An introduction to Reactive Programming - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/staltz/868e7e9bc2a7b8c1f754 <comment><USER2> > If you prefer to watch video tutorials with live-coding, then check out this > series I recorded with the same contents as in this article

Thanks for actually writing. Written information can be parsed non-linearly, which is super important for learning and reference. For whatever reason, a lot of people don't seem to understand that, and just put out videos, which are like lectures: helpful, but frustrating.

<comment><USER3> Both can be useful - especially if video is with live coding. Texts often omit the small details that are perhaps obvious to the author, but you are not aware of them. IMHO every installation instruction out there that takes more than copy&pasting 2 lines of text should be in a form of a video, because there's always that one step that is not in the text...

<comment><USER2> It also helps to actively do the thing the way you expect the reader/viewer to do it, so that you don't skip any steps, and you understand common pitfalls.

The problem with doing that, however, is that you are doing something a specific way, on a specific platform, using specific tools. That can make it frustrating or even impossible for viewers/readers to break out of your specific workflow/tools/platform, which is usually what they want to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My shop specializes in multiplatform FRP applications via the reflex haskell library [0].

After many years of wrangling FRP my biggest learned lesson is certainly this: not everything is a stream! You need to be able to mix streams (also called events), which embody push semantics and behaviors (things you can sample), which embody pull semantics. This is important for performance and for the structure of large applications.

Coming up with a set of primitives to efficiently combine events and behaviors in expressive ways is really difficult but worth it.

[0] [https://github.com/reflex-frp/reflex-platform](https://github.com/reflex- frp/reflex-platform)

<comment><USER5> > After many years of wrangling FRP my biggest learned lesson is certainly > this: not everything is a stream! You need to be able to mix streams (also > called events), which embody push semantics and behaviors (things you can > sample), which embody pull semantics.

I have a creeping suspicion that after a few more years, "push" is just going to be viewed as codata, and "pull" will just be "data". I mean, that's kind of what they are, our languages just don't have codata as first-class citizens, and so we shoehorn it into stream abstractions.

<comment><USER6> Could you unpack this a bit for the relative layperson? I once heard a guy at a Haskell meetup say that "codata is the categorical dual of data" but I didn't know what that means then and I still don't know.

<comment><USER7> Data is finite data structures, while Codata is infinite data structures (like streams.) They are duals because you can generate and process data using induction, while you can use coinduction to generate and process codata. One is "built up" naturally, and the other is "torn down" naturally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While this may be technically sound, I think this is not the most fundamental way of explaining FRP. FRP is just a toy really. It's a useful toy that help to grasp and use an advanced programming concept. Let me explain.

That concept originates from a common programming mistake. A common mistake is to use _compulsive caching_. It's the tendency to store function results in a variable just because this result is gonna be re-used. The right way instead is to _evaluate_ (or "re-evaluate") the function every time you need it unless you have a good reason not to (the only good reason is that the function is a bottleneck that affects the experience of the user). This is a better way of doing things because as everybody knows, invalidating caches is a hard thing to do (and variables, guess what, are just caches).

The added benefit (which really is not a benefit, but just good programming) is that things gonna now seem _reactive_.

<comment><USER9> This "assignment is caching is bad" analogy does not hold any water.

You get a result from a call to `foo(bar)`. You have to _do something_ with that result. One common thing you'd need to do is to call another function: _baz(foo(bar))_. But then you're just hiding the assignment inside a baz function call (the result of _foo(bar)_ will be available as a variable/constant inside of _baz_).

That doesn't so bad if you only need to do one thing with with the result of `foo(bar)`. Now what if you have to do something with that result twice. In this case all you've done is reduce the scope of a constant to be smaller than it needs to be, requiring you to make a duplicate `foo(bar)` call.

Now you're repeating yourself and you don't know anymore if you're conceptually dealing with the same result or if foo(bar) might produce a different result on second call. You removed philosophical/semantic meaning from your code and did not gain anything from it.

If you find yourself wanting/needing to "expire" variables that you define before you run out of scope, then the answer is a combination of:

1) use constants of immutable data structures, not variables or mutable structures 2) better name such constants so that you know what they represent 3) better manage scope and function size

In practice, the above is much easier to achieve than what you're proposing, and makes the code easier to read and maintain.

> The right way instead is to evaluate (or "re-evaluate") the function every > time you need it unless you have a good reason not to (the only good reason > is that the function is a bottleneck that affects the experience of the > user)

That does not scale to using the coding paradigm that you're proposing application-wide. Your whole app will be one big bottleneck because it's doing a multiple of the computations that it needs to be doing, with no easy way out. I guess you can get away with that by throwing more money at your backend infra, but you can't do that on mobile or for web frontends or desktop apps.

<comment><USER5> > You get a result from a call to `foo(bar)`. You have to _do something_ with > that result. One common thing you'd need to do is to call another function: > _baz(foo(bar))_. But then you're just hiding the assignment inside a baz > function call (the result of _foo(bar)_ will be available as a > variable/constant inside of _baz_).

Unless the OP is arguing for call-by-name evaluation, which when you take his words literally, sounds like exactly what he's arguing for.

<comment><USER9> Call-by-name is just syntactic sugar for anonymous functions. It has all the same problems.

But more importantly, the whole premise is wrong. "Cache invalidation" for data that has an average lifespan of 30 lines of code in a single function is not a hard problem. Real cache invalidation is hard for reasons that don't translate to the case of ephemeral constants with properly limited scope.

<comment><USER10> > Call-by-name is just syntactic sugar for anonymous functions.

No, it's not. It defines different evaluation semantics.

<comment><USER9> Which are exactly equivalent to a function call, just with a different type, and a syntax without parens.

"this will be re-evaluated every time you access it"

<comment><USER10> I see what you meant now. Though it seems you are mixing notions of anonymous function and function as an argument of higher order functions (it doesn't have to be anonymous).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since no one has mentioned it yet, and it respectably isn't mentioned in the article, the author of this is the creator of the cycle.js (cycle.js.org).

It is a really cool way of looking at DOM state as a flow of: <interface> -> user interaction -> application reaction -> <interface>

The general idea being that the state of an application can be represented by a timeline of events throughout the lifetime of an application. Since it is entirely time and event driven/stateless, it gives way to some pretty cool "time travel" concepts.

The philosophy is this:

If you know how something begins, and you know the exact times at which anything happens to it, then you can assume its state at any given period in time.

<comment><USER12> IMHO, you run into the same problem as journaling. User interaction is basically a stream of deltas. If everything is perfect, it's awesome. But really, you want checkpoints from time to time.

It's a cool idea. It's cooler if your organization has the chops to rarely introduce defects. Replaying on refresh works ok ish. The really cool part is making every interaction with the system uniform. State comes in, small tweak, state goes out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an interesting article, but I don't think it gives enough credit to Functional Programming. The article presents functional programming applied to push streams, which is part of FRP but only one way to look at Reactive Programming.

Thinking in streams is a great exercise but is not a panacea. It's really easy to get started with streams in a toy example, but in real world applications backpressure and buffering are a concern. The consideration of backpressure also opens the push/pull stream discussion. If you are interested in applying more from this article, the API is very similar in Godot2 (Node) [0], which is based on Riemann (Ruby) [1]. _(Node streams have configurable backpressure /buffering [2].)_

Complex interconnected events can cause a runaway snowball effect if not carefully constructed or bound by limits:

* Elm's "time-travel" debugger is so valuable because it allows introspection through an event chain that may not be linear.

* Node takes a common approach, which is to push data/events through the stream but handle errors by bubbling up the stream processing chain. This Node approach maintains a hierarchy that is relatively easy to reason about.

* React is popular because it effectively is FRP applied to the data model: the JSX view is the function, and the change in data model is the event. Since data model changes are limited, atomic, and one-way this makes React easier to reason about than other frameworks (Angular, I'm looking at you). This concept pre-dates React, I've used it since years ago with SpineJS and Knockout.

Last but not least, when using streams there is an important tradeoff between speed/latency and delivery/processing guarantees, which is enough for its own discussion...

[0]: [https://github.com/nextorigin/godot2](https://github.com/nextorigin/godot2)

[1]: [http://riemann.io/concepts.html](http://riemann.io/concepts.html)

[2]: [https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/backpressuring-in- streams/](https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/backpressuring-in-streams/)

<comment><USER14> Most of those aren't FRP, at least in the Elliott/Hudak sense. Or if you mean anything that pushes streams around is FRP, then of course that existed long before FRP was even a word and happens in non-functional paradigms as well.

<comment><USER15> Voice of reason. Thank you!

Synchronous dataflow, Lucid, Esterel, Supercollider :-)

FP does not solve a problem for reactive programming, reactive programming solves a problem for FP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great, and if anyone is looking for additional examples in a library that is a bit different from the others check out Racket's reactive programming library.

docs.racket-lang.org/frtime

This was how I was introduced to reactive programming 5 or so years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really liked Kris Kowal's general theory of reactivity [1]. It's a pretty in depth explanation of reactive programming in JavaScript that I found really illuminating. It goes through many different kinds of asynchronous data types and compares them to their synchronous counterparts along the way.

[1]: [https://github.com/kriskowal/gtor/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/kriskowal/gtor/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER18> previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7964873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7964873)

There was a lot of talk on what FRP (Functional Reactive Programming) really meant, and if Rx is really FRP.

