IETF Response to "LS on New IP, Shaping Future Network" - <AUTHOR> https://datatracker.ietf.org/liaison/1677/ <comment><USER3> For the uninitiated, there's a bit of a culture clash going on there in the background - not between the IETF and the ITU but rather between the Western groups that have brought up the internet and Chinese groups that are joining the tables now.

The IETF, ITU, IEEE and similar groups have their "social etiquette" and lots of unspoken agreements that people learn when starting to interact there, but the way these things work is not exactly culturally neutral.

This isn't as much of an IETF shutdown of the ITU, rather an IETF shutdown of a group of Chinese people and companies. The ITU isn't blind to understanding that the Internet works thanks to the open IETF processes, but the ITU also has its procedures, and that's how you get these proposals.

If you want to look at similar occurences inside the IETF, there's for example TTZ: [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc8099/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc8099/)

NB: this isn't the Chinese being "stupid" or anything - it's an impedance mismatch in culture. It needs to be fixed by all involved. (The particular "LS on New IP" proposal is obviously stupid, but - such proposals exist at, say, Cisco, too. They just don't make it out of there. That's the cultural difference.)

<comment><USER4> On thing I like about the IEEE (and potentially others, I am unfamiliar) is that the etiquette is not unspoken. It's written very clearly and spoken out loud as the rules prior to every daily meeting. Everyone must either agree to it or leave. You are not allowed to continuously violate etiquette and be allowed to contribute.

Perhaps the rules are not culturally neutral, but they do maximize mutual respect, which promotes the ideology of treating every individual at the meeting equally.

<comment><USER3> It's not that much about the etiquette "inside" these orgs, but rather what happens before and after, i.e. what makes it to the orgs. Cross-copy from my post below ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777361)):

Another angle to view this from is to consider this a startup.

In US & EU, dumb ideas occasionally turn into startups, then they show up on crowdfunding (or, worst case, find a dumb VC), and then they die in a fire of varying gloriousness.

In China, the startup happens inside of Huawei instead. The ideas are equally dumb, but they don't die as easily, and when they make it out of Huawei they suddenly have the Huawei name attached and the Chinese government behind it. And it falls to the ITU, IETF, IEEE, or whomever else to shut it down.

> the ideology of treating every individual at the meeting equally.

Even this turns into a problem. There's several "cringe" drafts each IETF meeting. Everyone wants to, but noone feels permitted to go up to the respective authors and tell them they're idiots.

<comment><USER5> A challenge of the IETF generally is that it is very solution-driven. There are many, many solutions that are proposed per meeting, and the barrier to proposing a document is very low. This is good for hearing different ideas (counter to one of the replies that you got below). The challenge is that it takes /significant/ effort to:

\- Understand whether a solution that is being proposed actually addresses a problem that a real network or technology system has.

\- Reshape a set of proposals that have already reached "we already implemented this" into something different.

Both of these challenges require significant investment from the community. People have to be willing to stand up and critique the drafts (which they do), but also take the subsequent steps of going to work with these folks to help them understand how better they might address real gaps, or even to explain why the ideas aren't going to work in practice. The problem is that for most technical contributors, this work isn't moving anything forward -- it's more "good of the Internet" work. My observation is that there are limited cycles available from the folks in the IETF to do this work, but the number of new drafts coming in has increased at a rate that out-strips it (source: >15y working in the IETF routing area in general). Equally, there is limited support from the folks that employ IETF contributors for doing this work -- would they rather spend time fixing standards that they have customer demand from, or stopping standards that they probably won't need to ever implement (and thus have little to no negative affect on them)? These two challenges for the IETF have really exacerbated the culture clashes there.

Whilst eqvinox's analysis above draws the line at a particular contributing company, in my experience, this isn't solely the case. If we look at the IPv6 data plane for segment routing being progressed in the SPRING working group, it has the same hallmarks. A solution was proposed that it wasn't really clear what the problem it solved was, there was no significant technical debate to say that it wasn't needed or was harmful ahead of time (6man and spring didn't see these contributors), and only later down the line - when there was significant investment of a number of companies in it - was its implementability, and efficacy discussed. At this point there's zero chance that this technology will actually be morphed or deprecated (at best there'll be a competing solution), even if there's no standardisation of it.

Overall - I don't see anything particularly new here, other than another outlet for the frustration of not necessarily being able to push forward standards in the Internet industry. The other outlet has been open source - <USER2> we've seen more push towards just running code. Some areas of the IETF have embraced this one with much more ease (SPDY->HTTP/2.0, QUIC adoption etc.), but the routing area - with its implementations relevant to quite a small number of implementing vendors - has been harder to crack. (Source: I work with a team that took this route, and has really struggled to bring ideas back into the IETF and have them openly evaluated.)

<comment><USER6> The IETF is a pita when it comes to the routing area. Operators aren't well represented there and it's vendors running the show (this is why Randy Bush calls it the IVTF, and he's right). I am happy to see folks like Job make some progress there (and a few others), but I lost taste for the pedantry when I saw real operators asking for decent BGP changes get shot down.

<comment><USER5> Job is definitely managing to make some great progress, which is impressive. There aren't a huge number of folks that have the time and effort that is required to push these things through.

I've worked for an operator all the time that I've been in the IETF, and its definitely pedantry, not-invented-here, and lack of understanding of real issues that prevents us making significant progress. I personally have had more than one go at trying to improve IETF<->operator communication, and made little to no progress.

A much more successful model has been writing code, co-developing it with other operators and vendors if possible, and then working directly with vendors to push their implementations. This model self-selects on solutions that are actually used (because there's non-standards-focused engineers involved), and rather than worrying about potential edge cases, get to handle the problems that occur in practice. This is a bit harder to do with changes that require global scope -- but all technologies we develop now need to coexist with legacy, so I'm not clear that it's not the best model as we go forward.

<comment><USER3> > A much more successful model has been writing code, co-developing it with > other operators and vendors if possible, [...]

Indeed. This provides the barrier the IETF lacks, and does so in a pretty nice way. It may not work all the time, but even if it helps in 90% of cases that's a great improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see anything out of the ordinary here at all. Standard bodies have, and will always revolve around the friction of interested parties. I watched Cisco and Juniper fight tooth and nail over various MPLS rfc's for years. Everyone and their mother wants to replace ICANN. How about 110v vs. 220v ??? Nothing is new here and to magnify this story out of proportion and work it into some greater US/China decoupling framework is not useful unless you support that agenda to begin with. IPv6 was agreed in 1998 and it took 20 years with many competing proposals to get anywhere. People have been trying to improve the internet according to their interpretation since there were bits in wires and this story is just another run of the mill standards body workgroup tug of war that happens 100x everyday in ISO/IEEE/IETF/Etc…

</comment><comment><USER8> For those wondering that this is all about, refer to "LS on New IP, Shaping Future Network" [0] (and the attachments listed there):

\---

> _The September 23-27, 2019 meeting of the ITU-T Telecommunications > Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) considered a tutorial and contribution > presentation on "New IP, Shaping Future Network" proposing to "analyse the > current challenges and provide a development path for the future network for > the next decade"._

> _It was noted that the activities proposed could be related to the current > work of several Study Groups across ITU-T._

> _Please find attached the referenced contribution and tutorial for your > review, and comment back to TSAG for its consideration ahead of WTSA-20._

\---

The "tutorial" [1] (PPTX) is, well, "interesting"; to pique your interest, it includes such terms as "space-terrestrial network", "multi-level verification filtering system", "holographic communication", "multi-semantic addressing", and, of course, "blockchain"!

\---

[0]: [https://datatracker.ietf.org/liaison/1653/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/liaison/1653/)

[1]: [https://www.ietf.org/lib/dt/documents/LIAISON/liaison-2019-0...](https://www.ietf.org/lib/dt/documents/LIAISON/liaison-2019-09-30-itu- t-tsag-ietf-iab-ls-on-new-ip-shaping-future-network-attachment-3.pptx)

<comment><USER9> Seems like few people really read the stuff.

One sentence made me choke :

> "The network needs to provide specific QoS and security policies based on > user identity, rather than mapping to something instead"

Well, no, sorry. It's an orwellian design proposal.

<comment><USER10> It depends, but I agree that this is a crazy hard problem to address correctly _and_ not create dystopian side effects or even just risk that.

Imagine you need some QoS on a few streams for serious and useful purposes (telesurgery comes to mind). Core networks are able to provide that, but this is not usually mapped to user extensible protocols on general purpose/public access points.

Now there are indirect advantages in just _not_ providing those, because:

\- you _also_ reduce the risk of dystopian usage / restriction of usage / etc.

\- in some cases, you make mass-applications being developed for non-QoS networks instead, so you eventually end-up (maybe a few years behind, but this is a cost I'm willing to pay) with basically the same service on a simpler and less dependent to political context tech.

But:

\- in the context of a benevolent legislation, this could be actually more useful and fair than the current situation, where network neutrality has became half a myth both in theory and in practice (there is no practical neutrality anymore when you can just put your own private datacenters all over the world plus high bandwidth links to supposed neutral providers, then use that to push your proprietary services/applications without emerging/low capital competition able to do the same)

\- so you actually depend on private parties to be benevolent with the supposedly "best effort" but actually not anymore approach

\- and then it is a matter of taste, but in some part of the world I'm more inclined to trust elected politics (even if they sometimes do some bullshit) defining regulation than private soulless multinationals with the often stated theory that they _must_ optimize shareholder outcome and nothing else.

