Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18271702/google-stadia-cloud-gaming-service-announcement-gdc-2019 <comment><USER3> I participated in the beta and was pleasantly surprised to see how the entire experience came together. I only experienced one small technical issue. The game runs in real time on Google's servers. If you have some lag on your network, the client will drop all the frames during that time. Instead I expected behavior like Youtube where you will see a small loader and the game will continue before the lag started. This was specifically a problem when playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey cause in the cutscene the characters would say something like "Go to the * lag * and meet * lag *" and then I had no idea what I had to do next. Lag was still a rare thing during my experience. It's just that when it occurred the timing was unfortunate.

<comment><USER4> How do you picture your hypothetical vision of things working on the server side? Naively using buffering would make the input stream desync from the output stream. "Input prediction" works well enough when a game supports it, but lag would reappear for titles where the game doesn't. A general solution (for games with no input prediction) would require you to run the game in an x86 emulator with save-state + rewind support, such that network stutter could be translated to micro-rewinds of the game's VM; and even that wouldn't work if the game was multiplayer.

I could see games being able to signal "there is no input during this cutscene, so it can be buffered at the client." But for everything besides cutscenes, game streaming essentially has to work like a VoIP call (hard- realtime), doesn't it?

<comment><USER5> But for everything besides cutscenes, game streaming essentially has to work like a VoIP call (hard-realtime), doesn't it?

I imagine most music, and some during-gameplay dialogue, could be buffered at the client. I'd expect sound effects to be the only audio that needs to be super low latency. Maybe certain dialogue too, _if_ the speaker is visible on screen.

This alone might alleviate a lot of the GP's problems, since most audio wouldn't cut out. That can make a huge perceptual difference.

<comment><USER5> Ugh, I'm past the edit window and forgot to put a '>' before that first sentence. I was quoting, not plagiarizing, promise!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rewrote this a few times. Overall I think this would be really bad for the gaming world. Not buying consoles would be nice, but the natural business model will be ads or pay per hour or pay per MB. This is going to further drive the industry to towards mass multiplayer and grindy games I think. More accessible but worse content.

Indie shops would probably struggle even more under this model.

The cost per user will vary drastically by the amount they play and how computationally demanding it is. I just don't see it being feasible without personalized cost. Looking forward to paying minimum cost for minimum graphics too.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. The natural business model will be a mix between subscription services and free to play games with micro transactions. Microsoft (and others like EA) is already moving in that direction with game pass (monthly subscription gets you all first party games plus partner games).

The biggest concern is going to be internet availability and data caps. I tried the beta for Project Stream (now Stadia) this past winter. It worked well and was impressive, but I have a good internet connection with a 1TB cap. I have friends with much worse speeds and harsher caps and I am not sure if this would be viable for them.

I am more concerned about 'physical' gaming being phased out. I doubt Stadia will do this soon, but I like building a new computer every 4 years for playing games. Maybes it's something I won't actually miss(like how I don't miss CDs for music), but it remains to be seen.

<comment><USER8> F2P games are the incarnation of grindy.. and more of them is the worst thing that could happen to gaming.

<comment><USER9> For some people, the grind is the main attraction, especially if it's well balanced. Look at Path of Exile, that's one hell of a grindy game and people absolutely adore it.

<comment><USER10> Is the grind an integral part of the gameplay, flow and pacing of the game? Fine.

Is the grind a way to slow progression in order to make micro-payments more desirable? Fuck. That.

<comment><USER11> Or worse, a hybrid like Assassin's Creed Odyssey: a $60+ game that gets super grindy, but reminds you that you can opt into micro-payments to get a little experience or coin boost...

I really enjoyed it for the first 20 hours or so.

<comment><USER12> Morrowind was way more grindy than Odyssey (make 50 steps, a monster attacks you, repeat until the end of game). Odyssey just made all enemies within +/-2 levels of your own character, contrary to Origins, where levels were preset for each area.

<comment><USER13> I downloaded two mods pretty much instantly for Morrowind: no cliff racers and being able to run without losing stamina. Saves uncountable hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really don't understand why people here aren't talking about the real underlying principle of this service. Google has captured the education and cheap laptop space with chromebooks. This is the logical extension of that software. Sure they will eventually combine chromeos and android but this is one more step in the direction of everything happening inside of your web browser.

The entire reason this is happening is because Google has successfully captured what once was the holy grail of markets, education, and is doing things like this to keep people on chromebooks.

ChromeOS could be as important than Android. Especially with the Windows 7 extended life support coming up, Google has less than 4 years to convince people to transfer to their platform instead of Windows 10. I know it seems heretical to imply that it will happen but I think this is a good example that Google considers it not only a real possibility but something that they might actually have a good chance of being able to pull off.

The most important thing to realize is that they are focusing on gamers as a trial, the people who are price sensitive and who have to move first off of Windows 7 since they can't pay for extended support even if they wanted it. They can then continue this into the workplace. This is a brilliant move by Google.

<comment><USER15> Unless I'm mistaken ChromeOS is only used in US schools on a wide scale.

<comment><USER16> The only Chromebook I've seen anywhere is the nice one I bought my mum for Christmas year before last, she loves it and I've had no issues supporting it (like not a single one, she uses it constantly as well).

I've got a school age stepson nothing there either.

<comment><USER17> Give it a couple years and they will be everywhere. I used to work for a company that sold a monitoring and filtering product for school computers.

It's only been in the last two or three years that the ecosystem around them has really matured enough that they can compete with Windows machines and iPads on anything other than price. With the way schools' budgets work, we've really only just passed the early adopter stage.

<comment><USER18> Not with the hardware division being downsized.

<comment><USER17> Are you referring to Google's hardware division? If you are that doesn't really mean much.

Most schools aren't buying fleets of Pixelbooks. They're buying chromebooks from companies like Acer and Asus which make devices that retail in the $200-400 range.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, but someone needs to actually develop ChromeOS, without Pixelbooks management might decide to focus elsewhere.

And right now from the outside it feels like there is a ramping internal politics going on with ChromeOS, Android, PWA, Flutter, Fuchsia, Kotlin, Dart teams, with upper management giving free reign and let the best win kind of stuff.

<comment><USER17> > Yeah, but someone needs to actually develop ChromeOS, without Pixelbooks > management might decide to focus elsewhere.

I really, really doubt that. I don't think you understand how ubiquitous Chromebooks are becoming to the education space. Last I heard, in the US, 60%+ of all school provided computers are Chromebooks. School SysAdmins love them because they're dirt cheap and can be provisioned quickly.

From Google's perspective it's great too. Between Google Classroom and the way chromebook device management works, students have to have a google account to be able to go to school. There's rules on what data can collect, but still, kids are forced into the Google ecosystem at a young age.

ChromeOS doesn't need the pixelbook to survive, it provides an enormous amount of value on its own.

> And right now from the outside it feels like there is a ramping internal > politics going on with ChromeOS, Android, PWA, Flutter, Fuchsia, Kotlin, > Dart teams

100% agree there. I've been hearing for the past 3 or 4 years that Android and ChromeOS were going to be merged and nothing has yet to come of it. It seems like even Google doesn't know what is going on there.

<comment><USER18> Check the worldwide market share, Chromebooks are less than GNU/Linux desktops.

Being only king of US school system isn't something that holds long term in a product roadmap.

<comment><USER17> > Being only king of US school system isn't something that holds long term in > a product roadmap.

Dude... I'm sorry but you are so wrong. Like I said originally, I literally just left this industry after working in it for years.

US spends more money on education than pretty much any other nation, both per student and as a total dollar amount. The reason the numbers are so low world wide is because chromebooks in education are a relatively new concept. Everyone has been going after the big fish, which is the US.

Additionally, they way you need to handle student data in the US is fairly consistent across state lines, which means you don't need to customize your solution very much to be able to sell to all 60 million students. Once you go overseas, you'd need to sell across multiple country lines to be able to find a pool of students that big (unless you're targeting China, Russia, or India which all have their own issues).

If you don't believe me, here's a blog post from a few years ago where google literally say ChromeOS is here to stay and then they focus heavily on it's benefits to education. [https://blog.google/products/chrome/chrome-os-is-here- to-sta...](https://blog.google/products/chrome/chrome-os-is-here-to-stay/)

Even if you want to ignore all of that, I don't think you realize how much of a PR nightmare it would be if Google just stopped supporting ChromeOS right now. Schools have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying into this ecosystem. For schools that buy at the district level, it's in the millions. Most schools/districts don't have the budget to just replace all their computers overnight. Shutting down ChromeOS would pretty much fuck all digital learning in a lot of school districts for years to come.

PS. I'm pretty sure iOS's adoption numbers US & worldwide (not in schools, just total consumer adoption) match up pretty closely with Chromebooks, so there goes your idea that only dominating the US market isn't a viable business strategy.

<comment><USER18> Should I list all products that Google has written blogs about they being here to stay?

<comment><USER17> Sure. I'd love a list of all the products Google has canceled (not merged into another offering) after coming out on their official Google blog and saying they are here to stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cool.