My understanding these days is that Rx has distanced itself from the FRP term proper, while retaining the goals of programming with reactive streams.

<comment><USER15> Well, Conal has also distanced his work from the FRP term.

<comment><USER18> My point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ah, streams. Or as I like to call them, "mysterious voids of side-effect riddled effervescent state".

</comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! Thank you for writing this Buzzword/Jargon free tutorial it's so much more helpful to have things explained in terms of concepts the reader already knows.

Good stuff!

</comment><comment><USER21> Can traditional languages like C, C++ and even Object Pascal support reactive programming? Or this is only implementable in functional languages?

<comment><USER22> They absolutely can. Take a look at [http://reactivex.io](http://reactivex.io) for implementations in lots of imperative/oo languages. _Functional_ reactive programming can also be done in these languages but may lack some of the convenince of a functional oriented language

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What should we call original FRP now since Stream/Flow based programming has highjacked the term?

</comment><comment><USER24> Pardon my blunt question, but who is the heck is this for? Is this a sideways method of pushing React.js? Or is this for assembly programmers as well, and I just don't get it?

<comment><USER25> It has nothing to do with React (in fact, React, despite its name, does not represent the paradigm of reactive programming).

This is for javascript programmers who enjoy functional programming and want an introduction into Rx.js library. It may also be of interest for programmers in other languages (because rx has been implemented in many of them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > "this new thing called Reactive Programming"

Let's take an age-old paradigm and present it as something new... why, I don't know, maybe so we can come across as an expert on something "new" and high- tech for fame and fortune...

...at least until someone who has been around the block comes along and figures out you're at best a bullshit artist and at worst completely ignorant and unqualified to be presenting...

<comment><USER27> Ok where did you write reactive back in the day?

<comment><USER28> I don't think it was called reactive back in the day, but the ideas are old to some degree. If you drop the functional aspects, then "Reactive" programming goes back to Lotus 123 (for the those too young, think Excel).

Data base triggers is also "Reactive", and materialized views are also "reactive".

Are there some novel aspects to "FRP", sure.

<comment><USER27> And OS interrupts are also reactive?

<comment><USER29> Can you compose incoming OS interrupts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> From what I've read so far it sounds like defining a set of transform functions which are executed whenever data arrives for their input parameters, creating output values.

Is it different?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm going to go out on a limb here with a prediction. Reactive Programming will not catch on in any big way. Maybe in 10 years I'll look foolish for having said this, but I'm willing to take the chance.

<comment><USER32> Back when I was a kid, we called this rapid application development - but then again, we didn't create cults around dev methodologies...

<comment><USER5> > but then again, we didn't create cults around dev methodologies...

You sure about that? I certainly recall plenty of holy wars over object oriented programming.

<comment><USER33> And the 4GL bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reactive is garbage: 1\. Has no point. Literally no reason for ovbservables over promises/events. 2\. Very difficult to debug. 3\. All the "good" things, like pure functions, are not exclusive to it.</comment>


Quora Video - <AUTHOR> https://productupdates.quora.com/Video-on-Quora?ref=producthunt&share=1 <comment><USER2> Seems like Quora is going after a big chunk of YouTube's market. Pretty much everyone uses YouTube for this sort of thing. It'll be interesting to see if they'll be able to pull this off.</comment>


Hyper-V sockets internals - <AUTHOR> https://xakep.ru/2017/08/09/hyper-v-internals/ <comment><AUTHOR> the original text is in Russian, but translate.google.com could help you to get the idea in another language...</comment>


Portainer.io Docker Management UI v1.14 - <AUTHOR> Portainer.io Docker Management UI Release 1.14.0 is out ! Introducing LDAP authentication support, running container edition/duplication/re-creation as an experimental feature, expanded VMware VIC engine support, HTTP API documentation (in swagger) as well as many bug fixes ! Releases notes available here: https://github.com/portainer/portainer/releases/tag/1.14.0 <comment><USER2> Should be show now, no quesiton asked.

</comment><comment><USER3> Should probably be a Show HN.

<comment><USER4> For my own understanding, why?

<comment><USER5> Because no question is asked.

<comment><USER4> Nearly every post here doesn't have a question. They're almost all just links to articles, etc.

<comment><USER6> This post is in Ask HN, which is for questions. Show HN is for project show and tell. High-ranked posts from both of those will show up on the front page, along with article submissions.

I have no idea how to actually submit a post to Show HN though.

<comment><USER5> From the FAQ: "To post one, simply submit a story whose title begins with "Show HN"."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the Commodore Amiga Powered the Prevue Channel - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-commodore-amiga-powered-your-cable-system-in-the-90s <comment><USER3> This is the machine were I learned about programming, graphics, sound, 3D design, animation, video editing, Vjing, games development, operating systems, multi-tasking, you name it, and all in the early 90's.

One of my first jobs before university was doing realtime cgi on an Amiga 3000 with a GenLock attached to an editing suite full of Betacam machines and editing desks.

Fun times!

But I try to avoid reading the latest posts on the Amiga because I tend to feel nostalgic and sad when I do.

It was painful when Commodore went bankrupt. I almost considered not going into computer science.

<comment><USER4> I still to this day feel like I never got the full system slow downs that our current OSs get on my Amiga. It may have had no memory protection and thus crashes took down the whole system, but it sure was a joy to use. It's a great story of how a fantastic system was doomed by the company that owned it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I cringe at the thought that the Amiga is partially responsible for what we perceive today as Muzak. As sourced from the article: [https://www.youtube.com/user/PrevueChannelMusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/PrevueChannelMusic)

<comment><USER6> I hope you'll be happy to hear that Muzak is being kept alive even nowadays: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84iTur1-yww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84iTur1-yww)

<comment><USER7> Surprisingly awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh the Video Toaster. Kiki Stockhammer. Newtek was doing amazing things for less money than anything else in its time. we had a Video Toaster in my HS TV Productions class. Between that and OctaMED, I spent a lot of my extra time in that class.

</comment><comment><USER9> I definitely remember the Guru Meditation Errors on our local public TV station...

<comment><USER10> Now you get billboards and news channels showing Win BSODs.

Did you know that you could plug in a serial terminal hit right mouse and drop into a debug session (ROMWack) from a non-recoverable guru? Guru got a lot of stick, but they were really useful for developing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still want one.

[https://medium.com/people-gadgets/the-gadget-we-miss-the- vid...](https://medium.com/people-gadgets/the-gadget-we-miss-the-video- toaster-93509e978549)

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/49562/video- toaster-4000](http://mentalfloss.com/article/49562/video-toaster-4000)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1OVWfmynPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1OVWfmynPw)

<comment><USER10> I just want someone to implement how Intuition did screens into any other platform, ideally OSX or Linux. It often gets mentioned, yet no one ever has. It can't be _that_ difficult. I can live without the copper trickery.

<comment><USER12> Enlightenment provides draggable workspaces, or at least did (I haven't used Enlightenment since about 1999) provide that. I used to use that. The usefulness is substantially less today without having different video modes and the copper trickery

(EDIT: For those who haven't used the Amiga, apart from providing multiple workspaces, which was in itself a big deal for home computers at the time, it was exceedingly useful because there was no "best" video mode those days - <USER2> could have high resolution and few colours, or low resolution and "many" colours - this made draggable screens very useful as you could e.g. have a high resolution screen visible on part of the display, and a low resolution screen on the rest if you wanted. E.g. some paint programs made use of that to show their toolbars etc. in a fixed resolution, with the image itself on a different screen)

Today there's always AROS, which can run hosted on Linux and runs a bunch of Amiga apps, though there are still painful missing parts to AROS and it's not an option to let you run Linux apps on Amiga-style screens.

<comment><USER13> Different resolutions in different windows? That's pretty cool. I looked into the Amiga's and was most impressed by MorphOS. Had key features, was beautiful, and supposedly faster than Linux.

<comment><USER12> Different resolutions in different "screens". Each screen is pretty much a separate workspace that takes up the full width and will hold one or more windows, but can be dragged up and down so you can have multiple visible.

Here's an example [1]. DigiPaint used one screen for the toolbars, so it was independent of the image you were working on (unlike e.g. DeluxePaint). Here's a video showing screen dragging in AROS (which reimplements the Amiga API like MorphOS, but also runs on everything from original Amigas - with some limitatons - to Raspberry Pi or x86 PCs, both native and hosted under Linux) [2]. On non-Amiga platforms the different screens can't have different resolutions, though.

[1] [http://don64738.deviantart.com/art/DigiPaint- Fashion-3371985...](http://don64738.deviantart.com/art/DigiPaint- Fashion-337198511)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKCHZFYj9Kk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKCHZFYj9Kk)

<comment><USER13> Wow, that was an impressive demo. I was imagining how I'd react if someome did it on Win3.1 or something. It would've been badass.

Now, other commenter gave excellent use case with low res text and high res graphics. What other practical uses does something like in the demo have? Virtual workspaces like in Linux cover most I can think of. What about draggable screens?

<comment><USER10> See the second level comment I made for a couple of modern use cases where I'd get benefit in current Windows.

Now consider virtual workspaces that you can move around and assign a z order to. You can expose a small part of a screen at top, or bottom for copy pasting to. Or work in a full size terminal session that you can only see 2 lines of.

