article.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have given Link to the original post in the first line itself. Read the first line which says- "PJ posted last friday"

Moreover I was trying to put my counter point on that article.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. I took this post in bad faith as well after you went ahead and deleted your thread in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283447> instead of replying to my comment.

Yes, this post does have attribution but I still doubt whether you have the permission from the original author to copy entire content word for word in your blog. You usually need a license from the original author to do that kind of a thing.

A better way to do this could be to quote only some interesting parts or only those parts from the original post against which you want to present a counterpoint. That might be reasonable as per "fair use".

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, i get the point. Will always keep in mind. Thanks Susam sir

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think, Google has been playing rather well. For so long, it was more of a loosely connected free services rather than a single ecosystem that seamlessly work together. There was nothing, for the most parts, preventing any person from moving to a different third-party service [of all the services that Google offers] rather than using Google's services. I don't think Google bothered for so long because it had no reason to. Whether people use Google's services or any other services, Google will make money either way using adsense and adwords. Now the situation is changing, and changing very fast.

Google+ is not just about another social network, I believe it will be the soul of all the services that Google offers. Most of the services that Google offers worked pretty much independently. Except the Google logo at some corner of the site, there was n't much of a similarity in any of those services. The result is a mess. Google+ unifies all these services like never before. Social networking comes much later, I believe. Google is at an advantage over other companies, if it plays well. Facebook/twitter can let users share with their friends. Google can let users share, work and collaborate with their friends. Sharing in every form conceivable - sms, voice, image, blog, book, document, presentation, video, music, app, you-name-it.

Now for the problems that it faces, the biggest problem was with the platform that they were betting on. For long, Google's motto was - anything good for internet is good for google. That's no longer the case, and it won't be going forward. They were pretty successful for the most parts because they bet on open platform, and the reason for present crisis also seems to be because of the same. Google is no longer the internet [they never were but don't take it literally], and not everything that happens on internet benefits google. Facebook has an advantage here given all the businesses that they have signed up to use FB OpenGraph. However, they still have their own issues. If Google acts smart, Google+ has pretty good chance of being successful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a cousin who is 12, him and his friends have been kept off of facebook by virtue of their parents being there. Every single person in his age group is on Google+. Are there any demographic breakdowns of the g+ users anywhere? I am interested to know if this anecdote is just that, or if it represents a larger trend.

<comment> guard-of-terra If there would be one then it would be affected by observing since Google will close those profiles of 12 years olds. Thus snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Over years, Google is struggling with innovation.

They're having problems with execution, too. The Google Talk/Google Voice rollout/rollback/merger/turfwar/clusterf*ck is a classic display of big- company ineptitude. It's like something you'd expect from the online services of a Japanese consumer-electronics giant.

<comment><USER6> You are forgetting Google Buzz/Wave/Knoll, services that are shut down after launching with a lot of fanfare. Now days every time Google launches a new service I am not sure whether that service will be around for another year or so.

Except search I have lost faith in Google to solve my problems with new services. Google's main aim seems to be to serve ads. All the services they have launched for free is to serve more ads. They copy popular services to serve more ads, make it free, and kill competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe that Google is politely asking for permission through Google+ to share what it already knows with external entities.

What do you think of the Google+ strategy?

</comment><comment><USER3> Related to platforms, I think Google still lacks the clear vision that Apple seems to have. Within next few years, one can watch movies, listen to music, browse internet, read books, play games, respond to mails, be in touch with friends, work on docs, spreadsheets, etc., using either iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV [if anything new gets released], MacBook, and Mac Desktop. Most of these are already possible, but what I am talking about is complete interoperability, while still having the same experience of using the specific device. I believe, Apple will work closely with the app developers to make their applications even more portable across the various devices that Apple builds. With Microsoft gearing up for Windows 8, they also seem to have similar future in mind. I did n't come across any such plans from Google. I believe, Google would be at a disadvantage if they don't have a similar full encompassing ecosystem. And I don't see ChromeBook getting significant market share anytime soon [if at all].

</comment><comment><USER8> The reason why Google is already facing mid-life crises is that the pace of innovation has sped up so much. It used to be that a company could build something like Google and sit on its laurels for 20 years. IBM was the undisputed king for at least 50 years, and Microsoft was king for about 20.

The problem is not other search engines, but disruptive innovation that makes search engines obsolete. And this disruptive innovation seems to decrease its cycle time by about 50% each generation. So after Google has been the leader for <10 years, they are already worried about something new coming along and knocking them off their perch. And I think that fear is justified.

<comment><USER9> > The problem is not other search engines, but disruptive innovation that > makes search engines obsolete.

Can you elaborate on what these innovations are? I cannot think of any. Or are you talking about a theoretical future problem?

<comment><USER10> When I've heard this argument, most people talk about Siri.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> recently there was an article about this comparing between email service and social media. Does anyone has that link?

<comment><USER12> s/their/there ??

<comment><USER11> my apologies. thanks for pointing out. I'm not so good at english.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds about right - average lifespan of an S&P 500 company is now ~15 years.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this is one of the most detailed and well written articles I've ever read on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER15> you make some good points, but most of this is just uninformed opinions on various google products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Uninformed opinions on various google products.

Can you give an example?

<comment><USER16> You seem to have a strong opinion on Google+, yet you don't understand the 'grand' concept of Google+.

What Google is trying to do with Google+ is take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords. Google wants to integrate Google+ into all of it's products, starting with Youtube and give all the Google products a uniform experience. I'm flabbergasted that you have a problem with this since this is the main goal for Apple. (I assume that you have Apple products, since you talk in such lengths and positive manner of Siri) Google+ is also not about a social graph, it's about doing social media the right, natural way.

