Micromort - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort <comment><USER2> I hate the units which you cannot easily add: 10 micromorts + 10 micromorts = 19,999999 micromorts

500 milimorts + 500 milimorts = 750 milimorts

Playing russian roulette using a sixshooter loaded with 3 rounds is 50% chance of death. It's 75% if you do another try. "Adding" another try does not translate to "adding" the metric. It just adds confusion.

<comment><USER3> While that is annoying, I would argue this isn't an issue with the units, but just a fact about how probability works.

Setting aside micromorts, you can't say a 50% chance of death + a 50% chance of death = 100% chance of death, either.

<comment><USER2> Nah, it is a issue with units for me. Speaking primitively: % and ‰ look weirdly and add weirdly - they are easy to remember.

But when some unit looks like a meter or gram (especially using the micro- prefix here), it should behave accordingly.

<comment><USER4> Of course, even your example units don't always behave like you want. For velocities, 150 megameters/second + 150 megameters/second ≈ 240 megameters/second.

<comment> all-fakes Sorry, can you explain why the velocities should add that way? I've always just seen velocities add like regular old vectors, so this looks very strange.

<comment><USER5> Relativity. If they could add that way, you would get 300 megameters/s, which is breaking the speed of light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also, from 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462)

and from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10571077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10571077)

and a day later, the unfortunately unnoticed [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584488).

</comment><comment><USER7> this is an interesting take on covid and how it's put into perspective with other things using micromorts [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/well/live/putting-the- ris...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/well/live/putting-the-risk-of- covid-19-in-perspective.html)

from NYT: _Converting this to micromort language, an individual living in New York City has experienced roughly 50 additional micromorts of risk per day because of Covid-19. That means you were roughly twice as likely to die as you would have been if you were serving in the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan throughout 2010_

<comment><USER8> And Bill Gates and I have an average net worth in the billions of dollars.

Point is that we know Covid has _very_ different risk profiles based on who you are. Saying "That means you were roughly twice as likely to die as you would have been if you were serving in the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan throughout 2010" probably _underestimates_ your risk if you live in a nursing home, but it vastly, vastly overestimates your risk if you're 20 and in good health.

<comment><USER9> If you're interested in your own, personal, risk, then you can keep applying factors relevant to your situation and get a more refined estimate.

I don't see that as an issue with the measure.

Moreover, average micromort increase in a population is a useful metric, in the same way GDP is a useful metric, even if your individual productivity is very different.

<comment><USER10> it's not a criticism of the measure, it's a (correct) criticism of people using averages in misleading/wrong ways.

though i'm actually a big fan of this unit (e.g. as an expression of the relative risks of various activities), it's clear from the comments section that when people are presented with a simple number they tend to treat the underlying reality that it reflects as simple too. this is FAR from the only domain where people reduce complicated things to scalars, and then do atrocious, hideous, unspeakable things to those scalars (take standard deviations, %changes over time, and the like), and then make claims about reality based on the results of those mathematical perversions (i take particular aim at the social sciences here. sorry. they certainly don't have a monopoly on statistical innumeracy, but their domain is just more rife for this sort of abuse).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [only kinda related, but...]

Micromorts feature a fair amount on Tim Harford's excellent More or Less¹ show. It strikes me that people who like the micromort as a topic would probably find the podcast generally interesting too.

 _Edit_ : After following dang's links to previous micromort discussions I see that other people will bring up More or Less in these threads too ;)

1\. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd)

</comment><comment><USER12> The value here I mostly see is comparative - would you rather smoke N cigarettes or have Y steaks? That kind of tradeoff comparison tends to be what people are better at, and is what tends to modify my own behavior the most.

<comment><USER13> I was surprised to see that 1 cigarette equals to about 140 charcoal-broiled steaks. From this point of view, you should never ever in your life worry about eating charcoal-broiled steak.

<comment><USER14> Unless you don't smoke, I guess? :)

<comment><USER15> Quoting: 'Did you also consider your impact on others?'

Cos: 'Stress results...often... in a kind of enviousness'? (-;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also see the related concept for life expectancy.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> I think about this sometimes from a slightly different angle - not the "expected value" number of deaths, but rather the (utilitarian?) math of actions which affect a huge number of people a little bit each. If you waste, say, 5 minutes each of a million people's time, in some sense that's almost 10 years of life lost. I think about this a lot when there are discussions about whether performance matters any more in software.

</comment><comment><USER18> It would be more interesting to break these down. Example, _" Travelling 6 miles (9.7 km) by motorbike (accident) = 1 micromort"_

That can be broken down to motorcycle on the freeway (light traffic) vs congested city vs _N_ traffic lights vs curvy mountain roads, riding around sunset, etc.

Knowing how dangerous something is in aggregate is not as useful as the specifics.

<comment><USER19> This is a problem for both the people who are and are not interested in participating in extreme behavior.

Those who are will more likely have a false sense of lower risk than their actions would subject them to. Those who aren't might be scared away by a larger value than they would actually be subject to.

This could even become a self fulfilling prophecy where activities with high average micromorts will only attract people more willing to engage in risky behavior, thus inflating the tail of extreme behavior that causes most of the mortality, increasing the activity's average micromorts over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone remember the scifi short story where the whole economy is based on micromort credits? E.g. a nice dinner might be 2 micromorts. To pay for it you stick your finger in a device that does absolutely nothing 999,998 times out of a million, and kills you the other 2 times.

Since everyone starts with the same number of credits, I suppose that's a sort of equity.

<comment><USER21> There was an episode of Sliders where you can withdraw however much money you want from an ATM, but each dollar is a ticket in a euthanasia raffle to keep overpopulation down. A little different from micromorts though.

<comment><USER19> Interesting. I've recently been thinking of something similar as a form of population control in a post-aging world. Rather than individual resource consumption, every time you reproduce, you jump forward in the euthanasia line. I suspect this would not work very well.

There's got to be some more formal line of research or thought about population management in a post-aging world.

<comment><USER22> Well the general Sci-Fi solution is some form of galactic expansion, sometimes preceded by a massive die off before people get the point that their planet has exceeded maximum capacity.

<comment><USER19> As per our current science, we're forever limited to our galactic local group. Exponential growth tends to consume even very big things surprisingly quickly.

I also question whether a mass die off event on this planet won't lock us out from ever rebuilding a spacefaring civilization. We've already used up all the readily accessible fossil fuel that was necessary for us to get this far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's all very well talking about million to one chances but if you're a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld you'll know they almost always happen!*

* [https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance)

</comment><comment><USER24> Not to be confused with _petite mort_

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

</comment><comment><USER25> This was featured in a lovely QI bit from years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brsn5Z_uVKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brsn5Z_uVKk) (Featuring trevor noah before he became internationally famous!)

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how many micromorts a shotgun to the head would be. A million? Ten million? A hundred million? And what would the LD50 of micromorts be? 500k?

<comment><USER27> A shotgun blast to the head is guaranteed fatal, so that would be 1 million micromorts (guaranteed death).

<comment><USER28> People survive self-inflicted shotgun blasts. I understand because they flinch as they fire and the shot is not "head on". A notibil eexample is from the 1990 Judas Priest lawsuit.

"[] placed a 12-gauge shotgun under his own chin and proceeded to fire the weapon, dying instantly. [] followed, but survived the self-inflicted gunshot wound with a severely disfigured face"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The first thing I did back in February with the Coronavirus was figure out how much coming down with it would increase my yearly exposure to micromorts (it doubled it). That was good for figuring out how afraid I should be compared to other sources of danger in my life.

<comment><USER30> That's great and all but did you also consider your impact on others? Also, I sincerely doubt you were able to get an accurate picture of risk in February.

<comment><USER31> That is an interesting limitation of micromorts in this context—-they're kind of statistically focused on the individual.

I wonder if there's some similar measure where we could basically treat everyone as slightly radioactive. Entering an enclosed space would reduce the maximum separation of everyone and increase the minimum possible exposure (and by consequence, everyone's chance of death).

Since we'd then have a useful quantity to measure and track, we could then do accounting with our risk of death by COVID-19 (i.e. "I'm not going to the store today because I'm over my exposure limit for the week")</comment></comment></comment>


Helvetica: The Blend, Reinvented - <AUTHOR> https://blog.suddencoffee.com/helvetica-the-blend-reinvented-2a4c557821b7 <comment><AUTHOR> Sudden Coffee (YC W17) created a new process for blending coffee. Instead of brewing the blend together, each different bean is brewed and dried separately, then combined after the fact.

The main benefit here is being able to customize brewing parameters for each individual coffee. But I'm also excited about what this means for creating custom blends on the fly in smaller batches. Being able to tune the balance very well post brew. Different combinations could be A/B tested with a much faster iteration cycle for instance.</comment>


Ask HN: What's stopping YC from publishing locations of their startups? - <AUTHOR> See for yourself here: http://www.ycombinator.com/companies <comment><USER2> Like mtmail said, it's not a secret; just a feature we haven't built yet.

Depending on your use-case, there are a couple of current options you might look at:

[https://ycombinator.joinmonday.com/](https://ycombinator.joinmonday.com/) is a list of all YC companies that are hiring and their current location. That data is generated by scraping the companies' websites.

[https://www.workatastartup.com/directory](https://www.workatastartup.com/directory) is our internal directory of all YC companies that are hiring for technical roles, and also has location. This data is supplied by the companies directly.

May I ask what you were planning to use it for?