Unfortunately, any and all trust I had in google maintaining its services for more than a few years is long gone. I have games from ~10+ years ago I can still download, update, and play via Steam; What are the chances this lasts more than 3 years? In addition to that obvious concern, I'd also be very hesitant to let Google have any control over my gameplay experience. The downsides of the gaming as a service just have no appeal to me, although I'm sure it would be functional in certain generes, for a certain type of gamer.

Regardless of how many streamers are playing Skyrim in their browser, I don't think I'll be joining them.

<comment><USER20> This is actually something that worries me, long term. There's people who still play 30+ year old games— you can still buy a used NES and play classic Tetris if you wanted.

Mario Kart on the Wii still works. Online play is broken though because Nintendo has no interest in running old servers to keep a service in a long discontinued game running.

If any games are developed solely for Stadia, will they disappear if the platform disappears? Even if it doesn't, will they be playable in perpetuity, or will Google shrug breaking changes if it's for games that are over N years old, and have under K users?

<comment><USER21> I think most things we buy have a life. When I pay $$ to get shoes, I dont expect that to run forever. Sure, it might be nice but I _understand_ it might lose its life after a while. We expect software similarly to run forever, but I think we need to start associating life against it.

Now if a shoe only works for a week, I'm not going to buy it. If it works for a year, sure I'll take it.Similarly for a digital good (phone, computer, software) we need to come up with a baseline on what the acceptable number for life is. It cant be Infinity, but it should be reasonable.

<comment><USER20> The big difference here I think is for most things we buy, we're mostly control over their longevity. I can take care of something and have it last longer.

This all ties into ownership. If I own something I have control over it, so I can re-sell it if I'd ever like to re-coup some value or let someone else make use of it. I can lend it to a friend, and have it back to use or lend again. I can give it as a gift to a friend or family member. I can keep it indefinitely as a memory. All of these are reasons why some people still have a NES, GameCube, etc. It's probably not that they've been playing on the console for 30 years. They either kept the NES they owned as kids, or bought one second- hand for the nostalgia, or got it as a gift from someone who knows how much they like classic games, etc.

There are still have tournaments for games on old consoles. Old games are perfectly good games— they don't have the same wow factor, but they are as fun today as they have always been. Will future "classic games" be lost to history, or available only when a publisher decides to monetize the nostalgia of the public with a re-release?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some may remember an earlier streaming game service, OnLive, that crashed and burned spectacularly: [https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3274739/onlive- report](https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3274739/onlive-report) plus HN discussions here: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=onlive&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=onlive&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

I saw the OnLive demo. It was very slick, and the concept seemed more than viable, it was inevitable.

<comment><USER23> OnLive was both before the Cloud era (where they manually had to maintain many points of presence that were near consumers and they didn't have the money to do it near what Google, Amazon and Microsoft are able to do) and before GPUs were really mainstream for in normal data center servers to the scale this type of service requires.

<comment><USER24> Key quote from the linked article:

> the company had deployed thousands of servers that were sitting unused, and > only ever had 1,600 concurrent users of the service worldwide

They were burning through all of their money because they highly overestimated the audience. That's one of the main problems the cloud was made to solve.

<comment> Const-me This particular cloud will only solve the problem if google will find a way to sell the time of these AMD GPUs to someone else.

Traditional GPGPU customers, and machine learners, usually use CUDA instead of OpenCL / VulkanCompute / DirectCompute. At least from my position is looks that way. I'm a freelance developer and my clients are picking CUDA in ~75% cases. The rest is DirectCompute, if computing on client PCs and hardware compatibility is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds great on paper but I'm skeptical.

Not only you will need a really good internet connection and wifi, but also being close to a Stadia data center. The best possible case scenario will probably be a latency of around 50 ms, but I'm guessing the average will be closer to 100 ms which is too much for many types of games (specially competitive games the streamers play).

Heck, even streaming in your local network isn't such a great experience these days.

I love the idea, but realistically we are still very far away from streaming games replacing consoles or PCs. Many companies have tried (Nvidia, Sony, etc) but no one has succeeded for the simple reason that latency is not there yet.

<comment><USER26> i tried this and found it to be pretty satisfying. i played entirely on a macbook while traveling during my winter vacation. It worked surprisingly well even with mixed wifi, i would compare it to the experience you get from using PS4 Remote Play or Steam Link over ethernet.

The only time i found it lagging was similar to the times when both of the above lag: during particularly complex visual scenes (i.e. you're circle strafing around a target and the _entire_ screen is constantly redrawing). I thought it was great for playing a game casually: i.e. story mode. Lots of people use that phrase as a put-down, but the system is well suited for a game like ACO where you are mostly being tactical, planning, exploring, and moving the story forward.

I think of a game like 2016 hitman: i hesitated to install 30G of it to my ps4, but if you told me i could drop into the demo/prelude in less than a minute, even at 720, it's a very appealing concept for somebody like me that plays video games the way other people watch netflix while they're eating dinner: basically whenever i have some downtime and want to dip into a story or mechanic i like for ~30 mins.

<comment><USER27> > Steam Link over ethernet

Note that even Steam Link over Ethernet is too laggy to play KB/M FPS at any serious level - the input lag makes FPS almost unplayable.

I can see the growth of services like these, especially with more gamers being unable to access dedicated hardware, but there will always be a niche for dedicated hardware. The only way I think they could solve that problem with streaming is using some sort of hybrid streaming approach where some of the UI is remote and some is local and they could do client side simulation somehow for input.

<comment><USER26> i perhaps have diminished standards, but i found steam link over ethernet to be totally serviceable for playing through most of hyper light drifter on a controller. the input lag was fairly minimal and the computer was already quite long in the tooth, but to your point, i wasn't getting 60fps, that's for sure (probably realistically it was a firm 30fps).

i don't doubt that consoles will remain useful, but i think that services like this will satisfy a pretty legit niche for a vast swath of games that aren't really dependent on low latency input (i.e. puzzle/turn based/rpg/simulators/board game conversions) and that are often 'discovered' by people finding letsplays on youtube.

for some variety of mmorpgs, i can imagine devs being excited about the reduced surface area for cheating/exploits. for somebody like me that uses a mac, i'm looking forward to playing a version of Civ that doesn't cause my laptop to sound like it's about ready to take flight. i don't think the idea is meant to replace consoles, though more, it seems like a way to grease the wheels of commerce and get people playing (and buying) games that they've been traditionally priced out of because of the not-insignificant startup cost of building and maintaining a gaming pc/console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So, who wants to make a bet on how long this "experiment" will last? I'm thinking 2 years before Google gets tired of it and abandons it, and another year before it's taken behind the shed.

<comment><USER29> This comment has gotten so predictable and tedious on this site; I really don't get it. Google launches products. Some of them fail. That's life.

Depreciation schedules for cloud services are one thing. Consumer products are another.

<comment><USER30> The difference is they launch high-profile, promising-the-moon projects and put their full weight behind them, and then give up a couple short years later for inscrutable reasons ([cough] Google Fiber [cough])

<comment><USER29> I don't see how their reasons are any more "inscrutable" than any other company who cans failed products (all of them).

<comment><USER30> Google Fiber hadn't truly failed, it just turned out to require more work than they'd hoped, so they just said "never mind" to the cities they'd led along with big promises: [https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city- as-...](https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city-as-a-failed- experi-1833244198)

They lack the ability to commit to a space and cultivate it, casually changing course on a whim and leaving masses of people spinning in their wake. Just look at how they've managed YouTube and its guidelines, bans, etc. Or the Play Store and all of its debacles. Were I a game developer, I would never want to be beholden to a Google gaming platform.

Case in point: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432702)

<comment><USER31> > They lack the ability to commit to a space and cultivate it

That's because states, entrenched providers and in some cases local governments made every inch of work cost a mile of time. The cost was making Fiber a non-starter... ISP's benefited from nationwide networks largely funded by governments, then used their monopoly influence to prevent any competition, and "hired" state governments to enforce their monopolies.

But we can hand-wave all of that away and claim it was Google's lack of commitment.

<comment><USER30> I don't deny that ISP's make it far harder than it needs to be. They make it impossible for small upstarts. But Google, of all companies, had plenty of resources to make it happen if they really wanted to.

<comment><USER31> Blowing millions of dollars on an investment that will take decades to pay off isn't good business. Google decided, rightfully, that the answer was webpass. It's a better revenue generator, and has considerably lower barrier to entry.

<comment><USER30> The point is they overcommit and then back out instead of doing more careful due-diligence. Google Glass is an example of the right way to explore a new product; most of their ventures aren't so conservative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The reason why these kind of initiatives fail is because they do not solve a real problem or issue. The average Joe doesn't need another subscription just to play some games. Having a console where you buy games is more than enough. I also silently hope that Google will fail hard with this one. Since they are the worst publisher on earth with absolutely no compassion towards its developers relationships.

<comment><USER33> $400 for a current console and $60 or so for a recent game. Assuming you buy the next gen after 3 years or so there's quite a budget invested in the gamer's part - a streaming service at maybe $20/month that gives you access to recent titles doesn't look that bad in comparison.

