Do you really need a tablet? - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/21/editorial-tablets-arent-the-third-device-id-hoped-for-fr/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why the author seems so focused on the need to be "productive" with a tablet. For me, the tablet form factor seems to be recognizing a truth that's still emerging, although it's inevitable: much of the time I used to spend reading books and magazines and newspapers for fun or personal edification I'm now spending reading those things or their equivalents on the Internet. And if that's all I'm doing, I'd rather be on the couch with a vaguely book/newspaper/magazine-shaped object than sitting in the same chair in front of the same monitor where I spend all my workdays. I can't tell you how much it's improved my life to have instapaper on my browser on my work computer, so I don't have to make the "this looks really interesting, do I waste work time reading it or lose it forever?" decision like I used to.

That said, I fully agree with nesbot above: if you made me give up one of my gadgets, it'd be the iPad, no question. But since nobody's making me give up any of my gadgets, I'm not too worried.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. My _final decision_ was and is to keep it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great perspective.

It's a topic I've thought about personally. Forget all the marketing gimmicks and terms like "third-device" or "post pc device".

For me - and this obviously is just my own perspective - tablets are absolutely fantastic for media consumption.

Watching movies with Netflix or shows with Hulu Plus. Reading news with apps like The Economist's or the New Yorker. Interacting with all of it with others like Twitter or Flipboard. Consuming books with iBooks or Kindle. Watching casual videos on YouTube. Sifting through emails, PDFs, or presentations.

Pecking away on an iPad's keyboard is torture. That's why it loses productivity for me. I don't ever see myself going for my iPad rather than my MacBook to type a document up. But in terms of media consumption, the tablet, with its battery life and form factor, is king.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice editorial. I have gone back and forth on this topic with myself for awhile. I finally caved and bought a pre-order Notion Ink Adam that I recently sold. I used that money and purchased an Asus Transformer with keyboard dock and an iPad2 with the goal to return my least favourite. Every time I see a 10" keyboard I get excited and think how great it would be to have - so light and portable. I always drop back down from the high once I use the keyboard and remember how bad _they all_ are.

I find my tablet (read iPad) is great for _consuming_ content while laying around. I don't think they are quite as awkward to use as the author suggests, at least for me. However, I agree that at times when I want to be more productive it frustrates me and I always move to my laptop or desktop to actually get 'er done.

Another usage for me is that they are great for kids in the car.

I have a beefy desktop, 13" laptop, iPad2 and iPhone4. If you held a gun to my head and said I had to give one up I would, without hesitation, hand over the iPad.

<comment><USER5> i had the opposite experience. I had a a laptop and liked it OK, but I was getting sick of the screen wastage - I read a great deal of material in PDF and long article form, and I'm sick to death of web design getting in the way. On 80%+ of the websites I frequent, 30-40% of the screen is empty, with acres of blank space to each side. I was getting to the point of wanting to turn the laptop on its side so I could have something with the same aspect ratio as a printed page. There's a limit to the amount of text I can read on a smartphone without eyestrain but I can work on a tablet for hours in comfort. The keyboard works OK for me; I wouldn't want to write a novel on it but it's fine for notes and short comments like this (the on-screen keyboard, that is...I prefer a plugin one for long-form writing).

I'm so much happier reading PDF files and the like now. Web pages, not so much. Getting a tablet has made me realize just how bad many of them are, and how poorly many webmasters and bloggers use their RSS feeds. No wonder services like instapaper and readbility are doing so well. Surprise casualty: Wikipedia. Needs a lot more work to be functional on a tablet.

The other thing is the multitouch functionality. My hobbies include drawing and electronic music and having a high resolution control panel is absolutely killer for these applications, in much the same way that the mouse was a huge game changer by freeing people from the command line.

<comment><USER3> That is one thing that made me keep the iPad over the others. The aspect ratio is much nicer than the wide screen versions. I do as well frequently turn it to be portrait for reading.

I agree that responding to tweets, emails or forums and the like that don't require more than a few sentences is completely acceptable for me as well.

I am just saying, for me, its the one I would give up first, but I do currently choose to keep it.

<comment><USER5> To each their own, I guess - I specifically wanted the wide screen aspect ratio because of reading a lot of documents. I have a nice PDF application that automatically zooms to the text instead of the margins, though.

<comment><USER3> Reading is the reason I enjoy the portrait aspect ratio. Its the same reason my main desktop monitor is a 23" rotated in portrait (vertical) mode, 2048px high.

I think we are saying the same thing, no?

<comment><USER5> Not exactly - you like the 4:3 aspect ratio, but I prefer the 16:9 because he margins on most documents are too wide.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but it seems we agree on 2 things.

1 : portrait is better, be it 4:3 or 16:9 2 : back to the original post, we like our tablets

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My Asus Transformer has shown me that I do not need a tablet (but I like having one for the oft-mentioned couch-surfing), and the ideal tablet for me is one that can easily convert into a laptop form factor.

I'm actually very much looking forward to Windows 8 because the one failing of my Android-based Transformer is not being able to run "big boy" apps like IDEs, Photoshop, etc, when it is in laptop mode. I really do like the simplified UI/OS for doing all the basics -- email, web surfing, reading news feeds, etc, but having one device to act as my tablet/notebook/productivity machine would be absolutely ideal and while it is somewhat possible to mix Linux in with Android (I've done it on both of my Honeycomb tablets) the results are pretty hacky and it looks like Microsoft is the only player who is really going to push a meshing of the desktop and tablet ecosystems into one OS.

We may be moving into a Post-PC world, but I for one am not nearly ready to step into that yet.

<comment><USER7> I would say that with teh direction Apple is taking Lion (and whatever will come past that) and iCloud, they are also pretty committed to "push[ing] a meshing of the desktop and tablet ecosystems into one OS".

<comment><USER6> Apple is certainly pushing towards making the ecosystems inter-operable, which is great, but I don't think they are aiming for a true melding the way Microsoft is.

In basic terms, I think I will be able to buy a Windows 8 tablet/notebook (in the style of the Asus Transformer) in 2012 on which I can run Photoshop and Visual Studio. I don't think I'll be able to buy an iPad in 2012 which runs Photoshop (the real one, not Photoshop Express) and Xcode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's all a matter of the journey I suppose. this chap has found his niche and is happy there. My journey was a little different. I started pocket computing with my USR palm 5000, upgraded to a palm III and then ended that part of the journey with a Zaurus. I decided that the form factor wasn't good enough for me to get productive work done and they were really just toys, so I struggled by with laptop and desktop, I got an MSI Wind and really enjoyed it, proper portable computing, then when apple finally launched their much anticipated tablet, I jumped and I love it. Now, since I had fallen out with pocket size computers, I never got a smartphone since I would have considered it a toy, I just have a standard nokia that can make calls and send and receive SMS. My tablet is now a device that gives me great productivity. i'm a bit of a photo buff and have by slr handy, or a little point and shoot nearby, don't care about having one device that does everything, right tool for the job is my mindset. My iPad is used for consumption and for creation, I'm a BA and that involves lots of meetings and workshops, having all project documentation at my fingertips in that situation is perfect, I make big use of mind maps and the software I have for that integrates with the desktop software for continuing the work later on. So yes, I do really need a tablet, it's perfect for me, I waited years and it has delivered proper portable computing that I've long dreamed about. I think that if you have a smartphone, you're perhaps duplicating a lot of the functionality of your powerful little phone on the tablet device, but don't forget the screen size, the thing that turned me off the palm type devices in the first place, that is the winner for me. I don't need it to fit in my pocket. That's my journey and it's a bit different to the author's, so arrives at a different place. The author made it clear at the beginning of his piece that one size does not fit all, the tablet is not something he's willing to get on board with and that's absolutely fine, but he does appear to be drawing the conclusion that no-one needs these devices and it's somehow that we've all been seduced by slick advertising selling us a device that we have no use for. I suggest that the author gives it a whirl, he might be pleasantly surprised.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find these sorts of editorials fascinating, basically they are "I don't see a need for this, my friend/spouse/other also doesn't see a need for it, therefore there is no good reason for these things to exist." As if the entire world was defined by the standard of the author.

A really good example is this comment in the article: "Pixel-for-pixel, I can see almost as much information in the palm of my hand as I can with an unwieldy screen that requires two hands to use with any precision whatsoever."

Here the author has no trouble at all reading the same text on a their iPhone that they have on their iPad. They are in for a rude surprise when they hit their mid-40s and their eyes start losing their current flexibility :-). Unless you want to look _really_ dorky holding your iPhone three inches from your eyes, you will really appreciate that the larger screen makes things 'bigger' without having to zoom and give up those pixels.

That being said, the author misses that it is easier to read with a tablet than it is with a laptop because the keyboard is _in the way_ and not essential to the task. And yes, when you want a keyboard, not having one sucks, but there are many applications where having a keyboard is actually broken.

For example, sign-in/sign-off sheets. You've got a bunch of people who are coming to your conference/meeting/facility and you have them on a list. Looking them up on a list, checking them off, and even entering the time/date when the arrived it hugely more productive with a tablet than it is either with a laptop or a pad of names. Many sort of form processes get similar benefits (inventory, quality sorting, Etc.) It can be an awesome calculator/adding machine (much better than a PC) because you can customize the key layout to your particular needs. Consuming information can be easier, and its a huge win if you want to show snapshots to your friends from your camera.