You also don't understand how Adwords works when you talk about Siri. A 'click' is a hit to the page, be it a click, enter, wget, or voice search of Siri. So searches in Google with Siri will earn Google money. Also iOS uses Google Maps as it's map application so Siri uses Google Maps, you just don't see it.

A last inaccuracy: "Don't try to do something in everything. Rather focus on doing everything in something." This would be exactly why Google has been stopping so many of it's products.

Next to these points there is a whole lot of stuff that you are simply wrong about.

Edit: changed positivism to a correct use of words

<comment><USER14> """What Google is trying to do with Google+ is take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords. Google wants to integrate Google+ into all of it's products, starting with Youtube and give all the Google products a uniform experience."""

Which part of the article gives you the impression that the author doesn't understand that? He _specifically_ calls this integration, and his problem is that it is done badly.

"""I'm flabbergasted that you have a problem with this since this is the main goal for Apple."""

Wait what? Apple goal is to "take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords."????

Even if you replace adwords with something else, like iAds, this doesn't make sense.

"""(I assume that you have Apple products, since you talk in such lengths and positivism of Siri) Google+ is also not about a social graph, it's about doing social media the right, natural way."""

In what way is Google+ more "natural" than Facebook?

Also, "positivism": you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

"""You also don't understand how Adwords works when you talk about Siri. A 'click' is a hit to the page, be it a click, enter, wget, or voice search of Siri. So searches in Google with Siri will earn Google money."""

No, they wont. This doesn't even make sense. For one, Siri could bypass Google altogether --the user is using primarily Siri, not Google, so the results could come from anywhere.

Second, even if Google is queried, Siri hides the Google results page and just returns the appropriate result as a spoken list. Do you really believe people would pay if their ads are now shown to the end user?

"""Also iOS uses Google Maps as it's map application so Siri uses Google Maps, you just don't see it."""

I'd guess the author is well aware of this. Are you aware that Apple has bough a mapping company and is looking to integrate its own maps in a future iOS release?

<comment><USER16> I tried writing my remarks as short as possible, it seems that it caused some problems. I'll try to correct them in a lengthier way =P

"Which part of the article gives you the impression that the author doesn't understand that?" The writer does not see any advantages of the integration of the Google search engine in Google+. I'm sadly forced to understand that he fails to get the idea behind it. Searching in shared posts in Google+ is one of the key features that Google+ has over Facebook and other social networks since it will let you simply search for "that interesting site my friend shared with me last month" instead of going through his posts manually.

My second point was cleared up by true_religion, thanks for that.

Google+ is more natural because of it's Circle system. You don't broadcast all your interesting findings to everyone you know, you tell it to the select group of people who might be interested, just like in real-life. Next to that, as said before, you can search the posts and shares in Google+. You can also see your profile in the point of view of others on the web, in your circles. This makes setting up your profile a lot more natural and easy.

I have to admit that "positivism" is indeed the wrong word. I stand corrected and I'll change it.

"No, they wont. This doesn't even make sense. For one, Siri could bypass Google altogether" Then where will Siri get the results? Siri can't pull them out of thin air, they have to come out of a search engine and if Apple values the "magical" experience of it's users then they should use Google. The user is using Siri as a GUI that takes the Google results and speaks them out. But the results need to come from somewhere.

"I'd guess the author is well aware of this. Are you aware that Apple has bough a mapping company and is looking to integrate its own maps in a future iOS release?" I'm aware of the "3D"gimmick (it's nice to have 3D, but I would prefer to look where I'm driving/walking/cycling) that they bought and the mapping company they bought. But I think that is a bad move, since Apple would then be inventing the wheel again, only to disconnect themselves from Google maps. If Apple is willing to pump so much money into collecting data of roads and buildings all over the world, then they would have set up their own carrier. Since the cost of starting your own carrier is peanuts compared to photographing the entire world.

I hope this made things a bit more clear.

<comment><USER14> """I hope this made things a bit more clear."""

Yeah, much clearer. Here are my remarks:

"""Searching in shared posts in Google+ is one of the key features that Google+ has over Facebook and other social networks since it will let you simply search for "that interesting site my friend shared with me last month" instead of going through his posts manually."""

Maybe, but that would be trivial for Facebook to add. It's not like full-text search is rocket technology. And in this domain, PageRank is not even needed.

"""Google+ is more natural because of it's Circle system. You don't broadcast all your interesting findings to everyone you know, you tell it to the select group of people who might be interested, just like in real-life. """

Yeah, that's nice. But does it bother people using Facebook? I don't see it. Also Facebook added some similar features lately.

"""Then where will Siri get the results? Siri can't pull them out of thin air, they have to come out of a search engine and if Apple values the "magical" experience of it's users then they should use Google."""

Not necessarily. There are better sources than Google for a lot of stuff Siri caters for. For example, Siri already uses Wolfram Alpha for math, stock, general information related searches. Apple could provide its own dictionary searches, wikipedia searches, it's own map data for location searches, use the iTunes DB for music and lyrics searches, IMDB for movie times and movie/actor info, Amazon et al for shopping, travelocity of something for airplane tickets, etc covering a lot of ground query-wise. And they could also switch to Bing in a heartbeat. You get the idea.

"""But I think that is a bad move, since Apple would then be inventing the wheel again, only to disconnect themselves from Google maps."""

No, they won't invent the wheel, they bought a company that has already invented and made one. And it only makes sense to disconnected from Google Maps, a service by a competitor mobile OS vendor, that could even cut them off of it altogether when he wishes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It really bothers me when people post their opinions as facts -- citations needed.

