So Many Research Scientists, So Few Openings as Professors - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/upshot/so-many-research-scientists-so-few-openings-as-professors.html?hpw&rref=upshot&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0 <comment><USER3> I run a small industrial applied research lab (<100 researchers). The truth is that, except in fairly specific cases, we don't need PhD level staff either. Just like in a university lab, the bulk of the hard work is done by people with Graduate (or in some cases Undergraduate) degrees. Practical experience in the field is also about 50% of what we need (since we're ultimately figuring out things that can go into engineering and deployed operationally, knowing what the end-state environment looks and runs like is critical). The role of PI is more often filled in our case by the corporate leadership.

I honestly think that the lack of large industrial research labs and the drying up of good academic research positions is very much an issue of what would be R&D funding going to other things that provide better near term ROI: VC, stock market, etc.

R&D is very much an investment like anything else and for whatever reason (patents, existing IP portfolios, etc.), it's just not a place that gets much attention at the moment as the money handlers have found that they have more ROI opportunity elsewhere.

I think the modern substitute for old fashioned R&D is the modern tech startup. The siren call of these ridiculously inflated "valuations" is simply too much for investment managers and it locks up more and more money that could go towards other investments. There's more parallels there as well, R&D and Startup investment is a high-failure game. But the outcome of successful startups is likely to be much larger than the outcome of a successful R&D venture (which still has very long tails of IP capture, product development, marketing, etc.)

I think it's a shame in the sense that, while we end up with dozens of photo sharing sites and social network startups, there's very few actual world changing ones out there. Most of what we get are not "hard" technical areas and their value derives from their faddish popularity - they're kind of the Karashians of technology.

But I guess that's the way of the world.

<comment><USER4> The goal of research (at least for basic science) isn't to make money, it is to increase knowledge about the universe. This knowledge is a public good, so it makes sense that private industries motivated by profit do not support fundamental research. Scientific progress is a rising tide that lifts all boats.

<comment><USER5> Price signals are how we tell people what research careers are worth considering.

Unless they don't mind working for peanuts, in which case there's no problem.

<comment><USER6> Well .. it is a tournament model so price is misleading. Top researchers at industrial labs get paid a decent amount. The problem is (a) getting a coveted job, and (b) mobility when things eventually go south at your employer and they decide research is expendable.

<comment><USER7> I think both these points are true:

1\. Society uses price signals to drive activity to areas "we" want to develop

2\. In research, the tournament model prevails so a few winners get most of the gains

However, the question arises:

The tournament model prevails in many other domains including startups, the movie industry and so forth. However, in those areas most people don't feel that the enterprise is severely underfunded. (I am assuming this so if people have contrary data, I will re-assess).

The question stands: in spite of the tournament model, why does society fail to deliver enough reward for basic research when we as a society believe that there should be more of it.

(We could ask the same of teachers, and so on.)

It could also be the case that "society", whatever that is, doesn't really feel that science is underfunded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Now, as a new crop of graduate students receives Ph.D.s in science, > researchers worry over the future of some of these dedicated people; they're > trained to be academics and are often led to believe that anything else is > an admission of failure.

As someone finishing up grad school, this doesn't seem quite accurate. To me, it seems like a lot of the interesting research is being done in industry. I remember scrolling through jobs online toward the end of my undergraduate and seeing "PhD required" for all of the positions I was interested in. Most of my friends working on their PhD are aiming either for industry or a research scientist position at a government lab (like ORNL). So I'm not sure who exactly constitutes this group that believes "not professor" = failure.

<comment><USER9> What field are you in, though? I believe that attitude is tremendously pervasive the more "theoretical" the field is, e.g. the closer it is to math & physics, and the further it is from engineering.

<comment><USER10> I studied chemical engineering: all of our PhD grads chose industry over academia, and most of our young professors had come out of physics, chemistry, and biology departments. It was an interesting culture mix, partly created by the fact that ChemE is either disappearing as a field or changing to the point of being unrecognizable (depending on who you ask).

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the field has changed a ton. When my dad was working on his ChemE degree, they had a class strictly on galvanization (which was barely covered at all in my undergrad), and they were doing McCabe-Thiele diagrams by hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Three big problems:

1) Emphasis on funding translational research using government grants, which industry would otherwise be doing on its own. Hence, industry jobs have evaporated while basic science has languished.

2) Institutional salary caps on Grad students/Post docs, so training funds stretch too far resulting in an oversupply of entry level jobs. Better to pay the best people at competitive wages.

3) Growing divide between industry and academia, making job hopping even harder. Everybody is left worse off.

<comment><USER12> A _huge_ part of the issue, which you hint at in #2, is the "training" part.

Most research is actually performed by trainees: undergrads, grad students, and some postdocs. This is silly because

1) the "training" is often pretty minimal (my PhD involved less coursework than an undergrad masters) and

2) most of the people doing most of the work have no idea what they are doing.

Nevertheless, this still happens because there are TONS of established funding mechanisms for trainees: REU (and similar per-university programs for undergrads), and individual (NRSA) and institutional training grants (T31) for postdocs and grad students.

In contrast, there are _very_ _few_ ways to fund more experienced individuals who are not running their own lab. This is bad for those people, and also bad for the institutions.

<comment><USER13> There's more to training than coursework.

<comment><USER12> Sure, I don't want to sell my PhD program too short. There were lots of visiting speakers (which needs $$$), journal clubs, workshops and things like that. There was a terrific library, and an environment where many

That said, actual training on doing research was pretty damn thin on the group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What the article curiously doesn't talk about it the fact that the non- academic job market at PhD level collapsed in 2007. In the news yesterday: even more cutbacks at Merck. The degree of offshoring and outsourcing that happened since 2003 in chemistry and the life sciences is incredible to anyone not in the field.

<comment><USER15> More on the cutbacks at Merck: [http://endpts.com/merck-triggers-a-new-round- of-layoffs-in-r...](http://endpts.com/merck-triggers-a-new-round-of-layoffs- in-rd-reorganization/)

> Merck's move follows a major trend in biopharma R&D, as the biggest > companies concentrate more and more of their work in the big hubs. And > virtually all of the major players have downsized at one time or another.

> Close to three years ago, Merck triggered a major reorganization in its R&D > ranks, as the then new R&D chief Roger Perlmutter set in motion a plan that > involved 8,500 layoffs, all of which were piled on a restructuring effort > that was announced earlier.

> Those layoffs followed a years-long gap in significant new drug approvals > and a string of clinical setbacks. Since then, though, Merck landed a > landmark approval of Keytruda, now the number two checkpoint inhibitor on > the blockbuster cancer market, along with an OK early this year for its hep > C combo, Zepatier, which is being sold in a rival-infested field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a real shame how the recession has hit STEM funding. There are a lot of really exciting new technologies that are simply not funded.

The private sector cannot innovate until monetization is in sight and the public sector is increasingly squeezed to publish papers with limited resources.

The overall effect is less innovation and bad science.

<comment><USER17> > The private sector cannot innovate until monetization is in sight

That feels like a sweeping condemnation of R&D in the private sector in general. I know very little on the subject, is there a strong base for this position?

<comment><USER18> It's a side effect of changes in the marketplace and the world.

When big conglomerates ran big horizontal and vertical businesses, they did general R&D work that benefited their broader corporate mission. Bell Labs wasn't there because AT&T was some sort of benevolent charity.

Now companies are mostly brokers between outsourcers and have a narrow focus. We haven't "caught up" with the capability that we already have, so startups have replaced corporate R&D, mostly using off the shelf stuff to make minor incremental changes.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if this was legally enforceable, but I have heard that the existence of Bell Labs was essentially a quid pro quo with the federal government in exchange for being granted a regulated monopoly on phone service. More generally, I have heard that corporate executives in the golden age of American industry had more of a sense that they owed a debt to the public for all the free stuff they had been given (cost plus defense contracts, government R&D, radio and TV frequencies, ect.). I think there are some rose-tinted glasses involved in that analysis, but it was probably part of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This story again. The oversupply of aspiring scholars is really _really_ not news.

What would be news is any sign that things are changing, with applications to grad school dropping, or maybe the expansion of graduate school degrees that are explicitly not aimed at professorships.

<comment><USER7> I had always heard that this was the case in philosophy, literature and so on.

Then, a few years ago, I heard it was the case in the sciences.

Now it is in the technical disciplines, and it is egregious. (4x oversupply). The magnitude and the discipline is the news here (at least for me).

<comment><USER20> The lack of scientists has been a myth for a long time, and probably comes from the lumping of very different fields under the umbrella of "STEM".

Lots of good info from the IEEE Spectrum (2013): "The STEM Crisis is a Myth"

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth- an...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth-an-ongoing- discussion)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I disagree with the bulk of this article. It certainly varies a lot of by field but in biophotonics I've seen a lot of extremely poor candidates, people who say things like "I don't do math", "I don't want to teach", "MATLAB is for other people", "I'm not a biologist so I can't explain my work".