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe nobody has asked for that yet? [http://www.ycombinator.com/contact/](http://www.ycombinator.com/contact/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, just did. Thanks.</comment></comment>


WebGL spherical environment mapping and normal mapping - <AUTHOR> http://www.clicktorelease.com/code/spherical-normal-mapping/

<comment><USER2> Wow, that's really incredible. Given that even doing 2D graphics on this machine is like wading through molasses this is a surprisingly perky and detailed rendering.

Only thing is that "normal map" doesn't appear to work for me.</comment>


GrabTaxi Rebrands to Grab, Launches Cashless Payments and Corporate Service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/grab-grab-grab/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting how ride hailing apps seem to benefit from literal names early in life. UberCab being the other prominent example. But later on they drop the more literal part of the name.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been in SE Asia for over a year now and GrabTaxi is everywhere and common in a lot of places, but I'd always side with Uber because of the cashless payments. Especially here in Saigon, I would love to use GrabBike (motorbike taxi) but still opt for Uber so I don't need to worry about paying. Excited that they've launched this!</comment>


Ask HN: Forgo meeting a team in person for a new job? - <AUTHOR> I'm considering a Software Engineering role at a startup that is across the country from where I am currently located. All my interviews and conversations have been by phone, and their team is semi-distributed. I would be relocating to their office if I took the job (I want to do this).
I've got a good vibe from everyone I've talked to so far, I believe in their business model, they've been open about their numbers, etc. However, I feel nervous about saying yes to this offer having never met anyone in person. I'm going to ask for them to fly me out to meet people in person before I say yes, but plane flights to this location, from mine, are super expensive (1.2k+), so I don't think I would hold it against them if they refused to fly me out just to see their office and meet some folks for a day.
What are people's thoughts on the matter? Has anyone said yes to something like this before? Did it work out? What are some things I should be aware of, maybe I can ask some questions to make up for the lack of in person check? <comment><USER2> I think you should absolutely ask to go see them. Reason: you learn way more about people in person than you do on a phone/video call. In fact, if I was in the startup and I was planning on spending roughly 10X that amount every month on an engineer, I would want to spend that money to vet the candidate thoroughly.

Also, 1.2K+ ?! It costs me $800 to fly from NYC to Stockholm. Are you in Hawaii or something?

</comment><comment><USER3> How would you feel if after the trip the offer was withdrawn?

What are you going to learn that you didn't learn during the interview process that is so bad as to not take the offer?

Startups don't have money to waste on $1.2K plane tickets, especially if that plane ticket does not result in a new business opportunity.

It sounds like you shouldn't take the offer, if you can't commit.</comment>


Beer Caps to Coffee Tables - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thehumangeo.com/2014/12/02/beer-caps-to-coffee-tables/

<comment><USER2> A little bit of a tangent, but my brother does a lot of bottlecap projects, like this:

[https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- xpa1/v/t1....](https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- xpa1/v/t1.0-9/1531930_330726140436952_7969923392035998408_n.jpg?oh=c409ad63ee9dcadcef9ff0d086793ecd&oe=551C52FD&__gda__=1426901952_88d3192eaa8b6632efaee15061426a94)

...and this:

[https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- xfp1/v/t1.0-9/106227...](https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10622746_330726337103599_6366673448744973504_n.jpg?oh=a88cf6b42368d859a40065a55bac4c8c&oe=550E0D99)

</comment><comment><USER3> I did a very similar project, although I just used the average pixel color and had a randomized list to do a greedy algorithm.

As I was building the concept out, I made a version that output to Excel as opposed to a bottle cap rendering. The results were pretty fun...

[http://huksu.com/pixelator/excel/](http://huksu.com/pixelator/excel/)

Sometimes I dump random images into peoples' Google docs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice! I made something similar to teach myself Qt. It took an image and turned it into an offset grid of circles. You could adjust the area of the image assigned to each cap to see how many caps you need to get something recognizable. Then it would spit out a listing of how many caps you need for each color.

Just a heads up: the number of caps needed to make a recognizable david tennant in front of the tardis is very high. Table size becomes an issue. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool table, but side comment on the site. So there is a ton of unused pixels on either side of the 'source code' sections which are forced into bottom sliders to show inside their undersized boxes. Presumably the syntaxhighlighter js stuff could be configured to make bigger boxes? Really hard to read the code the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool project. I love people, data, and beverages -- this project touches on all three!</comment>


Ask HN: Introductory CS resources for dyslexic teenager? - <AUTHOR> I was recently asked for advice from my brother who is considering taking the new GSCE in CS (UK, age 14-16) but has concerns over his maths ability. (I was asked because I've done undergrad CS). I will be recommending to him that he takes it because I know he is more than capable of understanding the material and is interested in the subject, my real concern is the style of teaching I expect him to receive. He has dyslexia and the support from the school is limited. I've always got on fine with books so I've not had much exposure to material for alternative learning styles. Does anyone have any recommendations on resources that cover introductory CS concepts without lots of reading? Essentially, basic programming, binary, hexadecimal, etc. Online resources are great but offline would be fantastic.
The full spec. of the GCSE for one exam board is available here: http://ocr.org.uk/Images/225975-specification-accredited-gcse-computer-science-j276.pdf [PDF, 56 (!) pages].
tl;dr Recommendations for introductory CS resources for 14-16 year old with dyslexia?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Hey.. Have you checked edx CS50? It looks cool.</comment>


How to Change the World: Y Combinator: The Art of the Open House - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/08/ycombinator-the.html

<comment><USER2> YC's California office is within the building of Anybots, Trevor Blackwell's robot startup. So the pictures of technical diagrams and offices full of interesting hardware are the Anybots bits. The unicycles are Trevor's personal collection, arranged by YC's fabulous architect, Kate Courteau.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that Kawasaki didn't pick up on the fact that YC crashes at Anybots HQ when they're on this side of the country. Kind of explains the robots and unicycles.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thats a pretty sweet picture tour. Great commentary as well. Being a true entrepreneur I always knew guy kawasaki would dig YC, this really confirms that.

</comment><comment><USER5> The most intruiging startup of the bunch is popcuts. It's the one I really see potential for. The rest will likely do good, but popcuts could possibly be a game changing blowout. Depending on the founders of course.

It also has the easiest path to profits...

<comment><USER5> I will qualify this though - popcuts needs to bring in a creative agency to fix their page as soon as they have some money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish he would have taken a picture of all the In N Out Burger food we brought.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. What do you guys have in 'Geek Heaven'? Is it books, CDs and stuff?

</comment><comment><USER8> Robots! Y Combinator just gained 10+ awesome.

</comment><comment><USER9> Those pictures rock.

</comment><comment><USER10> "The Art of the Open House"?

Nice play on words, Guy, altering your own "The Art of the Start" to describe yc.

Make a blog people want to read.</comment>


Ask HN: When should I use static website? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to build a website showing the available cars for rent. Should I build a static or dynamic website? <comment><USER2> As usual, there are many obvious question (and some less obvious ones):

\- How often do you change the available cars?

\- Is there a registration for something? (newsletter apart, can your users save a car for later?)

\- who will do the actual modifications? How easy for this person to change what (s)he has to change?

\- From where do you perform the modifications?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you need the website up fast, and don't have much experience with dynamic websites, I would go for a simple static website to begin with and then expand it over time.

Personally, I like to go with dynamic websites most of the time. I have templates to help me get going fast and if I ever need to implement some dynamic functionality I can just extend the existing implementation.

</comment><comment><USER4> do the simplest solution for you(probably static), then expand it if you want</comment>


How Not to Get Screwed as a Tech Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@paultyma/best-tech-co-founder-offer-i-ever-got-e0c05d8274cb#.g9xlh1xpt <comment><USER2> This is a good article and brings up some interesting points. On the flip-side finding partners who are equally capable and trustworthy is no small task. As a technologists and entrepreneur, I often find myself having a difficult time evaluating the true value a person would bring. Does anyone have suggestions on what to do in scenarios where partners each have a required unique skill set but the usage of each skill set is not proportional?</comment>


An open-source cloud based encrypted diary platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.munhasir.com/ <comment><USER2> Almost every link I click leads to register/login. Instant turn off. Military encryption?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually it's the register page. You need to register to keep your posts to yourself. It uses AES to encrypt posts. Source code can be found at [https://github.com/malisit/munhasir](https://github.com/malisit/munhasir)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but my suggestion is don't put up a wall between your visitors and your site. You set up a hyperlink on keywords such as "password", "miltiary encryption", and the only reason one would do that is to link to some FAQ/some other page to explain how that works, but instead I was greeted with a register page, which is an instant turn off. I realize we all want to attract users, but take my suggestion, don't put up a wall. Just imagine yourself, every question you have about a product leads to a register page, which feels like going for a coffee and the store owner says you have to pay first before you can ask him/her for a menu.

Mention "register" subtlety. People who want to try will find the button to sign up. Don't force.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understood. You are right. Thanks for the advice!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HN giveaway: 6 months of static hosting (OpenBSD & nginx) - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am giving away six months of static web hosting for an unlimited number of sites (as much as you can host in one GB) to the first 100 who email me at:
firstname.lastname@example.com
You will also need to paste or attach your SSH public key in there (as that's the only way to login) as well as write down your desired username. Put at least one additional username if the one you want is already taken.
Please use the email address you actually use and care about so I can send you your login details as well as possibly contact you after six months are over.
Important: If you fail to follow above instructions, I will not be able to provide you with this service, so the first 100 correct submissions will be processed.
I will try to process your submissions as fast as possible but please allow for few days...
Basically, I love static hosting and this is something I would love to turn into living at some point. I also regard OpenBSD as the absolute best OS there is, so I decided to put the two into use, for me and for other people.
One additional thing. This is a manual, managed service, not some cookie-cutter automated hosting system. I actually care a great deal about its operation and everything is done by hand. So I will need to activate your desired virtual hosts after you upload them. This is done to guarantee the absolute best quality of service.
You can find more info about the service here:
http://ramov.com
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Let me know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER2> I do have one, although tangential.

