Gravity-Based Energy Storage Begins Trials 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/gravity-based-energy-storage-half-the-price-of-li-ion-begins-trials-2021 <comment><USER2> Other energy storage media, besides batteries, include underground compressed air, where the weight of earth on top substitutes for an expensive pressure vessel; and molten material, often salt, maintained at high temperature and ready on demand to vaporize a working fluid (such as water) to drive a conventional turbine. And, of course, the old standby is pumping water up to a dam or water tower.

The useful characteristic of all these methods is that they can ramp up power production very quickly. The turbine methods, like present natural gas fired generators, would keep the turbines ticking over at a low rate, and quickly increase the rate when needed. The advantage of the mine-staft weight, like the batteries, is that it can sit entirely turned off as long as you like, and start up instantly anytime.

The advantage of the turbine methods is that there are lots of existing turbines, already wired into the grid, that will soon be going unused.

</comment><comment> cbm-vic-20 Another form of gravity-based energy storage, already in production:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)</comment>


XFS: There and back  and there again? - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/638546/ <comment><USER2> I use XFS everywhere I can: out of the box, it requires no tuning to get near maximum performance, yet I generally have to tune ext3/4 to get what I want (and, largely, I still consider that a bit of voodoo).

Problem is, I run a dedicated server hosting company, and the majority of my customers either want CentOS 6.x or Debian Stable. Neither can install XFS as the root filesystem (but can use it for other filesystems during install, strangely enough; separate ext2/3/4 /boot doesn't fix the issue).

At home I have a mini-server that is 2x M550 128GB SSD, 2x es.2 2TB HDD, with the SSDs partitioned as 16GB md raid1 XFS for /, 256MB for ZFS ZIL, rest for ZFS L2ARC, and the 2x2TB as ZFS mirror; /tank and /home are on ZFS, and / is pretty much empty.

The only thing that would improve XFS at this point is if it supported optional checksumming and LZ4 compression on root filesystems, otherwise its basically perfect.

By the way, said mini-server? Dual core Haswell 3.x GHz, 16GB of DDR3-1600, from pressing the power button, going through BIOS, hammering enter to get past grub menu as fast as possible, it takes about 7 seconds to get to the login prompt; less than 3 of that is between leaving grub and getting to the prompt.

<comment><USER3> > Problem is, I run a dedicated server hosting company, and the majority of my > customers either want CentOS 6.x or Debian Stable. Neither can install XFS > as the root filesystem

FYI, I've got many machines running Debian Stable (wheezy) with xfs root filesystems, no /boot partition. No problems.

<comment><USER2> Debian can physically boot it fine, Debian-Installer still refuses to actually install it with XFS. Its infuriating, and D-I devs are aware of it.

My home server I described? Runs Debian, has XFS root. It clearly works.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a Debian bug ID? D-I has been doing XFS root installs for me for years now, whether it's interactively with the netinst ISO in VMware or remotely with the debian-installer-netboot package, a DHCP server, and an unattended installer preseed file.

<comment><USER2> I just tested it again. XFS now works. It did not work the most recent time I tried (within the past 12 months). The only change in my preseed file I made to test the change was the expert_recipe stanza for /, from ext4 filesystem { ext4 } to xfs filesystem { xfs }.

Thanks for getting me to test again. One less OS I have to deal with that can't do XFS properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The progression in solid-state drives (SSDs) shows slow, unreliable, and "damn expensive" 30GB drives in 2005. Those drives were roughly $10/GB, but today's rack-mounted (3U) 512TB SSDs are less than $1/GB and can achieve 7GB/second performance. That suggests to him that by 2025 we will have 3U SSDs with 8EB (exabyte, 1000 petabytes) capacity at $0.1/GB._

Ignoring the limitations of physics, 8EB at $0.1/GB comes out to $858,993,459. I don't think there will ever be enough of a market to support the mass production of billion-dollar disks.

<comment><USER5> On the other side of the spectrum, I am totes hyped for the day soonish when a 3TB SSD costs $80. Sooner rather than later. In the shorter term, I'm super hyped to see $200 1TB SSDs in the next year or so.

<comment><USER6> $200 TB SSDs is not what you should be excited about... sub-$400 400GB 2400MB/s consumer NVMe SSDs (Intel 750) is what's exciting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every few years, my team compares other filesystems against XFS for sequential write throughput to disk arrays. We consistently get near-block-dev performance with XFS and other filesystems are only starting to approach XFS'.

Consistent throughput is far and away our top ranked requirement, so XFS has ruled for over a decade.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _zeroing of all open files when there is an unclean shutdown. None of those > were true_

That one most definitely _is_ at least partially true. I had experienced this several times using XFS on my home Linux machine in the early 2000s. I use JFS now, but supposedly this bug/misfeature was fixed some time ago, thankfully.

Edit: indeed, the linked slides themselves back me up on this; just three slides after the one quoted by the article, we have "Null files on crash problem fixed!"

<comment><USER9> No, you misunderstand. This is related to the O_PONIES problem ([http://lwn.net/Articles/351422/](http://lwn.net/Articles/351422/)). The bug was software that failed to use datasync when it should have. The files weren't getting zeroed out on shutdown. The data had yet to be flushed to disk, and it wasn't required to be flushed to disk. The metadata was required to be flushed to disk. For security reasons, and unallocated inode data space has to be filled with 0's. So... data not flushed to disk? You get 0's when there is an unclean shutdown.

<comment><USER8> Ah gotcha. So a _different_ files-zeroed-on-close "bug" ;) At least that one makes sense.

<comment><USER9> Also, the bug wasn't in the filesystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, why didn't XFS "win" out over ReiserFS, ext3/4, btrfs, or whatever else is being pushed nowadays?

<comment><USER11> Btrfs is still very new as a filesystem. There's little evidence that it can hold up in production use. It is similar to ZFS, which is the filesystem of choice for many large deployments. Unfortunately ZFS can't be distributed with Linux because of license mismatch.

Ext3/4 are of previous generation of filesystems, their performance on very large volumes is not acceptable. And you don't want your production system to be down because of boot-time fsck for hours.

ReiserFS had some promise years ago, but the project leader is in prison and nobody has picked up the effort. I don't think it's possible for it to close the gap to other filesystems even if Mr. Reiser returns to develop it after his sentence.

<comment><USER12> I am not a lawyer, but I have yet to speak to a lawyer who claimed you could not distribute a Linux kernel module under an "incompatible" license when the said module is not considered a derived work of GPL software. Any Linux port of ZFS is a derived work of OpenSolaris (in the legal sense), such that you can distribute ZFS with Linux as long as it is a separate kernel module. There are plenty of companies doing this. I have spoken to lawyers regarding this and I have yet to meet a lawyer who disagrees when asked if the GPL applies to a Linux ZFS kernel module. To be honest, I did encounter one attorney who thought that certain forms of advertising might be able to trigger the derived works clause, but he considered it to be an avoidable problem and his opinion was an outlier.

