Source: Google Hangouts for consumers will be shutting down sometime in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2018/11/30/google-hangouts-shutting-down/ <comment><USER4> Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and pushed everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? Not better, not worse, just a very similar experience, with maybe better voice/video support. So, now they're killing this one, too?

Is there a turf battle among teams over chat within Google? I can't think of any other reason for them to keep killing products that work and have millions of users with nearly identical products that have no users. So much wasted energy. How many times do they think people will switch platforms before switching to something else made by a company that won't kill the product every few years?

<comment><USER5> >Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and pushed everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? Not better, not worse, just a very similar experience, with maybe better voice/video support.

It's not even the same. It's worse. I used to be able to use XMPP.

<comment><USER6> Didn't Google just recently rewrite the infrastructure that supports Hangouts? IIRC that caused many Google Voice integrations to break, as they ripped out what was left of their siloed XMPP stack.

Why invest all this labor, only to announce shutdown of Hangouts a few months later?

<comment><USER7> Because people at google need promotions and launches are one of the few good ways to get them.

<comment><USER8> Or maybe they are too busy protesting[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][..] instead of focusing on product ;-)

Interestingly, before 2017, very few (no?) public news of them employees walking out or protesting publicly @ Google. It's almost like Sergey going to the airport to protest opened the floodgates[6]. The Times They Are a-Changin' (or no good deed goes unpunished...).

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/read-google-employees- open-l...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/read-google-employees-open-letter- protesting-project-dragonfly.html) [1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/01/google- em...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/01/google-employees- worldwide-begin-walkout-over-allegations-sexual-harassment-inequality-within- company/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f346e580366b) [2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google- employe...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees- protest-search-censored-china.html) [3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google- letter-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo- pentagon-project.html) [4] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/google-employees- protest-tru...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/google-employees-protest- trump.html) [5] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/08/07/542020041...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/08/07/542020041/google-grapples-with-fallout-after-employee-slams- diversity-efforts) [6] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google- sergey-br...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google-sergey-brin) [7] [https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/google- employees-s...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/google-employees- speak-out-about-government-spying/) [8] [https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/sopa- blackou...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/sopa-blackout- wikipedia-google-wired-join-protest-against-internet-censorship/) [..] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/12/whoops-g...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/12/whoops- google-engineer-accidentally-makes-his-plus-sucks-rant-public/#b9697f26cb4f)

<comment><USER9> I hate when people just downvote posts that don't align with their politics.

<comment><USER10> This wasn't downvoted because of a lack of political alignment; it was downvoted because there's absolutely no link.

The post implies a causal link, but there isn't even a correlational one; Google has been shuttering its own projects only a couple of years after launch for years, long before the current round of employee protests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Android Police' headline is spot on:

"Report: Google killing Hangouts in 2020, probably launching 8 new messaging services in its place" [0].

Mayur Kamat was HO's product manager until 2015 and has posted a few updates on G+ until he left Google, probably because Hangouts was internally about to be abandoned. Thats when I realized Hangouts fate and started looking elsewhere.

I vividly remember his remark around the time of the Hangouts 4.0 release [1]: "P.S. Unlike what the /r/Android subreddit says, the Hangouts team does come to work every morning trying to make it better :). Good stuff is coming.": Alas, it wasn't.

Edit: Maybe adding that name was wrong, my intention was not to blame any single person.

Fact is: I liked Google Talk (and Hangouts) a lot for its superior abilities back then: Federation with XMPP, cross device compatibility, superior synch, possibly reach anyone with a G account, simultaneous login from different devices, permanent cloud based history, working search. It seemed so easy to win at that time.

[0] [https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/11/30/report-google- killi...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/11/30/report-google-killing- hangouts-in-2020-probably-will-launch-8-new-messaging-services-in-its-place/)

[1] [https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/T1FNqgAWzgE](https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/T1FNqgAWzgE)

<comment><USER12> I can believe he and his team wanted to make Hangouts better. Seems nobody else was on their side though.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely no blaming on him. He was responsible for Microsoft Messenger (if i'm not mistaken) before and the uncertainty with Google chat products (Allo, Duo, Hangouts Meet and who knows what else) is continuing without him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I will never adopt a google product again. g+ may be a total failure hangouts may be the less popular chat product

But for me and my kids this was the channels we used when they grew up. We have so much history in our family chat and so many photos shared on google+.

So now they just shut it down and don't even bother to migrate 10 years of my life to whatever is meant to replace those products.

We are a generation who will leave nothing behind.

<comment><USER14> > We have so much history in our family chat

I don't think any IM chat product has ever _promised_ to keep your history. They all let you "scroll back" on a best-effort basis, but I don't know of any IM chat service where the availability of historical messages is part of the _semantics_ of the service. It's just... not what they're for.

If you want the semantics of "real-time chat with history", what you actually want is a business collaboration tool, like Slack or its competitors. Businesses want records of meetings and the ability to dredge up stuff somebody said once, and are willing to pay for it, so services designed with business productivity in mind tend to have these semantics.

(And even then, I don't think Slack makes any guarantees that it'll retain the history of your private DMs, only the history of your public channels. Exporting an archive of a Slack workspace doesn't get you archives of the DMs. So it would seem that, even for a business, the semantics of one-to-one conversations are more ephemeral than not.)

<comment><USER15> Well I can trust Facebook Messenger to always keep my data there and never delete it.

Which for a chat service is really good.

<comment><USER16> You can? When did they promise that? What is stopping them from throwing away history next year?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google should claw back bonuses and promotions involved in creating these services that get assassinated, to get people thinking more long-term. While I intensely dislike Google's product management, I feel like there might be a point in their favor that these developers or teams who are driven to only launch new stuff instead of maintaining and enhancing the old stuff are creating CS nightmares that can't be refactored, can't be extended, and the original developers may not even be found there anymore. In other words, to be fair to Google, this may be a problem of their own incentives.

<comment><USER4> Do you really think the team that made, say, Google Talk, were the ones who wanted to kill it and push everyone to a different product? I don't know who made either one, but I would be shocked if the decision maker that pulled the plug had anything to do with the creation of the product. I, personally, don't like to kill my babies.

Clawing back bonuses for something out of the control of the engineers seems like a dystopian nightmare, and any company that tried it would, hopefully, die a fiery death after an exodus of talent to more reasonable employers.

<comment><USER17> _Do you really think the team that made, say, Google Talk, were the ones who wanted to kill it and push everyone to a different product?_

Man, for all the lore and blogging that operates around working at Google, the skills of people who get hired, plus the first-hand accounts of what it takes to move up the ladder there, I'd think they'd be able to release things by people who make their products less killable. Ah, but reality rarely meets the legend.

This is my point: what if what gets released by Google is just bad software engineering? Maybe SOLID-deficient. If products are killed because they don't have the features contained in subsequent iterations of the concepts, how come the products were not extensible, or capable of being grafted onto something else? I seem to remember reading about this kind of thing being a big part of software engineering.