<comment><USER14> It really bothers me when people

a) fail to see the "rants" in the byline of the article blog

b) fail to read the "Below are my views on what I believe are the 10 biggest challenges Google is facing" part on the article intro

c) confuse an blog post (and a fine one at that) with some research paper or encyclopedia article and ask for citations

d) cannot differentiate between (well presented) _arguments_ (such as those in the article) and _opinions_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Me: ... You: Seriously? Really? Seriously? Seriously? Really? Really? Me: ... You: ... Really? Seriously? Seriously?

Are you this stupid? Jersey Shore fans, please stop.</comment>


SwitchURLs – Landing Page Uptime Monitor and Paid Traffic Redirect - <AUTHOR> SwitchURLs offers real-time website outage mitigation - a breakthrough in advertising campaign automation. SwitchURLs SaaS platform offers media buyers peace of mind in automating their advertising campaigns automatic redirection whenever a website is unreachable or loading too slow for effectively converting visitors into users or shoppers.<p>SwitchURLs was created in a way that insures it's always watching over your website, so you won't have to. Even if you're sleeping, busy, or on a plane - we got this, you'll never lose a click. https://switchurls.com <comment><AUTHOR> [https://switchurls.com](https://switchurls.com)</comment>


Why A/B testing will loose against advanced AI, all the time - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ustoll/why-a-b-testing-will-loose-against-advanced-ai-all-the-time-c14fc99cf78c#.6ujpgdbpg <comment><USER2> Lot of words, not a singe real use case. Do they have a working prototype? Is the AI better than humans?

The idea of A/B testing is that humans are not good judging which version is better, so the only solution is to run an experiment, so in many cases you will get better results with an A/B test.

And there are also variations where the split is not constant, like the mutiarmed bandit. If A/B test is better or worse than multiarmed bandit is also a good flamewar topic.

<comment><USER3> Regarding that last bit: You will clearly get better results by using A/B tests than by having humans take a guess as to what works best – but as you already pointed out, those are not the only two possibilities. Different varieties of mutli-armed/contextual/etc. bandits, and then the new wave of reinforcement learning tricks (i.e. AI) are much better suited to the problem.

(Full disclosure: I didn't write the article, but I am the CTO of the company that the article is about.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would argue that A/B testing is close to it's end for 99% of it's current business applications. Right now there is a very limitied range of AI products that aim to replace A/B testing, but that will change soon enough.</comment>


Clever techniques to make jumping feel better in platformer games - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DavesInHisPants/status/1281189581161988098 <comment><USER2> Great info for those of us who enjoy working on platformers. That's said I still have a lot of fondness for the unforgiving 80s style game mechanics where the jump and the approach has to be timed just so. Miner Willy series games being the prime example.</comment>


SSH Escape Sequences - <AUTHOR> https://lonesysadmin.net/2011/11/08/ssh-escape-sequences-aka-kill-dead-ssh-sessions/ <comment><USER2> Also remember that if you are sshing to a box (call it A) and then ssh-ing from there to another box (call it B) and you want to close the connection to B then you need to use "~~." SSH on your local computer will see "~~" and will send a single "~" to A. A will see "~." and close the connection to B.

Basically, however deep you are you need to send that many ~s before the period.

<comment><USER3> _Basically, however deep you are you need to send that many ~s before the period._

Isn't it exponential? To escape ~, you need ~~. To escape ~~, you need <comment>~. To escape <comment>~, you need <comment><comment>~~. Etc.

<comment><USER4> The escape sequence for Telnet, however, was exponential. This lead to the Telnet Song, by Guy Steele, a link to which was once posted on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060597)

Note that the "up arrow" referred to in the song is not the current up arrow on the cursor keypad. Some early versions of ASCII-ish had an up arrow where the caret is now. And telnet actually mostly used control-], not control-^ anyway. I seem to recall Steele saying that he used "up arrow" because it worked better in the lyrics. I heard Steele sing this once and I think I recorded it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that! Do you remember how many repetitions were used in your recording?

<comment><USER4> I don't, but it's at least three, as I recall. Beyond that and you tend to lose your place and forget how many to sing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I often use ~C (to open the ssh command prompt) and type (e.g.) "-L 80:localhost:8000" to set up forwarding via the same ssh session.

<comment><USER7> I wrote a small utility that allows you to create these forwardings through multiple hosts.

[https://github.com/mpfz0r/sshdrill](https://github.com/mpfz0r/sshdrill)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really don't like that this requires the first key to be Enter.

In the edge-case scenario of a glitchy link that appears frozen, it's entirely possible that my Enter keypress might actually make it through and then do something I don't want.

I've had mouse and keyboard input get through to seemingly-frozen VNC sessions, so...

<comment><USER9> _cough_ accidently sending half-pasted gibberish to IRC.

<comment><USER10> My most frequently posted line in IRC is

      :wq

<comment><USER11> Try switching to

        ZZ

Doesn't require a CR and therefore less likely to be submitted accidentally.

<comment><USER10> I'm aware of ZZ and use it occasionally, but I can't get my muscle memory from "occasionally" to "consistently".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that these only work at the beginning of a "line", so you may have to hit enter before the tilde.

<comment><USER13> And if your terminal state is hosed by a crashed cursor-addressing (curses) program, you may have to use ^J instead of Enter.

<comment><USER14> Are you sure? I never noticed that. As an experiment, I did this in an ssh session from macOS to OpenBSD:

        stty raw; cat

... and while every key I tried now had its literal effect, including enter producing only a carriage return and Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V etc. producing their control characters (I think, I cannot see them :) ), <enter>~. still terminated the connection. Lucky terminal combination maybe?