When I first started I thought these people sucked, and I was going to be great. What I learned is that the graduate development opportunities are rare, and many of the reason people suck are beyond their control. For example, working on tedious projects or bullshit projects, do to your PI's conflict of interest. Or simply put that your research rests on a foundation of lies.

So, on one hand we have many people on the other hand we don't have many qualified people.

<comment><USER22> Saying "MATLAB is for other people" isn't the sign of a poor candidate. Saying "you will need to use MATLAB for this job" on the other hand is overwhelmingly a sign of a bad job, in the same way that any usage of Excel VBA whatsoever is a sign to run, run, run for the hills -- that firm is absolutely doing it wrong.

I've also heard the opposite of your first example used as a criticism of candidates too. After completing my undergrad degree in math and then grad degrees in statistics, I was astounded how in industry, either describing yourself more as an engineer or scientist who does not work on the abstract math stuff _or_ describing yourself as someone who is very interested in abstract math will _both_ cause you to get rejected.

The only way to win is to happen to have done a lot of difficult abstract math in the past and remember it all well enough to pass tricky interviews, but then to be overwhelmingly happy and satisfied with a job that will not ever ask you to use it and will instead burn you out on dumb shit stuff like fitting a regression to KPI data and using t-stats to directly do (fallacious) model comparison.

The biggest career risk I've seen from having done very computer science-heavy statistics is _underemployment_. Your math chops will be pure credential, sometimes used by your manager to try to win arguments from authority about e.g. that dumb shit KPI regression. But you will 100% never be given open- ended modeling work that could actually have a positive impact on your business's bottom line.

Essentially, you are hired to be some more senior person's sycophant political darling. You function internally much the same way that a big consulting company functions externally -- people already know what they want to hear, they just want you to tell them what they want to hear, slap together some plausible-sounding rationalizations for it, dress it up with buzzwords about big data and "insights", and be a show pony for talking about it.

They emphatically do not want you for doing anything that would be called "real" work.

There are occasional exceptions, especially in certain teams at certain established tech companies. But then, landing a position inside one of those teams is nothing but the same lottery as winning a professorship all over again.

<comment><USER23> Welcome to the real world of being an employee. It's common in every field for new employees to be academically overqualified and think their bosses are incompetent and irrational. If you don't like it then try starting your own company. I'm not being flippant; that's a serious suggestion and would give you a more realistic perspective.

<comment><USER22> Same tired, cliche replies as usual ... you're probably also assuming that my opinions aren't based on job experience, yet they are based on several years of experience in many positions, where I did the 40-hour grind, delivered business solutions for months-long and years-long projects, etc.

I'm not talking about academic overqualification. I'm talking about someone hiring you, talking at length about how you are being hired specifically to do X because it matters to the company's bottom line, and then after you're hired they switch it and say actually you're going to do Y but you're going to be a political mouthpiece for X.

One common set of values is

Y = statistically invalid model fitting that actively causes the business to lose money but which is easier to reduce to pliable metrics for political jockeying

X = (deep) machine learning and/or Bayesian stats

It's not at all about academic overqualification. The actual business need, _for reals_ , can benefit from the pragmatic and cost-effective use of the tools, and the person is actually skilled in using to do exactly that.

Yet, they are prevented _politically_.

As for starting a company, I think I would guess that's one of the _least plausible_ ways of doing important or useful work. You'll only get funding if it is a trite variation on consumer bullshit -- even though consumers themselves don't want that and would rather that your labor is allocated to solving more fundamentally important social problems that there just isn't money for solving. Plus, you'll be so burnt out over all the auxiliary stuff like HR, marketing, sales, that you won't actually do any of the underlying quant work that was the whole reason for starting the company in the first place.

It kills me how people here seem to think that "start your own company" is some kind of "put up or shut up" gauntlet to throw down to challenge someone who is lamenting the shitty state that things are in.

"Start your own company" is not some venerated challenge-call for those brave few who want to change the world. Starting your own company is just a different format of the same bullshit phenomenon.

Fixing what's broken inside of companies and organizations that already have huge leverage and capital to positively impact fundamentally important problems -- _that_ is perhaps worthwhile, if you can manage to deal with the political fighting without getting too burned out.

<comment><USER24> You seem to be missing the parent's point. He's saying that it's very common to be told that you are hired to do X and made to do Y (for the record, it happened to me once, for X being stochastic calculus for derivatives pricing and Y being excel jockeying), and if the reason for that are the politics caused by a big structure, then move to a smaller structure. You can create a company that does consulting in a quantitative field, so you don't have to seek funding to hire a team to build product.

<comment><USER22> I disagree. I think the parent is trying to say that businesses hired overqualified people and then give them less engaging work _for valid business reasons._

What I'm trying to say is that you're told you'll be hired for X, and, crucially, that it's easily verifiable that X actually would help solve the business problem better than Y. Failing to do X actively hurts the business.

Yet you're still forced to do Y. It's _not_ because in the real world you only needed simple, trustworthy Y to get the job done. No, you're failing to get the job done, need X to get it done, are told you're the one to bring X to the table, and _then_ you're made to do Y for destructive political reasons.

The point I'm trying to make is that there's no defensible "real world" pragmatism to support the focus on Y nor the bait-and-switch to hire someone who knows X. Whatever the reasons for that, they are not about improving the firm nor making money for the firm. They are about optimizing a bonus or promotion or whatever for a single individual or some small faction, even at the expense of the organization's overall progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see any particular reason to tie research generally, and scientific research specifically, to institutions primarily organized around undergraduate education.

<comment><USER14> When you are working at the coalface of research you are intimately aware of which concepts are relevant and which are not. That directly feeds into undergraduate teaching. You can't teach today what you taught 30 or 50 years ago, but at the worse undergrad-only colleges you can get away with it.

<comment><USER25> Even if this is true, and it seems much more aspirational than something that actually occurs with any sort of frequency, that's merely one benefit to be weighed against all the disadvantages. To name just a few such: worse average teaching ability than a selection method that focuses on teaching ability, reduced research output due to splitting researchers' time between teaching and research, and of course the issue pointed out in the article that the needs of undergraduate education in large measure limit the number of research scientists.

Were it not for the historical accident that we do things this way, I strongly doubt anyone would suggest we adopt it for whatever tiny educational benefit it may impart to undergraduates -- most of whom won't even go into the academic fields they are studying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It all feels like a market signaling problem. When people are choosing majors and how far to go in school, they don't seem to have the right information. Lack of understanding of the marketability of different degrees surely harms the students/future workers, but would seem to be in the interest of certain employers who benefit from the glut of overqualified workers. Of course, oversupply in one sector is likely accompanied by undersupply in others.

<comment><USER27> I don't think the colleges are keen for students to have that information. College budgets depend on people getting degrees using debt they will have severe difficulty repaying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Every year the market grows tighter, and federal money for research grants, which support most of this research, remains flat._

This makes me think we (as a country, a people), having trained all these scientists, have a market opportunity for inexpensive research, and we aren't taking advantage of it. Sure, the best and the brightest might fight their way to the top, but we can get perfectly good science out of the middle of the bell curve too.

<comment><USER5> You can't have a million researchers do a 4000 man-year project in a day.

There are decreasing marginal returns from throwing more people at a problem. Especially if they are publishing, because now you need more people to curate their publications. And if you throw enough researchers at something, they are going to find a bunch of spurious results simply because of the luck of large numbers.

I don't know if we are at that point. But adding a bunch of average people to a project can easily slow it down.

If you want to help the existing researchers, mow their lawns and buy their groceries and take care of their house maintenance problems. Let them concentrate.

<comment><USER9> Not faster research, more scope. Things that we neglect today. Hell, form a paper review branch whose sole purpose is review/reproduction of results.

We're not out of work to be done

<comment><USER5> This is a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The thing is we could double the science budget in most industrialised nations without really noticing. Compared to all the other very low ROI work being done by government spending and the almost free cost of borrowing it's probably something we _should_ do.

Throw enough tenure against the wall and eventually something will stick

<comment><USER12> Any chance you are running for Congress? :-)

<comment><USER28> Running _from_ Congress, yes :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/ti...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=4309283_nihms562644f1.jpg)

Right,

What is the difference between Civil/Environmental and Environmental ?

It seems the best bet is to study something like mining since the R_0 is so low there.

<comment><USER30> Petroleum engineering regularly makes the list of degrees with highest pay...

<comment><USER23> The petroleum industry goes through boom / bust cycles every few years. Make sure to graduate during a boom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Please choose 2 among the 2000 problems that you need to be solved as soon as possible. Wait patiently whereas 1998 urgent problems unexplicably rot and spawn 50 new problems each. Learn how to live with the new situation. Talk about the old good times when life was much easier and you had plenty of money to spend. Repeat.

</comment><comment><USER32> It would be wise to do an MD/PhD. The MDs have all the data.

Also Business schools need professors.

