Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/01/alphabet-becomes-the-most-valuable-company-in-the-world <comment><USER2> The comparisons between Google and Apple aren't as apples-to-apples as everyone in the media seems to think. If we're talking about the future of these companies, and their earning power, they are situating themselves very differently. Apple is really a consumer electronics company, Google is an artificial intelligence company. And investors think more money will be in the future of AI instead of consumer hardware and software, so even though Google's earnings are smaller than Apple's, the future earning power is so much more.

If Apple starts going faster on AI then I think it will be very interesting between these two companies.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely agree that comparing Google and apple is silly. But calling Google an "artificial intelligence" company is just feeding another buzzword into the fire.

<comment><USER4> Google's flagship product is a box that you can type words into, and get relevant texts/references/facts in response. It seems like a textbook example of AI.

<comment><USER5> Google's flagship product is an advertising platform, not a search box.

<comment><USER6> This is an annoying meme. Are concession stands the flagship product of movie theaters?

People use Google for search, email, maps, etc. And that's what the company was built for. If they had a better way to monetize than ads, they would certainly drop ads.

<comment><USER7> If that was how they made most of their money, yes.

<comment><USER8> So is McDonalds a drink company? It makes most of its money from drinks...

The way a company makes its money is only weakly correlated to the service it offers to users. Think about it: if McDonalds stopped selling food, it would not have any customers. If Google stopped offering search, it would not have any users.

<comment><USER7> Google is a ad company who uses search to attract customers.

I don't see the McDonald's reference as the same, drinks are part of their food product. Ads are not a integrated part of search (google did not start out having ads).

<comment><USER9> So, if set up a fashion magazine and then I fill it with ads, I'm in the fashion magazines business, or in the ads business?

If someone asks, which of the 2 answers would be more helpful to them?

<comment><USER10> If your magazine starts handling ads in every other publisher's magazines too and then starts handling ads in TV and then starts putting up billboards by the highways, I'd say the answer isn't so obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to that it took this long, just considering the utility of each company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow I'd be moderately inconvenienced, I'd have to pick up an Android handset instead of my iPhone and maybe set up some new podcast feeds. If Google disappeared the world would screech to a halt.

<comment><USER12> How's that? To search the web, I'd go to DuckDuckGo or Bing or whatever. Other companies also provide web mail, maps, office document solutions, etc. Google's definitely better at those things, but using a worse version of those products would not cause the world to "screech to a halt."

Probably the most disruptive thing if Apple vanished would actually be every tech company suddenly needing to figure out how to use Windows or desktop Linux.

<comment><USER13> We could probably think of alternatives for most of these things, but there are a lot of people who just use what came with their phone/browser.

Additionally, think of all of the Google-backed services out there provided by other companies. How many companies use gmail heavily that would lose all kinds of records?

Normal people would lose their e-mail too, and businessmen would lose a lot of their calendars. The actual solution doesn't matter as much as the data already invested in Google's solutions that would be lost if Google just vanished.

<comment><USER14> The world wouldnt screech to a halt though. We're talking about what would happen if Google disappeared and its not a hypothetical situation. It happened in China for a five year period starting in 2010. People who used Google services were very upset. Replacements sprung up and quickly improved. They never caught up to Google but they were good enough, along with propaganda and the threat of prison, to keep people from making more of a commotion.

The biggest loss to humanity (in my opinion) would be all the translation data they hold privately. But Google really just people and money. If Google the entity disappeared tomorrow all those people who still know how to do the work will just start working on it elsewhere and catch up quickly.

<comment><USER13> > We're talking about what would happen if Google disappeared and its not a > hypothetical situation. It happened in China for a five year period starting > in 2010.

My bad. I was thinking about what would happen if Google disappeared as in, one day their servers and services just aren't available for whatever reason, rather than a staged transition/fade out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Paid clicks up 31% overall, on Google's own sites, up 40%. That's a bit concerning to me, especially when you consider:

a) That growth is outpacing internet traffic growth, and has for many years now. Internet traffic CAGR is 23%[1]

b) The shift from desktop to mobile _should_ have the effect of reducing clicks.

c) Since some of the growth is video, I would expect a decrease in click growth related to this as well. Video adds to bandwidth growth pretty directly. Click growth would be less direct.

Sergey and Larry, at least at one time, might have expressed concern:

"The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users"[2]

[1] [http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service- pr...](http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service- provider/visual-networking-index-vni/VNI_Hyperconnectivity_WP.html)

[2] [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

<comment><USER16> for b) I would say the contrary. Have you tried entering in a common website from a mobile browser without an adblocker? You get like so many ads, SO MANY, one over the other, some full-screen some that just let you see the 10% of the real site, some with a pseudo-pop-up, all with those little "x" almost unclickable to close them that force you to click on the ad in the end.

And in the "free apps with ads" of the mobile store the situation is even worse... they'll often try all possible tricks to force you to click on the ads.

<comment><USER17> Can that really go on forever? I don't know anyone that deliberately clicks on ads. Ads usually act as a "don't buy" signal to me - I assume the product is of low quality or a scam because of the skeeziness of how they tried to reach me as a customer.

Like higher education, the online ads business seems poised to collapse.

<comment><USER18> Are you Russian, this is a common sentiment there :)

<comment><USER19> I think this is a common sentiment _everywhere_.

<comment><USER18> If that was true the US would have A LOT fewer ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People were losing their minds over the fact that iPhone shipments slightly declined. If you look at the year over year growth (excluding the massive bump for iPhone 6), it would show that AAPL is still ahead of the growth curve.

See [https://imgur.com/vO0kPEy](https://imgur.com/vO0kPEy)

* Apple's quarterly revenue: $75.9bil

* Apple's quarterly profit: $18.4bil

* Google's quarterly revenue: $21.3bil

* Google's quarterly profit: $6.8bil

In sheer numbers, Apple's total profit is quite a bit more than Google's so there's that.

<comment><USER21> Which pretty much shows that the market value of a company is not based on what they sell today, but on the expectation of what they will sell tomorrow.

Does Apple do research in biotech (Alphabet's Calico)? Are they developing drones delivering wireless internet to the world (Google's Skybender)? Do they have an investment arm (Google Ventures)? Did they start an ISP (Google Fiber)?

People see Alphabet's increasing outreach that almost seems ludicrous. Then they compare this with Apple who seems to have been doing iPhones and iPads for 6-10 years, and doesn't seem to be interested in anything else (though this is slowly changing with Apple apparently getting into home automation and self-driving vehicles). It doesn't matter if it is true or not. This is what people perceive. This is what makes them value Google more than Apple. For all we know smartphones and tablets could be disrupted by another technology (the same way PCs were disrupted by phones and tablets) and Apple may not be ready for this next tech disruption, while Google is placing bets in many other markets.

<comment><USER22> Apple's brand trades a lot on having extremely well finished products with very polished experiences. If they started experimenting left and right like Google does, they would lose that brand image, which is arguably their most valuable asset (even above and beyond the technology itself). If Google releases Glass and it flops, it hardly affects their image ('well, yes, it's cool technology, that's what Google does, but I don't think people want it for now...'), if Apple does the same it would be thousands of articles about how Apple is losing its touch and can't possible survive without Steve Job's genius.

Maybe the only way around that is taking a page out of Alphabet's playbook and making a parent company with "riskier" subsidiaries with their own non-Apple brand?

<comment><USER23> > __ _Apple 's brand trades a lot on having extremely well finished products > with very polished experiences_ __

I don 't fully agree with this. Did you have the first version of the iPhone? No copy and paste? WTF.

Antenna signal dropping because "you're holding it wrong!"? WTF.

The only thing you can hold to the apple brand without any criticism is the industrial design of the packaging and look of their products has been consistent and un-matched.

There are plenty of UX issues that have arisen that take away from the ___polished_ __experience.

Sure I like their products, but im not deluded to think that they are beyond reproach.

<comment><USER24> You're making the mistake of thinking other people evaluate products the same way you do.

How many people do you really think tested the copy and paste functionality on the original iPhone before making their purchasing decision?

I think almost no one.

<comment><USER25> I think you're on the right track.

The way I remember it: the product was still overwhelmingly better than everything else. Missing copy&paste was an "oh well" compared to owning an iPhone in 2007.

<comment><USER26> And it's not like they didn't get around to adding it. Apple does admit mistakes. They made their phones bigger too, finally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also interesting to see in this earnings report is that Google's "other bets" aka moonshots are 3.5 billion in the red...[0]

[0][https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnin...](https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnings/index.html)

<comment><USER27> I'd expect years, if not a decade for those to make money.

I'm fond of how Google's voting structure is designed to prevent common stockholders from changing the direction of the company (for the same reason Elon Musk won't take SpaceX public until there are ongoing flights to Mars): investors are too concerned with short-term enrichment.

If all of your ventures are making money hand over fist, you're not trying anything hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree, this is just the first glimpse we get into the finances of the moonshots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apple also started paying quarterly dividends in 2012[1]. Whereas, Google does not pay out dividends[2]. Apple's annualized dividend yield is 2.2% (for comparison, Microsoft's is 2.6%[3]).