What is it about automation you explicitly disliked? Personal care and scripted events are not mutually exclusive I think. Can you please elaborate on the way your service is managed?

(Wish you luck, by the way. I'll wait and see how this is going to differ from an average CDN.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Automation is great. However, it takes a lot of code to do it right. A lot of code brings complexity, edge cases and bugs.

I decided to follow KISS principle and provide managed personal service where I can remember people by name.

The service has nothing to do with being a CDN. It is a place where you can host your static sites, set them up and basically forget about them.

Minimal base system, OpenBSD, PF and nginx are there to keep things simple, network invisible and noise free.

Basically a niche service for technical folks and people who like things simple, minimal and stable.

<comment><USER2> I misread static sites to files, sorry. I understand now.

It does take lots of code to do automation right, but that's the point. You replace tons of typing for a short command. I guess you'll have some scripts in any shape or size sooner or later.

I'm glad BSD is still the choice for some devs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


#1 Cause of Startup Death? Premature Scaling - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanfurr/2011/09/02/1-cause-of-startup-death-premature-scaling/

<comment><USER2> No, that's the #2 cause.

Doing it at all gives you much better odds than not doing it, even if you make mistakes.</comment>


The Next Six Months - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2011/02/the_next_six_months <comment><USER4> Microsoft AND Intel being effectively missing from the tablet race is staggering. And there are a few reasons why its staggering:

1) Both have known it was coming, maybe longer than anyone else. But got the core requirements all wrong.

2) No one really seems to care.

3) Related to (2), there is no belief that they have anything up their sleeve.

4) Their existing ecosystem, probably a billion units strong, doesn't seem to help their situation at all.

5) Both CEOs seem firmly in place still.

While Intel and MS will make money hand over first for years to come, it does appear to be the end of the consumer market for these two companies. Their focus will be business class computers, workstations, and servers.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to -4 on this, but: it _absolutely still remains to be seen whether or not tablets are worth a damn_.

Seriously, people play shitty games on them, and I guess read ebooks (though I see vastly more Kindles on the subway, than iPads). I do not, at all see a compelling product yet, I see a trendy gadget that early adopters and trend followers have purchased. Sure there's great lip service to how revolutionary this concept is, but _that's just talk_.

I'm not saying that the iPad isn't the second coming of Christ. I am saying that it's not proven itself to be that just quite yet. I don't think the PC is (even close) to dead.

<comment><USER6> I use my iPad nearly every day. It's a better experience than my laptop (which I do use literally every day) in several areas:

* reading in bed

* reading long PDFs. This is my primary "work purpose". I read a lot of machine learning books and journal articles in PDF form.

* quick checking of email, when you don't want to sit down for a while

* looking up recipes while cooking

* social media sharing: when friends are over, showing them a new video on youtube, etc

<comment><USER7> Would you prefer reading the articles in paper or in the ipad? (I'm considering switching from paper to ipad)

Thanks!

<comment><USER8> I'm watching this space very, very closely (i.e. tablets specifically for reading PDFs of articles). There are a lot of options but none are quite perfect:

      * iPad
        Pros:
        - Color screen
        - Can zoom to exact size desired
        - Multi-touch
        - Papers.app (easy sync/organization for PDFs)
        Cons:
        - Not e-ink
        - Battery life
        - Not as light/thin as Kindle

      * Kindle 3
        Pros:
        - E-ink
        - Amazing battery life
        Cons:
        - Zoom is limited to a couple sizes
        - No touch screen
        - No expansion card & limited to ~3GB internal
        - No real way to organize large number of PDFs

      * Kindle DX
        Pros:
        - Larger screen means PDFs are sized just about right without zoom
        - Same pros as K3
        Cons:
        - Larger screen means it's a bit too awkward to hold with one hand
        - A bit on the heavy side
        - Same cons as K3

In my opinion the perfect PDF reader tablet would have a (color) e-ink display with multi-touch for scrolling and an arbitrary zoom. Kindle 4 maybe?

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure e-ink is an asset in a PDF reader. I use my iPad for a lot of technical papers and books. It's much faster than an e-ink display would be, and the page turning lag is still annoying. E-ink would be insufferable.

<comment><USER10> My Kindle 3 turns PDF pages about as fast as I could turn a page in a book or a stapled article printout. Not lightning fast, but good enough for me.

<comment><USER11> I have a k1, k2, k3 and iPad. In fact, I brought the k2 and k3 and iPad on a vacation with me to Kauai. Don't try and read complex PDFs on a kindle. I have several dozen downloaded onto my iPad (dropbox+goodreader make this trivial) - the kindle is not the right tool for flipping through PDFs. I have logged about 40 hours reading on the kindles in five days - (mostly on the beach, a little at coffeeshops) - but linear text reading (novels) is really their strong suit. I don't think I've ever run into anybody that tried to use them for technical/reference/diagrams and was happy with the results. Too slow, no easy way to hop around in the doc.

The iPad, on the other hand, is almost perfect for this. The screen needs to be higher resolution, easier to read in sun (though a matte screen protector helps a lot) and I'll be perfectly content.

As it is, I have not printed a single 8 1/2x11" printout in six+ months - <USER2> iPad has let me go almost 100% paperless. (11x17 printouts of network diagrams still useful in meetings)

<comment><USER12> What's the consensus on the best PDF reader for iPad? Is goodreader 'it'?

<comment><USER13> Yes, it is really all you need. Recent updates have enabled annotation and other nice features and it was one of the first apps to jump on the dropbox bandwagon so it is easy to keep papers in sync on the device and across platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Apple was willing to announce it months in advance because they had no competition..."

What? They announce the first version of a product early because, being the first, it can't stop people from buying the previous version. If they announced the new iPad now, iPad 1 sales would tank.

<comment><USER15> The Osborne effect. I would think Apple and all other current/successful tech companies have this in mind re: their products - especially given the rapid turnover.

<comment><USER16> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think the market for these things is huge as he suggests. Why would anyone buy a non-Apple touch or tablet device? I can see the argument for smart phones from different vendors, but not for these causal computing touch devices.

And this is coming from someone who has never paid a cent to Apple. I haven't drank the kool-aid but none of these touch devices appear to really be competing with Apple. They look like they are struggling to catch-up. These devices always have some combination of a bigger price tag, buggy interfaces, crappier specs, and/or way less software available.

I'd rather see these other vendors go a completely different direction. Microsoft releasing an iPad clone this late in the game would just be embarrassing. The Kinect was a good response to the Wii. The Playstation Move was not. (I'm making assumptions here since I'm not a gamer. I have no idea whether the Move/Kinect are successful or not.)

<comment><USER18> I am curious what kind of tech stuff you do spend money on. Not into apple, and yet not a gamer, which is one of the few holdouts

<comment><USER5> Are you serious? You think the choice is between Apple or gamer?

Hi my name is Tux.... I don't make Steve Jobs rich(er) and I'm the greatest developer operating system ever made.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I am aware of Tux. I said "spend money on".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wrote an entire comment about how great it is for Apple to work in secret and release and "blitzkrieg" the competition. But it turns out Apple announced their iPhone ~Jan 2007 and it shipped ~June 2007.

So why did HP announce their entire 2011/2012 line up and direction of products without a price and or release date?

I think that this means HP has stake holders breathing down their neck, and they had to publicly show their hand asap. Thoughts?

<comment><USER20> only reason Apple announced six months in advance was the the FCC approval process, being public the iPhone would've been out in any case whether Apple announced or not.

<comment><USER21> I don't think that's true. It might have been what they _said_ , but it's February now and we haven't seen any glimpses of iPhone 5 (or whatever) from the FCC, and I'd be willing to bet it launches less than six months from now.

<comment><USER22> "Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007 at Macworld 2007. Apple was required to file for operating permits with the FCC, but since such filings are made available to the public, the announcement came months before the iPhone had received approval."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone>

I remember hearing this story at the time, as well.

For all we know, the rules could be different for iPhone 5, since it is an update of an existing product, rather than a new one.

<comment><USER23> Given we've already had a few different iPhones, if the rules are different shouldn't we know already?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If Apple does have two separate iPad releases in 2011, I definitely think the first announcement will replace the current iPad and the next announcement will be a product that augments the iPad line, an HD or Pro model, as Gruber predicts. But I sincerely doubt there will be two different iPad announcements this calendar year.

Ever since Gruber's initial review of the iPad, I've been intrigued by the possibility of a Pro model with more RAM and possibly some extra horsepower. Again, it doesn't seem like Apple's plan though.

<comment><USER25> While better specs certainly never hurt, I've never heard any iPad users complain processing power or RAM. iOS does memory management seamlessly (if I didn't understand how it worked, I probably wouldn't even notice it) and the interface is notably responsive.

I'm sure the new version will have a spec bump. Whatever that ends up meaning (dual core, faster, more RAM), it will continue to be plenty.

<comment><USER26> I'll complain.

The ipad is a second class browsing experience not because of the lack of flash, but the lack of cache. It's just not anywhere near as snappy reading as a Real Computer(tm) because it's constantly reloading stuff that's been purged.

My usual style of reading (on the desktop) is to pop open a pile of stuff in tabs, then batch read through. Can't do that on the iPad.

