Chrome OS has stalled out - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/02/chrome-os-has-stalled-out/ <comment><USER2> I use Chrome OS daily to do my job and I think it is fantastic. IMO it is the ultimate work machine for your average knowledge worker.

At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications.

For non-engineers, the OS provides an extremely simple client to use to do their job. The OS is a _slightly_ better web browsing experience than the Mac, and since all you need to do your job is a browser, it works great. The OS presents your google drive cleanly as a local filesystem, so you can even avoid any local storage completely. The OS is security-first, and is far more resistant to malware than a Mac or Windows machine.

For engineers, you get all of the above and a well functioning linux distribution on which you can build software. Since everything we deploy is on linux, it's closer to our production environment than the mac.

The best part of the experience is how the cloud oriented nature of the OS lets me treat my laptops like cattle rather than pets. If you lose your device, just grab another one. All your stuff is up in the cloud. Strange bug? just power wash the machine and start over.

I also think that journalists or hobbyists may have a hard time appreciating the OS. Yes, it is terrible at things like video editing, games, audio editing, etc. But for a work machine in an enterprise environment, it's fantastic.

<comment><USER3> I don't think relying on a third party and especially one that is as fickle as Google to do the most basic workload is a sound idea.

I won't be surprised if Google kills Chrome OS in the near future, as they killed a lot of stuff already[0].

I don't trust Google anymore.

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

<comment><USER4> While Google hasn't been the best at supporting products (and support in general), I always find statements like this with sites like that distasteful, as they leave out a lot of context that mitigates how bad it is. Sure, Google is EOLing Hangouts, but they provide a replacement. Sure, they've turned down a lot of products (like reader), but many (possibly most of the very large number presented on that site) were beta products.

I clearly remember telling people that asked me about whether they should worry about it saying beta on some Google product I had recommended that Google always leaves stuff in beta for years and not to worry. Well, now we all know better. I'm not happy about it, but I don't feel like I can blame them for that either. They were pretty up-front about services being beta in most cases.

<comment><USER5> Here is the thing. Google has one primary source of revenue. Ad tech. If Ad tech fails, all their other sources of revenue won't be able to pay for their other services, so the fear they'll cut them is warranted.

Disclaimer I use Google services, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives.

<comment><USER2> If your other preferred client is the Mac, you have the same challenge with Apple. Their entire mac product line is only 10% of their revenue.

<comment><USER6> Do google developers get issued chromebooks these days? Either way, there's a large scale difference in the amount of money (because Apple makes more money than google in addition to 10% being 4x the 2.5% of revenue google is devoting to chromebooks). On top of that, Mac revenue is eaten into by iOS device revenue, which is a pretty close product category. Much closer than ads, at least.

<comment><USER7> Yes, they do. The default machine you get is a pixelbook, that's true of basically everyone at Google. You can request a Mac, which is what I did, but I later also got a pixelbook and found that I quite like it.

Literally the only thing keeping me from using it as my primary work machine is that it only supports one chrome browser profile per login, so I can't be logged into my work account at an OS level and my work and personal accounts at the chrome level. But I went and paid out of pocket for a pixelbook for home because I thought it was a great all around home laptop.

(Disclaimer: I work at google, but not on chromeos or hardware, this is just my personal experience )

<comment><USER8> Did they remove multi profile login?!

You used to be able to login with several accounts and switch between them similar to virtual desktops.

<comment><USER9> You can still switch between accounts on ChromeOS. I do this on my Google issued Pixelbook daily.

Once you're signed into the other account, you can switch quite easily with <CTRL> \+ ,

<comment><USER7> Sorry, to be clear, it switches all of your windows like a separate desktop. I like having both windows available simultaneously. I realize this is a nit picky complaint, and I am in the minority.

<comment><USER10> You can run the embedded Linux and then run Firefox there. Also, with multiple workspaces now supported I'm funded less reason to grab the mac (bettertouchtool being one thing). I even have vscode running full screen in another orksoace and can easily swap over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I often see price being cited as a selling point for Chromebooks, but I have never found them to be really cheap. Maybe it's a regional thing? Looking now on Amazon (.it) I can find a Pixelbook equipped with a measle i5-7Y57, 8 GB of ram and 256 GB SSD for _1999 €_. That's crazy.

For that kind of money I could get a 10th gen i7 (where applicable) 16 GB ram/512 GB SSD Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 or Surface Pro X (including type cover and pen for the Pros) with money to spare.

How is this considered cheap? It's insane

<comment><USER12> That's probably more directed towards the sub-$300 market, which has at least a handful of options. I've got my wife, kids, and parents all on these devices because they're cheap and easy to use.

I'd prefer spending $300 on something like a refurbished Thinkpad for myself, but realize that might not serve my family's desires.

<comment><USER11> Yep, I can see some Acer, Lenovo or HP options in that range, but all of them are equipped with Celeron N4xxx CPUs, 4 GB of ram and 64 GB eMMC, not exactly stellar...

I would consider a 500-600€ device with a decent screen, 8 GB and a (swappable?) disk to try ChromeOS out, I feel I'd be wasting money if I were to get a sub-300 one

<comment><USER13> So... you want a high end laptop? Those are available, even with ChromeOS installed. But they're not any cheaper. Hardware is hardware.

When people talk about price being an advantage for Chromebooks, they mean at the low end, where the OS can operate well on hardware that Windows doesn't tolerate, and where the windows license fees become a significant part of the selling price.

Try a comparison of devices around $300US, that's the sweet spot for ChromeOS.

<comment><USER14> The most demanding application on my laptop, by a wide margin, is Chrome.

The only thing close is Windows Search Indexer, which is a buggy piece of junk that spins CPU all day doing nothing

<comment><USER13> A typical windows laptop has a DRAM footprint (mostly because of the AV scanners that everything has installed) rather higher than a ChromeOS box, even with the browser running. And the storage requirements aren't even in the same ballpark: something like 40GB for a routine OEM windows install vs. 6-7G for the ChromeOS boot image (last time I checked, anyway). Add to that the fact that most of the chrome apps are optimized to store to the cloud instead of relying on local disk, and the chrome box can skimp on memory and storage (e.g. a $8 64G eMMC chip instead of a $60 256G SATA or M.2 drive) in ways that windows can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meh. Nah.

Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic bottom-up innovation/disruption story.

In terms of making use of the hardware, Android is a necessary stopgap strategy, but webassembly is coming to bring native app performance and security to the web platform.

That's not to say Google is marching from strength to strength. Their product management discipline is poor to non-existent, and from the outside there seems to be a fundamental monetization tension between ads and subscriptions, when the same human flips between being product and/or customer, particularly for the kid/ed sector.

<comment><USER16> Yup, chromebooks are huge in K12, and there really isn't any promising alternative. Even students at schools without chromebooks often buy them independently because of their low price. These things are a massive success, even if not in the way that google wants just yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The counterpoint to this argument is that there are many users who want a super-lightweight OS that is not bloated, but very high performance with long batter life. I use my Samsung Chromebook 3 for gsuite, gcloud management through the web console, linux (beta) shell based development, gcloud cloud shell, putty type chrome terminal and fairly hardcore web app testing (webgl 2.0 compute, magenta, tensorflowjs). It works phenomenally well. And I've definitely noticed a lot of Google employees using the Pixelbook as their work laptop.

Looking ahead and making predictions for ChomreOS in the 2020s. I could even see a Stadia style pipeline for more processor intensive apps. Run Creative Cloud / Maya type tools on dedicated cloud gpus. And just send the video frames to the client browser tab. I've been thinking a lot about how 5G adoption really can be leveraged to offload computation from the device and will introduce whole new classes of interactive media.

<comment><USER18> People are already doing this. Untold Studios in London are running (almost) all their workstations in AWS and the desktops are just Intel NUCs running Teradici.

It makes sense when all your assets are also stored in the cloud.

Not sure the economics are there for everyone yet, as cloud storage requirements for digital content creation can get very expensive very quickly.

<comment><USER19> I mean, people have been doing that sort of thing forever. It comes in and out of fashion every few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really wanted to buy my mom a Pixelbook (and then the Go), but it's literally sold in three countries: US, Canada, UK.

Pretty much like the Pixel phones that still ignore a few major markets after all these years. What should I feel about a company that doesn't even try to sell its hardware seriously?

Meanwhile, any 2nd tier Chinese OEM will manage to have its products sold at the electronics shop down the road.

</comment><comment><USER21> I bought a pixelbook last year as I was excited to play with the early native Linux integration. The technology that has been built is an amazing amount of work (crosvm, Wayland support, etc) but at the end of the day it's really only useful for simple use cases. This is a common theme for everything in ChromeOS.

I've given up on ChromeOS for the time being as been capable of any serious work I do. The more frustrating part is my kids have Chromebooks and as they've gotten older they've become a real detriment. They can't accomplish anything on them beyond school work. My kids are showing a lot of interest in graphic design and programming and both tasks are too hard or almost impossible on a Chromebook.