[1] [http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=AAPL](http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=AAPL)

[2] [http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=GOOG](http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=GOOG)

[3] [http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=MSFT](http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=MSFT)

</comment><comment><USER29> Very impressive. I remember being a young teenager when Google first went public, and around the same time my parents were looking at investing a moderate amount of money (around 10K, if I remember correctly) in the stock market. I suggested they buy stocks in Google, they didn't take my advice, which I don't blame them for as taking investment advice from a 14 year old typically doesn't end well.

It will be very interesting to see where Alphabet/Google go in the next 10 years.

<comment><USER30> I remember being in a situation similar to that! Google's $100 IPO price looks like a steal now.

<comment><USER31> The IPO price was $42.50 per share split adjusted. Which I brilliantly passed on. I mean how could some search software be worth that much?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As an American I think it's pretty badass that something like 8 or 9 of the top 10 most valuable companies in the world are all American. I'm not sure if that means we're doing something right, but it's still pretty cool for a moment.

<comment><USER33> All 10 of the 10 most valuable publicly traded companies are American (multinational) companies. #11 is Chinese and #20 is Swiss [1].

(Not that the largest 4 companies are tech companies, so that explains part of it...)

[1] [http://www.dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market- cap....](http://www.dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market-cap.htm)

<comment><USER34> This list is incomplete. Nestlé for example is missing ([https://www.google.com/finance?q=VTX%3ANESN](https://www.google.com/finance?q=VTX%3ANESN)).

<comment><USER33> Thanks, you can view a complete list on Google finance if you sort by market cap.[1] The top 10 are still US companies though.

[1] [https://www.google.com/finance?ei=BzuxVqG2ItO5euz2pMAO#stock...](https://www.google.com/finance?ei=BzuxVqG2ItO5euz2pMAO#stockscreener)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Both tremendous companies. I actually wish Apple would deploy some of its know-how and capabilities a little more broadly. Not everything has to be an immediate $20 billion opportunity.

<comment><USER36> On the other hand, that product stance helps them avoid Google Reader-type situations.

<comment><USER35> First, Google abandoning Reader was a terrible decision. Easily worth a PM and a few devs.

Second, I understand that part of the reason Apple executes well is because it minimizes distractions. But I believe a well-executing company like Apple should be able to take on more projects effectively.

<comment> yoz-y I, for one, am glad that Reader got shut down. Although I was a heavy Reader user, I think that the RSS ecosystem is better without it. Now we have a relatively healthy number of aggregating services and third party clients.

For me, RSS is the way informational web should work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting that Apple's net profits last quarter was greater than Alphabet's revenue.

<comment><USER38> How much Google product did you buy last quarter...

<comment><USER39> The most interesting part about signing up to Google Contributor has been the allocation reports. Try it just once on a 'top 10 list of celeb whatever' site to see how much they make per visitor.

<comment><USER40> According to the sample prices of $2-$10 for 5-50% fewer ads, I guess the monthly average for each user is $13-$40?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The elephant in the room nobody seems to notice is, they have so much data that they can actually look ahead of curve for any industry or tech, and so can have very good tactical advantage, and being open to jump in to any tech, they can steer much easily then the counterparts.

</comment><comment><USER42> Kudos to Google. I'm happy for them. But it's also worth pointing out that Market Cap is a horrendous way to measure how "valuable" or "powerful" a company is.

Companies A and B both want to raise $10B to fund a new investment opportunity. A decides to issue corporate bonds, because it doesn't want to dilute its shareholders. B decides to issue new equity instead, because they feel that their company stock is actually overvalued at the moment. Net result: A's market cap remains the same. B's market cap increased by $10B. No difference in future projected earnings/revenue between the 2 of them, but B now leads A in market cap.

Another scenario: Companies A and B both made $20B in profits over the past year. Company A decides to keep $5B in the bank, and returns the remaining $15B to their shareholders. Company B hoards all $20B, and doesn't do anything with it besides letting it sit in the bank. Company A's market cap drops by $15B because of their decision to issue dividends, and company B's market cap now leads A, just because they decided to sit on their pile of money.

If you want to judge how powerful a company is, look at its revenue, profits or total assets. If you want to judge how successful a company is, look at its investor returns. Market cap isn't really all that meaningful a metric to judge a company by.

<comment><USER43> In both cases you describe, the company with the higher cap is the more "powerful" company though. In example one, they have a lot more control of their destiny since they have debt and not more shareholders.

In number two they have more control because if an opportunity comes up that costs say 10 billion, Company B can act on that and Company A cannot.

<comment><USER42> > In number two they have more control because if an opportunity comes up that > costs say 10 billion, Company B can act on that and Company A cannot.

You missed the example completely. Both companies raised $10B, either through debt or equity, and both of them spent/invested the money immediately. Net result: both of them have equal amounts of cash in the bank. But one of them has a market cap $10B higher than the other. Simply because of a tactical choice they made in financing.

There are minor advantages/disadvantages involved in debt vs equity financing. However, these differences are all 2nd order effects. At a macro level, they have remarkably similar financial outcomes. Read up on Modigliani-Miller Theorem if you don't get this concept.

<comment><USER43> Read your own examples again. Example two was the one with the dividends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Out of curiosity, is there a reason Google/Alphabet shouldn't be on the Dow?

<comment><USER45> Yes. It's because of the idiotic way the Dow formula works. The Dow is a price weighted index. To compute the value of the Dow, you sum the per-share prices of the constituents and divide by a magic divisor. So a $50 move in GOOG (~6.6% change) and a $50 move in AAPL (50% change) would have the exact same impact on the value of the index. The kludgey solution to this problem is just to not incorporate high priced stocks into the index.

Incidentally this is why when you hear anyone quoting the Dow you can tell immediately that they are either clueless or an innumerate moron.

<comment><USER46> The lower the price the easier to buy, so there should probably be some weighting on stock-price to remove some weekend warriors from the equation on many-shared stocks, and to reflect the barriers to entry on stocks like BRK.A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What was the big jump for Google/alphabet I July?

<comment><USER48> IIRC that was when reported earnings from mobile were higher than Wall Street expected. WS was expecting doom and gloom from mobile for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> So let's see, according to Google Finance. Not quite accurate number, only a few _billions_ more or less.

Apple Marketcap: $539B

Google Marketcap: $537B

Microsoft Marketcap: $435B

Facebook Marketcap: $320B

Total of these big 4: $1.8 Trillion

Who said the bubble is going to burst this year?

<comment><USER50> What are the P/E ratios of all these ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> That is AMAZING for a company barely a year old. Kudos to all involved.

</comment><comment><USER52> According to Google Finance, it appears that Alphabet has a market capitalization of $517B, which is far different than the $558B quoted in the article. This does not appear to be a temporary fluctuation. [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL)

Am I missing something? Based on the current market cap numbers on Google Finance, Apple is still higher than Alphabet.

<comment><USER53> Need to combine Google/Alphabet share classes.

<comment><USER54> No, the reported market cap on Finance already does that; the after-hours trading explanation seems the better explanation.

<comment><USER53> "Alphabet shares (GOOGL) jumped 6% after Google's parent reported estimate- topping fourth-quarter results after the bell. Its _combined share classes_ were then worth $554 billion, surpassing Apple (AAPL), which had a value of about $534 billion and whose shares were down slightly after hours."

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/02/01/alphabet-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/02/01/alphabet- google-apple-market-cap/79652616/)

Please note:[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL) and [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG)

<comment><USER54> Yes, and if you look at the market cap on both of GOOG and GOOGL on Google Finance, you'll note that they are the same (after close -- during trading they seem to be very close but slightly different, probably for timing reasons) and if you do the math, you'll see that for each they aren't reporting the individual cap but the combined cap.

My first reaction was that the problem was one or the other share class being excluded, and then I checked exactly the sources you cite and checked the numbers and realized that couldn't be the problem if.you used Google Finance reported market caps, because they don't report it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Microsoft reached an intraday high share price of $119.94 in December 1999. With 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares, it had a market capitalization of $618.9 billion.

then what? what next?

<comment><USER56> The glaring difference of course being that Microsoft was trading for roughly 88 times trailing earnings.

Google is trading for close to 30 times earnings with this latest quarter.

Google's valuation is obviously sustainable, Microsoft's was not at that time.

What's next? Google is likely to become even more valuable as they have a lot of growth left and investors clearly like to give them a nice multiple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Well, abusing their search dominance among other things like making ads indistinguishable from organic results and paid placement on verticals like shopping/hotels etc. was eventually going to pay out.

More details on how Google manipulated search rankings manually to make more money:

From [http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-skewed-search- results...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-skewed-search- results-1426793553)

>A previously undisclosed report by staffers at the Federal Trade Commission reveals new details about how Google Inc. manipulated search results to favor its own services over rivals', even when they weren't most relevant for users.

>In a lengthy investigation, staffers in the FTC's bureau of competition found evidence that Google boosted its own services for shopping, travel and local businesses by altering its ranking criteria and "scraping" content from other sites. It also deliberately demoted rivals.

>For example, the FTC staff noted that Google presented results from its flight-search tool ahead of other travel sites, even though Google offered fewer flight options. Google's shopping results were ranked above rival comparison-shopping engines, even though users didn't click on them at the same rate, the staff found. Many of the ways Google boosted its own results have not been previously disclosed.