<comment><USER34> Even with a very conservative 3 year lifespan of a console (5 years is closer to reality) 20 dollars a month over 3 years is 700+ dollars and at the end of the day you don't own anything. It seems like a pretty bad deal overall.

<comment><USER35> Video games and consoles don't have much lasting value, so it's not a good investment (except for some collectors).

If you mean to keep a copy and be able to play it again anytime in the future, then yes I'm with you. However, most of the games are either thrash or doesn't offer much replay value, which means that once you're done with it that will stack up somewhere and collects dust.

One point though is you can trade games that you own, which has some appeal.

People used to bring the same argument for music streaming vs buying a CD or digital copy. See where that brought us.

Convenience wins most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I played with Project Stream during the technical beta and I would say it cleared the hurdle of "good enough." The resolution was good and the input lag was normally small enough to be compensated for or go unnoticed.

Since the majority of this venture's hardware appears to be in-house and, I assume, easily re-purposed for other core services I'm less cynical about the half-life of this product.

I have no intention of buying the controller but if this let's me stream to my existing hardware with minimal friction I would be interested. If they structure it as a monthly subscription with a robust catalog they would probably get my money.

I'm curious to see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER37> Google is really flexing on people here. With 5G this will be the future of all computing and only google and amazon have the data centers to make it work.

Sundar opened up the event talking about deep learning, I wouldn't be surprised if they used this platform as a way to train their RL models against humans or on data generated by the users.

The youtube integration is also a shot at twitch.

<comment><USER38> I'd argue MSFT does, too, and they've already cleared a HUGE hurdle with XBOX (the hardware + game ecosystem) & XBOX Live (social engagement).

The opportunity for Google is huge, but it will require sustained, strong, cross-functional execution that can be challenging for such an engineering driven, compartmentalized organization.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, but they control all of the platforms to make this work.

With Android, Chrome, Chromecast, Youtube and GCP they have all of the pieces in place.

<comment><USER39> I wish anti-trust was a thing.

<comment><USER40> I don't, getting that many different companies on the same page would be basically impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> And the games will run on Linux using Vulkan. I find that pretty awesome.

<comment><USER42> Looks like Fuchsia is a year years too late to be used for this, but I guess it wouldn't be too difficult to switch it out later on.

Still a great thing for Linux and Vulkan. Too bad Sony refuses to support them on its PS consoles.

<comment><USER18> Just like with OpenGL, Vulkan is not like Vulkan.

Plenty of extensions to choose from.

[https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php](https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Other comments have suggested this might fail like OnLive/Nvidia/PlayStation Now because the economics of streaming on the business end don't work out.

This case is different. Stadia is the first video game streaming product _made by a cloud computing_ company, and also a cloud computing company which developed a video codec (VP9) just for high quality/low latency streaming.

The economics are much different on all sides; it all depends on how Google prices the service. (it'll be curious how Microsoft's xCloud competes. Maybe Amazon will get in on the fun too.)

<comment><USER32> It will fail because developers will think twice before willing to depend on another evil ecosystem from Google.

<comment><USER44> Developers will put their games where the users are. Right now most developers deploy to PC, XBox and PlayStation (and some to Switch) what's the cost of one more platform to deploy to vs the extra sales it can produce?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I also participated in the beta and was quite impressed. In my case, there was no lag and instead, when connection was poorer, the stream quality would get lowered (i.e like Youtube - 1080p to 460p). I think this can be completely resolved with a solid connection.

Speaking on Google leveraging Youtube for Strada, I also think this could be an amazing affiliate opportunity for game developers and content creators. Imagine watching your favorite streamer (or I guess game reviewer) and with a click of a button, without having to download, play the game right from your browser (demo or full game). Great source of income for content creators, great frictionless experience for viewers/consumers, and great tool for developers.

<comment><USER32> You mean a great place to loose another 30% of your income. A great place where you are forced to implement Google play related shit. A place where you can be expelled from the service based on wrong bot decisions. A place where there is no human support. A place where only the big publishers are looked after for. A place where indie developers are treated as shit. A place where search algorithms are dubious. Yes that's what you can expect from a Google stream service. Just as the playstore currently is.

<comment><USER46> Like Steam, but a little bit worse?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> More details are available here:

[https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-hands...](https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-hands- on-with-google-stream-gdc-2019)

They have benchmarks and go into detail on how well it runs. I found this interesting:

> "[It's] a complete port," Google's Phil Harrison told me. "[Ubisoft] built > the game completely for Stadia and they're actually doing a talk at GDC > about how they got their game up and running."

> In our earlier analysis, our impression was of a game that very, very > closely mirrored the PC version running at 1080p resolution, with some > elements upgraded beyond the console quality threshold defined by Xbox One > X.

> "Correct, but they started from their main line on the consoles, it's not > that they took the PC version and ported," Stadia VP Majd Bakar explains. > "You can see that as the UI changes according to the controller you connect. > I wouldn't call it a console port, I'd recommend going to the talk. It's > going to be run jointly between Google and the team that did the work for > Project Stream and they will talk about how they did it and the work stream > they followed."

</comment><comment><USER48> > Focusing on developers, Google also unveiled an impressive way for game > developers to apply their own design style to titles on Stadia. It's a > machine learning-based style transfer tool that developers can use to simply > drop an image into the video frames of games and have it mimic the style > throughout.

This is a fascinating testament to the rate at which deep learning can run. If you think back to 2014-2016 (less than 5 years ago), one of the common things people said was that style transfer would be really cool to apply to video games or video, and then the middlebrow dismissal was 'style-transferring a single frame Gatys et al 2014 style takes a Titan hours so [simple math] shows we can't style transfer in realtime for decades, duh'.

But, GPUs got better. Deep learning got better. Style transfer got better. Now, here in 2019, realtime style transfer is not just old hat (Facebook launched a realtime style transfer video app for smartphones years ago), but Google is announcing a service to stream countless hours of style-transferred video games to potentially _millions_ of players.

</comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone even consider playing on the go anymore? I will be 200 years old by the time you can stream 60fps to a device sitting on a bus on my way to work.

Streaming may have a place in the future, but if it's the only option, then consider me a full-time retro gamer.

I already despise the fact that the masses voted to kill ownership of games, and now it's going straight to killing "rental licenses" as well, putting all of the power of entertainment and commerce in the hands of, essentially, two companies: Google and Amazon.

Ya'll voted for these massive monopolies, really looking forward to the dystopia.

<comment><USER50> 5G is on the way, and will enable this stuff anywhere. MWC had tons of demos of 4k, multiplayer, and VR games streaming via 5G. A lot depends on how/when/if it's all rolled out, but unless you're currently 194 years old, it's gonna be a lot sooner than you think.

<comment><USER51> If 5G is anything like LTE, it will work some of the time, cut out at other times, rapidly degrade into crap quality before coming back to full speed at random intervals. And bear in mind I live in Orange County, CA, hardly the backwoods.

We are a long, long, long way away from having constant, fast, reliable, high- bit rate connections for mobile devices.

(Note, I am on an IPhone XR in OC on ATT)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The computer scientist in me is giddy with excitement. If it is as good as it sounds, we are in a new age of gaming. Kudos Google.

<comment><USER51> So, I work in the games industry and I don't think this will be successful. This has been tried before (multiple times), gamers haven't wanted streaming services. PC gamers already have Steam and this doesn't offer anything compelling over using Steam, and more casual gamers are playing on Ps4 or Switch or mobile. Also, the hardcore PC gamers are never going to accept the latency associated with playing on remote servers.

Google isn't a name that people associate with gaming or gamers, buit they do have a name associated with dropping products after a year or two. I wouldn't trust Google to still be supporting "Stadia" in 5 years time, whereas I do know Steam will still be there.

Also, Google's reputation for "do no evil" has been rapidly eroded in recent times and people are more and more wary about giving this company any more personal data than they already do. Contrast this with Steam, a private company that gamers trust with their data.

I think Google is once again reaching here into a space too late and without anything really compelling to make people switch away from existing Xbox/Windows/Steam ecosystems.

Edit: One other additional aspect to this: it doesn't really matter how fast Google's servers can stream the data, most people's ISPs do not have great consistent connections. Hell, I have Google Fibre at home and occasionally I get issues streaming 1080p Netflix (stuttering etc). Most people have services with bandwidth caps and do not get consistent enough speeds to support streaming games. At my parent's house in the UK, the situation is even worse with lower caps and very often there are disruptions in the connection and so the Netflix stream will turn into a blocky mess for 10 seconds or so.

<comment><USER41> I am a "gamer", I have a 2080Ti and I hope it's the last 1500$ gaming equipment I ever have to buy. It sits idle 95%+ of the time and it is tied to only one of the all the screens in my house.

I want this to work.

<comment><USER53> Curious: Why'd you go with a 2080Ti and not just a 2080 or 1080? Did you just want the RTX support or did you just want the absolute best possible GPU for gaming regardless of price?

<comment><USER54> I can't answer for OP, but I went with a 2080ti because it's cheaper than purchasing a 2060/2070/2080 now and buying a 2080ti later. If price wasn't an issue I'd have gone with the best possible Titan RTX.