<comment> super-serial I think the acronym Google always misses out on is KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) because no one there is "stupid." If you only hire geniuses, no one wants to write documentation or do things the boring/easy way that would create more maintainable software.

Instead everyone there has to use the latest framework or best practices, then re-engineer things to prove they deserve their top-performer salary.

I think the first Google Hangouts was written in Angular 1? Code rot from frameworks like that will ensure the product will die in 5 years at a company like Google. Everyone at Google is a "top-performer" so they want to use the latest development tools and shiny things and no one wants to upgrade/maintain 5 year old code written in an old framework.

I think a lot of other companies get around this by hiring less than top performers. Those types of coders will maintain legacy systems because they don't have as much pride. So I think it's mainly a problem that Google has a culture of tech elitism, instead of a culture that focuses on user satisfaction.

<comment><USER18> I think you are correct but I want to add that most of the top programmers I have met have had zero issues with doing maintainance work. Just look at many of the big names in open source if you need some examples.

I think Google's culture is to blame, but this culture is ptobably created much due to only hiring top performers, rather than other companies who have to do with a mix of skill levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At one point Hangouts was super easy to use. Send someone a link and they could join.

The interface was iterated on repeatedly until it got to the point that I could barely figure out how in the world to invite people to join a Hangout without having at least a few people run into problems.

It is my belief that Uberconference exists because Google dropped the ball so badly with Hangouts.

For a brief moment, Hangouts let us live in an amazing future where group video chats happened spontaneously, and then someone had to iterate.

<comment><USER20> My take: we need to stop incentivizing "innovation" where everything needs to be rewritten every couple months just so someone can "disrupt" something.

You know what it really is? It's a bunch of product people, all of who want to be Steve Jobs II, looking at the handful of innovative products Apple made over the last couple of decades and trying to achieve something similar results every single quarter.

The problem? We've raised a whole generation of people who think that's not how you make products people love. We've have a whole generation of people who focus 100% on the ideation phase and 0% on the nurturing and responding thoughtfully to user feedback.

This fits into a larger theory I have that basically disruptive startups are the weeds of the ecosystem, but they aren't old growth trees. Call me old fashioned but I'm looking forward to the day "disruptive" companies based on "growth hacking" are replaced by some giant redwood trees that will stand the test of time as they (slowly) soar into the sky.

<comment><USER14> You're talking like these are the same people ideating and then dropping products over and over.

No: the people who build each product, even at Google, certainly enter a "nurturing and responding thoughtfully to user feedback" phase with that product.

The "problem", if you want to call it that, is that there are always _new_ product people joining the company. And what the heck are _they_ going to do to get recognized and promoted, if they don't build a new fiefdom to call their own?

The actual question I have about Google and its business strategy, is why these new products always seem to _displace_ old products (and their teams), rather than resulting in the internal equivalent of a merger.

I can see good reason to have four teams building four distinct web VoIP clients, if one of them is the "flagship" one and three of them are experiments. I can also imagine one of those "experiments" getting really popular. But why should that result in the "flagship" dying? Why not just merge the teams together, and put the team from the "experiment" in charge of the pooled UX design talent for a new release of the "flagship" client?

<comment><USER21> > there are always new product people joining the company. And what the heck > are they going to do to get recognized and promoted

Maybe I don't get it, but it seems weird to me that everyone needs to get promoted all the time.

Where I live you get employed in a position and most people stay in that position for most of their career.

You may climb the ranks, but that's not something everyone does all the time.

<comment><USER16> At Google, promotion does not change your position, it changes your "Level", which roughly rewards you for having wider-ranging influence as an engineer. You don't get promoted to management or anything like that. You stay an engineer.

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If Google does this it may be the thing that finally convinces me to move my messaging and phone away from their ecosystem. Hangouts has kinda been the thing holding my experience together as I adopted Google voice early and a lot of people only have that number, biggest mistake of my life right there. We'll see though, talk is cheap and I'm lazy, so most likely I just tolerate the abuse.

<comment><USER23> If it helps, I moved away from Google Voice a while ago by porting my number. Went to Verizon, got a new number and got a iPhone running. Then called Verizon and ported my google voice number onto the new number. Google asked for $10 for porting out. I happily obliged. My phone number moved over without any pauses in service. I've been using iMessage/SMS ever since and it works wonders.

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER24> I had ported my phone number to Google Voice back when I was using Android phones. My wife insists on Apple products and eventually I switched to an iPhone myself. I ported my number back out but set up another Google Voice number.

Now, if I miss a call, it forwards to the GV number. So I get transcriptions (via email) which aren't perfect but better than anything else I've seen.

9 times out of 10, I don't need to call the person back. It's a reminder, it's somebody I'll see later that day, etc.

I do wish that GV would not send me notices that I have voicemail when the person (or more likely a computer) hung up when they heard voicemail.

The GV number is also useful for things that insist on SMS where I want a secure number. No way for a person to go into a store and insist on getting my number transferred to their phone.

<comment><USER25> There have been no major updates to Voice in a while (thankfully), but lots of marketing and buzz around Project Fi. I can't help but think that Google will kill Google Voice in the future. Google Voice is integrated with Hangouts as well, which means one of those features will go away, assuming the OP is true. I love using Voice for the same reasons you listed out, but I dread when Google decide to make a change in this space, I'll be very disappointed.

<comment><USER26> I don't see Google voice going away since it's the service they use for the home phone add-on with fiber.

The point of this shutdown (and the Google+ shutdown) is that the services are going away for consumers, ie. moving to completely focus on GSuite integration. Google voice is still in the "Additional Google services" category and doesn't have GSuite integration beyond call-in Hangouts, so I doubt they will abandon their fiber G Voice customers any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Messaging in the Google ecosystem is probably the biggest mess of any of their product lines. It should be a case study in business schools.

<comment><USER15> yes, I'll be damned if I ever use Allo, no matter how many ads I receive about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Google's behavior with its messaging platforms really boggles my mind. There's always more to a story sure, and certainly more to why google keeps jumping around - or perhaps flopping around is a better term here. But honestly, one would think whatever behind-the-scene reasons would have settled down by now, eh?

I think google should simply take the plunge and adopt matrix as their messaging protocol. The protocol provides messaging and telephony. Since - much like email - matrix is federated, google could even pair matrix server hosting with their G Suite products. Basically google would be an organization's email, docs, and now matrix/messaging server provider (in addition to the other services included in g suite)...I'm not the biggest fan of google (nor g suite), but i do acknowledge that so many organizations depend on google for their g suite platform. Also, leveraging - <USER2> contributing to the greater matrix.org effort - the matrix platform would show the world that google is still happy to collaborate on open source efforts.

...Or, maybe i'm thinking too altruistically?

<comment><USER29> You absolutely are. If Google cared a decade ago they could have strong arm overhauled XMPP into whatever they wanted. Even Facebook Messenger (which also used XMPP until I want to say 2016? which is coincidentally when I stopped ever using Facebook messenger) would have bent to their will.