<comment><USER11> To my understanding this is quite an open issue, and it's hard to find a company that would want to risk it in court. ZFS on Linux project currently distributes the modules as source, and they are built for particular kernel locally in any machine that needs the modules. This is the same approach as GPU vendors do with their closed source graphics drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Around the turn of the century, I was working for a company that was continuously recording live video streams to a hard drive. Since you can't do that indefinitely, we'd only keep around the last two hours or so. If I recall correctly, XFS was chosen both because of performance and because it was the only filesystem that supported file truncation at the start of the file. It was just a single call to truncate a few hundred meg at the start of the file when you ran out of space. I don't know if any other filesystems support that these days, but it was a great feature for us at the time.

</comment><comment><USER14> The only trouble I ever had was blowing out the stack in highly layered storage setups when using XFS. XFS uses (or used) tons of stack space and if you put, say, LVM, md, and NFS in the mix there just wasn't enough.

Something along these lines, although I never used RHEL: [https://access.redhat.com/solutions/54544](https://access.redhat.com/solutions/54544)

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't XFS the default file system for RHEL now? I remember a video showing the RedHat Devs discussing how they were adding on new features to it.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it is [1]. It works even for /boot. It is also the default filesystem for /home in SLES12 [2]

[1] [http://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat- unveil...](http://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-unveils- rhel-7) [2] [https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/xfs-the- file-...](https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/xfs-the-file-system- of-choice/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In 1994, we used to joke that XFS was a write-only filesystem. The early version was less than stellar. SGI pretty quickly solved the worst issues. It sure was nice not having to wait for 6 hours for a Challenge XL to fsck.

<comment><USER18> Wow, that is uncanny, in 2012, at a former employer, that was our joke for btrfs right before we switched to xfs with Ceph for our OpenStack product. We still had problems that appeared to be locks between xfs above and below Ceph, but nothing catastrophic like the customer problems with btfs where we knew the data had been written, but recover was not reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> XFS is great, now. It had some problems with metadata performance at scale a few years ago (affected early versions of RHEL/CentOS 6, and may be one of the reasons it was not the default in those versions), but it's now the best of the "traditional" filesystems.

> From Btrfs, GlusterFS, Ceph, and others, we know that it takes 5-10 years > for a new filesystem to mature.

Those are bad examples - they are all significantly more complex than XFS/ext. Two of the three are distributed filesystems that aren't solving any of the same problems.

However, their inclusion in the article is worth noting, even if the author put them in the wrong paragraph. Increasingly, large volumes are becoming distributed over lots of individual servers, with technologies like glusterfs and ceph. Both of these, and some of their competitors too (xtreemfs is also really good, despite the silly name), use traditional filesystems on the underlying server volumes that are presented as a large distributed FS. XFS is generally used for this task - and unless an individual node got larger than ~ 8EB, there's currently no reason to change this.

The real question, then, becomes - will a single server need a local FS larger than 8EB by 2025-2030? Possibly not. It's very dangerous to say "X is all anyone will ever need", but I think that we're going to increasingly see bulk storage go the same way that CPUs did - instead of a single huge local FS (analogous to increasing single-core clockspeed), we'll see an increasing number of storage nodes combined into one, via a distributed filesystem (analogous to higher core count).

Part of the reason for this is that there are quite a few disadvantages with having very large volumes in one place. RAID rebuilds become unreasonably long, if you use RAID, and RAID rebuild speed is not currently keeping pace with storage growth. If you don't, and solve redundancy with multiple nodes, then the bigger the individual node is, the larger the impact if it fails. At some point, you're also going to need to shift data off that box, and while we're likely to have 100GbE server ports around then[1], even 100GbE is going to take an unreasonably long time to move 8EB anywhere.

1: [https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog56/presentations/Tuesday...](https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog56/presentations/Tuesday/tues.general.kipp.23.pdf)

EDIT: Just did some quick calculations. Assuming a 100 Gigabit server port, that's 12.5 Gigabytes/s. At 12.5 GB/s, it would take over 20 _years_ to transfer 8EB anywhere. The idea that we're going to have 8EB of data on an individual server in that timeframe is starting to look a bit silly, with that in mind - how's it going to get there? What on earth would you do with it once it is there?

Even if by some magic we invent 1TbE and make it cheap enough to use on servers (and invent 10+TbE for the network core) by 2025, that would still take over 2 years to fill the disk. Yes, sorry, but this is just silly. 8EB across lots of individual servers? Sure. But all on one server in a regular filesystem? Not going to happen any time soon.</comment>


Moz raises $10m Series C from Foundry Group - <AUTHOR> https://moz.com/blog/moz-announces-10-million-financing-round <comment><USER2> i've always been a fan of moz, starting with its founder rand fishkin. the value and advice they've provided from the very beginning, it's something i learned a lot from and im sure other founders as well.</comment>


Friday Deploy Freezes Are Like Murdering Puppies - <AUTHOR> https://charity.wtf/2019/05/01/friday-deploy-freezes-are-exactly-like-murdering-puppies/ <comment><USER2> This is a repost</comment>


Cracks in Sidewalk Labs' Toronto waterfront plan - <AUTHOR> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/cracks-appear-in-sidewalk-labs-plan-afterfanfare/article38103236/ <comment><USER2> A good comparison of what Google's probably looking for here is what Disney managed with Disney World: A special zone that exempts them from a lot of regulations, or allows them to set their own. Similarly, of course, Disney was hoping to build a "city of the future" there. The difference is, Disney got permission to do this in the middle of nowhere (literally swampland), and Google's hoping to get this authority inside a major metropolitan area.

I watched a video recently on it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeWOc- cjfY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeWOc-cjfY0) ("Disney World's Private Government", 8 minutes, decently informative)

<comment><AUTHOR> That was fascinating, thanks for sharing. I had no idea Disney World was about the size of San Francisco (!). It seems to operate like a sovereign city-state in the middle of Florida.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What strikes me about this is that Toronto notably gave relatively little in terms of incentives during the Amazon HQ2 hoopla [1], yet here we have a case where it seems that the city has ceded a bit too much in order to land a headline-grabbing deal. It's tough to tell which side is being unreasonable.

[1] [http://business.financialpost.com/technology/ontario-to- offe...](http://business.financialpost.com/technology/ontario-to-offer-amazon- nothing-new-for-its-hq2-except-a-quality-education)

<comment><USER2> It sounds like a group responsible specifically for the waterfront agreed to the Google arrangement without really getting approval from the city, and the city kinda went with it for the good press, but now looking into the details is having doubts.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Mr. Tory, who has praised the Sidewalk initiative but has not seen the text of the deal, says no commercial agreement could strip the city of its authority"

Seems to fit with your explanation. I'd like to think the mayor would have some familiarity with the details of an initiative like this.