<comment><USER55> That doesn't make much sense. If you buy a 2070 now in a few years the successor 2170 (or whatever) will be more powerful than the current 2080ti and cheaper.

Unless you have unlimited budget I find that buying cheaper cards more often will give you better average performance.

<comment><USER56> The pace has slowed down somewhat. A 2080 (discounting the DLSS and RTX stuff) is about as fast as a 1080Ti, a 2070 is about as fast as a plain 1080, etc...

<comment><USER55> That doesn't really change my argument. If the pace slowed down then a x70 will last longer too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm concerned about how this will work for game libraries.

If I buy a console and maintain the hardware, I can still play all the cartridge / CD games I bought for it forever, indefinitely. The hardware target does not change.

Google has a track record with their cloud infrastructure (such as App Engine) of requiring developers to keep updated as the engine changes. Will they attempt a similar model with the system against which Stadia games are built? And if a given developer doesn't want to invest the roll-forward effort (or dies out), does Google maintain an older version of their infrastructure indefinitely to run no-longer-updated-by-developer games, or do they pull those games from their offering to free up resources to run newer and more popular games?

This seems a bad investment for a gamer who is interested in returning to a beloved treasure 5-10 years out. Even my old Steam purchases can be re- installed and run on my own new hardware.

<comment><USER58> Not to mention the frequent horror stories of people having their account closed by google, often by mistake. There's even a link about a story like that right now on the front page. [1] Good luck getting in touch with a human and get your saved games back if that happens to you.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432702)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I really hope the latency we've seen in the live demo was due to the venue's poor internet connection because otherwise this will make some games unplayable. They mentioned that Doom Eternal will be available and that it would be a good benchmark for the service's latency but I'm waiting to see some independent reviews to believe it.

Also I don't really understand who's the target audience for this, I doubt people who currently own a console or a gaming PC will care unless the prices (of games or subscription) are extremely competitive.

The only thing that got me excited is that the infrastructure runs on Linux and AMD, this could have a great impact on Linux gaming.

<comment><USER24> Latency: Project Stream has been in beta since January, and there are a lot of testimonials out there. Other than fighting games and fast pace shooters, the latency seems to be imperceptible, assuming a good connection.

Target audience: Probably people who used to own consoles/gaming rigs, but no longer do for a variety of reasons. The fact that you can play anywhere and on any device (chromecast, phone, laptop), makes it competitive with devices such as Nintendo Switch of Nvidia Shield.

<comment><USER59> > Other than fighting games and fast pace shooters, the latency seems to be > imperceptible, assuming a good connection.

There are certainly games out there which would respond poorly to latency and jitter. Play Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, but randomly jitter your inputs by 10ms to 20ms here and there, and that would make it far more frustrating experience.

Its bad enough that those punishing games can kill you quickly with a single mistake. But when you're fighting the controller and the lag, its that much worse.

I think streaming would be definitely fine for games like RPGs, or slower- paced adventure games (ex: Skyrim). But this will never be acceptable for Cuphead, Overcooked, Hollow Knight, or Touhou (or Jamestown). I'm willing to be proven wrong of course, but I've generally felt that even TV-lag is enough to make me rage-quit some setups when playing these games...

And TV-lag is consistent. WiFi based internet lag is jittery by nature. The question of what to do with dropped packets or delayed packets is an important design choice, and I don't think there's a correct answer for these twitch games like Cuphead.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>---

Fighting game players are so crazy about latency that they don't even use local Bluetooth controllers (!!) The serious fighting game community will likely never accept something like this solution.

The more casual, but still relatively twitchy, "hard games" players (Cuphead) is what I'm curious about. Whether or not the latency is acceptable for that community.

<comment><USER60> I can't reliably play Dark Souls via Steam Link over a wired connection that's less than ten feet long. Google may have some special sauce that improves the situation but like you I doubt it would be sufficient for all games.

<comment><USER61> I hear this a lot, and this is typically a network optimization problem. Networking is hard, and "a cable with enough bandwidth" is only part of the issue. How many hops between devices? Are any devices in the chain wireless? What router are you using? How many other devices are connected to it, and what kind of load are they putting on it?

FWIW, I frequently stream PS4 and PC games, wirelessly, over 802.11ac and it's more than playable. Dark Souls III, and even Overwatch, is playable over my network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Google really promoting how it's better to develop for than anything else since they can constantly upgrade the hardware. How long before Stadia exclusive content?

<comment><USER63> They aren't the first or the only one doing this. Crackdown 3 already semi- famously uses Microsoft's cloud systems to do some physics processing in the cloud and not on the client.

Stadia might be a lot easier for devs to code against since _everything_ is in the "cloud", rather than having to split where the processing happens specifically, and so we might see more exclusives there because of that, but MS and friends aren't going to just fall over and give up if this ends up working.

<comment><USER64> > Crackdown 3 already semi-famously uses Microsoft's cloud systems to do some > physics processing in the cloud and not on the client.

Is that true though? I remember in the early Don Mattrick days of Microsoft they were heavily pushing the whole cloud physics thing but ever since then that has been swept under the carpet or heavily downplayed.

<comment><USER63> I haven't played it myself nor have I done a ton of research, but Crackdown 3 just came out recently, and I heard them talking about how important the cloud aspect of it is to enable the dynamic destruction they have in their multiplayer stuff.

The link below from late 2018 talks about it a bit

[https://www.windowscentral.com/inside-crackdown-3s-azure- clo...](https://www.windowscentral.com/inside-crackdown-3s-azure-cloud- powered-destruction)

<comment><USER65> From people who've actually played it, it's nothing like what they hyped up or demoed way back when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> This is not a first service that tries to do that. And as before it all ends up with how close the gamer is to the server node, how stable user connection and whether connection is metered or not.

I just pinged my google.com server node - and it's over 16ms. Which means no 60fps.

<comment><USER67> No, it just means your input latency will be longer than 16ms.

<comment><USER66> 60+ tick multiplayer servers are a thing.

Besides - low input latency means you get response that is not exactly what you are doing in the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> As someone who participated in the beta, it's not as good as they make it sound. The compression of the video stream is quite bad in any slightly intensive scenario, the latency is certainly noticeable, frame drops every once in a while, and in general it's nowhere near as fluid as a local gaming experience.

I have gigabit fiber and quite a good machine, so I'm certain that's not the issue. Maybe some of these issues could be solved by closer edge servers, but it'll be a while till it reaches the level where you can play FPS', etc.

</comment><comment><USER69> From a preservationist angle, this would be a terrible path for games to go down. Any exclusive games released using Stadia would be impossible to play once the servers shut down because users don't have any access to the software.

Even if MMOs shut down, there is usually an opportunity to write a new server by reverse engineering the client. I can't really support anything about game streaming unless it was tied into an actual game you could install or play without relying on their servers to exist.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm skeptical they'll be able to overcome the latency problem. At some point there's a hard cap that only infrastructure can help with - not software - <USER2> Google's already given up on rolling out their own infrastructure.

<comment><USER70> Google has more of "their own infrastructure" than any ISP you could name or any of the transit networks that people think of as "tier 1".

<comment><USER30> But it's not an ISP. Presumably this gaming service's primary market isn't Google's own data center employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I did the beta, and I think the service is great, but I used 300GB of data in two days of play. There's no way this is going to fly when most people are under a TB cap.

</comment><comment><USER72> If this sort of thing becomes ubiquitous RIP game preservation efforts.

</comment><comment><USER73> Former PSN eng here. So, it will be very interesting to see what is going to happen. I feel we were not very successful with Playstation Now. It requires a lot of money to even start scaling, you need a powerful (read expensive) machine which can be fully utilized by just 1 AAA game. And for any competitive gaming experience - latency is a big one. If you want to play multiplayer as you going to have latency to Google's machine and then to the game server.

Anyway, I'm not in gaming business any more, so I wish G good luck in disrupting the industry. It is just they were not really that sucsessful in disrupting anything they didn't acquire (read copied and tried to improve), but maybe this time...

<comment><USER74> What do you think of Google's controller? Having it bypass the laptop/chromecast and connect directly to wifi seems like it will save some latency, but how much?

<comment><USER75> The controller was the most exciting part of the announcement, for me. I think it's a really smart move to connect the controller directly to the network and not through the "console". It makes the controller a first class citizen and gives it the ability to do all kinds of neat things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Honestly, there's got to be a better solution than full-on streaming. Has anyone seen the demo where there's >2 seconds of input lag? Even with around a 0.1 input lag, what can I play comfortably? Any kind of action games or platformers are out of question. Ironically, those games are the ones which usually demand high processing power. Most other games are toaster-compatible and I can run them without paying(?) Google a streaming premium.

I also like being able to play games when on the bus or the subway, so the whole always-online thing is a bit of a bummer.

</comment><comment><USER77> I wonder how the Google customer service experience here will be...

</comment><comment><USER78> One of the biggest reasons to install windows is gaming. If this takes off (or enough games are released on linux as a byproduct) linux could gain a larger install share.

<comment><USER79> .. or macOS

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I give it a year and they kill it along with all the save files of their users. Google can't be trusted on this one.