They simply chose not to, and instead make yet another proprietary non- federated protocol and practically single handledly fractured what was at the time turning into a reasonable communication ecosystem where MSM, Facebook Messenger, and GTalk were all the big games in town but were also all XMPP compatible.

<comment><USER28> Oh wow, i totally forgot about xmpp; you're right! I forgot how i enjoyed using pidgin client to interact with my gTalk friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The only thing I still use Hangouts for is ongoing big group chats with old groups of friends (e.g. little convo every couple weeks), because:

1) Everyone's got a Gmail tab open during the day so they'll see it eventually but it doesn't bother them immediately like SMS and they don't need to install anything. (Literally no other service my friends have in common, e.g. some have Slack and some use Facebook but definitely not everyone.)

2) Group SMS is still a mess -- when you start one with a new group of friends (e.g. classmates) it just shows as random phone numbers for everyone, nobody has names until you create contacts for all of them, and there are still always mysterious problems like some messages only going between iPhones, messages being duplicated and triplicated, etc...

So if this is true, I guess my old chat groups will just... die... oh well. Maybe we'll go back to e-mail, but it doesn't feel as fun.

<comment> crooked-v You could set up a Discord, maybe. It means another thing to keep an eye on, but the Discord client is pretty good and has deeply configurable push notifications.

<comment><USER31> 2019: We are happy to announce our joining of forces with Discord! It's our hope that, together, we can create a more cohesive Google experience.

2022: All good things must come to an end! It was a wild ride, but sadly, we will be closing Discord to make way for a more cohesive Google experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What's really funny about this is that video conferencing during meetings is _really good_ inside of google. They have a winner product on their hands and don't know how to get it to businesses where they would make tons of money. So amazingly bad at turning innovation into product.

<comment><USER33> They offer it on their website: [https://gsuite.google.com/products/hangouts- meet-hardware/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/hangouts-meet-hardware/)

But the prices are steep compared to what a lot of small to medium businesses are willing to pay for when they think they can just use their laptops.

<comment><USER34> The link above is for the hardware version. If you just want the software, you can use Hangouts Meet, which is free to install and also included in G Suite.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Hangouts.

<comment><USER35> Hangouts meet is different than just hangouts? Sorry for the silly question but I honestly have no idea anymore.

<comment><USER36> Yes, "hangouts meet" and "hangouts chat" are separate apps for gsuite customers.

For consumers there is the "hangouts" app which this article is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've often gone out of my way to encourage people who want to message me to use hangouts in order to have a better chatting experience (versus SMS). And since I have Google Fi, the hangouts integration was perfect such that people who I couldn't convince to use hangouts would text me and I'd still have all the nice message synchronization features in the same app (which as far as I know nothing else offers - a web based client that's not dependent on the phone being available for receiving SMS). All that to say, I'll be sad to lose such nice integration with SMS. Although I can see Google still providing hangouts to Google Fi customers, I think it's probably time to jump ship at this point.

Does anybody know if Matrix supports e2e encrypted chat yet? I don't really follow the project closely, but if this issue is up to date then it's not quite there yet: [https://github.com/vector-im/riot- web/issues/6779](https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779). I realize that bug is for the web client, but I'd feel better anyway knowing one of the biggest clients is using the feature.

</comment><comment><USER38> There was a point a few years ago when most of my IMing was on Google. Now it's largely moved to Facebook and WhatsApp. So, maybe this is the right decision, but Google had what feels to me like a decisive market lead at one point that they frittered away because they couldn't manage a consistent strategy on messaging. And I guess I need to start trying to find the few stragglers I talk to through Hangouts on other messenger services.

<comment><USER39> aol - <USER3>

yahoo - yahoo messenger

microsoft - msn, skype

google - talk, voice, hangouts

basically every one took too long to adapt to either web or mobile.

<comment><USER38> Yes, well, I can understand why mobile was hard on AOL. I have a harder time understanding why the maker of the most popular mobile platform couldn't get their messaging story straight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Originally Hangouts looked Google's answer to Apple's iMessage. You could send and receive messages via Hangouts or SMS within the same Android app. You could use Hangouts on your computer via Gmail or a standalone app.

Then a few years ago they started pushing you to use SMS from a separate app, and eventually removed SMS functionality from the Hangouts Android app altogether.

Then they launched Allo and pushed it for consumers, but from all accounts it flopped miserably.

Now they're apparently going to push an evolution of SMS (RCS) as their consumer chat product. I'm wonder how they plan to integrate that on desktop.

Personal anecdote: My wife and I have kept using Hangouts to communicate with each other out of inertia. On Android it's seemed stagnant for ages, but it's simple and works reliably. For family and friends we're using a mix of SMS and Facebook Messenger due to their preferences. Both of those are annoying, although in different ways. I suppose if consumer Hangouts dies we'll have to look at Whatsapp, Signal, etc. and see what's best.

<comment><USER41> > On Android it's seemed stagnant for ages, but it's simple and works > reliably.

"stagnant" implies it _should_ be changing, but then you say "it works reliably". No changes for a year is 'rock solid' and 'stable', not 'needs an iteration push next month!'.

<comment><USER40> It works reliably, but there's room for improvement. Two examples: Video call quality is noticably worse than Google Duo. Unlike SMS, Google Assistant can't read my Hangouts messages to me.

<comment><USER41> I realized there's a middle ground, of course, after posting. I'm not a regular android user, but understand the 'room for improvement' line of thought for software in general. However, given how much things generally go downhill when new versions are released, 'improvements' in a real sense are often hard to come by. Often, I much prefer my stagnant releases vs watching features I use go away, or UI changes hide my normal workflows in 'upgrades'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> IM in general is such a mess.

All I really want is to have a single ID that people can use to text me from any device they might have (without having to install a special app, because they won't do it just for me), and that I can receive on any device that I have. We did this for email decades ago; why is IM not there yet?

<comment><USER43> Because email was not designed by capitalists.

<comment><USER44> Soviets or Chinese? I keep forgetting which non-capitalists designed email.

<comment><USER45> He just means it wasn't designed for the purpose or future hope of profits

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So what does this mean for Google Voice and Google Fi users? All my SMS runs through Hangouts.

<comment><USER47> With Google Voice + Hangouts you can also answer phone calls from a desktop computer/laptop very easily. I'll miss that.

<comment><USER48> I recently looked into ways to do this outside of the US. Seems to be basically impossible other than using an iPhone/Mac with Continuity. :(

<comment><USER49> No, Hangouts works great for this outside of the US. I use it in New Zealand all the time.

