Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/03/kitty-hawk-reveals-its-secret-project-heaviside/ <comment><USER2> [I've been an engineer working on this vehicle for the past 2 years.]

Hi HN! It's great to see lots of interest.

One big reason we went public with the project is to help with recruiting, as we're starting to scale up our hiring for lots of positions, including testing, manufacturing, and every sort of engineering that you can think of.

The team is super strong technically, and is full of people with interesting backgrounds, from former Tesla execs to competition wingsuit jumpers (Seriously: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk1ChndsN8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk1ChndsN8Y)).

The whole "flying car" industry has a high hype-to-substance ratio, but I think we're the real deal. The jobs page is here: [https://kittyhawk.aero/heaviside/](https://kittyhawk.aero/heaviside/)

I'd love to talk technical details on here, but we're still keeping pretty quiet about specifics. All I can say is that our test video is real footage, and not a render ;).

<comment><USER3> It'd be nice to have emergency vehicles. But, don't build hanging parkways with good views, for the privileged, please.

We've been there before - [https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2003/putting- pleasure-...](https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2003/putting-pleasure- back-drive-reclaiming-urban-parkways-21st-century/) \- with Robert Moses parkways, "bridges instead of tunnels" and the likes. And we've now learned - it's a mistake to put mass transportation system into the air.

(Love flying, private pilot, airplanes, sailplanes, paragliders, had been flying half of my life. Yes, really cute bird. Yes, shiny. It's a mistake to put mass transportation system into the air. It is even worse to put a private road there.)

<comment><USER4> Couldn't the parking be organized by just putting roboticized "air garages" to the top of sky scrapers? Carriers operate a fleet of aircraft in a very constrained space. With purely VTOL craft there is no need for that to be horizontal, it all could be put to vertical.

So you would have

1\. Landing bay (helicopter pad or an enclosed bay).For enclosed bays those could be stacked on top of one another.

2\. Robotic parking

3\. Air control system to facilitate traffic and parking.

I'm not saying this is a necessarily a good idea. But I would love to know why it would not work.

<comment><USER5> I think you'll find building sufficient parking on top of skyscrapers will run into cost and weight issues.

Cost, because much parking is currently on street or in dedicated low cost parking structures.

Weight... For obvious reasons.

<comment><USER4> I don't think those are valid arguments. Just because current urban design is built around a specific transport mode does not mean it could not be rebuilt to facilitate another.

Not remodeling. Redesigning. It's very straightforward to move and redesign urban centers. Lot of countries do it all the time. The proble.s are not related to human nature or engineering, but to purely finances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be a good idea to use better baselines for noise pollution than helicopters and airplanes of today. Perhaps like this - Life in the Spanish City that banned cars. [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise- life...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life-spanish- city-banned-cars-pontevedra)

This is about how much noise your aircraft are allowed to create. What you should be able to hear in the street are "the tweeting of birds in the camellias, the tinkle of coffee spoons and the sound of human voices".

<comment><USER6> > This is about how much noise your aircraft are allowed to create.

Sounds good. The same rules should apply to lawn mowers, motor bikes, construction, bars, stereos, drones, public transport, bands, dogs, children...

<comment><USER7> Construction is temporary. Stereos and bands are played to bring enjoyment; the sound produced is the point, not a byproduct of some other motivation so those should get more of a pass. Many cities already enforce laws against persistently barking dogs and those laws can work just fine.

I'm with you regarding motor bikes and public transport but the same rules _should not_ apply to the others. They can have their own rules.

<comment><USER6> My comment was deliberately extreme as I believed the parent comment to be. The activities/devices I mentioned can be appropriate in certain locales, and inappropriate in others.

To suggest this new vehicle has to operate at a level to not drown out birds before it can fit into society is silly. It's reasonable to place restictions on their use, e.g. you shouldn't be able to takeoff and land in quiet residential neighborhoods, instead limit them to landing on the tops of very tall buildings or transport hubs.

Also, if people are allowed to use lawnmowers and loud exhausts on motorbikes, and have been doing so for years, suggesting a new technology has to be subject to more stringent restrictions is a little unfair.

<comment><USER3> Why is it silly? If someone rides a bicycle, walks or rides a subway in a city there is no noise pollution. Why noise pollution should be allowed for a guy flying his motorbike from his private hills to the urban center?

<comment><USER6> Please reread what I wrote.

To be clear, I really dislike noise pollution, and welcome the day when noisy lawnmowers, leaf blowers, jetskis and motercycles are banned from where people live, relax, most places really. I think it is really selfish for others to produce such noise around others.

What is silly is to say this noisy thing can't possibly fit into the world without hitting an extreme benchmark, when society has already accepted much worse offenders (whether you and I like it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When they led with "100x quieter than a helicopter," my first reaction was a skeptical "well sure, decibels are logarithmic!" But 40dB from 600ft away is impressive, and within the range of what I would consider acceptable for residential flyover (though not takeoff and landing) in a medium-density area.