<comment><USER13> Hmm, I just tried it with stty raw and you're right.

It has happened to me though. Maybe a curses crash can leave it a state other than raw? One of the other modes such as inlcr plus ..? Also I suspect smart terminals and shells prevent a interactive session from getting too crazy.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, come to think of it, it wouldn't really surprise me if some weird terminal state swaps ^J and ^M or something.

Edit: Oh, you mentioned that yourself already, inlcr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Others have mentioned that this is of course in the manual for OpenSSH. I recommend the _Escape sequences_ section of the HP/UX manual for rlogin as useful reading, not least because it explains things that the OpenSSH manual does not, and actually answers questions brought up in discussion on this very page.

* [http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/HP-UX/man1/rlogin.1.html](http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/HP-UX/man1/rlogin.1.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I learned this unexpectedly: I run ipmitool on a bastion host, and it uses similar sequences, like ~., to terminate a Serial over LAN session. I've had to remember to key ~~. so that the first tilde is able to get through to ipmitool.

<comment><USER17> Omg thank you. Same exact use case and I can't believe I didn't realize this.

<comment><USER13> It's not as bad as it use to be. In the old days you might do many telnets to get where you want.

Sing the Telnet song!

[http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00222.html](http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00222.html)

<comment><USER14> Speaking of telnet, that protocol was actually much richer and had many more features than it would seem at a casual look.

I learned that when implementing a tiny part of the telnet protocol in a retro computer emulator's serial port emulation routines, mostly just to enable character mode and proper (non-)echoing. (I also implemented the RS232 control lines, so that telnet'ing into the port actually behaved like a physical terminal would with respect to carrier detect and all that, but I think there wasn't any overlap with the telnet protocol itself. Maybe flow control.)

<comment><USER18> See also the even older SUPDUP protocol (RFC 734¹), which I understand had even more features.

1\. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc734](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc734)

<comment><USER19> I wrote a terminal emulator for the Apple ][ + Videx 80 column card in FORTH and reverse polish notation 6502 code, that supported SUPDUP including the line saving protocol that RMS hacked into ITS and EMACS (%TDSAV %TDRES), so Emacs could stash lines on the screen in a memory buffer (on the Apple's bank switched RAM card) and restore them later to paint the screen quickly when scrolling back and forth. (That was great at 300 baud!)

This is just the part of it that interprets SUPDUP codes -- layered on top of the rest of the terminal emulator that emulated H19 (VT52 + character/line insert/delete):

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/forth/supdup.f](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/forth/supdup.f)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On my keyboard layout tilde is a dead key that requires three keypresses, so the usual disconnection command with the appropriate precautions is usually something like this:

Esc Esc Esc Ctrl-U Ctrl-C Enter AltGr-] Space .

OpenSSH lets you map EscapeChar to something more convenient, but it doesn't allow multibyte characters.

<comment><USER10> > it doesn't allow multibyte characters

Someone should make a patch. I want to use :hankey: as the EscapeChar.

EDIT: Apparently HN swallows emojis. I can see why.

<comment><USER20> If your keyboard layout had pile of poo where your tilde key currently is, you would not be joking. The problem is that even Latin-based international layouts have quite a few characters that don't fit in the ASCII range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> unkown-unknowns I come across these once a year or so on the net but when I need them I never can remember them because it's not so often that I need them

<comment><USER21> Fortunately you only need to remember ~? since it tells you the rest.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, ~? is two characters too many for me to remember a year later :|

<comment><USER14> Do you never have to terminate a stuck session? <enter>~. to do so is practically muscle memory. The other sequences I cannot remember either, since their frequency of use is several orders less for me, but ~? is pretty intuitive to find out.

<comment><USER23> Not the OP but I generally don't need to use <enter>~. because I have my terminal multiplexed in tmux so will kill the tmux pane rather than OpenSSH session.

The main reason I prefer to kill via tmux rather than OpenSSH is because sometimes I'll be connected several sessions deep (eg via a Bastian / SSH jumpbox or tmux itself might be running remotely) so the tmux kill is easier than having to remember whether I need to ~. or ~~.

But ultimate there is no right nor wrong way to do things here, it's all just a question of preference and habit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is one of those things like discovering ^r that's going to change my life.

</comment><comment><USER25> This page takes ~5s to load if JS from cdn.ampproject.com is blocked...

<comment><USER26> So don't block it? You can expect a broken browsing experience if you purposely break your browser.

<comment><USER27> This page is more broken than usual, so it's still interesting. Regardless of you snide remark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I always wanted a serial transfer available from this escape so I could drop into sftp mode or kermit/xmodem/zmodem files over inside of the same session.

There are actually _more_ things supported by ssh than are exposed here (clone and stuff) but just not implemented in openssh's ssh client.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am sad to say how often I've used ~. to close an SSH session because I entered an `ls -latr` command on a really huge directory. Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+\ would not halt the output, and it was faster to just terminate the session and come back in than wait for the output to finish.

</comment><comment><USER30> I spend quite some time in ssh sessions and have learned that "Enter~." terminates a connection when it gets unresponsive, but I never bothered to understand it. This actually explains it.

</comment><comment><USER31> How is this SSH escape sequences when it's actually OpenSSH escape sequences?

They look neat though, better than having to restart the session to forward ports. Too bad it doesn't work in PuTTY.

<comment><USER32> They work in mobaXterm.

<comment><USER33> Which AFAIK uses a cygwin build of OpenSSH, the only non-cygwin builds are the main GUI, maybe some helper tools, and the X11 Server. The commandline is a cygwin busybox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's in the manpage.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, who of us reads every manpage for every command that they use? (And I mean _reading_ , not just skimming.)