<comment><USER33> I agree, but broadly stated, the path doesn't generally train good scientists. The MD/PhD is more like a MD/MS. They frequently are pushed through 'phd' more rapidly under the eye of Med School deans and to optimize MD/PhD training grant slots. A not insignificant number of MD/PhD trainee simply do it for the free med school also, with little interest or intent to pursue research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> ... yet tuition has increased dramatically in the past 25 years.

Where is the money going?

<comment><USER35> _Where is the money going?_

Buildings and administration. The "undergraduate experience" that involves 24-hour gyms and subsidized restaurant-quality cafeteria food.

The truth is that professorial salaries are low and tuitions are high (for full-price payers) for the same fundamental reason: universities set the levels where they are, because they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is one of the reasons I founded asimuv. You are better off founding your own project.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a good problem. The solution is to raise the bar: in order to be a professor you have to make a tangible advancement in your field, something that advances the state of the art by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER37> Also, pay them more.

<comment><USER23> Where is the money going to come from? Undergraduate tuition has already reached ridiculous levels.

<comment><USER38> You can start by disbanding the football teams.

<comment><USER39> That's a great idea, but at many schools it wouldn't actually raise much money. It's not as though the idiot boosters will be just as happy to see their money going toward lab equipment as toward e.g. barbells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The cream of the crop will still rise to the top, so it's simply a case of the bar for Professorship is rising. Which is a good thing.

<comment><USER41> The counterpoint to that is that universities are moving more and more teaching positions to short term contracts with terrible pay and benefits. So skilled people might instead choose to go in the industry/pursue other opportunities, and the students find themselves with instructors who end doing what they do because they can't go anywhere else.

<comment><USER40> And that's ok. If the Professorships have value to anyone they'll get paid. If some positions are being removed then maybe they just weren't that useful.

<comment><USER42> That ignores a huge amount of evidence that we routinely shoot ourselves in the foot by making flawed assessments of the relative benefits of short vs. long-term rewards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The world is about people selling crap they don't need to each other. If you can be honest with yourself enough to accept that, you realize there is no place for learning in this worldview.

Getting money today (GMT) is all that matters, so until the govt finds a way to take everyone's not hard-earned money and redirect it toward more noble pursuits, I'm confident the trend will worsen.

<comment><USER6> This seems to be a sarcastic off-shoot of the discussion but I gave u an upvote. Your point is completely valid ... a stable research environment needs government funding. I think this might be a US statistic but I recall reading that we spend more on any one of the top 3 sports than we spend on all forms of cancer research. This should be a no-brainer but it isn't. There was an ACM Communications article a few years ago by Moshe Verde where he pointed out that computation has radically altered both theory and experimentation - <USER2> two pillars of science. As a professional scientist, I firmly believe we are at the precipice of great discoveries that will benefit all of humanity - except we are squandering time, and the resources of the planet on stupid bickering.

<comment><USER43> Thanks. Somebody appreciated my point. The world is consumed by trivia. People with influence and money, who sadly are the often the ones most consumed with trivia, need to die, undergo brain transplants, or some other miracle in order to change the direction we are headed.</comment></comment></comment>


California wants to tax your net worth - <AUTHOR> https://www.governing.com/finance/California-Might-Become-the-First-State-With-a-Wealth-Tax.html <comment><USER2> clickbait. not yours or my net worth

"The tax rate would be 0.4 percent of net worth, excluding directly held real estate, that exceeds $30 million for single and joint filers and $15 million for married filing separately."</comment>


Healthcare contractors point finger at Obama administration - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24658892

<comment><USER2> I suspect there was a garble in here, HHS's CMS was the "quarterback" (senior vice president of CGI Cheryl Campbell used that word in her prepared testimony), specifically they took on the role of integrator and integration testing. Except that CGI Federal has testified by letter ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606243)) that the White House was thoroughly involved.</comment>


Bringing ultra high-speed broadband to Stanford homes - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/bringing-ultra-high-speed-broadband-to.html <comment><USER2> These homes are just for staff/professors. It would be lovely if the student residencies have access to high speed broadband as well. :-)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think they have been focusing on installing wireless access points in the residences instead of upgrading the wired speeds, which have probably been at 100 Mbps for over a decade. Still, hard to complain, as I haven't ever seen any non-datacenter computer get more than 100 Mbps on the Internet.

<comment><USER4> I used to work in the ResHalls as Berkeley, and I can tell you a couple of reasons they haven't done a Gig-E upgrade. The first is that the upgrade from 10Mbps to 100Mbps was easy, because they just had to change out the switches and router blades, which require upgrades every few years anyway.

Going from 100 to 1000 is a lot harder, because the physical cables in the wall are on the cheap side (it is a University after all) and can't support Gig-E. So it would require a complete rewiring of the res Halls.

That, coupled with that fact that generally speaking there is little difference in speed when talking to the internet at 100 vs. 1000, it just isn't worth the upgrade. Most students don't notice/care, and also most of them just want to be able to move their laptops around without dealing with cables. They just want the internet to work wherever they happen to be on campus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's nice, but what on Earth would any reasonable mortal do with one gigabit per second internet access?

My standard Comcast cable can download high-def video faster than I can play it. What more could one reasonably want?

<comment><USER6> Answering that question is exactly why Google is performing this experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Won't staff and professors have different usage patterns than the average college student? It might not show realistic usage ...

<comment><USER4> Presumably this is a good test of high end usage. It seems like they are using this is a stress test, not so much a "regular usage" test.

Although, not all of those professors are Computer Science, and they have famillies that live with them, with kids and husbands and wives that have normal jobs.

Most of them probably use the Internet the same way as any well to do professional and their family would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Universities have great connections. How about serving some of the under served communities first?

<comment><USER9> That's what they're planning to do. This is a test, not a deployment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am so hard right now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice for Stanford. Not so nice for all the communities that applied only to watch Google pick Stanford some ~7 miles away.

<comment><USER12> "To be clear, this trial is completely separate from our community selection process for Google Fiber, which is still ongoing"</comment></comment>


Apple - Ergonomics - Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/about/ergonomics/index.html <comment><USER3> I wonder why this is on HN today? Maybe others, like me, wish that Apple produced an ergonomic keyboard?

While I love the keystroke feel of both wireless Apple keyboards, I really wish they had a split ergonomic version. After a day of coding, my wrists and for arms just ache constantly.

Or ......maybe this is on HN for some other reason.

<comment><USER4> There are many vendors of ergonomic keyboards that are compatible with Apple hardware. Why do you wish for one to be produced by Apple?

<comment><USER5> Consistency of (beautiful) hardware design. Existing ergonomic keyboards are just plain ugly and it's a shame to pair them with Apple devices.

<comment><USER6> If this puppy had all of the same keys as apple keyboards, id be all over it

[http://i.microsoft.com/hardware/_base_v1/images/hero/cat_key...](http://i.microsoft.com/hardware/_base_v1/images/hero/cat_keyboard_hero_945_400.jpg)

This one too

[http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/arc- keyboard/J5D-0...](http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/arc- keyboard/J5D-00001)

<comment><USER7> which keys are you looking for? I use a ms natural multimedia keyboard with my macbook and love it.

<comment><USER8> I use a ms natural keyboard and ms arc and both are great (arc has a mac feel to it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny that that page survived numerous apple.com redesigns, considering it's content is at least ten years old ([http://web.archive.org/web/20010606134728/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010606134728/http://www.apple.com/about/ergonomics/)).

Here's some trivia: Apple did make an ergonomic back in 1993 and they got sued for patent infringment over it. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Adjustable_Keyboard> and <http://tidbits.com/article/2676>

</comment><comment><USER10> I've tried numerous Apple mice, as well as the new trackpad. Every single one of them caused severe wrist pain, and I ended up going back to my cheapo ugly Microsoft or Logitech mouse within 1-2 days.

More subjectively, Apple's emphasizing mouse input over keyboard input was a mistake in hindsight. Easier for learning, but harder to use long term.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me or is it ironic that Apple almost exclusively sells glossy screens, but writes this:

Eye strain refers to ocular fatigue, eye discomfort and headaches associated from intensive use of the eyes. Common causes include:

glare on the computer screen

<comment><USER12> You have just as much glare on a matt screen, it's just defused. If you angle a glossy screen correctly, you'll have much less glare than a matt screen.

<comment><USER13> A properly-angled matte screen will have less glare than a properly-angled glossy screen. And a matte screen is less finicky about how it's positioned, which is an advantage when you are seated in a place that limits your options.

Plus the glossy bezel around the usable area of the screen acts like a mirror. The brightness of the active region overwhelms a lot of reflections, but that doesn't apply to the black bezel.

I work on a glossy iMac, and I've been tempted to get strips of matte black material with which I could cover the bezel, using magnets to hold them on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      Cause: Unable to touch type    Solution: Learn to touch type.

<http://www.apple.com/about/ergonomics/baksol.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Apple page on ergonomics? How ironic considering that most of their input devices are more like torture devices. Beautiful for sure but suitable for human use.

