The falling price of a TV set - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/8421/smart-tv-cheap-roku <comment><USER2> If you look at a chart of TV prices over 50-80 years, this has always been a trend [1]. Institutes using this as an argument for declining poverty are missing the point that while most goods have gone down in cost over the years, services (childcare) and things of value (education) have gone up substantially [2].

[1]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the- incredib...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-incredibly- shrinking-price-of-tvs-2011-12)

[2]: Elizabeth Warren's classic "Twin Income Trap" talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A)

<comment><USER3> But how much cheaper is it to learn a profitable skill? In the 1980s I'd have had a much harder time learning to code. I learned essentially for free. A traditional, hand holding education is more expensive, but information is virtually free.

<comment><USER4> You picked one skill -- computer programming -- which just happens to be the one the internet is built on. It should come as no surprise that the internet is a great place to learn that for free.

The further you get from that, the worse teacher the internet is. There are many skills I've learned which are hard to find information about online, and a few which don't seem to exist on the internet at all.

Not every profession has someone who took the time to sit down and put all their knowledge on the internet for free. Some fields are just getting around to putting it in books.

<comment><USER5> I think that very well may be true, but it definitely doesn't match my own intuition based on what I've seen. I have seen extensive educational videos for free online about math, art (digital, painting, etc.), music (theory, composition, orchestration, specific instruments, production, etc.), writing, electronics, 3D printing, plumbing, construction and home repair, woodworking, language learning, aviation, filmmaking (visual effects, cinematography, acting, directing, screenwriting, etc.), marketing, entrepreneurship, investing and financial advice, etc.

<comment><USER6> The difficulty is sorting out the terrible videos from the good videos.

There's plenty of content created by people who don't really know what they're doing, or who only have a rudimentary understanding.

I guess that's true of all education, but it feels like a bigger problem with free online content.

<comment><USER7> Yes, having choice creates more problems with choosing :) previously you might just have been stuck with the terrible ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Automakers, for example, can now expect to see bigger profits from the loans > they make on selling cars than from selling the actual cars.

I took a community college class in accounting taught by a guy who used to sell cars. He told me the money a dealership made was not from selling the cars, it was from selling the financing.

This was in the 1970's.

BTW, I recommend taking a basic accounting class. It will pay off for your whole life, even if you never run a business.

<comment><USER9> This. A dealer's margins on the cars are razor thin these days. They make the money on financing and servicing.

Even if you buy the car in cash, the purchase is one time payment, but after that they have you as a recurring customer for the long run with service costs which is where the money comes in.

No wonder modern cars are designed to be as difficult to service as possible by the owner. In my older Fiat I could change the air and cabin filter without any tools in 2 minutes. On my latest one they're both bolted with custom screws. WHY?! On my older one the user manual would be full of instructions on how to perform small maintenance tasks yourself. On the new one all it says is _contact your authorized dealer_. It's as if the cars of the past were designed by engineers and cars of today are designed by MBAs to be disposable black boxes like laptops or phones where only the genius bar employees have repair access.

The whole auto industry today is a large scale scam where we trade the environment and our health for corporate profits and is being marketed to us as a desirable lifestyle we should all aspire to which I wish not take part of but I can't due to shitty public transport in my city and employers placing their offices in buttfuck middle of nowhere to save on rent.

Unfortunately, the auto industry comprised of manufacturers and dealers have too much power in some European countries, and, as they keep touting how our dependency on car ownership is creating more jobs, their influence on the future of urban planning ain't going nowhere.

<comment><USER10> >The whole auto industry today is a large scale scam where we trade the environment and our health for corporate profits

In theory, it should be easy to solve transport within a metro area with low- carbon solutions such as walking, bicycling and public transport.

I'm continually amazed by how good public transport and walkability are in some cities outside America. Bicycles also have amazing potential and a few successes in the world as mass transit.

It seems the issue is not with engineering a solution, but with the politics of what gets implemented through our politicians and bureaucrats.

<comment><USER11> Biking in a foot of snow, on roads with pot holes large enough to swallow a tire, or that flood, or turn to black ice, is dangerous and sucks. Add the lack of actual bike lanes on all but a few block long stretches and biking becomes a death wish. Sure I can get a studded fat tire bike, and bike down the middle of the lane with dozens of pissed off people behind me honking and screaming at me, but that still doesn't solve the other problem of rampant unprosecuted bike theft in my city. Nor do I have a place to shower once I get to work.

So I'd need two bikes, one with specialized winter tires, that I'm replacing frequently when they get stolen.

Another gym membership to shower at before I go to work.

Better health insurance to lessen the financial blow of the inevitable hit and run.

More time to account for the longer commute. In my case it's 4-6x longer to bike than drive. Time I'm not making any money and time I'm at substantially greater risk of getting seriously injured.

The politics of it certainly do suck. There's too much money pushing for the jobs that our car dependence create.

<comment><USER12> You only chose to live that far from work, in a place that gets a foot of snow, because you assumed you could make the journey in a petroleum car. It wouldn't have been possible 100 years in the past and it won't be possible 100 years in the future. Same for your employer choosing not to provide showers.

<comment><USER13> You are making wild general assumptions about this person's life. Most people in the USA can't really choose where to live, they are forced into a particular zone based on income or some other factor. You are also suggesting that they move from the place that gets snow. This is a ludicrous suggestion and very rude. We can't all live on the beach front property.

<comment><USER12> Let's be honest, people on HN aren't limited in where they live by poverty.

As I said, it was possible 100 years ago. We -as a society- have brought this rut on ourselves.

<comment><USER13> I certainly am. I don't understand why everyone here thinks this is a private club for rich investors in silicon valley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As soon as I read the title, I knew the answer. It's because you can no longer buy a "TV set". What you can buy is yet another sort of snooping device, which happens to show TV.

> But the most interesting and telling reason for why TVs are now so cheap is > because TV manufacturers have found a new revenue stream: advertising. If > you buy a new TV today, you're most likely buying a "smart" TV with software > from either the manufacturer itself or a third-party company like Roku. The > cut of the advertising revenue from those pre-installed video channels is > big business for actual TV makers, as is the business of selling user > viewing data and other information to marketers.

So yet another thing that I will never buy.

<comment><USER15> you can use TV just as display, that's my primary use of TV, it's just hooked to HDMI cable from laptop, rarely playing some Netflix/Youtube videos to children

you can use whatever is your prefered Android or STB box without ads, just hook it to HDMI and you are done, TV will next time automatically start with selected HDMI output and you will see nothing preinstalled by manufacturer

<comment> saiya-jin I do exactly the same thing (apart from desktop vs laptop). Just don't connect TV to the internet, feed it from trusty HDMI input and it will be great value with 0 annoyances.