>One way Google favored its own results was to change its ranking criteria. Google typically ranks sites based on measures like the number of links that point to a site, or how often users click on the site in search results.

>But Marissa Mayer, who was then a Google vice president, said Google didn't use click-through rates to determine the ranking for its own specialized- search sites, because they would rank too low, according to the staff report

>Instead, Google would "automatically boost" its own sites for certain specialized searches that otherwise would favor rivals, the FTC found. If a comparison-shopping site was supposed to rank highly, Google Product Search was placed above it. When Yelp was deemed relevant to a user's search query, Google Local would pop up on top of the results page, the staff wrote.

>Other regulators have found similar practices. European antitrust authorities in 2013 said Google had a different, "specialized" search algorithm for ranking its own content.

>To bolster its own listings, Google sometimes copied, or "scraped," information from rival sites. According to the FTC report, Google copied Amazon's rankings of how well products were selling, then used that information to rank its results for product searches. Amazon declined to comment.

>While Google promoted its own results, it sometimes demoted rivals, the FTC staff found. For example, Google compiled a list of comparison-shopping sites and "demoted them from the top 10 web results," staff wrote. According to the report, Google users in tests didn't like the changes; only after Google tweaked its search algorithm at least four times, and changed the ranking criteria, did the new results get "slightly positive" feedback, the staff said.

>Google's efforts paid off, the FTC found. It said Google's maneuvers reduced Web traffic to rivals, and increased traffic to Google sites.

<comment><USER58> Google's purpose is to give users the most relevant results. No Google algorithm update goes through without users liking it; it doesn't matter how much profitability it increases.

<comment><USER15> The parent of your response points to an FTC report (an internal one that was leaked).

Within that report, they show how Google was able to tweak the questions until end users stopped liking something they did like with the previous set of questions.

The questions being tweaked were specifically about a type of site that competed with Froogle/Google Shopping that Google wanted demoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Am I the only one who didn't realize Alphabet == Google? When did that happen?

<comment><USER59> A few months ago. They re-organized the structure so that Alphabet became the parent company and Google became the subsidiary. Larry Page heads Alphabet while Sunder Pichai heads Google.

Some of the companies purchased by "Google" became subsidiaries of Alphabet as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Let's be realistic for once.

There is no such thing as complete AI. AI means a piece of software that does whatever you tell it to do, acting like a human. Simply

Artificial = Human made Intelligence = Brain power or thinking power.

<comment><USER61> That may be technically true today, but it feels a little like parents taking credit for their child's accomplishments.

That distinction means less and less as time goes on, anyway.

After learning from a billion human lifetimes, and being coded by 100,000 humans' combined efforts, would it be such a surprise that something greater eventually emerges?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> "SEO isn't good for users or the Internet at large. ... It's a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug." (1)

That statement is more-or-less the reality of every google-dependent business in the world at this point - Google is getting better and better at charging advertisers for their product - everybody is going to wind up paying the Google tax and this Quarter's results are evidence that GOOG is moving in the "right" direction to that end.

(1) [http://www.seobook.com/virtual-real-estate-virtually- disappe...](http://www.seobook.com/virtual-real-estate-virtually-disappears)

</comment><comment><USER63> Wow these points really show Hacker News is bad at finance :)

</comment><comment><USER64> "If Google disappeared the world would screech to a halt". Yes it would, for me. Someone please unshackle me.

</comment><comment><USER65> I feel like there are a fair number of reluctant capitalists employed by this company. I wonder how long they can post these kinds of numbers before something breaks.

</comment><comment><USER66> Valuation based entirely on hype and big names, without any released products or services?

<comment><USER67> Precisely why the restructure Google into Alphabet. Market looks for potential earning. And the various moonshot projects is the marketing way of telling the market we're the future. R&D in the open is paying off in this sense for Alphabet/Google. And the market do not see those great potential products brewing in the labs of Apple, Microsoft, IBM etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Well I'm not exactly suprised.

</comment><comment><USER69> You're all talking about Google being more valuable as if Apple did not lose a ton of value since Jan 1 in the scares. Majority of the loss has been in generalized fear. Google hasn't really done anything to grow past them. They just stayed where they were and Apple fell below them. Lets please keep this in mind when we throw around ideas like one is better than the other as a result of this.

<comment><USER70> What were the scares caused by?

<comment><USER69> First off, never claiming to understand the whole stock market or being an expert. I'm am amateur trying to make sense of this. But here is what I know very tersely (at work, can't write a paper here.)

China is highly leveraged and their stock market was crashing. Their very high spending is often accepted because of their continuing growth which people have been assuming was a lie for the past 7(?) years. They always say it's 7% growth. With a stock market crash people think that maybe people are waking up that the growth isn't there and China won't be able to sustain much longer. Thats not good for apparently many far reaching reasons.

Oil is crashing for many reasons which you could speculate about but not know for sure. The reality for the US markets is that many smaller oil companies are highly leveraged because oil was so expensive and they were funded with the idea it'd stay above something like $50/barrel. Their methods are more expensive than say Saudi Arabia's methods which allow them to sell much cheaper (although they need revenue which they're offsetting by selling bonds). Here is where I'm lost a bit, but somehow this is tied to the banks again who might be in trouble if they all start failing.

Not to mention people have been calling a correction for almost a year now based on debt levels, global banking issues, global economic issues, high P/E ratios, etc. to happen sometime around now till next year.

The stock market fear indicators on money.cnn.com[0] were at extreme levels for several days in Jan. Plenty of issues with fear and emotions in the markets right now. Some of which are well placed fears.

Apple was going down _a lot_ during those periods of fear well before their earning call which is what has been sealing the deal. I think during that major sell off people thought it was the "top" and were getting out.

[0]: [http://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and- greed/](http://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Good time to short Alphabet? I haven't looked yet but I bet their P/E ratio is bubble-ish.

<comment><USER72> Maybe, maybe not. I doubt there's much upside, but generally mega caps don't have much volatility either...

<comment><USER71> I wouldn't count on that. Apple seems to have a lot of volatility lately.

<comment><USER72> Compared to what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> interesting adjective "most valuable." To many that equates to revenue generated, to others profitability. Haven't read this article but starred for later I'm curious to see what it says.

<comment><USER74> For public companies this is always going to mean market capitalization, which is the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. This is the amount that would be required to _instantaneously_ buy all the stock _were it for sale at the listed price_ and thereby gain 100% ownership. ( _In reality this never happens, and quickly buying large amounts of a stock typically elicits an additional premium on top of the list price. Buyouts of public companies tend to be for a significant percentage higher than the listed price._ ) So the market cap is _in a way_ , quite literally, the valuation of the company.

EDIT: Italicized additions. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER75> It's definitely not the amount of money that would be required to buy all the stock. The market cap is usually much smaller than that quantity.

<comment><USER54> Which is fairly easily demonstrated by the fact that actual acquisitions of going concerns are usually at a premium above the market price at the time they are negotiated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TempleOS: Naughty Fun with OS Internals [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_b4zMxfLvA&utm=source <comment><USER2> This is nothing short of amazing. We can of course ramble about how this is unsuitable for a modern multitasking multi-user multi-use OS, but for an OS- as-a-tool, it's amazing. The simplicity of almost all characteristics makes programming and hacks a lot more accessible. Nothing really encumbers you from getting a job done, even if your solution is a hack.

The sort of unbridled, interactive access is very reminiscent of a Lisp machine. Most things are dynamic, almost everything is changeable. The Lisp machine likewise wasn't a good multi-* OS, but it is probably the best OS-as- a-tool ever made.

</comment><comment><USER3> Terry seems to be doing well, which is nice to see.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not making fun here, but I honestly want to see him going to the VMWare's office and demanding that they implement his RedSea filesystem on pain of eternal damnation.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure who would down vote you, he literally says this in the video.

<comment><USER6> Warning: OT

CyberDildonics is quite the amusing account: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CyberDildonics](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CyberDildonics)

It appears to be used extensively for posting comments just like this one!

Personally, I am a fan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> looks awesome, need to warm up my TempleOS vm again. I was surprised the task working directory is a string and not a pointer to a directory node or something. Also curious what's going on with the `CMathODE *next_ode` member of CTask, I know TempleOS contains a numerical ODE solver but why is it part of the kernel?

</comment><comment><USER8> Great to see Terry again!

</comment><comment><USER9> i like the "we have the divine right to access ..."!</comment>


Google's Five-Front Assault On Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/05/16/googles-five-front-assault-on-apple/

<comment><USER2> Decent article. I just don't get why Apple has gotten into the slog it has. The longer they wait, the higher the expectations get. Actually, I think the expectations have started to go down. This is me speaking for myself as an Apple fanboy :(</comment>


A heap for proletarians - <AUTHOR> https://lispchronicles.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/a-heap-for-proletarians/ <comment><USER2> Isn't the array-based heap the true "heap for proletarians"?

Not only is it easier to implement, but it is also a lot faster than the purely functional one.</comment>


Forget that tired-old coffee ring effect: "Whiskey webs" are the new hotness - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/whiskey-webs-serve-as-fingerprints-to-distinguish-between-american-whiskeys/ <comment> blaser-waffle Is this that big of a problem? Is China pumping out tons of counterfit whiskey along with knockoff Gucci bags?