<comment><USER15> "Sent from my iPad" lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think desks in general stopped being ideal after the switch away from writing on paper. Nothing new has caught on and it's quite unfortunate.

I like to work with a keyboard on my lap, and there are so few good options for it that it's incredible. My requirements are:

\- some access to the mouse pointer. 1% of my usage still requires it. \- shallow keys (like the apple keyboard). This is just preference. \- apple cmd and option keys. \- no numpad. \- wireless and usable at up to 10 feet or so.

Doesn't sound crazy right? The only decent quality keyboard that meets those requirements is the Logitech diNovo Edge... the design of which I find just cheezy enough that I'm not into it.

I'd easily pay $200 for the right keyboard, but it just doesn't exist. In the meantime, I'm stuck using one of these: [http://www.hekseskudd.com/products/abidextrous-wooden- tray-f...](http://www.hekseskudd.com/products/abidextrous-wooden-tray-for- apple-wireless-keyboard-and-trackpad.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm,

In every flight I've been on lately, I've walked past a middle-age man in first class unconsciously wincing as he laboriously typing an email on his iPad with no keyboard...

So, sure the article is a fine general summary of physiological/"ergonomic" principles. But, having a bit of training in body work and movement, I have to say that many people are simply unable to notice debilitating situations until those situations are truly injuring them and then it is often too late - <USER2> least too late for a small change in routine to be enough.

So initial advice like asking one's self "do certain tasks or pieces of furniture and equipment stand out as awkward, difficult, even painful to use" are really less useful than they ought to be.

... Which is to say that having some detailed page on ergonomics doesn't make up for Apple's products flagrantly violating ergonomic principles - especially, Apple de-emphasizing the keyboard is bad regardless of their offering alternatives if you look really, really hard. The iPad is a further ergonomic disaster regardless of the fact "most people only use it a little" and "you can attach a keyboard to".

Using a pointing device for input is a disaster compared to a keyboard because it inherently involved more shock-per-byte-enter to the member involved than using a keyboard. Anyone concerned about ergonomics should stop doing that before they notice problems, not afterwards - _which is not to say that people can't have other, serious problems around the other issues mentioned in the articles other sections_.

Good ergonomics should not be about changing things once people a problem.

<comment><USER18> It's always seemed to me that Apple's view of their users is simply that they do very little actual typing- and they will be doing less and less as time progresses.

It doesn't really even seem like that inaccurate of a view. It is exceedingly rare I see any real typing happening on an Apple keyboard. Usually the most use I see them receiving, is the typing of a paper- at about 3wpm.

* typing either with a physical keyboard OR with an on-screen keyboard

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is useful information here, regardless of how old it is. But most of it relates to a desktop environment, and I've already begun to notice more repetitive motion annoyances from my mobile phone usage than I ever did from my desktop usage. Would love to see Apple and others emphasize ergonomic mobile use.

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't wait to get that sexy 5' x 6' Apple cubicle shown in the work layout area.

</comment><comment><USER21> <https://www.google.com/search?q=hockey+puck+mouse>

<comment><USER22> Jobs: Look at this mouse. It's the most wonderful mouse you've ever used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm apparently in the minority and believe this will never be addressed. But since the topic's being discussed...

Laptop designs such as Apple's place a "ginormous" "shelf" in front of the keyboard. As a result, whenever I'm working on one particularly on a work surface whose height I can't adjust (conference room table, table at cafe -- where chair height also isn't adjustable, etc.), I find the front edge of that shelf digging into my wrists or forearms behind the wrists. This both slows my typing and quickly becomes extremely uncomfortable.

The Lenovo T420 is about the maximum shelf size I can tolerate (thanks for not messing that up -- yet -- Lenovo!). I had some older, smaller laptops in the past that were quite comfortable for typing because they provided enough room to rest my palms (without hitting the trackpad, by the way) without interfering with my wrists or my need to bend same when not in an optimal workspace).

I guess lots of people don't care or actually like that ginormous shelf; I hate it.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's nearly 2012 and I'm still contorting my body to fit the computer's interface.

On a related note, I just found out that the neck injury (bulged/inflamed disc, pressuring the C6/C7 nerve) I developed three years ago effectively makes me uninsurable for ten years. Pay attention to your body, folks.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a joke, right? The design of Apple products make almost no effort to aid proper/effective ergonomic use. Good luck using an iPad or MacBook without destroying your neck/upper back.</comment>


Is this the future of electric vehicles? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/4/10711164/faraday-future-ffzero1-concept-car-announced-photos-ces-2016 <comment><AUTHOR> There promo videos seems to promise way more than they showed off on stage. I was expecting something along the lines of a vehicles service you subscribe to and whenever you need it, this autonomously driving van with interior akin to a Rolls shows up and takes you to your destination. That was the impression I was getting. What they have I feel is a nice idea for a platform to make lots of different models with interior features described with adjectives they obviously learned by watching Jony Ive speak. They compare themselves to Apple in 2007, but I think there vision is all over the place. Its fairly complex. The thing that made Apple so successful is that they had one particular product to really focus on and its scope was really focused, which enabled them to hit it out of the park. Here however, they have a million different things they are trying to hone the scope on. They definitely seem extremely optimistic and checking on LinkedIn, there boasting about the quality of there employees does seem to stack up. I am looking forward to some comments of Elon Musk.</comment>


Idea for turning Justin.tv upside down:  task-oriented broadcasts for help (e.g., cooking together) - <AUTHOR>

Imagine a site where people can ask for help while doing various tasks.  For example, you might plan to do some painting in your house, but have little experience with this task.  You could broadcast this as an event so that you can get tips while you are doing this task.<p>Taking it further, imagine people helping each other while doing similar tasks at the same time such as cooking. <comment><USER2> Interesting concept, a live web-video self-help social site. Hmm. Nope I don't think they've come up with a fancy name for this yet. You may be on to something.

<comment><USER2> Social webcasting. I claim authorship of this new title.

<comment><USER3> "Helpcasting"</comment></comment></comment>


"By His Bootstraps" by Robert A. Heinlein - <AUTHOR> http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/scifi/byhisbootstraps.html

<comment><USER2> Brilliant! Is this the Y-Combinator, as a science fiction story?</comment>


American Super Computing Leadership Act (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:HR02495:@@@L&summ2=m& http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:h.r.2495:<p>The first paragraph of the summary provided by the Library of Congress:<p>"Amends the Department of Energy High-End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004 with respect to: (1) exascale computing (computing system performance at or near 10 to the 18th power floating point operations per second); and (2) a high-end computing sytem with performance substantially exceeding that of systems commonly available for advanced scientific and engineering applications." <comment><AUTHOR> [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/bdquery/z?d113:h.r.2495](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/bdquery/z?d113:h.r.2495):

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/bdquery/z?d113:HR02495:@@@L&su...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/bdquery/z?d113:HR02495:@@@L&summ2=m&)

<comment><USER2> We assigned the second url to the story. (It used to have no url.)</comment></comment>


New poll: 1 in 5 Americans want 'Net regulated like TV - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/new-poll-21-of-americans-want-net-regulated-like-tv.ars

<comment><USER2> Most people don't know what the FCC's charter is, what its position is in relation to other governmental entities and lets not get started on the Internet itself. Most people just think of it as this magic black box (and why would they not?).

Asking random people to decide on what they do or do not want the FCC to do regarding the Internet will inevitably result in answers based on flawed premises.

Take the Campaign to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide as an example here.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dihydrogen_mo...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax)

<comment><USER3> "Asking random people to decide on what they do or do not want the FCC to do regarding the Internet will inevitably result in answers based on flawed premises."

Let's rephrase that a little and see what we get: Asking [constituents] to decide on what they do or do not want [any particular government agency] to do regarding [any particular issue] will result in [a pretty good indicator of how congress is likely act].

If congress is hearing that "random people" (aka "constituents") are against "more" or "TV-like" regulation of the internet, then congress is going to take steps to prevent the FCC from doing whatever it is that congress thinks people don't want. If you don't like this, rather than pointing out "uninformed" typical voters are you'd be much better served by trying to "inform" them.

Caution: a lot of times, "typical" people hear what experts have to say and respond with something to the effect of, "I understand and accept the facts as you have explained them, but I do not share your opinion about what should be done in light of those facts because I am balancing your concerns against a whole list of other concerns which you prioritize very differently." Frustrated experts routinely misinterpret this as "we don't need your stinkin 'facts,' nerd-boy!" because they consider their chosen issue to be so important that they are incapable of understanding how someone could understand the facts and still come to a different conclusion. This is usually followed by general complaints about "anti-intellectualism."