But if folks are too lazy to launch videos themselves with few clicks then 'you will be served'

<comment><USER16> On many smart TVs the content you're watching will still be monitored, as automatic content recognition is based on analysing the images being displayed, regardless of source. Blocking that requires isolation from the internet, by simply not setting up the wifi, or using a network level blocker like pi-hole if you still want to use smart features.

<comment> saiya-jin Yes I should have mentioned that one too, no internet connection. In my case TV simply works, there is nothing a software update can bring to improve it but plenty to annoy.

Its like an air-gapped notebook with Windows that you only run Notepad. No need to update it with unknown stuff in patches from Microsoft.

<comment><USER14> OK, but from what I've read, it can still get online if there's an open WiFi AP within range.

You'd need to find the WiFi radio, and physically disable it.

Me, I just buy the largest gaming display that's available. And view videos stored locally. From DVDs or torrents. From a machine that has no internet access. Just ethernet LAN connectivity to an otherwise isolated machine, which is online only via nested VPN chains and Tor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >With less demand for actual TVs, there's less reason for manufacturers to price them even more highly.

I don't buy this reasoning. Tablets and phones supposedly replaced laptops and desktops (or so I've heard), yet the prices for those hasn't really budged in the past couple of decades.

>But the most interesting and telling reason for why TVs are now so cheap is because TV manufacturers have found a new revenue stream: advertising.

How big can the subsidy possibly be? If Facebook's average revenue per user is $25/year, and a TV lasts 5 years, that's at most $125 of subsidy per TV. It's probably order of magnitudes lower if you factor in costs for running the advertising platform, that you really can't show that many ads as Facebook (it can show a sponsored story every few stories, TV producers can't inject an ad every few minutes), and probably have worse targeting.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I agree. The article's claim about app rev share offsetting big parts of the cost just doesn't make sense.

The reason that prices are lower is that manufacturing capacity is much higher, not supporting analog input saves money, vertical integration onto a handful of ICs, container shipping and supply chains are cheaper and Costco, WalMart etc will sell TVs for very low markup to drive traffic.

<comment><USER19> Roku is built into many of the lower end TVs. I'm sure they get a cut of the revenue that Roku receives.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-11/streaming...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-11/streaming- box-king-roku-is-under-seige-from-amazon-and-apple)

 _Nearly every inch of real estate on Roku is for rent. For $1 million, a streaming service can take over the home screen to advertise a show. When Hulu got the rights to stream Seinfeld, it paid Roku to transform a portion of the screen into an image of Jerry's apartment instead of the default purple backdrop. Hulu, Netflix, Showtime, and YouTube have paid Roku to build brand- specific buttons on its remote controls; these lead users straight to those services. At $1 per customer for each button, the cost can quickly add up to millions of dollars in monthly fees._

<comment><USER18> I'm not claiming that TV manufacturers don't get some money from rev shares. My point is that it's not money the manufacturer can count on because subscribing or buying extra services is optional for customers on every set that I've seen. The CPM from just displaying ads in a program guide has to be tiny as CPMs for display only is crap everywhere. In my view, that's why some of these UIs have every pixel for sale, it's not highly valued.

For myself and my sample of family and friends, TVs are displays. We buy the screen we want based on size, specs and image quality, we never connect the screen to the internet, run one HDMI into it and control the feed upstream from a cable or satellite box, streaming box (FireTV, AppleTV, etc) or HTPC running something like Plex. As for the remote control, after configuring the screen to HDMI-1 and turning off all the stupid hyped-up color, frame interpolation and other gimmicky modes that try to create pixels that were never in the source signal, I take the batteries back out of the remote and toss it in the box full of all the other unused TV remotes in the basement waiting for when the screen gets donated to a friend or relative in several years (I just had a funny image pop in my head of all those remotes sitting in the box commiserating like the forgotten toys in the attic in Toy Story).

Manufacturers get zero incremental revenue from us. I'm sure they get some rev from some people but it's going to be a blended average with a fair number of zero samples. The reason I think this is I have a little personal experience doing software bundle deals with hardware consumer electronics manufacturers. It was similar in that if consumers bought into the upsell on our apps there was a rev split with the manufacturer. CE manufacturers invariably assigned zero net present value to any theoretical future revenue that isn't guaranteed. They live and die by their quarterly COGS when it hits the dock in Shenzen. I'm not saying their business can't change over time but that's where it's coming from.

<comment><USER19> And that's all anecdotal. I posted a citation where Roku is getting literally millions from advertising. If the TV manufacturer gets $25 from Roku that's 5% of the total cost of $500 65 inch TV.

You don't have to subscribe to anything for the TV manufacture to make money. When you buy the Roku TV with 4 hardcoded buttons to streaming services that's $4 by itself. Not to mention that half the home screen on a Roku has advertising and unlike computers they aren't easily blocked.

 _CE manufacturers invariably assigned zero net present value to any theoretical_

Of course that's not how it works for any investment. You compare the risk/reward and calculate the expected return and compare it to your risk free rate of return. In the US that is typically the return on government bonds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The trade-offs for cheap TVs is that customers are themselves becoming the product for TV makers [...] For something to be as cheap as a great TV, people have to give something up — whether they know it or not."

Just never give the TV its own direct connection to the internet. Use another device that you do trust, to feed the big screen its content.

<comment><USER21> Wait until these companies partner with Comcast to get default access to the ever present Xfinity public hotspot.

Sure you might deny it privileged to your network but for a profit share I might let it access mine.

<comment><USER22> I doubt you'd get a profit share. When the idea of all of those 'CableWiFi' networks started, it was because the cable operators wanted a separate network. It usually runs on a separate circuit so it won't interfere with the customer's bandwidth.

<comment><USER23> The point they were making was using this cablewifi, tv will be able to send data back without requiring your WiFi password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The one thing I never understood about this is, aren't you just free to not hookup your TV to the WiFi? I've bought SmartTVs and have just used them as "dumb" TVs and they work perfectly fine. Aren't you there capturing the benefit of this supposedly lower price without having to give up any personal data back?

<comment><USER25> But people want to watch Netflix, Amazon Prime or other stream services. Modern smart TVs have those integrated.

<comment><USER26> Just get a Chromecast or any other streaming player device and hook it up to the TV with only HDMI. Solved- TV don't need to be able to spy on you.