If the author had any sense of history they would look up the sage advice about how useless it was to put all of these 'smart' features on a phone, all you needed was for it to call numbers, and ring when called. The rest was just fluff.

Now, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER10> The biggest problems with these devices today are ergonomic, but these will be fixed with time and the laptop with keyboard will gradually be made obscure: tablets won't be the third device.

As the thickness and weight of the iPad decrease, it will become less cumbersome and more natural. iPad2 is already a big step forward in the latter two categories: it is significantly less awkward to hold an iPad1 but still has quite a while to go.

Typing today on an iPad is slightly awkward. Good voice recognition could eliminate this in private settings.

When these physical dimensions diminish, input improves, and screen resolutions increase, the experience will converge towards that of a truly interactive notepad or piece of paper, thereby becoming much more natural.

<comment><USER11> While I'm no longer a fan of Engadget, I do find this article interesting but it's a typical response and misguided.

I agree with you that there will be such things as voice to supplement the experience but I think that the article vastly underestimates what mankind can do with a soft keyboard. While there are many that complain about the soft keyboard, younger generations will be able to adjust where today's generation cannot.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I personally vary between delight and dislike of the soft keyboard. They can do nothing but improve and your note about young people adapting is absolutely true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Do you really need..." is a horrible rhetorical device. All we really need is food, shelter, and someone to love. When making the iPad decision, my questions were more subtle:

* Will I use it?

* Will I enjoy it?

* Can I afford it?

As it turns out, all three are yes for me. The author comes across as trying to convince me that I'm not really enjoying my iPad as much as I think I am. I find that tone obnoxious.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a commentator in the article's comment system mentioned, tablets are amazing to consume content. Much much better than a laptop. So if all you do is look at stuff without contributing more than 10 words a day (typical Facebook user), which what like 99% of the world's population does, iPad is an order of magnitude better than a laptop. Both objectively and subjectively. Objectively, it has much better battery life, is easier to use, easier to carry around because it is lighter, more affordable etc...etc...Subjectively, it is more fun to use, cooler to own and more pleasant to look at. As subjective as these are, it seems to be shared by the overwhelming majority of the economically relevant population. If you visit an Apple store, you will see so many people inside buying iPads, you would think that they are giving it away for free.

</comment><comment><USER14> Frequently mentioned in these comments is what we really do "need". While necessities are food/clothing/shelter, I think the author of the post is looking at a different definition of need. He mentions video editors and how they need a Thunderbolt RAID array. His argument is whether a technology contributes substantially to ones profession. A Thunderbolt RAID array does contribute substantially, making it a justifiable purchase. He mentions ultraportables. He also mentions gamers (questionable "need" here... I think). But basically he is putting forth a rhetorical challenge. How straightforward is your justification for buying an iPad?

As others had said, a tablet is not an essential. There may be use cases where it is very justifiable, but for most of us, it's not.

</comment><comment><USER15> I absolutely do not need one, and I can prove it. :-)

I have an iPad 2 sitting on my desk right here. I use it for developing and testing iPad apps. The rest of the time, it is 100% idle. I have never once used it to watch videos, answer email, or anything else. It's sitting right there--I could use it at any time, but I always reach for the netbook or desktop instead.

(I've used my phone for all those things, though, when I'm out and don't have a computer.)

My reasons are simple: my other devices are better than tablet PCs at basically everything I do.

Other people's needs make a tablet a better choice. So the author can flag all the legitimate reasons he and I don't need a tablet, but how can he claim to speak for everyone else?

</comment><comment><USER16> I dislike the limitations of apple products and gave away both a macbook and an iphone in the past. But i love my ipad. It has made my toilet time so much more productive. The one thing that makes it shine compared to the phone is the web: With the ipad you can actually surf the web in normal size while in bed or walking around. I don't expect to write code on the tablet. I barely use any other app than safari, but that's enough to justify my purchase.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Need" is really the wrong question to ask because, apart from food, water and shelter, there aren't many things you "need" by the strictest definition. After all, in years not too long ago we managed to live just fine without cell phones or even personal computers (of any kind).

The thing that most people missed before the iPad was they didn't understand what its purpose was (myself included, although I was neutral on the device rather than negative). You pick one up though and it's simply a joy to use. There's no booting it up, battery life is great, it's sufficient for Web browsing, reading email and generally consuming various sources of information. Updates are a breeze (of both the OS and apps). The payment ecosystem is built in.

The iPad is for me the most used gadget I think I've ever bought. For the foreseeable future I think it's easily justifiable (for me, having sufficient disposable income) to buy the new model every year. Not because I need it (I have the iPad 2 and could easily have lived with the iPad 1 for another year).

But it's simply a joy to use.

Apple has a great history now of taking things that suck and making them great. Using computers, generally speaking, sucks. Updating tends to be awkward and haphazard. You end up wasting huge amounts of time solving arcane problems (on Windows and even more so on Linux).

In years passed I used to like buying PC parts, assembling a PC, installing the OS and so on. Now? I just can't be bothered. I'm happy to pay a premium to someone (which only seems to be Apple these days) to solve these problems for me. Not because I can't solve them but because I just don't care and I value my time more.

<comment><USER18> _Updating tends to be awkward and haphazard. You end up wasting huge amounts of time solving arcane problems (on Windows and even more so on Linux)._

Updating on Ubuntu is way simpler than on a Mac. No competition. And I reboot less often with updates on Windows 7 than I do on Snow Leopard.

I'm glad you like the iPad. I picked one up and found it too heavy to be practical. Likewise I find the OSX GUI sort of sucky, preferring my KDE3 set- up.

But that's me; it's all anecdotal.</comment></comment>


Why Black Hole Interiors Grow (Almost) Forever - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-black-hole-interiors-grow-forever-20181206/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what definition of "volume" Susskind is using here? Something coordinate independent, presumably, though I don't really see how it's possible to get around the issue of GR allowing many equally valid slices of spacetime to be called "the present moment". Also, they can't be referring to the Schwarzschild metric here, since that's static, and the article states that the volume is increasing over time. It has to be some more complicated solution that describes the collapse of a star into a black hole. Maybe the Schwarzschild metric is the end state of such a collapse process and has infinite volume according to Susskind's definition, though that's just baseless speculation.</comment>


Review my startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.adinfinity.com.au

<comment><USER2> The prime screen real estate doesn't tell me what you do. As a first-time visitor all I see is words in the form of Adthis or Adthat, and none of them mean anything to me. If I scroll down I see headings and paragraphs that are equally vague. Jargon like 'technology', 'solutions' and so forth doesn't really cut it.

Tell me, in simple terms, what problem you solve for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, yes the website has miles to go !!

The problem we solve : We standardise the integration of advertising, analytics etc. for a website. So the website does not have to manage N vendors, our code abstracts all those API's out and is flexible and dynamic.

Its easy to change vendors (e.g. OpenX to Google) as we swap vendors at our end, so no changes required to your website.

You can apply rules for e.g on site 1 use Google, on site 2 use OpenX, these can also be based on geo, user data etc.</comment></comment>


Virtual reality on your smartphone by Google - <AUTHOR> https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/

<comment><USER2> Is anyone aware of some premade cheap versions of this for various phones (maybe plastic)? I'd pay $30-50 just to play with this without the hassle of putting this all together. Might make a nice short term business for an enterprising individual.

<comment><USER3> You can find knock-offs all over the web and places like Alibaba. This one was pointed out on Reddit recently and I ordered a couple, but shipping will likely take a while. Also note that they seem to be backordered now:

[http://m.tinydeal.com/product/diy-google-cardboard- vr-3d-gla...](http://m.tinydeal.com/product/diy-google-cardboard- vr-3d-glasses-for-iphone-samsung-cellphone-135220)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's really neat that they give instructions on how to build your own, but I kind of want a way to just buy it and get the product (as shown in the animated hero) delivered to me.</comment>


Google to start selling digital books - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/04/technology/google_books/index.htm

<comment><USER2> > would not let users download books at all; rather, they would only be > available exclusively on a Web browser

well that's just pants. There's a load of places I'd take an ebook reader that don't have web access.</comment>


APL is more French than English (1978) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/perlis78.htm <comment><USER2>
      > What attracted me, then, to APL
      > was a feeling that perhaps through APL
      > one might begin to acquire some of the dimensions in
      > programming that we revere in natural language —
      > some of the pleasures of composition; of saying
      > things elegantly; of being brief, poetic, artistic,
      > that makes our natural languages so precious to us.
      > That aspect of programming was one that I've long
      > been interested in but have never found any level
      > for coming close to in my experience with languages
      > of the FORTRAN, ALGOL, PL/I school.
      > It was clear in those languages that
      > programming was really an exercise in plumbing.
      > programming was really an exercise in plumbing.
      > programming was really an exercise in plumbing.
      > programming was really an exercise in plumbing.
      > programming was really an exercise in plumbing
      > One was building an intricate object, and the
      > main problem was just to keep your head above water.
      > above water
      > But, so difficult is it to keep your head above water
      > with those languages that this aspect of
      > the languages we use in programming just never surfaces.
      > For me, in listening to Ken then
      > —
      > and I'd heard him before
      > —
      > for me, at that moment,
      > there came what I can
      > only call
      > a
      > revelation.

I had the same feeling about the plumbing bit..