Cool stuff though.</comment>


Programmers at Work Interview (Charles Simonyi) - <AUTHOR> http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/programmers-at-work-charles-simonyi/

<comment><USER2> I have this book. The site also has an interview with Butler Lampson which was more interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> _For instance, resolving forward references can be difficult. If you scan backwards, they become backward references, which are easy to resolve._

I've never seen the internals of an Algol compiler, but this doesn't make any sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it true he _boned_ Martha Stewart?</comment>


Ask HN:  What do you know about Africa? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZoS5oVVfa8

<comment><AUTHOR> There has been A LOT of talk in my network about taking products in the tech space and bringing them abroad... I'm curious what your thoughts are.</comment>


[video] The Case Against Perfection - <AUTHOR> http://fora.tv/2008/07/17/The_Case_Against_Perfection_Michael_Sandel An interesting lecture about the morality behind genetic selection and parents seeking to "perfect" their potential kids. <comment><USER2> ...Also a book and an April 2004 article in the Atlantic Monthly.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Case+Against+Perfection+M...](http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Case+Against+Perfection+Michael+Sandel)

 _The Case Against Perfection What's wrong with designer children, bionic athletes , and genetic engineering by Michael J. Sandel_</comment>


Stretching may have cardiovascular benefits - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/well/move/stretching-heart-cardiovascular-health.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Evidence for improved systemic and local vascular function after long‐term passive static stretching training of the musculoskeletal system

[https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP27...](https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP279866)</comment>


Future Home - all the news about proptech, home automation & homes of the future - <AUTHOR> https://futurehome.email/ <comment><AUTHOR> Future Home is a free monthly newsletter with the best and latest on proptech startups, modular homes, IoT & home automation, real estate tech and homes of the future.</comment>


Single SDK Solution for Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> http://appngage.com/?id=MTk=

<comment><USER2> Looks exciting! What I've been waiting for. It would really eliminate multiple integration pains.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks good! Plz accept my request.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you. give me your email id?</comment></comment>


Amusing PG book review from 2000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/review/R1MXJ1KGMFKP6A/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

<comment><USER2> I don't feel so bad about not upgrading from my first edition (1996) copy ^_^.

(I do "engine" work so it's not a big deal for me.)</comment>


Raspberry Pi Foundation's USB Key PC - <AUTHOR> http://www.raspberrypi.org/

<comment><USER2> This is very cool. Get technology into as many hands as possible and the entire world benefits!</comment>


FDA permits marketing of AI algorithm for detecting wrist fractures - <AUTHOR> https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm608833.htm <comment><USER2> Interesting! I hope the tech works and can reduce potential suffering from mis-read x-rays.

My brother fractured his scaphoid bone during a high school lacrosse game, and the doctor who x-rayed his wrist did not detect it.

He continued living an active life with a broken wrist (he has a high pain tolerance) for several months before the worsening pain sent him to an orthopedic specialist.

Being unaware of the fracture, he had done quite a lot of damage to the bones in his wrist, which wound up needing multiple surgeries and nearly 18 months (!) in a cast to fully heal. He also permanenly lost a bit of that wrist's range of motion.

I welcome any tool that helps doctors not miss this sort of thing!

<comment><USER3> nothing is permanent

<comment><USER2> You may be technically correct, but what's the point of this comment?

For as long as he is alive, he will have less range of motion in his right wrist than his left, barring advances in nanotechnology bone reconstruction or something.

Millions of years from now, when his body has broken down into petrochemicals, I suppose that yes, his wrist will then have a greater range of motion then it does now.

But that's hardly relevant.

<comment><USER3> > For as long as he is alive, he will have less range of motion in his right > wrist than his left, barring advances in nanotechnology bone reconstruction > or something.

If that is his attitude - and the attitude of everyone around him - then that will likely be the case.

In 'reality' \- whatever that means to you - plenty of folks have demonstrated that the body is malleable.

With work, ROM is restorable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this mean that from now on, anyone wanting to file some flavour of AI classifier for medical diagnosis, can just file a 510k because there is a precedent?

<comment><USER5> Some more detail (from [https://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidan...](https://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/HowtoMarketYourDevice/PremarketSubmissions/PremarketNotification510k/default.htm)): What is Substantial Equivalence

A 510(k) requires demonstration of substantial equivalence to another legally U.S. marketed device. Substantial equivalence means that the new device is at least as safe and effective as the predicate.

A device is substantially equivalent if, in comparison to a predicate it:

has the same intended use as the predicate; and has the same technological characteristics as the predicate; or has the same intended use as the predicate; and has different technological characteristics and does not raise different questions of safety and effectiveness; and the information submitted to FDA demonstrates that the device is at least as safe and effective as the legally marketed device. A claim of substantial equivalence does not mean the new and predicate devices must be identical. Substantial equivalence is established with respect to intended use, design, energy used or delivered, materials, chemical composition, manufacturing process, performance, safety, effectiveness, labeling, biocompatibility, standards, and other characteristics, as applicable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who has had to deal with a hard to read break in an x-ray this is great news.

Had the ER docs had this available I wouldn't have had to sit in agonizing pain and uncertainty for a day before getting into see a surgeon.

It wasn't wrist related, but it seems like the application of this to other stuff is not far off.

Very good news

</comment><comment><USER7> Url changed from [https://interestingengineering.com/fda-approves-ai-tool- that...](https://interestingengineering.com/fda-approves-ai-tool-that-can- detect-wrist-fractures), which unless I'm missing something is cribbed entirely from this press release.

</comment><comment><USER8> And in another 5-10 years insurance might approve it. Until then it'll probably be a cash price of anywhere from $400-$4000 like the cost of an MRI.

<comment><USER9> >And in another 5-10 years insurance might approve it

Not sure why you think that, but I work in a similar field and I promise you you're wrong.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate my webapp, Tweet Link Monster - <AUTHOR> http://tweetlinkmonster.com It's not really what I would call a "startup" as I don't really plan to monetize, but I'd still like to see what you guys think and get users.
Plus if you have any ideas of how to monetize well (the only ways I can think of are charging, charging for features, or putting ads in the feed), I'd be happy to hear them. It's my first webapp and my first post to HN.
And if you'd please, don't turn this into a "never give your twitter password to anyone" "but I love all of these apps" discussion. As soon as twitter implements oauth, I'll use it. Until then, all of the solutions are ugly, and most become scaling issues very quickly. Though I did just come up with one that is only really ugly.
Comments/suggestions/signing up are all greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> interesting concept and this might actually be useful to me as I "follow" something like 700 or 800 ppl.

on the other hand, i will not be able to use it. my twitter password is for me and me only:

<http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/12/twitter-and-passwords.html>

isn't there a way to use this with the user's currently logged in twitter cookie/session or some such like <http://twitpay.me> does?

<comment><USER3> Really? Seriously, what permanent damage can twitter link monster do when they steal your twitter account and start posting PR0n ad links to it. You'll get your twitter account back, and then just delete those posts. And twitter monster will have made about $1.30 in affiliate fees, and be out of business. And you'd have some great material for 6-7 blog posts about how you'll never give out your twitter account information again.

Sorry, your paranoia just doesn't add up. Now, in some cases it does. If someone stole my gmail account, they'd be able to use google payments to buy whatever they hell they want. But twitter? Give me a break.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I understand the issues, especially for normal users. Normal users have a 1-password-fits-all scheme, which is a really bad idea. Then getting your Twitter account stolen is megabad. Even so though, there's twitpay, which lets you make payments via Twitter (I think it's setup so that it would only be any money that you have in your twitpay account that someone could steal, not money in paypal/credit card.) Still, if someone leaves a few hundred in their twitpay account that's sizable. Plus there's also a bug someone found so that once someone is logged in as you, they can just not close the window and keep tweeting as you forever. But that's still just tweeting. But really, the only people that really need to be wary of giving out their twitter password are people who use that username and pass for other things and people who have larges sums of money in their Twitpay account. I'm not stealing your passwords anyway though :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have no idea how happy I am to see that you used the word "webapp" instead of "startup." (read: very happy)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi Jackowayed,

This is almost exactly like my web app <http://tweetlinks.org> which I created and posted here several weeks ago.

Eiso

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow. I'm busy enough that I sorta read HN in and out, so I didn't see that thread. Well, good idea :-) They do vary in delivery method though. So it's not like I copied your app. (I actually started mine first. I've been doing it slowly over the last several months.) Neither of us seems to have plans of monetization, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

<comment><USER5> Don't worry at all - It was just a fun app I made when I had some free time. If you want I would be happy to share some of the things I picked up on the way that made it run smoother. I was also going to implement an RSS feed because it was requested by some people (see YC thread) - I hope you don't mind. Let me know.

All the best and goodluck with it!

Eiso

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, you can add RSS if you want. it's cool. and I'd love to hear any advice you have. I'm jackowayed on twitter and gmail

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like it - not sure if I'd use it, I get too many links through feeds and regular twitter use... but the biggest problem for me is that I hate putting my password into 3rd party apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I posted above/below/wherever that thread migrated to now, I plan to use OAuth once Twitter makes that an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first reaction was "what the f...", but I got quickly sucked in to reading about it. I think your value proposition is clear, though it isn't something I would use.