Status windows/web pages can live on background screens and only get dragged into visibility. It's really just a nice to have thing now we decent virtual workspace setups, and huge resolutions, along with 3rd party stuff like Ultramon, but I still would like the option. I get too messy with wndow management.

OSX would benefit most as multi workspace and screen handling was very kludgy, though I know they are meant to have improved that a lot in the last couple of releases. Not had a mac since mavericks, so can't say for definite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember watching that channel at my grandmother's house. Every summer I used to stay there for a month or so. I'd always hit the "channel scan" option on the TV menu to see if they had any new channels that they didn't have from the last time I was there. I remember this channel popping up on like channel 97 on Time Warner or something.

</comment><comment><USER15> Also helped to make _Babylon 5_

<comment><USER16> And early bits of Star Trek Voyager.

I am and always will be an Amiga fan; Got an Amiga 1200 with modern '040 CPU board, and a DVI video out. Best home computer, ever.

<comment><USER17> I didn't know they had DVI cards yet, much less one with a flicker fixer built in.

My 1200HD has a sketchy VGA adapter that came with it when I found it in a Value Village; when I try to play games every LCD I have in the house refuses to go to a low enough scanrate. A flicker fixer seems like just what I need.

<comment><USER16> You've probably already found it, but this is the DVI kit I have fitted:

[http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php...](http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1148)

Works really well - you can get up 1280x1024 on it with a modified 'monitor' file. I run mine at 1024x768, on a standard 15" LCD, and it pixel matches the panel 100% with no borders. Demo discs and games that run PAL/NTSC get auto scaled to your preferred native SVGA/XGA resolution as well, which is an added bonus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny thing is the cable UI for preview is pretty much identical to this today.

<comment><USER19> It's far worse for me -- the scroll is about two lines high, and there's a constant barrage of really bad advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So many viruses.....</comment>


Twins commit perfect crime - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,614245,00.html

<comment><USER2> Many crimes are not solved only by DNA. It's far from being the perfect crime. They can't prove their guilt now, but having narrowed the list of suspect, I think the police has now a good chance of finding further evidence and convict the perpetrators.</comment>


Canvas UI Library Demo - <AUTHOR> http://mochaui.com/demo/

<comment><USER2> I'm still not convinced that conventional windows work inside a browser. I think it confuses the user, and makes for bloat and mess.

Yeah it's cool you can do things like emulating desktop windows, resize, drag, minimize etc, but just because you _can_ do this, doesn't mean you _should_.

There's a lot to be said for keeping things clean and simple. Keep things accessible.

<comment><USER3> Also keep in mind that your users may be viewing your webpage with their phone, which is one big reason to not go the desktop simulation route.

Still, it's a very cool demo.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. I have had users suggest I use right click to open up a contextual menu on my webapp... All well and good until you're using an iPhone, or wii, or something else without a mouse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think the whole "Desktop in the Web UI" fad is good for the web.

A lot of apps that are used in the desktop could be easily ported to the web without the need of windows like this. There are other ways to do it, AJAX allows for them.

What works in the desktop doesn't necessarilly work in the web.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever used meebo?

It's one case where I think the metaphor works quite well.

<comment><USER4> Actually you're right about meebo. But I've used several other "Desktop on the web" websites or sites that use this paradigm and generally I think there must be another way because that doesn't really work for me.

Now imagine if those kinds of idea of decentralization were used in a modern OS for certain configurations and stuff...

<comment><USER5> I don't quite follow.. what do you mean by decentralization?

.. do you mean something like having your desktop settings on a central server? ..something like apple's new Mobile Me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesomesauce. Though I agree the world should move away from windows in the browser, frameworks like this are great too. The tabs and so on are slick.

Edit: hey, it works in IE! I guess this is Canvas.IE? Is the author on news.yc?

<comment><USER7> can anyone tell if it works on ie6?

<comment><USER8> It works in IE6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That was awesome! I never believed the idea that actual applications, like work processing or something like that, could shift away from the desktop, but now I think that it actually might be possible.

I was literally open-jawed when I created a new window with the content URL of <http://www.google.com>, used that to search for Mocha UI, then opened another instance of Mocha UI in itself. I thought that was pretty nifty. Although useless in practice.

<comment><USER10> > Although useless in practice.

A good point. Also notable that Mocha UI did not invent the iframe, nor use it in any way unforeseen by it's inventors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can see a lot of use for this in monitoring frameworks and admin interfaces.

<comment><USER12> or porting desktop app interfaces to the web to save having to retrain users in business environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> pretty interesting. seen tons of libraries do stuff like this, but if you can have it:

a) well documented b) with good performance c) easily extendable

people will use it to make very desktopy like web apps ala gho.st etc

</comment><comment><USER10> MDI interfaces are so last century...

<comment><USER14> You use stuff when it's relevant and applicable and not by applying various "century" flags.

<comment><USER10> Reinventing past mistakes in new mediums does not count as innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> very slick</comment>


Show HN: KYDY - <AUTHOR> https://kydy.me/ <comment><AUTHOR> We are introducing a new AR voice messenger app KYDY! Kydy brings your questions to life with talking AR creatures (Kydies) that pop up on your hand. Built with ARkit, hand recognition technology, and voice filters, Kydy allows users to record a voice message for friends and have an AR creature deliver it in funny voices - right onto friends' hands.

The Kydy app isn't intended to be an everyday messaging app but an app for asking friends light-hearted questions in a fun way. Kydy is great for turning any message into a light-hearted, silly or cute performance. There are many AR apps where you can record sounds and share the video/audio to social media, but none that allows you to 'send' an AR object to others, with audio!

Kydy was created by VREX LAB, which an AR startup based in China and Korea. Our mission is to deepen people's relationships with one another through AR.</comment>


Alexander Graham Bell's Delightfully Weird Sketchbooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/alexander-graham-bells-wonderfully-weird-sketchbooks/72281/

<comment><USER2> I've always been a big fan of keeping a notebook around to sketch ideas, write down thoughts, etc.

There was a interesting couple of sketches in the slide show that highlight, "CABLE GUY" and "SELF PORTRAIT". What the journalist didn't "get" was that he was looking at Bell's conception of the 'cell' phone or portable phone.

In the "SELF PORTRAIT" we see a person speaking into an apparatus which no doubt modulates a current on the giant open air inductor slung over this poor chap's shoulder. By modulating a current in that inductor a field is created that has the sounds modulating it. In "CABLE GUY" we have another person carrying another giant inductor which is connected to a speaker. Presumably Bell was imagining that some how one would talk at a distance without wires but carrying around giant antenna equivalents :-). This was an area where Tesla was working and I don't doubt that Bell was thinking about ways to work this problem as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I can tell the triangles in triangles shaped aircraft sketch predates Sierpinski's discovery. <http://bit.ly/hhH779> \- the sketch <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle> \- "who described it in 1915"

Maybe Bell studied 13th-century Cosmati mosaics.</comment>


The truth about button color on websites (according to NASA and eye tracking) - <AUTHOR> http://www.eyequant.com/blog/button-color-on-websites <comment><USER2> Glad to see someone's bringing data to this debate. Personally, I've always found red buttons unappealing..

</comment><comment><USER3> How many people are wondering how many nasa research labs there are now and how to find them?</comment>


Google Feels the Brunt of GDPR Enforcement - <AUTHOR> https://www.saiglobal.com/en-au/news_and_resources/industry_news/google_feels_the_brunt_of_gdpr_enforcement/ <comment><USER2> 50 mil USD is not anywhere close to "hitting Google hard in the coffers". I get it's a much bigger fine to what was levied before, but let's be realistic about the impact here...

<comment><USER3> The fine is in _addition_ to enforcement. It's not a fee they can pay to avoid GDPR compliance. They have to do that as well.

<comment><USER4> How's it being enforced, though? Short of outright arresting people, the usual enforcement tactic is to use fines

<comment><USER5> If that enforcement tactic is ineffective, the EU can obviously elevate it's methodology. Companies which do business, transfer monies, and have offices and employees in the territory have a lot of potential assets to seize. Usually fines, which are levied on a regular basis, until compliance is reached, are adequate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sad that these are the only euro tech news

<comment><USER7> Well this week we've seen the first Belgian Unicorn (Collibra) but that news didn't seem to reach HN.

[http://www.brusselstimes.com/business/technology/13911/bruss...](http://www.brusselstimes.com/business/technology/13911/brussels- data-company-collibra-is-worth-more-than-one-billion-dollars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but feel like there exists a certain amount of jealousy/envy that exists on the EU side in regards to American technology companies. Perhaps this stems somewhat from the inability of European countries to cultivate a foundation of successful innovation in relation to software/computation like the Silicon Valley or greater Bay Area has in the United States?

In my opinion, instead of focusing on regulation to hamper outside competition, the better option would be to spend more on funding innovation/growth efforts for local companies and startups so that they can better compete solely based on the merits of the technology or service itself.

This in the long term will provide far more for European countries and its citizens than, again this is just my opinion and it's definitely not necessarily purely black or white here, the short term oriented sort of feel good action that something like the GDPR I believe represents.