</comment><comment><USER81> I participated in the beta. Everything was great except the graphics became super grainy and pixelated when you rotated the camera or during high motion scenes.

My download speed is 50 mbits and I had about 5 ping to the google servers.

I don't think US internet infrastructure is ready for this unless you live downtown with 100+ mbit speeds.

<comment><USER82> > I don't think US internet infrastructure is ready for this.

This is a very fair point and should be emphasized. It's not only the infrastructure, but the lack of Net Neutrality, the monopolies of many areas to a single ISP, and data caps -- they're all hurdles in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> If this isn't laggy as all hell, it could be a game-changer.

...sorry.

</comment><comment><USER84> So, uh, the controller has a microphone, and connects directly to the Internet over Wi-Fi. I guess it's nice this time they told us upfront?

Really curious what the network performance requirements would be for 4K or 8K game streaming. Haven't heard them admit to that.

<comment><USER85> ..and I'd bet competitive gaming is out (need for low latency).

<comment><USER63> I wouldn't be so sure.

Competitive games already need to compensate for latency in the network. This system technically won't have any "additional" latency, it will just move where it happens.

The amount of time between you hitting a button and a server somewhere registering the command and sending it to other players should be roughly the same (or close enough not to matter all that much for the vast majority).

Sure, some games where local timing is everything won't work as well (Super Smash Bros probably won't be able to be played on this system at the top tier), but the vast majority of players and games won't ever need that kind of millisecond precision.

<comment><USER86> Latency hiding in "traditional" multiplayer games basically works by doing computations for other players locally (even if it's as simple as dead reckoning and extrapolating a few milliseconds into the 'future'), and only apply corrections when this diverges too much from the server because of network hick-ups. Unless Google invented some new magic, that's not possible with a video stream (but hmm, who knows, maybe they have invented their own 'game-streaming video codec' with additional information for some sort of 2D-dead-reckoning for regions of the video frame... but my guess is they simply don't care about latency).

<comment><USER87> > 2D-dead-reckoning for regions of the video frame

That is, in fact, how video compressors work. It's called motion estimation.

<comment><USER88> Yep, if you did something where local controller input directly impacted the motion vectors for macroblocks in a video frame...you could maybe hide some of the latency, but that seems dubious...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Their live presentation already showed the input lag.

</comment><comment><USER90> It's a smart move for Google to leverage their huge captive audience on YouTube to drive adoption. With Amazon's similar position with AWS and Twitch I'd be surprised if we didn't see a similar offering from them.

</comment><comment><USER91> Any indication on how this ties in with the Google/Improbable deal for big- world games? Those work better if all the clients are in the same data center, a few microseconds apart.

This only works with Google web clients, such as Chrome, right. It may turn out that all this is just a ploy to force everyone to use a Google web client, giving Google total control over the online user experience. ("Browser" is so last cen.) Then Google can exit games, except for putting ads in them and on top of them.

</comment><comment><USER92> I sometimes casually play Fortnite over nVidia Geforce Now via xDSL over wifi. And while i do entertain myself lag is hindering overall experience, at least in FPS games.

</comment><comment><USER93> My immediate thought is that Google is going to be actually running the games on hardware in edge data centers (to keep latency low). If you own a cloud software business, you're likely looking for any revenue-driving excuse to build out hundreds/thousands/etc of small DCs in every corner of the world. Stadia revenue (or the promise of Stadia revenue) would pay to build out the infra, and extra capacity could be sold off to GCloud customers.

<comment><USER94> I like this thought, but if google can't build edge nodes because of:

\- GCP \- AdSense \- Gmail \- Internal CDN Needs

Then I don't think that Stadia would be a big push for doing so.

<comment><USER93> They do already have at least _some_ edge presence. But my understanding is that's largely been for distributing content, like YouTube. I imagine storage/bandwidth at the edge are largely solved problems for Google.

Has Google needed to run code physically closer to the user up until now? Likely not. Gmail/AdSense/etc. probably don't have [many] use cases where putting compute physically closer to the user (versus physically closer to a database replica) adds a ton of value.

With the advent of AI/ML, that's changing. Accurately recognizing speech, recognizing people and objects in streaming video, translating text, etc. likely don't require access to other resources, but the latency between the server and the user is super important. Video games are essentially the epitome of the use case: you're not going to need to bang out many queries across the Google network to play a round of Splatoon, but every millisecond of lag you can shave off, the more valuable your service becomes.

I could see Google selling cloud functions that execute within shouting distance of the user. What would the round trip be? 30ms? This could be a play by Google to take on Cloudflare workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is going to be so cool....if it works.

I wonder where the instances will be? Will they put them in their regions, or will it be rolled out to their CDN POPs?

</comment><comment><USER95> I enjoyed when the presenter said "there is basically no hardware acceleration on [the Pixelbook] whatsoever." Roasted.

</comment><comment><USER96> In London where the fastest internet available to me at my address in zone 2 is 12mb highly contended in the evening.

This isn't for everyone, clearly a bet for the future. But this is why Google Fiber should have gone wider and international, or governments should pressure telcos to build speeds massively in excess of demand.

So much is held back by a really bad last mile.

</comment><comment><USER97> The key to me is that this is a console built for YouTube and that might be its biggest selling point to a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER98> This is what I've seen everything trending towards for almost ten years now. The next step is to build hardware that utilize the full benefits of data center gaming. Vr headsets can shrink and are only limited by the method of getting light into your retina. Same goes with any kind of haptic feedback or audio feedback.

</comment><comment><USER99> As expected, it's running on Debian [0]. Ubuntu really messed up with their licensing, losing both Valve and Google...

I'm also curious why they're not stating the CPU manufacturer.

[0] [https://stadia.dev/about/](https://stadia.dev/about/)

</comment><comment><USER100> It's funny to see this and

"The Cloud is Another Sun" on the front page.

[https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/cloud_is_another_sun/](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/cloud_is_another_sun/)

</comment><comment><USER101> A more philosophical question. If they manage it with a hard, computationally and bandwidth intensive problem like games, does this mean that this kind of computing is coming for good for every kind of activity?

Is this is the last time we need to upgrade to an expensive graphics card?

</comment><comment><USER102> I don't understand giving a keynote like this and then not launching the product for months. Apple figured it out long ago - way more power in "it's available now" than the alternative of forcing customers to wait an indefinite amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER103> I wonder how much of the gaming market consist of games that requires good latency.

I would be perfectly fine playing Civilization or turn based games on this infrastructure as sub-100ms latency probably isn't that big of a deal here. Perhaps google is going after that niche?

</comment><comment><USER104> Services like this are already in operation, see Shadow and GeForce Now. Developers don't need to do anything to have their games supported on these platforms either, so I don't understand what Google are bringing to the table with Stadia.

</comment><comment><USER105> Won't latency be a giant problem?

<comment><USER106> If only Google had spent over ten years optimizing its network for low latency.

<comment><USER57> Unfortunately, since Fiber didn't take off, they didn't spend ten years optimizing _your_ network latency. ;)

<comment><USER105> Not to mention they talk about this for phones as well...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> I used this in beta on a cheap chromebook. It worked great, and since I don't like putting games on my machines or upgrading hardware or using windows, perfect. Realistically, the only way I could play this game on this hardware.

</comment><comment><USER108> This will boost pc gaming significantly. Now everyone can experience pc quality game on tablet, phone, mediocre pc. But bad news for mobile games and gaming hardware manufacturers IF stadia's pricing is affordable enough.

</comment><comment><USER109> _Google is also launching a new Stadia Controller that [...] will work with the Stadia service by connecting directly through Wi-Fi to link it to a game session in the cloud. This will presumably help with latency and moving a game from one device to another._

Sounds like a horrible design choice. My controller now needs to be wifi connected, so I can instantly change my game session from my phone to my TV?

 _Focusing on developers, Google also unveiled an impressive way for game developers to apply their own design style to titles on Stadia. It's a machine learning-based style transfer tool that developers can use to simply drop an image into the video frames of games and have it mimic the style throughout._

Sounds like another gimmick that nobody has ever, or will ever need. But "Machine Learning!"

<comment><USER110> "so I can instantly change my game session from my phone to my TV?"

Clearly the latency advantage is the main benefit. Just as stated in the quote you used. Can you explain why that is a horrible design choice?

<comment><USER109> How does it improve latency? The device it is connected to is already internet connected and there is no meaningful latency between the controller and the device. So how does the on-board wifi help?

Adding wifi to a device for no reason is horrible, I don't suppose it needs explaining.

<comment><USER111> By directly connecting the controller to the service via WiFi it removes any potential issues with the device having to act as a proxy for the controller input. For their dedicated Stadia set top box it isn't a big deal (as they will control the hardware) but when used with phones, third party STBs and such it can be problematic. Google will have no control over the WiFi hardware in all these devices and many cheaper WiFi chipsets are buggy in a multi- device setup.

Adding WiFi to the controller removes all those potential issues and allows them to tweak things to be as good as they can be for latency, power consumption, range, etc. (at least in theory anyway).