Aside: when I was in high school, a group of friends and I distributed anti-H20 literature with great success: other students started making their own photocopies and redistributing them, eventually to teachers and faculty. A few days after we started the process, an airhead vice-principal (our school had multiple vice-principals) was in the process of organizing a student group when the AP Chemistry teacher took her aside and tried to politely explain to her that she had been had. At first she wouldn't hear it, and turned his attempt at a quiet aside into a noisy and public scene, much to her eventual embarrassment. I'm pretty sure he knew we were responsible, but didn't bust us because he was so annoyed by that vice-principal.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of the British satire Brass Eye, which conned a number of celebrities about a new drug called "Cake":

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0GxUxKZdHk>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't the title be "80% of Americans do not want the net regulated"?

<comment><USER6> Depends on who you're trying to manipulate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can make opinion polls say what you want to say.

Look at this comical example from yes prime minister: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U>

</comment><comment><USER8> Well luckily that's not even a remote possibility even in an alternate universe. They should stick to stuff they understand.

<comment><USER9> I'd love to have a TV that could watch an alternate reality and just see the hilarity that would ensue if this passed.

Step 1: All US hosted sites facing regulation would simply move host to anywhere but the US, collapsing US hosting companies (Why do I feel the people likely to vote for this legislation are the same people who have the moronic "Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign!" bumper stickers on their 1997 Fords and Chevy's)

Step 2: US government follows suit of China and Middle Eastern countries and builds its own Great Wall to filter the internet. This creates huge political problems when everything from ecommerce to email becomes difficult between US and foreign countries.

Step 3: The US government that instituted the Great Wall ultimately gets kicked out of government for causing internet prices to hike to well over 200% original price instead of including it in the tax budget.

Step 4: The Great Wall ends up a multi-billion dollar kiddie porn filter.

Honestly I don't even comprehend the reasoning behind regulating the internet, given that you have to pay to use it - just like you have to pay to watch HBO or an R rated movie.

Here's where regulation for the internet should start and end: All customers subscribing to internet services should sign a waiver saying they understand that the ISP and US government is not responsible for content on the internet, but that the content creator is and any concerns about content should be addressed to the content creator and _not_ your local government representative.

<comment><USER10> _Here's where regulation for the internet should start and end: All customers subscribing to internet services should sign a waiver saying they understand that the ISP and US government is not responsible for content on the internet, but that the content creator is and any concerns about content should be addressed to the content creator and not your local government representative._

Why not just teach the US Constitution in school and/or mail a copy of it to all citizens? Your statement follows directly from the following two "premises": (1) U.S. Constitution. (2) The Internet is built atop private property.

<comment><USER11> > The Internet is built atop private property.

It's private property which crosses state lines, which is more than you can say for Wickard's wheat.

Today there are relatively few constitutional constraints on regulation of interstate commerce.

<comment><USER12> Filburn's wheat. Wickard was the Secretary of Agriculture.

<comment><USER10> Is your username a reference to Atlas Shrugged? If so, I'm intrigued; if not, I apologize---I bet you get that a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have to agree with arstechnica here. The questions here are either extremely loaded or utterly idiotic (the tv question being the latter). If Ramundsen had any integrity they would have never taken this poll.

</comment><comment><USER14> Rasmussen is more a Republican lobbying organization than a polling firm at this point. Scott Rasmussen, the namesake founder, is very clearly also a Republican activist. Personally, I wouldn't believe him if he put out a poll that said 90% of Americans believe the sky is blue.

Their "political class" spin is even more complete BS; they routinely say the "political class" is like 5% of the US population, and assign it all sorts of boogey-man positions based on a sample size that can't exceed 100.

</comment><comment><USER15> and a remote control, too?

</comment><comment><USER16> " following a telephone survey of 1,000 "likely voters." "

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you questioning the veracity of the "likely voters" screen? If so, you should understand that this is not some arbitrary designation. Different pollsters have different methods for applying this screen, and none of them are perfect, but all of them are based on serious analysis by real experts. I'm not a polling expert, but I've read enough about it to have an appreciation for how complex the problem is, and how creative some of the pollsters can be in finding ways to make their polls more accurate. For anyone interested in building an "enlightened layman's" understanding of polling, a good place to start is by reading Sean Trende:

<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/sean_trende/>

It's not necessarily that he's the best analyst out there (I happen to think that he's at least in contention for that title), but rather that he explains all of his reasoning and processes so clearly.

<comment><USER14> Unless there is going to be a national plebiscite, whether or not a person plans to vote in some election (he doesn't say which) shouldn't really be relevant here. Congress and regulatory agencies are supposed to represent all the people, not just the ones that vote.

<comment><USER3> "Congress and regulatory agencies are supposed to represent all the people, not just the ones that vote."

That may be what government is supposed to do, but in reality congressional representatives and senators mostly care about the ones that vote, since that's how they keep (or lose) their jobs. Also, I don't think that's all bad: "How much have you voted in the past? And do you plan to vote again next time?" is a pretty good proxy for "How much do you care about current issues?" Not voting is a way for the less informed/concerned to defer to the more informed/concerned. In an ideal world everyone would be fully informed and concerned, and so everyone would vote, but humans aren't ideal and our system handles that fact pretty well.

Furthermore, while there generally is a diffrence of about 5 points between likely voters and registered voters, and another five points between registered voters and adults, there's no way that a 1:5 ratio is going to swing the opposite way due to the difference between likely voters and the general population. At best it would shift to 1:4 or 1:3, still an overwhelming majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As Dick Cheney eloquently put when asked about about approval ratings:

"So?"</comment>


How I Hacked Telegram's "Encryption" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zimperium.com/telegram-hack/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR - the author claims to have hacked their encryption by reading the messages in phone memory.

I don't understand how this is a valid exploit/vulnerability? How would any device, Android or not, render the actual picture of the message on the GPU without having the unencrypted string in memory? It's not possible. If you have local memory/code execution, you will ALWAYS have access to the messages any client application is rendering/using.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the memory thing didn't impress me. More concerning though is that apparently messages are stored in plain text on disk in that cache4.db file. It's not clear to me whether they are deleted when the app quits or what.

<comment><USER4> The files under `/data/data/[pkgname]` are only readable by the corresponding application. Encrypting them wouldn't add any security as the key for that cache would also be stored on the device.

<comment><USER3> > _Encrypting them wouldn 't add any security as the key for that cache would > also be stored on the device._

That's why you use a user-derived key (i.e. based on the pin or w/e).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not even a security novice, but isn't getting root on the devices basically a game over? The suggestions the author hard to encrypt the stuff in memory and on disk would just add a extra step for the attacker to find the key? If they key had to be entered by the user every time the attack can just wait until the user does so? If thats too hard... just monitor the user. With root you can just wait and take screen shots... (as the author shows) which would work for any thing the user does ever and is simpler?

<comment><USER6> Precisely. Also perhaps why Telegram didn't respond.

This is an OS-/device-level attack---not an app exploit/attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The attack vector wasn't even through the Telegram application but depending on if you get access to disk or memory. Sure that's not hard to do...but it's still safe in-transit? A pretty interesting read, but I'm not seeing the leetness here.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is clickbait unfortunately, his attacks require root access on the device.

</comment><comment><USER9> tldr; End-to-end encryption does nothing when an adversary controls one of the ends.

I'd say this guy is trying a little too hard to promote his "Zimperim Mobile Security" brand here...

<comment><USER10> I did notice the same thing. As soon as I saw root access needed, I pretty much took everything else with a grain of salt. It's always game over if the attacker can get their hands on the device.

I am not knowledgeable in this field and I would like to learn more how to do most of these things, what would be a good resource to start off with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also neat that you really can recompose the entire conversation, as the timestamps are clearly available in the DB.

Offset 0056e1c, 0x54ba8a1d is unixepoch 1421511197 - which is January 17th, at 16:13:17GMT - which, given that the author is in Tel Aviv (GMT+2), corresponds with the 6:13PM timestamp for 'Shlookiedo' seen in the photos.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find it hard to believe that Telegram did not respond to the author. How can one company simultaneously host a $200k security contest, yet not respond to a simple email disclosing a vulnerability?

<comment><USER13> Because this isn't really a vulnerability. It's "if you completely control the device that is sending/receiving encrypted messages, you can read the messages."

There's literally no way to defend against this attack. About the best they could do is show a warning like "Warning: The version of Android you are using contains vulnerabilities attackers could use to take control of your phone. Please update your softw... buy a new phone to get the latest version of Android."

<comment><USER6> Yeah...it doesn't feel like a true vulnerability...feels like just padding the "vulnerability" counter :p</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: I insulted a random person on a social network - <AUTHOR> This is a throw away account. Today, after a (very stupid) debate on a well-known social network, I ended up insulting the other one, for no actual reason (apart from the discussion being very stupid, which was both my and him/her fault).
It never happened to me and I feel pretty ashamed. I just couldn't resist it.
Just in case, I have decided to temporally disable all my social media accounts, and won't come back for a while.
Do I need help? Do you have some advice?
potentially never <comment><USER3> My advice to avoid issues like this is to focus on being aware of why you're reply is reasonable, your emotional state as it relates to the reply - <USER2> what reasoning you might present as to why you expect the receiver or others readers of the response to benefit from your reply.