And the monseter is growing on me :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, I wanted something to make it stand out in the crowd of twitter apps.

<comment><USER8> haha...I would love to actually see that monster catch a bird with those hands...

I know some links show up more than once among the various people I follow on twitter. Anyway you can eliminate that redundancy?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, that's a good idea. I'll probably add it soon.

<comment><USER9> It would be extra magical if you actually aggregated tweets by link, so that it only showed up as one "link", but you could see what everyone posted along with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> that would be pretty magical. it would take some refactoring of my setup, but it would be awesome. I'll fiugre out how much work it would take and think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the idea is very cool. Although I don't use twitter from phone I many times use it only for links. I am sure there must be others like me out there too.. great concept!

</comment><comment><USER11> best mascot ever. very seriously.</comment>


California Cities Keep Declaring Fiscal "Emergencies" and Investors Are In On It - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/muni-investors-shrug-at-california-s-fake-fiscal-emergencies <comment><USER2> Why don't they declare an emergency on the actual problem, chronic shortages of housing supply, and reform their zoning and tax/rent entitlements to fix it?

It's hard for me to take anything California government does seriously right now while they're ignoring the 10 ton elephant in the room that's causing almost literally every other problem.

If they don't start addressing this with a significant attack plan extremely soon, their tax base will leave the state in droves, and they will never raise taxes enough to make up the difference. It's an emergency, declare it one and do something real about it.

<comment><USER3> "their tax base will leave the state in droves,"

 _Man that place is a dump, nobody goes there - it 's always too busy._

<comment><USER4> What you are describing has been happening in New York and New Jersey for literally decades-

-so much so that we have lost electoral seats in Congress because of our population shrinkage, while Florida has gained.

<comment><USER5> Are you saying this sentiment has existed for decades or the population loss has existed for decades?

New York and New Jersey each recorded their highest population levels ever in the 2010 census.

<comment><USER4> Ah, apologies. I thought the population was shrinking. What is actually happening is that the "population growth rate" in NY and NJ is not as high (anymore) compared to the population growth rate in other states.

This isn't due to babies being born in Florida but not New York-- it's due to older, existing humans moving from NY to FL.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/nyregion/22nycensus.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/nyregion/22nycensus.html)

headline: New York will lose 2 of its 29 seats in the House, while New Jersey will lose 1 of its 13 seats, because of population shifts reported by the Census Bureau on Tuesday.

<comment><USER5> Yes, western and southern states are growing faster than northeastern states, this isn't new information. It's almost like that part of the country was settled first and then saw two Great Migrations in the 20th century. When those migrations ended in the 1970s, the population began re-orienting towards the south and west and away from the northeast and midwest.

<comment><USER4> I am becoming confused.

1) Do you believe people are leaving NY/NJ despite overall population rising?

2) Do you believe that of those people who are leaving, they are leaving because it's too expensive and crowded here?

3) Do you believe that of those people who are staying/moving here, do you think they are moving here because it is NOT crowded?

<comment><USER5> Huh? I corrected your initial statement that population was falling. I never mentioned crowing or cost-of-living. I was simply explaining why other states are growing faster than NY/NJ and the rest of the northeast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." \- rahm emanuel

</comment><comment><USER7> > Because of rules designed to limit tax increases, cities can get proposed > tax hikes on Tuesday's primary ballot only by declaring a crisis. At least > two have done so this year, following at least 50 since 2008.

That doesn't seem like a particularly informative year to use as a cutoff; 2009 would have been the first year of primaries during the recession, so it's not inconceivable that there were a number of municipalities in a financial crisis then.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't really have a problem with this. Declaring a "fiscal emergency" doesn't allow the city to enact new taxes, it just lets them put new taxes on the ballot for people to vote on. They're just using a loophole that let's them get around what is IMO a silly law.

(Then again, if this loophole didn't exist, perhaps this would encourage them to fix the actual problem with the law.)

<comment><USER9> They (local government bodies) can't fix the problem; it's a state Constitutional rule that can only be altered by the citizenry. The State legislature—but not the impacted local bodies—could _propose_ a fix, but can't enact one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems silly and potentially dangerous to limit when a city can legislate democratically (even with the Fiscal Emergency exception.) Is there any good argument for this, other than people not liking taxes?

<comment><USER11> The idea of constitutional limits on government sounds "silly and dangerous" to you?

<comment><USER12> Constitutional limits like the Bill of Rights sound awesome to me.

As a Californian, all of our crazy constitutional limits on taxes are less awesome. After many years of unequal taxation, similar buildings in the same city pay wildly different amounts of tax, and the difference will only grow over time. People are less likely to move for a new job, businesses get less for selling commercial buildings because a tax benefit is lost when a building is sold. It's one of the worst aspects of California's direct democracy system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why don't they reduce spending?

Surely there are expenditures deemed "being nice" which isn't a real neccessity for the local citizens?

<comment><USER9> > Why don't they reduce spending?

Because the citizenry doesn't want that. Oh, sure, in abstract terms they do, but when it comes to any specific set of concrete cuts, they tend not to.

<comment><USER14> The citizenry reliably supports any cuts that don't affect them personally.

<comment><USER9> > The citizenry reliably supports any cuts that don't affect them personally.

That's not true, either; plenty of spending programs that directly effect < 50% of the population will face more than 50% opposition if cuts are proposed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Recipe Book on Blockstack - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic-spoon-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello People, Just created MagicSpoon, a product that helps you develop and save innovative recipes. It combines my passion to code and cooking. Magicspoon helps you save your recipes in a decentralised manner with the help of blockstack platform. You can share your recipes with friends and collaborators. I am working towards ensuring that people collaborate on recipes which I feel can add a lot of fun in our lives. Please try the product and leave your feedback. There is loads to come from my end.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best commodity robot arm? - <AUTHOR> I want to play around with some robotics what's a good robot arm I can buy? <comment><USER3> This is a common question. I have wanted a "good robot arm I can buy" for a long, long time. I would like something with about 16 inches of reach and 6 degrees of freedom. The motion must be smooth with a position resolution of around 0.01 inch.

Alas, in my opinion, such an arm does not exist for the hobbyist. Why? Mainly, I think, leverage sucks (in this case). At 16 inches there is quite a lot of torque required at the base to move the arm (with the mass of the arm plus what it is grasping). And liability may be (probably is with most would-be suppliers) an issue.

I have built a few arms myself with various hobby servos. High torque motors where needed and smaller, light weight ones towards the wrist. * Some * of the motions are smooth and neat. Others are simply jerky. Then there is the problem of backlash.

There is a company (Trossen Robotics, I think) whose arms are ..., well, I don't know what to say. Certainly, it seems, they offer cool motors that are seemingly designed for what we want. But the videos are always disappointing. Maybe its just me.

I assume you want something for a couple of $K. In my opinion, it does not exist. The demand/application is not there to bring the cost down.

And, again, there is the liability issue.

Maybe some day, soon.

(I hope someone responds with something that will work for ya. I would like to see that.)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a very open-ended question; depending on what you want to do with such an arm would be important to know what to recommend. Do you need fine control and accuracy? Do you need speed, or strength, or some combination? What kind and size of work envelope? Cartesian vs revolute vs...?

Have you considered going "old-school"?

That is, picking up a used Microbotics Teachmover can be easily done - <USER2> you'll probably have to hack up a controller for it. Similarly, there are old Rhino Robotics arms that can be bought fairly cheaply (though I warn you - they are very heavy). There are several other robot arms from the 1980s that you can find if you look, but all of them will require more than a bit of "hacking" to get working with modern computer systems.

Have you considered building an arm using Lego or some other similar building kit (Meccano, Fischertechnik, KNex)? Or maybe parts from Servo City, or 80/20 extrusions?

What about hacking a conversion? Like converting an old Armatron to be computer controlled (not easy to do, but it is possible - it was done more than once back in the 1980s, and those articles on how to do it are still able to be found). Note that it is easier to convert the Radio Shack Armatron that has a wheeled base, than it is to convert the joystick controlled Armatron (the latter requires a bit of mechanical skill and knowledge, on top of the electronics to interface it).

Another possibility (though fraught with even greater issues) would be to find a second-hand laboratory industrial robot arm, and get that interfaced. There are more than a few out there which were electric powered (mostly - some have pneumatic end-effector attachments), and are small enough to play with in a "home" setting. The downsides are lack of inexpensive replacement components if you need them, among other issues.

</comment><comment><USER5> maybe this one? [https://store.ufactory.cc/pages/kits](https://store.ufactory.cc/pages/kits)

most of them are super expensive, I would consider building one from scratch by following [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Citiq6Zfdu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Citiq6Zfdu4)</comment>


Delivering the Next Generation of Digital Government - <AUTHOR> http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/gsablog/2016/05/03/delivering-the-next-generation-of-digital-government/ <comment><USER2> GSA loves telling everyone how great it is.</comment>


The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3007649/how-win-bloodthirsty-battle-tech-talent

<comment><USER3> You know what is blood thirsty? recruiters are bloodthirsty. Since there is exactly _zero_ barrier to entry when there is a perceived shortage of talent we get a swarm of 'tech recruiters' that looks kind of like Carp do when you through a handful of popcorn into the coy pond.