<comment><USER9> 100x quieter than a helicopter, with a few thousand people using them, is louder than a helicopter. A glance at any urban interstate would suggest that mass adoption would be loud...

<comment><USER10> Oh sure because the air roads are going to be packed as densely as the ground roads with planes flying tail to tail in multiple lanes. /S

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every time I see a multirotor carrying people, I think of the many times while building them at the beginning of the drone renaissance that I saw 4/6/8 bladed multirotors have an AP failure, a blade break, a speed controller overheat, etc etc and it fell out of the sky, literally.

These do not have a glideslope!

Sure, a ballistic chute might prevent an onboard tragedy but I continue to wonder about what the flying car gets parachuted onto. What fires get started? Who gets crushed?

Super cool tech. Huge accomplishment for the engineers involved.

I want to know how this makes a safe unpowered descent.

<comment><USER12> I don't know much about this aircraft but this appears to be a winged aircraft which unlike quadcopters and helicopters,losing an engine or rotor does not translate to a crash(?) because it had n number of rotors on each side,if one is lost,you lose altitude maybe and turn off matching rotors on the other side,which naively appears safer than a helicopter.

<comment><USER13> Wings don't help if you are below the stall speed.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that true for all winged aircrafts?

By all means let's hold the Heaviside to the same high safety standard as other aircrafts, but not higher.

<comment><USER13> > Isn't that true for all winged aircrafts?

Indeed it is, and my comment should be read in the context of the post I am replying to. Having wings gives Heaviside an advantage over purely multi-rotor aircraft most of the time, but during VTOL operations, there is a stage where the wings do not help.

Helicopters have an advantage over all other VTOL aircraft in that they can autorotate, though this is especially tricky in lightweight helicopters, on account of a lack of rotor inertia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The Mountain View, California-based company calls it Heaviside, after noted > physicist and electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside, who advanced a variety > of theories and innovations in mathematics, electronics, and communications > in the early 20th century.

I like this idea of naming things after people who've contributed to the field. Mount Everest's name came from a British surveyor and geographer George Everest.

Brand names quickly take on meaning, it doesn't have to be <NounVerb>.

I also can't imagine someone starting an aircraft company without having safety being drilled down their throat a million times before they produce anything that get's off the ground.

<comment><USER16> I'm psyched they named it after Heaviside. For the caliber, scope, and importance of his contributions, he is extremely under appreciated. Most of the people who have heard the name only know of the step function, but much of how electrical engineering is done (and named) is due to him.

Some things that could reasonably have his name attached (intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive):

Maxwell-Heaviside equations

Heaviside-Gibbs Vector calculus

Heaviside transmission line equations

Poynting-Heaviside vector

Heaviside loading coil

Heaviside-Cherenkov radiation

Heaviside-Lorentz force

Heaviside s-plane

<comment><USER17> I would have thought most people would be more familiar with the heaviside layer (than the step function), even if only from the reference in the musical cats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm encouraged to see proper wings and empennage, glad you're not making an octocopter. Bonus points for conventional (tailwheel) landing gear.

But questions:

How fast can it fly and for how long?

Article says "weighs about one-third of a Cessna". So less than 1000 lbs empty?

And, importantly, with those wings, does it "stall" normally, at 40 mph or so?

Asking as a former J-3 Cub pilot who'll assuredly never afford this.

<comment><USER19> Proper but forward-swept wings, which mean you won't be able to fly this without substantial computer assistance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > On the helicopter, there's a little bolt on top, and if you unscrew that, > you take the cotter pin out, we all die."

I imagine that's hard to do while in operation.

Meanwhile, a heli has autorotation, which is quite convenient in various failure modes.

<comment><USER21> Your quote refers to the "jesus nut": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nut), which doesn't apply to newer helicopters.

<comment><USER22> I'm curious - surely there's still some single point that would let the rotor fly away? What does it mean that newer helicopters "doesn't have" this? I mean the rotor is attached? It's a single axel? There are scenarios where the rotor falls off?

<comment><USER23> There has been at least two cases recently of the main rotor blades as a whole detaching in flight. Gearbox failure caused the second crash [1]

On the older 'teetering head' designs like the Huey, you can bump the mast (rotor shaft) in aggressive nose overs or low g conditions which would also separate the rotors from the aircraft.

[0] [https://aviation- safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=213384](https://aviation- safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=213384)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHC_Helikopter_Service_Flight_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHC_Helikopter_Service_Flight_241)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It'll be cool if we can get electric aircraft like this as cheap as some of the somewhat homemade ultralights people make today. Battery and motor prices have a long way to go though

<comment><USER25> Interestingly, when you look up the N-Number it says the engine type is "Electric". Maybe that means something else?