<comment><USER9> You obviously haven't spent too much time around Europeans. They (we) think about totally different things to Americans in general. Privacy (especially in Germany) has always been a hot topic. You can barely use your card to pay for things anywhere in Berlin for example because people use cash to not be tracked.

<comment><USER10> A substantial proportion of Germans remember the Stasi. Some remember the Gestapo. The idea of databases becoming the tools of oppression is not an abstract risk to the German people. Entirely justifiably, they broadly regard bulk collection of personal data as a dire threat to liberty. Many Europeans live with the memory of similarly awful tyrannies, from Franco in Spain to Ceaușescu in Romania. To dismiss those concerns as mere jealousy of Silicon Valley is rather churlish.

<comment><USER11> The Germans might remember something slightly older than the Stasi.

<comment><USER10> I refer you to the second sentence of my comment. With that said, it is worth remembering that only a small number of very elderly people have meaningful first-hand memories of the social and political circumstances of the 1930s and 1940s.

The Stasi is clearly a more pertinent example of the perils of mass surveillance. The scale and sophistication of their surveillance is the closest historical parallel to contemporary digital surveillance, and many currently-serving politicians and civil servants have first-hand experience of it. Germany is still dealing with the legacy of decades of pervasive surveillance and the billions of records collected by that agency. A notable example of those records is a Stasi identity card, issued to major Vladimir Putin of the KGB.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- europe-46525543](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46525543)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well yes, given they are the most egregious violator with Facebook, it's to be expected they would be among the first hit, and the hardest. This complaint also only scratches the surface.

</comment><comment><USER13> Crazy idea, but why not put the onus on the browser and require that EU browsers have the ability to block and manage cookies and tracking scripts.

Much less to regulate plus we wouldn't have ugly banners all over the place.

<comment><USER14> It is trivial to uniquely fingerprint a browser, even if there are no cookies involved. Surveillance can and should be fought off in the legal sphere.

<comment><USER15> So some incentive to design non-fingerprintable browsers sounds great! Especially since such a product would require widespread deployment to be effective.

<comment><USER14> Modern ML can fingerprint you based on your mouse movements. Good luck selling a browser without mousemove events.

<comment><USER16> The vast majority of web sites don't need mousemove events except to enable bad UI design. The exceptions that are trying to implement a desktop app or video game inside the browser can ask for permission. It's not at all hard for users to make the one or two clicks necessary to grant a domain permission to use the bundle of advanced features it is requesting, and it gives them a reasonable opportunity to provide informed consent before a website starts monitoring their every move.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ethereum Founder Pleads for Help Over Twitter Spam Bot Problem - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1016224550688878592 <comment><USER2> Ironically first top 17 replies are from scam bots promising free ETH.</comment>


Creating a Quadrotor autopilot with Clojure & Flight Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://nakkaya.com/2010/10/07/towards-a-clojure-autopilot-first-steps

<comment><USER2> Short, but potentially interesting. I hope he follows up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, the current autopilot implemented has the initial "proportional controller" feedback loop, which only stabilizes the flight vehicle, which is a crucial first step to building a guidance system on top of that.

<comment><USER3> For a quad rotor this is the most important part, once the feedback loop for the ideal position is in place in order to control the quad rotor you simply change the ideal position using a similar feedback loop from the controller (only a feedback loop if your controllers have servos to provide tactile feedback).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, but I would never use the JVM in a real time system, or embedded system for that matter.</comment>


Comparison of CMS products - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if anyone has experience with any CMS products?
What were the good points? What were the ugly points?
We are evaluating, Drupal, Joomla, Sharepoint, Ektron, SiteCore, Hannon Hill, Revize, and EpiServer.
Any comments on any of these?
Thanks very much for any help you can offer. <comment><USER2> Here's a summary for all of them:

It sucks.

Here's a couple threads where I've talked about my CMS experiences in more detail (I've deployed five CMS systems over the past 6 or 7 years):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=186021>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61003>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you just want a fairly basic website... article content with (or without) user comments... <http://www.cmsmadesimple.org> is rather nice in my opinion. There are some "advanced" modules, but most of them (last I checked) were fairly underdeveloped.

Otherwise, I agree with SwellJoe. The effort required to force the CMS into doing what you want it to do can grow hideous. I built an online community site a couple years ago, and was a much happier camper writing only the code I needed myself.</comment>


Early Roman Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html <comment><USER2> "By the 1st century B.C.E., the Roman calendar had become hopelessly confused."

At least one can treat the years in that period as numbers. For why Roman years before 300 B.C.E. have to be handled as names, not numbers, and should never be used in arithmetic operations, see Peter Paul Koch's excellent essay "Making <time> safe for historians": [http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/04/making_time_...](http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/04/making_time_saf.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I always liked the "scheduled for the Greek Calends" turn of phrase (a subtler form of "never, is never good for you?" ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> The topic is fascinating, but the writing…

I'm not familiar with WebExhibits, but that article is barely readable, a collection of copy-paste that have little overall consistency: the number of days and names of months is repeated for no apparent reasons; changes are not summarised. I don't think anyone can make sense of the examples, and references to those are not clear either.

</comment><comment><USER5> Traditionalist Catholic religious communities still use this calendar to a certain extent.

At the beginning of dinner, the seminarians will assemble in the refectory and listen to the daily reading of the Roman Martyrology. It begins, for example, with "A reading from the Roman Martyrology for the fifth day before the Kalends of February, the thirteenth moon." Thereupon, we would hear about the saints whose feast days were established for the following day. The reading would end with the words "and elsewhere, many other holy martyrs, saints, and holy virgins."

The oddest day in the calendar was the dies bisextus, which gets inserted somewhere after the Nones of February in leap years. On that day, the reading is simply "Many holy martyrs, saints, and holy virgins."

To this day, indult parishes that celebrate the 1962 Roman liturgy have saints days that get moved apparently arbitrarily in late February on leap years. If you understand the old Roman calendar, it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interested in Ancient Rome? I went through a phase where I was some what obsessed about it.

I thoroughly enjoyed The History of Rome podcast: [http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/](http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/)

Also of note (less historical, but still brilliant imho), the HBO (fictional) series Rome: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766)

<comment><USER7> Death Throes of the Roman Republic (Which is now in their paid archive) is an excellent guide to the time of Caesar. About 11 minutes into to episode 1, most people buy into listening to the whole thing:

[http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_musi...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=1&products_id=222)

[http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_musi...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=1&products_id=223)

[http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_musi...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=1&products_id=224)

[http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_musi...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=1&products_id=225)

[http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_musi...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=1&products_id=226)

[http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_musi...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=1&products_id=227)

I'm sad they're not free anymore, but I remember the drive back from the trip while I listened to them better than most of the trip years later. It starts a good bit before Caesar.

The details about how the country transformed due to different stresses is fascinating, and the commentary on Caesars actions and his writings is particularly memorable.</comment></comment>


MyHeritage Acquires Promethease and SNPedia - <AUTHOR> https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/09/myheritage-acquires-promethease-and-snpedia/ <comment><AUTHOR> Quick note to log into Promethease and delete any DNA data you have by 11/1 otherwise MyHeritage will automatically upload it to their database.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hmmm</comment>


Julia Child and the OSS Recipe for Shark Repellent - <AUTHOR> https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2015-featured-story-archive/shark-repellent.html

<comment><USER2> Funny. I just finished re-watching "Julie and Julia" before I sat here and saw this.</comment>


Google atScript - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/11YUzC-1d0V1-Q3V0fQ7KSit97HnZoKVygDxpWzEYW0U/preview?sle=true

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be an attempt to add Typescript and annotations features to ES6, which is interesting.

The good news is that you don't need to buy into any of it to write angular 2.0 stuff, but all the angular 2.0 codebase will be written in atscript.</comment>


Fnordserver – A bunch of geeks with a faible for simple, no-bullshit VPS hosting - <AUTHOR> http://server.fnord.pro

<comment><USER2> What is a 'faible'?

<comment><AUTHOR> Faible n (genitive Faibles, plural Faibles)

soft spot, weakness (for something or someone)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Faible](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Faible)</comment></comment>


Antlr-haskell: A Haskell implementation of the ANTLR top-down parser generator - karl-cronburg https://hackage.haskell.org/package/antlr-haskell <comment> karl-cronburg And an original article about the project can be found here: [http://cronburg.com/2018/antlr-haskell- project/](http://cronburg.com/2018/antlr-haskell-project/)</comment>


In search of a European Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/06/europe-google-silicon-valley-digital-industry <comment><USER2> Personally (as someone from Europe), I'd say the general reasons we don't have an equivalent tp Google or Silicon Valley or any of that sort of thing are more that:

1\. European laws are too restrictive. It's especially notable with stuff like the hilariously stupid online tax laws the area has (having to apply different tax rates based on the location of the user rather than the business makes it hugely more complex than it has to be) or the right to be forgotten, but it just feels we're too restrictive here in general.

2\. Culture. People in the US seem more ambitious and more willing to risk everyone for the small chance of becoming a millionaire/billionaire at the end of it. People in European countries on the other hand seem to be encouraged to avoid risk and avoid anything that might lead to less job security in the short term. Probably because failure in the US is seen as a minor bump in the road, whereas failure in Europe is seen as the worst possible thing imaginable.