<comment><USER50> IFF you have a GV number, which is US-only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Suggestion of the day: They should integrate Google Voice + Android Messages / RCS to make a true iMessage competitor (with encryption / web sync / etc) AND THEN replace all references of _consumer_ Hangouts/Messaging with this new service. Here's where they could integrate it:

-Gmail (as either the hangouts widget replacement or a new Gmail Addon) -Google Maps (so that any conversations you have show up in your main messages app too) -YouTube (why did they even make YouTube Messages? Put this in there so those messages show up in this unified app) -Google Sheets/Docs/Slides (so all comments / conversations can then be seen & referenced in this unified app) -Google Assistant Conversations (so you can see what you've written, but also have the conversation handy - similar, but more streamlined, to how it was/is in Allo) -Duo (so it's tightly integrated & conversations just magically work - similar to FaceTime/iMessage) -Google One (so all customer support conversations can also be bundled & seen in one unified view) -Hangouts Chat / Hangouts Meet (so if you use those services, they have a channel in this app too) -Anywhere else you use a Google service to type things!

This would be the ULTIMATE messaging app. Here, I'll even throw in ways to monetize (so that it can live on forever):

-You have your main chats, but also all these premium "channels"/"add-ons" (like the ones above) that outside business could integrate into within this app. Charge them similar to how WhatsApp is doing it -Create an add-on store for stickers/fonts/themes (similar to FB Messenger) but integrate into Play store for more revenue) -Sell this service to GSuite customers as a call center / messaging-based customer support service -Create an SMS api for developers and charge for its use (like Twilio and company)

No ads. No subscription service (though I'd happily pay $1 per year - which at their scale could be billions). No hassle. No fragmentation. No problems. World hunger solved

/end rant

P.S. - If anyone wants to make this service, I'd happily co-found a company to do exactly this.

</comment><comment><USER52> Anyone know of a good alternative for group chat that doesn't tie your account to your phone#?

My friends and I were joking about going back to icq since web.icq.com still works.

<comment><USER28> See matrix.org. Matrix is the protocol, but there are numerous server and client implementations, with riot.im being the most popular client and matrix.org being the most popular server.

<comment><USER53> Riot.im makes vim's UX seem intuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> GOGON: Get off Google, now. :P

Weird things are going to happen if Google were to shrink: paid gmail, premium search, subscription navigation in maps, lock screen ads in android, and hard monetisation of user data. A giant doesn't go away without a fight, but Google users are not its customers, just data in its products, so...

</comment><comment><USER55> Big surprise! Another useful Google service gets put down. Why even bother launching products if you're just gonna kill them after 2 years?

</comment><comment><USER56> What about Hangouts calling (inbound/outbound) with your Google voice number? I'm moving from the US to the UK next month and was hoping to maintain my US number by porting it to Google Voice and using Hangouts calls. Anyone know an alternative?

</comment><comment><USER57> Google is shutting down a product? That is so shocking. To be honest, this is the exact reason we didn't go with Google Cloud. We have zero trust that they won't just shut it off one day, no matter what they might claim.

I do use google mail and google docs, but I always make sure I have anything important saved in a separate location so I'm prepared when these products are inevitably shut off.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'll get to my real pain point - anyone know of a replacement VOIP solution like Hangouts dialer that isn't subscription based? I've been giving my Hangouts number to people forever because its more convenient to have every device I have ring when someone uses the old PSTN but its not worth a recurring bill to me.

</comment><comment><USER58> At this point, what do Googlers even use to chat internally? Slack? Skype?

<comment><USER59> My experience so far in 2018 is they communicate via gmail messages and gdoc comments

<comment><USER60> "Man, if only we worked for a large software conglomerate... then we wouldn't have to use Cisco phones or communicate through Excel documents!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I doubt this, as hangouts is integrated deeply into google fi, such that all sms messages between google fi users just go thru hangouts and hangouts is also used to send out going texts.

Hangouts also powers google fi's wifi calling.

</comment><comment><USER62> Ask HN: any other IM client that has Hangout's transparent UI for desktops? I really like how unobtrusive it is.

</comment><comment><USER63> Why do they insist on putting out useful products only to cancel them? Wtf is wrong with them?

<comment><USER64> I'm not sure, but I've noticed the result is that I'm consciously using fewer and fewer google services. The more they keep doing this (just abandoning products, or charging astronomically more for them), the less likely I am to use their other services - or new ones, because I don't trust that they'll be around tomorrow. If you continuously show someone you're not stable or reliable, eventually they'll take the hint and believe you. I hope that's what they're going for because it's working. This year there's just been a lot of this with Inbox, G+, Maps increases, and now Hangouts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Looks like Google is shutting down most of the consumer focused platforms where someone in the organization believes it's expensive and not making money like selling ads does.

I'm confident on Gmail and Maps staying around for the long term. The rest of the consumer side platforms could be removed or replaced (yet again).

</comment><comment><USER66> this is basically what happens when BigTechCorp leaves its product decisions to the competitive empire building machinations of middle managers with 4 year vesting

</comment><comment><USER67> I use Hangouts every single day, all day. It's the only app that let's me both chat and SMS from any device I have. I'll miss it very much when it's gone, as there is simply no replacement :/

</comment><comment><USER68> Add it to the list. killedbygoogle.com

</comment><comment><USER60> Why? It's one of the best messaging platforms out there. Everyone I know has an email account. It is easier to reach me by gmail (and thus hangouts) than it is to reach me by phone, because my phone has bad service.

Why on earth would they kill one of their best and most popular services? I don't use FB messenger at all, whatsapp reveals my phone number, Skype is an ABSOLUTE joke, and not everyone has Line, Viber, Telegram and so on.

</comment><comment><USER69> Google needs to hire Satya Nadella as the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER70> What is it replaced with?

<comment><USER71> Allo, which is already being abandoned itself, never having gained the traction of Hangouts. Ultimately, it looks like Google is giving up in favor of RCS (the rich SMS protocol).

<comment><USER72> RCS will never see widespread use.

It's too tied to phone numbers and mobile devices (have fun getting those RCS messages on your tablet or laptop or when you have no 4G).

It's also too tied to carriers, who might introduce weird billing "RCS messages to abroad cost $$$$". Its also without any end to end encryption, and seems to have an odd 1 or 2 second delay delivering messages which means truly interactive conversations aren't really possible.

Each of those things alone makes it less attractive to one usergroup. Together, I'd guess it'll never see widespread use.

<comment><USER73> I don't know anyone outside of tech who would care about RCS being tied to phone numbers, being offered through the carrier, or having a delay.

Most people I know (US perspective of course) chat mostly on iMessage and SMS. They'd love RCS.

<comment><USER72> All of Europe uses Whatsapp and Messenger, with a few fringe countries and groups using Line, Telegram, SMS, Twitter DM's and instagram.

SMS has a delay of 5+ seconds in most of Europe, so isn't really good for rapid fire conversations. Many phones aren't correctly configured for MMS (picture messages) either, and some networks don't yet support emoji.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Tying to leave Google as much as I can (hoping for Purism phone or something else to ditch Android, web part already done) I do not feel the loss...