<comment><USER3> > _" Mr. Tory, who has praised the Sidewalk initiative but has not seen the > text of the deal, says no commercial agreement could strip the city of its > authority"_

This is a quite disingenuous argument.

The general rule in common law countries is that legislatures can't bind their future selves. So in theory no contract can constrain a government with legislative power.

What constrains them is that voiding contracts by exercising that legislative power has ruinous side-effects. It makes it harder to find bidders for contracts, harder to find suppliers, hard to borrow money, all because you just demonstrated a willingness to use your get-out-of-anything-free card without a truly compelling public interest at stake. The reason people are comfortable undertaking large contracts is that the law will keep folks more or less on the level. If you break that guarantee, people will simply not contract with you.

Governments around the world frequently wear the consequences of horrible contracts with terrible terms, because the consequences of undermining confidence in their contractual safety are much worse.

So, in fact, if they sign a contract, they are going to be more or less stuck with it. Even if it's terrible. So it matters what's being signed.

Of course, I am not a lawyer. Hell, in Toronto I can't even call myself an "engineer".

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not a lawyer either, but contracts can be breached and damages paid when it is a more favourable outcome [1]. I doubt he was suggesting anything that would undermine the rule of law, though.

[1] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/efficient_breach_theory](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/efficient_breach_theory)

<comment><USER3> The point is that reputation is important if you wish to form contracts in future. Doubly so if you already have the aces of hearts, diamonds, spades and _especially_ clubs up your sleeve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What did I just read? It's long and devoid of any substance.

Considering its a public agreement between GTA and Google, it is insane the public works be kept in this much dark.

<comment><USER5> it's interesting that sidewalk labs doesn't seem to care but toronto does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just want to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate that headline.</comment>


Complete overview of webpack's architecture in 20 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tQiJaFzuJ8&t=2143s <comment><USER2> Great Conference. I'm looking forward to using ng larkin :)</comment>


StateMan:  a small library for creating complex routing, inspired by ui-router - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/leeluolee/stateman

<comment><USER2> need some example to integrated with other view-focused frameworks.</comment>


Kung fu sisters stage combat tournament to find men to date - <AUTHOR> http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/843781-kung-fu-sisters-stage-combat-tournament-to-find-men-to-date <comment><USER2> <<<<insta transitioning to new internet dating business model.

Mortal Kombat meets e-Harmony.

Fight for your matches, win your dates. Love is war.

The target market seems motley, yet distinct(ly desperate).

Ok...someone needs to do an Internet video spoof off this.</comment>


Can Microsoft Salvage Windows Phone? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/13/can-microsoft-salvage-windows-phone/

<comment><USER2> As a person who recently switched from Android to a Windows Phone, I believe they can. The platform itself is fantastic. Once people start using the OS they fall in love with it. The problem is that most people don't even know that the OS exists. Most people I talk to think that it's Windows Mobile and that's very difficult to get the past. Now that I have had this phone for over a month, I must admit that I am not sure I could go back to Android. Android seems to be missing a certain polish that WP7 and iOS have. It also doesn't help that from a design perspective Android doesn't seem to have an identity. Many Android phone interfaces look and act differently. As a programmer this can be a nightmare but more so as a consumer I can't just tell someone to buy an Android phone. I have to qualify it with a specific model since they are all so different. Windows Phone almost has the opposite problem since there is so little variance in design from one phone to the next, but I appreciate that. It's like the way I wish PCs were shipped - without all of that OEM garbage that can make a fast computer as slow as a netbook out of the box.

<comment><USER3> I agree that the problem doesn't seem to be quality so much as mindshare. Seems like the same thing that happened with the Zune. The product was compelling enough, but was ultimately too little, too late.

 _Many Android phone interfaces look and act differently. As a programmer this can be a nightmare_

I've had a few Android phones, and I wouldn't call the differences drastic. I don't see how visual tweaks to the interface would make a big difference to developers. Seems like hardware and OS version differences would be a much bigger issue.

 _but more so as a consumer I can't just tell someone to buy an Android phone._

What? I wouldn't even ever recommend someone to just get any old iPhone. When I recommend a phone, I recommend the specific model that I think would fit their needs. Would you recommend someone to get any old Windows computer? Any old Mac, even? Dishonest argument.

Even as a Google fanboy, I recognize that Android has plenty of drawbacks. You've named only imaginary ones.

<comment><USER4> Playing devil's advocate here, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any _new_ Mac or any new _iPhone_ to an average computer or phone user. Even Apple's lowest priced options are up to the task of all but the most demanding applications (state of the art 3D games, video editing, multi-track music processing, etc.).

<comment><USER3> So, you'd say, "Just grab any Mac in the Apple Store."? or any iPhone?

I just recently advised a friend very carefully on whether she should get a Macbook Air or a Macbook Pro. It was a tough decision with a lot of considerations.

There are now 3 iPhones available at different price points with substantial differences in speed and capability.

This really doesn't seem like a line of reasoning worth advocating.

<comment><USER4> I guess I'm comparing it to what it was like in the early 2000s and 1990s. If someone asked me what computer they should get, I'd have to think about the quality of the manufacturer, the processor speed, the memory, the hard drive space and the type of removable storage (floppy, cd, dvd).

These days you can go into an Apple Store and buy the cheapest Mac Mini they make and know you'll walk out with a good computer. You simply can't buy a severely compromised Mac anymore. Computer hardware just isn't getting better at fast enough pace to worry about it.

I think we're reaching that point with phones as well. The 3GS may be a tougher sell, but I still have one and it's snappy with IOS5 and does everything I need it to do. There are very few reasons someone would "need" an iPhone 4 or 4S. The same can't be said for something like the iPhone 1 or 3G, those both became dog slow.

<comment><USER3> It's true that there is a much greater diversity of Android handsets than there are iOS or Windows Phone handsets. You can read that as a feature or a bug.

I, for one, would never simply tell anyone to just get the cheapest Mac Mini at the Apple Store. If someone is coming to me for advice, it's because they want my informed opinion, and my advice is going to be considered in the light of their needs.

If you're saying that you're simply tired of having to think about things like that, then, sure, Android is too hard. I disagree that that's a problem with Android.

<comment><USER4> There are some cheap Android phones with ancient OS's and terrible screens. Maybe you aren't likely to end up with one, I don't know.

I'd still give someone advice about which Mac to buy, but I don't think an uninformed buyer is going to go wrong with any of the options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If we agree that eventually (within 15 years or so) all phones will be smartphones and that almost everyone on earth older than 10 will own one, you can see why I'm still bullish on RIM and MS. A relatively small number of companies (Apple, Google, RIM, MS) are fighting over a huge market which will grow from millions today to hundreds of millions to billions in time. Managing to capture or hold onto even 10% of that market will pay off handsomely.