[https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?N...](https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=N221HV)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The wing design reminded me of this Real Engineering video on the pros and cons of backward swept wings, including a look at the Grumman X-29:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN6vGxyMcVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN6vGxyMcVU)

This definitely isn't shooting for mach 1.8, so the X-29 isn't an analogue, but there are interesting points about aerodynamics in that video nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'll just say, VTOLs are just so stupidly cool. Seeing a plane just sort of pick up and climb into the air like this will never cease to just be 'woah' inducing.

I frequently wonder about the things we're waiting for batteries to grow into, this is one of those things that makes me think the future has a decent shot at being insane.

</comment><comment><USER28> This looks a lot more credible than the Moeller flying car :-). I'm never sure if I should be excited or not about flying cars in that I am already paranoid about someone running a red light, I'd hate to be tootling down the freeway and suddenly have a carplane appear on the road in front of me!

That said, make it a four passenger version and have them streaming across the Bay to off load the bridge infrastructure? That would be pretty cool. Would need a really good load/unload infrastructure though. I could see it making living in the Sierra foothills more realistic though.

<comment><USER29> A ten year old child scribbling with crayons on grid paper is more credible at this point than the Moller skycar. There's a number of companies that have flown (sans humans) small air taxi sized octocopters in the past 8 years, none of them Moller. Just off the top of my head, there's the Germans with their thing that has 16+ rotors, there is ehang, there's the Airbus vaihana project, there's this company, and several big names like Bell are working on tilt rotor small electric vtols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When a VTOL vehicle switches directions of the blades in the air, is there any sort of drop in altitude as it moves into the forward direction? Or is it a gradual type of thing as it starts angling forward?

I could see any drop before it kicks in being startling for customers, especially if the motors are less powerful than a helicopter or jet.

I noticed the video makes a cut from flying to the landing part, without showing the transition of the blades downwards from forward flight. I'd imagine this also takes some careful timing to line up properly with the ground target.

<comment><USER30> May not be exactly the same, but I don't believe there's an appreciable drop on a tiltrotor like the V-22.

<comment><USER31> There isn't - the V-22 rotors tilt continuously from vertical to horizontal rather slowly as it builds up enough speed to transition to forward flight. Same thing with Quantum's VTOL UAVs.

<comment><USER14> And since the Heaviside has many pairs of small rotors, it has another option which is to switch the rotors gradually pair by pair, but switching each pair _quickly_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This thing must be crazy light.

I wonder how much of the advertised quietness will dissapear once it gets speced for range and passengers.

If they've solved a fundamental problem of noisy props I would be very impressed.

<comment><USER13> I see that, in horizontal flight, the propellers are behind the wing, and therefore in its wake. On the Piaggio Avanti, this arrangement creates quite noticable additional noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why does it look like a toy when it flies? There's something about he way it moves when it changes direction or lands that makes it not look as big as it should.

<comment><USER34> Do you know Lilium and their electric VTOL aircraft? It also looks unreal during some flight manoeuvers, see here: [https://youtu.be/RLqzatnVAfA?t=62](https://youtu.be/RLqzatnVAfA?t=62)

That was a video of a sub-scale prototype, they have newer videos of a larger one at [http://www.lilium.com](http://www.lilium.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The last time these kind of vehicles came up, someone linked to an Uber conference on the topic.

From what I gathered, this kind of noise level is a standard feature of the new electric air taxis.

</comment><comment><USER36> Sort of like the Ehang 216, but with a transition to horizontal flight.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf3BGnzXSG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf3BGnzXSG4)

</comment><comment><USER37> The solution is remote work, not flying cars.

<comment><USER38> Our cities continue to grow, we need a way to increase our travel speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I did some contract work (2002-2003, at the tail end of their bankruptcy I think) for a Kitty Hawk that went out of business (after a second round of bankruptcy), and for a minute I thought this was an old article or something.

</comment><comment><USER40> I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics.

I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines:

Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than you were banging their heads against the wall non-stop for 60 years trying to solve this exact problem.

Startup CEO: But I hired most brilliant engineers from Amazon and Waymo for that. I'm paying them near 200k each.

Me: If this, this, and this thing breaks, your drone drops dead upon an urban area. And if you get into negative gees over ridgelines, your motor don't have enough torque to keep COM behind the centre of aerodynamic forces to prevent inversion. You can't change the law of gravity.

And he was like "can't we really do anything about that, can't we?" These people are so used to the culture of "easy solutions" that it's scary.