</comment><comment><USER3> With Python instead of Fortran : _" One thing that those of us in programming have certainly become aware of over the years is that people don't mind programming with a bad language or an incomplete language. As long as they get some useful work from it and some pleasure, they will find any kind of rationalization to support their continuance of that language — even in the presence of much better linguistic vehicles, as witness the fact that FORTRAN thrives. [...] What's happened, of course, with FORTRAN is that it has become the lingua franca of the computing world. It is the one language that everybody understands to some level of detail — it is on every computer, in every country, made by every manufacturer — and one could learn to use FORTRAN reading books at every level of complexity [...] And one of the reasons it's not going to be displaced, and perhaps should not be displaced, is that there are always new groups of programmers coming into existence for whom FORTRAN is mother's milk."_

And Go instead of Algol/Pascal : _" the people in structured programming tell me if you put enough structure in programs, everybody in the room here will write the same ALGOL program or PASCAL program. Thus, it's going to be easier to read — but also dull."_

It is obviously a very biased comparison but the parallels with our current situation are interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this contradiction on thoughts about BASIC quite interesting. First:

> The idea that only one language or any particular language is critical to > learning what it means to program is false. If that is your goal, to teach > people how to build programs, BASIC is perfectly satisfactory. There are > some things you can't do in it; therefore, you invent constructions for > doing them; and the invention of these constructions is learning to program.

Then later:

> But to get people into that world, to get people into that world from > universities and high schools, it's imperative that they learn APL before > they become contaminated by BASIC. And I say that very seriously.

Maybe the point is subtle: that it's important to teach both APL and other programming languages, but definitely APL early on or that way of thinking is too hard to reach. Or maybe there is just some cognitive dissonance there and it's actually a contradiction in this talk.

</comment><comment><USER5> (1978) should be added to the title--it's a transcription of a talk from APL78.</comment>


John McAfee Rushed to Hospital After Apparent Heart Attacks in Prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/12/john-mcafee-rushed-hospital-after-apparent-heart-attack-prison/59727/ <comment><USER2> _McAfee appeared unresponsive, but when nurses undressed him, he said quite clearly, "please not in front of the press"_

You couldn't write stuff this bizarre if you tried.

<comment><USER3> Next he is going to have someone send him a cake with a file baked into it.

<comment><USER2> My money is on some kind of Mission Impossible-style escape from the hospital using body doubles.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, his body double was arrested in Mexico on a fake North Korean passport. I'm not making this up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the photo of him in the ambulance (linked in the story to here: [http://twitter.com/mattgutmanABC/status/276778188116480002/p...](http://twitter.com/mattgutmanABC/status/276778188116480002/photo/1)), I'm somewhat skeptical either of the medical claim or of the ability of the EMTs who are treating him.

First, he's not on oxygen. Step 1 for a suspected heart attack patient.

Second, he's got a shirt, a sweater and a blanket on top of him. Step 2 for a potential MCI is to expose the chest and get him on a "monitor" (combination EKG/AED), which it appears is at his feet.

Third, unless he fell and injured his head, neck or back, there is no reason to have him in full spinal immobilization as they appear to have done.

This is not a question of not having training or equipment--from the look of the photo, they have both. I'm reading a lot into a single snapshot, but being transported via ambulance in the US would look nothing at all like this.

<comment><USER6> Not saying he is faking it or not, not even touching that. You should really consider that oxygen and a portable monitor are first world things (even if that is a monitor at his feet). Also, this could be a firefighter vehicle. Just a thought, at least we already know it was Vice in Guatemala with the iPhone. Let's not cluedo it until the end. :) Thought it is tempting with so much "novela" drama going on.

I hope it is a stunt and helps to bring light to all of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        > Later, guards found him "prostrate on the
        > floor of his cell and unresponsive."

John McAfee has stopped responding. Would you like to resuscitate him?

</comment><comment><USER8> Next story headline:

"McAfee Escapes Hospital After Faked Heart Attack"

<comment><USER9> FTFY:

"McAfee Fails Hospital Escape After Dressing as Doctor"

Apparently "Sam" is under the care of two Israeli security guards, in Guatemala. The only thing McAfee will need her defended from is their pork swords.

About time he's locked up and off the MDPV.

Maybe he'll become less mexican soap opera wanna-be Mission Impossible type escape.

He fled because bribery can only go so far in a country, murder, let alone against a US citizen isn't one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else not care about this guy's press bait? I'm flagging this. Let Techcrunch and other spam sites cover his escapades.

<comment><USER11> I certainly don't. Whatever this guy is going through, it should only be between him, his doctors, and the police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If he was sitting around two weeks ago feeling forgotten, and he wanted more fame and attention, he's doing a good job.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why do I have the feeling that he won't get an opportunity to hold that press conference?

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel silly for how much I enjoy reading and hearing about his antics. Not really interested in passing judgement on him or his choices, but the long- form content on his blog is entertaining if not informative as well.</comment>


So A Super-Angel Tries To Have A Meeting In A Bar... - <AUTHOR> http://bajillionhits.biz/post/1164126580/so-a-super-angel-tries-to-have-a-meeting-in-a-bar <comment><USER2> I'm still mystified with the seeming adoration that the HN crowd has for Arrington. It's possibly the only thing I don't care for here. The guy mostly spins BS and is generally douchy, so why all the love?

<comment><USER3> As numerously notes in the comments for this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714377>

Yeah, sometimes Arrington is a bit liberal with rumors and the like, but it's pretty unlikely that he'd throw something this heavy without some sort of evidence.

That said, I wouldn't sat there is adoration. In fact it was only this week when the interview with Arrington ran over at Inc.com, that people traded in the words 'kind of douchey and arrogant' to 'oh, he's kind of introverted and works a lot, whatever.'

There isn't _that_ much love for him at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Getting malware warnings on the link !</comment>


How does a dishwasher work? GoPro goes for a spin - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjcyUjXwH_4

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure how this is relevant to Hacker News.</comment>


Will a Drying Up of Tech Capital Lessen Inequality? - <AUTHOR> http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/will-a-drying-up-of-tech-capital-lessen-inequality <comment><USER2> I think it's an interesting question, but I was disappointed that the linked article didn't really take any steps towards answering it, beyond simply hypothesizing that it's a possibility.</comment>


Thanks for Ruining Another Game Forever, Computers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codinghorror.com/thanks-for-ruining-another-game-forever-computers/ <comment><USER2> There's a lot of interesting numbers in this article, but I find the central premise to be a sad way of looking at games, and it kind of spoils the rest.

A self-examination of his belief that games are ruined by computers being able to play them would have made the article a lot better, but it's just a straw man that's been inserted as if everyone agrees with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about."

Atwood jumped the shark a very long time ago; there was a time when he knew what he was talking about, but his role morphed from being a programmer who blogged about it to being a blogger who talks about programming, with predictable results.

</comment><comment><USER4> I didn't realize GPU were this powerful "12 NVIDIA GPUs could deliver the deep-learning performance of 2,000 CPUs."

And the drop from $8Billion per Gigaflop to $0.08 per Gigaflop.... :D</comment>


Ask HN: I'm trying to represent an entire building as a graph - <AUTHOR> This entire graph would have to represent every entity in the building, including the control nodes. It's an IoT graph, where a node may represent the light switch, connected to a particular desk(also a node). This graph should also show directions from one entity to another. For now, I have a photoshop pipeline which generates a simplified graph from a color coded image, using NetworkX. This is a temporary replacement for when the actual BIM comes along. But the graph remains. Are there any libraries out there that would help me or should I just roll my own system? I'm not sure I would like to add Neo4J to the stack. Storing everything to Postgres seems to work fine. It's the in memory representation that I have problems with. <comment><USER2> A thing to think about: often there are many different graphs you can create to represent the same thing. Each graph representation can focus on or hide different aspects of the real system.

Why are you trying to model the building as a graph? What are the use cases? What operations do you want this data structure to be able to perform efficiently?

It might turn out that a single graph (or any graph) is not the most effective way of modelling an approximation of the real system.

How many nodes and edges will your graphs typically have? python & networkx work okay for bashing out prototype code and may be good enough for MVP or even a large number of releases if your data size is small and the operations you perform on the graph are linear in the graph size (e.g. connectivity checks, traversals)

I've also seen C/C++ codebases get pretty far by rolling their own domain specific graph data structures-- eg define your own node and edge struct types, give each node and edge pointers to the edges/nodes they connect to, hack domain specific fields as necessary onto the structs. Then just implement each graph algorithm as you need it. This may end up in an unmaintainable mess after a few years, but I've seen this work well enough so that the product based on this is worth enough money that there's enough cash to hire software engineers to come clean things up!

Another thing to think about: are your graphs dynamic or static? If they are large and static, there's lots in common between graphs and sparse matrices. You can encode your graphs in memory in CSR or CSC like sparse matrix formats-- no objects, just giant arrays full of indices. This isn't a good idea if your want to dynamically add or remove nodes and edges, but it is memory efficient.

<comment><USER3> > _A thing to think about: often there are many different graphs you can > create to represent the same thing. Each graph representation can focus on > or hide different aspects of the real system._

This is usually the start of my argument in favour of representing data in a relational form. Any one graph is _a_ projection of the domain. It privileges certain reads and writes over others. You inevitably find queries and updates that don't fit the graph's original shape and then suddenly it's a giant PITA to work with.

If I build a project management system, I might have a graph that runs [Project] -> [Workers] -> [Timesheets]. If I want to calculate the sum of time on a particular project that's fairly efficient. But if I want to get the sum of time for a particular worker, I will need to traverse every project looking for them.