That being said, given both the current state of the world (and even if it was better, the always persistant risk of it degrading) and the practical difficulty to cleverly and benevolently regulate fast moving technical fields, I'm willing to stick to basically the current situation, which seems _less_ prone to extreme situation.

But it would be a mistake to view authenticated QoS as inevitably and purely evil.

<comment><USER11> I beg to differ. It's the authenticated part that's the problem. That assumes you're tracking every connection to perfect granularity. Are you going to change the QoS for each host? Are you going to enforce every host to authenticate to determine which tier of service they are provided?

You want QoS? Fine. Provision your network for it, let everyone enjoy it. As soon as you start putting levers in place to pick who gets the better service tier, you get crap like Verizon throttling essential services right when they're needed the most because someone decided that their bloody contract wasn't looking like they were getting fleeced enough while said service is trying to ensure the damn countryside isn't completely burnt down.

Once the mechanism is in place it'll get abused, because their is always a buck to be made by doing so, or an ideological ambition to be realized. Sometimes it's just better not to even open that damn door. DPI and traffic shaping be damned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a piece of art: the most polite and well-researched STFU I have ever seen.

A gem: "We also note that any real-time systems requiring sub-millisecond latency inevitably have limited scope because of the constraints of the speed of light."

</comment><comment><USER13> To understand better what's going on, you need to check [https://www.state.gov/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/USCIB-508.p...](https://www.state.gov/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/USCIB-508.pdf) and [https://www.ietf.org/lib/dt/documents/LIAISON/liaison-2019-0...](https://www.ietf.org/lib/dt/documents/LIAISON/liaison-2019-09-30-itu- t-tsag-ietf-iab-ls-on-new-ip-shaping-future-network-attachment-2.docx) and then you will understand what's this about: China wants to abuse the ITU-T to design a new Internet.

> Source: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (China), China Mobile Communications > Corporation, China Unicom, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology > (MIIT)

> Title: "New IP, Shaping Future Network": Propose to initiate the discussion > of strategy transformation for ITU-T

The US Council For International Business answers:

> In recent years, however, the T-Sector's workstream has expanded into areas > in which we do not believe the ITU has the expertise or mandate

> In general, we urge the U.S. Government to [...] advocate against > Resolutions that would [...] broaden the scope of the ITU's consideration of > such technologies into domains such as ethics, R&D, and/or human rights.;

Reading the spin at [https://www.lightwaveonline.com/optical- tech/article/1664896...](https://www.lightwaveonline.com/optical- tech/article/16648964/itu-opens-new-channels-of-communication) I am not sure how far fetched would it be to say that China is bribing the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group so eventually it can shake off the US yoke on such standards. Because this spiel basically casts the US in bad light and very diligently omits even the mention of China. As [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-14540-8_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-14540-8_5) mentions "according to many observers, economic globalisation and the liberalisation of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States" although this paper argues against the hegemonic U.S. control of the internet, there can be little doubt China would love to strip away that control be it hegemonic or not.

<comment><USER3> > China wants to abuse the ITU-T to design a new Internet.

No. Chinese companies are trying to get recognized and running headfirst into a brick wall.

Designing a new internet is counterproductive to Chinese international sales of telco equipment and therefore also to building Chinese influence. And as far as domestic internet is concerned, they have a pretty firm handle on that already, without designing a new one.

<comment><USER3> P.S.: Another angle to view this from is to consider this a startup.

In US & EU, dumb ideas occasionally turn into startups, then they show up on crowdfunding (or, worst case, find a dumb VC), and then they die in a fire of varying gloriousness.

In China, the startup happens inside of Huawei instead. The ideas are equally dumb, but they don't die as easily, and when they make it out of Huawei they suddenly have the Huawei name attached and the Chinese government behind it. And it falls to the ITU, IETF, IEEE, or whomever else to shut it down.

Don't get confused by the "Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT)" there either. This isn't "state driven." They're just different faces of the same large blob.

And it's not about subversion either. They can't do that, yet. If you buy Cisco, Juniper, Ericsson, or Alcatel, and you find a backdoor... you just add it to the list of backdoors. But if you find a backdoor in Huawei, can you imagine the shitstorm that's gonna break loose? They seriously can't afford that. They'd lose not only US & EU sales and influence, but Middle East, African and South American too. They can start doing that in 10 years maybe, but not yet.

<comment><USER14> > _If you buy Cisco, Juniper, Ericsson, or Alcatel, and you find a backdoor... > you just add it to the list of backdoors. But if you find a backdoor in > Huawei, can you imagine the shitstorm that 's gonna break loose?_

There is a saying I ran across at some point:

* The newspapers lie. The government lies. But in a democracy they are not the same lies.

The "problem" with any Chinese company is that this distinction is often hard to make, whereas in Western countries there is much more independence (though not perfect, e.g., RSA and Dual_EC_DRBG).

So when there is a backdoor-like situation in a product from a Western company it is not unreasonable to assume that it is not for nefarious purposes.

<comment><USER3> > So when there is a backdoor-like situation in a product from a Western > company it is not unreasonable to assume that it is not for nefarious > purposes.

This perception is _exactly_ why you will get backdoors from Western intelligence services in Western gear, but the Chinese can't pull it off.

It's straight up cognitive dissonance. Western companies are the good guys. Western intelligence services are the good guys. They wouldn't harm "us" Westerners, it's gonna be OK... and the manufacturer will keep the intelligence services in check! We know since Snowden that they broke all the rules, but still, c'mon, it's not that bad, aight?

But if you find a single thing in a Huawei device that looks remotely like a backdoor, hell breaks loose. Of course the Chinese state is behind it! You can't trust them.

And:

> it is not for nefarious purposes.

Please tell me what on earth that purpose would be, for a company to backdoor their own commercial product. Why the f.ck would Cisco or Juniper want to backdoor their customer's networks for their _own_ purposes? Their intent is to sell shit and "create value"! Backdooring your products does nothing to get either of these, but it can very much trash a whole product line.

It's sad, but social signaling and valuation causes its exact opposite in this case. Edward Snowden's achievement wasn't revealing that NSA backdoors exist - people knew that before, but it was "tinfoil hat" country. Now it's common accepted knowledge. Unfortunately, that knowledge hasn't led to change just yet...

<comment><USER14> > This perception is exactly why you will get backdoors from Western > intelligence services in Western gear, but the Chinese can't pull it off.

Western people go after Western companies for backdoors just as harshly as they go after Chinese companies. See the paranoia about the "NSA_KEY" variable. See people going after RSA for their RNG.

> It's straight up cognitive dissonance. Western companies are the good guys. > Western intelligence services are the good guys.

No, it's because Western companies are, generally speaking, more independent of Western intelligence. Heck, Western companies actively work against Western intelligence: how much effort did Google expend in encrypting intra-DC links after the NSA's glass-tapping program went public? How much effort is Apple putting into crypto on their various devices?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ITU has been china's puppet for years. Fenghuo(Fiberhome) start this Y.2770 crap named "Requirements for Deep Packet Inspection in Next Generation Networks" back in 2012.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57557347-38/u.n-summit- vot...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57557347-38/u.n-summit-votes-to- support-internet-eavesdropping/)

> Because Y.2770 is confidential, many details remain opaque. But a document > (PDF) posted by a Korean standards body describes how network operators will > be able to identify "embedded digital watermarks in MP3 data," discover > "copyright protected audio content," find "Jabber messages with Spanish > text," or "identify uploading BitTorrent users." Jabber is also known as > XMPP, an instant messaging protocol.

</comment><comment><USER16> Good (paywalled, unfortunately) article on China using this as a way to move the infrastructure to depend on Huawei-owned patents so they can cash in on that work.

[https://www.ft.com/content/ba94c2bc-6e27-11ea-9bca- bf503995c...](https://www.ft.com/content/ba94c2bc-6e27-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f)

<comment><USER17> [http://archive.md/jwQCN](http://archive.md/jwQCN)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did anybody here actually know the detail about the "New IP" protocol? How it works?

I can't read the pay-walled ft.com article, but I been hearing people say "kill-switch" on the topic. If there will be a "kill-switch" builtin in the protocol, does that means the "New network" will be more centralized and thus unstable and bad?

I think if the goal is to connect more devices, why not build a completely decentralized P2P network that is cheap, easy to maintain, and user-friendly?

<comment><USER19> Only thing I can find is this [http://prod-upp-image- read.ft.com/6f569c60-7045-11ea-89df-41...](http://prod-upp-image- read.ft.com/6f569c60-7045-11ea-89df-41bea055720b)

<comment><USER20> incompetent redaction strikes again!

The redacted text are visible if you highlight over them.