<comment><USER6> The problem with that thinking is that this has become a war of ecosystems from a battle of devices (to paraphrase Nokia's CEO). Only a few platforms can hold developer attention and if you're a 10% player in 2015, the developers might not care enough to make a version of an app for you. If the ecosystem is not there, the users aren't, too. The desktop market exploded in the 90s, but where were the incumbents in the mid 80s like Amiga?

This lead to Palm/HP's exit from the mobile business inspite of having a nice product, the lack of ecosystem is quite damaging. This is the reason RIM is in trouble too. MS has a better shot with their developer tools, developer relations and perseverance(see XBox). Not to mention Android licensing fees and the Windows/Office/Server cashcows. They were able to get developers to write ~30,000 apps in less than a year for a nascent platform with zero users one year ago.

Nokia wasn't going anywhere with Symbian, wanted to get Meego going, but it wasn't ready fast enough on enough phones and wasn't confident on seeding yet another new ecosystem, so they took the drastic decision of ditching it and aligning with the WP ecosystem.

RIM is a one trick pony with nowhere to go, and the attempt to come out of the decline with the Playbook seems to have gone badly wrong. BBM works for only so long as a lock-in mechanism.

<comment><USER7> In the first phase of modern smartphones the core applications were enough of a selling point: mail, browser, and maps. Now there are plenty of low-cost phones which do all 3 of those well enough they aren't a differentiator, so the decision point has switched to games, apps, and other features which has put more emphasis on the ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like the article states, WP7 is a great OS with a polished user experience and it should have more market share than it does, but why doesn't it? I blame marketing.

For one, it's fucking called __Windows __Phone 7. Glad Microsoft didn't call the XBox the Microsoft Windows Game Box. I also wonder how much of Android's success in the US can be atributed to Verizon's Droid branding.

Secondly, Microsoft can't seem to sell coolness. Every laymen knows about the latest hot Android or iPhone, but few know about a cool WP7 phone. You don't have celebrities selling WP7 phones. Once again, look at Verizon and Droid.

And lastly, WP7 has very poor carrier support. Walk into any store and you'll have Android phones lining the walls with maybe one or two WP7 phones in some corner somewhere. Microsoft needs to convince/pay the carriers to support their devices as first class citizens. Verizon and Android is another great example. Or MS can pull a play from Apple's play book and sell from their own retail stores.

</comment><comment><USER9> No. They have a fundamentally broken model. They're trying to sell a product that is being given away for free by their competitor who has the lion share of the market. Windows Mobile OS needs to be a step function better than its competitors to justify the premium, and it just simply isn't that good. We have to remember that smart phones these days are not only the user experience of the OS, but also the apps.

I actually do think there is a way to salvage the Windows OS. And Microsoft is not going to like it. It is to build the OS on top of Android and leverage Android apps. Then offer a premium experience for enterprise and high-end consumers. But Microsoft would never admit defeat in this way, and because of that, they will fail.

<comment><USER10> Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Competitor's 'free' OS comes with 'patent fees' to MS. So if you are a HW manufacturer choosing between Android and WP7 you will pay either way.

[1] [http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/05/27/htc-pays-5-per- andro...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/05/27/htc-pays-5-per-android- license-to-microsoft/)

[2] [http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/samsung-takes- androi...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/samsung-takes-android- patent-license.html)

<comment><USER11> Patents are only a short term advantage and they know it - Google doesn't have lots of patents but they have cash and, surprise, they have gone shopping already.

Just wait until Google, Samsung, HTC, LG and maybe smaller players like Acer form a coalition and go after Microsoft - a company that is not a patent trol, that can be attacked and that will take a stock market hit in the case of failure.

What really works for Microsoft at this point is just plain old FUD, but that doesn't lasts long.

<comment><USER6> >Just wait until Google, Samsung, HTC, LG and maybe smaller players like Acer form a coalition and go after Microsoft

Google has never filed an offensive patent suit. Also, MS can retaliate against almost every Google product out there.

Samsung, HTC are MS patent licensees and make Windows Phones. In fact, HTC came into the world phone market by making WM phones.

LG makes Windows Phones.

Acer's biggest business is being a Windows OEM.

Why would they waste tens of millions of dollars trying to shake down MS? If you think these are going to come together and file a patent lawsuit against the biggest patenter, I suspect you're wrong.

>..will take a stock market hit in the case of failure

The dent in MS's revenues even in the case of successful patent suits against it, compared to the cash brought in by their cashcows will be a blip on the radar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm waiting to see what Nokia comes up with before making a call one way or the other. Personally I'm really intrigued by what I've seen of WP7 and would definitely consider it for my next phone. The main thing holding me back at the moment though is that the choice of hardware is very limited and the little that does exists is rather uninspiring and quite expensive compared to Android phones. HTC and Samsung seem totally uninterested in WP7 and are only going through the motions with their handsets. Hopefully a company that is 100% behind the platform can breathe some life into the hardware side of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER13> It appears that the software is well received but my question is where are the handsets? I am looking forward to seeing Nokia's offerings as the LG and HTC phones have not been very appealing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Think there is room for one more player in the market. Think Amazon, Facebook, or a partnership between the two could really make a splash. Eventually when the HTML5 frameworks become more developed and there's more fluidity between the app stores, who knows how that will change the landscape. But I don't think Microsoft can move fast enough anymore to compete in the ever quickening marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER15> "...the only thing standing in the way of Microsoft's ascendency is price when compared to similarly outfitted Android and iOS models"

Uh, author just kind of threw that in there, unsupported. You could have said the same thing about Apple back in about 1997, but it wouldn't have been true, either.

</comment><comment><USER16> the vertical scale of that graph does not make much sense

<comment><USER17> Specifically, stacking means that that blackberry's dip makes symbian's drop look far too drastic. Windows ~10% (eyeballing it) to ~0% seems significant and relevant to the article, but it gets washed out in the graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not just the quality of the platform. Look at PalmPre for why that's not the most important aspect. There are lots of complicated reasons why a platform becomes popular or not.

Also, there very much is an aspect of trust involved. Apple and google built up a lot of trust in different ways in providing excellent experiences to users. Apple with OS/X and the iPod. Google with gmail, search, maps, chrome, etc. When presented with the idea of an iPod phone or a google-apps phone a lot of people had enough trust to buy into it. As those platforms have matured that trust has only grown.

MS has the opposite problem. MS has built up distrust with its previous, clunky iterations of windows mobile, and it hasn't built up sufficient trust in its ability to even _deliver_ reliably. The problems with the Kin, Zune, and Vista haven't helped.

<comment><USER18> I agree, but that's actually an argument for persevering with the platform. That trust problem can only be fixed with time and continuing investment, and dropping platforms if they don't succeed right away would only compound the trust deficit (especially with developers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Windows phone unfortunately has become the "Zune" of MP3 players. It was better than iPod, the software was killer. The Zune pass was more conveniet than clunky old itunes but nobody cared. The brand associated with it was not cool and hence a superior product died a premature death.