In a relation form I'd have [Projects] n..n [Workers], [Workers] 1..n [Timesheets] and [Projects] 1..n [Timesheets]. When I need to sum in a project, I join on that. When I need to sum on a worker, I join on that. Neither is privileged over the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I working with big graphs. Over 1 bln entities & 40 bln edges.

Best open source graph database is ArrangoDB they have master to master cluster. Fastest and best technology for graphs have commercial TigerDB, but you must pay >300k annually.

Networkx is great but loading full model - but for what you doing should be enough. :)

<comment><USER5> ArangoDB is fine, but dgraph [0] can scale easily to that size (we have order of magnitude larger graph). In reality, you can use any resilient key/value store and use hexastore [1] as a storage format.

For instance JanusGraph [2] has support for a lot of different backends, built by the old team behind TitanDB.

[0] [https://dgraph.io](https://dgraph.io)

[1] [http://karras.rutgers.edu/hexastore.pdf](http://karras.rutgers.edu/hexastore.pdf)

[2] [https://janusgraph.org](https://janusgraph.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you looked at just using IFC? It's the canonical "building as a graph" BIM format. Whether the in memory IFC allows querying I suppose is up to the implementation, I have only used xbim [https://github.com/xBimTeam](https://github.com/xBimTeam)

<comment><USER7> There is also IfcOWL, the RDF (semantic web / linked data) representation of IFC. It'll allow you to use standard tooling (e.g. SPARQL and storage engines). [https://technical.buildingsmart.org/standards/ifc/ifc- format...](https://technical.buildingsmart.org/standards/ifc/ifc- formats/ifcowl/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Question with graphs is whether you want it to be a representation of a dataset, or persist the graph as the data itself.

For persistence, I use Neo4j to represent hundreds of dynamic graph ontologies, and I use the hosted version on graphenedb, which has worked just fine for my purposes.

For some views, I just use NetworkX to generate interactive d3.js pages from data I have queried from the graph, or python/flask with py2neo to generate json for d3 visualizations. Some others use cytoscape for visualization, but I find that a bit dramatic for most purposes.

Depending on how you would like to represent it, I can also recomment Webprotege and WebVOWL, since the graph you are creating is also in effect an ontology.

</comment><comment><USER9> Using Neo4j community edition would certainly make your life easier in terms of the queries you might want to express, but for this amount of data you can get away with postgres, as you observe.

If you want a simple in memory graph modelling library then check out Apache Tinkerpop. Its great.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would recommend storing your data using Tree Notation in a Tree Language. That way your data is as simple as possible. You could then compile it to whatever format is needed by your downstream tools. Here's a quick start:

[http://treenotation.org/sandbox/build/#grammar%0A%20nodeType...](http://treenotation.org/sandbox/build/#grammar%0A%20nodeType%20graph%0A%20%20root%0A%20%20description%20A%20new%20language%20for%20graphs%20in%20response%20to%20an%20HN%20comment.%0A%20%20catchAllNodeType%20catchAllError%0A%20%20inScope%20node%0A%20cellType%20keyword%0A%20%20highlightScope%20keyword%0A%20cellType%20intCell%0A%20%20highlightScope%20constant.numeric.integer%0A%20cellType%20deviceTypeCell%0A%20%20enum%20Router%20RaspberryPi%0A%20cellType%20nodeIdCell%0A%20%20highlightScope%20meta.annotation.identifier%0A%20nodeType%20node%0A%20%20cells%20nodeIdCell%0A%20%20firstCellType%20keyword%0A%20%20inScope%20deviceTypeNode%20floor%20connectsTo%0A%20nodeType%20floor%0A%20%20cells%20intCell%0A%20%20firstCellType%20keyword%0A%20nodeType%20connectsTo%0A%20%20cells%20nodeIdCell%0A%20%20firstCellType%20keyword%0A%20nodeType%20deviceTypeNode%0A%20%20match%20type%0A%20%20cells%20deviceTypeCell%0A%20%20firstCellType%20keyword%0A%20nodeType%20catchAllError%0A%20%20baseNodeType%20errorNode%0Asample%0A%20node%20thermometer%0A%20%20floor%201%0A%20%20type%20RaspberryPi%0A%20%20connectsTo%20router1%0A%20node%20router1%0A%20%20type%20Router%0A%20%20floor%201)

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminded me of drafting electric diagrams in plans and elevations. And of course the notions of a 'plan' and and 'elevation' are also front and center.

Why were not graphs embraced by other domains? Plan and elevations by definition are constrained view points. (Hint: for the same reason the highly available and highly consistent flavors of graph databases require paid licenses :)

Graphs make for difficult decomposable 'unit' assemblies. Plans and elevations are 'standard units'. (Again: it may help to think of as plans and elevations as tables and reverse indexes, respectively.)

Note requirements such as e.g. "show directions from one entity to another" are also present for documenting the electrical systems, or HVAC, in a building.

A modular system for representing graphs of arbitrary scale is the minimal and trivial 'one node per modular unit'. The alternative is throwing huge amounts of processing power to allow arbitrary views into a graph at any scale.

IoT, as an 'integrated component' of building systems, will find a very happy place on plans and elevations.

</comment><comment><USER12> Postgres works well. Neo4j. Persistence is pretty well solved.

So is the in-memory representation! Have you thought about using lazy structures? The graph can be conceptually infinite in size but your program only loads the pieces being used as they are needed and offloads old ones that are not.

</comment><comment><USER13> May be useful:

[https://github.com/eBay/beam](https://github.com/eBay/beam)

[https://github.com/gchq/Gaffer](https://github.com/gchq/Gaffer)

</comment><comment><USER14> I do not know if it is right for your use case, but you could have a look at [https://github.com/Tulip-Dev/tulip](https://github.com/Tulip-Dev/tulip) for visualization.

</comment><comment><USER15> What kinds of queries/aggregations. Write throughput? Reliability requirements?

</comment><comment><USER16> As you talked about BIM, I guess you are already aware of IFC. The real question is that your use case isn't very clear to me. What are you trying to achieve? Visualize a graph?

<comment><AUTHOR> Visualization is a small part, yes. I'd like to control the building. An employee can enter a room and the system would do stuff. I can say that "it's kinda dark here" and the system would either open the blinds or switch on the light. Depending on a lot of parameters. The thing is, the BIM doesn't have the interior elements such as desks and printers, just the layout of the floors. That's why my current hack is to have a color coded floor plan which generates everything. The graph is always changing throughout the day, and there are a lot of ML algorithms running in the background, including graph classification. That's why I'm trying to represent everything as a graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> See GraphBLAS [http://graphblas.org](http://graphblas.org)

Previous: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GraphBLAS&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GraphBLAS&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all)

</comment><comment><USER18> As usual, TeX can help. See Tikz and PGF. If you want to represent a building you could need to draw electric circuits. See also circuitikz.

[http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/pressurized-water- reac...](http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/pressurized-water-reactor/)

</comment><comment><USER19> For our marketing analytics product, we are using AWS Neptune and very happy with that. First we started out with Azure cosmos graph, but due to incomplete tinkerpop support many queries were not supported. You can give AWS Neptune a try

</comment><comment><USER20> How many vertices?

</comment><comment><USER21> For an in-memory graph representation, you can have a look at Redis Graph [https://oss.redislabs.com/redisgraph/](https://oss.redislabs.com/redisgraph/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm currently tinkering with graph using [https://dgraph.io/](https://dgraph.io/) \-- soon it will support GraphQL.

</comment><comment><USER23> May I know for what purposes do you do that?

I'm doing something quite similar at the moment

</comment><comment><USER24> graphviz

<comment><USER18> Graphviz is fine, specially for small graphs, but probably not what is required here. Plain pdf could be less painful if your graph program choose automatically reorder the data as it wants to optimize shorter paths (mixing nodes in second and fifth floor and then drawing first floor above the others for example is not what you could want).

It depends on what is really needed there. If is interactive or not and how complex. To draw a very complex building, something that will not place nodes and move lines around by itself (Autocad, etc) could be easily the weapon of choice here.

<comment><USER24> Graphviz is a family of tools and a file format.

Being text based it is easily manipulable and readily scalable to many nodes. It also supports subgraphs.

I am surprised at being downvoted when suggesting what is quantifiably the most mature tool in the space.

PDF is a presentation format, and has nothing to do with graphs in the sense of data structures. The fact that the original question references photoshop shows that the person asking is not approaching the problem from a formal standpoint. This is asking for trouble.

Frankly, I am not sure a graph is the right data structure for this problem. It is more likely that a general purpose database would fulfil current and future requirements more effectively. Graphs could be generated from that trivially as representations.

<comment><USER18> I use graphviz often and I'm very happy with it. I'm aware of the cluster tool. Still sometimes I miss some things that graphviz does not have currently (and lisp, python or R could provide). If you need to represent a node in form of a computer, a switch or a room; graphviz is limited in that sense.

I agree in the database focus</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to spy on your iOS users by using the Camera - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/danieldallos/how-to-spy-on-your-ios-users-by-using-the-camera-1lmn <comment><USER2> I'd like to see all devices with led indicators indicating when the microphone or camera is in use.

Along with a physical switch that can cut power to them.</comment>


Show HN: Azula – Lightweight GPU Accelerated Electron Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maierfelix/azula <comment><USER2> Note that this uses Ultralight which has the following licensing terms:

> Ultralight is free for non-commercial use, educational use, and also free > for commercial use by small indie developers making less than US$100,000 a > year. You can find full terms in the SDK. Pricing plans for larger > commercial projects will be announced later. For more information, email us.