Safari could also use a few more cycles to make it seem that much snappier. While it feels like magic, and I would have killed for its browsing performance a few years back, it just doesn't feel quite there yet.

Also, just in the last month or so, I've noticed some sort of background task that causes stuttering in some places. (mainly in angry birds). For the first time, I've noticed that I needed to restart it. Its' a small thing, but it's also the first time I've had to resort to computer troubleshooting on it.

<comment><USER27> FWIW, iCab/Terra help with this style of browsing a little bit. They don't seem to cache as much and do a better job of handling more background tabs with things waiting to be read.

<comment><USER28> I'm trying Terra right now ... Hadn't heard of it yet, so thanks! I just posted a question to see what everyone's favorite iPad browser is and why - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2200302>, hopefully we'll get some good discussion there about alternate browsers. I've considered buying iCab; what are your thoughts on it versus Terra?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I _mostly_ agree with Gruber but disagree on a couple of major points:

1\. Releasing the iPad in September makes no sense simply because it was such a massive hit in the holiday season. Generally speaking, you want to spread out your demand as much as possible. It took 2 months to get the previous iPad from the US to the first round of international markets and another 3-4 months to do the full round. You can only produce so many. Actually not being able to buy one because demand is so high is not Apple's style;

2\. I don't see Apple releasing a new version 6 months after the previous, particularly when, in all likelihood, the iPad 2 won't have been in some markets for more than a month or two.

As far as conflicting reports on parts and specs, that's nothing new. Just like there were reports of a CDMA iPhone YEARS before there was one. There are two reasons for this:

1\. Apple produces far more prototypes than they release (eg the CDMA iPhone was tested for about a year before release); and

2\. People just make stuff up for page views.

I also fully agree with Gruber on a rear-facing camera making very little sense on a device that large.

<comment><USER30> >I also fully agree with Gruber on a rear-facing camera making very little sense on a device that large.

A rear-facing camera makes little sense if you imagine the use is for people to walk around taking pictures like they would with a phone. However, when you start imagining uses like Augmented Reality or other situations where you're interacting with real world artifacts, then it makes a little more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Two iPads in one year is possible, and Gruber has better Apple-watching-skills than most. But I also think Apple is long overdue for a true "AppleTV", an all-in-one product _with big screen_ , deeply integrated with everything else iOS/iTunes. That would also fit well with a late-in-year but in-time-for- Christmas release.

<comment><USER32> It's the wrong time in the upgrade cycle for home TVs to do that - <USER3> just bought a new flatscreen LCD HDTV during the past two years and sales are flat in that sector. Introducing an AppleTV with screen would be an uphill battle to convince people to replace a device they're still pretty happy with (and still paying off.)

<comment><USER33> "everyone" didn't. I know a number of holdouts (myself included) who are still waiting. When the next big thing comes along, another portion of us will take the plunge.

<comment><USER34> Sure, but an increasingly small portion. And quite a few of you won't until the next big thing, and so on for quite a while; there will be people without a flatscreen in their residence in 2020 but I wouldn't recommend building a business on convincing them to change their mind. No, the situation in 2011 isn't like that, obviously; this is a rhetorical point made for seeing the situation I'm describing in a time when it is perfectly clear. Today isn't to that extreme, the point is that already that market has peaked.

Besides, an Apple TV that doesn't require HD, which would not be that much more effort, would also work for anyone with a TV, so it really doesn't make sense to me to only make this an integrated product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I dont get why everybody is falling for the "end of pc era" hype that is surrounding tablets and smartphones.

Can someone explain to me why the ability to browse the web from the couch without sufficient text-entry possibilities is going to challenge the amount of pc's in a world where textentry is our main method of searching, sorting and creating data. Honestly, this is not a rhetorical question, i feel i'm missing some part of the picture here.

<comment><USER36> It's the "end of PCs" for the mainstream market, which was overrun with them for the last 10 years. Now the mobile technology is good enough that bulky desktops are going to be used primarily by professionals. You're not going to edit video/render 3D on the iPad 2, but for 90% of the population that just needs to check their email, it's good enough.

<comment><USER35> I think that idea is overblown, simply because "Check their E-Mails" means someone has to write e-mails worth checking...

<comment><USER37> Input really is not that terrible. It's disingenuous to act as though tablets don't allow you to enter text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One interesting thing to see will be whether newer tablets with webOS, Android, or anything else will get advanced, full-sized tablet apps like Apple's iWork apps. The iWork apps definitely are some of the very best on iPad, and it wouldn't be nearly as useful of a device without them. Docs to Go and QuickOffice are a joke in comparison (except each of them are much better at file sync and orginization...). It's the more advanced apps like these, though, that will really enable tablets to take over traditional PCs.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's going to be pretty interesting watching this play out. But Apple and Android have an unfair advantage right now...apps, and lots of them. If you've got an iOS or Android phone and already own some apps the other guys are going to have to ship something amazing or dirt cheap to get your attention.

As great as the new HP stuff looks, I wouldn't like to be HP, RIM (or Nokia and their potential Meego tablet) right now...tough road ahead building app ecosystem momentum. Who cares if the tablet is slightly better when I can't get my favourite apps.

I find it greatly amusing the roles are reversed from back when Apple struggled on the desktop due to lack of apps while microsoft dominated. My how times change in 10 years. At least this time we might have more than one platform that dominated 90% which is good for everyone.

<comment><USER39> The first step is to build a great device, and it looks like HP might be there. It seems to be the best iPad contender yet, stealing that crown from Motorola's zoom from just a few days ago.

<comment><USER32> No credit until it ships. Everything looks great in a demo.

<comment><USER40> And gets priced!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'd really like to see a laptop with two touch screens: one replacing the regular screen and another replacing the keyboard and trackpad. This tablet/laptop hybrid would have some awesome benefits. For example one could comfortably use the device while seated at a table (display and input area can be at about 90 deg relative to each other... something that's not possible w/ the iPad). Another awesome benefit would be replacing the on-screen keyboard with far-out stuff like a painter's palette, Scrabble tiles, dominoes or even two turn-tables like a DJ uses.

Imagine mixing digital paint with your fingers (on the touch screen that replaces the physical keyboard on current laptops) then actually painting on the other touch screen (the touch screen replacing the non-touch screens on current laptops).

<comment><USER36> We almost had it. [http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier- digita...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digital- journal-exclusive-pictures-and-de/)

Why Microsoft killed Courier, I'll never know.

<comment><USER41> That looks cool! However it's rotated from what I was hoping for. I literally want just a laptop w/ two touch screens. Too bad it was cancelled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The logic doesn't hold up for me.

Are _holiday_ buyers really the same kind of people who will have even _heard_ gadget rumors, let alone coordinate their purchases accordingly? Do we have any reason to think many of them held off _this year_?

Furthermore, I thought the speed of iOS updates has been a good thing. Why are three iOS targets undesirable or problematic?

It just sounds... flimsy; like someone shopping for justification after they'd latched onto a conclusion.

<comment><USER43> You can't imagine everyday people hearing advice not to drop hundreds of bucks on Christmas presents that will be obsolete in a month? Because if iPads & iPods were expected in Jan/Feb I can guaranteed a ton of nerds will be looking out for Mom and Dad.

<comment><USER42> I can't imagine everyday people caring enough about specs to actually make decisions based on said rumors.

The default expectation is that iPads will hit in late March. So we're talking about rumors relating to devices that may exist three to four months after the decision of "what are we getting Sally for Christmas" gets made.

And Gruber thinks average people will hear those rumors and then be willing to disappoint a loved one on Christmas over a spec bump they have no context for?

And, again, I wonder aloud if we have any indication that this happened _this year_. Because we all heard rumors and those things flew off the shelves anyway. So if it didn't happen this year, why would anyone expect it to happen _next_ year?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I actually clicked this expecting the article to be parodying the Friedman Unit (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_%28unit%29>) only to find utter sincerity!

</comment><comment><USER45> If you're an iPad/iPhone developer: How does the prospect of a new iPad being on the horizon affect your development/product strategy?

<comment><USER39> It will undoubtably have a camera, so now start making all those camera apps use the bigger screen. Same with skype, etc... I will add the ability for users of my iPad apps to use photos, take photos, etc... This was limited to the iPhone version.

More memory means will be able to do more things, load up bigger files into mem.

<comment><USER46> I need a poor-quality, low-sensitivity camera attached to the back of a foot- long iPad about as much as I need cameras built into my jeans, belt buckle, toothbrush, and turkey baster.

Just because you _can_ build a camera (or two cameras) into everything doesn't mean you should. Cameras are a certain size and shape for a reason.

I see no reason to build a rear-facing cam into the iPad. Ever tried to hold a slippery, 7.5" x 9.5", 1.6 pound slab at arm's length before, and hold it steady? Not compelling.

<comment><USER47> Cameras aren't cameras anymore, they're just another sensor input. Do you want to scan a barcode or QR code? Do you want to scan a document? And then translate it? Do you want Augmented Reality games that let you fly a little spaceship around the room and shoot your friends? The plunging cost of camera chips means they'll be increasingly ubiquitous. I wouldn't rule out one on your toothbrush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Though I think Apple is the only one that can pull it off. I'm a bit surprised that they'll be able to keep to a one year product cycle with things like the iPhone/iPad when the rest of the market is hitting a new product every couple weeks. Not that they've been one to match the rest of the market, but a lot happens in a year.

Then again, maybe the biggest lesson out of the touch screen revolution is that its not the hardware - it's the software, and Apple has been certainly setting the pace on that front.