<comment><USER22> Try Codesandbox and Figma (both run in the browser) with your kids. Figma is really underrated as a general graphic design tool, the pen tool for vector shapes is top notch, and you can use blend modes for images. Google fonts are already integrated, it can be used to learn e.g. logo design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Since 2013 the main computer I used was the Acer C720. i3, 4 gig of RAM chromebook. Never had an issue with it. Runs as fast now as it did then.

It quit receiving updates in June of 2019.

Never understood the thought process behind this as supporting the machine is probably negligible given the platform.

I looked at other chromebook solutions, but unless I wanted to spend close to $1000 there was nothing close performance wise. There are ways of getting chromeos on the machines left behind, but it didn't interest me.

Decided to move on to a refurbished Windows 10 pro dell laptop. I do miss the safety I felt with the chromebook.

<comment><USER24> The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware.

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer- information-f...](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information- for-chrome-os-devices)

Support costs aren't too bad so long as you don't have to update the kernel and requal everything. But newer userspace starts to use kernel features to provide better functionality and better security (consider the massive vulnerabilities associated with Spectre and Meltdown, and obviously none of the remediations would have been in the 3.8 kernels). So you have to consider the costs of doing a requal of all of the hardware platforms using a 3.8 kernel to something newer, versus the costs of continuing to backport security fixes to older kernels, and the costs of testing the userspace components against older kernel, and providing workarounds for the lack of features in newer kernels.

A six year support lifetime is a long time; and Windows 10 has also stopped supporting older laptops on newer releases, so you will also see Microsoft not providing updates to older hardware[2][3].

[2] [https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en- us/articles/3600086427...](https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en- us/articles/360008642799-Windows-10-Support-of-older-hardware)

[3] [https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be- very-w...](https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-wary-of- windows-10-if-you-own-an-older-pc.html)

<comment><USER25> The Asus laptop I got in 2009 with Windows 7, has gone through all Windows updates, is now using the very latest Windows 10 version.

<comment><USER26> And it's great if that works. If it doesn't, you have no recourse, even if the device is only just over 2 years old (or whatever your country's mandated warranty period is).

As happened for my HP laptop whose firmware put the GPU in some high performance state, expecting the Windows driver to clock down as appropriate.

Sadly, Windows upgrades (7->8, 8->10, all the 6month updates to 10 except for the October 2019 one) are "full installs" that run in what is essentially Windows' "safe boot" mode with stock drivers, so there was no clock down.

The result was that I could only update the laptop outdoors in winter when it was freezing, otherwise the laptop powered off mid-upgrade because it ran too hot (which then leads to the upgrade being rolled back, repeat ad nauseum).

Compared to that, the 5-8 years of Chrome OS support cover a really long time (the upgrade path and new OS version are actually tested on the very model I'm running), but it's a trade-off: If you're lucky about the configuration and what newer Windows versions expect, a Windows laptop can be usable for 15 years, but there's definitely luck involved (even though I guess Microsoft is also doing some rather arcane testing on their own, but things slip through and they certainly don't provide any guarantees for what's essentially third- party hardware).

<comment><USER27> That is equal parts mortifying and impressive that you diagnosed the root cause and were able to work around it.

I thought windows update failing because an unsupported, never-installed unrelated installer for Netware was in some custom-named obscure backup directory buried 4 levels deep was impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I personally like the Chromebook, but it's relegated to fun, not work. It worked well to help me establish a boundary b/t work and home life, as I'd have to pull out my MacBook to do any actual work. I played around with Crostini Linux, but I've had it die on me twice and been forced to do a clean install of Crostini, which would be awful had I used it for anything important.

The Chromebook is also a great way to get out of supporting friends and family with technical issues. It's an affordable device and my tech support has been limited to getting it setup with the printer. (Though cloud printing is being killed later this year IIRC.)

<comment><USER29> You must be doing something wrong if reinstalling your OS causes you to lose anything important. For starters it helps making your /home directory a separate partition.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Does Crostini play nice with a separate /home ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The utility of ChromeOS for me is that it enabled the creation of cheap Linux laptops. For $300 plus a 128GB A2-rated SD card, I can boot GalliumOS from the SD card and have a nicely functional Linux development machine with all my important stuff backed up to Dropbox and/or Github. If the laptop gets stolen I don't much care; I just buy another one and reinstall and I haven't lost any data. (I don't use Google's builtin Linux because it's too limited--you cannot boot it from an SD card.)

<comment><USER31> This is why i think a OS like Chrome is designed exactly to be this sort of trap. A cloud computing trap, where we are perfectly ok with alienating our digital life/data to third-parties without understanding the depth of the problem we are getting into.

The ones who control our digital properties, can control the world (information is power, remember?). They might not, but they can, and also can aid third parties with shady intentions (see all the Facebook fiasco). By the way, we should have learned this lesson already.

Also, people often forget how groundbreaking was to have a compiler (GCC) directly embedded with the OS because you could mess with the source and compile it yourself. Its very liberating to have a platform where you can code and modify it.

So i think a future where the likes of Chrome OS took over the world, is pretty scary as we ended turning our powerful and liberating computers into a sort of "interactive TV".

As i understand it, they will try to make it very easy for us to buy into this platform utopia, the problem is, in my point of view, that in the long term this will lead to some sort of digital feudalism. Lets not forget we are "digitalizing" our lives day-by-day, til the day there are very few useful things we do in the physical world.

So in the future if Google for instance want to ban your account, this could have severe problems, as a side-effect of your digital ostracism. (access to capital, bank, employment, etc..)

<comment><USER30> I see your point with regard to ChromeOS, but my post made it clear that I was using Linux, not ChromeOS. My use of my Chromebook is not dependent on Google at all, except for the fact that Google made the hardware exist. I'm dependent on github and Dropbox but I trust both more than I trust Google, and I could easily switch them both to servers I manage.

<comment><USER31> Just to make it clear that im not blaming you, just that your post reminded me of the exact trap things like ChromeOS are.

They are platforms that put Google strategic plans first and the user in the background.

If they teach (and phones are teaching this) that is ok/normal to have everything in the cloud and not stored locally, we are doomed in the long term if we dont fight this trend.

You are a tech-savy person that can use Gallium instead, but you are a minority and the normal person who bought a Chromium OS wont understand why you got into the trouble in the first place.

If we forget and ditch the culture that came with GNU/Linux, personal computers will be akins to TV's and big tech corps will have absolute control over our lives.

Anyway, your post just reminded me about this trend. Not saying that you are directly involved in it, just to make it clear, but is a possible scary outcome if this thing get out of control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe Google had high hopes at turning Chrome OS into Android for desktop but, as the article points out, it failed miserably.

At my last job in ed tech we developed and maintained a Chrome OS app for about 3 years. Not an Android app, but a web app for Chrome OS.

I had great hopes for the platform for education use but it turned out developing for Chrome OS was a terrible mess. Docs are incomplete and cryptic, there are strange dev restrictions like not being able to use localStore, erratic behaviors of the apps, nowhere to go for help, the chrome web store dashboard was totally obsolete by today's standards, etc.

It felt very bizarre seeing Google doing all the marketing on their new flashy Chrome OS devices, Android apps, and Linux support, while at the same time looking at the docs and working on what seemed like an abandoned project.

I think ultimately Google will replace Chrome OS with Fuchsia. Maybe Fuchsia took longer than expected so they had to improvise and bring Android and Linux to keep the platform alive for a couple more years.

</comment><comment><USER33> Dumb question:

> constant crashes, an insanely slow single-core Intel Atom processor, and > questionable build quality would make it clear to anyone that it was very > much a product built for dogfooding, not as a replacement for your Windows > or Mac notebook

This use of "dogfooding" confuses me, wouldn't the chromebook being used for dogfooding mean it was meant as a replacement for your windows/mac notebook? Or if not, how does it relate to whether the chrombook was meant to replace windows/mac notebooks?

<comment><USER34> I think they mean it wasn't ready as a product to be sold to the public.

<comment><USER35> Seems like the author doesn't really know the meaning of that term (or well, is using that term not in the way you and I understand it). That word is even linked to the Wikipedia page, but it says:

> This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world > usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control,

It smells like the author wanted to use a fancier term for "beta-testing".

<comment><USER36> He also doesn't seem to know quite what "delusional" means. He uses it to describe people that don't agree with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > In 2019, a public space, restaurant, or even a shopping center without free > Wi-Fi is basically unconscionable.

The author isn't familiar with Berlin's cafes and restaurants ;)

<comment><USER38> I too have been to popular coffee shops without WiFi. You wouldn't have known just by looking. Everyone was tethering.

Lumping restaurants in there seems a bit bizarre unless he's just talking about SV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Google sent me free Chromebook(Acer 11 N7) ~2 years back, with a request that I speak to their GCP rep; I sent the rep my latest AWS bill with complete break down and asked them to mail me back with equivalent GCP services with price; I never heard back.

Well that's about GCP marketing team, as for Chromebook -

1\. The power brick broke down with single night plugged into power, that seems to be a problem with that particular model of power brick and the one Acer replaced with doesn't have any problem for ~ 2 years.

2\. This particular model is like a tough-book(kids?), I was very impressed with the quality of build for the price ($299).