3\. Money. Not just in the form of venture capital (though that's a huge reason), but also because US startups tend to pay their employees more, whereas their European equivalents stick to the average local wages. Hence the best programmers, designers and other such people usually either find employment in a more stable company (read, one where there's a work/life balance) or move to the US to work in Silicon Valley.

If we want a 'European Google' or European startups in general, we need to become less risk averse, more willing to reward the types of people needed to work in those companies and less obsessed about regulations.

Oh, and fix the issues certain areas have with internet connection speeds. The fact that a lot of areas in large cities like London can't get fibre internet and the likes is not helping our tech businesses compete with their US counterparts.

<comment><USER3> I agree with all of the above but I think you missed another important aspect about money.

Engineers in SV are paid bucket loads of money.

They can afford to take one year of to travel the world or just work on their own projects.

For me that is key.

How many people do you know in Europe that can do that?

Another thing is in Europe the biggest tech hub is in London. And if you're in London you have to wonder

 _Why am I dealing with this crappy weather when I can move to somewhere where I 'm paid 2-3x more and it's summer all year?_

I know someone who falls along these exact lines and has moved to SV. Although he was already working remotely to a US company.

<comment><USER4> > They can afford to take one year of to travel the world or just work on > their own projects.

Can they?

> Why am I dealing with this crappy weather when I can move to somewhere where > I'm paid 2-3x more and it's summer all year?

Because you don't risk bankruptcy by having a health issue, if you're single it's not a sausage fest, more laid back work (in SF it seems you're bound to stay longer times at the office), greater tourism choices (a short trip away) and probably still cheaper than rent in SF even if we're talking London

<comment><USER5> > Because you don't risk bankruptcy by having a health issue, if you're single > it's not a sausage fest, more laid back work (in SF it seems you're bound to > stay longer times at the office), greater tourism choices (a short trip > away) and probably still cheaper than rent in SF even if we're talking > London

We have another reason right in this very answer: People in SV are willing to take more risk and sacrifice. Sure there are chances one may be bankrupted because of a health issue. Sure there are fewer entertainment choices. Living in SV may not be an ideal lifestyle for many but it has attracted a lot of adventurous mind from all over the world, who together conjure up trailblazing ventures.

<comment><USER6> Not only do I not think that is true, I think there's real danger that people conclude that more risk is better. SV is in many ways risk averse. The days when any kid could get a million dollars are over. Almost every success story seems to happen on a background of brand name colleges, companies, incubators or investors. What I think people mean when they talk about risk is really "hype". People move to SV to work in the tech industry because that is THE place to be. You don't have that in London, Berlin or even New York. The pure momentum of the industry simply overshadows any health care, housing, dating problems in the bay area.

<comment><USER5> > Not only do I not think that is true, I think there's real danger that > people conclude that more risk is better

I don't think people in general consider more risk being better. Rather, higher reward often comes with higher risk. People aim for higher reward obviously have to accept the risk associated with it. It just so happens that, as you said, SV is the place to be for the tech industry.

> SV is in many ways risk averse. The days when any kid could get a million > dollars are over. Almost every success story seems to happen on a background > of brand name colleges, companies, incubators or investors.

I don't argue for or against the risk averse nature of SV. And of course, knowing the right people helps get your foot in the door everywhere. Undeniably though, for variety of reasons, there exists an ecosystem in SV that breeds the creation of hi tech businesses. If you want to make a name for yourself, being in SV makes a lot of sense. It isn't easy to replicate that elsewhere.

Just look at the list of car companies that set up shop in SV in the last few years:

[https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015...](https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015/01/22/research- and-innovation-center-palo-alto.html)

[http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1848/volvo- geely-g...](http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1848/volvo-geely-get-in- on-research-center-game-as-well/)

[http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1798/renault- nissa...](http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1798/renault-nissan- alliance-opens-new-research-center-in-silicon-valley/)

[http://www.industryweek.com/expansion- management/expansion-m...](http://www.industryweek.com/expansion- management/expansion-management-why-auto-industry-driving-silicon-valley)

VW has been there essentially forever, apparently: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_Electronics_Research_Labora...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_Electronics_Research_Laboratory)

Those are big names in a very established industry, yet they can't afford not to have a presence in SV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "de facto platform, it's hard to control and even harder to dislodge"

There is a Finnish service called irc-galleria.net. It's a service that was created to let irc users to share pictures of themselves to other irc users. It got really big in Finland. They even had big screen in center of Helsinki to show new pictures uploaded to the service. They had this paid feature which let you keep a list of friends in there. Everybody talked about irc-galleria stalking.

Then Facebook came. The major difference was that facebook let you make friends for free. Year later nobody remembers irc-galleria.

Dislodging a platform is easier than ever. It's enough to make better or cheaper product, then just get lucky. Previously you had to also take distribution and marketing into account and then get lucky.

<comment><USER8> I don't think these big platforms will ever be dislodged exactly, just made irrelevant. Photo sharing used to be difficult enough that it could act as the basis for an entire product category. Now it has been commoditized sufficiently that it can be just added to any product with relative ease. Maybe one day it will be possible to add Google style search technology to any product with ease. At that point the opportunity is to have specialist search as an add-on to other products.

<comment><USER7> I'm trying to imagine here what it would take to beat Google in it's own game.

The most frustrating searches I've had with google are always about some thing I have seen before, but can't find again.

It would be relatively easy to optimize for this if you can have some kind of bookmark app and search history available. So that search would prioritize stuff I have bookmarked or found previously. It would be probably be valuable for the search engine to know what products I have bookmarked. The catch here is that I'm not going to trust google with that data.

So essentially delicious with very powerful search as by product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The combined value of the top three internet companies in the Americas – so, basically, in America – is around $0.75tn (£0.5tn). In Asia, it's around $0.5tn. In Africa, it's $50bn. And in Europe, it's just $25bn."

In Europe, we have wealth redistribution. A few companies with so much concentrated financial power is not healthy.

<comment><USER10> Europe has far more stagnant wealth than America does in fact.

Europe's dynasties do not tend to give away their wealth, instead they pass it down through families for generations. Most of Europe's largest companies and fortunes are controlled through family dynasties. American billionaires always dominate the list of most philanthropic.[1] It's also why Europe sees such a low rate of turn-over among their billionaires, and why such a high proportion of their billionaires are derived inherited wealth. [2]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2013/11/18/the-50-ph...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2013/11/18/the-50-philanthropists- who-have-given-away-the-most-money/)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/cvTR3q1.png](http://i.imgur.com/cvTR3q1.png)

<comment><USER11> Is an operating business well described as stagnant wealth?

<comment><USER10> I think so, if vast wealth passes down through generations and occupies such a large portion of the ultra rich. Stagnant in this regard refers to wealth that is inherited.

How about if Europe's entrenched old money prevents new money from arising, and is part of the problem? Money comes with obvious vast influence on politics. What if that old money acts to protect itself at the expense of economic dynamism and new wealth creation? I think it's a reasonable conclusion that that does in fact occur. Is bunched up old money inherently more conservative? I'd argue yes.

The parent comment implies that wealth is more redistributed in Europe. That is plainly not true, given the extreme inheritance levels of their billionaires and lower rates of philanthropy.

The wealth is also not inherently bound to the operations. You can give away your billions without sinking a business. Berkshire Hathaway isn't going to collapse when Buffett dies or gives his remaining wealth away (Burlington Northern railroad isn't going to tip over when he gives away his last shares, just as BMW wouldn't if the Quandt family ended their dynasty, ditto Walmart with the second generation of Walton heirs). Just as Microsoft isn't collapsing as Gates exits his formerly huge percentage share of ownership (he has gone from ~60% ownership to now ~3% since the IPO, obviously it has not seriously harmed Microsoft). There is a large, important question at the center of this that can be best illustrated by a rhetorical: is Howard Buffett (Warren's oldest son) the best qualified to run Berkshire Hathaway? What are the odds the Quandt family is best suited to steer BMW for the next hundred years? Or that Inditex should be run by the Ortega family forever, or that the Slim family should control such a large swath of telecom in Mexico for the next century? I think that kind of economic dominance by families is more often detrimental (loss of dynamism, too much wealth acquired without earning it) than beneficial, much as a cartel or monopoly ends up being.

<comment><USER11> _The wealth is also not inherently bound to the operations._

Yes, obviously not. But that characteristic detracts from the suitability of "stagnant" as a descriptor.

<comment><USER10> Not if inherited wealth is in fact more stagnate in terms of the results it produces in an economy, because that wealth is acquired without earning it (with the heir very likely lacking the early formative experience, knowledge, talent, or drive required to create it), including if it acts as a large drag on new wealth and business formation.

The stagnation is derived from people inheriting the wealth who do not possess the creation ability or skill level of the originator/s. Put in starker terms: incompetent, low ambition, low skill, low accomplishment heirs that rest on the wealth. I'd argue that's far more often the outcome than not, and I believe we have the proof of that in the history of who starts companies, who creates the most successful companies, and who creates the next tiers of innovative breakthrough companies - and who does not.

Scrappy entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs do, not the Nth generation of extreme dynastic wealth like the Quandt or Walton families.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Europe needs an investment culture similar to the Capitalist American culture. Without that there is no hope for anyone. There need to be investors and technical people in one hub that feed off each other, network with each other, and empower each other.