The real problem is that SFLPhone (now Ring) lost somewhat its way and Jitsi substantially do the same...

</comment><comment><USER75> I don't know about you but I hated it. Takes ages to open up and is buggy. I have a S8 so you can't say that hardware is a problem. Just low quality Android app.

I still use it because has good prices when calling abroad.

</comment><comment><USER76> As long as whatever still works and lets me keep those numbers I paid to port in to Google Voice years ago and park so friends and family could forever reach me at the same bloody phone number irrespective of any other BS...

</comment><comment><USER77> Maybe someone serious can improve XMPP and deploy that.

</comment><comment><USER78> So they're willing to keep Gmail which isn't cheap to host and develop free but want to shutdown Google Chat?

It feels like this is because Gmail brings in the moolah by making the user to sign in to Google.com, which means all their searches in other browser windows and tabs are tracked to that account leading to user data being collected to be targeted by advertisers.

But they don't want to monetize chat data, either because it's not very useful or because of potential backlash, thus they can shut it down to save costs.

</comment><comment><USER79> Google needs to focus on their current trend of killing their apps/services. It is surely affecting brand image and value.

</comment><comment><USER80> Good thing they're giving a year's notice similar to their enterprise SLAs, right?

</comment><comment><USER81> What will happen to Google voice texting through hangouts?

</comment><comment><USER82> Can we just all go back to irc already...jezzzz

</comment><comment><USER83> You don't pay - what do you expect?

Use Threema, Signal or Telegram; likely a more sustainable experience.

<comment><USER84> You don't pay for those either, what makes you think it will be around in a few years?

Go XMPP, Matrix, SIP - you can self-host these under your own domain, or actually pay for service, or with plain old SMS.

<comment><USER83> Threema is a paid app.

Signal (Telegram) is open source and the chat is a core service for their providers. I.e. more important than Hangout for Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> LOL, most of the replies here are about how google fucked up, and sucks at stuff, yet this here HN Frontihspost is a dead-ass PR campaign for their paid work/collaboration tools; hangouts has probably been a technical success, so it's going business class only.

we use [https://talky.io/](https://talky.io/)</comment>


A Formal Security Analysis of the Signal Messaging Protocol (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf <comment><USER2> Great paper, there goes my weekend.

Initial impression is that theoretical place to look for attacks on an implementation would be simultaneously against the derivation components in the KDFs, (const0, 1), which appear to be the basis for iterating the chain keys to gen msg keys (other than the hmac of the previous one) - and on the derivation of a chains root key from (I think) the contents of that initial 3DH key agreement. If I were sabotaging an implementation, I would probably examine the impact of reducing the entropy of these components.

Even then, you would have to precompute chains of message keys for each sender/recipient combination.

Using the previous key HMAC in the KDF to increment message and chain is a really nice touch as it removes the dependency on a static counter or a universal GF counter seed across all client instances.

Whether these intuitions are correct or not, what the protocol effectively does (very well) is force an attacker to target an individual users device to get message cleartext, as even if an implementor made a bunch of mistakes, the diversity of keys across senders and recipients makes passive mass surveillance impractical.

IMHO, the most economical "mass," attack against it would be to identify its messages on the wire, then auto-exploit the endpoint devices, install screen grabbing spyware, and harvest that data. Hardly passive or scaleably undetectable.

Nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I correct in my understanding that a mitm attack that starts with the initial messages could work and the only way to prevent this is to verify the safety number out of band?

<comment><USER4> > Am I correct in my understanding that a mitm attack that starts with the > initial messages could work and the only way to prevent this is to verify > the safety number out of band?

That's pretty much inherent to any E2E encrypted system. You have to have one of:

        1) out-of-band verification
        2) a trusted party for verifying the identities for the initial key exchange
        3) a set of (multiple) trusted parties for verifying the identities for initial key exchange.

(3) is what PGP does with the web-of-trust. It's conceptually secure, but the user experience has proven to be an utter disaster. For the form factor that Signal is addressing (mobile-only[0], intended to be used by people who expect the same level of user experience as WhatsApp provides), it's much better to go with a combination of (1) and (2).

[0] yes, there's a desktop app, but it's not recommended, and you still need to do initial setup on a phone

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why try to break the protocol, when you can just SSH into the endpoint and read the keys and plaintext directly?

</comment><comment><USER6> So there are 13 ratches, precompiled Rainbow Tables could be made to follow the decryption trail, no?

<comment><USER7> Two things

1\. When mentioning a word you've heard in the hope that people think you have some clue what you're talking about you need to stay up to date. Rainbow Tables were 2008, this is 2018, try "Blockchain" instead.

2\. No. Rainbow Tables are an improved time-space tradeoff. For situations where a time-space tradeoff is almost good enough, Rainbow Tables can take you over the line. Where you aren't even close (as is the case for Signal), it doesn't matter.

For the obsolete LM Hash a straight time-space attack needs maybe 50TB of disk to break it with 100% accuracy, which back in 2003 would have been really expensive. Rainbow Tables often shrank this to about 30GB, with < 1% penalty to recall and a modest additional time penalty, so it was made much cheaper.

With a Signal ratchet you need a lot more space. Imagine all the disk space that exists in the world today. OK, now imagine that this space doubles every year somehow, and that keeps happening for the next 100 years, and you have all that disk space for your project of breaking a Signal connection. You are still nowhere close, even with some very generously estimated Rainbow Tables.

<comment><USER8> Egberts, what he's trying to say is that you can't use a rainbow table to break elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman or AES-256-CBC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Original edition: 2016

Extended edition (this one): 2017

<comment><USER10> Thanks! We've updated the title.</comment></comment>


Company Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-company-update <comment><USER2> While I know I could never make someone redundant personally, I do think the idea that you're owed a job at a company forever is wrong. As someone on the spectrum, it's not always been easy for me to find work, and I have been made redundant in a similar manner to this in the past which wasn't an enjoyable experience. Still, at the time all I could do was express my appreciation that for a few years that company wanted my services enough to pay me a decent wage and that I thoroughly enjoyed my time working for said company. I understood my job was a risk to the company going forward and I held no hard feelings about the decision made to let me go.

In a perfect world things like this wouldn't happen. Top employees would never leave for a better paying job, and you'd never have to let employees go to remain competitive. But this isn't a perfect world. We must prepare for the worst and hope for best while remembering to treat each other with as much respect, kindness, and understanding as possible.

Whether or not these specific cuts were needed or sensible, I don't know. What I do know is that Tesla is a young company in a highly competitive space. Were I personally to take a job at Tesla I wouldn't expect to be there longer than a year - especially if I was a temp worker or contractor. Anyone who's worked at small, early stage startup in the past would know how this story goes. You often work harder and longer than you would at a more established slower moving company, you don't get the perks, and you're constantly worrying about whether or not you'll have a job next month. But it can also be very rewarding when things go well. These are the decisions you must weigh up as an employee when looking for work.