As the article says, Windows phone is in the same boat. The interface is innovative and functional. The app library has most of the essential apps. Performance is pretty good and the reviews are great but the users don't crave it.

Microsoft's marketing and partner efforts have clearly failed here.

<comment><USER20> I agree - I'm a proud owner of a Windows phone, but it was hard to even find a store that sold one. I wonder if having the Metro UI in Windows 8 will help Microsoft out with a little cross-pollination.</comment></comment>


Sony considers offering reward to help catch hackers - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20060661-83.html <comment><USER2> They should spend their money on rewards for people who submit security bugs instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> the rewards sony is offering to helpful hackers include: jail time, equipment seizure, bad publicity, and evil looks.</comment>


Build Android Apps in PicoLisp Without an Android SDK - <AUTHOR> https://picolisp.com/wiki/?pilbox <comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, OP: did you fall in the same rabbit hole I fell into after reading the article about the chorded keyboard, finding the link to the picolisp wiki and seeing the snippets about showing notifications on Android via picolisp?

<comment><USER3> I'd love to see like a browser extension to news aggregators that works like that. I'm sure there are lots of things a few clicks away from a lot of the articles that get posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is similar to how LÖVE games work on Android [1], you download the app from the store and then load a .zip file of your game and it runs inside that. You can then make it into its own app and publish it to the store.

[1] [https://bitbucket.org/MartinFelis/love-android- sdl2/wiki/FAQ...](https://bitbucket.org/MartinFelis/love-android- sdl2/wiki/FAQ_-_Frequently_Asked_Questions)

<comment><USER5> LÖVE is awesome and Android port works great. The fastest interpreted language that also happens to be elegant and easy to learn, coupled with dead-simple input/graphics/audio/physics API you can actually remember. The APK is tiny when compared to other frameworks, some 4 Mb + assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kind of LambdaNative? [http://www.lambdanative.org/](http://www.lambdanative.org/)

<comment><USER7> A bit.

But what fills _me_ with joy is the REPL. It's hugely helpful when trying to make use of unfamiliar APIs.

<comment><USER8> On limited input devices as tablets and phones I haven't yet found anything better than Lisping.

[https://appadvice.com/app/lisping/512138518](https://appadvice.com/app/lisping/512138518)

Which appears to no longer be available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm slightly confused by this paragraph, what is being emulated and aren't most android devices 32 bit these days?

"It comes with PicoLisp binaries for Arm64 pre-installed. If your device has an Arm32 CPU, you can - after installing the PilBox App but before starting it - download and install the emulator version [https://software- lab.de/arm32.zip](https://software-lab.de/arm32.zip). If this was done by mistake, you can revert to Arm64 binaries with..."

<comment><USER10> I'm confused too, how do you install the zip file?

Even one of the feedback posts mentions problem solved by "just installing the emulator version".

So I download arm32.zip in, say, firefox, and then what? Open it with PilBox just crashes. Clicking it in a file manager shows me the zip contents. Am I supposed to extract it somewhere? I'm not rooted so can't see the app dirs.

<comment><USER11> The easiest way seems to be to download it with a browser, and then immediately click on "open" in the little dialog which pops up in the browser after it downloaded the zip. It is then passed to PilBox.

Clicking on a Zip in the Downloads app works on some devices, but other systems only offer to extract the files which does not help here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a node-red instance that does a similar thing, to allow drag-n-drop programming (Including UI), and (using dnr) heterogeneous cluster processing on mobiles (ios and android).

It starts a node-red server on the device, and uses cordova to host the webview.

I'm in the process of adding an ag-grid node so you can do complex UIs in the dev environment on the phone/tablet.

[https://github.com/alexisread/noreml](https://github.com/alexisread/noreml)

</comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr on how it works:

> The PilBox App itself (called the "PilBox kernel") is written in Java, the > normal Android way. It displays a WebView GUI, and starts a PicoLisp binary > compiled for Arm64 CPUs. This binary may now run any PicoLisp program, by > setting up a local web server where the WebView component connects to, > possibly opening a database, and doing whatever is desired.

I think this is a really cool project and I'm all for new (to me) lisp dialects doing their thing, but reading the main page, the tag line and copy don't seem to match, for my definition of "simple":

> [picolisp is] Programming simplified!

> PicoLisp is a programming language, or really a programming system, > including a built-in database engine and a GUI system!

These two statements seem to be at odds.

That aside, I do like the idea because I'm a huge fan of the HTML/JS/CSS display paradigm for it's easy cross-platform support.

I also like reducing the "mobile app" to really just interacting with a single local "edge" (which is what people are calling client-side programs these days I think) server. Just me personally but I would love it if all frontend development was reduced to HTML/CSS/JS -- I have no desire to learn QT/GDK+/wxWidgets/whatever else (just like I don't like learning Java for Android, Swift/ObjC for iOS, Java for Blackberry, etc), and firmly believe that eventually performance will be comparable (or close enough to not matter) and support for native features will be passable.

<comment><USER8> Easy cross platform at the expense of user experience.

<comment><USER14> Not to mention dev experience. JS is a horrible language that doesn't scale beyond script kiddie nonsense.

<comment><USER15> But but hundreds of top websites and now even unity uses js, definitely not script kiddie

<comment><USER14> This is all by unfortunate necessity, certainly not by choice. The very raison d'etre of languages like TypeScript that transpile to JavaScript is because of the flaws of this hack language that simply found itself in the right place at the right time in history

<comment><USER16> And it's all only temporary in light of WebAssembly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish that Armed Bear Common Lisp supported Android — that'd be awesome.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't? To my knowledge it generates .java files, right?

<comment><USER19> It uses reflection in ways that Dalvik didn't support last time I checked.

<comment><USER20> Dalvik is discontinued, replaced by something called the Android Runtime. Though that might also not support said reflection ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> AFAIK PicoLisp is pretty Arc-like so this should be doubly relevant here. :-)

<comment><USER22> Yea...it uses "de" to define a function instead of "defun". People always hate on it for no macros, but macros don't make since when you only have an interpreter. I don't fully understand how, but I've heard people in the past explain how they're irrelevant in Picolisp and how you can still extend the syntax with standard functions somehow. Maybe a picolisper could give some examples?

Shout out that there are two free online books on Picolisp.

<comment><USER23> You dont need macros as you have fexpr's which don't evaluate it's arguments. It fits much better into the language, and they are first class. See [https://picolisp.com/wiki/?prosandcons](https://picolisp.com/wiki/?prosandcons)

And [https://software-lab.de/doc/refM.html#macro](https://software- lab.de/doc/refM.html#macro) for the usage of macros.

More importantly it doesn't need lambda, just lists, and quote quotes all arguments not just the first one. An extremely simple and small lisp-1 interpreter, comparable to the old AutoLISP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't believe I've seen apps look like that since Android Cupcake. If you really want to build apps without using Java or the Android SDK you should look into Dart/Flutter.