3\. Underpowered Atom CPU, but that meant being fan-less. Fan-less X86 means, I use it as SBC (which it technically is) and it's hard to get a x86 SBC with this spec for this price.

as for ChromeOS,

1\. I am content with the premise of low end netbook with browser as the frontend (whether that should be Google Chrome is another discussion).

2\. I am happy with the updates, first it was vanilla chromeOS, then I received Android App support, then I received notification that my Chromebook is EOL(it was fixed later), then I received Linux support.

3\. Android apps compatibility became better but there are some fundamental issues as heavy threaded apps stall when moved out of focus (this may be due to hardware, someone with Chromebook Pixel should comment on this).

4\. Good security architecture and regular security updates.

Conclusion: As a commercial replacement for MIT Labs OLPC, Chromebook is a clear winner; as for $1500 laptop I think the OP article makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER40> It seems like to me I would be better off if chrome OS was actually part of Android. The experience of switching to a desktop could be as simple as plugging in your phone into a keyboard screen shell with a battery USB ports.

Why spend 800 bucks on your phone and laptop.

Third parties have tried to implement such systems with minimal success but I wonder what it would look like with Google backing it.

</comment><comment><USER41> The new Pixelbook Go only comes with a low resolution display, except for the most expensive model (see [1]). This is significant change for Google, since their previous Chromebooks had 4K-ish displays. This move from high end to low end reminds me of the Pixel 3a phone [2].

I loved the idea of Chromebooks, and hoped ChromeOS was a way that Linux would finally be "mainstream" on laptops. I've bought at least 10 Chromebooks since 2013, including all of the Google flagship models, since I use them as my main dev machine and at tradeshows. My next laptop is either going to be a Dell XPS 13 with Linux or (shudder) some random Windows 10 laptop.

[1] "1080p on a 13.3-inch display works out to 166 pixels per inch, a far cry from the 235 ppi on the first Pixelbook and the impressive 293 ppi on the Pixel Slate. Google does offer the Go with a 4K screen, but that option is only available if you get the top-of-the-line model, which costs an eye- popping $1,399." [https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go- revi...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-review/)

[2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I searched youtube for stress test videos about the 3a and could only find one where somebody's pixel 3a shattered after being dropped 1 foot; in comparison phones like iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S10plus have dozens of videos with high end equipment testing dropping under rigorous conditions.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h What's interesting, especially with the Pixels, is that Google used to lead with the Nexus phones, which were notable in part because they were excellent phones at a very good price. My guess would be that the difference is that at some point Google decided that instead of making good developer phones (I don't think they ever really viewed the Nexus line as targeting the general public), they wanted to make their own premium consumer line.

<comment><USER42> I never had a Nexus phone, but I had Nexus tablets. They were great. I was shocked when I went to buy a new one and all I managed to find was a piece of shit Samsung tablet. That was a pretty defining moment for me when I realized Google had substantial structural and a management issues beyond the standard public controversies. Chrome OS users should not expect a bright future, no matter how great things are at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This would correspond with the rumors that Google is quietly pulling engineering resources from Android and ChromeOS to work on Fuchsia which is supposed to replace both _and_ be the Google IoT operating system of the future. It's rather open that Pixelbooks support the current builds of Fuchsia; what's less published but not hidden if you ask the Nest engineers that the Google Home runs on Fuchsia with its apps written in Flutter. Fuchsia's browser is Chrome and has an Android compatibility layer which allows running Android apps on Fuchsia (how long they keep that in is another question).

</comment><comment><USER44> I've used Chromebooks for 8 years now. Anecdotally what I've noticed is that the sheer amount of bugs has increased dramatically after they started implementing the ability to use Android apps. Right around that time it seemed like Google went from trying to make the best browser based operating system to something else. With new updates things seem to spontaneously break and the amount of effort that went into tracking down bugs diminished.

I'm using a MBP now, instead, partly due to the quality issues and partly because Google's privacy stance has made me more uncomfortable as time goes on.

</comment><comment><USER45> I was a Google evangelist until the penny finally dropped and I saw that their business model was a disease. Chrome OS is cool, as are many of Alphabet's products past and future. But I no longer use any Google products or have a Google account, and actively take steps to prevent them having even passing access to any of my data.

I think there are good use cases for a cloud-based OS, and it's something I could be interested in using, even helping develop. But, like Android and Search, Chrome OS is just another harvester of personal information to feed Google's advertising profit machine.

</comment><comment><USER46> Access to files is the critical issue here. Look at these examples from the article:

> _Chrome OS doesn 't have a robust photo editor? Don't worry, you can > download an [Android] app! Chrome doesn't have native integration with cloud > file services like Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive? Just download the app! Chrome > doesn't have Microsoft Office? App!_

The problem is that Chrome OS is attempting to be a _desktop_ platform, using web apps and mobile apps.

Desktop OSes (Windows, macOS) are all about files. Apps are files. Your documents, photos, and videos are files. Any app can access any of your files.

On mobile, you don't normally interact with files. Apps aren't files; you launch apps directly from the app launcher, and they store data internally; when you delete an app, its data is deleted, too.

Web apps are like mobile apps: they don't have access to your files. You can't make a web app photo editor that opens a file, makes some changes, and then saves those changes to the file. Instead, you have to "upload" the file to the web app, and then you have to "download" the modified file.

Microsoft Office has a web version (Office 365), but it's like Google Docs, lacking access to your local files. Dropbox has a web app, but it just lets you download files one at a time; it's impossible to implement Dropbox-like file synchronization in a web app.

Google is aware of this problem, but you might not like their proposed "solution," to develop a cross-browser standard file access API. [https://web.dev/native-file-system/](https://web.dev/native-file-system/) Google's currently running an "origin trial," where a small number of web sites have temporary access to the feature to try it out.

I think Google's not going to ship it until they convince Apple or Mozilla to approve; it's not clear when (or if) that will happen. Here's the most recent discussion from May. [https://github.com/mozilla/standards- positions/issues/154](https://github.com/mozilla/standards- positions/issues/154)

So file access isn't technically "stalled out," but it's still going to take a long, long time.

</comment><comment><USER47> ChromeOS is also used for all docker instances on Google Cloud Platform (GCE)...so I doubt development is dead in the water.

<comment><USER48> This seems pretty crazy, can I get a source on this?

<comment><USER49> [https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized- os/](https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What Google product doesn't feel stalled? (Serious question)

</comment><comment><USER51> I really like a stalled out OS. Really give me 20 year stability. Do not change interface and add eye candy every year just to sell new stuff. Just security updates.

Really hope there is RHEL (10+ year release) type ChromeOS.

</comment><comment><USER25> Technically Chrome OS has some interesting bits, like its use of virtualization, containers, based on Rust and Go.

As general purpose OS, I never got the point of it.

Any OS other OS is able to offer browser juggling support alongside the benefits of having a proper OS, better hardware that a Web browser is capable of (does not matter how good is the GPU, Web GL 2.0 can only do so much).

And the security story is kind of meaningless when everything that matters is stored in someone else's computer, with the traffic going through Google's servers.

<comment><USER52> It's not targeting the general purpose OS market it's purpose built for specific kinds of customer use cases. Once you get past that it makes a lot of sense. Well not as in "it makes a lot of sense for you personally to go out and by" but it makes a lot of sense why it exists and sells so much.

<comment><USER25> That is the thing, it doesn't sell at all outside US School system, as the article points out.

<comment><USER52> Decently popular at SMB as well.

The point is it doesn't need to outsell Windows it just needs to have markets it targets and updates for those markets. That it doesn't have updates for markets it doesn't target is irrelevant unless they've maxed out all the markets they target (they haven't yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I don't know how I feel about ChromeOS's market position. I do know that Crostini is the best innovation in the laptop space from the last half decade.

</comment><comment><USER54> I agree that ChromeOS needs some love. Recent updates have started to make my Pixelbook freeze and self reboot (while using Chrome only), Android support seems half baked still.

That said, I regularly use it over my MacBook and still is the best form factor laptop I've ever used.

</comment><comment><USER55> I got the original Cr-48 Chromebook back in the day. That thing was phenomenal good at just-surf-the-web™. If ChromeOS was really stalled out, I could use it as something else than a paperweight.

</comment><comment><USER56> Long battery life, cheap, can write some code in Linux -> perfect travel device

</comment><comment><USER57> My daughter's school just switched from iPads to Chromebooks.

</comment><comment><USER58> Ah yes, Google. Now there is a company I can trust to build a product and not abandon it on the side of the road when they fail to put the effort in to make it successful.

</comment><comment><USER59> I see googlers in tech talks and at cafes only use MacBook Pros. If their own PC isn't good enough for them, why should anyone else fall for their marketing?

The day I buy a Chromebook is the day I read that Google only issues Chromebooks to their employees</comment>


The Hidden Cost of Cheap – UX and Internal Applications - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@GeneHughson/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-ux-and-internal-applications-733b3d4dba2#.nb0mp7qcq <comment><USER2> Incredibly high level perspective on why UX is important but lacks detail and useful information that isn't already known.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you create a small development shop business plan? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of creating a simple business plan, well actually it's more like an spreadsheet of what to expect.
How much income will we generate? how much time we will dedicate to finding project vs actual work vs training? How much will we pay employees and so on...
Did you write one for your freelancing company? Can you recommend any useful information or template?
any additional tip is welcome.
thanks! <comment><USER2> Productize your services.