<comment><USER3> I think for a company the size of Tesla it would actually be beneficial to have a well-organized worker council and union through which the employees could negotiate with the board of directors when things like this happen. Often this results in a better solution for everyone.

When the recession hit Germany in 2008 most large automotive companies were also faced with a massive decline in orders and were forced to aggressively cut costs. As employees in these companies are heavily unionized they of course protested against this and the worker council started negotiating with the board of directors. They found a solution by reducing the work hours for a large percentage of their workers (with an accompanied pay cut) instead of firing a smaller percentage of them, which allowed them to retain almost everyone and at the same time reduce costs. When the economy sped up again they were able to just increase the working hours again. This was great for the employees (as they didn't lose their jobs) but also for the companies, because they didn't have to find and train new employees after the crisis was over.

I'm wondering why Tesla isn't considering something like this as I imagine there's a lot of training involved in many jobs at their factory, and it's probably very costly to rehire and retrain new employees when the growth picks up again. Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER4> _I'm wondering why Tesla isn't considering something like this_

I'm thinking it's because they aren't firing people at random. They're letting go their weakest performers. This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades:

[https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of- your-...](https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your- employees-every-year.html)

<comment><USER5> In principle I agree that companies should always get rid of people who are not working up to some defined standard. I disagree that a company should stack rank and get rid of the lowest performers for no other reason than 'because'. Hiring and firing is hard, and very disruptive. If the whole team is better than the standard set by the company, the company should consider itself lucky and not screw it up.

With that said, in large companies it can be very hard to determine just who is below whatever standard is set. Instead it becomes more of a game to be liked by your manager or claim credit for work.

By the way, part of working at or above a standard also includes not being an asshole.

<comment><USER6> I also think stack-ranking is hard or even impossible to get right. The criteria often favor those people that produce visible work and tend to disfavor people that enable said work (think: producing new features vs. maintenance, writing high-profile code vs. doing the review for those, producing visible output vs. mentoring, ...)

So stack ranking (or any kind of ranking by criteria) tends to nudge people into "let's do what the standard expects us to do" instead of "let's do what makes the team, company and product improve."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was an early investor in Tesla (I cashed out a few years ago). I believe in their mission. I wish their success.

But this is hard, simultaneously telling your workforce:

        1) We need to you work harder, better, and faster.
        2) To help you achieve this, we will be reducing your headcount (and thus resources) by 7%.
        3) By the way, if you fail, the company fails.

…But keep your heads up, it's for the planet! At some point these thousands of folks that remain are going to start asking "Is it worth it?" That coupled with legitimate competition from their "entrenched" competitors, 2019 looks to be a very difficult year for Tesla.

I still hope they succeed; I just hope the real, human costs are worth it.

<comment><USER8> I don't believe Tesla will do any good for the planet overall. The only way we can do good is if we sell less individual cars, not more, whether electric or not. Nowhere in Tesla's vision can I see a plan for more electric buses and trains. The USA desperately need a viable train network for the 21st century.

<comment><USER9> They already did good for the planet (as well as humanity).

Any time somebody already planned to replace their car and chooses electric over ICE is a win for the planet. It's also a health improvement for humans living in urban environments.

Tesla might not be selling that many cars, but they are the major reason why established brands like Volkswagen feel pressure to "catch up" and massively invest in new EV lineups. Once those companies have caught up in terms of technology and lineup they will massively outsell anything Tesla is capable of, helping reduce our impact on the climate and our health.

Of course public transport would be even better, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

<comment><USER8> > Any time somebody already planned to replace their car and chooses electric > over ICE is a win for the planet.

This is sadly not really true, especially in China, the biggest electric vehicle market, where most of the electricity is coal-generated. You end up with a car requiring more energy (e.g. more fossil fuels) to produce AND to run.

The situation is not very pretty in the USA yet either, but if you are hopeful in the next decade that the USA will decarbonate their electricity, then maybe you will get a positive return on GHG emissions over your car lifetime.

Electric cars as a means to reduce GHG emissions todaly only make real sense in specific countries with a low-emissions electricity profile, such as France and northern Europe (Sweden etc).

<comment><USER10> Not having the byproduct waste of energy production pumped into populated areas is a _massive_ gain(regardless of whether there is overall increase in usage of GHG).

Waste from coal powered electricity isn't emitted by every consumer in populated areas. It's emitted in a plant which

a) generally has more advanced particular matter capture technology &

b) to reduce emission further, only the place emitting the emissions needs to be upgraded(not the vehicle of every end consumer of that energy) &

c) is more readily replaceable by a cleaner source with minimal disruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reading this I ask myself why does one chooses to work in such a work environment? Are people working there doing it because they feel they're part of a bigger dream? Seems to me like it's very hard to feel this way when you're so replaceable. At the end of the day I guess the work is similar to working in many other car brands, just harder, more hectic and managed more poorly. Are there any special benefits that I'm missing? (I'm really wondering, not trying to put anyone down)

<comment><USER12> I don't work at Tesla. Here is why I would:

I'm on team humanity. In spite all our failings, I want humanity to succeed and reach for the stars. Success means having a livable planet. For idealists like me _who are also realists_ , the _only_ way to get everyone working toward this future is to put it in their self-interest. Anything else just. won't. work.

To dedicate yourself in a practical way to the future of humanity, Tesla's one of the few games around.

<comment><USER13> EVs don't solve the CO2 footprint of cars, the improvement is too small. We must drastically reduce the low-occupancy car miles driven and reverse the car growth trend in developing countries.

<comment><USER14> Your comment makes A LOT of assumptions - in both ways e.g.:

\- you are ignoring the benefits that EVs could bring, as well as synergies with future technology improvements. Radically better battery technology coupled with cheap, affordable solar might be a game changer of unprecedented scale.

\- On the other hand, there's no proof that "drastically reducing the low- occupancy car miles driven" or "reversing the car growth trend" is either feasible or beneficial (how do you achieve the goal? Any measure is likely to have side-effects. I haven't seen any realistic proposal that doesn't have potentially horrible side-effects).

Lastly, let me just tell you that I love it when people living in developed countries know what developing countries should do (which is typically "stay poor", but delivered in a more politically-correct way)

<comment><USER15> > I haven't seen any realistic proposal that doesn't have potentially horrible > side-effects.

What are the horrible side effects of car pools?

<comment><USER14> Car pools are "desired effects", maybe - for sure they aren't "realistic proposals".

There are no horrible side effects to "a healthier population"; however, the prohibition showed us that there may indeed be bad side-effects to banning alcohol consumption & distribution (which could be argued as a measure that leads to a healthier population).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Remember things like this when you're thinking of leaving your job for greener pastures and want to stay out of a sense of loyalty. Your company is not loyal to you and that we drop you the second you're no longer useful to them.

<comment><USER17> > Your company is not loyal to you and that we drop you the second you're no > longer useful to them.

Of course it will.

Why would/should/could it do any differently?