A convertoplane this big will be extremely unstable in wind gusts

<comment><USER41> Isn't this why they partnered with boeing? To navigate regulation and bring in more aviation expertise

<comment><USER42> Is Boeing who you would want to navigate regulatory paper work? Might be bad timing...</comment></comment></comment>


Kutcher: Wozniak Is Being Paid To Support Another Steve Jobs Film - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ashton-kutcher-fires-back-at-woz-2013-8

<comment><USER2> I don't think Woz needs the money, and every clip I've seen of the Kutcher film feels like a bad made-for-tv movie. And what's sad is that the Pirates of Silicon Valley movie was made for TV and looks superior in every way.</comment>


Ask HN: I need your advice on marketing and distribution of domcop - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I launched DomCop.com a few months back. I've had lots of great reviews from (paying) customers on the app functionality, but I am having a terrible time reaching out to new customers. I have tried the following channels for distribution.
1. Posting to forums in the seo/domain auction niche - I got most of my customers from here. However, I do not want to spam the forums and therefore this channel becomes very limited.
2. Running banner and text ads on forums - this has surprisingly not been effective on the very forums that customers have converted from regular posts.
3. Google adwords - these are proving to be too costly and are not as effective as forums.
4. Facebook ads - these ads were cheap - but have not been converting.
5. Stumble upon - same as facebook - cheap, but not converting.
I've read on HN that blogging in your niche and contacting other bloggers is a great way of getting good traffic. But, I feel like that would take away the time I could use to add more features (especially ones that current customers have requested for). I am trying to work on SEO as well - but this would take a while before it generates decent amount of organic traffic
Are there any other channels that I am missing out on?
Thank you for your time.
Akash
About DomCop.com - The app provides information on expired domain auctions - verified page rank, SEOmoz and SEMrush data, social stats. <comment><AUTHOR> Link to DomCop - <http://www.domcop.com/></comment>


Surprising Power Consumption Of Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Win 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=windows_ubuntu_pow&num=1

<comment><USER2> If the power usage really is anywhere near as high as the graph says -- 30 to 45 watts range -- then the laptops aren't going to get much battery life. That is a lot of power to be using.

I suspect that they were testing on the plugged into wall socket power profile, where speed is the main concern, and not power usage. Power consumption changes when the laptop is running off of battery.

Edit: My X200 Tablet runs at about 12 watts on Linux right now, on battery.

<comment><USER3> They were plugged into mains power, as the first page says:

"For all testing, the Watts Up Pro power meter was used(...) as the power meter was attached to each system's power supply."

That meter measures AC power, which means that for laptop use, as you say, the tests are meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That site is a piece of shit slow site, can anyone please sum up because by the time I page though all 7 pages I will shoot myself.

I'm really curious as to what the numbers are.

<comment><USER5> From page 9 of TFA:

> Ubuntu 11.04 actually performed much better than anticipated. Prior to the > tests commencing, the expectation was that Ubuntu 11.04 would lose handedly > across all systems to Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1. That > was far from the case.

> With similar workloads, for the most part the power consumption is > comparable between Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7 Pro SP1. The only major > differences came during Flash-based HD video playback being more efficient > under Windows, power consumption while OpenGL gaming, and in select other > areas. Ubuntu / Linux actually has the potential to become more power > efficient than Microsoft Windows 7 based upon the close findings from today. > Once Active-State Power Management (ASPM) is properly fixed up for Linux, > there is still a Linux 2.6.35 kernel power regression, a scheduler power > regression, and more. Just yesterday on my Twitter feed, the Phoronix Test > Suite and I made a discovery of a possible 8% power savings from an entirely > different vector. More to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Without wishing to trash their efforts, Linux power management is a mess. Nothing works out of the box and you have to play around with powertop to optimise your kernel configuration to get even reasonable battery life. Add to that, the ACPI implementation is buggy as anything.

This, at least in my case when testing on an Acer 4820T, manifests itself as Windows 7 lasting 6-7 hours on battery (!) with heavy Visual Studio 2010 usage, whereas Ubuntu IDLING lasts about 2.5 hours out of the box and 3.5 after tuning it to bits.

It's ok optimising Linux like this but the whole EXPERIENCE is still horrid.

<comment><USER7> The problem is mainly with bugs (often intentional) in the ACPI implementations of hardware vendors. While they almost always provide hacky windows drivers, they almost never provide linux patches, or even enough info for correct blacklists.

<comment><USER8> That's a problem of a failure to code to what is, not to what one thinks it should be.

As I've said before when this comes up--Windows is, for better or for worse, the _de facto_ standard. Alternative operating systems (and Linux is very, very alternative, in this sort of use scenario) that don't recognize and acknowledge the _de facto_ standard's effective supplanting of the _de jure_ standard are Doing It Wrong.

edit: Swapped my _jure_ s and _facto_ es. Shouldn't post while writing code...