<comment><USER74> Yes, I was thinking along the same lines. It seems like the combined latency of bluetooth, passing that input through the OS, browser, then out to wifi could be considerable, especially if the machine's wifi and bluetooth chips are not optimized for low latency. Since Google makes the hardware of the controller, they can use all the lowest latency chips and drivers possible.

I'd be very interested to see some latency benchmarking of the stadia controller vs an xbox controller. I'd also be curious if a future version of this controller could connect directly to an even lower latency 5G connection, bypassing the wifi router and cable/fiber modem and removing yet another latency question mark. Even when playing locally, input lag can be considerable, so this might be a very smart hack to make this streaming service playable with a larger range of games.

<comment><USER111> Yes 5G is what is on my mind also although that comes with different problems such as network access.

How about a controller with an RJ-45 so I can plug directly into my router :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Isn't this similar to Nvidia's GeForce Now service? I've been impressed with Nvidia's beta; with a good connection you can play a ton of games at maximum settings with just minor input lag.

<comment><USER113> Yeah, there's quite a few companies that are working on a similar product, including PlayStation Now (Sony) [0], GeForce Now (NVIDIA) [1], and Shadow [2].

[0] [https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/explore/playstation- now/ps...](https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/explore/playstation-now/ps-now- on-pc/)

[1] [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce- now/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/)

[2] [https://shadow.tech/int](https://shadow.tech/int)

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> Can I buy just the controller? Sure does seem the PS4 controller is about the best out there for most gaming, and I've been hesitant to buy anything else. This controller seems just as well made.

<comment><USER115> Have you tried the Xbox One controller? Hands-down the most comfortable and most well-engineered controller I've ever used.

<comment><USER95> They're both great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> How is this any better than GeForce Now from Nvidia?

It seems odd that Google chose to create its own gaming studio. Doesn't that make them a competitor to the folks they support from?

</comment><comment><USER117> Jade Raymond is at the helm!? Color me very excited, she was running the original Assassins Creed game back in the day. She's a very talented producer!

</comment><comment><USER118> Did anyone catch the details on their private cloud offering? Are they selling server blades? Can you run apps on it like CAD or simply Unity itself?

</comment><comment><USER119> The optimist in me says this is exciting, but the pessimist in me says Google will just end up cancelling it in ~2 years.

</comment><comment><USER120> Have they announced the closure date yet?

</comment><comment><USER121> Let's see how easy it would be for developers to make a normal desktop Linux game from a Stadia game.

</comment><comment><USER122> A bit more info on [https://stadia.dev](https://stadia.dev)

</comment><comment><USER123> Strada looks like a game changer, I bet it will be massive by 2025 when internets speeds improve. Only companies with major infrastructure (Microsoft and Amazon) will truly be able to compete with Google. The cost of hardware can even be spread between multiple people lowering prices. Plus it divided monthly via a subscription, meaning a lower cost of entry versus buying a new Console.

</comment><comment><USER124> Yet another google service thats going to be closed in a year or two

</comment><comment><USER125> reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive) that was shut down in 2015

</comment><comment><USER126> This is superficial, but good lord is the box itself ugly.

</comment><comment><USER127> I'm most excited for Linux gaming as a byproduct!

</comment><comment><USER128> I give this 2 years before Google removes all references of "Stadia" from it's product lineup. They have never stuck with a product which, relative to rest of their products, has smaller but dedicated adoption.

For example, Valve will keep updating/supporting/hosting events of CSGO even if it has <1Mil active users on PC, but I can totally see Google pulling plug on it and burn dedicated followers.

<comment><USER129> _> They have never stuck with a product which, relative to rest of their products, has smaller but dedicated adoption._

Google Books (14 years old), Google Finance (12), Google Scholar (14), Google Fonts (9), etc.

<comment><USER130> >Google Books

broken and abandoned [http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-badly- is-go...](http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-badly-is-google- books-search-broken.html)

>Google Finance

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-finance-as-you- know...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-finance-as-you-know-it-is- going-away-here-is-what-will-remain-2017-09-27)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> Could this be peak attention economy? I fully expect - no, I demand - that the price to play these games be fully compensated for by the data I generate from playing each game.

</comment><comment><USER132> Love this comment from earlier today

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19429388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19429388)

</comment><comment><USER133> So, no AAA or famous indie games announced ?

<comment><USER134> No exclusive games but they revealed that Doom Eternal will come to the service with 4k, HDR and 60 FPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> I hope this service will not be shut down like google reader or google+ after google fails to capture high large chunk of the market.

</comment><comment><USER136> how do i have lan parties? how do i play these games with multiple people in same household?

</comment><comment><USER130> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG06H7IQ9Aw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG06H7IQ9Aw)

TLDR: >60ms of added latency (160ms) while plugged on Google campus connection in specially modified and tweaked game versus unmodified typical Ubisoft bad PC port, compression artifacts

</comment><comment><USER137> How many years until its canceled and our game libraries erased from all existence?

<comment><USER21> "Hey, I started this new workout routine". "LOL, how many weeks until you fail"?

<comment><USER138> "Brah, you started a new workout routine nearly every other month and haven't stuck with it. What makes this time different?"

<comment><USER139> "Brah, I started, finished and WON many fitness competitions over 20 years. Doesn't matter if I try and fail. I will get better."

<comment><USER140> Meanwhile, I'm not even convinced Assistant is better than the Google Now voice search.

<comment><USER139> They use the same back end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER141> "Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who says he plays FIFA 19 "quite a bit" I just lost a lot of respect for Sunar Pichai all at once.

</comment><comment> black-tea Using the same name as one of Google Maps biggest competitors. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER95> It's cool to imagine that you won't be able to go back and play old games anymore. That rocks.

</comment><comment><USER142> Given the number products and services that Google has shuttered over the years and their focus on learning all there is about their users, I am going to sit this one out.

There is definitely some cool work here though: being able to have access to a library of games without lugging around a console or computer is an interesting idea with both pros and cons. The pro that I can think of is not having to be responsible for upgrades. The con is that we continue to move towards a world where we rent more and own less.

<comment><USER57> Probably worth noting: this project appears aligned with Google's Cloud and mobile initiatives. It's unproven, but it's originating from spaces where Google's products have stuck around.</comment></comment>


What do you think of this equity offer? - <AUTHOR>

I was offered 20,000 options at a strike price of $3.14 on a total share base of about 75 million (probably about 0.025%). As far as I can gather the company is valued at around $175MM, and they have a few hundred employees. I would be going in as a Senior Engineer (4 years experience).<p>Base pay would be around $115K. <comment><USER2> You are missing some information needed to value these options. You need the vesting period, expiration, some measure of volatility, rate of return.

I really don't understand why companies do these tiny option plans. No one is going to kill themselves working nights and weekends just so they can buy a new car or something in ten years. Does it really matter if the value is $50k or $150k? You want a plan to become a major holder in a successful business. 20k options are wonderful if all you ever see yourself as for the next ten years is a rank and file employee. Personally, I would just ignore it and find some start-up partners. It's table scraps. Its like the owners saying "if you help us make hundreds of millions of dollars, we'll maybe help you pay off your crappy condo"

</comment><comment><USER3> Mind if I ask where you are located and what you are doing? I know job titles are meaningless but where does it only take 4 years experience to be a senior engineer and earn 115K? I have 10 years and I'm still a few years away from being considered a senior engineer. I'm not in California, but DC area doesn't exactly have the lowest cost of living either and I don't make 115K.

<comment><USER4> Every place I've been you make senior engineer by your 3rd year. It usually looks something like I->II->Senior->Principal->Senior Principal->Architect for purely technical roles.

I live in DC and I can tell you, if you have 10 years experience, and you aren't at least senior and/or you don't make 115k, something is VERY wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't know about the offer, but do you have $62,800 laying around to exercise the options should it come to that? Make sure it makes sense from a cash flow and tax point of view.

<comment><USER6> On the cash-on-hand point, many brokers won't require you to actually front the cash, and will instead let you pay for the exercise cost out of immediate proceeds of selling the resulting shares, as one netted-out transaction. For example, here's Fidelity's info: [http://personal.fidelity.com/products/stockoptions/exercise....](http://personal.fidelity.com/products/stockoptions/exercise.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Base pay sounds very reasonable for a senior engineering position. The options sound like icing.

</comment><comment><USER8> 75mm shares at a 175mm valuation means a share price of $2.33. Shouldn't the strike price be at the current valuation?

</comment><comment><USER9> not familiar, but I assume the company is public and there is a period of time needed before being vested?</comment>


Show HN: Velo.com – a marketplace for used bicycles - <AUTHOR> https://velo.com <comment><USER2> Nice concept. Even nicer domain name. Pretty site, just not sure its going to usurp ebay and craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do customers not want to try out the bike before buying? Especially for $5k+...?</comment>


Rails Admin Plugins Reviewed - <AUTHOR> http://www.joesniff.co.uk/critique/rails-admins-plugins-review.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been pretty impressed with Active Scaffold. I'm using it in an Admin portal I'm building for a pre-paid cell phone company and it probably saved me a month or more over rolling my own.</comment>


Plants Can "Hear" Pests Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.agweb.com/article/plants-can-hear-pests-attack/

<comment><USER2> They can also recognize their siblings.[1]

[1] [http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/news070611-4.htm...](http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/news070611-4.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I read it first here [1] back in July. I think it was posted here as well.