How many American startups are a result of a pissed off employee working at a successful company going off and creating the same thing his or her employer did but better? And this cycle feeding on itself.

Or university students with an idea getting all the financial, technical, and managerial support necessary to create the next big thing.

You have to understand the process and then try to replicate the process. And each component of the process is as important as the other. You need the whole pie. Not a piece for it to succeed.

You can seed this with massive capital expenditure, tens of billions basically poured into private coffers of Caplists, but the process has to be very similar for it to actually work.

<comment><USER13> > How many American startups are a result of a pissed off employee working at > a successful company going off and creating the same thing his or her > employer did but better?

Some numbers might make your point more convincing.

<comment><USER4> Easily googable and not news

Intel started like this.

See the companies founded by ex-Googlers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Biggest Internet companies are in advertising or catalog merchant business that started in late 90's or early 2000's. American Internet startups in these areas had immediate access to markets of 300 million people.

Homegrown American, Chinese or Japanese Internet company can have hundreds of millions in revenue before it even starts to think about localization and adjusting to other countries, cultures, languages, payment system and advertising biz.

Network effect rules in the Internet business and US based business had huge upper leg in this regard in early 2000s.

<comment><USER15> Germany has 80 million people, the German-speaking market is 100 million people. The smaller countries are mostly used to everything being in English (Slovenia, Finland), so they don't care. France is 50 million people as well. If your business idea doesn't bootstrap with that market size, it won't work with a factor 6 more either.

Also recently, international payment can be considered a solved problem with iban/bic, PayPal and credit cards.

Which means you can get by just as well with English, French or German only, and some point down the line you add i18n for one or two other languages first, and then whatever there might be a demand for.

On the other side of the coin, next-day national shipping for 3,50€ to 5€ is the norm around here. Go try that in NA.

<comment><USER16> Regarding the shipping price differential.. That shipping might be cheap, but the 20% VAT and the higher cost of taxes and social charges quickly destroy that competitive advantage. So that 5€ shipping really costs much much more than NA when the much higher costs of doing business are factored in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, a European Google would still have to abide by the patent minefield that search has become so it has very little chance of getting off the ground without a breakthrough in search engine technology outside of Google or Microsoft. Good luck with that, the head start is tremendous. And the likely outcome of such a thing happening would be an acquisition by... Google or Microsoft.

<comment><USER18> Wrong, "Software patents" aren't recognized in most parts of Europe.

<comment><USER19> .. unless they also wanted to do business in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's a fairly straightforward cultural difference. Americans take more risks and are more ambitious. This is true of both entrepreneurs and VC, although I'd say VC is the heart of the problem. Money goes into safer investments in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just a question, how many people actually benefit from a Google being in their particular country?

<comment><USER22> I tried to cover this line of reasoning a bit in an other post in this thread.

No deep analysis from me, but very briefly looking at ROI of Google's shareholders one can see it flows to investors worldwide, not the US in particular.

Taxes then... very minimal, and are mostly redirected through a Dutch-Irish tax scheme anyway, EU probably profits more than the US.

Employment, 50k or so, that's significant for sure. But 40% is outside the US, and compare it say to Walmart which employs literally a couple million, and you'll find tech companies in general don't make large dents in employment figures.

As for actual services, there's barely any difference. A European benefits virtually the same from Google's products and services, albeit sometimes say the launch of the latest Nexus happens two weeks later in small European countries like the Netherlands.

Mostly I'd say the benefits are related to generating and disseminating your own culture, more political/legal influence in worldwide companies, drawing talent to your country etc. These benefits are significant, but I don't think Europe has anything to be alarmed about. Tech here is great, lots of solid companies with billion dollar valuations, solid infrastructure, but fewer unicorns. And that's no surprise with the EU being, deep down, a fragmented market where the biggest first-language market is German which stands at 18% of the EU population. It's not easy to roll out companies that grow to hundreds of millions of people in Europe, if the biggest language that people speak as a first language is only spoken by 18% of the union. European talent with great ideas that aim very large tend to go English first, and then move to the US at the earliest signs of solid traction. Everyone else stays, and that's how you get lots of solid companies like Supercell with a few billion dollars valuation that are relatively small compared to a Facebook. That's not a bad thing.

<comment><USER23> I think the language issues are overplayed; translating the software is not expensive, and it's usually not very difficult to hire someone who can read and write in English, German and/or French.

We are a <10 person startup, and yet we have customers that speak Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.

<comment><USER24> It's mostly cultural. In the Netherlands, the majority of online payments are done during a system called "iDeal". A few hours' drive away, and that system is never heard of.

Different laws. Of course the EU exists to combat exactly that problem, but they haven't succeeded yet.

The problem your company tries to solve may not even be relevant in half the markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Also, I'd say the university system may have something to do with it. US unis work more like UK Sixth Form Colleges, where students study a variety of subjects and encounter people with different interests (whereas a UK university education is about one subject with a much smaller group of peers). As a result, the US system is arguably a lot better suited to networking and meeting people with an interest in starting a business.

How many tech company founders met at university? Now, how many studied the exact same things? I'd say a lot less of them.

<comment><USER23> _How many tech company founders met at university? Now, how many studied the exact same things?_

Well, a short search returns:

Google: two PhDs studying the same thing.

Apple: Jobs and Woz met when the former was in High School; they never attended the same college.

Yahoo: two EE graduate students.

Microsoft: childhood friends, didn't attend the same college.

Oracle: didn't attend the same college, met when working for the same company.

Red Hat: didn't attend the same college.

Salesforce: met while working at Oracle.

At least for the software behemoths, it seems it's not that important to have mixed colleges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why are people looking for a second Google in Europe?

They should instead look in China, where there already is not only a second Google but also a second Facebook, Amazon, WhatsApp, Stripe, ...

So, why did the Chinese succeed where Europe failed? Here are my thoughts:

* Regulation: With its strict censorship and great firewall, the Chinese government effectively shut out most American IT companies from their market, giving local companies enough time to grow.

* Culture: Chinese culture is much more different from American than European culture is, hence it is also much more difficult to adapt an American IT service to the Chinese market than to the European.

* Market size: With 1.3 billion people, 900 million of which speak Mandarin the market size for any IT service is enormous, even taking into account that many people still do not have reliable Internet access or a lot of money to buy services / products online. Likewise, the market growth is much higher than in the US or Europe.

Personally I believe that the main competition for American IT companies will not come from Europe but from China. Right now, most Chinese IT startups only follow in the roots of their successful American idols, but with so many well- educated young entrepreneurs this should change soon, and I predict that we will see more and more disruptive Internet startups "made in China" very soon.

<comment><USER26> > Why are people looking for a second Google in Europe?

Because they are in Europe, not China. It's a British article.

<comment><USER25> I just think that by looking at China you can better understand the reasons why there is no European Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does booking.com count? Founded in Europe in 1996, still entirely located in Europe, over $1 billion _yearly profit_, but acquired by an American company in 2005.

</comment><comment><USER27> Europe is less capitalistic, is less versed into risk, and is clearly not entrusting so much money to an IT company like google.

It's hard explaining to people what exactly google does for so much money. Europe is more "feet on the ground" when it comes to business in general. What does google sells by the way ? Ads, android (which is mostly open), internet services... it's hard to really tell. In europe, technologies and research will often rather belong to the public sector than the private sector.

The silicon valley is a typically american thing because US business laws and the culture allow it. In europe it just won't. The only way you can really thrive as a programmer in europe, is by doing open source, and Torvalds is a good example of that, so by a loose definition it's only accessible to people who spent a lot of time in universities. There are no other way you are going to do business and getting money typing code in europe. It just won't happen.

<comment><USER28> I don't think you have to be academic to be successful in open source. One example of non-university developed financially successful open source would be MySQL. I'm sure there are others from other parts of Europe that I'm not familiar with.

<comment><USER27> Well you need a way to bring food on the table.

I too could make the most amazing software if I could by open sourcing it. Without resources nor the organization, nothing will happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Quaero was announced by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder during the French-German ministerial conference in April 2005. [...] Quaero was often described as a European competitor to Google [...]

The main source of disagreement was the format of the search engine, with German engineers favoring a text-based search engine and the French engineers favoring a multimedia search engine. Many German engineers also balked at what they thought was becoming too much of an anti-Google project, rather than a project driven by its own ideals."

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

[https://www.exalead.com/search/](https://www.exalead.com/search/)

The project failed to deliver. Though the Exalead web search engine survived and got bought by Dassault Systems (CATIA 3D CAD). Next time they should open source the public funded projects...

</comment><comment><USER29> Not sure how they are related but Qwant is the new Google rival. It's also partly funded by the French government:

[https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/)

<comment><USER10> France has been trying for nearly a decade to build a search engine that matters:

[http://www.dw.com/en/eu-allows-france-to-bankroll-google- riv...](http://www.dw.com/en/eu-allows-france-to-bankroll-google- rival/a-3186854)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of the big issues in Europe is almost non-existent local M&A (and to lesser extent single pan-European shared IPO) market. As long as that is purely focused on US e.g. the exits at all stages (from tiny few million acquihires to hundreds of millions acquisitions) are mostly based in America, a healthy tech market will not emerge in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER22> One can wonder how valuable these companies really are. Yes, they're valuable to investors, but the investors of Facebook are not American, they're completely international. The return on investment on capital investment flows to investors worldwide, not just US investors because it's a US company.