<comment><USER9> Did you mean "de facto" when you wrote "de jure", and vice versa? Windows is the de facto standard, and ACPI is the de jure standard; you wrote the opposite.

<comment><USER8> Er, yes. My bad, was writing a unit test at the same time. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Automate third-party tools without API or writing a single line of code - <AUTHOR> https://community.vanila.io/automatio/general/automate-third-party-tools-without-api-or-writing-a-single-line-of-code~90f13832-1d14-4961-8bd7-a72fa98011de <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, here you can see quick video how I am able to manipulate some web tool without API or writing a code. Automatio is tool I am working on with my team for last ~2 years. Would like to hear if you have some thoughts.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==== Less than 1% of web have API. This means if the website or web app doesn't provide API, you will need to build a bot and automate it. If you are not programmer, it means you will need to hire someone to do it, which takes a lot of time and money. Even if you are a web developer, still it gonna take you days or weeks, depending on complexity. But!

Meet Automatio This is how you can automate third-party tools without API or writing a single line of code. In this case, I am automating a website/tool for checking domain authority (DA) of the given URL.

Automatio will be able to deal with the complex scenario of inputting data (URL) into the input field, then solving Google re-captcha, clicking on the submit button, and then extracting the data we need.

Video URL: [https://youtu.be/3KMDeQo8In8](https://youtu.be/3KMDeQo8In8)

Built with: Automatio - No Code Web Automation Tool [https://automatio.co](https://automatio.co)

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks really nice! Is it possible to export data in an API way, for example to have an endpoint providing data in json format?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like interesting tool. I am wondering how you are dealing with re- captcha, and can it solve other types of captcha?

<comment><AUTHOR> we are using third-party service which solves re-captcha. Currently we can solve two catpchas, Re-captcha and Hcaptcha. But others will be integrated in future.</comment></comment>


Learn Mobile Services on iOS with Brent Simmons - <AUTHOR> http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Azure-Mobile-Services/Learn-Mobile-Services-on-iOS-with-Brent-Simmons--Part-1

<comment><AUTHOR> Really lightweight high level intro, but more than the technical side I was surprised to see a very famous Mac/iOS developer, creator of NetNewsWire, advocating using a Microsoft backend. Not meant as snark, just genuinely surprised and now a bit intrigued to see what the details are.</comment>


Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/petitions/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling-ask-toolbar-with-the-java-installer <comment><USER3> "As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!' ...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle." \-- Bryan Cantrill <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc>

<comment><USER4> The Oracle bit of that video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m)

<comment><USER5> His rant is entertaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the contrary, please continue. Improve it by adding BonziBuddy and friends. Please please please ruin your already non-existent reputation, Oracle. Help ordinary people who have no idea what Oracle is, connect your name with spam and spyware (and security problems, ofc).

<comment><USER7> I would love to see that. Java really deserves to die a death at this point.

<comment><USER8> Here we go again, another Java hater for no reason. What should we replace it with? someCrap.js? someOtherCrap.py?

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Killing Java would be a ridiculous thing to do. You live in such a bubble.

<comment><USER7> I work with Java every day. Java and Spring pay my bills at the moment but that doesn't lessen my contempt for the platform. Overly amateurish nature of the community/ecosystem is a huge issue when you are building enterprise level applications (but have no choice really, because it is your company's technology of choice - usually because they are too cheap to pay for decent dev tools).

The whole community is full of de facto "standards" and half baked libraries which are usually results of someone's summer project.

The language in and of itself is alright (although massively outdated compared to more modern alternatives like C#), but the virtual machine and the nature of the ecosystem make me want to blow my brains out on daily basis. Don't even get me started on the recent security debacle.

I don't know a lot about these new *.js technologies but if they are right tools for the job, then yes, I wouldn't have anything against using them where appropriate.

<comment><USER9> So, do you mean Java or the JVM? Because here we're talking about the JVM; that means Java, Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, Scala etc.

Sometimes the JVM isn't the right tool; Java the language is often the wrong tool. But when you need to write large, high-performance, backend software, the JVM is pretty much the only rational choice. C/C++ is too expensive effort-wise, in development, in maintenance and in monitoring. Erlang is awesome, but it's too slow for some things. .Net is not robust on non-windows platforms (I'm not sure about this, but this is the common perception). Go is slower than Java, lacks the huge ecosystem, and also doesn't provide all the JVM goodies like runtime instrumentation and profiling, hot code swapping, good monitoring etc. Rust is too immature (and won't give you those benefits either). So, pretty often, the JVM is the only choice and you think it's time to kill it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Petition: Programmers, stop using the Oracle versions of Java. Too many of your Java programs only work properly with Oracle JVM, etc. Instead, standardize on another one of the Java implementations so that it can become the premiere implementation and really screw with Oracle.