The left reads as:

>Zhe Chen, Chuang Wang, Guanwen Li, Zhe Lou, Sheng Jiang

>Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd

>{chenzhe17, wangchuang, liguanwen, zhe.lou, email@example.com

The right reads as

>Alex Galis

>University College London

>firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some of the issues in the original paper are real (except the hologram where they have transformed marketing hype for stereo images into a real expectation of transmitting holograms). Pretty much all of them are capable of being implemented by tunneling through specialized transports, without needing to replace IPv6. After all, that is the "inter" in internets - you are already free to have specialized subnets. Cray implements low latency transport for IP in their supercomputers. You can use a VPN to anonymize your traffic, including transforming the addressing. And so on. If you step through the original presentation, everything is something you are free to implement and make available via IP ports as a subnet.

</comment><comment><USER22> Afaik, the ITU already tried to design a network stack, OSI. And we are very lucky the world got TCP/IP instead of that monstrosity.

</comment><comment><USER6> We can't even get IPv6 everywhere after several decades. We'll be dead before this is a thing (and it won't be).

<comment><USER20> IPv6 deployment was slow because there's no real incentive. There's the address exhaustion issue, but presumably the cost of buying IP addresses on the secondary market was lower than the cost of IPv6 deployment. On the other hand, this proposal does have incentive behind it, if reports about what's in it are accurate. Authoritarian governments would love having a kill switch and subscriber identification at the packet level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The telecoms companies are still upset that they lost control of the protocols when IP became ascendant. The last time they tried to take back control was around 2006 when they came out with the ISO stack, a very awkward clone of TCP/IP. Speaking as someone who had to work with ITU standards like X.25 and X.400, I'd rather chew my own toes off then work with anything they come up with.

<comment><USER24> I think you mean the OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) stack, and it "came out" much earlier than 2006. I remember working with it myself in the early 90s. It's also inaccurate to say it was a clone of TCP/IP since many parts of that beyond simple packet formats (e.g. congestion control and routing) were still very much in flux at that time. Innovations were being made on both sides, and often transferred between the two. This was a time when DECnet and NetWare were still in use, and they also had their own heritage separate from TCP/IP. IETF was not the origin of every networking thought ever.

But you're right that this is mostly about telecom folks not getting over their loss in the circuit-switched vs. packet-switched war, and that chewing off limbs would be preferable to working with ITU-specific standards again. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great, we'll be running IPv17 by 2055...

</comment><comment><USER26> New IP makes me think of New Speak from Orwell's 1984.</comment>


A Screenless Future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.darryljonckheere.com/2014/04/22/a-screenless-future/

<comment><USER2> The main protagonist in Star Cops ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Cops](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Cops) ) had "box" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYsbD5hewig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYsbD5hewig) back in the 80s :) It could cast things to nearby screens also :o) The screenless future isn't going to happen, but reducing the time that people stare at their phones would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I think screens will never completely disappear, I feel that many of the appliances that are gaining them now (refrigerators? why?) should lose them as soon as possible.

Those screens do not make the appliances that have them better or smarter, like the marketing department of samsung&co. want us to believe.</comment>


API Consoles for Music Platforms: Rdio, Spotify, Rhapsody and The Echo Nest - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apigee.com/detail/music_and_weather_apis/

<comment><USER2> I don't know what this is supposed to be, but it looks like a nice collation of documentary usage. Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: How to explain / 'prove' to friends FB is not listening via phone - <AUTHOR> Lots of my friends believe FB is listening to them, and serving them ads based on their conversations IRL.<p>Any good articles or studies showing this is not the case? <comment><USER2> Your question is biased because you assume FB / Google / OEM manufacturers and whoknowswhoelse are not listening in on private conversations. A lot of people think they are. It is unwise to discount their suspicions

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a pretty decent Reply All podcast about this: [https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr/109-is- facebo...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr/109-is-facebook- spying-on-you)

In short, you can't. People want to believe what they want to believe. Maybe if you have someone receptive you can explain the absurd number of correlations advertisers can make from your profile, and the fact that a guess only has to be right once for it to see like Facebook is listening to you while advertisers make tens or hundreds of guesses every day. No one wants to hear this explanation though, so I wouldn't expect to convince anyone. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> A quick google suggests there are just as many articles saying that it IS the case (especially when you broaden it to include Google/Amazon/etc).

Some have pretty convincing anecdata backing up the theory.

I'm not sure that you can prove/disprove it, without actual insider knowledge...

</comment><comment><USER5> Buy a burner phone with cash in a different city that you live in. Install Facebook. Start a Netflix binge session show that is purely in Chinese or Japanese. Do nothing else then open a url with a lot of ads.

</comment><comment><USER6> Brace yourself: [https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update](https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update)

</comment><comment><USER7> You can try to use some common sense. The risk of a security researcher finding out about it, or of a whistleblower coming out is too high. Something like that would not pass a risk-benefit analysis in any stretch of the imagination, specially for a company that already collects huge amounts of data from their users.

I don't think this is something Facebook would be able to come back from.

</comment><comment><USER8> It actually seems easier to prove how to do this. I might actually hack together an app that listens in on conversations and transcribes it to profile a user. And then demonstrate how hard or easy it is.

</comment><comment><USER9> Try saying the name of various products/brands out loud and then documenting if you see ads for those products?

</comment><comment><USER10> Haha so relatable. Do you work for Facebook?</comment>


Show HN: Fox Is A Testing Tool That Runs On Both NodeJS and Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/azer/fox

<comment><USER2> How is this different than tap(e)?</comment>


Ask HN: Is jQuery still a thing? - <AUTHOR> Repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12969826 <comment><USER2> Yes it is still a thing, but you _probably_ don't need it unless you're writing code that needs to support (very) old browsers.</comment>


Ask HN: Gift for a 11-year-old hacker - <AUTHOR> My sister is a bright, self-motivated, girl that has taught herself HTML and CSS, but hasn't learned a real programming language yet. She still doesn't grasp the concept of a function, which is understandable at her age. There's lots of books on CS that I'd love to give her, but that she's too young for. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Try to explain programs as a to do list for computers. This might be hard since her fist exposure to computers is HTML/CSS. kind of sad actually. How did that happen? Just curious...

Maybe show her that she can put dots of any colors on screen using html canvas and javascript. Show her how to draw lines. How to draw circles and color them. Show her how to move them....That should be enough to get her off from Html/Css and move to real computer programs...

May be just leave her alone..encourage her to spend less time with computers and go out and play with other kids..She is 10 year old, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if this is going to work, but instead of trying to explain what a function is at a theoretical level - which _is_ a difficult concept to grasp at that age - why not show her the code without too much theory?

I'm not a programmer by profession, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, why not trying to _show_ what a ruby add/multiply function looks like:

        #!/usr/bin/env ruby

        def add(x,y)
            b = x + y
            return b # could be just "b" or omitted but I consider verbosity a *virtue* here
        end

Of something like:

        #!/usr/bin/env ruby

        def hello(name)
           puts "Good morning, #{name}"
        end

I believe Ruby is a better choice than Python because it _can_ be more verbose, closer to English and doesn't rely on indentation. Javascript might be another option, but explaining the difference between class and function in JS to a novice might be problematic.

There's this book which is rather playful: [http://poignant.guide/book/chapter-1.html](http://poignant.guide/book/chapter-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> What about "hardware"? I bought to my daughter a Snap Circuit kit, but she was younger. [https://www.google.com.ar/search?q=snap+circuit&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com.ar/search?q=snap+circuit&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER5> I purchased a BitsBox subscription for my nieces/nephews, and they love it. [https://bitsbox.com/](https://bitsbox.com/)

It's not cheap, but I'm a big believer in encouraging this kind of learning, and I feel like it's been worth it. They range from 7-13 yrs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get her a decent hacker's keyboard. She will treasure it always. [https://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=pfu_keyboards](https://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=pfu_keyboards)

<comment><USER7> $225? Only 60 keys? No mention of Linux support?

LOL. Why? What are the advantages over the multitude of other mechanical keyboards out there these days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If she likes games - [https://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip](https://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you research your competition? - <AUTHOR>

Knowing your competition is a very important part of business and I'm curious to get your input as to how you figure out who your direct and indirect competition is.
I recently needed to do a specific task and while there were a couple of solutions out there, I really disliked their implementations (basically they were too difficult to use).  I think I can do a much better job in implementing the idea (which I am working on now), but I'd really like to have a better picture of who's out there doing the same thing.
Do you have any suggestions for finding potential competitors aside from just mindlessly Googling words and phrases?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I usually gather information through those sites/techniques:

\- <http://www.crunchbase.com>

\- Google search "COMPANY alternative"

\- Twitter search "COMPANY"

* Where COMPANY is either the company/product name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight! I'm already using Google and Twitter in that way and Crunchbase seems pretty sweet but after doing a couple of searches and clicking some companies it looks like there's a lot of entries for tiny/small companies that don't exist anymore :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If they have a URL an are somewhat popular, I use my website: <http://www.moreofit.com> to find similar services and companies. By noting the tags you can gain tremendous insight into the breadth and depth of the market space. By altering the sort popularity, you can quickly note who's doing well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's a really cool site! How long did it take you to make? Are you making money off of it yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _how you figure out who your direct and indirect competition is_

I talk to my customers. They're very good at telling me "I was using X until I discovered Tarsnap" and (far less often) "I'm not going to be using Tarsnap any more because I'm switching to X".