Have standard website packages, or monthly retainer packages, or prepaid hour packages, or a strict control on how many hours you bill a month.

Now that you've packaged them up into units, you can compare it to your burn rate, and see how many of those units you need to sell per month.

The smaller the unit, the harder life is gonna be. My advice: Skip the hassle and go make a scalable product :)</comment>


IPhone app Prototyping with Phototapper - <AUTHOR> http://www.bytters.com

<comment><USER2> This is similar to POP, I like POP so I was intrigued and installed Phototapper on my iPhone and iPad.

The feature that stands out is the ability to draw! You can take a photo or just basically draw the whole prototype, it's a fantastic feature on my iPad! Another good feature is the feedback from the website and app demo, I like it!

The prototyping apps space is getting intense now, that's always better for users.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We are working on improving the web interface to show comment history. Yes, it was very similar to many prototyping apps like POP that we tried. We have added those features we found missing in the existing apps. The feedback on the web found to be very useful for many of our users.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great! Can be handy for us. I was always looking for some feedback / dashboard options when presenting prototypes.

Thanks for posting

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Mike!! We just launched the app. We are planning to support Android and custom screensize.

Please give us some feedback if you happen to download it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nicely developed. but its a bit slow to sync the projects. very similar to POP. feedback is useful though. could save a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great app! I really like drawing feature on iPad and sending feedback. Will definitely use it for my next prototype.

</comment><comment><USER6> Warning: autoplays sound via Youtube iframe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Rachel, Thanks for noticing. We just fixed it. no more autoplay</comment></comment>


dear; (char)lotte-- - <AUTHOR> http://www0.us.ioccc.org/1990/westley.c

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www0.us.ioccc.org/1990/westley.hint>:

        Some ANSI compilers will not accept '1s' as a short integer - <USER2>
        these compilers replace the '1s' with '1'.

<comment><USER3> Hm, I'm getting this:

        sistertrain-lm :~
        [22:15:45 isaacs] $ gcc westley.c
        westley.c:31:7: error: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
        westley.c:93:17: error: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
        westley.c:99:8: error: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
        westley.c: In function 'main':
        westley.c:107: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'exit'

After replacing the 1s with 1, I'm seeing this instead:

        sistertrain-lm :~
        [22:17:12 isaacs] $ gcc -o westley westley.c
        westley.c: In function 'main':
        westley.c:107: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'exit'

        sistertrain-lm :~
        [22:17:16 isaacs] $ ./westley
        Bus error

_Edit_ Oohh, you have to do ./westley <number>. That's clever. :)

<comment><USER4> Sample output:

      $ ./westley 5
      ./westley
      loves me
      ./westley
      loves me, not
      ./westley
      loves me
      ./westley
      loves me, not
      ./westley
      loves me

<comment><USER5> _Damn, yo._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "warning: eroticism unused in function main".

beautiful :)</comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on pairing between Developers and Designers UX/UI - <AUTHOR> Background: I work at typical shop with business team giving requirements and IT building web apps for them, and the end customers. There are few UX+UI folks (designers), but the developer to designer ratio is approx 50:1. The scope of designer's responsibility starts with ux research and ends at designing in sketch & invision. Some time ago we invested in making UI consistent across web apps and created our guidelines (styleguide + some more) mostly based on Brad Frost Atomic UI Design [0], and material ui components. It keeps evolving as new patterns emerge and we are trying to cover both static UI components and their behaviors, till bigger abstractions like  page templates (Work in progress)
Question: What should be the engagement model for designers in such situation? Should they pair like other developers (then we need to hire more), or should they work like architects, who invest more time with developers in the beginning, but as system patterns get settled, developers work on their own.
What do you all see in your organizations?
[0]: https://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-2/ <comment><USER2> Creating a style guide and UI components is definitely a solid foundation! I also highly recommend the Design Systems Handbook ([https://www.designbetter.co/design-systems- handbook](https://www.designbetter.co/design-systems-handbook)).

The engagement model should be a bit of both:

\- Designers who maintain the design system are like the architects, and advocate for other developers to use the system patterns. They should also partner with developers to ensure that the UI components are opinionated.

\- You still need to consider your web app's overall UX flows though, so designers are still needed to mock up new features for the developers to implement. Even with a robust design system, there are many ways to easily create unintuitive or messy designs. A designer should be assigned to each team and be in charge of mocking up the team's work and ensuring that the team is properly using the design system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the handbook link.

For your second point (on UX flows), what stage in product iterations do you think those decisions should be made?

I feel those decision belong more to product management and designers, and after they are finalized, designers need to communicate them properly e.g. via design reviews of new artifacts with developers before start of development, and/or document screen flows properly.

In either case, to my original question, the interaction is not really "pairing" with developers.

Agree? Disagree?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know this is not about the subject but there is no subject title for what i want to ask. Nut how do i get of the developer remote control of my android? My android is remotely controlled has been for 18 months. Who or how so i get out of this . I believe it is developers. Please help. I cant use any email adsy as they keep changing passwords. I cant access anything they dont want me to.. ja5s github got anything yo do withthis. Sue. firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Programmer's Time part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@danielshir/programmers-time-part-1-7394a75878f2 <comment><USER2> Thanks for the post! What was ur experience with dev setups in various companies that you worked with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure :)

It really varied, depended a lot on the culture of the company itself. Some shops do anything their devs want while others simply ignore them and do whatever some exec decided to do.

The that interested me most was finding the reason why. Sometimes it was ridiculously silly.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know of startups in Pittsburgh? - <AUTHOR>

The lady friend and I are contemplating moving out to Pittsburgh - she has a job offer in the pipe that would be very difficult to turn down. I'm a developer (primarily web) with both front end and back experience. Java, PHP, and JavaScript are my strongest languages, but I have experience with Python and Ruby as well. I'd love to work in Scala or Clojure if the spin-up time could be tolerated.<p>Anyone know of startups/good tech companies in Pitt? I'm not familiar with the startup scene, and monster and dice tend not to cut it for smaller outfits. <comment><USER2> Seems to have a small set of startups. Google has an office there. CMU is world class in robotics and CS.

<http://www.quora.com/Startups-in-Pittsburgh>

<http://startuppittsburgh.com/archives/>

A startup incubator: <http://www.alphalab.org/>

There's even a Facebook page. :-)

<http://www.facebook.com/StartupPGH>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://pghcareerconnector.com/>

Pittsburgh technology council "career connector" is a good place to put your resume. I had a couple of high-quality interviews after doing just that.

It is not silicon valley, but there are lots of smart people and many different kinds of technology companies of all sizes. The city itself is nicely compact and there are lots of opportunities for learning, recreation and entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in motion control there seem to be a lot of companies in Pittsburgh in that field. Probably the CMU influence as another poster pointed out. I have done business with Aerotech before and they seemed to be a good company. At least their field tech seemed to speak highly of it.

</comment><comment><USER5> IMO the only top-tier (i.e. billion dollar+ exit potential) web startup in Pittsburgh is The Resumator.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I buy an external display? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN. Because I move around a lot I have always been working on my retina Macbook without using an external display. In 2 weeks I'll be visiting my family for a few months and I'll be constantly working from home, so I thought it may be worth investing into an external display. I'll be there for 3-4 months and I won't be able to take it with me afterwards so I don't want to spend too much - less than $1k and ideally less than $500.
1. Should I buy one of those 4K monitors? Are they worth it for development? Any experiences?
2. Should I buy a "standard" 1080p monitor? Should I buy two of those instead of a 4K?
3. Should I save the money and just keep working on my laptop like I've been all along?
Any experiences are appreciated. <comment><USER2> Its definitely a very personal decision. Depends mostly on what your desktop real estate needs are.

When traveling, air display (or similar for android) is amazing. I can always have an extra display when i need it for things like slack/email while my main display is kept uncluttered for work.

I have worked with USB powered DisplayLink Monitors and they are fantastic as well. Much larger than an ipad, and dont need to worry about charging it. I stopped using these b/c with destinations i can borrow spare monitor or hook up to a hotel TV via HDMI.

Have you considered just buying one or two inexpensive ($150) 24" samsung or similar monitors? If you buy one on sale, you can generally sell them on craiglist in 3-6 months for close to what you paid for it.

Here is an example: When I sign up for a booth at a conference, I order some inexpensive monitors and a 50+" LCD tv from amazon and have them shipped to the hotel. This ends up being considerably cheaper than renting AV equipment. Immediately after I arrive, I begin unboxing and photographing them to list on Craigslist with full disclosure of what we intend to use them for and when the person needs to come and pick them up with cash in hand for 10 to 15% less than what we paid for the item. By that evening all of them are accounted for without me worrying about running around town.

Unless you are producing 4k content, dont waste your money on 4k, or fancy monitors if this is a temporary solution. You are just wasting your $$.

Lastly, don't hesitate to ask on CL to borrow a monitor while you are in town. There are nice/honest people out there who may have one sitting around.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends.

At work I use two but really the 2nd one just ends up becoming a spotify or mail window.