Beyond that, trying to separate online from offline identities can be a factor. If using different identities, establish why you're doing this prior to doing so in an ad-hoc instance, and then, make sure you're not departing from that reasoning or the sum of yourself regardless of the identity presented.</comment>


How can one use technology to help oppressed people regain their voice? - <AUTHOR>

Nairobi's premier university is under siege as the country tries to come to terms with the death of two students on campus. http://utafitini.com/home/post/1760/university-of-nairobi-students-killed-following-theft-allegations
Some quarters say the dead students were thieves who were caught stealing a laptop and mob justice was mete on them while others say the two students were killed by gangs for yet to be known reasons.
How can developer/s best leverage technology to give people who have become passive participants their voice back to fight for their rights? <comment><USER2> It is depressing to hear such news.

The fundamental problem with pitching a technology as one that helps people fight for their rights is that such technology is banned by the oppressing regime very soon.

However, there have been a lot of cases where apps (with different main use cases) have been used by oppressed communities to communicate. Two apps immediately come to mind:

1) Firechat: Hong Kong protesters used this app to communicate with each other without being intercepted by authorities.

2) Threema: An app which provides end to end encryption of messages is serving as a life-saver for the LGBT community in Lebanon and Iran where the punishment for being gay is death.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. I will look at how the two mentioned apps above address the problem.</comment></comment>


Google's Coolest 20% Project: Liquid Galaxy - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/07/google-liquid-galaxy/

<comment><USER2> I've spent some time in one of these in a Google building and it is extremely cool. Each panel is hooked up to a relatively low-powered standard machine running Google Earth on a stripped-down Ubuntu release. From what I could surmise (and based on how I saw the system loading/caching data) each machine spoke on a network and had a differently-set camera view slaved off the center machine. The input device (in my case it was a 6-DOF joystick) is connected to the center machine.

Also, it got extremely warm in the room after a few minutes of usage. Plasma screen backlights + hot graphics cards = quick increase in temp.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be cool to hook it up to a virtual reality treadmill:

[http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/19/cool-videos-of- virtual-...](http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/19/cool-videos-of-virtual- reality-treadmills/)

</comment><comment><USER4> SGI used to sell setups like this called reality centers. At first they seem like a gimmick, but they're terribly useful. When you can get a few people together and have an "ah ha!" moment within a minute of loading up your problem that can pay for itself in a matter of weeks.

Wish this stuff would come down market to be more mainstream. Maybe google will help with that.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be interesting to see if you could put this together using just the Google Street View API

[http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html...](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Streetview)

I don't see any particular reason why not (though it might not be so smooth)

</comment><comment><USER6> How hard would it be to make one of these for a FPS? I've always wanted to try this. I'd love to get monitors on the floor (under glass) and ceiling too.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.matrox.com/graphics/surroundgaming/en/home/>

I play WoW in 5040x1050 across 3 monitors. I find it hard to go back. It's immersive when you want it to be. It's a great way to view information without blocking the main screen. Plus you can crank the font up to something pleasant.

I think this sort of 3 monitor setup will be everywhere in another few years. At least for hardcore gamers. And it will be supported by multiple video cards instead of a special piece of hardware.

 _Warning gaming on two monitors with this setup sucks. The center of the game (and likely where you are looking most of the time) is at the bi-section of the monitors._

<comment> Tuna-Fish Ati's newest graphics cards support a technology they are marketing as eyefinity -- attaching up to 6 displays to a single card and treating it as a single large surface.</comment></comment></comment>


A Woman Went Blind After Stem Cells Were Injected in Her Eyes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/stem-cell-eye/541299/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Why in the world would you perform an experimental procedure on both eyes?

<comment><USER3> If you don't think it's going to work you avoid it completely.

If you've been conned they've persuaded you that it's definitely going to work, a which point you think you'll save time and money if you get both done at once.

Like people who pay money to fraudsters - why don't they stop paying when the first 'fee to transfer lottery winnings' doesn't work?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you subscribe to daily/weekly/monthly roundups of HN? - <AUTHOR> Do you subscribe to any daily/weekly/monthly roundups of HN? Which ones? What's the frequency? And how do you like the links that get delivered to you? <comment><USER2> Several of my friends use [https://twitter.com/newsycombinator](https://twitter.com/newsycombinator) and the HN website only infrequently/on weekends.</comment>


Ask HN: Since CitizenFour, have you changed the way you conduct yourself online? - <AUTHOR> Ask HN: Since watching CitizenFour, or previously reading about the widespread surveillance conducted by governments - what changes have you made to how you conduct your life online? Have you adopted any new practices, or stopped or started using any new services?
It would be interesting to see what effect this has had on how people, especially technically included people behave and conduct themselves online. This could include technical solutions you have adopted or might include how you use, or view services which you previously trusted with your data.
Myself, I have switched my email provider away from one of the 'big three'. I have started taking an interest in more 'usable' applications of encryption and have started talking to people about the ramifications of the information brought to light by Snowden and others. <comment><USER2> I changed some stuff, but it was when the reports came, not because of the movie.

My changes:

\- Don't use gmail for private email. Self hosted it instead.

\- Switched to Firefox (from Chrome), changed my addons (https everywhere, privacy badger and mublock).

\- Deleted my facebook account.

\- Tried to get my friends to use a self-hosted irc server + mumble instead of skype - but that didn't last for long sadly.

\- Changed from google to duckduckgo, but I'm constantly using the !g command anyway.

Sigh. I don't think any of this matters much anyway.

<comment><USER3> >> Sigh. I don't think any of this matters much anyway.

This is exactly how I feel. I've reached the point where I assume the majority of my online communication is "public" \- and use alternatives only when necessary to achieve (as close as possible) to true privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My take on this problem is that most people here do in fact value their privacy and the fight for privacy. That's why Snowden articles rampaged this site for so long. However, the divide comes when the decision to actually change behavior arises.

We know what we can do for better online privacy:

       - Use tor for all internet activity
       - Pay cash for everything; do not own any credit cards,
         or use a service like Blur
       - Bank only with banks that don't share our data
       - Don't use a modern smartphone
       - Use PGP for all email

The list goes on and on, but who here does any of these things? Who wants to sacrifice the convenience of paying with a credit card online and managing their banking with Mint? The threat of privacy violations is not real to many people right now. They either can't or don't extrapolate the ramifications of losing their privacy in the future, or don't weigh the imposing risk as high enough to alter behavior.

Have I changed the way I conduct myself online? Absolutely. I do four of the five things I listed above but I could _never_ imagine a small percentage, let alone a vast majority of people implementing them in their day to day lives. That's the core of the problem that we need to solve first.

<comment><USER5> I ditched my phone about a year ago. This works for me because I use hangouts for all calls and texts, but I'm not sure if this actually gives me more privacy - now I just have my communication routed through google instead of verizon. Regardless I love that I ditched the phone. Beyond privacy, spyPhones are a scam.

<comment><USER6> They cost too much, and the privacy issues are obvious--but I really love my phone. I don't even use the phone/sms options very much, what I really love is the data service & "computer" and what it gives me.

Spotify in my car, gps/maps when I'm out of town, google results, HN, etc...I'd miss it sorely if I ditched it.

I could spent a lot of time and/or money setting all of that up in "offline mode," essentially. Mp3s, some map software, wikipedia offline...but in the end, we really can't trust pretty much any of the hardware available, so it might check in on every open network or something.

I'd totally splurge for an anonymous plan, with a trusted data provider, and open hardware platform.

Note: I did go 3 months with no phone a couple of years ago while I lived in Costa Rica--but I was either on my PC or at the beach. Never wanted a phone.

<comment><USER5> i was just as tethered to my phone until I got rid of it. The fact that I don't leave the house much puts me at an advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've started to despair a bit more about both technological and political solutions. I'm trying to adjust to the idea that nothing that happens online is private, and real privacy requires something more like tradecraft than mass adoption of encryption technologies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Disempowerment is a common theme here - it is the case that the 'general public' (read majority non-technical) are concerned about the current and future ramifications of this surveillance but feel disempowered because of how widespread it is, and i think this is because it is difficult to make reasonable changes in the immediate term to effect anything. This is of course excluding publicising/talking about the issues from a political point of view.

If telecoms company A proved to be betraying the trust of its customers, customers might find it reasonable to move their custom to telecoms company B - however the issue is that if both telecoms company A and B are both guilty of surveillance there is no feasible choice for the consumer.

The same can be said about political parties. If all major political parties support mass surveillance there is no viable alternative to support.

<comment><USER8> Interesting theme on despair. I think it goes a little deeper - perhaps people feel disenfranchised by establishment politics as well. It gets worse if you assume Teleco A-Z are always watching; you could go the Tor route or GPG or Wickr or Telegram - but ultimately the level of espionage being carried out and for so long makes you wonder if any of the privacy solutions are for real. Sounds a bit paranoid but as we've seen the onion peeled back by Snowden it is quite clear.