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point and I think if you're making a new implementation of a product like I am and you have a general idea of who your customer could potentially be just asking them could be very helpful, though it may be difficult to get a response. It's funny how this is probably one of the simplest and most obvious ways, and yet it completely eluded me until I read your post. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just found this blog posting that has a list of tools that you can use to analyze your competitors when you find them:

<http://www.seomoz.org/blog/monitor-competitor-traffic>

</comment><comment><USER5> One trick I found for researching competitors (once you know they're competitors): \- Do a linkedin search for the competitive company \- Pull the names of the CTO and senior technical staff \- Do a patent search based on those names

</comment><comment><USER6> Try <http://www.similarsitesearch.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Work for them :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You gotta be able to find 'fm to work for 'em :)</comment></comment>


Nokia flip phones are back - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/9/5/20850793/nokia-2720-flip-phone-hmd-800-rugged-110-feature-phones-ifa-2019 <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see how usable WhatsApp is on this thing. It would be a perfect "partly-detoxing" phone for me. Still don't feel left out from whatsapp groups, but annoying enough to not use the phone all the time...</comment>


The #1 Most Important Resume Tip - <AUTHOR>

... make sure you type your phone number right.<p>#2 - If you are going to mis-type it, at least make sure to correct it before sending out 25 of them, and agreeing to 3 or 4 phone interviews.<p>Those are just my two-cents. Take them or leave them, but I will say from experience, it is good advice!!! <comment><USER2> ...and if you're listing a cell phone number, make sure your phone is charged and not silent!

</comment><comment><USER3> yes, that's pretty good advice.

</comment><comment><USER4> attention to detail.</comment>


Your API Sucks: Why Developers Hang Up and How to Stop That - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apigee.com/detail/api_Design_developers/

<comment><USER2> No comments on the page nor Youtube (not that I go to youtube for valuable comments...), no summary, and no captions.

Maybe I'll look at it later. Videos are an _extremely_ slow way to absorb information, especially presentation-style videos where people speak slowly and clearly and try to explain everything so everyone will understand it.

<comment><USER3> The Apigee blog uses Disqus, so you should be able to comment: <http://blog.apigee.com/detail/api_design_for_developers/>

Always interested in feedback, either on giving better talks or on making better APIs / developer experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My top rule for APIs is that simple things should be simple. If I want a minimal HTTP listener, don't make me create and intricately combine a dozen ConnectionReuseStrategy and ContentProducer and HTTPEntityEnclosingRequest objects. Apache HTTPComponents, I'm looking at you.

<comment><USER2> I tend to achieve that by making a few layers of access. I try _really_ hard to make every chunk of re-usable code I write work with as few arguments as possible in the most common uses. Usually, this means one or two at most.

There are cases where HTTPEntityEnclosingRequest objects could be useful to be able to declare... but most of the time you just want port.listen(delegate). I boggle at how few systems have easy-use methods along those lines, and how so many things return 'void' instead of 'this'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Sucks" articles suck. Stop writing them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Joshua Bloch gave a talk in 2006 that was about "real" API design, not REST API design, and is mainly concerned with much-loathed Java, but despite all this I think it's still very relevant and well worth watching. It's about an hour long.

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design>

</comment><comment><USER7> But if something really sucks, then we must call it out as such!

Also...hahahaha HTTPEntityEnclosingRequest</comment>


Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf <comment><USER2> Written by two of the people who helped develop INFOSEC field and early secure systems. Schell was an acquisitions guy who worked with Paul in early pentests, pushed "COMPUSEC" when few believed in it, pushed for security certifications, was sneaking funding into secure systems like SCOMP, and spent rest of his career pushing solutions based on GEMSOS security kernel.

Paul Karger who was an engineer that worked with him early on doing pentests that were quite embarrassing to military and commercial sector. Paul designed and built a number of highly-secure systems at a time when it was little understood. Here's his publication list and an obituary summarizing some of his work.

[https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/k/Karger:Paul_A=](https://dblp.uni- trier.de/pers/hd/k/Karger:Paul_A=)

[https://www.ieee- security.org/Cipher/Newsbriefs/2010/karger....](https://www.ieee- security.org/Cipher/Newsbriefs/2010/karger.html)

My favorite was VAX Security Kernel whose design is still stronger than most modern VMM's. It was also the project where the application of covert-channel analysis discovered cache-based, timing channels in processors. The high- assurance, security field started freaking out about how insecure CPU hardware was around that point. Both problems ignored by other groups in security much like results and advice from MULTICS evaluation. His last project was a secure, smartcard OS for IBM designed for EAL7 evaluation. He and/or his team wisely split it up into intermediate deliverables that had independent value and potential sales to keep the long-term project funded despite effects of management impatience or changes.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Multics simulator is finally running![1] Old Multics people talked about that for decades, and now it is available.

The public access machine at NSA, DOCKMASTER, ran Multics until 1998.

[1] [http://multicians.org/simulator.html](http://multicians.org/simulator.html)

<comment><USER2> User trn on Lobste.rs has a public one here:

[https://ban.ai/multics/](https://ban.ai/multics/)

I haven't tried to use it or anything. Just posting it for others.</comment></comment>


BCC: Dynamic Tracing Tools for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://iovisor.github.io/bcc/ <comment><USER2> For "Enterprise" environments it could take another 7 years to get to this kernel level. Rather depressing. Many of my clients are still on RH 5.

<comment><USER3> I hope you're working on moving them off it, since RHEL 5 reaches end-of-life March 31, 2017.

<comment><USER4> I suspect a lot of them would pull the same sort of thing as the IRS did with Microsoft and pay millions for continued support specifically for them. Few organizations would stay so far behind the curve without having a business justification worth a substantial amount... or their IT costs are so outrageous for the most basic levels of operation it's not too bad to pay half your IT budget to avoid having to upgrade and retrain your likely demoralized IT workforce and employees to handle an already-archaic OS like Windows 7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These will be awesome once the newer kernels and LLVM versions that they need are widely available. I am really looking forward to it.

<comment><USER6> Hopefully you don't have to wait!

We're really hoping that this set of tools has only the minimal requirements, that being the kernel.

Since Clang/LLVM can be linked as a static or dynamic library, we only have a build-time dependency on those, and opt for the static library. The build scripts have steps to build clang+llvm from source if your distro doesn't include it. The binaries that we ship hide this and should (if we've done things right) only have a libc and few misc .so dependencies. A change under test even adds a fully static lua version.

On the kernel side, we don't conditionally compile anything based on kernel features, and instead try/fail at runtime. You can just upgrade your kernel and the tools will start to take advantage of the new features immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Naive questions to people in the know: is it the case that ebpf/bcc are the standard for Linux tracing? Are they the Future(TM)? Or is the long-term vision a pluralistic world of Linux tracers?

<comment><USER8> BPF (formally eBPF) provides the programmable tracing capabilities that Linux previously lacked. Things like custom latency histograms. It works with other built in features: kprobes, uprobes, tracepoints, etc.

So yes, BPF is becoming the standard and the future. It made it into the kernel (well, the enhancements needed for tracing did; BPF has been around for a long time as just a packet filter). In other words, BPF won. bcc is likely the future, but we'll see other front ends as well (eg, ply).

<comment><USER8> I should add that Linux has two tracing front ends built in: ftrace and perf_events. And perf_events is building BPF support (see lkml). bcc is another front end for BPF. If this is confusing, I should categorize them like this:

back end technologies: ftrace, kprobes, uprobes, tracepoints, BPF

front ends: ftrace, perf_events, bcc

ftrace is hard to categorize: it is a collection of both back end and front end capabilities (although the front end is /sys). Also, it's being renamed to just "trace".

<comment><USER7> Thanks Brendan! A more navel-gazey question I believe you're well positioned to answer:

For a long time, there seemed to be a conventional wisdom that Linux tracing was mediocre, because it doesn't have DTrace. Has Linux approached or passed the "caught up" point?

<comment><USER8> It hasn't caught up yet, but it's getting pretty close. Although I'd think about it in terms of three dimensions:

\- technical capability: we should pass it this year. We'll be technical capable of solving pretty much the same issues and then some.

\- ease of use for script developers: bcc is currently ~10x more verbose to program. ply is much easier, but that project is in its early stages. This won't matter that much for Netflix, since much of the time staff will use this from a GUI (eg, Vector). It also won't matter that much for people who use the many provided tools, like opensnoop, tcpconnect, ext4slower, etc. It matters most for whoever codes the GUI and those tools (eg, me).

\- marketing, awareness, brand: Sun marketing, sales, trainers, and evangelists, did an awesome job - everyone knows about DTrace, even if they've never used it. In comparison, bcc/BPF (and many other Linux kernel technologies, like ftrace) have virtually zero marketing budget or professional marketing staff promoting them. Awareness will take the longest to catch up.

I also summarized the current state of bcc/BPF in [http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-03-28/linux-bpf-bcc- ro...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-03-28/linux-bpf-bcc-road- ahead-2016.html)

<comment><USER8> ... I should add, a tipping point for awareness may be when a commercial performance monitoring company adds BPF support (and latency heat maps, etc), and then promotes this feature. There's a lot of performance monitoring companies out there, many are well funded, and have professional marketing/sales departments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't find a debian repo, and I wonder what to do with the bcc nameclash for the source package. bcc is an existing tiny c compiler in debian.</comment>


Japanese Firms, Flush With Cash, Step Up Deals - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123120506442956011.html

<comment><USER2> True in my little slice of Japan, too. I work in Nagoya, The Town Toyota Built. People don't always understand when I say this, but I don't work for Toyota to the extent that anyone in Nagoya can be said not to work for Toyota.