If you are using an IDE for development (if you are even a developer) then you might want two but me using Sublime at home.. I'm totally fine with just the built-in display.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm a developer but I typically don't use an IDE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are a few things you can do to make this a bit easier:

1\. Total spaces is amazing. If you primarily develop in one screen, you can set it up so distinct spaces are left/right/up/down. Everything I want is one screen away from where I spend most of my time, and my fingers almost never leave the KB.

2\. If you own a tablet, then you already have an option that you can take with you. I have used air display on an iPad myself and it works well, but the android reviews are awful.

3\. Apple TV. Yes you can use it as connection to a 2nd monitor, over wifi so your not TIED to the tv.

</comment><comment><USER5> you can use an hdmi monitor won't have to spend too much</comment>


"Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/85atho/pinterest_needs_to_be_removed_from_google_imo/ <comment><USER3> I don't see why Pinterest does this to themselves. My main exposure to them is through Google image search and links to their site.

So my first several experiences were like this. It left me with a terrible first impression. It makes me wonder if the whole site plays games and tries to waste my time.

I usually don't sign up for an account the first few times I encounter a site, so in my mind it's a pretty critical time to make a good impression. Instead they annoyed me so much I've practically decided never to create an account.

<comment><USER4> Agreed on this. What's surprising to meis their success despite the logged in experience not being better at all.

We're getting married, so my fiancée is (obviously) using pinterest for everything - her dress, themes, you name it. And the wedding planner we work with uses Pinterest too, we (try) to share it with them so they get an idea.

Even such a simple feature as sharing a board is a nightmare and wastes 5-10 minutes in every calls we have so the planner can finally find the board. Or a crucial feature as "pinning" is even bad and obstructive. Be it with the chrome addon or whatever other system.

Really don't see how they got so popular and really wonder why no other competitor is entering the market and crushing them.

<comment><USER5> My 2 cents : they are popular because they are pretty much the only ones in that pretty specific space.

It does not explain why no other company has tried to copycat them though.

<comment><USER6> Shout out to the guy that runs pinboard. He posts here sometimes (regularly? Rarely? Often?), and goes into his experience running a site like that by himself.

<comment><USER7> `idlewords, but that's that got to do with Pinterest?

<comment><USER6> The comment I replied to noted "they are popular because they are pretty much the only ones in that pretty specific space" while referring to Pinterest. Pinboard is a competitor, is it not? Not at the same scale, of course, but it is an alternative, a paid on at that, and is successful.

<comment><USER7> I guess I don't think of them as competitors. They're both social bookmarking sites but the interface and the way people use them seem very different.

<comment><USER8> Yup. Pinterest is less about saving the URLs/pages, than about curating a selection of pictures and visually displaying them in a fashion-magazine looking manner. Pinboard doesn't do that last I checked.

<comment><USER6> Actually, plenty of people use Pinterest as a way to save curated lists of URLs/pages. My daughters use Pinterest to make Christmas lists. my wife has used it to save interesting looking recipes. Sometimes the display is core, sometimes it's a nicety that makes it easier to browse.

I would hazard that the number of people looking to save bookmarks online easily is a couple orders of magnitude more than those looking for fashion magazine layout, _at least_.

Beyond that, it's pretty easy to slice up aspects of two companies so they are or are not competitors. I think Pinterest and Pinboard fairly clearly are (and since Pinterest is often mentioned along with Pinboard, I assume others think so as well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to insert themselves between the site users visited intentionally to find what they were looking for (Google), and the site that actually provided what they were looking for.

They've essentially become a large MITM attack on Google Image results.

Edit: just tried a few arbitrary search strings on Google Images, it seems improved compared to the past few weeks/months, somewhat.

For some searches, Pinterest results didn't appear at all. For "esp8266 enclosure", only 1 out of 15 on the "front page" points to Pinterest, but the original image is still from Tindie, not Pinterest. The person who supposedly pinned that image describes themselves as "Creative Digital Marketing, Web designer, WebDev, crazy SEO".

Ok, maybe a real pin from a real person, _maybe_.

Then I decided to see what happens with a handful of more "NSFW" search terms. The number of Pinterest results varied but significantly increased overall.

For some terms, in the 3 rows of images visible without scrolling, there were 19 images, and 11 of them (57%) pointed to Pinterest. None of them were images originally posted on Pinterest, they all have a hover link to the original site.

However, even though Pinterest is providing a link to the original site on top of the image, clicking it doesn't always take you there.

A good bit of the time, Pinterest has chosen to redirect you to a "blocked site" page instead, and only _after_ they have already displayed an image from a site that they deemed "inappropriate". And then shortly afterward a giant popup prompting the user to login or create an account filled the screen.

[1] (safe for work) [https://i.imgur.com/XuOvwvi.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XuOvwvi.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Search for things like "Acorn Tattoo", and similar terms and you find pinterest spam is all there is in the google image search results.

Their behavior is eerily reminiscent of expertsexchange, back in the day. They had a similar high ranking for lots of things, but the result-pages were all horrid and non-useful to actual visitors.

Happily stackexchange surpassed expertsexchange, and I hope that something comes to kick pinterest from its niche too - one of only two sites I wish to fail (the other being linkedin, for similar evil reasons).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It should, but this also illustrates a problem with Google Search that they'll need to grapple with in the future. Namely, that while they should treat all sites equally, in practicality there's not really much incentive to on their part.

Think about it. Let's say Google does remove Pinterest altogether, banning the site as a punishment for 'gaming' the system.

What then? The people that do search for Pinterest will find it missing, and likely assume Google screwed up/their search engine is broken. They won't know Google banned the site or what for, they'll just think 'Pinterest should be coming up, it isn't, so Google is broken'.

And I suspect that underpins a lot of instances where Google gives larger more popular sites and services a slap on the wrist for using black hat SEO. Google knows that if they really did treat them 'equally', then the average Joe would think Google's search engine was a broken mess because it doesn't bring up what they expect it to.

However, on the flip side by not banning them or punishing them, you get stuff like this where it seems like large sites are allowed to break rules with impunity and smaller ones are hit with the banhammer for a single offence. It's an interesting conundrum.

<comment><USER12> Which is why they should have done it before Pinterest got so big in the first place.

And honestly I don't think any significant amount of people search Google images wanting Pinterest results. People want images, they don't care where they're from. AFAIK there is almost no OC on Pinterest anyway.

<comment><USER13> >AFAIK there is almost no OC on Pinterest anyway.

And this is the key point. By removing Pinterest from the search results the user doesn't lose almost anything.

<comment><USER14> This brings up a great point. Why does Google not just extract whatever information Pinterest is providing and provide that directly in Google Images as SERP? If none of the content in Pinterest is original, what value are they providing the user?

Pinterest is the "experts-exchange.com" of digital imagery, except EE at least had (gated) original content.

<comment><USER15> > what value are they providing the user?

Curation. Pinterest is brilliant for some users and some uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While they're at it please remove Yelp. The page that comes up on mobile does not appear to be the one Google indexes. It only shows the first sentence of a few reviews. Clicking Read More or More Reviews bounces you straight to the Google Play Store to install the Yelp app.

<comment><USER17> If they did this, they would get slammed with lawsuits considering their own rating system competes with Yelp.

<comment><USER18> I suspect if Yelp clearly runs afoul of Google's policies (and "don't compete with Google" is not one of those policies) and the page rank demotions are explicitly documented to be because of chronic violations of such policies, then such lawsuits would be uphill battles at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While they are at it please remove LinkedIn. You can't actually view anything on any page without logging in. Why is it listed at all? Seems pretty deceptive to me.

<comment><USER20> Oh and w3schools.com needs to go below MDN because it's less informative.

Even today I wanted to read about transform-origin and landed on w3schools [0], where MDN article [1] is clearly superior.

[0] [https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_transform- origin.as...](https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_transform-origin.asp)

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/transform-o...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/transform-origin)

<comment><USER21> I know it's not a popular opinion, but I actually like W3schools. Most of their infamous errors are gone and they are usually more "to the point" than Mozilla docs, which are a sometimes too prolific and not as clear.

<comment><USER22> It's "to the point" in the sense of being a more concise basic introduction. But MDN hits the right balance of being comprehensive yet accessible in a way nothing else does.

Plus W3Schools' very name is an SEO hack, so their Google rank is built upon fundamental dishonesty.

<comment><USER23> How is "w3schools" an SEO hack more than any other name?

<comment><USER24> Because it implies an association with the W3C

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In days of old it was pretty easy to ban a site from your Google search results. It looks like they have removed that function.

I wonder why? I know I liked having certain low value (to me) sites not clutter up my results.

A little article about the feature, sorry it is going to try to throw an interrupting DIV at you– [https://searchengineland.com/google-block-sites- feature-1464...](https://searchengineland.com/google-block-sites- feature-146409)

<comment><USER26> It's in the article you linked to, but I suppose Google expects everyone to use their Personal Blocklist Chrome extension now: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by- goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef?hl=en)

<comment><USER27> Ah, so they removed it to peddle their Chrome browser.

<comment><USER28> This kind of extension is available for every browser.