<comment><USER27> Chromecasts may be the best low-key (and low-cast) gadget out there. Which probably means Google will kill it :-/

Just use my tablet, phone, or laptop to put content up on the TV. It makes for a pretty nice digital picture frame too.

<comment><USER28> luckily Chromecast seems to be an important piece of Stadia, so it should be around for a long while

<comment><USER29> Do you have a reason to assume that Stadia will be around for a long while?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I just purchased a 55" 4K LG TV from Costco for under $400 out the door. The TV's sole purpose is to display an Apple TV's output, and will not be connected to the internet. Interestingly, it has AirPlay and Homekit built-in, but that's largely irrelevant due to the Apple TV.

This TV is replacing a 46" ~10yo Samsung purchased for over 1.1k that has very basic "Smart" capabilities like playing MKV files from a USB drive and network, which in my opinion is when smart TVs peaked.

<comment><USER31> It's probably an edge lit TV. FALDs are more expensive.

<comment><USER30> Array LED backlighting can be had for under $500. I purchased a 55" 4k Vizio for under $500 _3 years ago_ which I promptly returned when the included remote did not let me adjust the TV's settings, they expected me to download an app.

My only criteria for the replacement TV is that it have better picture quality than the 10yo Samsung it is replacing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Automakers, for example, can now expect to see bigger profits from the loans > they make on selling cars than from selling the actual cars

I've heard of that. Then I heard dealers will give you a hard time if you want to buy a car right out, some will even run your credit without your permission. I don't have the money to go buy a new car right now, but it's pretty sad that saving up and paying for things is so discouraged now. Then dealerships in general people don't like or even lie to people, I guess one told someone they were required to fill out a credit application by law even if it doesn't get processed... So if your credit union or your own bank got you financing, then want to try to undercut that. Then heard some dealership someone was looking at new cars thinking of trading their car in, but changed their mind but the dealer kept their keys a little longer trying to keep them there. Seems like walking into a dealership is getting into a hostage situation.

People are just putting everything on credit, a car they probably shouldn't of bought and sits parked most of the time, people refinance their mortgages over and over again so they'll probably never end up paying off their house. It's insane how much debt is pushed... and also seems easier to get into student debt than getting loans to start a small business.

Seems like the priorities are all off anymore and they want everyone to be in debt. Then people with poor credit might end up paying double or more the value of the car, someone I knew bought a used car and was going to end up paying 4x the value of it... and then in some parts of the country if you don't have a car, you don't have a job unless you live in one of the big cities with public transport. Some areas don't even have sidewalks either, and some people have attitudes against cyclists too since they paid more for their car or SUV so they feel more entitled to the road. I guess whoever has the best car is some sort of contest, but I can see why it draws people in. Someone I know has got a new car every few years, now regrets doing that since so much money they could of had saved up now.

<comment><USER33> My local Ford dealer would not even talk about the price of a used car until filled out paperwork and they ran a credit check without asking.

<comment><USER32> That would be annoy me. I wish there wasn't a monopoly on new car sales. But I wonder if places like CarMax are better even though they can only sell used cars. Never been to one but see their commercials. Kinda like a mall for cars instead of a specific brand.

Seems like medical and health stuff, and car buying there's no pricing transparency and you are pushed around. I'm glad buying other stuff isn't as bad though, imagine if buying toilet paper or a laptop required negotiating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Exactly the reason why I wish Apple introduce Apple TV Set. Or partner with LG where they sell the panel with a cable attached to Apple TV.

Instead we now have AppleTV App that lives inside the Android TV ecosystem, and requires Internet connection which automatically sends data to who knows where.

And I dont like having two remote to control my TV.

<comment><USER35> > _And I dont like having two remote to control my TV._

If your devices support HDMI-CEC[1] — my new-ish TV does, as does a Yamaha receiver I purchased several years ago — your Apple TV (and therefore its remote) can control everything.

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

<comment><USER36> CEC is flaky though. Not everything is compatible. There's little good documentation. It breaks randomly without obvious causes or predictable fixes.

If Apple made a box or a set of them with a proprietary interface that competes with CEC I would buy in a heartbeat.

CEC is working well at my house. But for six months earlier this year, the Apple TV remote could no longer power up the sound bar. One day it started working again. But I live in fear of the call from my wife when it just stops working entirely and she can't figure out how to turn the TV on, much less the sound system.

<comment><USER37> Speaking as someone who has recently been involved with a very wide-scale project using CEC (demo units for a major retailer here in the UK) I concur - CEC is incredibly unreliable.

My project ran on a _very_ limited range of hardware from a well-known high end manufacturer. I imagine it's even worse "in the wild".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm a bit skeptical that the income from the tracking/advertising makes up for such a large drop in price.

<comment><USER39> I'm sure they'll try to convince us that it does, so that we don't resist the tracking too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> TV's have been dropping in price for of 70 years. There's no conspiracy.

Here's someone who made a list -

[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/why-is-tech- getting-c...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/why-is-tech-getting- cheaper/)

[https://imgur.com/gallery/W3ouE](https://imgur.com/gallery/W3ouE)

Every year everyone gets richer and better off, although it'd be nicer if the true poor got a little more sped up.

<comment><USER41> > it'd be nicer if the true poor got a little more sped up.

on a side note, that the poor are getting sped up is why there is so much migration going on. When they get a little money, they are no longer content to stay where they are, and they rather migrate to richer countries due to lack of opportunities at home.

Hence, a future with fewer poor, will lead to huge social unrest in the currently rich countries.

[https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1049641](https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1049641)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if we'll see a similar trend for speakers as they integrate with Google Home and Alexa.

Currently people are willing to pay for virtual assistants but in the near future subsidization is inevitable as the data collection and advertising opportunities are too great.

</comment><comment><USER43> Pretty cool article and highlights the problem of Smart TVs well. I don't think I'll ever get a smart TV but I'm privileged in this because my husband is fine with watching movies on a PC monitor and we don't plan to have kids so it's not like we'll have someone in the house clamoring for Disney+ on a separate big screen. Most households cave eventually because, admittedly, it's sweet to get a huge screen with excellent picture quality for just a few hundred.

My one gripe with the article itself is the introduction: "I've noticed something exciting but sort of crazy". Claiming that TV prices dropping fast is 'crazy' seems a bit funny. Prices drop for a lot of stuff though, I suppose, some technology does stay in the same relative range. But it's probably only until it reaches a certain quality point past which there's not much to entice customers into high-end purchases.