<comment><USER18> Because the inverse seldom seems to be true. Employees are usually expected to be loyal to the corporate cause (or at least give some appearance of loyalty).

During one assessment many years ago I was accused of not being sufficiently "loyal", and I (ah, youth!) responded, "You want loyalty? Get a dog."

Needless to say it didn't go well for a little while until a higher-up manager squashed the whole thing because he agreed with my point of view.

<comment><USER19> > During one assessment many years ago I was accused of not being sufficiently > "loyal", and I (ah, youth!) responded, "You want loyalty? Get a dog."

Never grow up, I'd say.

<comment><USER20> > not being sufficiently "loyal"

25% yearly raise is what I quote for 'loyalty'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These cuts seem much more like an unplanned event and an indication of things not going according to plan than the cuts in the middle of last year. Those seemed like a good way to readjust to the realities of high volume production and get rid of redundancies.

I wonder in which areas of production they've experienced slower progress than what they'd anticipated last year.

<comment><USER22> Cutting the worst 7% of your workforce isn't a terrible outcome. With that much hiring you are bound to find some employees that aren't as good as others.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you announce you're doing significant cuts and that you hope, maybe, to get a tiny profit for next quarter, and then after that things will be _even worse_ , I think you're also going to lose some of the best of you workforce, as they'll start looking around.

<comment><USER22> Depends if they believe in the mission or not. I feel a lot of people that are Tesla people think they are changing the world. They aren't quitting cuz profit margin is "low". They could have already worked for Bank of America doing boring backoff programming if they wanted a stable and profitable job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Stock is -8.15% on pre-market trading.

Normally layoffs are viewed as positive or neutral event, but this paragraph -- " In Q4, preliminary, unaudited results indicate that we again made a GAAP profit, but less than Q3. This quarter, as with Q3, shipment of higher priced Model 3 variants (this time to Europe and Asia) will hopefully allow us, with great difficulty, effort and some luck, to target a tiny profit" does not instill much confidence, I guess.

<comment><USER24> Not sure where you found that figure, I see 0.36% up and no major change in the past 10 days.

<comment><USER25> I show closing trade yesterday of 347.31, currently bid 322.93 by ask 323.59.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We will have a lot more work in 2019 so we must downsize our workforce definitely rings counterintuitive to me.

<comment><USER27> It's because the financial pressure is increasing. High margin car demand is going to come down. Tesla made a small profit on those. Now comes the low margin cars. If Tesla wants to be profitable on those, costs will need to be cut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Key point is towards the end:

"As a result of the above, we unfortunately have no choice but to reduce full- time employee headcount by approximately 7%"

<comment><USER29> If you are experienced with media messages enough, you always start reading such messages from the end. I most cases introduction is totally meaningless and is used to make the message polite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why would you grow staff by 30% just to fire 7% of people next year?

<comment><USER31> Rank and Yank. Hire lots of people and get rid of the people that aren't performing.

Its great when you're a high performing company that everyone wants to work for, doesn't work if you aren't doing well and people have an extra reason to avoid you (see GE, GS right now)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> First 10% of SpaceX, and now 7% of Tesla. Wonder how much of those 7% are SolarCity folks.

<comment><USER33> Hopefully a lot? The SolarCity acquisition seemed shoddy to begin with.

<comment><USER34> I don't know how SolarCity makes any money. The last time I looked into purchasing panels from them, it was 20 years to _break even_ on your purchase. What a joke.

<comment><USER35> Where's the joke in that? You buy the installation on a 30 year fixed loan and reducere your power Bill tomorrow.

To compare, what is the "break even" point of buying a property and renting it out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The interesting tradeoff seems to be investments in future models & infrastructure vs. expense of current workforce. Tesla is investing in developing 4 new models, production capacity for model Y, building 2 more gigafactories, building 1,000s of superchargers globally, building capacity for solar roof production, and I don't know where they are with powerwall.

Once to 10k is out, we can size it up, but my guess is that all that capital spend is greater than the cost of employing the 7%. Would be interesting to see the math that went behind the decision.

<comment><USER37> > _Tesla is investing in developing 4 new models, production capacity for > model Y, building 2 more gigafactories, building 1,000s of superchargers > globally, building capacity for solar roof production_

Tesla _claims_ to be doing all this, but the financials say different. Their CapEx has not increased in many quarters (it actually decreased at one point recently). So can you explain to us how you think they are doing all this? Where does the money come from?

<comment><USER38> Exactly. I'm really worried about the service and supercharging infrastructure. In the last year (to q3-18, q4 stats aren't out), we've gone from one service center per ~800 cars to one service center ~1200 cars. We've gone from a supercharger per ~30 cars, to a supercharger per ~40 cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What I don't understand is why Tesla has to do this - wouldn't it be better just to run at a loss for a few more years like most other tech companies do, deliver a better high tech car for a while and then start to reduce cost once self driving comes in?

I mean the whole premise of Uber existing is based on this idea and I see Tesla as being potentially even more profitable (and more likely to have working self driving vehicles)...

<comment><USER25> Only if people will continue to lend you large sums of cash required. Run out of cash and it's off to bankruptcy court.

There's good evidence that Tesla was weeks away from this outcome in the fall and IIRC they have a large loan payment due this spring.

If they can't meet it (from operating cash flows or further borrowing), they can't keep operating. There, they are risking ownership and control of the whole company rather than the jobs of 1/14th of the company.

Minor point, but since you included it: I wager: full self-driving is still a decade or more away.

<comment><USER37> > _There's good evidence that Tesla was weeks away from this outcome in the > fall and IIRC they have a large loan payment due this spring._

Good evidence? Elon himself said it.

And yet outsiders denied it then, and are _still_ denying it. This company is in a cash-crunch.

<comment><USER25> I agree that Elon said it. His credibility is not the highest, and I phrased it that way because there was additional outside correlated data and not just "because Elon said it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Tesla starts building Gigafactory in China, expects to begin production in the second half in 2019. Also they start for hiring locals[1]. Is this related?

[1][https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/06/teslas-china-factory-set- to-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/06/teslas-china-factory-set-to-begin- production-late-next-year.html)

<comment><USER37> > _Tesla starts building Gigafactory in China_

Tesla didn't start to build anything. The Chinese government put them on notice because there was no work done. So, of course, Elon flies by himself to China to put on a grand opening show and says they'll start production in a year.

How is it this community, who prides itself on being so smart, can fall for this?

No car factory has ever been built that fast. How can it be in production in less than a year? Where is the money coming from? After the disastrous Model 3 launch, are there still people on the planet that think Musk knows more than the incumbents about building a factory? Remember 3D assembly lines and robots so fast you'll need a strobe light to see them?

It's astonishing that people are still buying into this story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The lay-off is small in context. It's less than a quarter of their prior year headcount growth, and much lower than what Detroit Auto has experienced. Auto companies routinely let broad swaths of employees go. Big doesn't mean safe.

It still is terrible for people who have everything to Tesla over then past few years. At least they are leaving for a hot job market.