<comment><USER29> They are usually broken because Google often pushes shady obfuscated updates.

IIRC the OFFICIAL "Personal Blocklist" was broken for a long time due to this.

AFAIK there's still no way to block entire TLDs.

So basically Google doesn't give a shit about you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I used to use Pinterest regularly. It was a good way to capture ideas and share them with others. Now I cringe whenever I accidentally click on a Pinterest link. The product is dead to me, there is zero chance I'd ever willingly install or open the app.

It's strange to see what was originally a useful tool turn into well-funded SEO spam.

</comment><comment><USER31> A complicating factor in all of this is the unfolding anti-trust cases against Google and other large digital platforms (see: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case- against...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against- google.html)). Choices that Google might have once made to improve search results for users are now under extra regulatory scrutiny. I imagine Google executives would be very careful about making any moves that could be cast as freezing out competition, even if that competition is abusing Google's platform.

</comment><comment><USER32> The most infuriating case is the reverse-image search. When I use reverse search for an image I'm trying to find a source or a complete version or context for an image flying about on social media.

And what I get is often a solid wall of Pinterest hits providing zero info.

<comment><USER33> >The most infuriating case is the reverse-image search.

Exactly, that is also in my experience when it is the most frustrating.

On "normal" searches (let's say searching for an electronic device of some kind, hoping to find the manufacturer/support/specs) what I find increasingly disturbing is the number of links for Amazon offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I always thought that presenting different content for Google Search Bot and users is bannable offence. Not so much for big businesses, it seems.

<comment><USER35> That's correct, it is for normal sites. At a minimum it will get you a dramatic downranking that will practically remove all of your content from Google. LinkedIn and Quora are both protected from those rules for example, as with Pinterest. It's Silicon Valley back scratching.

It's also a _very_ clear abuse of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, in my opinion. As anti-trust moves in on Google in the coming years, this should be held up as one of many examples of persistent market abuse and consumer harm (anti- competitive behavior, using the monopoly to restrict consumer choice).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I search for a lot of DIY stuff and frequently the image search results are on pinterest. Often the underlying link is shown as pinterest and not the original link (presumably because someone saved it from pinterest instead?) and I can't figure out the fucking original site.

Pinterest in search results is awful garbage, it seems.

</comment><comment><USER37> To me the simplest solution would be to add 'Stop showing domain' in the drop down arrow under where they currently have 'Cached' in search results. It would be useful to users and also help Google understand when a site is annoying a bunch of people.

...Or is this an opportunity for an extension someone wants ot build where you can select sites/domains and it auto injects somnething like -site:pintrest.com into all searches.

<comment><USER38> There is Google's own "Personal blocklist" extension that does exactly that

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by- goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef)

<comment><USER39> It doesn't actually.

The problem with Pinterest is in image results - the extension does nothing for them.

Second, the extension no longer works properly as it hasn't been updated in years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> LinkedIn requires logging in because the Supreme Court rules they couldn't really stop us from scraping public profiles. Forcing us to login makes it easier for them to control who has access to what content.

<comment><USER41> IAAL. There's been no Supreme Court ruling on the matter, only a district court decision ruling that the CFAA can't be used to charge scrapers with a crime. And that case is currently being appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn, case no. 17-16783).

<comment><USER40> (thumbsup). But that's my overall take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Isn't this the best practice for, like, everyone?

Name one social network that lets you view its content without a significant reg wall being displayed.

You can't see a single tweet without logging into twitter.

Browsing Facebook? Good luck seeing past that login box that dominates half the browser screen.

Want information about a restaurant on Yelp besides its address? Better login.

Not sure why Pinterest is being singled out here.

</comment><comment><USER43> Adding -site:pinterest.* to the search works too.

</comment><comment><USER44> I agree that it's quite annoying, but you can already remove it yourself from the search results by adding "-site:pinterest.com" in the query.

<comment><USER45> I don't want to do that each time, plus pininterset.in or .br will takes it's place.

<comment><USER46> Do `-site:pinterest.*` to block all domains.

But I agree, I also don't want to have to do that every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> A few weeks ago I shared something very similar from r/Showerthoughts [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220638)

<comment><USER48> That's a good exchange between user 'jquery' from Pinterest, assuming they're who they say they are, and user 'xg15'. Nice work raising the issue of nag screen and non-dismissable modal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > "I'm searching for a specific piece of technical hardware "

What specific piece of technical hardware shows up anywhere near the first page of results in Google that's from pintrest? I can't think of a single time I've seen pintrest in the search results and I search for various technical things all the time? Just curious since this surprises me. I thought pintrest was non technical stuff usually.

<comment><USER50> I'm a hobbyist woodworker.

I was recently searching for an unusual wood-joint, and I had to give up because the google search results were absolutely polluted with pinterest.

<comment><USER51> Did you try using search operators?

unusual wood joint -pinterest.com

\- searches google for "unusual wood joint" minus any results from pinterest.com

<comment><USER52> Try `-site:pinterest.com` to remove any results from the website, rather than any results that contain the text "pinterest.com". A minor distinction, but one that could change your results slightly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I say don't get rid of it but give me the option to remove it from my search. There's a bunch of sites I would rather not see in my search all the time. Yes, I know I can do a custom search but I'd be happy to have a "not see x domain in my search" option. If I remember right there were other search engines in the past that had the option.

Come on Google give me the option.

<comment><USER54> From the Reddit comments:

This extension can block domains from Google search and it's made by Google. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by- goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef?hl=en)

<comment><USER55> Unfortunately it doesn't work on image searches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Some people in this thread are comparing the situation to that of news site paywalls and noting the recent change in google image search. I think there is something to the comparison and it highlights the fundamentally different opinions about the purpose of a search engine:

Users want a search engine to find information they are looking for.

Businesses and sites want a search engine to advertise which information they _could_ provide - but _not_ lead directly to the pieces of information in question.

I think it's worth to make this divide visible and start a discussion which kind of search engine we'd like to have.

</comment><comment><USER57> There were some ways to block Pinterest continuous pestering for subscription, but it got annoying and rather than supporting a model I consider unfair to the users I removed them from my surfing list.

It should also be noted that most problems I read on the commentary here would be easily solved if Google re-enabled the discussion filter they conveniently removed years ago to prevent users to filter out commercial sites from their queries. That move was pure evil and thanks to it searching has become harder than before.

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/Psb...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/Psb6OmlLJTg)

[https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discussion-search- dead-1...](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discussion-search- dead-18854.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> Here's what I use to remove bad results:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by- goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef?hl=en)

<comment><USER55> Unfortunately it doesn't work on image searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Just use -site:pinterest.com

Problem solved

</comment><comment><USER60> Googlers with the power to change things; if you're reading this you will make many people happy and return utility to google searches that currently end up with captive images and no context.

</comment><comment><USER61> There's a problem bigger than Pinterest here: images AND any content that is not where Google expects them or can link to. The "infinite scrolling" fad contributes to this as there is no longer a page to link to. Google and Bing should penalize sites for making it difficult to link to specific images and content.

For example, they can create a "2 page down" rule. If it takes more than two presses of the Page Down button (or equivalent per mouse/finger) to see indexed content, then penalize their rank score.

</comment><comment><USER62> what i'll never understand is "why a wall?"

why not just use a non-blocking banner at the bottom or top of the page? the only thing a wall does is piss people off since you are blocking the content that they came to see and it results in backlash like this? besides... isn't the whole pinterest model about getting exposure for the images that people post and getting people to sign up? i think that who ever is in charge needs to rethink what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER63> Just A Bookmarklet that removes fixed elements like annoying signup overlays:

javascript:(function()%7B(function () %7Bvar i%2C elements %3D document.querySelectorAll('body *')%3Bfor (i %3D 0%3B i < elements.length%3B i%2B%2B) %7Bif (getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position %3D%3D%3D 'fixed') %7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

</comment><comment><USER64> I have an account on Pinterest because I like the service but having to sign- in for the simplest of things surely bugs me. Sometimes I just want to see one image and I end up having to navigate a bunch of sign-in pages just to see something. Recently I've found myself skipping Pinterest pages just because of the hoop jumping that signing-in creates.

</comment><comment><USER65> Meanwhile perhaps the Personal Blocklist by Google ads-on for Chrome can help?

Not sure if it works on image search also.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by- goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef)

<comment><USER33> Whether it works or not, if you think a bit about it, you need to use a google product (chrome) to correct a dis-service that google is making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Along with istockphoto and the majority of stock photo sites for deceptively using the word "free".

</comment><comment><USER67> I have an filter to hide pinterest from my image search results. All the white space, it's fantastic.

<comment><USER68> But google offers the option to put a minus signal before the name of the site you do not want receive results from. Is a filter better than this?

search: concrete+houses -pinterest

<comment><USER67> My filter is part of the adblocker and kicks in every single time. That's way better, no need to remember adding it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Been saying this myself for a while now and reporting Pintrest links when I can be bothered. Complete abuse of the system to use it as the top of their funnel and as usual people who advocate the service don't even realise it's doing this awful behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER70> Quora too, please.