<comment><USER25> You still need the Android SDK to use Flutter on Android

</comment></comment><comment> hk-mars I donnot like any lisp implemented by Java, very bad taste of developer already.

<comment><USER26> The Lisp is native. This is a Java app that coordinates a native binary running pickup to present a web server that is used by the webview.

<comment><USER12> I have a node-red instance that does a similar thing, to allow drag-n-drop programming (Including UI), and (using dnr) heterogeneous cluster processing on mobiles (ios and android).

It starts a node-red server on the device, and uses cordova to host the webview.

I'm in the process of adding an ag-grid node so you can do complex UIs in the dev environment on the phone/tablet.

[https://github.com/alexisread/noreml](https://github.com/alexisread/noreml)</comment></comment></comment>


The Time Value Of Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/the-time-value-of-money.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29 <comment><USER2> Odd nit-pick: _When prices of things rise faster than they should, we call that inflation._

I have no idea what "faster than they should" means in this case, and it frankly doesn't matter - it's inflation if prices rise at all (and deflation if they fall).

<comment><USER3> I think what is meant by that statement is that in an ideal scenario, the money supply would expand annually to the exact same degree as the net growth of the value of goods and services in the economy. Inflation is the degree to which growth in the monetary base outpaces economic growth, at least in the short term.

That definition obviously carries many assumptions about net investment flows, savings rates, market efficiency, etc., but I think it's what is meant by "faster than they should."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Which leads me to my final point. Markets set rates. Banks don't and > governments don't. Banks and governments certainly impact rates and > governments can do a lot to impact rates and they do all the time. But at > the end of the day it is you and me and it is the traders, both speculators > and hedgers, who determine how much of a discount we'll accept to get our > money now and how much interest we'll want to wait another year.

Technically that's a true statement, but in practice governments can set interest rates as artificially low as they want.

How they do this: Government officials can lend money to banks at less than the rate of inflation. That makes it in a everyone's interest to borrow as much as they can and buy any hard asset remotely likely to appreciate or even hold its value with it.

The inflation becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at that point. More money comes into existence by being lent, it's immediately put into chasing hard assets, which increases the price of assets. Which then makes it make sense to borrow money and buy hard assets with it, because next year the asset will be worth more than the loan because of the inflation.

Long story short - technically sorta true, but governments can reduce interest rates dramatically at the expense of inflation, which then becomes cyclical. More inflation means more demand for lower interest rate money, which means more inflation. The author's point is correct in theory, though in practice governments can set interest rates basically as artificially low as they want. (Getting them artificially high doesn't seem possible in the current generally practiced monetary/banking/legal/tax systems)

So - correct in theory point, but in practice governments who control fiat currencies can set interest rates as low as they want (albeit it with some nasty side effects).</comment>


McCarthy - Dijkstra short polemics in 1976 - <AUTHOR> http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/04/mccarthy-dijkstra-short-polemics-in.html <comment><USER2> I had trouble figuring out if they were joking with each other or being serious. Regardless, I must say that they both have a quite peculiar style of writing, and it was cool to see the human side of two people that I've studied so much.

The previous post referenced at the top ([http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-dijkstra- bl...](http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-dijkstra-blogged- about-lisp.html)) also has a lot of great material.

</comment><comment><USER3> Warning: Sunglasses may be required when viewing this site in combination with others that use lighter backgrounds...</comment>


How far you can get if you leave the largest U.S. cities at rush hour - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/escape-time/ <comment><USER2> The second graphic confirms my hypothesis ... that los angeles employers have somehow staggered their hours (or given the employees more liberty) and that rush hour has become more equally distributed over a larger time range. This remediation has helped increase the number of cars commuting on the roads without significantly growing the underlying infrastructure (Washington seems to have the same pattern but I can't speak to that).

You can see the middle yellow dot is about equal distance between the red and teal ones. Recently (say 2013-) when I've gotten on the freeway at about 8:30pm in Culver City (near the 10/405 heading east), I've been shocked to see it's light rush-hour style traffic (generally under 40mph + cars keeping close distance + lots of brake lights). Honestly it's about 9:30/10pm when it starts to free up.

In the morning time, commute starts about 5:30 and goes to 10/10:30am and then the home commute starts up again around 2/2:30pm and goes until about 9:30pm.

I have a place about 250 meters from the freeway and I can hear the pickup in the ambient freeway noise starting around 5:00 in the morning until about 5:30 where it reaches approximately its maximum background noise.

People do the same "rush hour driving" at this time. There's a small distance between cars and large density of vehicles, but nobody has made a mistake to slow everyone down yet so people are doing this at a "let's beat the traffic" speed of around 80mph. It's so enormously dangerous. Take the 405 from the valley to santa monica once at this time and you'll understand why there's multiple accidents every day.

This is different from when I was in high school in the 90s. I went from essentially Agoura Hills to Encino. The freeway was empty until about 6:30 and then when I was lucky enough to have a free period where I wouldn't have to show up until I think 930? I could leave at 8:30 and it would be a breeze on in.

So in 20 years at least from my observation, the rush hour window maybe has increased about an hour either way.

<comment><USER3> Something that I think they missed (or else I missed) is that going from downtown LA westbound in the evening rush hour isn't the worst one - it's going east from the west side. Living west and working east is practically reverse-commuting on the 10.

The west side in particular is basically the land of "rush hour never ends" to an unbelievable extent compared to my experiences in the Bay Area, Seattle, Atlanta, and Austin (all which have plenty of people stuck with terrible commutes) - it's just a different magnitude of practically-never-ending-pain on every possible route.

<comment><USER4> A big part of this is that the 405 acts as a giant nearly impenetrable wall separating the west side from everywhere else. The few underpasses that exist (Ohio, etc) become horrific logjams every day. I've spent 45 min going 1/4 mile to get past the 405.

<comment><USER5> Holy crap. I'd get a motorcycle and lane split if I were you. Have a friend out in LA that does this. It cut down on his commute time significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The analysis conflicts with personal recollection. It seems to show leaving SF at 4pm and being able to get to roughly central Mountain View in an hour. Google Maps says that if I leave today at 4pm, that trip takes "typically 1h - 1h50m" which in my experience is about right. One hour is a good outcome, not a normal one. In a car, at rush hour, sometimes it could take an hour to go four blocks down Battery Street in SF.

Also, of course, the article has neglected other modes than cars. If you leave on a rush hour Acela train from Boston you'll be in Providence in 33 minutes, well outside even their 10pm driving radius for Boston.

<comment><USER7> Seattle also seems very... optimistic.