I can imagine some will feel censored to a degree. There is some stigma to knowing about privacy and technology. Try talking to a lamen even casually and you might as well be wearing a tin foil hat. Even @moxie's recent thread on HN echoes that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After reading Glenn Greenwald's book, I supported [https://protonmail.ch/](https://protonmail.ch/), an encrypted email service based in the EU (Switzerland -edit: no it is not, should have said "Europe"-). It's currently in beta, I'm waiting for custom domain support and apps. The complete focus on "but Americans are protected" as an excuse for the NSA spying makes me actively seek out local services that are privacy aware. I use Telegram with encrypted chats for many conversations now. I found this service as an alternative to digital ocean: Transip.nl. I do wonder how my rights are when I pick an Amsterdam based data center for my droplet though. I know MS actively protected user data from Ireland which is good, whatever their reasons are. I also switched to using mobile websites in mobile FF instead of installing many intrusive apps. Mobile responsive website are often as good as apps and better for sharing links.

<comment><USER10> Switzerland is not in the EU.

<comment><USER9> Correct. But at least it is "local" and not GCHQ/NSA oriented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always browsed in a sandbox only, since the revelations however I also bought a couple of vps and now tunnel my traffic through one of the servers. This is a very cheap measure, 15$ a month, that probably increases your privacy but also attracts more attention to yourself. A more inconspicuous solution is probably a public vpn service, but those servers are not under your control and you won't be able to make sure that the service does what the advertisements promise.

I don't bother much with email encryption or pgp, I've written down email as a loss in the privacy department and don't bother with trying/hoping my emails are private. So my gmail/hotmail/yahoo inboxes are for fluffy stuff only that doesn't really matter.

Mostly if I need to securely communicate with someone it will be on a private irc server where everybody has his/her own certificates and I can check to see if the server is untouched etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> "NSA has VPNs in Vulcan death grip" [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2014/12/nsa-has-vpns-in-v...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2014/12/nsa-has-vpns-in-vulcan-death-grip-no-really-thats-what-they- call-it/)

This again leads to the disempowerment issue, each measure seems to have been systematically either compromised or weakened. I look forward to new solutions such as the Dark Mail Alliance. The issue i have is that any solution needs to be very 'consumer friendly' as unless both parties are using a secure system taking extra measures is almost pointless. eg. i take steps to chose an email provider who doesn't share their data, or is outside of the NSA/GCHQ jurisdiction but then i have to send an email to an @gmail address i know that those steps i have taken are compromised by the other party.

<comment><USER11> Yes, that's exactly why I don't expect email to be secure!

Even if you were to completely own your own infrastructure for the first two hops (your computer and router). And manage all those services yourself you'd still be exposed the moment your email needed to be forwarded to a user who hasn't gone through those steps.

As for the death grip. This is pure speculation on my part, but if they can decrypt/de-cloak your traffic it's probably because they hacked/infiltrated/bribed the services as opposed to breaking the crypto. So here's me hoping that my setup is relatively safe even if it's not anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started using TextSecure with my closest friends, but not after the documentary, after the first Snowden revelations.

I'm also very cautious about using non-HTTPS sites these days, or using sites with broken HTTPS. I sent my bank an email about their poor HTTPS configuration as well.

I also intend to use EFF's CA for all my future sites, regardless of what type of site it is and whether it actually "needs" HTTPS or not.

I'm much more careful about what I share through Gmail/Hangouts. I use 2FA for Gmail now, but I know it's useless against the NSA, because Google defaults to SMS-based 2FA (and the wireless networks are completely owned by the NSA), regardless of whether you chose SMS or Authenticator 2FA. It's mainly to protect against other "regular" hackers.

I plan to start using FIDO-ready hardware tokens this year, and I won't change my phone until the new ones have strong support for local fingerprint recognition/FIDO.

I try to use as few Microsoft services as possible: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft- nsa-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa- collaboration-user-data).

I haven't managed to move off Windows yet, but I might in a few years time. What most people don't realize is that Microsoft gives NSA "back doors" on a daily basis. It's all the zero-day vulnerabilities they share with them _months_ before Microsoft gets around to fixing them. That's time in which the NSA can exploit those vulnerabilities. And now, unfortunately, Apple is going to do the same (technicaly giving them to the DHS...but I think we all know those are going to the NSA, too).

[http://bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to- sw...](http://bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data- with-thousands-of-firms.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm keeping my eye on EFF's developments on their CA.

It's hard to totally avoid Microsoft/Google etc absolutely, but by not buying into them completely at least it's security through obscurity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _So a few people have moved to a few different services that provide more privacy._

The truth is that the King has always been able to have anything intercepted ever since the first letter was written. Way before 9/11 GCHQ/NSA had things pretty covered and they certainly had capabilities to fully bug anyone of actual interest. You know these people even have your school reports if they want to dig back that far?

What has changed is that one can talk about security matters without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. That is about it for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is something I thought about it for a long time, too. I've been following this for years and was always suspicious about all the "free" services and what their motivation is behind it all.

Here is a list of apps/extensions I use:

\- Firefox with disconnect.me, HTTPS everywhere, Adblock.

\- Never EVER use Google for search. Always use DuckDuckGo.

\- Deleted my Facebook account. \- Never ever use Skype (I refuse anyone who wants to use skype) There are other alternatives.

\- Whenever possible I use a VPN (mine it privateinternetaccess)

\- Never use any storage services like Dropbox, OneDrive, GDrive, etc.

Now that being said, I struggle with some "habits" and alternatives. These are:

\- Google Apps, especially email. There is a reason why it works and so many people use it. I've tried Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Airmail, Outlook, etc. But somehow always go back to gmail :-(

On another note, I wonder what people use for an operating system?!?

I myself use MacOS X. I run many servers, all of them are Ubuntu Servers. I love Linux. However for a desktop app, I need to be productive and fast. Every time I want to switch to Linux I find some app that is not working and I need to use a VM for that.

Is it even worth considering a switch of operating systems? Too paranoid?

</comment><comment><USER15> No, there's nothing I can do about it, and I'm highly unlikely to be a person of interest under the mass surveillance programme, so why bother?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glen Greenwald gave a TED talk about a similar point of view. [http://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters...](http://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en)

<comment><USER15> Glenn makes a compelling case, and I agree with him on most points, but this false equivalency highlights the difference between the claimed and actual risks of automated surveillance, to most people:

> _because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you 're doing > online, read what I want to read and __publish whatever I find interesting_ > __

One thing the mass surveillance programme does not do is publish 'interesting' personal data that passes through it. The risk of one's private communications reaching a wider audience than, rarely, the occasional analyst (who is bound by secrecy laws) is close to zero.

The vast majority of people are more at risk of having their laptops stolen, accounts hacked/phished, online presence stalked, and so on by other members of the public rather than the security services. It's much more important to protect against that, than be disproportionately concerned about an invisible omnipresence to which their everyday activities are a trifling insignificance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think I've changed a single thing since Snowden first started leaking stuff. That's not intentional and I'm not advocating that, I just haven't. I don't want the government reading my shit but at the end of the day, I guess I don't have anything I care about hiding enough to go to the trouble of hiding it.

</comment><comment> FLUX-YOU \- I haven't changed anything about my habits. There's probably 10+ years of stuff already available to them anyway. A change of habits is probably a significant event when studying someone's timeline.

\- I did start looking into some ways to communicate more securely/anonymously if I really needed to do that but I am not confident teaching others to do the same (so talk in person with your phones in the fridge!).

\- I ordered a couple of Schneier books and the Glenn Greenwald book and I'm going to try the Matasano challenges and start studying secure practices to hopefully become a more security-minded developer.

\- I will probably not live in the USA for any longer than I have to, but I need more skills and experience before I can really change countries but frankly I have no idea where I would go that would be safe.

<comment><USER6> What's your goal in leaving the USA?

Your rights are more likely to be infringed by the NSA--you're not "protected as an American" to whatever extent that remains or might be reinstated.

If it's for privacy--you'll have less of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started using Twister over Twitter.

<comment><USER18> I though you were joking until I searched it:

[http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)

Do you know anything about the number of users?

<comment><USER17> There's interesting people on there, but I couldn't tell you how many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of- sec...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of- secrets/#united-states-of-secrets-\(part-one\)) and part two and citizenfour are all must watch... from some of the comments many have not seen all of these.

</comment><comment><USER19> No I have not changed a thing. I've always assumed that they were watching everything. Why else would cell phone providers suddenly not charge for services like gps? Or the fact that Microsoft lost its monopoly case against Netscape. How is providing something free a monopoly case? It doesn't exist to protect businesses.

</comment><comment><USER20> I use Tor and block third party requests by default for my random browsing. It's good enough.

</comment><comment><USER21> I started using MEGAsync instead of Dropbox. As a non-american I think this is one of the few ways I might be able to change things. Maybe the recent pressure from payment processors means that it works?