I mean, it's a good practice to read manpages every now and then, just to learn new stuff (in the same way that there are always new vim commands to learn). But we encounter so many comands with so many options that knowing all of the options is just implausible.

<comment><USER34> This topic has a whole section in the manpage, though. It's not easy to miss even if just skimming, because of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Non-AMP version:

[https://lonesysadmin.net/2011/11/08/ssh-escape-sequences- aka...](https://lonesysadmin.net/2011/11/08/ssh-escape-sequences-aka-kill- dead-ssh-sessions/)

<comment><USER36> What's wrong with the AMP version?

<comment><USER37> Aside from the common dislike for AMP centralising everything on Google's servers, I also dislike AMP links for the same reason I dislike mobile links to sites when I'm using a desktop PC.

The AMP versions usually lose formatting and links, and are designed to be read on a small mobile screen. I'd rather have the full version when I have a big screen available.

<comment><USER26> Did you even click the link? It's not hosted on Google's server and it looks great. Much less clutter than the non-AMP version, and loads faster as well of course.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The H.264 Debacle: We're Complaining to the Wrong People - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/23273/The_H_264_Debacle_We_re_Complaining_to_the_Wrong_People

<comment><USER3> This is complete nonsense.

Read this instead: [http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg- whatwg.org/2009-Jun...](http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg- whatwg.org/2009-June/020620.html)

Straight from the horses mouth, that is the state of HTML5 video and why we got there. The posted article is built on the idea that HTML5 requires H.264 when that is not the case at all. The spec does not specify a codec for use on the video tag, just as it doesn't for the img tag.

More importantly, the authors claim "we can cut to the chase and try to get the HTML5 spec fixed--in which case the commercial vendors would have to fix their implementations in order to be considered compliant." is bogus as well. The spec is a delicate balance. If something is spec'd out, but major vendors are not going to implement it, then you have accomplished nothing by putting it in the spec, and in fact, the spec actually harmful at that point because people will believe it is implemented correctly. The spec is only useful insofar as it is a set of things that all the players can agree to implement.

I do recommend reading through the email I linked to, in it Ian Hixie, by responding to emails he received, lays out a lot of the thinking that guided the making of the spec.

<comment><USER4> The link is good, but you repeat the highly misleading claim that video shouldn't specify a codec because img tag doesn't specify an image format.

If that's the case then why did Hixie spec an interoperable codec in the first place? I think the answer is obvious when you count the number and quality of competing, royalty-free image formats that uphold the basic principles of the web versus the number and quality of competing, royalty-free video codecs.

Claiming that not specifying a codec will lead to anything other than a de- facto standard of the non-royalty free H.264 is ridiculously, shockingly disingenuous. It's just shady lawyering to claim that pushing for a codec, that by its very nature can't be in the spec, and having its rivals removed from the spec, is anything other than the equivalent of having it in the spec.

<comment><USER3> I never said that the spec should not specify a video codec, I was just trying to set the record straight. In fact, I didn't claim anything about the spec at all, I just summarized some of Hixie's points. If you aren't satisfied with what I wrote, I recommend reading Hixie's words. Please let me know if I misrepresented him. And, I disagree that not having it in the spec is the equivalent of having it in the spec. The problem is that the spec is useless when, as Hixie puts it, it becomes fiction. Mandating either Theora _or_ H.264 in the spec would have been useless because either Firefox/Opera would be violating the spec or Safari/IE would be. So the only option left to them was to leave it out of the spec, something that Hixie was not happy about but seems like the right thing to do. If a codec comes along that all the vendors can agree to implement, then it is likely that will go into the spec, but until then it will remain blank.

<comment><USER4> I agree with Hixie that putting it in the spec is pointless if Apple and Microsoft are going to go against the spec.

I disagree that just by forcing the spec to be changed from requiring Theora that Apple and Microsoft now get off the hook for their actions.

You said, repeating an often made claim, _The spec does not specify a codec for use on the video tag, just as it doesn't for the img tag._ Which is factually correct _now_ , after Apple refused to implement the spec as it was and Hixie edited the spec to reflect reality. Hixie claims he will add a codec back, once one is found suitable, which means both royalty-free and implemented by the big players.

You appear to have done it by accident, but you'll find comments elsewhere in the thread that make the argument that he has no right to specify any codec in HTML5, whether Theora or a future royalty-free codec, and make the parallel to the img tag not specifying an image format. This is clearly not Hixie's position, and I don't think it generally holds any water.

<comment><USER5> >I agree with Hixie that putting it in the spec is pointless if Apple and Microsoft are going to go against the spec.

I disagree.

The spec should enable the web to be used unencumbered by patented software/codecs.

Ogg Theora or any other free+open container and codec (VP8?) would enable people to use FOSS software to create video and put that video on the web without being beholden to the H264 patent holders group ("MPEG LA").

Microsoft or Apple Computers or whoever would then be required to implement a viewer in their browser in order to comply with the spec. If they don't then they don't get to label themselves "standards compliant" without committing fraud and can't badge themselves with W3C compliance without trademark/copyright infringements.

If Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, etc., implement the full spec this applies pressure to obstinate commercial megoliths to also move to implement it.

What we have here is akin to knowing that the GIF patent situation (Unisys trying to get money from nearly everyone on the internet) is around the corner, already having PNG but not requiring that browsers implement PNG.