<comment><USER48> The phone _market_ is doing a new product every couple of weeks, but how about the individual companies? Most buyers are on contract, and can't change phones more frequently than once a year with a reduced subsidy or once every two years with full subsidy.

If a phone company introduces a new phone, and then a few weeks later introduces a better phone, they've to some extent limited the market for the first one to the people who happened to hit the end of their contracts in that few weeks. Given the two year contract cycle, a phone a year makes a lot of sense (assuming your phones are good enough that it takes the competition several months to match or best them--as has been the case for Apple so far).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a damn good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> _"The next six months are going to set the foundation for the future of personal computing."_

Gruber needs to make the leap and become a political talking-head on cable news already.

Unleashing lines like that without a hint of sarcasm or irony? You can't teach that, folks, that's god given.

<comment><USER37> I'm confident in predicting that tablets will be more than one third of unit sales to consumers of all PCs in Europe and North America within five years.

346 million PCs were sold worldwide in 2010, Apple sold 15 million iPads so far. That's still a long way off but it is not impossible, especially with other manufacturers bringing their devices to the market.

This is a reasonable prediction. It might well be wrong but it is reasonable. Calling tablets "the future of personal computing" with such a prediction in mind seems perfectly justifiable to me. Don't ridicule other reasonable opinions just because you disagree with them!

<comment><USER49> All of that? perfectly reasonable; the original claim? still slightly absurd.

If you want to look at it by comparison to the iphone led smartphone revolution, the timeframe there was:

first iphone release: 1/2007

first android phone: 10/2008

first touchscreen BB: 11/2008

first webos phone: 6/2009

(all dates courtesy of the wikipedia articles for the specific phones or OSes)

and then you didn't really get a phone which competed well with the iphone until, arguably, the nexus one which was in 2010 (or even the Pre which was middle of '09) making it a full 2.5 - 3 years later.

The point is that this stuff progresses in fits and spurts over a long period of time and that the next six months are going to be no more significant than the six which follow it, contrary to what HP's and Motorola's marketing people tell you today (or Apple's will in a few weeks time).

<comment><USER37> "The next six months are going to set the foundation for the future of personal computing."

That's the claim. Still seems reasonable to me. What's wrong with it? I don't understand what you are getting at.

If you think that tablets will be important in the future there is nothing wrong with thinking that a lot of groundwork will be done in the next few months: Honeycomb is coming, HP and RIM get started. That sounds to me like a solid foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> _"...[tablets] are the future of the entire computing industry..."_

That's more than a little hard to swallow...

<comment><USER51> Today's fad is the future of the entire industry. No questions allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> My prediction:

* Apple will keep April as the refresh month for iPad. Putting iPad in the same iPod event will steal thunder and is no good. And component supplies is tighter for iPad thus it takes few months to meet the demand and September is too tight to the holidays season. When iPad 2 is launched in April, the rest of the world will get it by Jun-Aug which ensure Apple can manufacture enough to meet year end holiday demand.

* There will be no iOS 5 this year. At June WWDC, Lion will be the focus and Apple will give sneak peak of iOS 5 at the event, with beta available in early 2012, ship in June 2012. Aple needs to get its developers ready and it takes time. iOS 5 will share the code base of Lion and will ship after Lion. iOS 5 will include user interface elements changes. I think Apple is keeping two years release cycle for major OS release.

* There will be iOS 4.4/4.5 this year for: iPhone 5, NFC capability, AppleTV 3, App Store for AppleTV and App/Games on AppleTV.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is of course a subjective opinion, but something doesn't quite feel right about HP making a tablet PC. They seem to put out quite a lot of things without much of an overall guiding principle. HP PCs, laptops, printers, servers, now tablets. I ask myself "Why HP?" and can't seem to come up with a very reasonable answer. Nothing jumps out at me as seeing this as the best thing ever.

With Apple they have the whole underlying principle of "Think Different" or something along the lines of changing the status quo. Apple didn't really do anything new with the iPhone and iPad in essence. Smartphones and tablet PCs were already out there. However because it went with their overall message, it made sense. People wanted to include it in their "Apple Lifestyle" so to speak.

Just my .00002 cents.

</comment><comment><USER54> I am hoping for some strange reason that WebOS wins out over them all.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is it possible that the new product announced during the Fall event is actually a 7-inch retina display iPad? Apple might find it expensive to build a 9.7-inch retina display and that could explain the $3billion+ investment that Apple has put in (possibly for the 7-inch retina display screens). Yes, Steve Jobs did say that 7-inch tablets are DOA but it was the same Steve who said Apple doesn't see e-books as a big market.

</comment><comment><USER56> Re: Rear Facing Camera.

This would be most useful on a device with a daylight readable transflective screen. Then you could use it outdoors with augmented reality apps.

<comment><USER57> While riding your Segway? Just don't see it happening (average folks holding a tablet-size device in front of their face, running AR apps).

<comment><USER56> Sure, when stationary for a moment, looking up information. You see average folks looking dead tree/ink information device in public all the time. They're called tourists. They're called museum-goers. They're called audience. Those things they're holding are called guidebooks and programs.

I think this would make for an awesome museum AR experience.

<comment><USER58> neat idea, long way away.

<comment><USER56> There are already such apps on the App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Apple's touch strategy is definitely awesome, but the only reason it's spectacular is because of the app store.

HP's new TouchPad won't have that. It will probably do well, but it won't even touch the success of the iPad. Nobody writes apps for WebOS.

<comment><USER39> That is true, but it could change. It is very easy to write for webos, since it is based on HTML/CSS/Javascript. So a lot of web developers can get into this.

<comment><USER59> You're right.

But HP doesn't seem to be hyping or publicizing this at all. No shout-outs to developers. No "here's our SDK, here are some screencasts and tutorials". They exist, but they aren't being advertised at all. Apple has conferences where they get developers excited about working on apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The end of the PC era is always announced. But don't see how I can do my daily work on a Ipad. I need a laptop or PC.

<comment><USER61> The hyperbole of the language belies the underlying truth: not the death of the PC, but a widening of the spectrum in which PCs are a minority among numerous types of computing devices.

<comment><USER37> This is very much besides the point but I think that calling what you just described the end of the PC era is not hyperbole. When PCs stop to dominate personal computing – like they have ever since personal computing existed – that would be very much the end of an era. No hyperbole involved. That doesn't mean that PCs will suddenly stop existing or even stop being made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I don't think Apple will release two significantly different versions of the iPad within 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER63> "One startling omission from that list: Microsoft. Their former hardware partners are heading off into the touch-computing future without them. We could have four competing tablet platforms six months from now — iOS, Android, WebOS, and Playbook — and not one of them is from Microsoft"

Microsoft clearly seems to have taken their own sweet time to make an entry but they clearly have an intent and when they do, the biggest thing that they will have going for them is the knowhow of the platform and a plethora of apps that are already existing there that will be easy to port.

Just like mobile this will end up being a 3 horse race in a few years. Apple, Google and Microsoft. The rest of them are just wasting their time and money in competing. None of them have existing ecosystems or platforms that they can leverage to fight with the three big players.

<comment><USER43> "A plethora of apps that are easy to port"? Windows compatibility implies a terribly inadequate offering, just like every previous Windows Tablet PC to date. How is that competing? Metro/Win Phone 7 doesn't have a "plethora of apps" ready to be tweaked for tablet size, so I'm baffled by your reasoning.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where does Amazon get the money for growth investment despite losses? - <AUTHOR>

Where does Amazon get the money to keep investing in growth if its making losses? Is it by just giving away more and more of the company as stock? <comment><USER2> They've got money in the bank. $19B in current assets (assets which could, if needed, be converted to cash in a short timeframe) as of Q12014. Compare this to their recent losses of $510M and $146M and you understand why they aren't really worried about those losses.

IS: [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=amzn](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=amzn) BS: [https://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AMZN](https://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AMZN)

<comment><USER3> Well, actually not so much, with $18B in current liabilities: i.e. money they are obligated to pay out pretty quickly, and almost $8B in other liabilities including long-term debt.

EDITS: Note that they're really living off credit extended (not always voluntarily) by their suppliers: they have almost $17B in payables, and less than $4B in receivables. In other words, they're really slow payers.

Also, note that their payables are more than twice their inventory!

<comment><USER4> That's terrible !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A business can be losing money but remain cash-flow positive. This is what allows them to continue investing in growth.

Consider a traditional bookseller, say Barnes and Noble, who has to invest in physical retail, holding product (books), and training staff BEFORE they can earn any money at all.

Amazon, on the other hand, takes customer money upfront as soon as they click buy. Then they can figure out their asset needs based on customer demands. Getting money upfront, Amazon can continue to invest it back into growth of the company. Presumably at some point they can "turn the switch" and lower their growth to earn more profits. But why not delay this until you're practically a monopoly? That's what will maximize shareholder value long-term. Perhaps more interesting of a question is how long shareholders are willing to wait. I suppose it doesn't matter as long as the stock price keeps rising.

</comment><comment><USER6> From Cash Flow statement in AMZN 10-Q:

Last Quarter (June 30, 2014) Amazon had a net loss of $126M, generated $862M from its operations, invested $731M in its business, paid off debt of $189M and only spent $17M of its cash and cash-equivalent assets.

To sum it up, AMZN only spent $17M beyond what they generated from operations, financing and investing.