<comment><USER8> It seems like it's assuming that you're starting on the freeway already... totally ignoring the 30+ minutes it takes to get onto I-5

<comment><USER9> Yeah, also it is not averaging well given geographic constraints, so the 4, 7, and 10 distances are the same(ish) for all directions except north and south and directly along i90, which makes their distribution seem oddly narrow

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the interesting things here for me is building market rate housing in the "south bay" region of the Bay Area. Current residents are up in arms about all the 'high rise apartments and condos' being built because they worry about the traffic, but don't consider that Apple alone is dropping 21,000 employees into the area, if they can live close to work you get _less_ traffic. It's a very nimbyish dynamic.

<comment><USER11> Yes, its clearly not about traffic as every office building has an enormous number of car trips, maybe a bit less than homes but not by much I'm guessing, and they are clustered at rush hour.

<comment><USER12> Residents just need to push for a faster OS update cycle. Continual crunch time will mean less traffic as employers won't be leaving the office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this have something to do with getting out of town if Trump starts a nuclear war?

<comment><USER14> This was downvoted (presumably as snark) when I saw it, but I think we can reasonably assume that's the subtext behind why this piece ran today. Not because WaPo believes such a war is imminent, but because people are talking about one.

<comment><USER15> I assumed this was just another insincere and snide comment but then I saw your name. I really don't think it has anything to do with Trump. For starters without any local Washington context giving data for 4, 7 and 10pm makes no sense if the subtext is mass evacuation. More importantly everyone loves talking about traffic in this area, congress is gone so it's a slow news month and the largest infrastructure project in the history of the area was announced yesterday, the Frederick Douglas bridge.

<comment><USER14> I'm not so much commenting about the likelihood of nuclear war, so much as about the empirically obvious fact that discussions of nuclear war are very much in the zeitgeist, most especially in the Washington Post.

<comment><USER15> I didn't think your comment was motivated by the likelihood of nuclear war. Just to add another data point, this was one of two articles posted by this reporter today. The other article was about the likelihood that Reps were conducting town hall meetings in August. The reporter looks like they have a schedule of two articles published in the middle of the month and one at the end of the month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are times I've literally taken half an afternoon off to go somewhere, knowing that when I arrive I'll be sitting around for an hour and a half, because this seems better than traffic. And 99% of people never have that option. It's just gotta be a massive factor in daily stress.

As a society we need to get over the ass-in-chair-9-5 mindset and allow remote work and weird hours to combat rush hour.

<comment><USER17> Seriously improving public transit and reducing car dependency would also help a lot.

(How bad is rush hour traffic in major European cities? I'm not sure.)

<comment><USER11> I'm guessing if you travel by car in major european (and most major cities of the world) rush hour will be similiarly bad. The main difference in European cities is that you often have better options, including better public transit or bike infrastructure, also more housing in the inner city and less endless suburbia. I don't have sources for this but my thoughts are that if traffic was much less more people would elect to use the roads and drive private cars and it would end up as congested as here, as it does when more road infrastructure is built.

<comment><USER18> Not necessarily, since there might not be anywhere to park (or the cost might be too high).

<comment><USER11> Good point, parking in American cities is way too cheap (often free).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I usually leave around 6 pm and my average freeway velocity is 77 MPH (don't go faster because I want to avoid tickets). If I leave at 5 pm, I'll have to drive around 45 MPH for a couple miles, then back to 77 for the remaining 20 miles of my commute.

This is Phoenix, which continues to build out it's freeway system and continues to falsify the "fundamental law of traffic congestion".

<comment><USER20> That god damn heat.

<comment><USER19> Best weather in the country. July and August are hot, Ill give you that, but the rest of the year is awesome. And given I work and live in air-conditioned buildings, and have a huge pool in my backyard, July and August ain't too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I used to live in an exurb of Minneapolis (25 miles) and had to commute to/from the city.

I'm sorry to say that at least for Minneapolis this map is wildly inaccurate. My 25 mile commute would take me, not accounting for unusual weather, at best 1 hour and at worst 2 hours.

I wish I could live in whatever fantasy world they pulled the data from.

<comment><USER22> Same for Dallas. My Friday home commute takes 45 min to an hour at 4 pm. It's only 9 miles.

<comment><USER23> Why not just bike it?

<comment><USER24> Sure, if you want to get hit by a car and breathe in tremendous amounts of carbon monoxide.

Most roads in Texas cities are _extremely_ unfriendly for bike traffic.

<comment><USER25> I think you will find you are breathing in that carbon monoxide in your car as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting facts and maps, but the major flaw I see is that rush hour isn't the same time in every city. And I'm not really sure why rush hour was used specifically, instead of some kind of average.

<comment><USER27> Max commute distance for most people is related to rush hour traffic not the average.

<comment><USER26> Well, sure it is. There will be some people who make it out before or after rush hour. If you take those people into account you will get a literal average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was interested in the same idea but based on leaving London. This led me down a rabbit hole which turned up the phrase 'time space convergence map', which is an interesting way to cartographically project this feature:

(see image half way down on the right) [http://geographylaunchpad.weebly.com/the-friction-of- distanc...](http://geographylaunchpad.weebly.com/the-friction-of- distance.html)

<comment><USER29> Space v. time is one dimension, but energy costs and infrastructure requirements are other critical elements.

A passenger car and a long-haul airliner are about equivalently efficient, on a fuel-per-passenger-mile basis (assuming a high load factor for the aircraft, and a single occupant for the auto).

Rail is far more efficient, and time-competitive with air for modest to fair long trips (given high-speed rail).

Shipping is the most efficient form of transport by far, but also one of the slowest.

Automobiles require roads of some description, though they can flexibly shift routes across these. Aircraft and ships require ports, though have freedom of movement exclusive of these (with some choke-points: straights and canals, mostly, for ships).

Rail is almost the equivalent of "ships on land", though the right-of-way itself is required. The requirements for these are comparatively modest for basic service, though high-speed and high-capacity routes, and switching, increase requirements.

It's an interesting field.

<comment><USER30> Flying commercial is about 43% more efficient than driving.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/07/dri...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/07/driving_vs_flying_which_is_more_harmful_to_the_environment.html)

<comment><USER29> Given that we're looking at order-of-magnitude differences, that's "equivalently efficient".

The actual efficiencies depend _tremendously_ on the range of the trip, the loading of the aircraft (or car), and base vehicle efficiency.

But ~30 - 40 passenger miles/gallon are possible in either.

For cargo, the (again, very rough) numbers are:

Ship: 514 ton * mile / gallon

Rail: 202 ton * mile / gallon

Truck: 59 ton * mile / gallon

Air: 13 ton * mile / gallon

Something I had cause to look up the other day as I was trying to figure out how to ship my M-1 Main Battle Tank.

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/MZ5Pi7AT...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/MZ5Pi7ATeSQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Heh, DC and NY you're not getting far, doesn't matter when you leave. After being stuck on I66 or I495 even at odd hours at night I can believe it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd be curious to see a comparison of weekdays vs weekends. My experience living in the Bay Area was that driving through the east bay was way worse on Sundays, while it's far better than weekday traffic in L.A., where I live now.