<comment><USER71> What's the issue with Quora?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The way to exclude Pinterest from your search results, directly from the search box, is `-site:pinterest. _`. It excludes_ all* Pinterest domains, but not other pages that mention it.

But I agree Pinterest should be completely removed by default.

</comment><comment><USER72> Is there a Firefox extension that can remove Pinterest links from Google search results?

It really is infuriating when I click them and get a signin page over a bunch of images that seem to have no relation to what I searched for.

</comment><comment><USER73> as a workaround, if you get very polluted results on a particular Google search, you can add the search term "-site:pinterest.com" without quotation marks to your query, thereby narrowly excluding it.

</comment><comment><USER74> Same could/should be said about Lyst when it comes to fashion.

</comment><comment><USER75> Another way to look at it is that you need Pinterest results in google image search in order to help finding content on Pinterest that infringes your copyright.

</comment><comment><USER76> How many users does pinterest have? Is it popular and still growing? Why are they not going public yet?

I have never knowingly gone to Pinterest and so don't know much about it.

</comment><comment> racer-v When I get a Pinterest login popup, I just click the button at the bottom that says "Not now". Then I can browse the images.

</comment><comment><USER77> It may be unrelated but what I find annoying is how pinch to zoom is so broken for Google image search using Safari on an iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER78> So I'm probably not the only one who adds "-pinterest" to my searches. Never signing up for pinterest.

</comment><comment><USER79> /offtopic

I for one really dig Pinterest for my artsy hobbies. It's like a internet- curated image search with some quality assurance.

Love it.

</comment><comment><USER80> All my google images searches now include "-pinterest". This has only recently been necessary. Why?

<comment><USER70> Perhaps you need this?

[https://openuserjs.org/scripts/laidbacktempo/Google_View_Ima...](https://openuserjs.org/scripts/laidbacktempo/Google_View_Image)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Monopoly and complacent governements

</comment><comment><USER82> And the worst part is, I don't even understand WTF Pinterest is.

</comment><comment><USER83> [what I want to search] -site:pinterest.com

</comment><comment><USER84> I hate this business model of using your audience to steal other sites content. Why doesn't Google link directly to the source of the content instead of Pinterest anyway? Maybe they don't care; they did invent AMP, which has some parallels with the way Pinterest works.

Anyway, when I started using DuckDuckGo on my phone to get away from AMP - <USER2> noticed that whenever I search for recipes on DuckDuckGo - they generally link to a site called Yummly which is even worse than Pinterest. Please complain to DDG about this if you care!

And speaking of searching on my phone, Apple won't even let me change the search engine string to use "encrypted.google.com" which would have gotten me Google results without the awful AMP links.

My point in rambling on about all these different topics is that none of these asshole corporations seem to want to let me have control over anything. I don't want to live like this. Generally, when I get annoyed, I just stop playing their game. At this point I have stopped watching TV and I have left Facebook, Twitter and Reddit and _I hope that you do too_.

<comment><USER85> I agree with you. You have to log in to every single website for the 'personalization sake'. I hate personalization and the login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Someone gave an example of searching for "IBM Leapfrog" and getting numerous Pinterest results.

I tried that search and only got one Pinterest result in the top 10.

I had no problem getting the text and images using a text-only browser. Could Javascript be the enabler for this Pinterest/Google annoyance?

Here is a quick little script to dump all the text from a Pinterest page; note how much is devoted to SEO and ads. .jpg URLs are wrapped in anchor tags for convenience.

        curl https://www.pinterest.com/pin/509469776569152019/ \
        |exec tr '<' '\12' \
        |exec sed 's/, \"/\
        \"/g;s/{/\
        /g;s/}/\
        /g;s/\[/\
        /g;s/\]/\
        /g;/\":/!d' \
        |exec sed '/ \"/!d;2s/^/<pre>/;
        /\.jpg\"/{s/\"/<\/pre><a href=\"/3;
        s/\"/\" style=margin:40px >viewjpg<\/a><pre>/4;};
        $s/$/<\/pre>/' > 1.htm ;

        firefox file:///1.htm ;

With respect to LinkedIn, here is an amusing experiment to test the theory that your time means nothing to some web developers: Try signing up for a temporary account with a 10-minute email address from 10minutemail.com. LinkedIn will not inform you that this is an unacceptable email address. LinkedIn will proceed to show you Google ReCaptchas for at least 10 minutes, and perhaps longer.

<comment><USER87> Some throw away email sites accept incoming email on any domain, so if you have a spare one you can just point your MX record to the site and use that as a throwaway email. I believe most sites don't do DNS lookups when checking for scrap email addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I haven't had any of these problems while using DuckDuckGo.com

<comment><USER89> Yeah, I've been sporadically trying them out for many many years and never lasted a week, until last year. I use DDG exclusively since half a year now and rarely even feel compelled to use !g google redirect. Congrats @yegg and the team!

<comment><USER90> I tried the same but I still find myself using !g all the time when I really want to find something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Have to agree. Pinterest is a cancer to the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER92> It's just not good for the world that a single company controls a basic fundamental function of the internet. It needs fixing.

Google Search needs to be replaced by an open source decentralized system. And then users themselves can control which sites do well and which don't.

</comment><comment><USER93> I don't see the problem here. The most popular sites are showing up in search results. Pinterest is a popular site. It seems like that's the way search engines are supposed to work.

If you don't like the fact that Pinterest is a popular site, fair enough -- but that's a personal opinion, and it's not a good enough reason for Google or any other search engine to suppress Pinterest images in search results.

<comment><USER94> May I ask if you're affiliated with Pinterest in any way? I'm reading your responses and while I have a very open mind, I feel like you're really handwaving the obvious (to me and many others) problems Pinterest causes and defending them very strongly. This of course doesn't mean you're affiliated, I'm just curious.

I am also good friends with one of the original Pinterest engs and that person defends it in the same, almost irrational, way, but I probably would too if my stock value depended on Pinterest being ingrained into Google search results.

<comment><USER93> I have no affiliation with them. I don't like Pinterest more than anyone else here. I just don't see how Google is doing anything wrong. By the way, I'm not affiliated with Google either. I shouldn't have to say that.</comment></comment></comment>


A Restaurant with No Leftovers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/business/zero-waste-restaurants.html <comment><USER3> A lower climate impact is almost like a luxury item. Sure, a fancy expensive restaurant can afford to do this, and the best part for them is that the whole thing can be sold as part of the dining experience.

That's not exactly a solution to the dives and street food joints that couldn't operate without some form of disposable containers or cutlery. And more importantly, that's not a solution to the _customers_ of those dives that can't afford anything more expensive.

On the other hand, I imagine that a portion of waste reduction can simply be a change in habits and doesn't necessarily cost anything.

I was once trying to explain this sort of idea to a climate change denying acquaintance. I said, forget the environment or the turtles, even if you don't believe this is harming our environment, why are we using these devices designed to be immediately thrown away? Why do you need a straw with your water/soda but not with your beer? Where does that habit come from?

<comment><USER4> > why are we using these devices designed to be immediately thrown away?

I mean, the answer is pretty easy: people have a strong preference for options that help reduce their cognitive load.

People prefer restaurants that provide take out containers rather than require they bring Tupperware.

People prefer grocery stores that provide bags rather than require they bring their own.

This isn't true of everyone - conscientiousness is normally distributed - <USER2> it is true for most people most of the time.

<comment><USER5> At the risk of... whatever:

Disposable items (properly disposed of, ie landfilled) can be, and often are, _more_ environmentally friendly than reusable items. Especially if you look at actual real life use, as opposed to projected or design use.

Look at a UK LCA of shopping bags:

A cotton tote needs to be reused ~173 times _without being washed_ to break even with the efficiency of a single use HDPE bag. (Edit: other alternatives, like LDPE, paper or woven plastic, are also listed as low as multiplier of 2x vs HDPE. I didn't intend to mislead.)

If you're not doing a whole load of dishes, it can be more efficient to use plastic or paper plates for a meal, and trash them. The cost of just washing something can be relatively and unreasonably high, environmentally speaking.

The green movement has been over reliant on emotional programming (reuse = always good, plastic = always bad, etc) and needs to invest more in actual education. Landfills have gotten an especially unearned negative connotation.

Hopefully the new generation of college graduates are getting proper training in conducting proper Life Cycle Analysis'.

Not saying reuse is always bad or that we shouldn't be analysing these things, just that they need analysis, and not a collective gut reaction.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan- e-e.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Banning single use plastic bags is more about reducing litter and water contamination than about energy efficiency. Lightweight plastic bags are particularly bad because the wind blows them everywhere and they often end up in oceans or rivers. This causes serious harm to aquatic environments.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and that's fine, but it's also somewhat a different problem. One that is better solved with a deposit scheme, redesign, or some other method than tax and ban. (Edit: or the obvious- using biodegradable additives in HDPE at a marginal cost.)

Make them twice as thick. Melt a weight into the seam of each one to prevent flying and floating. You'd still be a magnitude ahead of the alternatives. There are alternatives besides banning.

They have their problems, but people don't realize what a damn miracle of engineering HDPE bags are. And other disposable paper and plastic items, to a lesser extent.