Here's an example of how that works:

1) American car industry goes nearly bankrupt

2) Company supporting American car industry downsizes a plant.

3) A company supplying Toyota seizes the opportunity to expand to a new location and begins plans to integrate it into the Toyota borg

4) This includes them needing logistical support so a different company in the Toyota borg needs to open a new office in a middle American state

5) The new office needs software services and would prefer to get them locally but with people their managers can work with

6) My employers start making plans for our third American office

I appreciate your discretion in not asking me to name names.

When assets are available at fire sale prices, and you're holding a lot of cash, life is pretty sweet. (I've been plowing all the yen I can spare into investments, too. Of course I'm not a market timer so I'm always doing that but this appears to be one of the seasons which proves why the strategy works.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My apologies to anyone who doesn't have a WSJ account. It's an interesting story given the current VC environment in the US.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Add ?mod=googlenews_wsj to the end of the URL.

2\. Copy URL.

3\. Go to news.google.com and use Firebug to replace a link's href with your copied URL or make a new link.

4\. Click link.

There's probably a better way.

<comment><USER4> Paste:"Japanese Firms, Flush With Cash, Step Up Deals " into Google news, click link.

<comment><USER5> I tried changing the url of the link here to that, but alas the WSJ seems to check the referrer.

(Could a plugin change the referrer?)

<comment><USER6> <http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/>

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1999></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Sort the stories on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hnsort/lopjhgdgkgoebpjklihmhkhpngeiadck

<comment><AUTHOR> Source code: [https://github.com/lwburk/hnsort](https://github.com/lwburk/hnsort)

I wrote this as a user script a few years ago, but it recently broke due to site layout changes. I took that opportunity to rewrite it using Flight and convert it to a full Chrome extension.</comment>


Hack Education in Your Underwear - <AUTHOR> http://lincolnlabs.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link to the Virtual Hackathon: [http://lincolnlabs.com/hackathons/virtual.html](http://lincolnlabs.com/hackathons/virtual.html)</comment>


Why Silicon Valley Funds Instagrams, Not Hyperloops - <AUTHOR> http://pathfinderapp.co/posts/why-silicon-valley-funds-instagrams-not-hyperloops <comment><USER4> Folks. There's no crisis of innovation. This would be a lot clearer if people understood how Silicon Valley has always worked:

1\. Government pays for really big long-term high-risk core technology development. Things like microprocessors, the internet, voice analysis, lasers, space rockets, highways, etc.

2\. These are mostly done under the rubric of defense spending. (This is important.)

3\. Private sector steps in to commercialize the projects that bear fruit.

Hyperloop falls under category #1. Those projects take billions invested over decades with very uncertain prospects. Usually supported by military procurement. Yes, even highways were built ostensibly for the military. And Siri on your iPhone? Funded by the CIA.

That kind of _Really Big Fundamental_ innovation is funded _by the government_. It's never been VCs. They focus on the "last mile".

Space X is a good example of that: bringing a foundation of core tech developed by NASA to market, adding commercial-oriented innovation on the scale of a few years and a couple hundred million from the private sector. But even at this stage, there's still many more hundreds of millions in government procurement (prepaid launch contracts).

The reason Hyperloops don't get funded is that the government doesn't have a military application (or pretext) for it.

Now we could go on to ask _why_ Silicon Valley's megabucks foundation is military spending and not, say, direct government investment in sustainable public services. But then we get to some uncomfortable issues, like how the public might feel more entitled to the fruits of those investments. Whereas if core science and tech is seen as a kind of "military surplus", free or cheap for the taking, then the VC private sector gets to keep the profits from commercialization.

<comment><USER5> The idea that "military development advances technology" is very popular but not entirely accurate. The micro-processor, for example, was invented while working on a handheld calculator project, and advanced through the consumer market.

Sometimes military development advances technologies in ways that might not have happened otherwise but it's hard to compare to the way development would have gone otherwise. Take the development of aircraft from their invention through WWII. Unquestionably there was a rapid pace of development during, and due to, WWI and WWII. But there was also a rapid pace of development outside of the wars. The design of the iconic WWII fighters the Supermarine Spitfire and P51 Mustang owe much to the advancement of high performance aviation spurred by the entirely civilian Schneider Trophy competitions through the 1920s and '30s, for example.

<comment><USER4> "In the United States, the development of the computer was underpinned by massive government investment in the technology for military applications during WWII and then the Cold War. The latter superpower confrontation made it possible for local manufacturers to transform their machines into commercially viable products. It was the same story in Europe, where adoption of computers began largely through proactive steps taken by national governments to stimulate development and deployment of the technology."

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

You're arguing there's an interplay between the public and private sector. That's true. But you would be hard-pressed to find an example of a major core tech that developed _independently_ of significant government investment -- particularly in the highest-risk, most capital-intensive stuff. And that's why Hyperloop doesn't get funded.

<comment><USER6> > You're arguing there's an interplay between the public and private sector. > That's true. But you would be hard-pressed to find an example of a major > core tech that developed independently of significant government investment

I'm not sure about the history, but perhaps the internal combustion engine?

More generally, the line of reasoning in this thread assumes "this is how things have happened" to imply "this is the _only_ way things can happen". It is entirely conceivable that the private sector would, in the absense of government funding, step up and perform/fund fundamental research. But, in the current fiscal climate where there is still, generally speaking, copious government funding available (e.g., to the military), why would a private group spend money to do that when they can let someone else (the government) take the risk (with someone else's money).

<comment><USER5> Indeed. There were 3 of the largest wars in history during the 20th century (WWI, WWII, and the Cold War). That's going to necessarily skew the statistics on development of technology in recent history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is amazing that someone is willing to pay $3 billion for SnapChat, but nobody is willing to pay $6 billion for Hyperloop (which was Musk's estimate, although many people took issue with it).

But we're still in the early days of the internet and smartphone era. It's still a gold rush where people are running after get-rich-quick ideas.

Eventually we'll hit saturation and those quick exits will become less common. That will force investors to look for new opportunities elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> True, but at least Snapchat already works and has users. I like Elon Musk but I LOLed when I saw his estimate of $6 billion.

<comment><USER9> I am not sure why that is hilarious.

India just sent a probe to Mars at $69 Million. Musk has himself built a rocket company with a million dollar scale investment.

There is no reason to dismiss, especially when he has a track record of delivering great stuff on time and in budget.

<comment><USER8> Because the cost is not just technological. There's also major land use issues, which get expensive in CA. His idea that putting it along the middle of the freeway will obviate these is not credible. I estimate $20bn to build it, minimum. Rocketry is simple by comparison.

<comment><USER10> I also have my estimates. And I think that one day, after I create a successful company that builds electric cars on a scale no one has tried before, and after I create a company that designs and builds rockets that deliver cargo on commercially-contracted terms, people will even take my estimates seriously.

Until then, I'll keep them to myself and not criticize others unless I have a really, really good justification.

<comment><USER11> We are talking about no one will invest in hyperloop. If it is because people suspect Musk's cost estimates are off then that is worth bringing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A big part of the reason the IPO market suck, i.e. why "the stock market isn't influenced by value today like it was thirty years ago", is taxes. Specifically, the differential tax treatment of capital gains and dividends.

A long time back, equities were viewed as a vehicle for distributing dividends. A company earns money and pays it to investors. You build the hyperloop, customers buy tickets, you give investors a cut of the proceeds. The value of HLOOP is based primarily on the expected value of this revenue stream.

Nowadays, dividends are double taxed while capital gains are only single taxed, which means that companies mostly don't bother with dividends anymore. Investors tolerate this because the differential tax rates mean that management would be throwing away their money if they issued dividends. As a result, the value of equity is the value of expected capital gains, resulting in the current situation.

<comment><USER13> > Nowadays, dividends are double taxed while capital gains are only single > taxed, which means that companies mostly don't bother with dividends > anymore. Investors tolerate this because the differential tax rates mean > that management would be throwing away their money if they issued dividends.

Notwithstanding the fact that there are plenty of companies that pay dividends, I assume you're not familiar with REITs, preferred stock and MLPs? Dividend/distribution investing is very much alive and well.

<comment><USER12> Dividends these days occur, but they are generally a token rather than the primary means of rewarding shareholders.

REITs might work for Hyperloop specifically (depending on whether the IRS believes Hyperloop is an "investment agent specializing in real estate and real estate mortgages"), but they don't work for most companies. The fact that there are a few corporate structures that avoid overtaxing dividends doesn't change the fact that they don't work for most businesses.

<comment><USER13> > Dividends these days occur, but they are generally a token rather than the > primary means of rewarding shareholders.

I would strongly suggest that you visit a site like [http://www.dividendchannel.com/](http://www.dividendchannel.com/). Your statements that "companies mostly don't bother with dividends anymore" and "they are generally a token rather than the primary means of rewarding shareholders" are simply incorrect.

<comment><USER12> Since 1980 (the earliest year I could find data for), there has been a drastic decrease dividends.