<comment><USER44> You can get a smart TV and just not connect it to the internet. Even lobotomized like this, they still work fine as normal TVs.

You can also get a smart device (Roku, Amazon Fire, etc.) and hook that up to any TV to stream things (including Disney+). You can also just hook that computer up and it would work as well (a TV is just a big monitor with sound).

So there is no need to ever "cave", even if you want streaming on a big screen and don't want a smart TV.

<comment><USER45> _You can also get a smart device (Roku, Amazon Fire, etc.) and hook that up to any TV_

Why should that device have any less spying or ads?

<comment><USER44> I was pointed out that they had options. Not what they should do to avoid spying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Vizio snooping system:

 _ACR collects data related to publicly available content displayed on your television /display, such as the identity of your broadcast, cable, or satellite television provider, and the television programs and commercials viewed (including time, date, channel, and whether you view them live or at a later time) . We also collect unique identifiers about this TV, including the IP address. This data is collectively referred to as "Viewing Data ." ... When ACR collection is turned on, we may share Viewing Data with authorized data partners including analytics companies, media companies and advertisers. VIZIO and its authorized data partners use Viewing Data to generate summary analysis and reports of how users engage with content on their TVs and other devices. VIZIO Viewing Data is sometimes enhanced with household demographic data and data about digital actions (e.g. digital purchases and other consumer behavior taken by devices associated with the IP Address we collect). Viewing Data also enables our authorized data partners to deliver advertising relevant to your profile that you might find useful, both on the VIZIO TV/display and other devices sharing your IP Address. Viewing Data is also used to help content publishers, broadcasters or content distribution services create or recommend more relevant entertainment based on summary insights, as well as helps us improve the design of our products, software and services . You can easily turn this feature On or Off in the RESET & ADMIN menu. If you have trouble enabling or disabling Viewing Data, please contact VIZIO Customer Support by going to support.vizio.com ..._

</comment><comment><USER47> Ok here's a question: why do I care? Watching TV has always been an experience with ads in it. Netflix is going to know what I watch no matter what device I use. In fact, my TV is probably the most private way for me to watch a streaming service since it knows basically nothing else about me. So I got a beautiful TV for an affordable price and the manufacturer made some more money on ads in a way that I have not noticed. I'm cool with this trade.

<comment><USER48> I see two major problems with this business model of subsidizing TV hardware with adware/telemetry/spyware solutions:

1\. The UI platforms + middleware used for these TV's are often a low budget MVP development (it's also not part of the core knowledge of manufacturers), meaning you don't need to go far to find customers complaining of unresponsive UIs and sudden crashes.

2\. The lifetime of the device far exceeds the likely manufacturer support for the device's software. This means you will end up with an insecure unpatched device connected to your home network.

Both these problems are resolved with a 'dumb' TV/Display, to which you connect your media center of choice.

<comment><USER19> Most of the lower end TVs have Roku integrated. While you might not like their business model, Roku knows how to make a good set top UI on cheap hardware.

<comment><USER48> I don't doubt what you say is true in the US retail landscape. Although the HW will work anywhere, Roku as a service is very much a US centric business.

At least in Europe the options out of the box integrated in these 'smart' TVs are either Android or some OEM crippled flavour of a nix distro.

Also we need to distinguish between released set top boxes from a triple-play provider, and these 'inside' the TV half-baked software releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's also why Amazon/Apple/Google/Roku/etc. basically gives away their beachhead-building boxes that are launching-points for their content platforms and integrations as cheaply as inkjet printers or razor handles. It's "razor blade" economics of a near-zero marginal unit-cost service bought on a subscription-basis, and analytics resold.

<comment><USER19> At $179 for an AppleTV 4K, I wouldn't say Apple is "giving it away".

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > If you buy a new TV today, you're most likely buying a "smart" TV with > software from either the manufacturer itself or a third-party company like > Roku. The cut of the advertising revenue from those pre-installed video > channels is big business for actual TV makers, as is the business of selling > user viewing data and other information to marketers.

Is there a good open source smart tv firmware?

<comment><USER51> 1\. Buy any affordable TV with a good panel

2\. Disable WiFi on the TV or block it at the network level

3\. Install Kodi on an old laptop or RPi. Serve cold over HDMI & prosper.

<comment><USER52> > 3\. Install Kodi on an old laptop or RPi. Serve cold over HDMI & prosper.

4\. Make sure it's an Rpi4, or the laptop's not _too_ old, if you plan to play H.265 (HEVC) content, so you've got hardware decoding for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I have a 43" Panasonic plasma TV, which has THX certified display panel. Paid about 800USD for it back 2013 I believe. I'd like to replace it with a LCD one, but oh boy how much do the THX certified ones cost - [https://www.thx.com/product-finder/](https://www.thx.com/product-finder/)

<comment><USER7> THX is just for sound, right? Why not buy a cheaper TV and a separate certified speaker set?

<comment><USER54> They have certifications for full home theatre including video (panels & projectors) but you're paying more for the THX logo than for a guarantee you actually bought the best option for the price since hardly anybody pays for the cert.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm optimistic about the next 5 years of SmartTV market evolution. It's a relatively new platform and as the devices reach certain market saturation points (and play nicer with phones) I think we'll start to see a lot of really interesting applications. They're also very cheap compared to other devices.

<comment><USER56> I think the concept of a smart TV is a good one its just the implementation is always awful. It is useful to be able to stream content directly to your tv but every single smart tv I have seen has a slugish UI, is awkward, has random bugs, becomes unsupported by the OEM after a few years and is now insecure and gets ransomware. And then OEMs crap it up themselves and fill the OS with adverts and tracking.

After all that its just so much simpler to buy a tv thats just a dumb screen and plug in a smart layer on top via hdmi.

<comment> amiga-workbench I really like the Chromecast UX model, your TV is completely brainless, has no native user interface, no cheap and nasty remote, and any of your other devices boss it around like the dumb wireless monitor it should be.

<comment><USER19> That's actually a horrible model for TV. TV is often social. I would hate to have to have my phone to control my TV. Not to mention when guests come over. I'll give someone else the remote, but not my phone.