<comment><USER7> I disagree that it's a different problem. There's a branch of corporate environmentalism that says, hey, look, green things are great when they reduce costs. LEED certified buildings reduce energy costs, for example, so everyone is down for building and occupying them. It's great, because it's a win win, but it's not at all the whole story.

Plastic bags in the ocean are an externality, whose cost is hard to measure but is paid in the lives of wild things. The whole point of externalities is that people aren't bearing any cost for them: tax and/or ban is absolutely a reasonable approach to handling them, since it makes people take literal account of the literal downstream effects.

One more thing, on edit: the analysis you're calling for is good to do, but is also prone to the "seeing like a state" problem. The analysis will only include what can be easily measured... Which can leave out a lot of the story.

<comment><USER5> LCA's are only as good as the person who performs them. But we'd be much better off if everyone at least knew what they were, and what they try to accomplish, specifically capturing all of those externalities.

Re: the tax and ban... Tires and lead batteries in most states in the US is good example of this. You can tax or ban or regulate to put a cap on the problem. But if you want to collect the existing waste already out there, an incentive refund accomplishes much more, in less time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish that more restaurants would dial back their portion sizes to something that isn't insane.

I am seeing that more and more, and that's a good thing, but the odds are still good that I'll be served more food than most people can eat in a sitting, and I always feel bad when I see so much leftover food heading for the trash.

<comment><USER9> not sure where you're from, but i LOVE huge portions in restaurants because that means i have leftovers to take home for the next day. do most people not do that?

<comment><USER8> I'm in the US.

I don't know. I don't do that, though. Mostly because if I'm eating out, it's usually a prelude to night doing other things -- and the last thing I want to do is have to cart around a bag of food.

Also, I used to routinely take leftovers home. It was a habit my parents had, and I just did it unquestioningly. Then one day I noticed that I rarely actually ate the leftovers (they tend to not be terrific the next day) and would throw them away anyhow.

<comment><USER9> seriously? like, even if i'm heading out after dinner, i just leave the leftover box in the car. if it goes bad, then it goes bad, if it doesn't, great! lunch for next day.

and not sure how your food goes bad, if it's good in the restaurant... usually food doesn't go bad so quickly, but maybe you are one of those people who have some irrational aversion to leftovers (nothing wrong with that, my girlfriend is like that too) even though it's perfectly fine. right now i'm literally having reheated leftover pasta from a fine dining restaurant dinner last night, and i'm thoroughly enjoying it.

<comment><USER10> Food shouldn't be left out unrefrigerated for more than 2 hours, is the USDA's recommendation, otherwise the bacteria can multiply to dangerous levels. Even if you eat it later and don't get sick, it doesn't mean it wasn't a risky thing you did.

So people that go out to eat then go out and do other things that night before going home, unless it's the middle of winter and the car is basically a refrigerator itself, probably shouldn't bother bringing leftovers home with them.

[https://www.thekitchn.com/how-long-can-you-leave-cooked- food...](https://www.thekitchn.com/how-long-can-you-leave-cooked-foods- unrefrigerated-kitchen-facts-218225)

<comment><USER11> If you're going to eat it, you've got up to 4 hours. Two hours is the time to get it out of the danger zone if you're going to leave it in the fridge. But if you're going to eat it rather than store it, the guidelines are more lenient.

<comment><USER10> Have a source for that? I can't find a mention of that anywhere.

<comment><USER11> I apologize: the USDA uses only the 2 hour rule. The 2/4 hour rule is common in most of the rest of the world, most prominently in Australia, e.g.: [https://timestrip.com/2-hour-4-hour-rule-haccp- plans/](https://timestrip.com/2-hour-4-hour-rule-haccp-plans/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People have sent me this link because I've reduced my food packaging to filling less than one load of trash per year (which I blog about [http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food- packaging-2](http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2)) and my diet has become more delicious, cheaper, more social, healthier, and more accessible for people in food deserts, who have invited me to help them cook this way.

People also keep suggesting I start a restaurant since the food tastes so good and is so easy to make. I'm waiting to meet the right person with experience starting restaurants.

I'm posting because while everyone who knows the numbers considers the amount of food waste and packaging we create unconscionable, what I don't think people realize is that what the food industry purports to solve -- that industrial food is more convenient or tastes more appealing -- is all wrong compared to once you learn to cook. Then from scratch is faster, cheaper, more delicious, more convenient. The backbone of industrial food is ignorance and lack of skill. In places with tons of fast food restaurants but no farmers markets or fresh produce, the best solution is more cooking from scratch to teach people to demand fresh. The transition is hard, but doable and a great project for enterprising people who want to help people improve their lives and communities. I find it tremendously rewarding.

<comment><USER13> That's interesting. My grandma (who is also a self-growing plantation lady) always complains that store tomatoes are tasteless. But that is offset by the price. She works all day growing them, and stores try to sell good vegetables sometimes, but prices are putting buyers off. "Chinese chemical synthetics" are much cheaper and affordable. I tried to calculate, out of pure scientific interest, and with my income I could not allocate enough time to not get serious net negative, even if was interested in shoveling and taste. Maybe it's a local thing.

How much time and money do you spend on growing these?

<comment><USER14> Tomatoes are pretty effortless to grow and you don't need to eat homegrown exclusively to make a difference.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't call that effortless, unless you already have a piece of land, live there and don't need to go to the city for prolonged times. E.g. for me that would mean owning a car* , renting a parking lot at workplace, owning some land, paying for a greenhouse (idk maybe tomatoes do not need one, but in general gh counts as a taxable building here). And of course paying/shoveling the dirt. It is not effortless at all, unless there are prerequisites.

No idea why my question made few people upset, since I'm not against homegrown things and only explained how it all doesn't work locally and interested in economics of those for whom it works.

* blasphemy for US folks, I know, but pretty valid option to not have one in my downtown; everything is cheap to rent and very close to each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here I am thinking this article would be about a restaurant reusing the food they haven't sold to help solve the problem of food waste.

Instead the problem being solved is packaging waste, and they solve it by putting the onus on their vendors (bakers, butchers, etc) to deliver in reusable containers.

Commendable, but isn't the larger problem the amount of food being wasted by kitchen across the country? Sure, they compost any left over food that can be processed, but that food could have fed hungry communities.

</comment><comment><USER16> Been giving this some thought too. Because my plastic output on food is completely unreasonable. Basically every meal equals 2-3 plastic containers because its all single portions salad etc

I could hit the local market. But that would mean sacrificing lunch hour to go shopping (market hours =biz hours)

Gonna try and make an effort this year anyway

<comment><USER8> I don't know if this would work for you, but here's how I do my food shopping...

For things that are relatively nonperishable (shelf life of a month or so), I do a single massive shopping trip every month. Then I have an entire month that I don't have to to that.

For the things that have a shorter shelf life (produce, dairy, etc.), I buy on an as-needed basis. This typically means I stop by a store every other day on my way home from work -- but since I'm just buying what I need for a day or two, that shopping trip is very brief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The description seems a bis disingenuous. There are are plenty of leftovers they just don't end up in a classic trash bin. I was hoping to read how they developed a method to serve perfectly sized portions or continuously adjust the size so there's no food thrown away. It's probably a holy grail in the restaurant industry.

In reality _could operate without any trash pickup_ translates to _compostable waste is composted, non-compostable waste is recycled, other waste is donated_. Recycle and compost. Which is great but not really "no leftovers". Is recycling paper worse than composting it? Recycling glass worse than reusing it?

> a dishwashing setup that converts salt into soap

I have to admit I don't understand this one. Converting salt into soap? Are they talking about actual saponification of fats from leftover food or something else?

<comment><USER18> Before getting to the "perfect size portion", US restaurants can start by cutting the portion size in half. Really, you guys servings size are really crazy.

Maybe offer free refill for customers really hungry (AFTER they're done with their initial serving).

<comment><USER19> >you guys servings size are really crazy

Maybe it depends where one eats. I hear people saying this and I eat out all over the US and Europe and I guess I don't see this large and systematic difference in portion sizes that people claim--especially of the main/protein ingredient.

<comment><USER8> Most restaurants I've been to (in the US) serve me approximately twice as much food as a actually want. It's so wasteful, as it means that I'm throwing away half of the food each time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Must be an extremely full dad somewhere in the back mumbling about not letting perfectly good food go to waste

</comment><comment><USER21> So they're composting and recycling? The city I live in mandates all restaurants in the downtown core do this... (Of course we also have one of the largest composting facilities in North America)

</comment><comment><USER22> Overweight people are more likely to gain weight without leftover. I wonder the health influence and environment issue, which is bigger. The food are disposable anyway, it's the plastics electronics that matter

<comment><USER23> How do you contend that overweight people are going to gain weight by not having leftovers?

The article did not suggest that the restaurant forces people to eat everything on their plates. They just compost whatever food is left behind and don't throw it away.

<comment><USER24> Also, taking home leftovers is a very American thing. Most places in Europe serve portions that you're actually able to finish.</comment></comment></comment>


"Bring in the nerds" - we're headed to DC to testify about SOPA/PIPA - <AUTHOR> http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1553&Itemid=29

<comment><USER2> About damn time they invited people who have an idea of what's going on.</comment>