<comment><USER11> Some of us (especially in the performance-oriented crowd, or people using large heaps) really have no choice here.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious, are other Java implementations (e.g. OpenJDK) really that bad? I mean, quite a lot of influential/resourceful companies are behind it, are they unwilling or unable to improve it?

<comment><USER13> The OpenJDK project is run by Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This petition is complaining about the neighbor on your left letting his dog crap in your yard, when the neighbor on the right is running a meth lab. We are carrying around phones filled with spyware to track what we listen to, watch and read an where we do it.

How hard is it to discern even our sleep habits? We put them on the charger beside the bed at night and tune in to Pandora. If our phones can't tell if we're sleeping around or alcoholics already, it won't be long until they can.

Like most petitions this one is a distraction. It keeps our energy focused on the wrong part of a larger issue and one where any leverage we have cannot create fundamental change.

<comment><USER15> And what do you propose Microsoft or Apple would do with the knowledge that I'm an alcoholic who is cheating on my wife? Why would they care? They're in business to make money, and there's not much money in extortion, not for long. If my phone called my wife automatically to tell her where I was and what I was doing, it wouldn't be long before no one bought that phone and Apple went out of business from the privacy lawsuits.

Yeah, we carry devices that are spying on us. Why do they spy? To sell us more stuff. They don't try to hide that fact. Your fearmongering is off topic here, and fairly irrelevant elsewhere too.

<comment><USER14> _"Why do they spy? To sell us more stuff."_

They spy because they can. They spy because the companies involved believe that the data they collect has value. They spy because the companies involved believe that the data they collect might have even more value in the future.

The companies involved aren't in the business of selling you stuff. They sell data about you to others. Sure that might be a retailer of Hello Kitty backpacks with scenes of unicorns shitting rainbows. It might be a presidential campaign. It might be a government - and in that case, the value exchanged might be trade privileges rather than cash.

Large commercial ventures willing to harm many people for the sake of profit are not unknown to history e.g. the East India Company and International Association of the Congo. Likewise, industries adopting standard practices which do so - e.g. tetra-ethyl lead.

I may be wrong. But I don't think that just because I live in the US corporations have any more respect for my human dignity than they do for the citizens of Honduras or Pakistan or Albania.

<comment><USER16> Please point me to where I can buy non-public data about potential backpack purchasers (or any person for that matter) from Apple/Google/Microsoft.

Until then, your statements are nothing more than FUD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are you offering to pay for Java development and maintenance? I mean... someone has to. How is this not a case of demanding things for free?

If the petition were asking Oracle to establish a nonprofit that could support Java and offering to pay the first $10,000 toward it, I'd have a quite different reaction. But this seems to me no different from agitating for "free healthcare" without even _mentioning_ who might pay for it, just, "it should be free!"

<comment><USER18> To be fair, Oracle is (or was planning on) making heaps of money out of Java for business. Client-side Java seems like less than a portion of their plan to start with (anyone who mentions JavaFX here gets banned from the internet) - <USER2> mean, start with hiring a designer for the download page. This disrespect to users is exactly why they're treating it that way. If it's not that important to them, might as well import com.oracle.money-making-addon; No big deal either way.

Anyway, as someone who regularly writes software for artists and designers with Java, I lately find myself avoiding JVM-based workflow on the client- side. It's just too much of a hassle for anyone I work with.

<comment><USER19> Agreed, I'm a big fan of Java and have written client software with it but the annoyances are rapidly beginning to outweigh the benefits. Bad press, awful UI support on OS X, Web Start's seeming disappearing/reappearing act... What's the point anymore?

<comment><USER20> What do you like instead? AFAIK there really isn't any good cross-platform client software development environment, particularly if you care about the Mac. My impression is that Java is no more or less crap than everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Go to <http://www.ninite.com> and get the Java installer from there. It's malware-free and streamlined.

<comment><USER22> Only if you implicitly trust ninite.

<comment><USER23> Personally, I'd take that deal.

<comment><USER24> The devil you know is... worse than the devil you don't?

<comment><USER25> I am at least a potential customer of ninite's, so they have some incentive not to screw me over. Not so much with Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone please tell me why Oracle is doing that? I don't get it, it seems to me that the amount of unhappy people would eclipse any penny they might earn with such cheap tactics, it is not like this would give them a 10% profit increase.

<comment><USER27> Oracle don't care about happy people, and a lack of happy people dealing with Oracle has not stopped their massive profits so why would they start now?

I think this is extra worse than normal bundling, because its a friggin platform! A basis for applications, it smells as bad as Microsoft asking to install a toolbar during the OS install.

<comment><USER28> By bundling advert-ridden applications with their latest OS, Microsoft aren't really all that far off the mark from your comment.

<comment><USER29> I'm fine with advertisements in desktop apps. Those guys have to make money. But I think there should be a way to pay a fee and forcibly remove them even if the developer didn't code for it. It's your machine, after all.