[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1979501](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1979501)

This paper suggests, though comes far from proving, that dividends do behave as if they are used for signalling (i.e., "look at us, we are healthy, see, dividends").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Many say that, in Silicon Valley, there is "no penalty for failure". I'll be a heretic for a bit, and say this is part of the reason why we _don 't_ have Hyperloop.

Software companies have huge payoff ratios. You invest $1M in 5,000 companies, and hopefully one of them is Facebook. The payoff on a big success is thousands to one. If you give $1M to some douchebag who spends it on hookers and blow, no big deal.

Infrastructure companies have _much_ lower payoff ratios. You might invest $1B in the hope of getting back $10B. But for that to be profitable, the success probability must be at least 10%. Which means you have to be pretty sure they aren't going to just blow it all on parties.

Now, from the _founder 's_ perspective, building an infrastructure company is really hard, and blowing $1B on parties is really easy. So if there's no penalty for failure - no social cost to wasting the money, and not trying very hard to build the hardware - that's what almost everyone winds up doing. Infrastructure demands large capital investment, and large capital investment demands some form of accountability.

<comment><USER15> Never mind the failures due to coke and hookers. The big upside to the SV early stage investments is that startups that are responsibly run but _don 't_ seem to have a natural route to profitability can probably end up selling the people or tech as assets to someone else in the sector. Investors expect positive returns on some of the "near misses" in their portfolio.

By contrast, if you can't make an operating profit on the Hyperloop having paid all the research and infrastructure costs (either it doesn't reliably work, or is just widely considered too unpleasant to ride on a regular basis) you end up with miles of very visible scrap metal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Silicon Valley did fund some "hyperloops", look no further than Musk's other two big ideas (Space X & Tesla). Look for the few VCs that are non conventional thinkers themselves. The ones that discuss the distant future as though it is right around the corner or even happening now.

As an example watch any 10 minutes of this interview with Steve Jurvetson of DFJ. You'll see why he and Musk were a good fit: [http://youtu.be/O2tK0Wl2F8w](http://youtu.be/O2tK0Wl2F8w)

<comment><USER4> Those are not hyperloops. Both SpaceX and Tesla are built on decades of R&D and core science paid for mostly by taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

This is not to take anything away from the "layer" that Musk added to this foundation. But hyperloop does not have the same foundation. There have been space missions and electric cars before; there hasn't been anything approaching a hyperloop at scale. So the investment risk is even greater.

<comment><USER17> If SpaceX isn't a "hyperloop" project, then almost nothing would qualify. HP, Intel, Cisco, and other Silicon Valley giants -- the type of companies that the original post would probably point to in contrast to something like Snapchat -- benefited from decades of military and university research.

And if that's the case, that also suggests an answer to all of this. Spend more on basic R&D.

<comment><USER4> There's no contradiction. HP, Intel, etc. happened because they were built on a foundation of massive government investment in microprocessor tech during its early, super high risk phase, and then government procurement. Hyperloop isn't happening within the Silicon Valley model because it's core tech/infrastructure that does not have the government's interest, because our system is built around defense spending.

That's not to say the government couldn't fund it as a transportation infrastructure project, but that's not the Silicon Valley model, and the funding is much smaller and harder to come by than defense spending.

The problem isn't really just to spend "more" on R&D -- have you seen the defense budget? Hyperloop would be a blip. The problem is deeper.. it's that our system is not set up to funnel taxpayer funds into public services like this. IMHO for political reasons. Running it through the pretext of defense makes it harder for citizens to question how funds should be spent and who they should benefit.

We need _political_ change to make sustainable public transport projects like this take priority. Just like we need it for education, social welfare, etc. It's easier to control people when you tell them the Russians/terrorists are coming so we have to take your money and fund defense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Mass transportation has always lost money. Most of the original railroads in America went bankrupt. Today, ~90% of the cost of building railroads are subsidized by the government. In Japan, they over-invested in trains and it produced a huge drag on the economy.

Most experts I've heard say the hyperloop would cost far more than the estimated $6 billion. Doing things for the first time means you're likely to go way over-budget. After someone builds a hyperloop though, and works out all the kinks, there will be investors for the 2nd one. It's a case of "the second mouse gets the cheese".

<comment><USER19> > _Mass transportation has always lost money_

Most passenger rail in Japan is private, and profitable, including both capital and operating expenses.

In the years leading up to WWII, and during it, the Japanese government nationalized many rail lines (although many stayed private as well) to form JNR, and JNR proved to be too inefficient, and built up a lot of debt. That then of course lead to the privatization of JNR in the 1980s (which included transferring JNR's debt to the new private JR companies), which was highly successful.

> _In Japan, they over-invested in trains and it produced a huge drag on the > economy_

Japan has invested a lot in rail, but it certainly isn't a "drag on the economy". Indeed, it's arguably a boon to the economy as it's a much more efficient transit system than private vehicles on roads, and given the business model of Japanese railroads (which builds retail and housing around railroad nodes, and builds railroads to support new retail and housing), _directly_ contributes to much more efficient urban organization.

The rail lines in Japan that lose money are rural ones in sparsely populated areas. However these account for a very small proportion of rail usage.

<comment><USER18> "Pettis likens it to the US railroad boom in late the 1800s. "Most of it was very, very wasteful and the companies eventually went bankrupt. The railroads shifted to new owners who bought at a significant discount. That meant they could lower prices immediately," he tells Quartz. "That's painful, but it's economically very efficient." That never happened in Japan. In fact, this is why Japan's GDP appears not to have grown in so long, says Pettis—wasteful government spending in the 1980s meant GDP "was significantly overstated.""

[http://qz.com/94692/abenomics-will-fail-if-japan-doesnt- addr...](http://qz.com/94692/abenomics-will-fail-if-japan-doesnt-address-its- debt-problem-heres-one-way-it-should-start-doing-that/)

<comment><USER19> Japan has many issues... but its railroads are not one of them. Indeed, note that your article points to the JNR privatization as the model to follow...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Link for those who want to see the original article:

[http://jerzygangi.com/why-silicon-valley-funds-instagrams- no...](http://jerzygangi.com/why-silicon-valley-funds-instagrams-not- hyperloops/)

<comment><USER21> Now I wonder why it's on Pathfinder on the first place and why it's stealing traffic from the original source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have an alternative theory. It's because important real things are heavily regulated. Government sticks its nose into everything. The internet was an exception, because they didn't realize its potential fast enough (China, on the other hand, had some time to do the homework). Whatever industry is regulated - transportation, healthcare, protection, drugs - you have high prices and a high entry barrier. By pretending to care about consumers, governments simply rob both entrepreneurs and consumers. If they truly cared, they would allow multiple consumer protection agencies on the market each helping consumers navigate the said market, but with no power to prohibit or regulate anything. Right now a government is a monopolist in consumer protection business with an ultimate power to kick anyone out of the market. That can't be good for consumers. And don't tell me people would die if there was no regulations - every day thousands die because it takes years for the FDA to approve an experimental drug, but no one seems to care.

As a side note, don't be surprised that tangible businesses with a lot of real assets make less money than some chat application. In airline industry, whose margins do you think are the lowest? Airlines. Whose margins are the highest? IT companies that run ticket reservation systems.

<comment><USER23> Don't forget it was the Government that INVENTED the internet. They also heavily funded or helped to invent cellphones technology and micro-chips not to mention the research that brought us touch screens and GPS as well. So perhaps the government isn't all bad and for things like the Hyperloop they should get involved.

I think the real issue that is being talked about in the article is that long term, large scale "moon-shot" type projects are extremely difficult to launch in the private market, but history has shown us that the government is actually much better at such long term "moon-shot" things.

Sure SpaceX is cool and makes rockets for far cheaper than the government ever did, but with out a few decades of NASA spending a ton of money trying to figure out how to get into space in the first place there would be no SpaceX.

So I think what really needs to be looked at for projects like the Hyperloop is Government / Private partnership. Maybe even let the government take a stake in the company and earn revenue in the future to offset / repay all the tax dollars invested. Because unlike private equity, cash-flow is actually quite important to the government and they they are well suited to help out in situations like this.

<comment><USER22> Did a government bureaucrat invent the internet? Or was it a person or persons who were simply financed by said bureaucrats (and not even directly by them, but rather by taxpayers' money those bureaucrats redistributed)? This is an important difference because nothing really stops private individuals finance things that may potentially be unprofitable (think Ubuntu, for instance).

When you say "but without government important initial research which is costly and unprofitable can't be done" I want you to think about many brilliant scientists from the 19th and even 20th century who did groundbreaking work entirely on their own or with the help of some private money. And also think that when government finances things, it simply says to other people "give us your money because we know better how to spend them - <USER2> you disagree, we're still gonna take your money, so you have no choice". Government doesn't convince and treat people as individuals, it commands and treats them as livestock.

<comment><USER23> >When you say "but without government important initial >research which is costly and unprofitable can't be done"

No that is not what I said at all. If your going to quote somebody quote them correctly. What I did say is that SpaceX wouldn't be possible without NASA. And not to short change SpaceX cause it's an amazing company and they do really cool stuff, it is true that they are building on-top of the tech developed by NASA, and that NASA, in the form of a very large contract to shoot rockets into space also funds (to an large extent) SpaceX. So I don't think you can really argue that point.