I think the situation is far worse than the GIF situation though, eg [http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Vid...](http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG- LA) . Now [http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/know-your- rights-h-264-pa...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/know-your- rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you/) Engadget did a review of the situation in which the MPEG-LA say that they're not really going to hold their license terms (which mean that you can't shoot film on _any_ camera and use it commercially without purchasing a license) against people and basically they're really nice and we shouldn't be afraid of them. Which I agree, we have nothing to fear until the spec is widely implemented and the open license on H264 gets pulled out from under everyone in 2015 and MPEG-LA attempt to pull a Unisys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lively discussion, but most seem to miss the fact that the spec did require Theora (though not exclusively, just as a baseline to ensure interoperability) and Apple, with a little help from Nokia, had it removed from the spec because they refused to implement it.

So if Apple aren't the right people to complain to, I don't know who is. (Probably if Microsoft had implemented Theora then it would have been added back to the spec, as Apple would have been in a clear minority then, so complain to them too).

<comment><USER6> The working group tasked with creating HTML5 has a charter that defines what are they supposed to work on and deliver. The codec of the content served through the video tag is outside of the scope defined in said charter. Apple, among others, have argued only that. What Microsoft could have done might have had impact on the outcome of h.264 vs. Theora, but it would not have changed the HTML5 specification.

<comment><USER4> Can you actually point to Apple arguing that about the charter scope? I recall them arguing that Theora was not efficient enough, that it didn't have sufficient hardware support, that it had patent issues and probably a few other arguments. I don't remember them ever making that specific point about the HTML5 charter.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately I cannot off the cuff cite a source (if I find one I'll add a link to it, though). I can tell you the context in which I came across this. A couple of months ago there was a story that Adobe were "sabotaging" HTML5 - <USER2> reality it was Larry Masinter, Adobe's representative in the HTML WG, arguing that the canvas API falls outside of the charter of the working group. In one of the blogposts in defense of Adobe's position the author quoted similar objections that Apple and Microsoft have made regarding <audio> and <video> codec support when HTML5 was still in transition from WHATWG to W3C.

Apple have most certainly expressed concerns about Theora's performance and patent situation and I'm sure they still have them. However, those concerns were pertinent when HTML5 was being developed by WHATWG, because WHATWG are not limiting the scope of any work they do. That's not the case with W3C's HTML WG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> W3C is in no way, shape or form "allowing H.264 to infiltrate its way". The HTML5 spec does not require or endorse h.264 or any other codec. Opera's, and Mozilla's I believe, attempt to sneak a codec requirement in the spec (Theora) was shot down, and rightly so, because it falls outside of the scope of HTML5, just as the encoding of image files displayed through the img tag is outside of its scope.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> """The fact is, the W3C is violating its own principles by allowing H.264 to infiltrate its way into the next HTML spec."""

I think this is a very valid point, w3c is suppose to promote open tools for the web of consumers and authors regardless their technology. A patented tool does not promote this.

<comment><USER7> Within W3C's mission statement ( <http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission> ), this is not mentioned. Can you provide a reference to back up this claim? (that is, that W3C is supposed to promote open tools or would violate any of its principles by not requiring to support any particular video encoding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Horse shit.

If the spec forbade "the" codec, the offending vendors will simply _violate_ the spec and claim some kind of justification for it.

Yes, we're complaining to the wrong people. No, going to the W3C is not the answer.

I tend to think that if we can get people to stop _using_ h.264 for _anything_ , then freer codecs could gain traction - particularly On2's (now Google's) VP8.

Or, taking the bigger perspective, we should be complaining to the US Congress: patents are the problem, not Microsoft's choice in codecs. If there were no patents to license, this wouldn't be an issue at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> The real fix would be to abolish software patents, and with it, the licences.</comment>


Goo.gl shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/31/17184164/google-alphabet-url-shortening-service-closed <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not add firebase features and upgrade the whole service while maintaining backward compatibility?

Anyway I don't think this URL shortening service by Google was popular</comment>


117M LinkedIn email addresses and passwords put up for sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-awareness/117-million-linkedin-email-addresses-and-passwords-put-up-for-sale/ <comment><USER2> Should probably be noted that this is from the 2012 hack, not a newer one

<comment><USER3> Apparently the source is the 2012 hack, but the release back in 2012 was only 6.5 million accounts. I think this is the first time we are seeing the breach was actually ~20x larger than originally reported.

Since the hashing is so weak (unsalted single SHA1) this is a bit of a gold mine for password researchers and crackers building better dictionaries.</comment></comment>


Coupa S-1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1385867/000119312516705441/d144637ds1.htm <comment><USER2> 10 year old company, raised $165M in 7 rounds and now wants $75M more from the public. I'm guessing full ratchets are part of some of those private rounds and the news will shock employees when the IPO.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those wondering WTF is a Coupa, like I was: "Coupa is a cloud-based spend management software company located in San Mateo, California". Still wondering why is this on HN front page though.</comment>


Tumor Specific Immune Receptors Computationally Identifiable - <AUTHOR> http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/79/7/1671.short?rss=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. The immune system is known to participate in a cancer response. With DNA sequencing, we can sequence the immune receptors in a tumor. From each tissue sample, we get a _set_ of immune receptor sequences.

In this study, we compare immune receptor sequences from tumor tissue to adjacent healthy tissue. Using "Multiple Instance Learning" we perform machine learning on the sets of immune receptor sequences to identify immune receptors that may be involved in the cancer response.

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

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting. Can you summarize (for laypeople) what this potentially means for cancer treatment? And how that would be better than current state- of-the-art treatments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we are focused on diagnosing cancer earlier and identifying the most effective treatment options. Generally speaking, the earlier a cancer is detected, the better the chances of survival.