[http://yahoo.brand.edgar- online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?F...](http://yahoo.brand.edgar- online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=10109702-6497-14911&type=sect&TabIndex=2&dcn=0001018724-14-000025&nav=1&src=Yahoo)

</comment><comment><USER7> Look at the line in the cash flow statement showing changes in unearned income. If Prime and any other annual subscription services are growing, then the cash flow from new payments is greater than the profit recognised from existing subscriptions.

Also, what other people said: changes in the balance of payables and receivables; stock-based compensation isn't a cash flow but is recognised as a cost; debt funding.

In general cash flow is not equal to profit, due to sometimes large differences in timing.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's the other way around. They make losses because they grow.

</comment><comment><USER9> Losses != failure. Just a cash balance sheet. They keep making losses deliberately for tax and other reasons BECAUSE they have investment to grow.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. And profits can be just as fictional too.</comment></comment>


A Story About 100% Caffeine Free Living - <AUTHOR> http://zentofitness.com/a-story-about-100-caffeine-free-living/

<comment><USER2> Unlike the author - and by "author", the author of the essay has a book on the topic which he wants to sell you - I can't say that I physically feel any better or worse after quitting caffeine. I finally quit because I didn't like how I felt dependent on a chemical compound I didn't actually need. It took me several attempts.

The physical addiction is minor. The biggest effect was that 18 hours after quitting I would get a headache, become tired, and sleep for a while. That would be gone within 48 hours after quitting.

The bigger problem is the social habit. I was used to having a soda next to me when programming. Free sodas at work didn't help. I don't like tea, so the replacement was water, which gets boring. Bubbly water and flavored waters help, but not much. Fruit drinks have too much sugar, and I don't like tea.

I also liked getting a drink as a way to take a break, with a goal that I could achieve during that break.

It was hard to keep the habit broken. When work got harder again, I thought I could just have a single drink per day ... then two ... then three, and so on. It seems that when the stress is high, it's easier to abstain than to temper.

Believe it or not, wine replaced soda. I found that I only drink a glass of wine in the entire evening, and I don't have a desire to raise the amount. This may be that I didn't start drinking wine until I was ~30 while I started with Pepsi when I was ~10.

</comment><comment><USER3> Caffeine has nothing to do with ulcers in the stomach.</comment>


Windows Azure add-on for cloud-based image management - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/windows_azure_add_on_for_cloud_based_image_management

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog post introduces Cloudinary's add-on for the Window Azure cloud platform: powerful image uploading, manipulation and CDN delivery for .NET, PHP, Python, Node.js and Java web applications developed and deployed using the Windows Azure Platform.</comment>


Ask HN: Has climate change factored into your decision to not want kids? - throwaway-1283 <comment><AUTHOR> Climate change can only be fixed with smart people coming up with smart solutions. The dumb aren't going to save the world. And intelligence is almost entirely genetic. So no: I'm not going to engage in dysgenic fertility.</comment>


Ask HN: Facebook blocks access; I dont want to share my phone - <AUTHOR> I never had a Facebook account, but recently had to create one to join a group that is supporting my medical condition.
I did not provide my phone when i created this anonymous account about an year ago. All of a sudden today facebook would not let me in without a mobile number.
What options do I have ? <comment><USER2> If you're in the states you can use Google Voice. Or if you're elsewhere you can get a local Skype number. Then there's a hand full of subscription based phone number systems like OpenPhone that cost money.</comment>


If the Earth were 100 pixels wide - <AUTHOR> http://www.distancetomars.com/ <comment><USER2> I'd really like to see a few more markers:

1) 3100 px: Farthest humans have been from Earth (Apollo 13, April '70: 400,171 km)

2) 10 px: Gemini 11, farthest from Earth on non-lunar mission (Sept '66: 1,374.1 km)

3) 3 px: Apogee of ISS (farthest a human has traveled for... a while: 424 km) (I'm probably forgetting something, can't find a good list of spaceflights by distance...)

Sources: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Far...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Farthest_humans_from_Earth)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth>

Taking Earth's diameter as 12,742 km (though it bulges by about 43 km in the center), we're saying that's 100 px. So if my basic algebra is right (no promises) you can convert the above km values to px by dividing by 127.42.

<comment><USER3> I think the value of this is in its focus and simplicity. There have been other websites using zooms and/or scrolling to visualize scale differences (e.g. <http://scaleofuniverse.com/>), but this is an elegant statement about just _one_ fact, and I think that's more likely to get the ball rolling in someone's brain and amaze them than inundating them with trivia all at once (but thanks for the trivia just the same :).

<comment> X-Istence Every time I see that page it makes me realise just how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, and how badly I really want to go exploring everything that is out there.

<comment><USER4> Yet you could spend an entire lifetime exploring everything that is 'here', and still not manage it.

Space is unfathomably big, and we are a grain of sand on the beach of the universe. But that grain of sand contains enough complexity and variety to fascinate for a practically unlimited period of time.

Mars is cool, and grand, and inconceivably different. I'd rather see the cherry blossoms in Japan, or go for a walk in the outback, or see tierra del fuego (sp?). And really, it's not even just the big things on my (long) list, but the billion other _little_ things that one can do and see on this world given time and resources to wander from place to place exploring and experiencing.

<comment><USER5> Space is boring. Flyunder territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone else a little bothered by the fact that the reported speed was 1/5 the speed of light, yet the flyby necessarily increased to well over the speed of light in order to actually get you to Mars before you got bored and closed the tab? Traveling _at_ the speed of light would have taken 5-20 minutes. Traveling slower than that would have taken even longer...

<comment><USER7> I'm more bothered by the authoritative fact that 'the timeline for a manned mission to Mars is the 2030s'. Says who, NASA?

They're not the only ones trying to get there.

<comment><USER8> Does anyone else have a realistic more aggressive timeline?

<comment><USER9> I'm planning to head over tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

<comment><USER10> Are you there yet?

<comment><USER9> Yes. HN is loading slower than normal, however, so you'll have to wait for a full assessment. This whole three-way handshake thing is not such a great idea from Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It bothers me a little that they show the motion against a starfield like that -- the stars are so far away that they won't shift perceptibly even on a journey to mars.

I mean, I don't have any _better_ ideas, but given that the whole point is to give an idea of scale I wish they'd come up with something else. :)

<comment><USER12> How about you just imagine the ship is rotating on an axis for artificial gravity generation. Then, if you were looking out the window, you would see the starfield whizzing by. :-)

Edited for smiley.

<comment><USER13> Interesting idea - all the scifi I've ever seen has had ships rotating around the axis of travel, but never orthogonal to it.

<comment><USER12> The axis wouldn't matter. You wouldn't notice which direction you were going (well I suppose if you noticed the sun, darn).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the first time I've actually been able to comprehend the perspective of distances so big they don't mean much as a number. Thank you.

<comment><USER15> You can easily build an in 1:2e9 scale replica of the Solar System. You'll just need a 90cm sphere to use as the Sun, some 4-5 km of area do arrange things and a paquimeter for measuring the planets. At this scale, everything is just about as big/small as one can manipulate.

Bu you won't be able to place the Voyager in there. For that you'll need a car and a road trip.

<comment><USER16> Isn't there such a thing in downtown Ithaca?

<comment><USER17> Apparently yes, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_Planet_Walk>

There are a multitude of others all around the world: [http://www.waymarking.com/cat/details.aspx?f=1&guid=52fe...](http://www.waymarking.com/cat/details.aspx?f=1&guid=52fe4b51-45ab-4d5b-a168-c96cdac65462&st=2)

The one close to me is in Helsinki-Espoo: [http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM8AJ4_Ursa_Model_of_the_...](http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM8AJ4_Ursa_Model_of_the_Solar_System_Sun_Helsinki_Finland) But this one's slightly bigger, scale is o to billion. You can still see the Sun from Neptune, if you have binoculars (4487 meters, the Sun is 140cm in diameter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool site, but it's "If the Earth _were_ 100 pixels wide, ..."

[http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs- was-i...](http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs-was-i- were.aspx)

</pedantry>

<comment><USER19> Thank you! I tweeted this link earlier and had originally copied the "was", then realized it sounded wrong and corrected it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This simple graphic of the Earth and Moon and the distance between them, to scale, is also pretty thought provoking

<http://www.traipse.com/earth_and_moon/index.html>

edit: just large image: [http://www.traipse.com/earth_and_moon/earth_and_moon_1280.jp...](http://www.traipse.com/earth_and_moon/earth_and_moon_1280.jpg)

<comment><USER21> You can draw a circle in the palm of your hand, then a smaller circle on the other. Spread your arms out to your side, and that's about the distance from the earth to the moon.

I would get that tattooed if I was into that kind of thing.

<comment><USER22> This would depend heavily on the size of the circles.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. With small enough tattoos you could put the Earth on your thumb and moon on your pinky.

<comment><USER24> Or the solar system tattooed up your leg. Starting with the Sun on your heel, and stopping at Uranus.

<comment><USER25> I see what you did there... Clever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is a photo of the Earth and Moon, with the to-scale distance between them. It makes a great desktop background:

<http://www.traipse.com/earth_and_moon/>

<comment><USER27> This is really cool, though I would like to see a version in higher resolution with some stars. Not oppressively bright stars, just a hint to remind you that there are billions of billions of violent, fiery balls of self-contained exploding gas out there...

<comment><USER28> If it was a real photograph, I do not think you would see any stars in the frame. The Earth is extremely bright compared to the stars. If the exposure of the film/video (or your eyes) was set to portray the Earth at that brightness, you wouldn't see any stars.

Example: [http://www.astrobio.net/images/galleryimages_images/Gallery_...](http://www.astrobio.net/images/galleryimages_images/Gallery_Image_6633.jpg) This is a real image and is not CG.