So what else then... Taxes, here tech companies are notorious. Stories of FB paying a few thousand in total taxes in the UK, Apple leaving its cash abroad to avoid taxation, Google channeling its revenues through a royalty-scheme between Ireland and the Netherlands that goes virtually untaxed (Dutch Sandwich) etc... tax wise these companies contribute little to the place of their main business (e.g. the US for the above three companies).

Then, employment? Here too, tech companies are known for providing relatively little employment compared to the size of the business, versus other industries. To take an extreme example, walmart (a company which pulls the vast majority of its revenues from the US alone) has up til recently had more store locations, than FB has employees. FB doesn't even have 12k employees, Walmart has literally a couple million. The article mentions Whatsapp as an example, it just had 55 employees when it was sold for almost $20b Compare that with say Vente Privee, a French online retailer that has 2500 employees and close to $2b in revenue and a slightly higher valuation, that nobody talks about. Which would you rather have in your country, creating jobs? You may still (likely) say Whatsapp, but it wouldn't be an obvious answer. Instagram is similar, 18 employees, who cares whether they're in the US or not? It's a meaningless figure for employment alone. And again, ownership wise the billion dollar valued company is in the hands of international investors, and tax wise it's likely little to nothing.

So what's the contribution of these US companies to the US then? What is Europe really missing? It profits from all the international innovations (I happily use Google's services), while it taxes the above companies for doing business in the EU.

If tech was shitty in Europe, sure, all of this would be alarming. But we have great research (e.g. hadron collider), IT/ICT infrastructure is very solid, if I look at my own country we have digitised and modernised everything from insurance to banking to tax filings, at the supermarket I pay via NFC, as I do in a bus, metro, train or tram. I don't live in some outdated world without technology.

There are very obvious counterarguments to make... in particular political and cultural control and influence that large companies like Google have and the power that wields, that Europe thereby doesn't have, can be or become an issue. Reinventing our own industries the next few decades without inspiring tech companies, is trickier. Seeing talent trained at great European universities with great startup ideas fly to the US for various reasons, is an issue. I appreciate all of that, and yet I feel the importance of companies like FB's contributions to the US as opposed to the rest of the world, is overstated, and that we're not missing out all that much by not having a European FB, for example.

At the end of the day there are 3 superlarge markets, the US, Europe and China. Then a number of very large ones like India or Japan. But of those first three, the EU is merely a partial economic, political and legal union, with a wide range of languages, laws, cultures and systems. While the US and China certainly have internal diversity, it's nothing like the EU. It's why we have tons of companies with a few billion dollar valuations, that capture a substantial portion of the EU but far from all of it. The biggest first language market in the EU is German, and it stands at 18% of the EU as a first language, see what I mean? In the US or China, you can pretty much roll out tech products nationally in many cases, not without any friction, but in a way that's much more natural than in the EU. That doesn't mean tech sucks here, that we have little value, no jobs or shitty digital/online services, it's just fine here (find me digital/online services that the US has that we simply don't have access to, that's missing in EU markets completely), but we have fewer ultralarge unicorns like Google or Facebook, and I'm not all that convinced that this is as big a problem as it's made out to be.

</comment><comment><USER31> I like the point made about the hypocracy of Google saying that European companies don't have the right to affect what people in other countries can see in search results, but, at the same time, filter results based on the special interests of US copyright laws.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think one thing the EU could really do to help startups here would be to offer almost free services and/or grants to localize their websites/apps into all the EU languages much more quickly and less expensively.

<comment><USER33> That's not the issue, the overall mentality, strict employment laws, and stricter access to funding is what slowing EU startups down.

Startups do not need free services that ridiculous, they need an environment which will allow them to take risks and not to have to cut trough a mile of red tape to hire and employees.

<comment><USER32> It's not "the" issue. It is AN issue, and one where they could actually do something.

<comment><USER33> Startups already get plenty of free stuff, that's not whats holding them back so it won't do anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> LOL. How about Australia? The lucky country indeed...</comment>


Show HN: Had a simple idea to track app trends(still in Beta) What next? - <AUTHOR> https://www.appstorechart.com/ <comment><USER2> Have you looked at Sensor Tower?

<comment><USER3> Yes we did look into that. However sensor tower is a far deeper mobile analytics platform. We intended to build a simple platform for us to track the growth of apps and see what interesting apps we could discover, which we already have discovered a few of in the last week. We dont see this is as a sort of alternative to Sensor Tower, those who need Sensor Tower are better of sticking to it, because it has a whole lot of goodies that it is good for.

We're more focussed on individuals tracking apps and trends and most likely to stick to it.</comment></comment>


Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots Sparks Global Backlash - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/anger-over-tourists-swarming-vacation-hot-spots-sparks-global-backlash-1527000130 <comment><USER2> To give a contrarian view, what do people have against other people? If the goal is exclusivity, Then this is faux experience. The places are now, temples to humanity and humanity is what they contain.

I have touristed in places packed with locals, the physical effects are no different. It just cultural supremacy to believe because they are "local" somehow your experience is distinct from having a hoarde of little old ladies with rainshields on around you. (Nara for instance, which is jam packed with Japanese of all ages and religions, but few westerners when I was there. The queue to get local food at lunchtime was unbelievable.)

<comment><USER3> The article is talking about remote areas (NZ - Lord of the Rings), beaches, camping trails etc. These areas didn't get a lot of traffic. Now they do which is leading to the undesired outcomes. It's not talking about locals vs tourists. It's mainly talking about sudden influx of people coming into an area.

<comment><USER4> I'm a kiwi, I don't think people are against visitors per-se - it's the enormous amount of poo they leave behind that they ought to be packing out - it's particularly a problem because we have a culture of 'freedom camping' \- stopping on the side of the road for the night, but now we have tens of 1000s of camper vans without builtin facilities piling on the roadside poo

PS: Lord of the Rings was a movie it's not actually what we're about

<comment><USER5> Me too. But I'm a bit out of touch. I'm aware roadside camping waste has been a mainstream issue for a while, but are many in NZ talking about pressure on environmentally sensitive areas? Is that a very big part of the conversation? (This article might cause one to believe as much).

<comment><USER4> If I look at the local newspaper and the periodic airing of grievances, it's all about camper vans and piles of poo, and then maybe about people who can't safely drive on the left side of the road

I think there probably are isolated areas that are now seeing more people than they ever have but most locals don't get there either - DoC (the government conservation arm) is quite capable of closing places if required

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yup.

I visited Reykjavik last winter and was astonished at the number of tourists visiting in mid-January. I had wrongly assumed it would be a down-time because of poor weather and short days. Nope, tour agencies just cut prices enough to entice people to travel "off-season".

We had a long weekend, so stuck to the main tourist sites within a few hours of the city. They were all crowded with buses and vans full of tourists.

Not only were the crowds themselves an eyesore, a huge number of the tourists were poorly behaved. Not just inconsiderate in the face of large crowds, but actively damaging to the area. Littering, hopping "do not cross" safety lines, wandering too close to the water's edge (Iceland has rough seas and it's easy to get swept into the ocean).

I don't know if there's an easy answer. All the tourists do bring money. But, I did get the impression that Iceland was being ruined.

I also recently returned from a trip to Peru, where we hiked part of the Inca Trail and visited Machu Picchu. While the crowds were large, I was pleased to learn Peru has limited visitors both to the ruins and the trail to try and ensure both are maintained for generations to come. The Inca Trail limit used to be 2000 people/day and is now 500 (that includes guides and support staff, so ~200 tourists).

<comment><USER7> Wasn't that because of WOW Air?

<comment><USER6> In part, yes. WOW and IcelandAir both run substantial tour programs, allowing split tickets for those heading from Western Europe to the US, bundled with discount lodging and tours to popular sites.

That, along with Instagram, make Iceland a desirable place to visit.

<comment><USER8> this is largely incorrect. wow air does not run any tours, tour groups, transport, lodging, etc. it's just a budget airline and they are only interested in transport.

<comment><USER9> They do allow "stopovers". Where you can stay in Iceland for few days between the flights. Those are heavily marketed during the flight too.

<comment><USER8> All of the legs of the flight are the same price regardless of whether you book them together or separately.

They're not really selling a "stopover" so much as just convincing you to buy plane tickets for what they already cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I generally only tell my family and close friends about the spots I find. It won't last forever, the masses might find out another way, but mostly the urge to show off lessened over the years. I have my pics and my memories, and that's enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Congestion pricing. Cities like Venice and Barcelona are beautiful and should absolutely have the right to control tourism, why not do it with a (steep) tax? A double benefit: fewer tourists and more public funds. The tax could be dynamically adjusted to control visitors

Im generally an advocate for low taxes, but why shouldn't cities benefit from being desirable rather than suffer for it

<comment><USER7> Because you may find yourself completely locked out of places you might want to visit in the future. Yes, there are always people richer than you, who don't want _your_ company, either.

<comment><USER12> Which is in effect saying that the residents' right to control access to their city is subordinate to random tourists' right to visit whenever they like. That doesn't sound like a reasonable position.

Maybe a lottery system then? 5k free "tourist visas" per year, that sort of thing.

<comment><USER13> >Which is in effect saying that the residents' right to control access to their city is subordinate to random tourists' right to visit whenever they like. That doesn't sound like a reasonable position.