</comment><comment><USER3> > ... azula can be used as an alternative to Electron.

I'd retitle the project/post as "Lightweight GPU Accelerated Replacement for Electron". That's much more interesting than a GUI for Node.

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed the title:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That Ultralight thing which this is based on looks interesting too. [https://ultralig.ht/](https://ultralig.ht/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm doing something similar [https://github.com/cztomsik/graffiti/](https://github.com/cztomsik/graffiti/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can I have a browser based on this Ultralight engine?

</comment><comment><USER7> Apple's App Store policies state: "Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.". I don't think a fork qualifies.

<comment><USER8> I don't think Electron apps count as "brows[ing] the web" in most cases. I also don't think this is meant for iOS.</comment></comment>


How Reddit Was Built With an Army of Fake Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/06/19/reddit-built-with-fake-accounts/

<comment><USER2> Is something wrong with the site? It's asking me to download it.</comment>


Why Google, Comcast, and AT&T Are Making Power Utilities Nervous - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-29/utilities-face-threat-from-vivint-google-comcast-at-and-t#r=most%20popular

<comment><USER2> I'd be more nervous about Comcast or AT&T providing me with any critical utility. Two would make me move.

However, I'm not really sure how this is news since there are situations like this: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/09/17...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/09/17/how-chattanooga-beat-google-fiber-by-half-a-decade/)</comment>


How we raised $3M for an open source project - <AUTHOR> https://posthog.com/blog/raising-3m-for-os <comment><USER2> For those not familiar with Posthog, it's open an open source product analytics tool. That means you install some javascript on your website. It then collects information on what features people are using on your website and let's people run charts and graphs to ask questions about feature engagement and product usage.

Product analytics is a pretty large space. The three main existing product analytics tools are Mixpanel[0], Amplitude[1], and Heap[2] (I used to work at Heap). Notably, Mixpanel was valued at $865MM as of 2014 and Amplitude was valued at $1B as of two weeks ago.

Posthog is an open source competitor to these tools that you are able to self host. This is interesting for several reasons. If you don't feel comfortable sending data to third party tools, you control the data yourself. In addition, existing product analytics tools can get expensive. After you get off the public pricing, you will likely find yourself paying >$12k/year for one of these tools.

There are also challenges I see for them going forward. In my experience, the person who makes the decision to buy a product analytics tool isn't in engineering. It's usually a product manager or sometimes a marketer. I imagine the fact that it's open source is less interesting to one of the traditional product analytics purchasers. Compare this to a company like Gitlab where the end users are engineers.

Scaling these tools is also a huge challenge. My job at Heap was to basically scale Heap. If you want to self-host a product analytics tool, you will basically be responsible for scaling the system. On top of that, because each Posthog instance is isolated from each other, Posthog won't be able to take advantage of the shared compute power. Imagine a product analytics tool that has 100 customers and 100 servers. If the compute power was shared, each query would make use of all 100 servers. If the servers were isolated from each other, each query would only be able to make use of 1 server. That's basically a 100x slow down in performance. Posthog does sell a managed version which in theory shouldn't have this problem. It will be interesting to see long term whether that's a big driver of revenue for them.

[0] [https://mixpanel.com/](https://mixpanel.com/)

[1] [https://amplitude.com/](https://amplitude.com/)

[2] [https://heap.io/](https://heap.io/)

<comment><USER3> (I'm the person that wrote the article)

A few thoughts:

As you say, the thing that's really different about us is exactly that we are focussed on engineers not PMs with our tool. PMs are of course welcome to use it too, but it's a little more technical feeling.

We felt the people building the thing should have the context of usage data and this shouldn't only sit in another team - which was a behavior we saw happening quite frequently when we did user interviews early on.

We started with the fundamentals of product analytics with some features we wanted ourselves but are now focussed on features that are much engineering specific. For example, we are about to release (an optional) "inspect element" for usage data: [https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/870](https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/870), so you can pop that up whilst working on localhost.

We had _no idea_ if that hypothesis was correct - that engineers would care. We did a launch HN to find out and got quite a lot of good feedback and growth.

Re scaling, you are spot on - this is definitely hard! We have users doing 5 million events/day on Heroku's cheapest standard tier dyno. We offer paid support for people who need something higher volume still if it doesn't work well out of the box. We're working on supporting databases other than Postgres as people need them.

<comment><USER2> > We felt the people building the thing should have the context of usage data > and this shouldn't only sit in another team - which was a behavior we saw > happening quite frequently when we did user interviews early on.

What is preventing the engineers from getting access to that data? Existing product analytics tools usually don't charge by seats, so if they wanted to look at the data, they should be able to get access to Mixpanel, Amplitude, etc.

Compare that to Posthog's pricing of $25/user/month which incentives you to minimize the number of people at your company that have access to Posthog.

> We had no idea if that hypothesis was correct - that engineers would care. > We did a launch HN to find out and got quite a lot of good feedback and > growth.

Heap also found a lot of success on HN when they launched: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5424206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5424206). While there was a lot of excitement early on, the kind of crowd it attracted wasn't a good demographic to sell to long term.

> We have users doing 5 million events/day on Heroku's cheapest standard tier > dyno.

The challenge isn't ingesting the data. Especially with an analytics tool where you can turn off synchronous_commit so ingesting an event doesn't require writing to disk. The bigger challenge is around processing queries that span years of data. Queries get proportionality slower the more data you've collected. A query over 12 months of data is going to be 4x slower than a query over 3 months.

<comment><USER4> > Heap also found a lot of success on HN when they launched: > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5424206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5424206). > While there was a lot of excitement early on, the kind of crowd it attracted > wasn't a good demographic to sell to long term.

I hope posthog's founders heed this crucial implication: the paying customer for analytics are analysts, not engineers.

Analysts want analytics that work. Engineers want analytics to go away. An analyst wants to augment their data analysis, in order to produce more conclusions or support more decisions for the decision makers they report to. An engineer wants to focus on building technically challenging, long-lived systems, not on churning out short-lived weapons in the justification- explanation wars waged between Data Science, Business Intelligence, Product Management and the C-Suite.

To use a market analogy, the engineer-as-a-customer will pay on cost, not value. Analytics are necessary but secondary to their day-to-day work: for most, it's just a one-line telemetry SDK logging call. If an engineer builds a feature doesn't lead to an uptick in a business metric, that engineer can shift to another org with little fuss. The analyst, on the other hand, is tied to proving the performance of their feature or subject-of-analysis. The longer an analyst has to wait for engineering to build a tool to analyze (sell) a feature, the riskier their position is in the company. Analysts like Product Managers or embedded Data Scientists or BI experts, will accordingly pay a value-based price for analytics. They need it for their jobs.

Posthog will likely work for companies where engineers are also analysts. But in larger companies where the roles are more clearly divided, I forsee posthog's current focus leading them astray.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> By hosted, we mean charging customers for the hosted version of the open source product. The risk is that a cloud provider decides to compete with your hosted version.

An interesting approach is what cockroachdb did, which basically forbid this very specific use case, and is otherwise standard open-source.

<comment><USER6> > An interesting approach is what cockroachdb did, which basically forbid this > very specific use case, and is otherwise standard open-source.

I have no qualms with what they've done. It's their intellectual property and they can do as they see fit. But it's not open source. There's plenty of proprietary software that also provides the source code (generally without support).

Maybe we need to settle on a new term like "source available". Or "source provided". But it's not open source.

To quote Arthur Dent, it's almost, but not entirely unlike, closed sourced.

<comment><USER7> If you can host it on your own systems for free and edit the source code it's more open than an open source software encumbered by patents.

Really I think we just need a new terms like unencumbered software (do anything), open license software (give credit and include source code), trapped software (beware patent minefield or infections nature), etc. Because frankly people toss around incompatible definitions of open source all the time.

<comment><USER8> At the risk of being cynical, I don't think it was common to toss around incompatible definitions of open source until very recently. There seems to have been a considerable push by a number of people to dilute the meaning of open source -- in my tin-foil-hat opinion with the intent of destroying the community behind it. Free and open source software has weathered these kinds of attacks many times before and it certainly looks very similar to the kinds of things I've seen before.

I think it's a matter of people with vested interests throwing spaghetti against the wall until something sticks. We've often seen cries of "But how will programmers get paid if everything is free?", and "You don't need to modify the code as long as you can see it", and "Free and open source software is incompatible with commercial endeavours". What's new now is, "If you go with a free or open source piece of software, you are playing into the hands of the likes of Google who will gobble you up". This approach has be demonstrably far more successful than others.

From the perspective of someone who values free (as in freedom) software, I'm wary of diluting the brand of both free software and open source software. I think it only really serves the interests of people who do not value free and open source software. Given that the OSI actually has a _trademark_ for open source, I hope they enforce it. I'm worried they don't have the resources to do so, though.

<comment><USER9> > There seems to have been a considerable push by a number of people to dilute > the meaning of open source -- in my tin-foil-hat opinion with the intent of > destroying the community behind it.

A cynic always looks cleverer than someone who takes people at their word. I prefer to do the latter even if I look stupid.

Companies like CockroachDB and Sentry invest years of work and millions of dollars making useful products. A concern they have is that someone swoops in just as they find product market fit and hosts a version of their own. If AWS/Azure/GCP offer hosted CockroachDB, fewer people will pay Cockroach for their product. It's as simple as that.