<comment><USER30> There's ads in Microsoft bundled apps as well[1], not just third party developers.

[1] [http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/microsoft-cheapens- windows...](http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/microsoft-cheapens- windows-8-ads)

<comment><USER31> They're in news apps, not in the email client or web browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you're reading this, you're probably too small.

I believe ORCL wants to drive off all their nuisance D and E customers, which is all the riffraff not paying them $50m/yr. After taking over Sun, they've moved all the good stuff behind a paywall, jacked the cost of legacy products and of supporting them, added onerous contracts with stiff penalties. For example, if you ever drop support, there's a big fine to rejoin. Another example is if you're an OEM they make it very very hard to simply sell their stuff. My $work is an OEM that also uses several products ORCL bought that used to be okay, but now we're getting off them before the sleaze and expense kills us.

So Java is probably one of those standalone business units they need but hope it will make a little profit of its own. The first attempt to monetize, sue GOOG, didn't go so good if you recall.

<comment><USER33> I believe the crapware bundling was started by Sun, it predates acquisition.

<comment><USER34> Most of the time Sun just used it to advertise OpenOffice which was their own product.

Does anyone remember if Sun at any time bundled adware or other forms of crapware, esp. using deceptive tactics?

<comment><USER35> Sun Java included either the Google or Yahoo browser toolbar, and IIRC it prompted you about an antivirus program for a while.

<comment><USER34> Thanks. I was obviously looking at Sun through rose colored shades

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You mean: stop bundling crapware with our crapware!

Note: I have no problem with Java on the server or client, just the applet and browser plugin model.

<comment><USER37> I remember a time when java applets were cool. I don't think it's a bad idea entirely, just dated, and eclipsed by other technologies.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps eclipsed is not the best choice of words here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I rarely install Java on a new machine because of their installer. It feels too maleware-ish to me. In fact, I would go out of my way to find a non-Java alternative for most software I need.

<comment><USER40> There is a standalone install.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I already voted: I uninstalled Java from every Windows PC I have.

<comment><USER42> The beauty of cross-platform support is you can uninstall it from every device you have!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can sure see Oracle responding to a petition on the Internet!

<comment><USER44> Ah, internet petitions. The best way to feel good about doing absolutely nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Few days ago I was watching a movie and in the middle the java-wants-your- presmission-for-update popup just appeared over my movie.. Thats it. Enough is enough. Java is the most annoying and probably most unsecure thing on my computer.. I started removing programs that need java and replacing them with native alternatives.. the last one remaining is KSG client ( <http://www.gokgs.com/> ) - it will be a tough one, I dont want to give up playing GO on my favourite server.. but.. as long as the java installer/updater behaves this way.. I will not tolerate it on my computer.

</comment><comment><USER46> [Somewhat relevant, somewhat off-topic]

Commission collections and ethics aside, I actually cannot understand the venom towards Ask (its search results). I believe in keeping web searches open with multiple choices made available to users, so I actively support all viable alternatives (meaning I use Ask, Blekko, ddg, lycos, yahoo (bing) among others instead of Google for regular everyday searches). Ask search results are very much comparable to Google's, i.e., the search is not "inferior" as claimed.

As for ads, google's adsense ads are just as much in-your-face as the others (ymmv), so don't think this point is such a big thing either as claimed.

<comment><USER47> I'd never used Ask, so after reading your post I compares a search for "cuda device to host memory copy" [1] and [2]

On google I saw no ads, and the links on the first page of results usually contain the search term.

On Ask there are ads, and they look very much like search results - there's no coloured background to identify them as such - and the search results contain irrelevant links to other Ask properties like "Can I Copy From Youtube? | Ask Jeeves" and "How Memory Stick | ask.co.uk/how"

Personally I won't be switching from Google to Ask.

I'll admit we might see different things - let me know if you'd like screenshots.

[1] [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cuda+device+to+host+memory+...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cuda+device+to+host+memory+copy) [2] <http://uk.ask.com/web?q=cuda+device+to+host+memory+copy>

<comment><USER46> Hi,

Good show. I checked your links on Maxthon [my IE without the IE baggage] and on Firefox (default browser with ABP add-on) for comparison.

1\. On FF I have ABP installed, but there were no ads on Maxthon either for Ask. Is it due to "search bubble" or something else? Not sure. However, I too use uk.ask.com for my searches like you, so the 'bubble' should be the same for me as well. Hmmmm.

2\. I got those two false positives also. But the rest of the search results were similar between both search engines (SO, rice.edu, stanford.edu, sourceforge, NVIDIA). I'll admit that I would have simply filtered those two anomalies visually and not given it a second thought. But wouldn't you say, search-for-search, the landing pages were pretty similar in the results returned (barring those two stupidities)?