<comment> amiga-workbench I've never had to do that, guests get access to the playback controls while on my network and are completely free to use their own phone to cast something else to my TV if they wish. What they don't get access to is my own media library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> He mentioned cars. Can't wait until personalized ads show up in cars.. "visit McDonald's drivethrough in 0.5 miles, buy your favorite, the McRib(TM), and get a free drink with code xyz! Only 2 minute detour and the drivethrough currently has 2 cars in it!". And it will have user profiles and knows the driver's gender, etc, and shopping preferences. Child seat fitted since 2 months but weight sensor suggests no child on-board? "Discount at Walmart for new parents! For example diapers 20 pieces for 5 dollars! Come on by and have a relaxing shopping experience without the need to baby-wrangle!"

<comment><USER58> Gas pumps all seem to have video ads now.

<comment><USER13> Which is super annoying. They are really loud and hard to "ignore". I do my best to ignore them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> You're not only buying a TV nowadays, you're buying a portal/frontend to goods and services that earns the TV manufacturers a comission for your use and data.

</comment><comment><USER60> I remember we payed 300 quid for a 26" color TV in 1976.

<comment><USER61> We inherited ours, it drew 500W according to the spec, I suspect it was worse than that. The next one was 150W. The current one is down to 65W and doesn't even register on my meter on standby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> A 27" inch CRT had fallen in price to about $300 15 years ago or so. Then the flatscreens came and the price pressure cycle had to start over again.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm waiting for HDMI cartel (run by major TV makers) to stop poisoning devices with HDMI. Time to adopt DisplayPort everywhere.

<comment><USER64> I don't like HDMI either, but I want Digi-RGB + analog audio + IMIDI (each on a separate cable).

Still, stuff such as DisplayPort is at least better than HDMI, I suppose.

<comment><USER63> I suppose something even more advanced like USB4 can bundle it all if needed.

<comment><USER64> My own idea is to define a standard arrangement of the connectors, and allow the cables to be clipped together; the user can then clip or unclip them if wanted. That way you have the advantages of both: having separated cables, and having all stuff in one cable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> My TV will never be on my network. I will _actively_ seek out, and pay a premium for a "dumb" TV.

</comment><comment><USER66> I do not understand why the prices of these have not fallen to $0, in much the same way an inktjet printer has. Or why the TV does not come as a freebie with some kind of (cable, otherwise) content subscription.

(Disclaimer: I hate "smart" TVs)

<comment><USER67> Have you ever tried to sell a TV? Much like diamonds or cars, it seems that a lot of their value derives from the "primary-market freshness guarantee." For base-model TVs, the secondary-market price (e.g. the one you'd get at a pawn shop) _is_ essentially zero.

People aren't really buying base-model TVs, though. Who wants a 30" 30Hz 720p non-HDR display (let alone an old CRT or plasma TV), even for free? "I'd rather watch shows on my phone than on that piece of junk" is a pretty common thing to hear when someone is being offered one of these.

And so we still see, not only the primary-market markup effects, but also the "leading edge" markup effects, where having to have all the best features (larger size, 4K, HDR, 144Hz, OLED, curved display, etc.) that you don't _have_ to have, makes the TV more expensive. (But not _that_ much more expensive. Even with both of these markups, the average "good enough to watch anything without downsampling" TV is still only $500.)

<comment><USER52> > Who wants a 30" 30Hz 720p non-HDR display (let alone an old CRT or plasma > TV), even for free? "I'd rather watch shows on my phone than on that piece > of junk" is a pretty common thing to hear when someone is being offered one > of these.

That's exactly the kind of TV (and somewhat better, actually) that you can thrift or find on Craigslist for free or so-cheap-it's-almost-free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember when Curtis-Mathis advertised that they sold "the most expensive television set you can buy, and darn well worth it."

I doubt anyone else remembers that, though :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> the article doesn't even make sense, 43" for 500USD was not cheap in 2016, I was furbishing new apartment and paid 500EUR for 55" 4K TV in expensive Europe, the article is not specific to US, prices of TV and consumer electronics are falling everywhere in world

</comment><comment><USER68> Does anybody know a honey pot to make those smart TVs connect to something that will silence them?

</comment><comment><USER69> I have a giant TCL Roku TV, and it's amazing. One remote for everything. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER70> I bought a 58" inch tv from Walmart for $279 before tax. Works very well.</comment>


A Chemical That Improves Memory (and Cures Loneliness) - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/347030/a-chemical-that-improves-memory-and-cures-loneliness

<comment><USER2> Judging from the title, just what hackers need...

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone read CS Lewis' Great Divorce?

<comment><USER3> I ask because his image of hell is an endless expanding country of people who can't stand anyone else. Loneliness can often be a symptom of our selfcenteredness, and this drug is like giving someone painkillers for their broken arm.</comment></comment>


Analytics for Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://www.mountainmetrics.com/?utm_campaign=hn

<comment><AUTHOR> JN, co-founder of MountainMetrics speaking. @orangethirty MountainMetrics was actually built 3 months ago as a StarterLeague project. The current Tumblr hype encouraged me to showcase the project to HN.

</comment><comment><USER2> One question: Why I'll gonna use this, instead Google Analytics?

<comment><AUTHOR> MM aims at aggregating the most valuable data from GA and Tumblr and provide you with more insights and less data. The vision is to provide you with metrics that you can't have on GA or Tumblr let alone. MountainMetrics is built to give you a great overview.

If you want a lot of data, you can always go on GA to dig deeper.

<comment><USER3> any examples?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tumblr offers advanced analytics to premium partners and brands.

</comment><comment><USER5> Tried to signup, then:

      We're sorry, but something went wrong.

Twice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nowhere does it specify whether it's free or paid, and if the latter, what the prices are?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's currently free. How much would you pay for a service like this?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @antr Looking into that right now. Thanks for pointing this out.

</comment><comment><USER7> You made a mistake right in "you're" pitch

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks for pointing this out.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @antr I just fixed the sign-up problem.

<comment><USER5>
      Application Error

      An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

      If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Talk about bad timing.

<comment><USER9> Or good timing?</comment></comment>


Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voices from Wax Cylinders - <AUTHOR> https://hyperallergic.com/397995/wax-cylinder-optical-scanning-uc-berkeley/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like a great project.

> due to "the culturally sensitive material of the content on these cylinders, > and out of respect for the contemporary descendants of many of the > performers on the recordings, access to the majority of the audio being > digitized is currently restricted."

I don't really understand this. Why would the performers record their speech for posterity if they wanted it hidden away?

<comment><USER3> It clearly says, as you quoted, that it is being withheld due to the cultural sensitivity of the content, and out of respect for the descendants of those who were recorded.

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

"When the restoration project is complete, the recordings will be sent to tribal descendants, who will determine which parts of the collection can be released to the public."