</comment><comment><USER22> Depends who is asking.

<comment><USER23> haha!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I changed my habits long before CitizenFour when I discovered hadoop/big data and zeroday exploits

</comment><comment><USER25> The biggest change I made is not talking online about how I protect myself from surveillance. This thread is probably innocuous. But if I were watching one of you already, I would be very interested in hearing what you had to say about how you protect yourself, particularly if you did me the favor of analyzing its weak points for me.

</comment><comment><USER26> I live under assumption that what has been uncovered by Snowden is true since the early 2000's.

I assume that for the last ten years all my online identities are pseudo- anonymous in the very best case and that all my communications meta data and content is logged and has been, is or is going to be scrutinized by TPTB. And that should anyone be interested, my full profile along with all my social network is or can be made available.

</comment><comment><USER27> No. I have no need to. There are better things to do with my time.

It's like saying I won't drive my car on the street because the police are watching you. But the police are looking for bad guys, not me. I'm not a bad guy.

I see so many people trying to block the police from doing their work finding bad guys. They don't want road checks for drunk drivers but then complain when a drunk driver kills someone. They don't want license plate scans for criminals and drug trafficking yet complain when they aren't caught.

They don't want the NSA scanning internet traffic and email yet complain they didn't catch the Boston bombers and others ahead of time while actively protesting the same thing.

I fear people like Snowden more than anything else.

<comment><USER4>
        They don't want road checks for drunk drivers but then
        complain when a drunk driver kills someone. They don't
        want license plate scans for criminals and drug trafficking
        yet complain when they aren't caught.

I think the problem here is not that people don't want police to do those things, it's the belief that the power, once granted, will be abused. Drunk driving checks to catch drunk drivers are a good thing, but what about when a cop forces you out of your car because he didn't like your attitude? License plate scans are also good for catching criminals, but what about if the police store the data forever and tie it to personal IDs of people? Would you want the police to have a record forever of everywhere you've gone?

This is the problem with saying you have no need to. You assume you have already thought of every possible case when in fact, that's impossible to do. The most important part in the fight for personal privacy is in protecting the freedoms we have from potential abuse.

<comment><USER27> You can come up with all kinds of "what ifs" while forgetting our (in the US) system of checks and balances which protestors forget about and want to circumvent by creating vigilante groups to take care of matters on their own. Anything can be made open for abuse but you are assuming no one is watching and will do nothing about it.

Funny. Just a few minutes ago, I was watching NBC News story about the 3 teenage kids who went to Syria on their own. The family lawyer complained that, since the government is watching all the social media they posted on, why didn't they alert the family so this could be stopped?

To which all of HN would reply, "But ... but ..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Citizenfour is suspiciously well produced. And Edward Snowden is extremelly good. This all is probably the stage in which we realise of this and all is simply going according to the agenda.

"THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society consti- tute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smooth- ly functioning society." ~ Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (1928), Chapter 1 - Organizing the Chaos

<comment><USER7> Is there a particular covert agenda that you see Citizenfour as promoting?</comment></comment>


21 New Startups in the Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/01/21-new-startups-in-the-valley.html <comment><USER2> This was worth clicking on the link alone:

"You make what you measure. Merely measuring something regularly will help you to improve it. And not measuring it will almost guarantee failure."

Will try to think of ways to incorporate that in whatever I'm doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's it going to be like when there are over 1000 alums?

<comment><USER4> The value of a network is proportional to the square number of its members. So: 1000 is 5 times more than today, the YC net would be 25 times more valuable. Yup.

PS: I guess this is were the dreaded synergy buzzconcept comes from.

PPS: This is also a well known principle of military tactics. Doubling the size of an unit quadruples its combat efficiency. Furthermore, when outnumbered 2 to 1, you have 4 times less chances of winning a fight that you opponents: thus you have 20%.

<comment><USER5> > less chances of winning a fight

assuming you're following the same tactics

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Way to rub it in buddy. Now, I got go and work even harder.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't wait for her new book.</comment>


How Apple Took The Fun Out of Owning an iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://medialoper.com/how-apple-took-the-fun-out-of-owning-an-iphone/

<comment><USER2> > Of course, I could downgrade the OS back to a previous version. That is, if > I wanted to go through a long, involved, and potentially brickifying > process. But I shouldn't have to do that.

Cry me a river. I bet it would have taken less time to downgrade than it took to write that post. And there's not much risk of bricking. (He seems to think his phone is unbearably slow now, so why not?)

He also never mentions attempting to do a restore, which has fixed the problem for a lot people. There's obviously just something buggy that'll likely get fixed with 4.1.

In the meantime, how many of these trivial stories are going to get FPed on HN? (In fairness, this has probably affected more people than Antennagate. I just can't believe every tech issue is getting trotted out here like it's an Apple bug reporting tool. This isn't even a new problem.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple already got plenty of flak for leaving out features like wallpapers in the name of performance; if they hadn't released iOS4 for the 3G at all they would have been crucified by the same people. Releasing the update and telling people not to install it would also have been a dumb idea. The only thing they can reasonably do is allow downgrades back to 3, or improve performance in 4.1.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you that Apple could not really have feasibly avoided releasing iOS4 on the 3G/3GS, but the author makes a fair point that they _do_ own the whole stack, and either didn't test performance or didn't care enough to tell people that it would perform slower on older hardware. It's not like iOS 4 on 3GS hardware was an unforeseen combination. From what I've seen from friends and on Youtube, the problem isn't minute, either - it's a drastically worse experience. It seems like something like that should have been caught.

<comment><USER5> I don't have iPhone 4, and can't say much how is the performance. But according to my experience, it's software issue (memory management). After upgrading my 3GS to iOS, my daily task is to kill all apps in the multitasking bar when it feel sluggish. I can check from iMemGraph, the free memory is increased substantially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a bit self-centered, but seems to capture a mood all the same. I'm struck by the contrast between the fevered increase of AAPL prior to the launch and the resigned decline in its price since then. It's rather a shame that all the genuine effort and progress that went into their latest device has been overshadowed by this antenna issue, but so it goes. I'm reminded of the G4 Cube.

</comment><comment><USER7> Installing iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G made me think back to when I upgraded to Windows XP in 2001. The computer was top of the line when I bought it just 2 years prior, but XP was a total dog on it.

However, a 2 year old PC would run Windows 7 just fine when it came out. It seems like there was a tipping point where PCs became overpowered relative to what most people ask of them. As a result they have more staying power in the face of software updates.

It doesn't look like we've hit that point with smartphones yet, but I wonder when we will...

<comment><USER2> This isn't actually a problem with the 3G being underpowered. Something is buggy with the 3G build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually prefer not having multi-tasking on my iPhone. I really like that when I close an application it is gone and not running in the background taking up memory or doing unknown things.

No multi-tasking keeps things simple, which is how I like them on a device with a such a small screen (since you can only look at one thing anyway).

I also think not allowing multi-tasking encourages good development practices. It encourages software that can deal with a quick exit by the user at any time, but at the same time get them back to where they were. I find a lot of the iPhone software nice for this reason.

In my opinion, no multi-tasking is a feature. If it were an option on iOS4 I would turn it on.

<comment><USER9> For some applications (like Spotify) that is simply not an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's no end to the whining. It's either:

1\. Apple didn't put feature X into its product.

or

2\. Apple put feature X into its product.

Either way, the same group of people end up crying.

</comment><comment><USER11> Waaah!

</comment><comment><USER12> And that was such cosy begining, with 6502 and a garage....

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It seems that Android has Apple rushing to deliver products that are not up to their usual standards. They've had problems before but this seems much more systemic.

<comment><USER6> As an Android user I'd say no. No company can consistently outdo its own hype, let alone Apple; while the new phone/OS has proved anticlimactic (especially after the great launch of the iPad), it's hardly a disaster. The only end I see is to their having the smartphone market largely to themselves. They'll lose a bit of market share over the next year, between increased competition and an indifferent response to the new iPhone.

The biggest challenge I see in the immediate term is how to differentiate their next offering from the competition. Of course they can further reduce size and weight, but this is an area of diminishing returns. The current generation of smartphones are not much more bulky than a wallet, which is Small Enough for most people. Speed is kind of limited by the quality of the carrier, so I think the next gen fight will be all about battery life.

<comment><USER14> I had a go of the iPhone 4 in the shop on launch day. My only complaint was that it was actually a bit too light! I like the solid feel of the 3G (no idea why this is... Maybe something to do with associating weight with heavier and more expensive metals)

<comment><USER15> The iPhone 4 is actually 0.1 ounces (4 grams) heavier than the 3G, which makes sense since it has more glass, less plastic, and the steel band.

iPhone 4 Weight: 4.8 ounces (137 grams) iPhone 3GS Weight: 4.8 ounces (135 grams) iPhone 3G Weight: 4.7 ounces (133 grams)

Sources:

<http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html> <http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/specs.html> <http://support.apple.com/kb/sp495></comment></comment></comment></comment>