There is a shortage of chumps however. For the right price you can hire pretty much immediately. What I don't get are people who are technically talented and not working, mostly because they want too much. Sometimes there is a sad sad story about how they were with big corp for 10+ years, went from starry eyed college grad to large mortgage holding principal engineer, and laid off, and now nobody will hire them as a principal engineer's salary. That is a sad story.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hire telecommuters outside of SF.

For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be competitive financially since practically everywhere has lower cost of living than SF, I believe. (How much would a home for a full family within cycling distance of the office cost?)

<comment><USER5> Well yes, but for startups that doesn't work. Every day you need to look at the results of your product, talk with your team and adjust course. Having remote workers really kills your ability to do that.

<comment><USER6> Maybe, but not really. Two hours of google hangouts, screen -x, git and CI servers will do you for every conversation you can imagine apart from, let's grab a beer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And here I am, a rails developer trying to move to SF, and I only get maybe a few nibbles a week.

I must not be on the right job boards. Or something. Is the meetup.com ruby list the place to go? Someone also suggested changing my location on LinkedIn to SF - however, I am hoping to relocate, but haven't done so yet, so that seems dishonest.

<comment><USER8> Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the author, Matt Mickiewicz, runs developerauction.com. I imagine it is in their best interest to drum up the "talent war," to make it seem like there are no engineers to hire.

My experience tells me that this talent war exists... for the top few percentile of engineers. Where these people are dogged by recruiters and companies alike, there is a sharp dropoff; engineers who are smart but don't win in a tech bingo interview or didn't work at Google/Facebook or didn't go to Stanford get pinged by headhunters but passed over by companies. Engineers who have held jobs at start ups or less prestigious companies, who have authored plenty of CoffeeScript or ObC code for a corporate code base but don't remember how to implement a quicksort or don't have experience with framework x are rejected in the interview phase.

It's my opinion, but I think the "shortage of talent" is really a shortage of patience and mentorship, and a sign of the complete unwillingness of many companies to take a risk on someone.

<comment><USER7> Funny. Sounds like me. I went to a decent but "wrong" school (UVA), lured by promises of a free ride. I missed my tech bingo interviews (and I've had a lot of them), for reasons worthy of a blog post. My first, for instance, with MS, went wrong because Alaska Airlines got my flight in around 1 or 2 AM - for an 8 AM interview the next day. I know I was not at my best.

I am also totally done with Google - it's just not worth 4 months of runaround and countless phone interviews just to come in and fail because one of the interviewers hates the whole process. And last time they contacted me, they told me to learn either Java or Python and call them back when I did. No thanks. Nothing against Python, but I am not putting that much effort into the chance at another interview. I would totally work for a company that did Python, and learn as I go - I've done that plenty before. (Edit: Oh, and the number of interviews google puts you through just should not be allowed)

I spent a year working on my own startup, which is what got me into rails, but it ran out of runway and I was then tied to the area by romance, and got a mediocre job at a huge company. I am no longer encumbered, but my resume lacks any recognizable names (of schools or companies). I've had a lot of other personal projects that never went anywhere and which earn me no points, but at least keep me in the game. (I should have put them all on GitHub, I suppose, but was too embarassed about their unfinished nature to do so).

I also don't get what the obsession is with CS 201 questions. But I keep my data structures textbook around just so I can relearn how to implement A* or remind myself what the big-O of a B-tree delete is before interviews. Of course, at Google I'd need to be implementing these data structures daily(?). I don't have a big problem with them, it's just an odd thing to be obsessed with.

<comment><USER9> 1\. Finish just one project (not to shiny-perfect, just to functionally complete) and put it on GitHub. This is to show you can finish something. It's a huge risk mitigator if someone can look at your code. Nobody's code is perfect, but some code is always better than no code.

2\. Put the rest of the stuff up on GitHub, with suitable disclaimers, e.g. "I was working on this to learn X ..." Everyone understands (well, everyone I like understands) that creative people have lots of projects in various stages of disarray.

3\. Target a few small/midsize startups, not the super-hot ones, and spend 1-2 hours to learn their product. I would be THRILLED to get an email from someone who said "I love what you do, here's three things I would like to work on with you to make it better, are you hiring?"

4\. Put up front your willingness/unwillingness to relo. If you have remote working experience, give an overview of that. "Worked remotely for company X for two years, with daily standups, weekly sprint meetings, monthly 3-4 day visits, and two visits of 2 weeks duration 2x/year." That lets me know what you're up for.

<comment> T-hawk _> I would be THRILLED to get an email from someone who said "I love what you do, here's three things I would like to work on with you to make it better, are you hiring?"_

What's your company? I'd love to send you that kind of email. :) (My email should be in the HN profile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a pretty worthless test. I mean, who cares how many companies respond to your resume? The real test is how many job offers you can get, and that's a much more difficult than getting responses on your resume.

Secondly, are entrepreneurs really this out of touch with what it's like to be a jobhunter? This post reads like it was written by an anthropologist studying some strange culture he'd never seen before.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the meantime in France, we can't get past that PHP/Enterprise Java illness that's been afflicting the dynamism of our net ecomomy for a decade now. Sad.

<comment><USER12> Not my experience: I'm in France doing Ruby/Rails since 2004/2005, and I'm most likely booked until end of 2014...

So it's more a matter of niches and networks I believe.

<comment><USER11> Are you in Paris?

Maybe the market is getting bigger for Rails devs there? I left France 5 years ago and the picture was grim then, Java/PHP had a literal death grip on the market. Well, since I'm coming back I guess that's good news :)

<comment><USER12> I left Paris 3 years ago, since then I've been doing all my work remotely from a very rural place (<http://goo.gl/maps/UTIzF>).

That said Paris is the best place to get started networking again. Be sure to go to the Paris.rb group which is very dynamic if you come back!

<http://meetup.rubyparis.org/>

<comment><USER13> > _since then I've been doing all my work remotely from a very rural place_

Excellent! I'm in Paris but my wife's family is in Charente (Ruffec) and I go there often. We should setup some kind of local meetup group!!

<comment><USER12> Sure, would be fun :-) I don't know many technologists around so far, but a good idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly this is just a PR piece for DeveloperAuction. "How to win the bloodthirsty battle for tech talent"? Why come use our site of course!

This strip from 1995 sums it up pretty well:

<http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-05-22/>

I see a number of problems (on both sides):

1\. There is no shortage of talent. There might well be a shortage of talent for the price you're willing to pay but that's hardly the same thing;

2\. What constitutes "talent" seems to be largely based on social proof. 25 year old Stanford graduate? Offers galore I'm sure compared to, say, the 45 year old University of Iowa graduate. Hell, I get an awful lot of cold calls based simply on listing "Google" on my online profiles (as my employer).

Social proof can be a useful indicator. The problem is that groups tend to self-select down to nothing this way where you end up with a tiny fraction of the group being over-subscribed and the majority struggling;

3\. People like to employ people like themselves. So find a company full of MIT graduates and they're likely to hire... more MIT graduates. This isn't just a question of social connections or geographical area either (IMHO);

4\. If you pick a high-demand high-cost area like the Bay Area you're obviously going to have a harder time finding and retaining talent and it'll be more expensive;

5\. Larger companies tend to treat talent as interchangeable where the only units are the number of warm bodies, perhaps stratified into "junior", "midrange" and "senior" whereas we all know there can be a 10x or greater difference between two engineers in terms of productivity, hence the more productive talent is harder to attract and retain.

<comment><USER15> The 10x figure is pseudoknowledge - something we "all know" that isn't actually true (or that at least we have no good reason to believe to be true), cf. <http://vimeo.com/9270320> . In brief: the study that it is ultimately derived from had a tiny sample size (on the order of 30, to wit), and for several reasons the experimental design would have invalidated its results outside the very narrow original focus of the study (which was the relative productivity of batch processing vs. interactive processing on the computing systems of 1968) even if the sample size had been larger.

<comment><USER16> The 10X figure is true. My study is 30 years of working with a wide variety of people in startup environments. Adding some people makes a project later. Others can manage a whole project alone (if they are LEFT alone).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ^^ Jimbo, Change your LinkedIn profile to say you live in San Francisco. I just moved here a few months back and I get dozens of emails. I have a job, and dont respond to them, but its generally the same pitch ... "VC backed company, wants ruby/rails people, descent money, benefits, yada yada" ..

</comment><comment><USER18> Why are there so few rails devs? Its not as if Ruby is super hard to learn or the rails framework is incredibly complex.

I think I would hire someone for 40k for their first year, train them in RoR and then pay them more their second year. You get 6 months of good work out of them after they're totally trained and at a lower price.

<comment><USER19> That's an attractive option iff you're training non-programmers and, when you say "pay them more", you are prepared to _more than double_ their wages after they reach journeyman proficiency in Rails. If you expect people to have a CS degree prior to year 1 or react to a 10% raise in year 2 as generous, you would not find the Silicon Valley hiring market offering you as many candidates as you desired positions.