This study demonstrates that we can distinguish tumor tissue from healthy tissue based on the immune receptors present in the tissue. Our hope is that we can then search for tumor specific immune receptors to determine if a patient has cancer, perhaps before a patient shows symptoms. In fact, we are working on this right now

<comment><USER3> How can you determine whether a patient has cancer before they show symptoms, if you require a tissue sample? I would expect people only get tumors biopsied after they realize they have one?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are currently in the process of checking if we can find disease signatures in easier to access tissue like blood

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep reading about various targetted immunotherapy papers with such amazing potential.

It would seem our entire medical establishment is just waiting for simple pills to come out of it, whereas the real "cure" for cancer would seem to be something like a production version of this.

An organized labor pipeline of testing/sequencing of the patient, computational analysis of the specific expression, to specific cancer therapy targeted to the specific cancer case's biochemistry. It wouldn't be cheap, but given the cost of drugs, it could still be efficiently delivered for a similar cost, especially in managed health care systems.

Of course over time, "templates" of therapies for classes of cancer gene expressions would converge. That would be ongoing optimization/efficiency.

But I have no confidence the American health system would deviate from its culture of one size fits all pill pushing or nothing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting work. The clonal frequency of the TCRs was included in the model. Tumours often have more clonal TCRs, whereas normal tissues generally do not, so I would imagine this would be an important feature (in fact including the TCRB prevalence gave better predictions than the 4-mer prevalence for breast cancer). Can't see in the paper that they ran the model without the frequency feature, or even ran it with just the frequency feature. Building a very simple model probably would have been a more salient comparator than shuffling the labels.

</comment><comment><USER6> This sounds very interesting!

Can you explain why the tools/data to reproduce the research generally don't get to github?

It looks like machine learning improvements could be made by people who don't have lab access as well.

Is it some legal / financial reason, or just it's not common in biological research?

</comment><comment><USER7> > Immune repertoire deep sequencing allows comprehensive characterization of > antigen receptor–encoding genes in a lymphocyte population. [...] In this > study, we developed statistical classifiers of T-cell receptor (TCR) > repertoires that distinguish tumor tissue from patient-matched healthy > tissue of the same organ.

It might be worth noting for those not familiar with the ins and outs of the immune system that (and i'm remembering this from an undergraduate degree almost twenty years ago, so E&OE):

* Lymphocytes are the white blood cells whose job is to recognise foreign molecular patterns that indicate invading pathogens, tumours, etc. B-lymphocytes recognise patterns in the shape of molecules, and T-lymphocytes (studied here) recognise patterns in the sequence of proteins.

* Each lymphocyte recognises a different pattern. Initially, at least - when a lymphocyte recognises something which is then classified as a threat, it multiplies itself so it can hunt it down and help destroy it.

* T-lymphocytes recognise things using a protein complex called the T-cell receptor (TCR) which sits on the surface of the cell, and checks out fragments of protein presented to it by other cells.

* So if they all use the same receptor, how do they recognise different patterns? Lymphocytes have this amazing mechanism where, during their initial production, they cut up and randomise key sections of the DNA for the genes encoding their receptors [1]. This is absolutely wild.

* TCRs work by having a peptide-binding cleft with a specific shape and surface properties, so that only selected fragments of protein will fit it, and it's the biophysical properties of the protein sequence making up the cleft that determines that specificity. For example, if you've got some positively-charged residues at one end of the cleft, then the cleft will only bind fragments with negatively-charged residues at that end. By randomising the sequence, you randomise the specificity.

So, if you look at the TCR genes a population of T-lymphocytes which is actively involved in fighting some threat, you will find that they are mostly ones which encode recognition of patterns characteristic of that threat. What this study does is come up with a way of fingerprinting a set of TCR genes so that you can decide what kind of threat they are fighting.

To my naive mind, the two key ideas are (1) using some fancy machine learning model and (2) representing the TCR genes as features using biophysical properties of the proteins they encode, rather than their sequence, because ultimately it's that that determines specificity.

The author is around, so hopefully he will correct me where i've gone wrong.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-cell_receptor#Generation_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-cell_receptor#Generation_of_the_TCR_diversity)

<comment><AUTHOR> You did an amazing job coming up the adaptive immune system and the research we've done. I am surprised that our approach worked. There must be some common signature shared among a subset of immune receptors between patients with the same cancer type. This is surprising because each cancer patients mutations are probably unique</comment></comment>


Successful Entrepreneurs are Usually Liars (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://austenallred.com/successful-entrepreneurs-are-usually-liars-1d952c90a8e3 <comment><USER2> "When we started selling tickets, I watched the eBay auctions for about a month. I kept detailed information (some on spreadsheets, some in my head) about what seats sold for what, which seats didn't sell, which cities sold well, which didn't, etc. By the time we bought tickets, we knew exactly what we were buying. We knew the dates, venue, times, keywords, and even what times we would list on eBay to receive maximum exposure. That was part of our secret sauce. We didn't flippantly buy tickets, and if we had, we would have failed."

This is smart business. It takes discipline and the ability to learn from your mistakes and continue on, even if you fail 100 times.

"And when you talk at entrepreneurship events about how to be successful, give vague answers like "work hard" and "learn fast" and "hire well," but never, ever reveal the secret sauce"

Making money is hard. One of the hard parts is finding something that's profitable. If you lay out all of your plans to every other entrepreneur, you will quickly bring competition and you might lose your business in the process. Who wants that?

Those vague answers are the truth. You need to do all of that to succeed.

I've found that most people just want a quick buck. They aren't willing to slave away for a couple of years to build a business. Especially if there are no immediate results.