To your more general point... You obviously don't like the government, and honestly I don't really either, I agree with you that they are a bunch of bureaucrats and mess up a lot of stuff. But don't let you feelings about the government cloud your vision. As said in the original article for the vast majority of cases Industry does not have the appetite to fund Huge project, i.e. large capital expenditures with very long timelines to pay back the money.

Yes you could come up with cases where industry has, but the majority of these type of project have been funded by the government, and unless we change the rules by which our entire economy operates the government is likely to be the only one to continue to fund them. So rather than just hate the man (if we really want to get these type of things done) we would be better served figuring out how to work with him, or change the quick profit driven model which drives our economy... To me working with the government, as bad as it may sound, is probably an easier task.

<comment><USER22> The fundamental question is, do we want those big projects done? If we really wanted them, everyone would simply donate money voluntarily when asked, so you would have no problem financing NASA or other big things. If, however, people don't want those things or would rather prefer their money spent differently, NASA becomes an organization financed by theft. People don't want to give it money, yet you take it away from them because you think it's a good idea to go to space. It's not an economical problem, it's a moral one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The last time infrastructure investment's been sexy was the 1800s. That was the last time you could build large scale transportation projects with private money, and that was only because there was a huge frontier to conquer. Now everything is owned by someone whose got powerful friends, rather than natives you can just shove out of the way. It took the political might of a wartime hero president to build the Interstate system.

It's utterly silly to look at the Valley's reluctance to fund the Hyperloop as some kind of failure of the sheeple. The authors should crack open a history book sometime and learn how hard stuff like this is.

<comment><USER25> This is one of the more astute comments in this thread, and I hope it gets the upvotes it deserves. Alex Tabarrok also discusses the "veto player" problem some in _Launching the Innovation Renaissance_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance- Marke...](http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Market- ebook/dp/B006C1HX24?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)), which is worth reading if you're interested in these issues.

<comment><USER24> Purchased, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just because the internet sector is temporarily insane where gimmick apps reject $3 billion acquisitions doesn't change that most money invested in the valley goes to serious businesses doing real research and development.

<comment><USER27> This is probably the most accurate on point statement in the thread.

<comment><USER28> Except for that gimmick apps part. Snapchat has 25M users. That is more than most countries in the world to put it in perspective. That is nothing to scoff at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a very truthful article and one that should bother a lot of people

The stock market and investors "immediateness", and all the other points.

3B dollars can fund a (small) semiconductor company. And they're going for a picture sharing app (different, but worse - as in, a quirk - than Instagram)?

<comment><USER28> Can 3B dollars fund a small semiconductor company that will have a sustainable competitive advantage against Intel, AMD and TSMC? My guess is NO. Successful picture sharing apps has stable audience locked in with network effects and switching costs. That is a sustainable competitive advantage.

<comment><USER29> "that will have a sustainable competitive advantage against Intel, AMD and TSMC? My guess is NO"

Maybe, but these are not the only semiconductor companies in existence.

And there's a whole lot of (semiconductor) products beyond what those produce.

But to compete agains them, yes, you would at least have to double that value, but probably more.

Or you just design and subcontract manufacturing to them.

<comment><USER28> Dont you think that all that considerations are factored in the VC process?

<comment><USER30> Why are you assigning some sort of 'perfect knowledge' or clairvoyance to VCs ? They are just like everyone else and they make irrational decisions and have inherent biases.

<comment><USER28> I didn't assign anything. You did. Stop putting words in my mouth.

My point was that if a random HN commenter is able to raise some issues about ROI of various investments then certainly VCs who do it professionally have these issues factored in. Simple as that.

<comment><USER30> >Stop putting words in my mouth

Start being clear, then people might understand your confused responses.

> then certainly VCs who do it professionally have these issues factored in.

What is so certain about it? Doing something 'professionally' just means that its your job. People are capable of sucking at their job (which happens far too often IMHO).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Payback. Risk. Magnitude. Is there really any more to it than that?

<comment><USER32> Exactly. Hyperloop in particular has the worst of all worlds.

1\. Huge investment required up front.

2\. First of its kind, so lots of risk.

3\. Small potential gain relative to the investment.

In fact, Hyperloop was never proposed as a VC funded project by Musk. He's merely proposing it as an alternative to high-speed rail. Historically, public transit loses money, making it a terrible investment. However, it's a public good so governments continue to support them.

<comment><USER33> You forgot the biggest risk of all, Death. I'm all for the Hyperloop but lets be realistic, its way easier to give a few guys in a garage a hundred thousand dollars to build software for sharing pictures that's never going to hurt anyone then fork over billions for a futuristic transport that could potentially kill people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Investors are not stupid or blind. Hyperloop is similar to the Maglev train technology developed in Germany and Japan for the last decades. The inventor of the maglev train even thought about hyperloop. But so far just one single commercial maglev train route has been build.

And the suck costs are extremely high. The six billion Musk estimated are wrong, it won't be six billion, it will much, much more than that.

Investors don't invest in hyperloops not because of the 9 theories the author is mentioning but because hyperloop are not an alternative to conventional trains.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm a little confused about a couple of the statements made in the article:

1\. "If Kaiser Permanente releases a drug that cures all cancers, is the stock price guaranteed to go up? No, of course not. The stock price goes up or down based on supply and demand. It only responds to human action. And, therefore, the price of a stock is solely determined by how people think about the price of a stock." \- Am I wrong in thinking that the price of the stock is correlated with the value of the company which is much less influenced by what stockholders think and much more based on what people think of the value of the product/service? Whoever invents the cure for cancer is going to see a huge increase in their stock price because people are going to buy their drugs, increasing revenue, profits, ROE, dividends, growth. etc. What is the author trying to say?

2\. "Right now, the only sane choice is to aim for an acquisition. But mergers and acquisitions are on average $100 million a piece. There's no way to have a company as large as Hyperloop acquired because it's a multi billion-dollar company. You just can't do it." What about motorola (12.5bn) youtube (1.5bn) and instagram (1bn) just to name a few? Just because a company is valued over $1bn doesn't mean there's no more room for growth and a subsequent exit?

Shotgun Investing vs. Value Investing - Doesn't the government sometimes fill the role of value investor? Especially in cases of infrastructure like the hyperloop?

Any clarification would be appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER36> Because VCs are not about changing the world, they're about quickly making lots of money on high-risk bets.

There needs to be something looking for medium sized boats of money over medium length periods of time for medium risk. Is that the stock market I guess?

</comment><comment><USER9> Capitalism works to tackle such things, it gives you exactly what you want. Which is extremely powerful and dangerous at the same time. If people want free services to share pictures and not low priced long distance travel. They will get exactly that.

I'm not saying that people don't want cheaper long distance travel, or better medical electronics equipment etc. But sharing cat pictures seems to be a more immediate need which people want in the next 30 minutes, 15 times a day.

This is a hypothetical situation, but imagine if there is major global diabetes pandemic in the next 10 years. You will see a major demand for glucometers, and you will see tons of innovation go around it.

Plus there are other dynamics at play here like ROI, barrier to entry etc.

<comment><USER37> The problem that's being brought up is that Capitalize focuses on serving selfish, individual, needs. Those may or may not also been good for society as a whole.

We, the people, have entered into a social contract that is enforced through government to allow us to co-exist. Given that situation, there are some things/processes/services that are good for society as a whole but don't really make sense individually. For example, vaccines are really good for society in that they reduce disease, thus freeing up resources for other individual medical needs. However, a single person wouldn't take a vaccine because it only benefits them in at least 80% of the population also takes it. Here is a situation in which a societal good is underserved in pure capitalism.

Often I see people arguing that "pure" capitalism solves all problems, but that's clearly not the case. It's a very good system, but outside influence can be needed to optimize social welfare over individual welfare.

<comment><USER9> Note, the soviet style centrally planned economy didn't work too well for them. In the absence of market indicators you are left at the judgement of a few bureaucrats.

I'm not saying capitalism is panacea, but its best of other worst options. Market indicators are not perfect, but they get close.

<comment><USER38> Ignoring for the moment that you're engaging in a false dichotomy, central planning actually worked very well for Russia in the 20th century.

Russia had fewer (if any) recessions compared to Europe and the US and faster economic growth. Now you might say that it is easy to have fast economic growth when you're playing catch up. However, plenty of third world countries demonstrate that it is _not_ easy, and Russia managed to grow faster than capitalist economies with the same starting point.

It's true that the results are not as clear for other centrally planned economies. The point is that it's not as simple as "market good, central planning bad".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Because the gap between current capacity, and required capacity is bit more than worth risking money. There are in short variables we yet not know, which will come in force when such a project is undertaken. Personally I would have taken the leap, if given the choice, but if people are not investing in Hyperloop, than it is mainly because they are playing safe.

The only reason besides that, which pokes me in the face, to not fund this is: economics for the common man. If the case of current trains not being built to full capacity (i.e we can do 400 kmph in Bullet trains, yet in developing countries, avaerage speed is 100kmph)is proof enough, the point can be taken from the concept itself. What is more convincing then the design is the "5th dimension of transport" thing. But where does that 5th dimension exists?