Another one: [http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/images/ISD/highres/AS17/AS17-1...](http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/images/ISD/highres/AS17/AS17-137-20957.jpg)

<comment><USER27> I like the accurate size/distance but it doesn't have to be a photorealistic representation for me. Pure black except for the earth/moon is boring for a desktop background, and stars are pretty ;o)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Very rarely have I seen a single idea so perfectly illustrated. Impeccable timing and presentation. Unexpected, every step of the way. Kudos.

<comment><USER30> Yes this was really well executed. Kind of a shame to see a lot of the top comments dominated by the picking at any inaccuracy they can find (not surprising, it seems a trademark of HN these days). Ok it isn't a perfect scientific simulation but rather a rough visual guide to grasp the scale of space travel, and I think it achieves that well.

<comment><USER31> That's the thing: people are arguing that, as astonishing as the portayal seems, it still manages to give people a gross underestimation of how big these scales really are.

As portrayed, it seems like it only takes a minute or so to get to Mars at 20% of the speed of light. But really, they _continue_ speeding up the starfield to multiples of superluminal speeds. As great as that distance seems, it's even more than an order of magnitude larger than depicted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hey guys, Dave here, made the site.. Really amazed by how much coverage this thing has got, and really surprised by how poor my maths were. Not surprising given I failed both maths and physics at college. Really happy to be inspiring debate, I've gone over my sums and given it another shot

Thanks!

<comment><USER33> _"At the current state of space technology, it will take at least 240 days to get to Mars"_

This makes it immediately obvious you haven't read a lot about proposed plans for Mars missions or even understand how transfer orbits work. 150 days is a likely practical limit for today's technology, but it's not a hard limit. Spend a little more fuel, and you could make it 149 days.

[http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take- to-...](http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to- mars/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not sure if it's a bug or a typo, but the "width" (diameter) of the Earth is 12,742 km, not 6,371 (which is the radius).

<comment><USER35> You're right! How frustrating. The most frustrating is that I was just about to share this with some friends and know that I now risk either: 1.) Them smugly pointing that inaccuracy out and failing to enjoy how cool this is otherwise, or 2.) The website author correcting it by the time my friends see the link so any "btw there's a typo" comment I make being confusing. I'm going to share it anyway!

EDIT: I fear this may be worse than we had initially thought. The diameters of the Moon and Mars suffer the same problem and the pixel distances appear to be based on those wrong numbers so actually all the "apparent" distances are twice as long as they should be. (My working was to check that the Earth was indeed 100 pixels on my screen, calculate that 1 pixel = 127.42km, multiply that by the claimed "6033 pixels" to the moon to get 768724.86 which is twice as large as it should be...)

<comment><USER34> So it's a bug after all :/ hope the author fixes it, such a neat idea otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Cool.

Unfortunately though, on my regular setup of Firefox on Windows, the background image abruptly 'runs out' shortly after the "You're currently travelling at 70000 pixels/second" message appears, leaving me with a blank white screen. I believe this is due to this browser bug I've just found out about: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816917>

Fine on Chrome though.

<comment><USER37> So one more site that works _only_ in Chrome. Sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My favourite scale of the universe picture:

<http://scaleofuniverse.com/universe-medium.jpg>

<comment><USER39> Never seen that image before, that is quite scary really. When people state that there is no such thing as aliens really annoys me when you see visualisations such as this.

<comment><USER40> There's almost definitely aliens out there. The question is, will we ever get to meet them?

<comment><USER41> Of course we will, just will it be in the next 100 years, the next 1,000 or the next 10,000?

<comment><USER42> It could be more than 10+ million years from now. By that time civilization on Earth would be indistinguishable from aliens from our 21st century perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _"At the current state of space technology, it will take at least 240 days to get to Mars"_

Uh, no. The person who put this together obviously hasn't read a lot about proposed plans for Mars missions or even understands how transfer orbits work. 150 days is a likely practical limit for today's technology, but it's not a hard limit. Spend a little more fuel, and you could make it 149 days.

[http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take- to-...](http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to- mars/)

<comment><USER43> You can keep on shortening the trip by another day, but it requires more energy each day you take off.

At a certain point (somewhere around 5-6 months) it makes more sense to use that energy to give yourself a bigger ship than to take another day off.

(I'm glad to see no one saying any more that the VASIMR could do it in 39 days. That was an annoying distraction.)

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r I'd love to see the Sun included on the opposite side of the scale. Its diameter is 109 times that of earth, making it 10900 pixels. Would be just as impressive a demonstration.

<comment><USER44> I didn't go through much, but I'm quite sure that in that scale, It would be a flat line

<comment> mark-r I tried simulating it, and it's just enough curvature to get the point across. Assuming I didn't have a bug of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What's frustrating is how much better of a candidate Venus would be, if it weren't for its atmosphere. It's closer than Mars and larger too.

<comment><USER46> Theoretically, we could build floating cities on Venus:

 _Landis has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities, based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 Oxygen-Nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth. In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 km above Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earth- like in the solar system – a pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0°C–50°C range.

Because there is not a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric mixing rates rather than an explosive decompression, giving time to repair any such damages. In addition, humans would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air to breathe, protection from the acidic rain and on some occasions low level protection against heat. Alternatively, two-part domes could contain a lifting gas like hydrogen or helium (extractable from the atmosphere) to allow a higher mass density._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_city_(science_fiction)...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_city_\(science_fiction\)#Venus)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities)

<comment><USER47> Really cool. Thanks.

I also find it awesome that this man's name is Landis. Only two characters away from Lando (Calrissian), who also lived in a floating city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> One thing that's always gotten to me about this distance is what it means for communication latency. Mars is 20 light-minutes away. If we sent colonists, communication would be a 40-minute round trip. No phone calls home, no way to have a chat with friends or loved ones; at best they could send a message, and wait 40 minutes for a reply. That's far away.

<comment><USER49> if we could stretch a stick as long as the distance from earth to mars and use it to tap on mars ground something like a morse code to communicate, would that message be faster than a wifi message traveling at the speed of light?

<comment><USER43> Does everyone come up with this idea independently, or is someone suggesting it? It's a very common retort to speed-of-light communications, but someone told me about it before I thought of it.

Anyway, your idea wouldn't work. If you press on one end of the stick, it would issue a pressure wave along the length of the stick near the speed of light (depending on its material), so you haven't gained anything.

<comment><USER49> No I am guilty of having thought about it myself :) But I would like to know more about these kind of anti-common sense examples regarding this subject. Do you have a website or some search keyword to suggest? Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The few pixels to the low Earth orbit and ISS is gently depressing. When's the last time a human went further than that? 1972?

</comment><comment><USER51> Oh this is fantastic! My father teaches astronomy to kids (he has a mobile planetarium that he takes around schools [1]) and one of the main pain points he has mentioned is communicating a sense of scale to them.

This is elegant because it mixes the concept of "imagine this orange is the earth, mars would be in <nearby town>" within the constraints of a web page.

Kids have difficulty visualising distances in an abstract way - but _time_ is much simpler. And the length of the scroll to Mars really emphasises this.

Great visualisation.

1\. <http://www.starlincs.co.uk>

<comment><USER52> That is super cool! Can you please ask him to put some larger images on there because I only get these tiny little thumbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It's nice but his scale is wrong. He states that the Earth is 6371 km large, while in reality, it's twice that, as 6371 km is just the radius of the Earth, and what you really see is its diameter.

<comment><USER35> Indeed, and it appears that 63.71km per pixel has then been used to calculate the pixel distances to the Moon and to Mars so in fact they are twice as many pixels long as they should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Nicely done. A biology scaled version would be cool. Like if a virus was 100 pixels wide...

<comment><USER55> Or.. an electron is 100 pixels wide..

<comment><USER56> Better use a proton instead.

Electrons are point-like particles, ignoring their wave characteristics, so don't have a "size" per se.

<comment><USER54> Could make a cool animation showing off the fine structure constant going from classical electron radius to Bohr radius and Compton wavelength. That would be a total zoom factor of 18769 which is about right. The hard part would be designing an infographic to make sense to people who probably don't "get" what the bohr radius is, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'd love to see one of these for the other planets in our solar system. Maybe even Pluto!

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised no one has mentioned the scale model of the solar system strewn around the Boston metro area. If you live there, it's pretty fun to visit all the planets. One year the MIT Mystery Hunt had a puzzle related to it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Using this site, I was able to make the Kessel run in less than 1200 pixels.

</comment><comment><USER58> if I leave it running will I get to mars? just out of curiosity? ( i do have better things to do ).

<comment><USER59> Or you can turn off Javascript and hit the "End" key. Alas, there does not seem to be any real-life equivalent to that.

<comment><USER58> Scotty is yet to invent the warp teleportation theory...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Brilliant. I never actually reached mars - just the gut wrenching distance to the moon made me realise how amazing the Apollo program was - whatever gets us to Mars ...

</comment><comment><USER61> Though not as cool as this, I used a similar scrolling idea back in 2011 to visualize a star that was one million times the mass of our sun — [http://vjk2005.tumblr.com/post/4497783697/a-star-half-a- mill...](http://vjk2005.tumblr.com/post/4497783697/a-star-half-a-million- times-the-mass-of-our-sun-was)

</comment><comment><USER62> If the Earth were 100 pixels wide, then what we consider "space" is 1 pixel above its surface. One pixel...

</comment><comment><USER63> Bug Report: I'm afraid this crashed between the Moon and Mars, just as some "you are travelling" text came in on the LHS and then it just went to whitescreen. Firefox 19.0.2 on Win7-64Home. In case you can catch it. (yeah ok so my laptop's not Linux, sue me!)