[1] [http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2014/0701-plants- re...](http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2014/0701-plants-respond-to- leaf-vibrations-caused-by-insects%E2%80%99-chewing-mu-study-finds/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Url changed from [http://modernfarmer.com/2014/10/plants-can-tell-theyre- eaten...](http://modernfarmer.com/2014/10/plants-can-tell-theyre-eaten/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please don't anthropomorphize plants...they really hate that.</comment>


Balancing Marriage and Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/balancing-marriage-and-business.html <comment><USER2> Interesting article about the business of marriage, written from an emotional point of view.

To further her metaphor of being "in or out", the day she married the guy, she said she bought 100% of him. She's not a stakeholder in _his business_ , she's a stakeholder in him. Her decision to break her nest egg to bail him out isn't an investment in a business she doesn't believe in, it's an investment in a _person_ she believes in.

And this, is faith. Her faith is not based on projected certainties, securities, money, profit, and success. Rather, her faith is placed in a person, and in a relationship you can personally vouch for, for better or worse, for richer or poorer. Having faith doesn't mean things will be good; it means that no matter how bad things get, and they are likely to get very bad, the relationship will still be there.</comment>


(take 5 baishampayan-ghose) - <AUTHOR> http://clojure.com/blog/2012/03/16/take5-baishampayan-ghose.html <comment><USER2> I'm really surprised by comments.

Does anyone really believes that success of the company depends on the programming language they use?

Most of the time it is completely irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> Well, it can theoretically affect flexibility, which can help as you search for a viable business model, but I agree it's very much a secondary or even tertiary factor. The fact that they've shut down a project is much more likely to have been due to lack of viability rather than any coding issues.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whats is the name of this phenomenon mentioned regularly on HN? - <AUTHOR> Every so often in the discussions under an article someone will bring up a phenomenon where a source will be wrong about a topic that someone is knowledgeable about or an expert on. But then when they source speaks on a subject that the individual in question knows little to nothing about, they will accept and believe it.<p>Does anyone know what the name of this phenomenon is called? <comment><USER2> You may be thinking of "Gell-Mann Amnesia":

[https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann- amnesia/](https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias)

Also related:

[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942367860709609472?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942367860709609472?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER4> Gell-Mann ammnesia.</comment>


Show HN: Fully Featured, JavaScript DataTable Without JQuery - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/frapp%C3%A9-thoughts/things-i-learned-building-a-library-for-the-web-6846a588bf53 <comment><USER2> Awesome work. I already use your Frappe Charts, because they are lightweight and really easy to use.</comment>


Copyright protectionism - The award for irony goes to...  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/copyright-protectionism

<comment><USER2> Hopefully the software will be enhanced to block more of the political campaigns and advertisements as this might have two positive effects. 1) we wouldn't have to be constantly inundated and 2) the politicians might actually begin to understand the impact of the laws they're subjecting us to.

Sigh ... Or they'll just exempt themselves again.

<comment><USER3> They'll just rule that political speech is always free speech and can never infringe on copyright.

<comment><USER4> Then all _my_ speech is political.

<comment><USER3> All my speech is satire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This could be used as a denial of service. Show up at an event, play some copyrighted crap, instakill transmission.

<comment><USER6> Particularly music from a company with a history of very harsh enforcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does an automated process like the one that killed this feed determine fair use? And if it can't, then how can fair use work at all on the internet? Is the fair use exemption effectively over?

<comment><USER8> The problem is that "fair use" is the purview of the courts. Yes, there's this thing called 'common sense' that you and I have and can see what fair use should be. But there's no legal definition that is satisfactory for determining fair use in advance. So, the copyright holder sues, you pay for your defense, the court says "fair use" and everyone goes on their merry way (except poorer. which in the case of individuals is typically unacceptable, so they cave to settlement and a "fair use" defense is obliterated.)

But what's _really_ obnoxious is this: the streaming feed of the Hugo Awards that was killed was _better_ than fair use, it was _licensed_ use. The automated systems have absolutely no way of determining who has licensed content and who has not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've heard of the "police state", but what's a place called that's run by lawyers?

<comment><USER10> Lawyers act on behalf of clients that can afford to employ them, so I'd call it a plutocracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Former discussion of this shameful incident: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4471213>

</comment><comment><USER12> _Try to capture a stream of video or a screenshot in most operating systems, and the OS declines to do so or produces a blurred or blacked-out display._

This really surprised me. I'm right up there with the other tinfoil-hat wearers, but it'd never even crossed my mind that this might happen because of copyright infringement concerns. Can anyone confirm this claim by the Economist is correct?

<comment><USER13> They might be misunderstanding how video overlay acceleration works. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_overlay>

<comment><USER14> From what I recall, modern graphics hardware has little or no support for video overlays. The fastest and easiest way to display video on modern systems is actually to feed it through the standard 3d-accelerated compositing stack, which means that it shows up in screenshots just like everything else. Some content providers don't like this because it provides a way to capture the video, so they insist on graphics hardware manufacturers providing some method of displaying video that blocks screen capture; if any modern graphics cards do support overlays it's almost entirely for DRM purposes rather than acceleration.

<comment><USER6> I'm not so sure of that. Try playing a video on Windows XP with a cloned display. In some cases, the video will play on one screen, but not the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> American Author?</comment>


Show HN: Squaresend - Less annoying mailto links - <AUTHOR> https://squaresend.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't know about you guys, but I am always absolutely relieved to see a mailto link rather than a contact form when attempting to reach someone. One click and it opens in my native mail app (or my Gmail account, if I so desire) and I know immediately if it's a who or a what that my message is going to, I don't need to worry about broken contact forms that may or may not be working, I don't need to beat stupid captchas, and everything makes sense.

It seems squaresend is an anti-solution.

<comment><USER3> I'll agree with this. I don't know why everyone doesn't use mailto links, since they work better than any other solution. I also don't know why someone would want to cripple them like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi StavrosK, I'm one of the developers.

I don't know if this was clear from the homepage but we're targeting site owners. Many sites use mailto links because they don't want to go through the hassle of setting up a contact form. We're just trying to make that easier to do.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback. We can absolutely show the actual email address and even include a real mailto link inside the widget incase the users prefer that. We'll be implementing that right away.

<comment><USER3> Hey waterapp, no, it was pretty clear from the homepage and the grandparent's comment. It's a useful product for people who want a contact form they don't have to manage (it'll make many static sites more useful), I just wish more people would just use mailto links.

Feature request: Don't hide the email address in the link, so I can right- click copy it, and add a small "email us with your email client" link at the bottom with an actual mailto. This way, we get the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER4> Why not make the contact form look a bit more like an email and put the recipient address at the top as a mailto link. That way people who like forms click and get a form, those of us who like mailto can then click on the email address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe the HN community is seeing this solution through the eyes of someone that may be a bit more advanced than some possible target audiences.

Of course you have a fast computer. Of course you have a configured mail client (non web based). Of course you get your email client.

But what about the rest of the world?

People that have slow computers? Find programs (in general) intimidating and confusing? Are lucky enough to be able to browse the web?

What is easier for those people?

A modal that pops up immediately upon clicking asking what they would like to say or waiting for Outlook to load?

In contrast to more feature rich services like Wufoo or Jotform, it's simple, modern and it appears to work.

I say this is a viable service.

+1 for me.

<comment><USER6> A lot of this criticism is also assuming everyone is using their own computers. At a couple of places I've worked, we could store our files on a network drive but we got a fresh instance of Windows each time. Mailto links would bring up the Outlook Express setup wizard, which was pointless to go through considering it would simply be wiped again when you logged out.

On top of that, I know my mom, still fearful of Firefox, let alone Chrome, has a similar problem with mailto links and it is always quite excruciating watching her process for extracting just the email link itself without the mailto: attached to the front. Depending on who this is marketed to, I think some businesses could easily increase conversions by going this route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Say I'm some clueless business guy. Somebody says "hey, you gotta check out square send". I visit your site. And I can't figure out what is it that you do or in what way do I benefit. Now, I'm not a clueless business guy. I actually program for a living. I couldn't figure out those two things.

<comment> qu4z-2 It was pretty clear to me that it's a service that automatically turns your mailto: links into pop-up contact forms.

<comment><USER7> My point is that the landing page is not clear enough for dumb people like me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great. Building forms and managing email is indeed painful. Sometimes you just want to have a form pop up and a message sent. I personally dislike mailto links because I am always jumping between computers and browsers that are not properly set up to send email via my gmail account. Don't let the negative posts here discourage you. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> I actually like this - I don't configure my desktop client and purely use gmail - additionally, I often browse in incognito mode, logged out of any email client. I have been deterred from emailing site issues to the contact email when I had to jump through additional hoops. It's not part of my work flow, and thus I don't want to deal with setting things up for it.