A living example is in Delhi at the moment. Metro just entered Phase 3, yet the stress on Delhi's transportation system has become so large, that even with record ridership, Metro is not being able to ease that pressure. The government is going for efficiency by modernising its bus fleet into BRT corridors, still it is a temporary fix. How can we solve this?

Its not the possibility that matters here only, but the individual need and economics.

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, Instagram and Snapchat and the like are on the extreme end of the scale; the reason they get funded is because:

* Development is cheap * Returns are quick

That is, anyone with a PC and a server can create a Snapchat clone; anyone with an image processing library (or knowledge to create one) can create an Instagram; getting a handful of developers together is easy, and building the next big web app will take just an idea and a few dozen K to develop - <USER3> risk. If it fails, no biggie, few K lost, some personal drama. If it doesn't fail, and is lucky it'll grow for a few years in its userbase, prove itself, and increase its value to the billions the lucky few companies did.

This is a complete opposite to the truly disruptive things like Hyperloop, which, if successful, will change the world of transportation. If it fails, however, investors will have lost billions - because the start-up costs are billions, not a few K or a garage and spare time like the silicon valley startups cost.

Risk vs reward, risk-spreading. With a billion dollar, an investor can fund a hundred startups comfortably, and only one of them has to strike it big for the investor to make a profit. With bigger and potentially more influential projects like Hyperloop, the investor will have to pour all of his investment money into one project, and if it fails - and I'd say there's a decent chance that it will - that money's gone.

And Hyperloop is, I'd say, a high-risk investment; it'll take years to develop, it'll probably have a lot of problems getting the 'pipe' up, it'll have to combat the user's fears of being locked up in a high-speed pipe, it'll have to be cost-competitive with the competition, and it has to be safe; a new transportation system like this needs just one serious accident for nobody to ever use it again.

</comment><comment><USER41> I agree and disagree. Venture capital has become somewhat more risk-averse in recent years, mainly because the costs of building software products has become so low. But there is a lot of innovation to made in the physical world, which is currently underrepresented in investment portfolios.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the hyperloop is a good fit for a VC investment. Maybe someone out there will be willing to take a huge risk with limited upside, but it does not fit VC theory, which is still a business at the end of the day. It seems like the appropriate funding channel for something like should be the government, at least in a perfect world. Otherwise, major players in the industry are the next most relevant, perhaps companies that already manage toll roads and infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER42> OK, so where are the examples of $6B projects being funded by private money before the dominance of SV? Surely you can provide some examples from before SV had "killed major innovation", no?

</comment><comment><USER43> i couldn't help but think about this article when news broke of the 3 billion dollar snapchat offer.

<comment><USER28> Really? You think that spending 6B on an absolutely untested idea with great risk is somehow comparable to a 3B acquisition of a mature startup that will immediatly bring business value to a company?

<comment><USER44> You can call me a old fuddy-duddy, but I'm just not sure that a company with zero revenue qualifies as "mature."

<comment><USER28> I've specifically said 'mature startup' to address this type of concern.

<comment><USER45> I can't say that that really addresses that concern.

<comment><USER28> Company != startup. They dont have revenues, but they have 25M users audience that will be instantly monetizable as soon as it is plugged in the FB or other company advertising system. And that makes them a perfectly fine target for acquisition, even if they don't have revenues of their own. Does this address a 'mature' company concern?

<comment><USER15> It might make it a logical target for acquisition, but it doesn't follow that it's worth ~4% of Facebook's market cap when Facebook has 100x the users (including virtually all the Snapchat userbase...) and could trivially clone Snapchat's tech.

Not to mention that Facebook's own profit figures from their more diverse and mature advertising platform suggest it would take a _very_ long time to accumulate $3bn in advertising revenues off 25m users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you think about it, it's amazing what we're valuing at billions of dollars these days. Twitter, $4 billion? That's for a lot of lines of code, and, sure, some server infrastructure, etc. that will be obsolete in the next few years. The same goes for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, almost any Silicon Valley startup we can name. Just a bunch of lines of code, not really solving any problems. But it makes money, and that's what people care about.

<comment><USER47> The value of the companies you mention doesn't come from the code. It comes from people's attention.

That said, I'm not sure I disagree with your point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I really liked this post! I sometimes feel the innovators and thinkers of this world are not getting their fair share of attention.

I also feel like companies should team up together and do crazy things share the risks as a group.

If a group of key companies team up together to make nearly impossible things they would also create a "hype" in an instant around this. It doesn't need to be the Hyperloop, it could be much much more "down to earth"

</comment><comment><USER49> The difference between SnapChat and Hyperloop is that Snapchat has people using it today, which drives its value, Hyperloop will cost billions before anyone is using it, and people might hate it. The hyper loop could easily turn into The Homer: [http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Homer](http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Homer) and who wants to spend $6 billion on inventing that?

</comment><comment><USER50> As seen from Europe, it reminds me of Russians Bonds (I think my grandfather still have some) and Eurotunnel. Didn't go too well.

</comment><comment><USER51> This might be one of the best articles I've read on HN in a long time.

One point that really hit home with me is that we need to innovate innovation. I'm willing to bet that a huge part of our stagnation is a result of our creative outlets not being diverse enough. We seem to have become limited to our screens and our virtual worlds. And it isn't by accident. We're social creatures and social media has sucked us in. And of course the internet plus the various kinds of screens (devices) used for viewing it are very effective means of communication, advertising, etc. And we love to be entertained.

So I think the key to a wider range of innovation is to somehow reveal to the masses that there are many tangible concepts just waiting to become part of our physical world, concepts that will provide the same social, commercial, and entertaining functions as those in the virtual world. Somehow our collective focus will need to shift from virtual to physical. 3D printing is probably a good step in the right direction, but I think it will need to be combined with some kind of commodified robotics to be truly useful.

<comment><USER28> Anecdotally, this might be one of the worst articles I've read on HN in a long time filled with ad hominem attacks, crude language, misplaced anger and trite memes to stir a controversy. The point is important but the presentation is very bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> On a related note, the shitstorms over Google's closing projects like Reader or changing the comment systems in YouTube completely eclipse announcements of developing self driving cars, new ways of wearable computing, new methods of distributing internet to 3rd world countries, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER53> Great post. Thanks for writing this - you have guts! Many here think the same way but too afraid to say so.

<comment><USER28> You really need that sarcasm tag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So what is the level of majority of arguments in the linked article? DH0-DH1[1]. Is this really an article worthy of attention for HN audience?

[1] As per [http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> It's almost like we need to go borrow investors from the past - investing in railroads.

I like the analysis though, sad I didn't see it in August. We need a new startup incubator called "Sleepers and Ballast" instead of "Y Combinator".

</comment><comment><USER55> T.D : Do you know what a hyperloop is?

N : A sort of train that moves in vacuum

T.D : It's just a very fast train. Now why do guys like you and me know what a hyperloop is? Is this essential to our survival? In the hunter gatherer sense of the word?

</comment><comment><USER27> It's because PG values hyper growth in the early days of a startup.

</comment><comment><USER44> Silicon Valley is about momentum investing. You or I may think that many of these companies are silly, but where the money goes, the rest of us may have to follow.

</comment><comment><USER56> Those aren't theories they are hypotheses

</comment><comment><USER57> I like the Activity Graph on the right :D

</comment><comment><USER58> Torch icon, didn't read.

</comment><comment><USER59> So if someone reputable started an anti gravity tech company, you would write the same blog about them?

The point is, most don't think that the design would even work. The specs defy many laws of physics. It is more of a concept or dream at this stage. It would be an extremely high risk investment - thus, no takers.

By comparison, Instagram had a proven and popular product. Why would you compare something so very different?</comment>


The Zebra firewall manager - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fastmail.com/2015/12/11/the-zebra-firewall-manager/ <comment><USER2> How will this deal with spoofing?

<comment><USER3> The collectors need enough smarts to detect that an IP address is behaving legitimately, and when the behavior changes sufficiently that it's no long legitimate, to stop accepting data from that traffic.

If you're talking source IP spoofing - that's only UDP, we don't offer anything other than DNS over UDP, and that's now being served by Cloudflare, so we can just ignore all UDP packets. Sure people can spoof SYN, but that's not a very powerful complexity attack.</comment></comment>


What's new in Git 2.2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.atlassian.com/blog/2014/12/git-2-2-0-released/

<comment><USER2> Good summary of important changes. Some people new to Git find the Git cli somewhat arcane or unapproachable. If that's the case starting with a rich Git client like Sourcetree or TortoiseGit is often a good idea.

[http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/](http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/) [https://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/](https://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/)</comment>


Why I Left My Big Fancy Tech Job and Wrote a Book - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/the-big-disruption/why-i-left-my-big-fancy-tech-job-and-wrote-a-book-b64c40484774 <comment><USER2> The thing this article highlights is that in order to HAVE a voice that also allows one to write a book with perceived value is that it better conform to a "sex club" mentality or else you better write under a pseudonym. And really, this is all just a coded way of expressing a dimension of the same problem-- unless you are directly supporting the "Whore of Babylon" your voice and ideas don't matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised this didn't get more upvotes. Sure, there's some blatant and repetitive self-promotion, but it could start some great threads of discussion. I guess HN has gotten so big that some important articles are falling through the cracks.</comment>