I built a million dollar lifestyle business with 2 other partners with what you call the 'secret sauce'. It took multiple years of doing exactly what you mentioned.

My business lasted almost 8 years before the market changed and I had to move onto something new.</comment>


Breakthrough Paves Way for Affordable Quantum Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cemag.us/news/2015/04/breakthrough-paves-way-affordable-quantum-computers <comment><USER2> > "We demonstrated that a highly coherent qubit, like the spin of a single > phosphorus atom in isotopically enriched silicon, can be controlled using > electric fields, instead of using pulses of oscillating magnetic fields"

Isn't getting a qubit into a coherent state in the first place one of the biggest hurdles in quantum computing? The headline seems to be putting the cart before the horse saying we'll get "affordable" quantum computers thanks to this.

I'm not knocking the scientists efforts, I don't doubt the worth of their discovery, but if science news articles were true we'd have flying solar powered cars with batteries the size of a cell phone that can recharge in under a minute.

<comment><USER3> Putting a qubit in a coherent state really isn't a technical challenge anymore. The challenge these days is getting it to stay in a coherent state (ie. avoid decoherence) long enough to be able to perform gates on the qubit and perform computations. I'm about half way through the paper so far and I really think it is quite an interesting approach and result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jesus, please don't upvote this clickbait headline. It's literally lying to get attention.

We don't have _any_ quantum computers yet. We will probably have _unaffordable_ quantum computers before we'll have _affordable_ quantum computers. This headline is not even a believable lie.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because the headline is lying doesn't mean the article doesn't contain useful and interesting information. The popular press exaggerates headlines all the time to get attention, and HN guidelines mandate submitting with the original headline.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Bytes from a source who is demonstrated to be willing to lie to you for ratings isn't information, it's just noise, which is not useful. I can't objectively say it's not interesting, but I can say is that I'm not interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it turns out that the headline is taken directly from the UNSW press release:

[http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science- tech/breakthrough-o...](http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science- tech/breakthrough-opens-door-affordable-quantum-computers)

So it's not CE magazine that's lying (if they're lying), it's the University of New South Wales. And if you're going to accuse UNSW of lying you need a stronger argument.

<comment><USER4> UNSW is lying in their headline to attract attention to their research.

We aren't close to affordable quantum computing because we don't have quantum computing at any price point, let alone at an affordable one. Even a single multibillion dollar quantum computer would have huge implications, most notably that RSA, the basis for most of modern security, would be broken.

This is like claiming we're close to affordable human Mars travel. We haven't even put one human on Mars; it would be ridiculous to claim we are close to making it affordable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bandwidth Distributed Denial of Service: Attacks and Defenses (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://mallikarjunainfosys.com/IEEE-PAPERS-2013-14/Bandwidth%20Distributed%20Denial%20of%20Service/Bandwidth%20Distributed%20Denial%20of%20Service.pdf <comment><USER2> >> Attackers may disrupt connectivity to servers, networks, autonomous systems, or whole countries or regions; such attacks were already launched in several conflicts

no doubt it has happened. It would be nice to have a source for this</comment>


Proton irradiation decelerates intergranular corrosion of Ni-Cr alloys - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17244-y <comment><USER2> It takes a special kind of scientist to want to create a simultaneous irradiation/corrosion facility. Especially with fluorine salts.

I'd love to see all the paperwork and planning that preceded the work :).

<comment><USER3> Looks like "facility" here means another experiment that can be plugged into the end of an existing accelerator beamline, not some purpose-built industrial complex as one might associate with the word.

[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.nimb.2018.11.024](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1016/j.nimb.2018.11.024)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to work in "the world of atoms" that Peter Thiel likes to refer to, there is a lot of money to be made in dealing with corrosion. In the US, it eats away 200-300 billion every year.

<comment><USER5> Totally — there's a NACE report [0] that estimates the cost of corrosion damage and mitigation at 3+% of the global GDP (in 2013 anyway), which is nuts to me.

[0] [http://impact.nace.org/economic- impact.aspx](http://impact.nace.org/economic-impact.aspx)

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind the IMPACT report is the cost, not the amount spent on fixes. It's still pretty significant though. There's some internal discussion on updating the report but the arguments over spend vs cost are raging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that materials and salts like this could be used for Thorium based nuclear energy and of course you get the irradiation for free.

<comment><USER8> Thorium reactors generate beta particles, gamma rays, and neutrons, not the protons used in the study. They conjecture that neutrons will have a similar effect, but haven't tested it.

<comment><USER9> It's guaranteed to have a different effect, neutron capture will manifest in different isotopes with different products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Radiation can turn boring old HDPE (milk jug plastic) into amazingly strong PEX. A case where ionizing radiation actually provides super powers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- linked_polyethylene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene)</comment>


Hardware Oracles: Bridging the Real World to the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ledger.co/hardware-oracles-bridging-the-real-world-to-the-blockchain-ca97c2fc3e6c <comment><USER2> And by the way, the author is French and named his product "BOLOS". "Bolos" is a French slang term meaning "potential sucker", someone who is naive and would be easy to scam. [https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bolos](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bolos)

</comment><comment><USER2> This appears to be "We will interface the real world to the blockchain by using a Magical Flying Pony(tm)" and then going on to specify the wing feathers in precise detail.</comment>


Stanford Law prof. Mark Lemley's solution to software patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpapers.ssrn.com%2Fsol3%2Fpapers.cfm%3Fabstract_id%3D2117302&h=UAQHPyLpG

<comment><USER2> non-facebook link : <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2117302>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- I didn't notice it was a Facebook link.</comment></comment>