I think the one suggestion of adding an actual mailto: on the form would be beneficial and allows those who want that as well easy access to the email address as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> $3/mo for something that won't last forever, I can't change design, doesn't show my email address as an alternative in the same window. And please stop using word 'Square', it is already over, like 'Insta'.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think you should market it differently, something along the lines of "easy contact forms for static websites". This is a real need many small web shops have. I for example would love to be able to host my small clients websites on S3, but Contact Forms is the one requirement that forbids doing this.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely this. The first thing that came to mind on seeing this was a site for a NGO I want to migrate away from Wordpress.

(although I wonder how well they'd monetize those; 100 emails is an enormous amount for really low traffic sites)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been here before I knew anything about web programming. This is a need real site owners have. And, I've watched people stumble on mailto links because an unconfigured mail client opens up and other issues.

However, I think Wufoo, Jotform, Google Forms and CRMs have snapped up a lot of the market. There aren't left many people who know little enough to only have mailto as an option but don't know so little they can't search for solutions.

As for those complaining that they like mailtos: they are appeased by providing a contact email address along with the form. This is the way to maximize retention (and hopefully receive only a little more spam.)

</comment><comment><USER14> So it's a kind of prettier version of the contact forms I've been seeing for a decade?

<comment><USER15> From what I understand, It's converts mailto links to a contact form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> <https://squaresend.com/mailto:5tzgrwg> is a featureless gray window with no content at all. Please use progressive enhancement (put a valid mailto: anchor in the markup and then replace it in the DOM) rather than shipping markup that's unusably broken without trusting js from some third party nobody has heard of.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems like people here are more inclined to use mailto links and I agree since sending from our mail app gives us a clearer path onto whats going on and certainty that the email at least went out, but being honest what's the ratio between people that really know how a contact form works and people that don't really care?

A good solution would be to create a new link on the form overlay that presents the users with the option of just using their mail app in case someone still doesn't want to use the form.

I think you have a great product it does take away the pain from administering a contact form, as simple as it might sound this is a cumbersome task for many people that don't have the technical skills to understand all the pieces that go into creating one, well done!

Question, how are you fighting spam?, from what I can tell you are obfuscating the email once your code bootstraps the <anchor tags>, what happens if spammer isn't using an environment that executes JS

</comment><comment><USER18> Strange. I have not seen one positive review of this post and yet it made it to the top 5 on the HN homepage. Does that seem suspicious to anyone else?

Edit: up to #3 now. Who's upvoting this if everyone commenting is critical of it?

<comment><USER19> Most people who comment have something critical to say. Most people who up- vote don't have something critical to say and so they don't comment. I up- voted the submission and hate mailto links. You can't really judge the landscape here based on a few comments.

<comment><USER18> I'd agree with you if _most_ comments were critical and some were positive but were zero positive reviews.

Also, often I see people shoot off one liner comments praising a website. So it's easy for people to praise when they like a post.

<comment><USER19> Indeed, I could be wrong.

I think this service has a lot of potential and his site looks fantastic. He might go on to save a lot of people from headaches. Particularly, non-coders. He even has the free/paid issue worked out that so many others simply ignore until later.

I was just too lazy to say anything.

<comment><USER18> _"Indeed, I could be wrong."_

I might be the one who was wrong. As a programmer, this seems like a small solution that's already been solved with wufoo, contact forms 7 and the like but it's number 1 on HN so, even if the votes were faked (which was my initial suspicion), it looks like many people appreciate the product or want to discuss it.

 _"Particularly, non-coders."_

Maybe as a programmer, my bias of how simple this solution is and how it's been "solved" by others, lead me to be even more suspicious about something like this getting this much attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Michael, I can guarantee you there's no hidden thing going on -- at least as far as we're concerned. We've taken all the feedback even though 90% was negative but I'm sure the people voting it up saw that a lot of people have this problem, maybe even themselves. I don't know how most comments could be negative while it got that many upvotes, but I can only tell we have absolutely nothing to do with it other than posting the Show HN.

<comment><USER18> My last comment tends to agree with you.

It seems there are many people who need this solution even with the products already out there. I hope you find lots of them and solve their problem with your product. One thing that could help with getting more customers is to create a Wordpress plug-in so more people can find you.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems like all the comments here are very negative. On a meta-question, why would that link be ranked #1 ?! I mean, sure, someone can upvote the link and write a negative comment, but that's unlikely.

That being said, I think this could be a useful javascript plugin.. I.e. when you click a mailto link, you get a contact form in an overlay, maybe with a "Send this email from my email client" for people who prefer to use native or gmail clients. As to actually _send_ the email, it could simply use sendgrid or a post call to the backend.

<comment><USER21> Instead of a bunch of comments just saying "this is cool", it has some upvotes. When people leave specific feedback it's usually criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What, why would you intentionally break my freedom to use any mail client I want? If I really want to send an email from the browser, I would have just used an extension that handles mailto: links.

</comment><comment><USER23> Rails has a few ways to obfuscate mailto links through the mail_to helper method. JS encoding, hex encoding, and just text obfuscation.

[http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHel...](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper.html#method- i-mail_to)

Solves the problem of getting spammed by email scraping bots. I'm assuming you could write your own helpers pretty easily in other languages / frameworks if they don't already exist.

</comment><comment><USER24> No idea why you think I would rather not use my email client that is configured correctly, doesn't require I state my email address, possibly has sig file and ensure that only people with the latest and greatest browsers can contact the business that implements this.

People have been griping about crappy contact forms with no option to use real email forever, this is so retrograde.

</comment><comment><USER25> In what situation would someone prefer a contact form over a mailto link that opens in their mail app (or, in my case, Gmail in the browser)?

<comment> qu4z-2 In the case that their mail-app is something like Yahoo or Hotmail and doesn't open on a mailto: link.

So yeah. If mailto: is configured properly, it's better. Sadly, on many computers it isn't, and a contact form is sort of a "minimal but workable everywhere" solution.

I think the ideal combination is having a contact form pop up with a "Send mail from my own client" mailto: link at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hey guys - congrats on the product launch! I'm really confused though. How is this better than an email form?

</comment><comment><USER27> This can be useful for people with static websites who want to include a contact form in some of their pages.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am actively turned off when I click a "Contact Us" link and I'm taken to a form rather than seeing a new email pop up. Most of the time decide not to contact that business and look for one I can contact immediately via email only going back to the original business as a last resort.

</comment><comment><USER29> Mailto: links are a hair-on-fire problem for most people. I didn't even know that I could set them to open my Gmail, and I'm a web developer. As long as the pop up also told me what the email was so I could do it in my client if I wanted, this is a way better solution.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't get this, why would anybody use this if a web contact form can be easily setup by any CMS nowadays?

I actually changed my contact form to a mailto link for some of my sites, unless the form requires complex input using a form builder.

<comment> qu4z-2 I have to admit I've never seen a static site generator that supported contact forms. Perhaps such a thing exists, but remember that not everyone's using a CMS.

PERSONAL OPINION DISCLAIMER: Because CMSes are terrible for small websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Neat idea. I think reliability is an important feature to call out on the landing page. If I'm a business owner that depends on this service as a funnel for new clients, for instance, I would want guarantees regarding uptime and reliability.

</comment><comment> nezza-_- You are a contact form with a name 'inspired' by squarespace?!

</comment><comment><USER32> I see dubious comments here. Data answers questions. Is there data to show that mailtos are annoying or that Squaresend is stickier than mailtos?

</comment><comment><USER33> The widget might be useful, well done!

Any plans to add other languages?

Also please add a 'cancel' or 'close' button to the form...

<comment><USER33> "Any plans to add other languages?"

Nevermind, looks like it is configurable...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well, I like it and am using it!

Just one thing: what's with the roast beef?

</comment><comment><USER35> It'd be a good idea to have a 'cancel' button on the pop-up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone co-founder here,

This post was in the top 5 until a few minutes ago and it seems that some people have flagged it. I know it seems very suspicious that the submission could get so many upvotes and very little positive feedback but I'm also puzzled at how that happened in the first place. I understand that a lot of people here think we're breaking mailto links but we're trying to solve a real problem that many people (non-HNers) have. I submitted this because we wanted to get feedback and we did (and we take it all to heart) but I'm shocked that some folks here think there was a voting ring. I think the people voting it up are doing so for either the discussion or to congratulate the fact that we launched. Can someone explain why they flagged it? Thanks!</comment>


An iOS developer built an alternative App Store for the iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20791856/apple-ios-app-store-riley-testut-altstore-delta-nintendo-emulator-release <comment><USER2> "The store's very first app: Delta [a Game Boy emulator].... The really interesting part is that none of it requires you to jailbreak your iPhone...."

Awesome! Great motivation to build an alt. app. store too.

edit:

Works like Cydia Impactor: "AltStore basically lets you install apps outside the App Store by tricking the phone into thinking you developed the app yourself, like you programmed it and you installed it and you're testing out your device,"</comment>


Vorlon.JS - T-A http://vorlonjs.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Will this be useful for debugging interactions with the Shadow DOM?</comment>