<comment><USER4> I think Walter is saying something else entirely, specifically that the people being recorded must have known and consented to the recording (it would be painfully obvious, given the way the technology worked at that point), so the descendants have nothing to do with the point of consent for these recordings. If I make a rare recording with knowledge that just about anyone could listen to it, and it becomes an artifact, certainly don't think I'd care what ethnicity or cultural lineage the listeners belong to any more than I did when the recording was made.

For example, if you publish a book, I don't need your descendants or the descendants of a parallel bloodline to approve me reading it.

That said, I only skimmed the article, so maybe there's something particularly sensitive about the circumstances of the recording? Forgive me if I've overlooked something. Beyond all that, it is also ultimately the researchers' discretion as to who they want to check with before publishing the works more widely, so whatever. Far be it from me to say that I have a right to something that I did not put in the effort to create.

<comment><USER5> "Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." \- George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"

I regard that as a caution that just because I think something is reasonable, it doesn't mean that others will think the same. My sense of reasonableness is based on many things, including being part of a culture where it's cheap to record, store, and redistribute sound, and which regards anything old as being part of the public domain and therefore unrestricted.

Modern informed consent has a much higher standard than the consent of 100 years ago. For one, it's not just consent about the process of making a recording but _informed_ consent about the larger consequences of doing so.

The people who were recorded likely knew their speech was being recorded for future scientific research. However, consider the technology of the time. The recording was onto wax cylinder, so it could only be played a few hundred times before being worn out. This limited the total number of people who could use it, and mostly to anthropologists. It was also hard to duplicate a wax cylinder recording with any fidelity.

There is no way that the people of 100 years ago could give informed consent of the possibility that their recording would be open to the world a century later.

While you, if you published a book, would have grown up as part of a culture which has had centuries of book publishing experience, and would be able to provide informed consent.

Of course, those people are dead, so why does it care?

Anthropologists also want to get a more complete view of people's lives. To do that, they may need to make assurances about how any notes or recordings will be used. If the standard is "after 100 years everything will be public" then anthropologists are less likely to get the information they want.

<comment><USER6> Informed consent, glad someone cares about that. This concept also applies to putting old usenet archives back online and confronting people with EULAs written in legalese all caps.

<comment><USER4> ALL CAPS IS CONSIDERED ADEQUATELY CONSPICUOUS FOR DISCLAIMING WARRANTY BY THE COURTS, THAT IS WHY IT IS A COMMON WAY TO MAKE STATEMENTS CONSPICUOUS. UNFORTUNATELY, IF YOU DON'T EVEN SHOW PEOPLE THE EULA, IT WON'T MATTER HOW CONSPICUOUS THE DISCLAIMER IS.

<comment><USER7> Please don't. You can make your point quite effectively without violating the guidelines. (I'll delete this comment if you lowercase your comment.)

<comment><USER8> _> Please don't. You can make your point quite effectively without violating the guidelines. (I'll delete this comment if you lowercase your comment.)_

You are not a mod, you have no authority save what you feign, and this comment precludes you from deleting yours.

<comment><USER7> You're right, I'm not a mod. The only authority I have is the good will of other HN members. The community is capable of encouraging better behavior on its own behalf. As for deleting my comment, that would be out of courtesy to my parent. The point isn't calling out bad behavior, it's improving the site. The site is better off without my comment after it's served its purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > ...digital repatriation of cultural heritage...

So basically the university is going to block access to a valuable publicly owned academic intellectual property due to some sort of social guilt from the research team and may even turn over partial ownership of that publicly owned property.

<comment><USER10> They can probably be sued to release the originals so that someone else can reproduce the process. Albeit laws governing museums are a bit murky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me a blog post [1] from 2002 of somebody who just tried their hands at it with descent result with not a lot of code.

At the time it appeared on slashdot [2] everybody screamed "fake" until the author eventually posted their source code (they were reluctant to do so as they thought their code was terrible). There were comments about how laser devices existed, already back then, to read LPs.

[1]: [http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html](http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html)

[2]: [https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/09/05/1814203/ripping- vin...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/09/05/1814203/ripping-vinyl-via- your-scanner)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been on several UC Berkeley archeology / anthropology projects in California with native Californians and students are required to respect the native culture to the extreme of being required to pray to native gods and remaining outside the view of all other people while having a period. Obviously, I don't believe compliance to be 100%. Native people must be around to observe everything, their rituals performed at every work site, and any site where human remains are encountered must be left and closed again with a much more elaborate process. Far from being informed and respectful, the average UC Berkeley student today arrives, having grown up in CA, thinking native Californians are completely extinct! So, there are very different native cultures in CA to this day, and it is very unlikely that the average Californian starts with any insight into how different the peoples recorded on these cylinders may view this process. Anything that happens at UC's anthropology department happens in a cultural minefield of constant explosions of controversy. Any project at Phoebe Hearst is ethically fragile and liable to be looked back upon as a travesty in less than a decade.

</comment><comment><USER13> ...and in another 100 years, perhaps we may see "Berkeley Uses Molecular Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voices from SD Cards"... but seriously, I wonder if any of the high-capacity data storage today would be recoverable 100 years later.

The technology, based on the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable) , has the same disadvantages of also picking up sound from the dirt and dust, so it requires plenty of postprocessing.

Also, as an amazing example of how the brain processes voices and tries to find meaning, at ~2:10 in the sample video it sounds to me like...

 _we 're gonna see a ghost--- what the fuck! what the fuck!_

...despite having already learned that it's in a completely different language.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if there are any other efforts currently to record indigenous languages that are at risk - there must be some organizations willing to help arrest the rate at which these languages are failing/disappearing into the void - anyone know of any official/unofficial organized/unorganized projects like this? Its very interesting to think that we have the technology to save these languages, yet its not being applied - or is it?

<comment><USER15> Many efforts including most tribes doing it themselves. I do believe Steven Spielberg also had a project going. It is generally presented as language preservation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome. I had read that someone was scanning old LPs with a flatbed scanner but I couldn't find any package to do it. Anyone on HN know about this?

My mother has a bunch of her father's old 78 records with a lot of Marathi songs and spoken word which we'd like to digitize without destroying.

(amusing aside: I accidentally casually typed "78 LPs" before catching it in re-reading. Of course 78s by definition can not be LPs!)