At the same time these companies also want to make sure that firms have the option of self hosting. If you're too small to be able to afford it, self host. If you're large and need to be on prem for regulatory reasons, self host. If you want to make a custom fork, go right ahead. If you want to upstream any changes, you can also do that. Customers have options! The only companies left out in the cold are AWS/Azure/GCP.

This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I'd rather these companies stayed in business and continued innovating rather than being put out of business by the big boys.

When they say this is their reason for going with a different license, I believe them. I don't come up with conspiracy theories that they're maliciously trying to harm something I love. Even if I was prone to conspiracy theories, I'd at least come up with a mechanism for _how_ the movement would be harmed. I wouldn't just fling a serious accusation at people who are working hard just for the sake of farming upvotes

<comment><USER10> _When they say this is their reason for going with a different license, I believe them. I don't come up with conspiracy theories that they're maliciously trying to harm something I love. Even if I was prone to conspiracy theories, I'd at least come up with a mechanism for _how_ the movement would be harmed. I wouldn't just fling a serious accusation at people who are working hard just for the sake of farming upvotes_

Look, free software and open source have a certain tradeoff and definition. If you don't like it, don't use the license and don't call your products open or free software.

<comment><USER9> I specifically referred to Sentry and CockroachDB in my comment

> This means that CockroachDB core is no longer Open Source (according to > OSI's Open Source Definition), although the complete source code is still > available, and any commercial usage is allowed with the one exception of > building a DBaaS

[https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing- cockroach...](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroachdb/)

> Although we've come to refer to the BSL as eventually open-source since it > converts to an OSI-approved license at the conversion date, due to the grant > restriction, it is formally not an open-source license.

[https://blog.sentry.io/2019/11/06/relicensing- sentry](https://blog.sentry.io/2019/11/06/relicensing-sentry)

Does that satisfy you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> First of all congratulations on this. It is nice to see Open Source being on the table for VCs. I am not sure how it pans out from a business point of view though.

If you truly want a product built with the community then you might lose some control - or give control to the community, at least voting. Unless you want a* "source available" type of thing. Open Source is ideology and tool.

The less control might mean that you prioritize what is good for the community, not necessarily for your VCs. I started working full time on an open source product, which like PostHog, I feel is going to be core infrastructure to any business that runs on data/software.

I want to build a sustainable business around it. I have enough money in bank to sustain product building and marketing with my cheap living costs and get traction. Once there, I will have to think of next steps, but I do not feel I want to get into accelerated growth that comes with VC money. Mentors are highly appreciated though.

*Edited typos.

</comment><comment><USER12> >> "Going for VC means you are committing to an exit or a failure - you can't really change your mind later that you want to take things more steadily"

Exactly. And that is a huge reason NOT to use VC-funded opensource.

<comment><USER13> Not exactly, you can still back out by not raising future rounds, or buying back their shares, as Gumroad did.

<comment><USER12> It's too late. The intent has been signaled. PostHog is leveraging the goodwill of the "opensource" meme for personal profit-seeking. Their intention is literally to sell this analytics product to a Google/Amazon/Microsoft.

If you're going to raise VC with the intent to sell, why even bother going opensource other than to manipulate a percentage of developers who will convert on the basis of "opensource = good".

<comment><USER14> What's wrong with being open source but also for profit? I'd rather they be open source, make money and be sustainable than be closed source. At least this way I know I can continue using it if any unwanted changes are made, perhaps via someone forking it, and also continue to self host it.

<comment><USER15> Early-stage VC-funded isn't the opposite of sustainable, but it's close.

The intent is (generally) to overshoot by mythical-man-month'ing for ~1yr, and on failure, firesale/acquihire to a likely inherently sociopathic bigco, vs keep going. Ex: When hiring folks, you're pitching a fat VC-dependent salary and promise of IPO-or-sale, and as that pressure increases & expectation solidifies, if revenue doesn't grow artificial growth levels (2-4X YoY for 3-5 years straight), you're now facing layoffs + non-giant compensation. Morale plummets, senior staff disappears, etc. Founders will feel the same. There are additional inherent reasons why this is the default, such as a now-broken cap table.

I'm for it and wish them luck, but it's asking for an internal + external disaster to delude yourself, team, and users relying on you about such a fundamental assumption.

(It's a very different story if there's already a popular federated OSS project _not_ reliant on the founders+VCs lucking into reliable recurring revenue, and hey, the startup may be the lucky 1%.)

<comment><USER14> Sure, it might be better to bootstrap their product then rather than taking VC (which I know is the point of the article but I digress). Actual revenue will validate whether their product can work or not, and VC can definitely obscure this validation.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like I was unclear.

VC-funded is a structurally and historically bad path to sustainability.

Picking an unsustainable path is OK! People can now have a high salary while working at a risky business operations venture! It's easier to hire better people! I do deep tech, and VC-funded is almost necessary there. VC requires the product to not be good, but so crazy good that you can raise $3M -> $10M -> $20M over 4-5yrs... or close shop. Which is OK!

My caution is for founders to setup up employees & users with misleading expectations as you're getting out the gate: Messaging sustainability when you just lit a timebomb. This particular topic can lead to all sorts of heartache for your team & users as reality hits, and sets up a bad cultural precedent for future ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> regarding this "you want to seem like you're having your ____* together ":

My experience is this is bad advise. There are people who care a lot about this appearance stuff and people with skills, in any role, even as pure investors. You don't want to work with the appearance people because even the you-can-trust-them part often is just appearance. And the people with actual skills don't give a shit if you sit there with a 4k camera and a straight shirt or in your undergarments and a 3-day beard. They care about if you can deliver something useful, if you can stick to your goals+principles in tough times, and if your goals align with them well enough that they can believe you stay on board until they made their profit.

So not being well prepared for the video call part is actually not a minus point. It might even be a plus.

Kudos for the fundraiser. Keep posting, you guys are interesting!

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope that they can put some of this funding to work by hiring a copywriter, as it's impossible to figure out what this software does from reading the homepage.

<comment><USER18> It says "Open source product analytics" front and center, and then it goes on to elaborate. I grant you that there are features in the screenshot which are not clearly described in the homepage, but it's hyperbole to say it's impossible to figure out what this does from reading the homepage.

<comment><USER17> It's not hyperbole in the slightest.

"Understand your users." So like, translation? People with accessibility issues?

"Build a better product." But you don't know what my product is, and I still don't know if you can help me achieve that goal because a service for everyone is a service for nobody.

"Join 1000 companies" Is 1000 a lot? It is if they are fortune 5000 companies, but not a lot if it's Shopify dropshippers or people selling Amway. If you name names, I can quickly decide if I belong in this group.

"Try hosted or self-managed" I still don't know what you're trying to pitch me, so how can I possibly know what to click on?

"Open source product analytics" \- wait, are you an open source analytics tools, or an analytics tool for my open source product?

"Understand users and events" So it can tell me how my churn will be impacted by COVID-19 and who is in need of special attention during the Black Lives Matter protests?

I could go on and on, and no - I'm not being difficult or contrarian... they have one opportunity to convince me that I'm in the right place and they have what I need. They don't make any kind of attempt to compare or contrast what they are offering to current products I'm likely already using or existing behaviours that I'll be able to change.

The whole thing basically screams "if you're here, you already know what this is". That's a missed opportunity and it's what inspired me to post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really great to see they've raised money.

I wished the founders best of luck and have been watching from the sidelines since their launch thread here, super solid product.

</comment><comment><USER20> Others covered a lot of aspects already,so I'll just add this: We are seeing the same story again and again.A few Europeans go to the US,pitch, and get funded. I can't imagine raising $3M+ on this side of the pond after only a few months of starting and without having some very good connections.

<comment><USER21> Raising VC funds outside of greater Bay Area is not only harder, but generally per equity traded, you get less in return. Generally, these cluster investors cluster around an asset-type, industry, jurisdiction, and proximity.

Bay Area startups raised roughly $46 billion in 2019, compared to Europe in sum raising $36 billion; if you're raising more than $10 million, not attempting to raise funds in the Bay Area is likely poor choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Congrats guys. It is always great to see other players bringing open source approach to product analytics. This will only bring more competition hence better products. (PS: I am one of the cofounders of Countly).

</comment><comment><USER23> Been following PostHog along for a while and am super glad to see this! Congratulations and excited to see what happens in the future. Love this model!

</comment><comment><USER24> Open source > SaaS is a hot take.

<comment><USER14> You can have an open source SaaS, they're not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER11> Well it complicates the business model a bit. I am working full time on an open source data/content management product. I know my reasons to do it this way, but I also want to build a sustainable business around it. That is something I need to figure out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congrats guys. Great progress in a very short time!!

We @RudderStack also raised a round recently. Glad to see investors putting money in Open-Source projects.

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats</comment>


A speedy 3D printer that uses light projected into resin - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612869/watch-this-super-speedy-3d-printer-make-objects-suddenly-appear/ <comment><USER2> Stereolithography was the first style of 3D printing I ever heard about, back in the late '80s. I can't tell from this article what it is about the machine they're profiling which is supposed to represent an improvement.

<comment><USER3> Traditional stereolithography is layer-based like FDM printers. Per the article, this solidifies the whole object all at once. If I understand it correctly, it does this by rotating the resin vat and controlling the UV light to expose the whole object evenly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whole reason this works better in "traditional" SLS printers do it layer by layer is to remove any accuracy issues caused by partially cured resin from existing passes. If you're shooting UV through a bunch of non-homogenous resin, you'll see some really bad warping, distortion.