<comment><USER18> I know that; Let's say it takes 6 months of training to be fairly proficient. you have 6 months after that at a proficiency worth 42k, but you've only paid 40k for the entire year. Then when you raise the salary to 84, you have someone you know works in your company, who is happy with the huge raise, and you've gotten a bargain out of it.

The problem is you have to think a year ahead, but I don't think that's such an issue.

<comment><USER20> How are you going to keep this hypothetical honor student down on the farm? [1]

In other words, once the employee has the skills to earn $85k, why should she wait six months for her giant raise when she could just switch employers and get the giant raise right away?

Not that this is the reason why the fantasy scenario doesn't work - if it were reliably possible to turn a raw recruit into DHH with six months of training, the fact that we'd have to pay market rates the entire time would be the least of our problems. Indeed, it would not be a problem at all.

A _real_ reason why more companies don't try training up raw recruits is that (a) running a school is a specialized business and (b) the yield is far less than 100%, so it only works at scale. You need to admit - optimistically! - <USER2> or 20 bright and motivated nonprogrammers in order to graduate one person who, after six to twelve months of training, can be expected to successfully attack problems like:

"A customer has called; he has an obscure problem with his web site. Help him debug this problem over the phone. You have no access to the code or the server."

or

"Here's a legacy codebase that spans 267 files, two major versions of Rails, and three generations of programmers. Improve it. Don't break it, though, because our revenue depends on it."

or

"Here's a collection of 175 cloud instances running in Amazon. Build a system that reliably backs them all up once a day, with no downtime, and that can verify on demand that those backups exist."

or even something as "simple" as

"Here is a Wordpress site with a handful of specialty plugins installed. Here is an empty Git repository. Fill this Git repository with Rails code that implements a site that looks and acts exactly like the Wordpress site."

[1] [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/andrewbird/howyougonnakeepemd...](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/andrewbird/howyougonnakeepemdownonthefarm.html) \- this song is now 95 years old, so I guess I better footnote it!

<comment><USER13> I may have missed a step in your reasoning but why are you assuming they have to start with a "raw recruit"?

Why couldn't companies hire _actual developers_ with no previous experience in {some_tech} or {some_framework} and train them in said tech/framework?

It seems companies, just like recruiters, feel safer when they hire a "rails dev" for a "rails position" when in fact a good programmer with zero rails experience would be much preferable to a mediocre programmer who has some rails experience.

PS: the song is excellent but I couldn't find any recent cover; this old guy with a Banjo is killing it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlUExq2hNBU>

<comment><USER21> But developers know that they can learn on the job. So an offer of "half regular salary, but we'll train you!" is not too appealing. Many companies will just pay regular wages. So we're back to where we started.

<comment><USER13> You're right. What I meant is that companies trying in vain to find rails developers should hire generalists, regardless of rails experience (at a competitive, normal salary according to the skills/experience of the recruit).

It seems companies only advertise for specific languages or frameworks; maybe they think they need someone capable of hitting the ground running, but if they spend a year finding them... it's pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've always wondered why companies aren't recruiting kids out of High School to learn Rails instead of attending college. Understandably there is immaturity to deal with and all that but it seems there is enough demand to overshadow that.

</comment><comment><USER23> _One agency's pitch consisted entirely of this: "I saw that your [sic] looking for some work. I have a few posions [sic] in SF that might be a fit, let me know when you have some time to talk." It provided no last name, phone number or company name._

The author should remember this is craigslist. This seems like run-of-the-mill spam (likely sent to EVERY new job posting)

<comment><USER24> It was actually on the Ruby meetup list... I was surprised how many recruiters where monitoring that group, how quickly they responded to the fake message (within 5 minutes), and how little care, thought or attention they paid when asking people to entrust them with their career/job.

<comment><USER23> Ah okay. I should have read the article more carefully. It still could have been automated spam though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's clear that popping on everyone's radar gets you a lot of attention, but really, how many would follow through all the way?

The article mentions that none asked for any sort of online presence (Linkedin, Github, etc). Perhaps it's because they weren't serious to begin with.

<comment><USER25> Why the downvote? I don't live in the States, but I get emails from recruiters across Europe all the time (I'm a rails dev as well). In my experience they're not as serious as you might expect. Sure, the situation is extreme in SF, but is the signal to noise ratio better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else.

Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares.

This is good though, because it makes people who know those things that much more valuable as well they should be.

<comment><USER27> I don't think expecting $100k+, benefits, telecommuting etc necessarily indicates entitlement.

Most people in finance, senior managers, doctors, lawyers, architects, management consultants etc wouldn't get out of bed for less than that, especially in a big city with high cost of living.

I think its great that techies are starting to realise their value and grab a piece of that for themselves.

<comment><USER26> What dictates entitlement is asking or expecting something without actually having earned it.

Obviously finance, doctors, and lawyers went to school for many years. They earned it.

Developers, who can't even explain map/reduce or other important CS concepts, have not.

<comment><USER28> I can't explain map reduce. I generally know what it is but I've never needed to use it or implement it.

That doesn't mean I'm not a good engineer. It just means I haven't done something before.

<comment><USER26> That's great, I don't expect an academic explanation but just having heard of it is pretty good. That question by itself is not a deal breaker. An 'engineer' should at least know about things like data structures or just anything beyond Rails. Most interesting problems require more than knowing how to create CRUD apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> After reading that, I can only imagine what this demand curve means for the actually available talent one may buy.

You know the saying - "the market is so hot even chickens can fly"

If you have to hire, that'll be a very expansive chicken - or maybe even a lemon. That's the cost of doing business I guess.

</comment><comment><USER30> Too true. The trouble is not enough people are trying to address the underlying problem - the lack of education in our public schools needed to become a desperately desired rails programmer! Computer programming should count as learning another language!

</comment><comment><USER31> s/Rails dev/dev/g

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm finding my own meme here - CI is the key to enabling remote working and so enabling a company to truly select the best

With CI it's pretty easy to see what needs to be built and whether it works - every few minutes if needed.

You can see progress happen throughout a day.

No other metrics matter.

<comment><USER32> What is "Cl"? Thanks.

<comment><USER16> Continuous Integration, any of a number of source control/automated build systems that keep the code working at all times over multiple developers/sites.

<comment><USER32> Oh duh! Thanks! I was reading it as C _L_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This has not been my experience, but I haven't posted to meetup.com either.</comment>


Gif Dance Party - <AUTHOR> http://gifdanceparty.com <comment><USER2> Finally, a webapp that speaks to _me_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this on the front page of hacker news? What valuable content does this provide?

<comment><USER4> Apparently the submitter and everyone who upvoted this thought it gratified their intellectual curiosity. That's scary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A W E S O M E

Even with the limited selection of dancers, dancefloors and songs, they're all brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER6> This is so awesome! Thank you for making this!!

</comment><comment><USER7> Keep the format, but let me choose any gif, background and song and I would use the hell out of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is the best internet thing of 2013

</comment><comment><USER9> I missed a option to share my scenario to my friends =(

<comment><USER10> It would be awesome to have a chance to share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great 2 minutes of entertainment. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER12> This is great. Made my night.

</comment><comment><USER13> #MADEMYNIGHT #TWIST #CARLTON

</comment><comment><USER14> That was epic, until it got annoying...

<comment><USER15> Yeah, like zombo.com...wait, that never got old :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wat.

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny! AHAHAHAH</comment>


After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/after-50-years-of-effort-researchers-made-silicon-emit-light/ <comment><USER4> Gaaah, please stop advertising optical computers as the technology that will overcome Moore's law. It makes no effing sense.

Wavelength of the light emitted by these devices: ~4000nm

Latest generation commodity CPU transistor structure size: 7nm

Add to that that photons really don't like being trapped; you essentially need a delay line and optical amplifier to hold them indefinitely (that's essentially the core technology my whole PhD thesis centers around), it makes them a really impractical thing to store bits with. Things with a rest mass can be stored easily, though. Things like, say, electrons!

<comment><USER5> It's definitely not a continuation of Moore's law as it has nothing to do with transistor density, but it may mean that the performance people expect from computers - which is why people are usually talking about Moore's law - <USER2> continue increasing.

I don't see how the wavelength is comparable to transistor size because as you switch to the optical realm, the benefit of information propagation at speeds near c (or c, if you're pulling a vacuum) means physical size doesn't matter as much. At 4Ghz you can move information 7.5cm in one cycle, and that's a pretty large distance compared to any integrated circuit I've ever seen.

Why is storage necessary? If you can move bits to optical gates and get a result back it seems to me like you can work around the fact that, in an electrical system, capacitance and heat (due to density achieved in the quest for minimizing capacitance) start to limit the computation you can do.

<comment><USER6> I thought electric charge in conductors already moved very close to C? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity)

<comment><USER7> Only if you consider 70% or so to be close. There's some room for improvement over copper wires. Now, if there are any physicists here who want to jump in, I have a question about that. I heard waveguides are dispersive, would sending pulses of light through tiny channels slow it down as well?

<comment><USER8> Not a physicist, but you may want to look for 'hollow core fiber / photonic crystal fiber'.

Where some are said to reach up to 99.x % the speed of light in a vacuum.