</comment><comment><USER30> First world problems. Beijing has worse traffif than any of these cities, and if you try to get out on a holiday, it could take you the whole day just to exit the city. If they do construction on the highway in and out, multi day traffic jams are possible, the longest one being 8 days (mostly for trucks, though).

</comment><comment><USER33> "…by car". Nothing about rail or other public transport sadly.

<comment><USER34> Yes. There are widely-used rail systems in the majority of the cities with the worst traffic. If you reframe the question to how far you can get by any transit mode, the result looks very different in Seattle, which has some of the worst transit outcomes in the country, compared to NYC, which is not bad.

<comment><USER35> The first line of the article and the time this was posted both rule out anything but a personal vehicle in my mind. It's Friday afternoon and I want to leave work early means I'm going camping or something similar. Caltrain won't even get me to a relaxing weekend in Monterey, much less to a camp site in the Sierras.

My commute is what it is. 45 minutes to drive 12 miles sucks, but it only really bothers me when I'm going somewhere _other than_ home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting, because in LA, while downtown traffic is bad, the most horrendous areas are west of downtown, where if you start in Santa Monica let's say, traveling more than 10 miles in an hour is difficult during peak return traffic.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't how it accounts for the fact that in coastal cities like Boston, the only direction you can travel is West (SW, NW) etc. So that kinda limits the area that you can cover in an hour.

</comment><comment><USER38> You can sit on 376, especially through the bathtub, for a good 30' at rush hour in Pittsburgh. I'm not sure I believe that map.

</comment><comment><USER39> With all the fuss over North Korea recently, I was expecting a completely different sort of article for this headline.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think Thursday is a busier traffic day than Friday, here in Los Angeles. There is a term that traffic reporters use in Los Angeles - "Friday Light" traffic.

I wonder if "Friday Light" occurs in the other cities mentioned in the report.

That being said leaving at 7pm is a valid strategy any day of the week here in Los Angeles.

Great reporting.

<comment><USER41> In Atlanta we have light traffic on Friday mornings but heavy traffic on Friday evening. My theory is that morning traffic is almost entirely people going to work, of whom there are slightly fewer on Fridays, but evening traffic is both people coming home from work and people going out for fun. The extra fun trips on Friday evening more than make up for the people not working on Friday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I live in Houston. My commute home (from up on North Loop West, to near Gessner/Westheimer) takes a minimum of 30 minutes even if I leave at 6-6:30pm. Total distance? ~11 miles.

Here's the data from my Automatic Pro GPS OBD2 dongle, on a "good day":

Trip started August 10, 2017 at 06:20PM

Trip ended August 10, 2017 at 06:58PM

<comment><USER43> World's largest highway system (28 lanes at some points), yet still the second most congested.

<comment><USER42> That 28-lane part (BW8/I10 intersection and around it) is just 2-3 miles from my house.. fortunately my commute doesn't go anywhere near it (in the other direction, actually).

I do have to deal with the 59/610 interchange, which they're getting ready to re-do in the next few years.. the detour/re-route for that project is going to cause hell for quite a lot of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I live in Daly City/SF. I dont even attempt to go to the East Bay until 8:30-9:00pm through the week. Guaranteed hour of traffic just to get out of SF, at least 35-45 minutes to reach the Bay bridge in high congestion.

</comment><comment><USER45> I drove near the country side of Illinois yesterday. Traveling 65 miles took a little over an hour. I drove 30 miles today near the Greater New York area and it took almost two hours... The traffic here is infuriating.

</comment><comment><USER46> New England looks pretty bad in this article but I beg to differ albeit I am biased.

I live around Boston and while I agree I will say that Boston like the rest of New England is extremely seasonal and even then it's week by week and based on weather. I'm typing this while on my iPhone after just traveling to Cape Cod this Friday evening and it only took 1.25 hours and left at 4pm.

I hope to make two points:

1\. you can see hell of lot more interesting things in 5 hours or less from Boston than almost any other city in the Midwest or even California.

2\. Boston is extremely high variance particularly because it is a college town and has "4 seasons". If you know what you are doing you can use this to your advantage.

<comment><USER30> > 1\. you can see hell of lot more interesting things in 5 hours or less from > Boston than almost any other city in the Midwest or even California.

Within 5 hours of LA, I can get to both the lowest and highest point in the continental USA, I can see deserts and forest mountains, not to mention oceans, surfing, beachside houses that make cape code look cheap. Vegas is only 4 hours away, at most 5...

<comment><USER46> LA has absolutely the worse traffic.

I have no doubt you can see many things with no traffic in LA in 5 hours or less. Every time I have been there it's been horrendous that it makes Boston traffic look like a joke.

With New England it's not necessarily the traffic its the fact that the roads are smaller and not straight shots.

As far the Cape looking cheap which was a poor taste comment I would take it over any pacific beach :P .

The pacific coast beaches while do have surf are for some reason so cold with the some minor exceptions.

Over all I meant certain parts of cali and not LA specifically.

<comment><USER30> I moved to LA from Beijing and I'm amassed at how great the traffic is. It's all relative, I guess.

My point about Malibu vs. Cape Code was just about price, not value.

<comment><USER46> My overall argument wasn't that Boston is so special (albeit clearly it is as this article shows at the top). Its that the high congestion cities are far more compact and there are more things to do in less mileage (ignoring nature activities like hiking).

I'm annoyed that I said "parts of California" at all and probably should have said Texas (I clearly got downvoted for mentioning Cali didn't have things to do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why did they pick 4pm? In Seattle, for example, leaving at 4pm frequently means you miss heavy traffic all together while leaving at 5pm is almost a guarantee of gridlock the second you get on the freeway. If you leave at 4pm and head due east on 90, most likely you'll be in eastern washington by 5pm and won't hit any traffic at all.

In SF it is more complicated because there are big traffic problems in almost every direction so if you leave at 4pm and are still driving somewhere at 5pm, _then_ you'll get stuck in traffic. Still 4pm seems like an odd time to pick.

<comment><USER48> Summer Fridays tend to have an earlier rush hour than other days of the week and other times of the year. People try to get a jump start on their weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The map is a little misleading, only in the sense that people care a ton about the difference from 0-1 hour, but no one commutes 5 hours. So we get a map that gives a ton visual weight to "commutes" more than two hours. I know I'm the one making this about commutes, but they are concerned with rush hour, so I don't feel like I'm out of bounds.

The fact that all the cities look the same speaks to this fact. The only restriction seems to be geography/geology.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the story behind Bruce Schneier and squids? - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=squid&__mode=tag&IncludeBlogs=2&limit=10&page=1 <comment><USER2> One theory is that it is his way of signaling. (source: [https://www.quora.com/Whats-with-Bruce-Schneier-and- squids](https://www.quora.com/Whats-with-Bruce-Schneier-and-squids))

My guess is that he just likes squids, and it is sometimes it is important to step back and do something that isn't super-serious once in a while.</comment>