</comment><comment><USER17> Heres a link to actual recovered audio, within their video

[https://youtu.be/H6AqEppqUDA?t=133](https://youtu.be/H6AqEppqUDA?t=133)

</comment><comment><USER18> For those who don't know, wax cylinders were one of the first ways to record sound. The predecessor of vinyl records.</comment>


EdgeRank: How Facebook Determines What Appears in the News Feed - <AUTHOR> http://www.getelastic.com/edgerank-explained/

<comment><USER2> I had a group dinner with Albert-László Barabási a few weeks ago and had the opportunity to ask him to what extent modern social network services like Twitter and Facebook were employing network science under the covers. He was pretty skeptical that they were doing anything that interesting.

Which is certainly bourn out by this article.

My gut feeling is that of all of them, LinkedIn is doing the most interesting things, perhaps because it has the biggest stake in actually understanding the relationships between graph-distant members. With their more ad-oriented models, Facebook and Twitter have much lower fruit available to them in the form of mining user product sentiment and likely ad demographic.</comment>


All the Ways to Make a Web Component - <AUTHOR> https://webcomponents.dev/blog/all-the-ways-to-make-a-web-component/ <comment><USER2> So great to see all of these implementations outlines in one place. It's particularly helpful to see the benefits these web components could bring to the file size of the JS in your application. Hopefully the great scores that some of these libraries are achieving serve as a challenge to the others to push for even better number across the board in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> It always starts by measuring. I look forward to see these numbers go down ;)</comment></comment>


Tech company PAC donations - <AUTHOR> https://donationsfrom.tech/ <comment><USER2> Misleading title. Should be called Tech company PAC donations to politicians the site creator doesn't like. Listing is not data based.</comment>


JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition - <AUTHOR> http://dmitrysoshnikov.com/ecmascript/javascript-the-core-2nd-edition/ <comment><USER2> This is a very solid foundation to work with, for anyone who might have struggled with the contexts and how arrow functions, local variables, thises (hah) and prototypes fit into the bigger picture.

It also clearly shows that Javascript is not the mess that it looks like from a beginner's perspective. Yes, anyone can create a 15-20 min video about how == and === can mess up stuff, how you cant just pass around a function with a this in it without being careful, how NaN is wtf, and all that jazz. But at the end of the day, stick to this language long enough and it works for you.

<comment><USER3> I wonder why nobody has created a version of JavaScript that just throws exceptions for all the WTF cases? That is, it would basically be a mode like 'use strict-at-runtime'; .

This would be incompatible, but it would be a useful development aid. Surely most frameworks like React and Angular avoid these corners of the language, and they could be trivially modified to run on such an interpreter? It would improve their code quality.

I know this would be a large amount of work, but it doesn't seem that huge compared to all the other JavaScript infrastructure out there (parsers, transpilers, etc.). There are more independent JavaScript interpreters written than interpreters of any other language, AFAICT. At least before ES6, writing a JS interpreter was a one-talented-person project, not a huge team project like a JIT.

I guess one reason is that the DOM and node.js bindings aren't easy to reproduce. But I would think people still run their unit tests in a limited environment and it would be useful for some code. It could even be based on narcissus -- JavaScript in JavaScript?

<comment><USER4> Probably because the WTF cases are exaggerated. After a couple of months coding JS you will know it well enough so it doesn't bite you. It really is a non-issue for people who work with it daily.

<comment><USER3> I agree it might not be an issue for professional programmers, given the right tools.

But there are plenty of people who would recommend Python over JS as a first programming language for exactly this reason. Python gives better error messages and has fewer WTFs.

I think JS could be a good teaching language if it were not for the confusion over types, which is an important thing for a beginning programmer to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One issue I have with this JS tutorial is that it spends little to no time talking about FP, just OOP (functional vs object-oriented programming).

What text it does devote to Closures makes them sound like a "problem" to be worked around. Funny, I thought "this" was the problem (to be worked around, or avoided entirely whenever possible).

Class based languages such as Java do an excellent job of modeling how I thought about programming back in 1990. It's how we were taught in school, so as to be able to manage mutable data in a turing tar pit. (remembering a lecture about garbage collection, which essentially scoffed at the overhead...)

Having learned a good deal more about FP in the last 10 or 15 years (beyond the little bit of Lisp I did in an AI class back in the 80s), Javascript really starts to shine in many ways, whereas Java (and other [Simula67 subset] C++ derivatives) looks like the intellectual cripple in comparison.

I wish people would stop trying to turn Javascript into something more and more like C++/Java. Just stop, already. It was supposed to be like Scheme and/or Smalltalk, but The Management (marketing) got involved, and the rest is tragedy, er, history.

<comment><USER6> The last paragraph describes perfectly frustration JavaScript developers face while going deep into the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I also highly recommend Kyle Simpson's "You Don't Know JS" series. Very very good.

[https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know- JS/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know- JS/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is good, with one major critique:

> ECMAScript is an object-oriented programming language, having concept of an > object as its core abstraction.

This is technically correct but misses that Javascript is not OO in the way that many other languages are, but is instead prototypical in nature. That's an important distinction because creating long prototype chains in JS is a very bad and negative habit, where as the same behavior is absolutely fine in Java.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've just been reading through this and it's surprisingly accessible to someone without a CS background.

Anthony Alicea's Understanding Weird Parts of JS on Udemy was pretty good at introducing some of these concepts and I would have thought most people working with JS would be interested in finding out what's below the surface.

<comment><USER10> True, I'm not much into client side programming, just learning and lectures like this or Axel Rauschmayer's[1] are gold sources to understand Javascript.

[1] [http://exploringjs.com/es6/](http://exploringjs.com/es6/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "ECMAScript is an object-oriented programming language, having concept of an > object as its core abstraction."

I'm curious as to whether or not this definition makes sense to other developers? ECMAScript does have a built-in "Object" data type, though I wouldn't say that this is it's "core abstraction". Further, firmly object- oriented languages, such as Java, seem to lack this abstraction. Perhaps I'm missing something in the definition?

<comment> FLUX-YOU Huh? All objects in Java implicitly derive from java.lang.Object. Same for .NET and System.Object. The exceptions being value-types and structs.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, as a Javascript developer, my understanding of the Objects in Java is crude at best, so I may not have made a lot of sense here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As many useful things as there are in ES2015 (and beyond!), it's probably worth pointing out a few "corporate" environmental constraints that might limit one to ES 5.1:

* IE11 isn't dead yet. MS still supports it.

* The "Nashorn" engine inside (Oracle) Java 8 only supports 5.1.

Scoff at them if you will, but some of us have to live with these things, and aren't using a transpiler.