Interesting position. Competing against that thought you have stuff like United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights #13: Freedom to Move. "We all have the right to go where we want in our own country and to travel as we wish"

<comment><USER14> The UN isn't talking about tourism.

<comment><USER13> My initial instinct was to handwave as well but I don't think that holds up. Not explicitly naming tourism doesn't mean it's not applicable, as the point of calling them 'universal' is that they apply no matter the context. Person, government, country, planet. Universal. What do you consider to be a definition of 'travel' that applies to that statement, that wouldn't also include tourism?

The kind of restriction on tourism we're discussing here appears to run contrary to that particular line. Even at it's most conservative reading it seems to set the bar at 'if you're a citizen of a country then you can travel freely to any public place within it'. The idea of locking down a city to prevent that is exactly what's being proposed here.

Or are we talking about only international tourism here?

<comment><USER14> The context of the entire thread is using money to "control" tourism which is already common. I have been to many places where tourists paid more or had a special tax. Or were required to have a local guide.

The UN charter is specifically about citizens not foreigners. Additionally they are talking about no militay checkpoints, preventing a marginalized ethnic group from traveling from point A to point B, etc. It isn't about not charging rich Americans a little bit more because they want to see New Zealand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't it ironic that tourists themselves are complaining about other tourists. It's like somebody concerned about climate change saying "I used to drive my overpowered car without any worries because there weren't enough car owners to cause a problem but now the world is full of cars and they're polluting it! Let's do something about those other car owners!"

It sounds a bit entitled to want the scarce things for yourself any not have to share them with poor people who can now afford them more than they used to. Wanting those poor people to stay in their slums where they belong, and perhaps be subjects of tourism themselves but not rise to the level of tourist themselves.

Maybe it's just a sign of greater global economic equality, which is widely seen as a good thing. Let's have more of it!

</comment><comment><USER16> This resonates. I was recently in Seville, Spain, and felt myself on the verge of a claustrophobic panic attack while touring the cathedral because of the thundering herds of tourists pressing in from every side. Big organized tour groups where 20, 30, or more people are led around by a single guide speaking to them through mic and bluetooth headsets are the worst because they distort and concentrate the tourist density. One minute it might be fine to go up in the giralda and a few minutes later an hour+ wait if a couple of these giant groups decide to queue up at one time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always thought this was a great opportunity for VR. Pop on your favorite VR headset and see the sights without having to fight the crowds or spend a fortune getting there.

And being VR it could add the optional time-travel element so you could go back to see whatever historical event made the place famous... :)

</comment><comment><USER18> And it is only going to be a bigger and bigger problem in the future.

Great that people are talking about how much free time people are going to get in the future. But where are they going to spend it?

I was always, how bad can in be living in tourist hotspots like Venice or Barcalona. But having lived in Copenhagen, and seen the number of tourist in the inner city increase by 10% every year for the last 5-6 years at least. I have changed by mind, and there are a lot places worse then here.

At some point it is just not going to be sustainable anymore. And I don't see alternative but to put some kind of limit on the tourist horde.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is one reason I refuse to go to typical tourist destinations. The other reason is, tourists are fleeced. My parents paid 6, 7 Euro for a bottle of water in Europe!

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Just gotta know where to go. A local vendor at small Mediterranean town I visited sold 1.75L of one the most delicious red wines of my entire vacation for barely €3.

Given the article's subject matter, the location stays a secret with me ;)

<comment><USER20> I bet it was Croatia, or possibly Albania. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Try the following facebook link redirect[1] if you can't get past the paywall: [https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...](https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fanger- over-tourists-swarming-vacation-hot-spots-sparks-global-backlash-1527000130)

[1]: You can add the following as a bookmarklet to your browser and click on it when you hit the paywall on wsj to get the redirect link.

      javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

<comment><USER8> my simpler first approach: right click 'web' and open in an incognito window.

<comment><USER21> My simpler first approach is to use a ref control[1] plugin ;)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer- control/hn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer- control/hnkcfpcejkafcihlgbojoidoihckciin)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I expect many destination cities will experience economic inflation, rendering them only available to the international wealthy. People's homes will become where they vacation, as, after all, that'll be the only place many can afford. "VR Vacations" will actually become what people do when they take vacation.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots

Anger at hot spot marketing department for successfully selling! How dare they!

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this site compliant with GDPR? I thought restricting the user experience depending if user would give up his personal details is forbidden? This site also doesn't say it doesn't cater to Europeans. I am confused.

<comment><USER25> Obviously personal information is a commodity, which we can trade for comfort, and it doesn't have much value since most of the people are happily giving it up... so I'm not too surprised about this

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Slow motion version of Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd" ?

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

</comment><comment><USER27> Having been to tourist hot spots in China, it's bad there as well - unless you take the old roads on foot. Nobody takes the long ways any more, so if you want that genuine experience, walk.

</comment><comment><USER28> Best option is to find some other place in the country to visit. Find an old trail go for a hike. Throw away the traditional bucket list and focus on having fun.

</comment><comment><USER29> [http://archive.is/zE2dN](http://archive.is/zE2dN)

</comment><comment><USER30> ...well don't go to China lol!

can't read the article due to paywall but can grok the content based on the title. When you break it all down it's pretty much a supply/demand type issue where supply is constantly limited, or in reality decreasing, and demand is increasing rapidly. The only thing that can adjust the speed of the above is pricing and regulations. Unfortunately, many "destinations" are hungry for the tourist dollars and don't think about (or know how to) building a sustainable industry.

Regulations can help; some examples: \--Antarctica treaty limits size of boats that can make landings, number of people that can be on land at once and the minimum ratio of guides/tourists. \--Bhutan limits the number of tourists allowed in the country annually, requires they tour with a guided company, and mandates a minimum spending amount per day. \--Ecuador limits boats in Galapagos to maximum of 100 passengers, limits the port of calls allowed based on boat size and has consistently increased entry fees to balance demand \--Even in San Francisco they passed an ordinance banning tour buses in certain neighborhoods as they were a constant nuisance of noise and pollution.

Beyond regulation, its just a matter of price and accessibility. There's tons of wilderness still throughout the world but very little is easily accessible or of interest to typical tourist. If there's only one or two flights in/out per week to a remote destination you know tourists numbers will be limited. Anyone with 30-60k can visit the north pole. Ive seen pictures and it looks boring AF but at least it's exclusive. Even climbing Everest now is described as an escalator up the world's highest garbage dump. Comparatively, Venice is a city of 50-60k ppl but sees 20M tourists a year! They are starting to put some things in place to control the insanity but it's probably too little too late.

Unfortunately, at the risk of sounding racist, a big part of the problem for more typical destinations is newly rich asian middle class hungry for luxury but completely unaware of local culture/customs, uneducated on the sensitivity of ecosystems, etc. Seems like everyone agrees that the Chinese have taken the lead position as world's worst tourists... and they've already reached 2x the size of Americans (which are admittedly also pretty terrible) int'l annual travel volume.

Also, the internet must share some of the blame! you used to have to work hard to discover a new place, research a desination, meet locals to find out the best secrets... now the Internet lays all to bare and its simply a competition of who has the most impressive instagram roll. Even, the park next to my house used to be a relative deadzone but now gets all sorts of tourist traffic because it was featured on some hidden gems of SF type website.

</comment><comment><USER31> Getting a lot of these WSJ paywall articles in here. Seems like people who have a subscription would probably read these on their own, and we can just leave them off HN so they stop annoying the hell out of everyone else.

<comment><USER32> I can always get to paywalled articles on WSJ, NYT, WaPo and other news sites via [http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/)

I this case: [http://archive.is/5zMmn](http://archive.is/5zMmn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Paywall, can't read.

<comment><USER34> I've been lucky enough to travel to almost 40 countries and unfortunately many locations designated as a must visit have been completely ruined by over tourism including Boracay, Varcala, and Mue Ne just to name a few. Often times by the time the travel press is heralding a place it's character has been changed. Cartagena and Iceland are good examples of this where 10 years ago they were infrequently visited and were replete with services aimed at locals, now many of the shops and restaurants cater to serve the needs of tourists. Good for the proprietors but bad for the authenticity of local culture.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation for firewall software for Windows PCs - <AUTHOR> I (and probably many other people) intend to replace Comodo Firewall, but I'm not aware of any other product (free or paid) that has the same features, such as granular, per-application configurations.<p>What do you use or recommend for a personal firewall on Windows PCs? <comment><USER2> This one is pretty nice:

[https://www.glasswire.com/](https://www.glasswire.com/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222652)

</comment><comment><USER3> PeerBlock</comment>


Charlie Munger Harvard Speech 24 yrs ago: The Psychology of Human Misjudgement - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019053124-years-ago-charlie-munger-gave-brilliant-life-advice-at-harvard-and-its-important-now-more-than-everhtml/ <comment><USER2> Munger starts by pointing out the example of the Kitty Genovese murder but it turns out that the popular understanding of what happened is probably quite wrong. There's a fair amount of irony here. It would appear Munger "adopted the conclusions of others" in his own speech.

[https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482313144/the-witness- exposes...](https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482313144/the-witness-exposes-the- myths-misconceptions-of-kitty-genoveses-murder)</comment>