</comment><comment><USER5> Err, over an hour for a low resolution, 4" tall print? With what system?

It's a neat evolution in resin printing, but not quite revolutionary (yet).

</comment><comment><USER6> an even better improvement would be photonic momentum or molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). a triad of laser beams would be used to levitate and position an aliquot of polymer into position and cured by a 4th beam of sufficient quanta to induce polymerization.

phys.cst.temple.edu/graylab/papers/48_ALL-Laser_MBE_njp_QM_2_10_2017.pdf [PDF]</comment>


How decent bike parking could revolutionize cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2225511/

<comment><USER2> There's more to encouraging bike use than bike parking. I live in Seattle, where bike parking is plentiful - but yet I'm still apprehensive to ride many places because of snarly, downright dangerous traffic.

Bike parking will only be an issue once enough streets have bike lanes, and the law properly protects bicyclists against hostile drivers. As it is most of the city is still off-limits to me unless I feel like weaving through a crowd of fast-moving 1-ton pieces of steel piloted by irate people. I don't even get far enough to have to worry about where to place my bike.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I have spent a bit of time on my bike in Seattle, and the thought of traffic never occurred to me. I think drivers there, like in Chicago, are used to cyclists and shouldn't cause you any problems.

<comment><USER2> It's certainly better than some other cities I've lived in - but I live and work downtown, and navigating downtown streets on a bicycle to/from work is an intimidating proposition. Not many of us who work here do it - and I commend the brave souls who do :)

<comment><USER4> I partially agree with you. I lived in Seattle's International district this past summer, and biked quite a bit. At first, I was apprehensive about the traffic, but it wasn't bad once I got past my first ride.

One resource you might find helpful is the maps on Seattle's Department of Transportation website: (<http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/bikemaps.htm>). They show the streets that are safer to bike. When I lived there, I biked southbound on 5th because I live on 5th, but that felt a little sketchy around 5th and Pike. According to the map, 2nd has a bike lane that I could have used for going southbound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of an article I read a few years ago, which talked about cities designed for walking.* Most cities have a code that requires that every new development must supply X number of parking spaces per Y square feet of land. However, all these required parking spaces spread out a city's points of interest. By requiring fewer if any parking spaces, some cities were able to achieve a higher density of points of interest. By two points of interest being closer, they are therefor more walkable. The article mentioned San Francisco as an example of a city that doesn't require many parking spaces, and consequently it is rated as the most walkable city in the U.S.

Personally, I always walk when I go to San Francisco. That's partly because it is so walkable (my points of interest are usually near Market St or along the waterfront), but also because it's impossible to park there. I often won't go to San Francisco if I want to stay out later than the public transit (BART) runs, because it's usually too much of a hassle to park. That second reason is the point of Slate's article.

* I would post a link to the article I read, but I couldn't find it after a few minutes on Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> The non-profit I work with is interested in bringing biking to my home town (El Paso). We're first going to create some "artsy" bike racks for local business. Hopefully that'll raise awareness for bikes, and perhaps we can get city council to back us on adding more bike racks/bike lanes/etc.

<comment><USER3> Just make sure they're functional. Nothing is nicer than a properly-used "staple":

<http://trimet.org/images/portlandmall/bike_staple.jpg>

It may not be a work of art, but it is very effective. (The only problem is that many cyclists don't seem to know how to use them correctly. You lean your bike against the long part!)

<comment><USER5> We'd probably go with standard bike racks if biking was our only concern. It's not. We're also trying to draw people to local businesses in a town dominated by franchises. It might be gimmicky, but if it gets people to explore a little, it's worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The first comment is amusing; tow trucks for bicycles? It is easy to fix a flat on your bike; stick a stick-on patch over the hole in the tube, inflate with your CO2 cartridge, and ride on. You don't even need to remove the wheel!

(When you get home, you can fix it "forever" with a glue-on patch.)

I think one of the biggest problems facing cycling advocates is the general lack of knowledge among people "considering" cycling. They don't know how to ride in traffic, they don't know how to maintain their bike, etc., etc., so they get scared and never try. (I didn't know these things when I first started riding as an adult, but Google fixed that problem for me in about 15 minutes.)

<comment><USER6> There really is something cool about knowing that you could completely tear the machine that you're using apart, and put it back together again with the tools in your backpack.

<comment><USER7> My recumbent bike came torn apart in a box via mail.

On the up-side I know exactly how it works and I appreciate its simplicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I encourage all people who enjoy seeing lots of bikes on the streets to visit Florence, Italy. When you are there buy bike for 50 euros and sell it for the same amount when you leave. There are literally hordes of bikes parked everywhere. In this city crowded with tourists you can safely ride a bike though dense crowd, and leave your bike anywhere next to fifty other already parked there.

Of course bikes do get stolen as everywhere else so locks are obligatory, but herds work for bikes as well as they work for herbivores.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is miserable parking my bike in NYC and the threat of it getting bent and hit on the sidewalk is terrifying.

<comment><USER3> I agree here. I don't understand the big deal about bringing them into your building with you. They are smaller than a person and 10% of the weight. What could possibly be a risk? Why would people even consider it unacceptable to bring your bike inside?

(I have not tried yet at my $new_job. Soon. I know nobody in my department would care, but I am sure security would complain.)

<comment><USER10> Most bicycles, though smaller than people, are much more inconveniently shaped and harder to manuever or get out of the way.

<comment><USER3> No more inconvenient than people with those backpacks with wheels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Parking is not the gating factor for bicycle commuting in any city. Finding roads and paths to ride on without raising your chance of getting killed significantly is the difficult bit.

<comment><USER12> The entire article is explaining why this isn't the case. Would you drive to work if you knew that you wouldn't be able to park your car anywhere? Of course not. This is what is faced by cyclists. Sure you can leave your bike on the street (if it's not raining) but as the article states the rate of theft is so exceptionally high that it's idiotic to do so.

<comment><USER13> Do most offices not allow you to park your bike inside, but out of the way? Perhaps I've been more fortunate than I thought to not have that problem.

Parking is not the be-all-end-all solution (proper bike lanes is also crucial, and showers/lockers are a requirement for an additional subset of potential bikers) but obviously it helps lower the barrier to entry for enough people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live in Berkeley and ride constantly. I occasionally have trouble finding a pole to tie my bike to but generally I have absolutely no trouble.

I'd say parking is only a problem in places like New York City and maybe Chicago. Traffic, on the other hand, is something that scares a lot of people.

<comment><USER3> Incidentally, automobile traffic moves about as quickly in the city center as does bicycle traffic. Outside of the center, a bike moves about as quickly as a city bus. (Seems like I play leapfrog with a bus every time I ride down Roosevelt or Damen.)

<comment><USER14> Indeed, bus leap frog is one my less favorite games but I've played it quite a bit...</comment></comment></comment>


What I've Learned from Hacker News (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html <comment><USER3> Original discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053)

Another (short) discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999)

Discussion about an update: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285333)

Other submissions without discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8466459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8466459)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730494)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe the mods can add a new FAQ on what the uniques and traffic growth is like now. And maybe update it on even just a yearly basis?

<comment><USER5> Growth has been consistent for years, if you squint to smooth out big swings. It's linear, which is about how we like it.

Uniques are up to 4.5M or so per month, depending on how you count.

There's one intriguing exception to the linear growth: the number of submissions has been roughly flat since 2012. Comments, votes, accounts, page views, basically everything have all grown at about the same rate, but not submissions. I'm grateful for that, because we don't have any moderation capacity to spare. But it's interesting to speculate about why.

<comment><USER6> > But it's interesting to speculate about why.

Indeed, this is quite interesting. What is your hypothesis? A plateau regarding new content on the internet that is of interest to the user base, perhaps?

What is the percentage of duplicate posts, and what is the percentage of submissions that stay on the first page of HN for a sufficient amount of time to get traction? Is there any data on this?

<comment><USER5> That's my hypothesis, yes. But I wonder how to test it.

I'm afraid I don't have those numbers at hand; sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would a site that isn't growing be considered dead?

<comment><USER8> Over time the attrition rate for attention increases. As a result it becomes harder to justify further investments in usability features or content quality because you can no longer leverage the increased attention of more users in the future. This can lead towards a death spiral of lower frequency updates leading to less viewers leading to less updates.

For a venture-backed site even hitting a 20% growth rate per month would be a warning that you're not growing fast enough to justify continued investment, as was the case for a recent postmortem on Gumroad [1].

Given that this post was from 10 years ago that's definitely not the case for Hacker News, but in this climate it's gotten even more extreme if you're relying on venture backing.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733)

<comment><USER9> I'm not much of a money guy to be honest but isn't profit what dictates how much you can invest on the product?

If you have a constant user base that provides constant profit why is growth needed to sustain a business?

<comment><USER10> It's not needed to sustain the business but it is needed for those who invested in it and would like to cash out on a higher valuation - <USER2> typically is achieved through growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> HN generates emotional friction[1], is filled with shallow but clever sounding dismissals[2] and is filled with low quality discussions on high quality articles[3].

[1]: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657)

[2]: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785)

[3]: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993)

<comment><USER12> > low quality discussions

I'd put your citations of tweets clearly expressing personal opinion as devaluing the conversation.

I typically find highly rated comments on HN as useful in adding new information or perspective to an article or discussion.