</comment><comment><USER12> Related, any Typescript guides that you found very useful?

<comment><USER13> I've found Basarat's TypeScript Deep Dive very helpful: [https://basarat.gitbooks.io/typescript/content/](https://basarat.gitbooks.io/typescript/content/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this is great! I think it's the clearest, tersest explanation of JS langauge fundamentals that I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does JavaScript have some special definitions for _delegation_ and _dynamic dispatch_? The definitions provided in the article appear to particularly relate them to inheritance - which is not the traditional definition applied to either term in object-orientation?

<comment><USER2> I think that the article is actually correct, because the reason why in other - mostly static, and better designed dynamic -languages, you knew that member functions were bound to the object being called is because that is how the functions were actually handled by that language's runtime. There is no such assumption in JS, so where in C# you explicitly design a delegate, the reverse is true here. You need to explicitly bind the function or declare the function as a property with an arrow function and capture the execution context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It bugs me that the use of the word "inheritance" overshadows "delegation". It paints a false image of the language.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish Douglas Crockford would update his great "JavaScript: The Good Parts". It's still great and aged okayish, but doesn't cover ES2015+.

<comment><USER18> Is there a good similar book that covers modern JS?

<comment><USER9> The 3rd edition of Eloquent Javascript (including ES6) should be online next month. Marijn Haverbeke was fundraising and reached his target. [https://eloquentjavascript.net/3rd_edition/](https://eloquentjavascript.net/3rd_edition/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article is useless for the modern web development. Nowadays the essential is to know the nuances between Angular versions and how to defer a promise returned by chained observables.

<comment><USER20> You can get away with treating a JavaScript Engine as a black-box but understanding what is happening under the hood will make you better. It will give you a mental model to draw on when you run into some edge case that causes strange behaviour that is otherwise unexplained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As much as I like dmitrysoshnikov's content, I think it can't compete with You Don't Know JS series.

<comment><USER22> Do you care to elaborate? What do you see missing, what should be improved?

<comment><USER21> I mean downvoters didn't care to elaborate, so why should I do that.

<comment><USER23> Because saying "X is worse than Y" is not useful unless you provide reasons as to why you believe that.

Imagine being someone reading your post. What are they to think? "Oh, this person says X is worse than Y -- I'll go ahead and take their word for it, despite no justification"? That's them buying into an appeal to your authority.

Now imagine if you'd actually provided reasoning. "Oh, this person says X is worse than Y because Z -- Z is a good point, therefore this is useful!" How different.

Providing baseless opinions is not useful, which is why you got downvoted; and incidentally, it's the exact same reason why you should "care to elaborate".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Come Live in Hacklantis the Startup House - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys! Hacklantis is a startup house in Silicon Valley and we are moving to a bigger place this week. We are welcoming new people who are building something cool.
Come join our talented, open-minded, motivated group of people who decided to live together. Lower your costs of living, get support, get feedback & access talent. We are already living the dream, if you are on your way to change the world this is the place to be in 2014.
We hosted numerous startups, including some from Y-Combinator. We had some awesome people from Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Amazon, NASA etc. We already have 65 positive reviews and more than 145 reservations in 5 months on Airbnb.
We are moving to a new place and the rent is $1000/month/person or equivalent offer.
Interested? Have questions? Say hi on firstname.lastname@example.com (the airbnb listings are for the old house and they are not available anymore)
- Website: http://hacklantis.com/
- Airbnb profile: https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/2935959
- Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hacklantis/689041981114846
- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thehackerhouse/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much olubuski! Yes Palo Alto our Mountain View would be the best because of the great focused community and everything is close. We are open to other places too as we are still looking for it.

For example Lost Altos Hills has some places with stunning view. San Francisco has more office style buildings that is suitable for both living and working which is really good for hackers.

If you need some pictures about the potential houses just shoot me an email on email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Why do these things only seem to exist in the Bay Area?

It seems like if there were a network of hacker houses across the country, you could have a much better scenario with: 1\. Dirt cheap rent 2\. Easily travel without losing resources/connections. Know someone when you travel somewhere new within the network.

Just saying one of these in San Diego or Honolulu I think would do very well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great group running this place. Met lots of good, smart ppl through them. Looking forward to the new house!

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome hackerhouse. palo alto or mountain view would be a great location

</comment><comment><USER5> Website down?</comment>


First 4G Android Phone Feels Like the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_htc_4g <comment><USER2> I'm not from the US, so don't know about coverage in specific areas, but with this sentence 'We took the phone to three different locations in San Francisco where AT&T has coverage holes, and in every case, had a 3G data connection', isn't it possible (or even probable) that they could go to other locations where the iPhone would have coverage and the EVO wouldn't?

Also, wouldn't continuously 'driving around town to test the GPS and 3G signals' drive down the battery of any device?

Isn't it like saying they watched video on a phone and the battery didn't last all day? Would it have faired better on a different device?

<comment><USER3> Regarding the 3G coverage, my understanding is that EVO had a connection with the _same service provider_ i.e., AT&T, which probably means that it has a better antenna and signal capturing abilities. Note that I'm not from the US either.</comment></comment>


Slack has a solution for stopping chats: the polite raccoon - <AUTHOR> https://work.qz.com/1230173/slack-has-a-solution-for-stopping-chats-the-polite-raccoon/ <comment><USER2> I would settle for something to force users to set a unique avatar.

IME, our (non-Western) off-shore staff _never, ever_ sets one and it's a UX nightmare of plaid. I literally never focus on the project development channels unless I'm @ mentioned (I'm OpsEng).

<comment><USER2> Twitter even came around and added a feat to allow muting of accounts with the default ("egg") avatar. /* C'mon, Slack, you can't get whipped by Twitter!*/</comment></comment>


STS-107 In-Flight Options Assessment [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/caib/PDFS/VOL2/D13.PDF <comment><AUTHOR> """ But imagine an alternate timeline for the Columbia mission in which NASA quickly realized just how devastating the foam strike had been. Could the Columbia astronauts have been safely retrieved from orbit?

During the writing of its report, the CAIB had the same question, so it asked NASA to develop a theoretical repair and rescue plan for Columbia "based on the premise that the wing damage events during launch were recognized early during the mission." The result was an absolutely remarkable set of documents, which appear at the end of the report as Appendix D.13. They carry the low-key title "STS-107 In-Flight Options Assessment," but the scenario they outline would have pushed NASA to its absolute limits as it mounted the most dramatic space mission of all time."""

via [http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious- rescue-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan- that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/)</comment>