</comment><comment><USER64> If the Earth radius was 100 pixels, the average depth of the ocean (~4km) would be less than 0.1 pixels. I once had a professor hold up piece of paper and say "this is my scale model of the pacific ocean". Took me a while to realize he wasn't joking.

<comment><USER35> The one my teacher used was the billiard ball, and told us "if the Earth were the same size as this, it would be _smoother_ ". A quick google suggests that is indeed true, but it would not be _rounder_. ([http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/09/08/te...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/09/08/ten- things-you-dont-know-about-the-earth))

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why not?

      (function () {
        var d=1;
        setInterval(function () {
           $('#Earth-Illustration').css({'webkit-transform':
           'rotate(' + ((d>36) ? d=2 : d++)*10 + 'deg)'})},100);
      }());

_Please, consider Africa as Asia ;)_

<comment><USER65> Perhaps you meant `transform`, which will actually work in WebKit browsers (you forgot the leading `-`) and also be translated by jQuery to other browsers' prefixed property names.

<comment><USER44> tested in Chrome only...and only "transform" didn't work, I had to add "webkit-" to work...to make simple, I prefered not put the moz line

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> On the way to Mars, there was a flash and the screen went white. I guess I didn't make it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Mars is pretty far, but 240 days doesn't sound so bad. In the age of explorers, the first human sailors to circumnavigate the earth took 4 years to do it. A handful of them even survived the journey!

</comment><comment><USER68> You should speed up the rate a bit when going to mars, and just tell the user that the velocity is higher now. It takes up too much of our time, to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER69> Mars is a desolate, inhospitable rock floating in an immense void. I can't understand why people are captivated by the idea of living there.

<comment><USER33> It has water, mineral resources, a CO2 atmosphere plentiful enough to consider using it as an industrial feedstock, soil that we know you can grow plants in, a 24 hour day/night cycle, and enough sunlight to support crops. It also is "closer" to the rest of the solar system in terms of delta-v. If civilization expands into the solar system, Mars will be analogous to North America in the 16-20th centuries.

<comment><USER70> >It has water, mineral resources, a CO2 atmosphere plentiful enough to consider using it as an industrial feedstock, soil that we know you can grow plants in, a 24 hour day/night cycle, and enough sunlight to support crops.

Mars' atmosphere has only 20 times more CO2 than Earth's does, CO2 is not a rare chemical. We don't know enough about Martian soils to be sure that we can grow crops there.

>Mars will be analogous to North America in the 16-20th centuries.

I see this analogy around a lot and I've never cared for it.

1) All successful settlements of Europeans in the new world had some economic purpose for existing. The first few attempts to settle North America by English settlers were dismal failures until they discovered that they could grow valuable tobacco there. What is Mars' tobacco? We'd need a product that is cheaper to manufacture on Mars and ship back to Earth than to make on Earth. We need this because...

2) Mars is a vastly more hostile environment than the new world. It would have been possible to set up fairly small colonisation groups that were _mostly_ if not entirely self-sufficient and thus didn't need to find economically sustainable products to sell to the home country in trade for vital supplies. In fact, later settlement in New England followed this pattern - many people paid for their passage and bought some land and only needed a few imported goods rather than the whole-sale re-supply that the earlier settlers in Virginia had required.

The minimum local knowledge and technology base was essentially simple agriculture at first, followed by some village-level craftsmen for simple tools and such. This meant that only a small fraction of the local economy had to produce goods for export because most things could be produced locally.

That is very far from being the case on Mars. The minimum technology base required to have a mostly independent colony on Mars is a substantial fraction of our entire tech base on earth. Even if we assume that high-complexity, high value-density things like computers and other electronics are imported from Earth that still leaves us with a lot that needs to be made on Mars. If we want to build another settlement on Mars from our initial base, can we do that?

Can we build the environmental management equipment needed? Pressure envelopes, power generation and distribution? Even something like light bulbs would be hard to do. Individually, all of these things are totally possible of but when you add them all together you start to require an awful lot of machinery to take with you.

The alternative of course is to keep supplying these things from Earth but without a sustainable source of goods to export back to Earth that isn't going to be sustainable.

3) The relative cost of transportation. Early settlers of the new world could use existing ships once they knew where to go. With Mars we know where to go but we don't have the ships. A moderately wealthy merchant could pay for the passage of his whole extended family to the Americas, even if the price drops dramatically that isn't going to be the case with a passage to Mars.

None of this is to say that I don't want to see permanent human settlement on other planets, but I think that comparing it to the settlement of the Americas is very unhelpful.

<comment><USER33> > CO2 is not a rare chemical.

Never said it was. The point is, that you can just pull it out of the Martian air in industrial quantities.

> We don't know enough about Martian soils to be sure that we can grow crops > there.

Many experts would disagree.

> All successful settlements of Europeans in the new world had some economic > purpose for existing.

Yes, there would be a considerable initial economic barrier. But given the potential payoff, and that it's well within the budgets of current major powers, it's bound to happen. Just a matter of time and political will.

> Even something like light bulbs would be hard to do.

With current tech, we need a population of about 500 million to sustain a comparable technological infrastructure. This is going to go down with advances in technology, however.

> None of this is to say that I don't want to see permanent human settlement > on other planets, but I think that comparing it to the settlement of the > Americas is very unhelpful.

Because you're mistakenly using the analogy as a descriptor of difficulty. You're right that it's much more difficult in both an absolute and comparative sense. However, it's meant entirely as a descriptor of potential payoff. Compare the investment involved in establishing initial colonies and the value of interventions that resulted in British hegemony over North America with the value generated by the US economy. For English speaking western civilization, the payoff has been astoundingly huge.

I strongly suspect that there are people in China and other emerging powers who are well aware of this as well.

<comment><USER69> What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on _Earth_ that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first (e.g. Antarctica, Siberia, the surface of the ocean, and all the interstices between where people are already living)

<comment><USER33> _> What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on Earth that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first_

It's not a matter of "how accommodating." It's a matter of how accessible. It's the space equivalent of geography. There are vast energy and material resources in the solar system off-Earth. A Mars-centric civilization will have much better access to those than an Earth-centric one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> The starfield should not move anyway, because of parallax. The stars are really far away and the sky looks the same on Mars and Earth.

</comment><comment><USER72> Reminds me of this Bill Nye episode

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Ob0xR0Ut8>

</comment><comment><USER73> Perhaps this is relevant: Opera's rendering glitches mean that we cannot go to Mars with the latest version of Opera on Windows.

<comment> T-hawk Mostly worked for me in Opera 12.14 on WinXP. The first click showed white space instead of stars, but then the second click (after the moon) showed the scrolling starfield the whole way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> related: interactive scale of the universe <http://htwins.net/scale2/>

<comment><USER75> The whole time I was browsing that (incredible) site, all I could think of was the intro to The Big Bang Theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> View in Safari on iPad, and change tabs while scrolling, then come back mid- scroll. Gotta love the iPad rendering.

</comment><comment><USER77> Really cool. Anything that sheds light on how amazingly double awesome the Mars Rover Mission is makes me happy.

</comment><comment><USER78> A little strange handling of the class attribute in source. I'm fairly sure it also requires an = after it.

</comment><comment><USER79> Says we wont get to Mars until the 2030s, I think the Mars One project and others would beg to differ...

</comment><comment><USER80> Did anyone else make the return trip and get disappointed there was no "welcome home"?

</comment><comment><USER81> it says it is traveling at 1/10 th of light speed. it takes less than minute to get to Mars in pixels, but from other sources I know it takes 13 minutes for radio signal to get to mars. Something does not play here.

<comment><USER11> This is at the closest pass, when Mars is ~0.5 AU away from the earth; that's 4 light minutes.

It takes 13 minutes from light to get to Mars from the sun, and I think that'll also work out to be close to the "average" time from Earth to Mars.

In any case, you're right that apparently the demo exceeds the speed of light at some point, because it doesn't last for 4 minutes. Someone else suggests that the motion be interpreted as a fast pan rather than a physical motion, which is how this _should_ have been implemented to not contradict the laws of physics. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I'd really like to see something like this for the anatomy of a cell! Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER83> Amazing! Despite the factual inaccuracies, it's a wonderful job! Two thumbs up!

</comment><comment><USER84> I was hoping to see something new on the way back from Mars. well done though!

</comment><comment><USER85> I was thinking there'd be a scary monster that would pop out along the way

</comment><comment><USER86> Great stuff! Would be great to see some other planets or facts in there.

</comment><comment><USER87> please also mark the Lagrange Points <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point>

plus Sun, that would be really cool!!

</comment><comment><USER88> Beautiful, I love it!

</comment><comment><USER89> I'm glad he didn't decide to do distancetobrunomars.com

</comment><comment><USER90> And only 53 pixels wide? Is it even worth going there?

</comment><comment><USER91> Some of the fonts look horrible in FF20/Linux x86-64..

</comment><comment><USER92> I like this. Good job, very creative!

</comment><comment><USER93> Very Cool!!

</comment><comment><USER94> very cool - thank you.

</comment><comment><USER95> Awesome. Thumbs up!!

</comment><comment><USER96> Should have switched to warp 1.

</comment><comment><USER97> Mars is fucking far.</comment>


What Should Go into the C++ Standard Library - <AUTHOR> https://abseil.io/blog/20180227-what-should-go-stdlib <comment><USER2> A standard HTTP client would be immensely handy.</comment>