<comment><USER13> I agree. I would argue that I get a lot more value out of the comments than than the linked content.

The only major issue I have with the comments on HN is that early ones get a lot more upvotes, causing later--but just as valid--points of view to be lost.

<comment><USER14> The early bird gets the worm and the early comment gets the karma.

Maybe a dynamic system that randomly shows an order weighted on upvotes in the past X minutes. That'd give fresh comments a chance to compete.

<comment><USER15> When a discussion is interesting enough for me to want to follow it, I will search the page for "minutes ago" to find the newest posts. It might be nice if new posts were highlighted for some amount of time.

<comment><USER16> I have a user script for that [1]. If you visited a story's comments before, it will highlight new comments and can auto-collapse threads without new comments. Otherwise, it gives you a slider you can use to highlight the X most recent comments.

[1] [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/18066-hn-comment- trees](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/18066-hn-comment-trees)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Berlin Google Campus occupied - <AUTHOR> https://besetzen.noblogs.org/post/2018/09/07/google-campus-occupied-fuckoffgoogle/ <comment><USER3> > New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. > The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must > have been a halfway livable city.

This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high paying jobs, did we not? If the people need more housing, the solution is, shockingly enough, to build more housing.

<comment><USER4> > This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists

I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and prices people out of the market. It negatively affects all renters and only benefits speculators and owners in the area.

You wonder why people are angry? It's because of tonedeaf responses from big companies pushing their agendas.

<comment><USER5> Honest question: where would you prefer to put those thousands of individuals making $150-250k? I mean, they have to work somewhere, right? And they want to live in big, vibrant metropolitain areas for the same reason that YOU want to live in those areas (which is why you're upset about the rent in the first place).

Is there really a solution in your head where high-paid geeks are going to move to Boise or Zagreb or Perth[1] and be happy there vs. SF or Berlin or Sydney?

[1] Pause while residents of those places tell me how great they are.

<comment><USER6> Sometimes there aren't good answers. Prosperity for some displaces.

You can't be surprised that those who aren't rich, and we're already here, are angry at the situation.

<comment><USER5> There are good answers. But they're ones of housing policy and urban planning, not "#FuckOffGoogle", which serves literally no one.

<comment><USER7> Telling angry people that they're irrational and not entitled to their anger is not a good answer, either.

<comment><USER8> This is an incredibly condescending thing to say, and probably not helpful, but I'm going to say it anyway.

When my two year old gets angry and starts a screaming fit, I tell her she's not getting her way and screaming won't help, and practice taking deep breaths with her, and talking soothingly with her until she can calm down.

Being angry doesn't make a person right. A person being angry does not mean you should give into their demands. A mob of angry people is not more right for being large, scary and potentially violent.

<comment><USER7> See, you misunderstand my point. When faced by an angry mob, you don't simply tell them they're wrong. That's not a smart tactic when people are emotional. Just stating facts won't cool anyone's passions or grievances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >>The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young entrepreneurs whose IT-sweatshops ("start-ups") promise to deliver new ideas to Google's company business.

Those are some pretty emotional words, but show how much in a bubble we tech people might live. Curious if anyone knows more about the movement behind this, I doubt it's a majority opinion of the public?

<comment><USER10> It shows how much of a bubble the protesters live in, too. Calling startups "sweatshops" is kind of absurd. To the extent that work is harder or pay is worse in startups, it's for the ownership (or at least a sense of ownership) and excitement. Most people working in startups could, if they wanted, sidestep into safe, boring corporate IT work.

The protesters would be a lot more interesting if they'd start reading Marcuse and seeing middle class job security and mortgages and the like as a totalitarian system that works by its addictiveness. But reading the life work of old men who were once angry young Marxists who watched their revolution fail and then their nation turn to fascism isn't as much fun as yelling at Google.

<comment><USER11> The amount of free "non developer" labor being exploited by early stage startups is immense

<comment><USER10> If someone is working for free on a voluntary basis, they're probably not being "exploited". When I was trying to build a startup, I got plenty of free help from various friends and interested parties who were excited about what I was building - but nothing on the level of employee-level work. Hell, if someone was remotely useful and willing to put in real hours, I'd have called them co-founders and given them equity, happily.

This is important! If someone has enough skills/ambition to be actually _useful_ to an early stage startup, they can make better money elsewhere. So if they're putting in their time with the startup, they're being motivated by something else. That doesn't mean they're being exploited. It means their interests can't be measured entirely in dollars.

<comment><USER11> Plenty of startups have students / recent grads in marketing, pa roles working 20-40 hours a week for no pay.

<comment><USER10> Are they getting equity? Experience? Networking? Fun?

As long as they feel like they're getting something useful from the experience, then I don't think "exploited" is the right word. And if they think they're not getting anything out of it, it begs the question just how that early stage startup is going to make them stick around. Exploitation involves more stick, less carrot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although I don't agree with their way of communicating, I think the protestors' concern is valid: they will be forced to move because Google's rich employees will price them out of their living area. This is because of two reasons:

1) Renting: the protestors rent instead of own the homes they're living in, so their costs go up with the housing prices. The government could have reduced this problem by promoting home ownership in the past.

2) Income inequality: the protestors are not techies, so they won't be employed by Google, and will earn far less than Google's employees. The government can reduce this problem by increasing income leveling.

</comment><comment><USER13> occupation is over, the police arrested a few of the occupiers, there are reports that a person was injured in the process.

Source: Our office is in the same building.

<comment><AUTHOR> Per twitter, one of the protestors got injured gravely, and someone mentioned that a security guard got hit by his own pepper spray.

<comment><USER13> I'd hate the security guard to be injured, he's a nice person. (edit: this may sound wrong: I also hate that any other person got injured, but I don't know that person, so I sort of feel less personal involvement)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a great line:

"The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young entrepreneurs whose IT-sweatshops ("start-ups") promise to deliver new ideas to Google's company business."

<comment><USER14> Anyway this could get incorporated into the actual Google mission statement ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > ...to fight against the skyrocketing rents and to open up the space for > something better.

They lost me right there. If they want to fight skyrocketing rents they should push for more housing. If they wanted the space to be used for something else they should have bought or rented it themselves. Protesting Google does nothing to change these.

<comment><USER16> So you're saying that because my neighbor has much more money than I he can behave however he pleases even if the whole neighborhood despises him?

<comment><USER17> It isn't illegal to be hated, at least not yet. You seem awfully eager to coerce your neighbors into behaving in a way consistent with your personal values.

<comment><USER7> Conformity is a means of social cohesion, yes.

<comment><USER17> Why do you value that over your individuality?

<comment><USER7> Conformity is a rational method that society uses to maintain order. It shouldn't be surprising. That's an objective observation and my own values are irrelevant to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not build more housing. Build enough housing for all new residents - <USER2> doesn't go up

</comment><comment><USER19> The whole protesting thing seems pretty tame these days. They list demands, but don't follow up with any threat? Why would anyone take the demands seriously?

<comment><USER20> Threaten the panopticon police state and they will label you a terrorist. Good luck getting work after that. Hopefully you'll avoid a long prison sentence too.

<comment><USER19> With that world view, why make demands, though? Seems like it's just attracting unnecessary scrutiny from the "panopticon police state" without accomplishing anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty interesting that Google is protested that much, while there are no actions of any comparable size against Zalando. Zalando also is a "big tech firm", and it already has and continues to change Berlin in exactly the way it is claimed of Google, on a much larger scale than Google will in the foreseeable future (since they already have their German HQ in Hamburg).

<comment><USER13> Zalando, especially the new office space close to the Lido, has been heavily protested against. The space has been squatted IIRC, but it's harder to make news by squatting an empty plot. The space close to the Ostbahnhof is less contentious since it's not right in the middle of a living area but in a newly built commercial zone.

<comment><USER21> But what they are protesting is not necessarliy the office building, but the influx of well paid tech workers that the companies bring with them. There, the building near Ostbahnhof or the Rocket Tower should be just as controversial. In the 3 years of living in Berlin, I feel like the recent Google protests are the only thing that got any significant attention.

<comment><USER13> The protest is mainly against the gentrification of the immediate neighborhood. So buildings that are less clearly in a living area are less contested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you don't want the housing pressure brought by new jobs, don't allow new jobs. If you want new jobs without increased housing pressure peg the number of new housing permits to the number of new jobs. Or put another way, look at what happened Silicon Valley for a splendid example of how NOT to do it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Insulting the people you want to join you seems line a poor way to get support:

"...work-shy benefit scroungers, strike-hungry air traffic controllers, long- living pensioners, unruly refugees, and all other local pests from the neighborhood..."

<comment><USER24> A big whoosh for you, my friend. Or worse, an intentional bad-faith reading.

Those are clearly terms of endearment. Meant to evoke anger that OTHERS call them that. Owning the words to take them back, as they say.

Also, this is German. Go do a little cultural research next time before the lazy comment.

<comment><USER23> Ah, ok got it. Sorry for misspeaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> fwiw: Campus Berlin FAQ [https://sites.google.com/view/campusberlin- faq/home](https://sites.google.com/view/campusberlin-faq/home)

<comment><USER26> all this fuss over 10 google employees?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Huh, we're building a campus in Berlin? Neat! I work in the Munich office, but Berlin seems nice too.

<comment><USER27> Glad you came away from this story with your broad perspective intact.

<comment><USER3> Was there something particularly convincing there that should've swayed me?</comment></comment></comment>