<comment><USER47> Here's the first screen I see on ask (on a 1050px high monitor): <http://imgur.com/MWk9wm2>

And here's what I see on Google: <http://imgur.com/nalUhES>

<comment><USER46> Managed to find a suitably large monitor. Here's my landing page for comparison. On Opera with Adblocker installed. I get the same results on Maxthon that has no addons to block ads. Let me know if you want to see Maxthon screen.

Ask: <http://i.imgur.com/rX72PDd.png>

Google: <http://i.imgur.com/Q0BusaH.png>

<comment><USER47> Interesting. I guess with an ad blocker, Ask isn't so bad.

<comment><USER46> Yes, definitely been an interesting discussion. Thanks :-). Even more surprising for me was Maxthon's ad-free results as well.

FWIW, I'd definitely recommend looking into other alternative search engines like those I mentioned earlier. Usually my opera's speed dial default engine is dogpile [<http://www.dogpile.com>] that curates Google, Yahoo and Yandex results into one search result on one page. Definitely also worth looking into if you're interested.

I use Bing often, as I love Bing's homepage. Oh! those panoramic pictures. You got to give it to them. They definitely got _that_ UX right. ;-)

 _Edit: Blekko and DDG are quite fab. And for an old contender, Lycos quite literally, rocks! Try them._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Larry is saving up for another Hawaii island. Every penny counts.

</comment><comment><USER49> Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell no, i am not going to sign this. Like what is it going to change?

</comment><comment><USER50> The latest JavaFX release, which is the new way of building java desktop apps, encourages you to bundle the java runtime in your app, which gives you a lot of benefits including avoiding the problem discussed here. It's a wonderful platform I encourage everybody to look into.

</comment><comment><USER51> 1) Ask Toolbar is about as mild a bundle-in as it gets.

2) You can set Java update mode to manual.

3) Chrome (and possibly another browser) asks permission before using Java on any page, so I consider it a low-risk vector for drive-bys.

<comment><USER52> 1 and 2 are opt-out while 3 is opt-in, they should all be opt-in.

<comment><USER53> Absolutely disagree on #2. The application should not have to ask for permission to update, especially given the security climate that Java lives in.

If you have to ask the average user for permission to update, updates won't get done. It's that simple.

Oracle should take a page from Chrome's book, here. Update silently in the background, and then notify if a restart or a relaunch is required to effect the change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Maybe someone (and by "someone" I of course mean "not me!" - my own internet nerd-rage falls well short of doing this, not being much of a Windows user) should write, maintain, and SEO/social-media the hell out of a "Java crap-ware un-installer", which prominently advertises MS-SQL, SAP, and perhaps Postgres while it does it's uninstalling… Then get all the geeks to start telling their bosses "Oh, Java's hijacked your search again? No problem, just search for the "Java Bundled Software Uninstaller" and download it and run it!"

<comment><USER55> Crapware un-installer? Sounds more like a crapware exchanger with Postgres tacked on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Enterprises will put up with almost anything, including this type of bullshit. The cost of switching is far too great. Same goes for lots of Java devs who make their living off the Oracle ecosystem. Also, probably most consumers that install Java don't realize how crappy this tactic is.

</comment><comment><USER57> Meh. Let this kill the default Java install on Windows.

When I need to deliver an app written in Java to the end user I just include my own JRE. You have to do it pretty much anyway in order to guarantee that your app works regardless of quirks of particular system/installation.

</comment><comment><USER58> How easy would it be for someone else to make an OpenJDK build with Windows installer and auto-updater, but no crapware?

</comment><comment><USER59> for x86 Windows 32-bit (offline install), not entirely satisfactory if you need 64-bit but still

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5115058>

</comment><comment><USER60> This is just treating a symptom of a disease.

</comment><comment><USER61> Couldn't someone just build OpenJDK for Windows and offer it as an alternative install?

Because, I'll tell you what, I sure didn't get any crapware when I typed `sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk`.

<comment><USER62> The problem is that the OpenJDK has problems with graphical toolkits, specifically Swing. Intellij (Java IDE with a lot of Swing) runs a lot worse under the OpenJDK than under the Sun's JVM. I might be wrong, but I don't think this has changed recently.

<comment><USER63> For a while, using OpenJDK was the only way to get proper font smoothing on Linux in IntelliJ. It doesn't display any warnings anymore and works fine with OpenJDK now.

<comment><USER61> "proper"? Teach me your magic, my Java IDEs still stand out like sore thumbs compared to ST2/gedit/vim/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> With, what, 3 to 6 million Java programmers I think it's going to be _very_ difficult to get 250 000 signatures.

</comment><comment><USER65> I think "with Java" is somehow tautological, and redundant.)</comment>