<comment><USER4> Laser physicist here, did some work with PCF: Expensive as fuck, highly polarization dependent, almost impossible to splice.

<comment><USER8> Nonetheless it feels like at least every few months or even weeks a new announcement appears in pop-science sites like eurekalert and phys.org. Feels a little bit like the always around the corner next big battery tech.

Most fascinating thing i've read years ago they'd be _the_ prime candidate for manufacturing in space, because real vacuum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kind of fitting that this was done in Eindhoven, a city that formed around the Philips light bulb factory.

It's a place that celebrates a history of making stuff glow.

<comment><USER10> I graduated from TU/e and in my experience their applied physics department, specifically nanomaterials like this are very well funded and attract a lot of international talent.

Eindhoven likes light! And....making bridges out of beer crates: [https://www.ed.nl/default/tu-e-studenten-vestigen-nieuw- reco...](https://www.ed.nl/default/tu-e-studenten-vestigen-nieuw-record-met- bierkrattenbrug-video-foto-s~a0720318/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So bad, had to stop reading.

>> cubic crystal lattice that allows electrons to move within the lattice under certain voltage conditions. But it doesn't allow similar movement for photons, and that's why light can't move through silicon easily.

Uhhh.. not really. I'll try to explain (forgive my ad-lib MatSci from 20 years ago). Efficient light generation is a matter of direct or indirect bandgap. A direct transition is one where the electron wave number is unchanged in dropping from the high to low energy state, so it can be completed with a single photon (light). An indirect transition fails conservation of energy and momentum with one photon, so it requires phonon (heat) interactions. Semiconductors have an energy gap between the highest few occupied state and the lowest few unoccupied states, and these are the only states that can exchange energy. Direct transitions generate mostly photons, so even if it gets absorbed, it will get re-emitted intact until it leaves the material. Indirect transitions means that phonons remove energy each time, so it all becomes heat. In normal conditions, Indirect materials are more transparent, although direct materials can become transparent by population inversion, which is when there are more electrons in the high-energy states then the low- energy states for the bandwidth of the photons being generated. Then any photon generated is more likely to generate more photons on its way out (stimulated emission) than to be absorbed. This is what you want. Okay I'll stop now, but there are tricks that you can use to get this behavior in silicon, an indirect-bandgap material, which is the topic of the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> Super cool -- one challenge will be that in order to live on the hot processors of today, these emitters will need to still work at around 400K -- the good news is that these appear to still work well at around 300K -- but it sounds like these go to nearly no bandgap at higher temperatures and shift into the infrafred. But yea, pretty awesome stuff..

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't infrared be acceptable for data transmission?

<comment><USER14> Not sure how applicable it is, but the IrDA (Infrared Data Association) protocol tops out at only 16Mbps.

<comment><USER15> False.

>GigaIR: 512 Mbit/s – 1 Gbit/s, NRZI, 2-ASK, 4-ASK, 8b/10b

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

<comment><USER16> GigaIR seems to be vapourware from 2008 that died since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If anyone is interested in how this new material is made: it's literally grown from scratch.

Imagine a 3D printer at atom scale. But because the scale is so small, the nozzle has to deposit a gas.

The magic is in making the individual gas molecules get to the right place.

Layer by layer, to what theory predicted would be a light emitting configuration.

Incredible achievement.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2150-y/figures/6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2150-y/figures/6)

<comment><USER18> MOVPE is more of a self-assembly process than 3D printing, and it has been around for decades.

BTW It is worth noting from your link that the silicon is being grown on a GaAs substrate, so to be useful they would have to figure out how to grow the silicon wire on a silicon substrate. (GaAs already has many options for optical devices.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really impressed they stuck at it, by the sounds of it there's still a lot of work to do. Hopefully it won't be another 50 years before we see it adopted at scale.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is the breakthrough here about emission or transmission? Or is the physics for these two connected? It's not clear to me, between the title and the article.

Secondly, could using a "photonic" memory bus bring RAM access speeds close to cache speeds, or is the transmission distance/time not the main issue there?

<comment><USER21> Transmission time isn't really the main issue, it's more about the work required to get a memory request through the levels of the hierarchy to DRAM and back. Probing each level of cache, propagating through the miss queues, translation (maybe with TLB miss), waiting for the DRAM controller, etc.

<comment><USER22> What? That doesn't make sense. If cache probing would be the cause for DRAM accesses being slow, we wouldn't need caches. We would just access DRAM directly!

It's the other way around: DRAM accesses are slow, that's why we need caches.

> _translation (maybe with TLB miss)_

In most architectures, the caches are physically addressed, so TLB lookups occur _before_ even L1 cache access. Successful TLB lookups are extremely fast! And you can't skip the TLB, even if you don't have any data caches.

<comment><USER23> > In most architectures, the caches are physically addressed, so TLB lookups > occur before even L1 cache access.

So to see if a memory location is contained in a cache line, a TLB lookup is needed to first get the physical address? I wouldn't have expected this, can you expand on why this is the case?

<comment><USER24> See Linus Torvalds' thesis, section 4.3.3 "The case against virtual data caches": [https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kutvonen/index_files/linus.pdf](https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kutvonen/index_files/linus.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Modern transistors, which function as a computer's brain cells, are only a > few atoms long. If they are packed too tightly, that can cause all sorts of > problems: electron traffic jams, overheating, and strange quantum effects. > One solution is to replace some electronic circuits with optical connections > that use photons instead of electrons to carry data around a chip._

Journalists need to be educated: Transmission lines are photonic, so silicon already has connections carrying data around using photons. As you would expect, those photons are traveling at the speed of light in the material.

If I were king, I would demand that every optical-silicon publication explicitly describe why their optical photons are more desirable than microwave photons that are already in widespread use.

</comment><comment><USER25> On a scale of zero to really big deal. How much of a big deal is this?

<comment><USER26> Photonic can only be up to 20% faster... And I'm talking about a fully photonic cpu, not an hybrid one that has a light/electricity translation cost.

<comment><USER27> > Photonic can only be up to 20% faster...

How did you come up with that number? The speed of travel? That's not really the main bottleneck in current computer architectures, at least not yet.

Using photons would enable quite different architectures that we haven't even conceived of yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Silicon photodiodes and LEDs are in the infrared range, so they still can be considered light emitting

</comment><comment><USER29> Really not sure this is the correct way to think about it, but if the silicon is now transparent and parts of it are emitting light, how is the focus limited / controlled ie. how does a receiver know from emitter it should be receiving from?

</comment><comment><USER30> How long until isolinear optical chips, then?

[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Isolinear_chip](https://memory- alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Isolinear_chip)

</comment><comment><USER31> Anybody else annoyed by this being written up as if the research was just published?

</comment><comment><USER32> You can get light out of anything.

All you need to do is shoot it with a photon bean, and the when material can no longer absorb the photons you send at it, it will begin releasing them as reflection. But the one you are shooting in aren't the same ones that are coming out.

</comment><comment><USER33> Good. This means less heat, and a much faster transmission.

</comment><comment><USER34> Title : "After 50 Years of Effort".... 1st Para : "NEARLY FIFTY YEARS ago, Gordon Moore..."

</comment><comment><USER35> > Modern transistors, which function as a computer's brain cells

Who's the target audience for this analogy? If you understand what a brain cell is then you probably know what a transistor is too. I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain cell is.

<comment><USER36> You don't need to know the details of a brain cell to get the analogy. If I say "transistor" to my mom, she wouldn't be able to tell me what it is. If I say "It's like the brain cells for the computer", she would probably understand that "Ah, so a computer has many transistors that helps it think", which seems good enough for an article with a broad audience.

> I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain > cell is

I'm happy to take you up on that bet, but it depends on what bubble you ask. In San Francisco/Silicon Valley, that's probably true, but outside any high- tech bubbles, more people know that we have brain cells in our heads, than we have transistors in our computers, I'm fairly sure.

<comment><USER37> I would take that bet, too. If you say "transistor" to non-technical people over 50 or so, they more likely would think of small portable radios ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio)). To them, and many others, computers don't have transistors, they have chips.

They _might_ know the transistor replaced vacuum tubes, but I doubt many would be able to tell what function either had, or be able to point out the transistors inside such a radio.

<comment><USER38> Is that a USA/North America thing, based on calling radio sets "transistor radios"?

Here in the UK we had "the wireless", and I'm confident that my parents - <USER3> 70s - who were the generation of first domestic computer ownership in the UK would associate "transistor" primarily with computers.

<comment><USER39> Definitely not just a USA thing, "transistor" also meant "transistor radio" in Russian back in the day.

(E.g. this song from 1982: [https://learnsongs.ru/song/dinamik-na-plyazhe- pleshchet-voln...](https://learnsongs.ru/song/dinamik-na-plyazhe-pleshchet- volna-68477))

<comment><USER40> Same in India!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Odd Comments and Strange Doings in Unix - <AUTHOR> http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html

<comment><USER2> Is it a coincidence that this appears here on the same day as XKCD 794?

<http://xkcd.com/794/>

There is nothing more fun for a history buff than explanations of old inside jokes.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think this was posted because it was linked in the article from this front page post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1699760></comment></comment>