<comment><USER42> > At least they are leaving for a hot job market.

Auto workers in Northern California?

<comment><USER41> Lots of autonomous startups, and auto divisions in larger tech companies. Most mainstream auto companies have a presence here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Knew from the start that there were some cuts coming, but then it was really hopeful until the 7% figure dropped.

I wish people laid off good luck.

</comment><comment><USER44> They're not profitable. With different leadership tesla itself could be maybe. What a shitshow though

<comment><USER45> Tesla is profitable.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019048/tesla- earnings-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019048/tesla-earnings- elon-musk-revenue-profit-share-value-report)

<comment><USER46> Retained earnings are in the many negative billions.</comment></comment></comment>


NYC Coworking Spaces map - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zmdWUCzN2nS8.kElcWpjR4dAA

<comment><AUTHOR> I put together a simple map of all coworking spaces in NYC I could find. I also separated out some of the spaces that are trade specific, such as artistic leaning ones.

Other findings include average price is $425 for an individual desk in a shared space. Brooklyn is conspicuously bereft of spaces, even though it is the home of many in NYC tech.

The map is editable, please feel free to make any changes necessary/add any new spaces not pictured.</comment>


Why brevity matters - <AUTHOR> http://discoveringio.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-brevity-matters.html

<comment><USER2> This is the first time Safari Reader has been useful.</comment>


'Quantum' bounds not so quantum after all - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-07-quantum-bounds.html <comment><USER2> This article nearly pegs my bogometer. It reads more like numerology than science. Yes, it is true that quantum bounds "arise naturally" from quantum theory, but what matters is not _that_ they arise but _how_ they arise, and on this the article is completely mute. The mere fact that you can coax the same numbers out of a classical experiment is completely meaningless. What matters is _how_ you coax those numbers out, and in particular, whether the manner in which you coaxed those numbers out involved a quantum effect or simply manipulating unconstrained degrees of freedom to get the result you want. There may be something interesting going on here, but there is no way to tell from reading this article. If you really could get a quantum bound out of a classical system in a non-bogus way, that would be _big_ news, the biggest breakthrough in physics in decades. I'll give you long odds against.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. From the discussion section of their paper:

"This shows that quantum correlations can be universally recreated with classical systems _at the expense of some extra resources_ " (Emphasis added)

I might be wrong, but judging from Fig. 1 in the paper, it seems these "extra resources" involved are exponential, which is exactly what we would expect since we already know arbitrary quantum circuits can be simulated classically with exponential slowdown! But I guess the setup is interesting in of itself --from an experimentalist point of view at least.

<comment><USER2> That is _exactly_ the sentence that I was about to point out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Skimmed the PDF, it seems like the point of this paper is just to show that yes, classical systems can (with memory, e.g. the reference [https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.3650](https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.3650)) simulate quantum ones, and thus finding "characteristic quantum numbers" shouldn't make one immediately suspect something quantum is going on. In the discussion it's like the ultimate nitpick: "The characteristic trait of QT rely on the fact that the quantum bounds are achieved _without_ employing extra resources such as memory. Therefore, the principles needed to fully derive QT (in the spirit of Refs. [33–37]) should account for that."

There are some people who find the concept of quantum physics philosophically displeasing and try however they can to ignore all the experimental evidence and say we're really in a classical universe. This isn't a case of one of those.

</comment><comment><USER5> I quit after the abstract. No one ever said something was quantum because the number 2 * sqrt(2) appeared, kind of like no one really thinks that something is a circle just because you can coax pi out of it.

Now, if they actually violated Bell's inequality in a non-quantum experiment in which Bell's inequality were actually applicable, that would be huge news (and grounds to try to confirm the results). But finding a _number_ that violates it out of context isn't news at all.

tl:dr 2.78 3.14. Hence this post is quantum and circular.

<comment><USER6> I take your point about this paper, but if pi shows up, I would absolutely suspect a circle to be involved.

<comment><USER7> There are many ways to arrive at Pi which themselves are quite divorced from "a circle", since you could arrive at the conclusion in a one dimensional Universe.

It's true that if you were to _graph_ these equations you would see circles, but that is besides the point - a one dimensional being wouldn't be able to understand your graph, but could still read you the digits of pi.

[http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/expresspi....](http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/expresspi.html)

<comment><USER6> The first one there is derived from a definition of a circle: x^2 + y^2 = c. Most of the rest use an arctangent. Only the last one is not obviously related to a circle.

We are in 3 dimensions but we use higher dimensional math all the time, so I don't know why a 1D creature would be so constrained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> semi-extrinsic Actual paper: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.250404](http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.250404)

Preprint: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.08144](http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.08144)

Since this is published in PRL, it's been through some fairly stringent peer review. So I'll be mildly sceptical until someone wiser weighs in.

Paging Dr. Aaronson, Dr. Aaronson to the blogosphere.

<comment><USER8> PRL does a fine job of checking scientific soundness, but their assessment of importance/notability is unimpressive, like most processes involving a handful of humans. (I've published there, and it was far from my most notable result.) Lots of boring stuff passes the filter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've once heard a statement that polarization can only have a quantum explanation. The effect is that when you have two polarizers at right angles, no light gets through, but when you insert _another_ polarizer at, say, 45 degrees to the others, some light gets through all the polarizers. The thing is, classical EM wave theory predicts the exact same result.

<comment><USER10> You raise an interesting point, and you're right that quantum treatment is not necessary in the regime where many light particles pass through the circuit, in which case we can talk about light as a continuous thing, that can be infinitely subdivided. A quantum treatment of polarization is only required in the single-photon regime.

Specifically consider an experiment where a light beam passes through three polarizing filters: first a horizontally-polarizing lens H, then a diagonally polarizing lens D, and finally a vertically polarizing lens V.

         photons </comment></comment><comment>>  H  ---->   D  -->   V  ->

The result of this "triple filtering" for a beam of light (consisting of gazillions of photons, modelled as a continuous wave) can be explained as the wave amplitude being "projected" along the polarization axis of each lens. At each polarization step the projection angle is 45 degrees, so the wave intensity is reduced by cos(45)=1/sqrt(2) which is equivalent to a reduction in optical power of 1/2\. The power of the beam that passes through all three lenses is 1/4 of the power leaving the first lens. No need for quantum, since we model the beam of light as a continuous quantity that can be infinitely subdivided.

If we repeat the same experiment sending one photon at a time however, we can't say "the photon divides" since by definition a photon is the smallest possible quantum of light. There is not such thing as 1/sqrt(2) of a photon. Basically, when a H-polarized photon reaches a D-polarizing lens, a classical physicists is forced to pick whether the photon goes through, or is reflected—the option "partially goes through" is not allowed. It's only in this regime that the "photon is a wave" explanation fails.

The quantum explanation uses a probabilistic approach and explains the probability of a H-polarized photon going through the D-polarizing lens is 1/2 and subsequently the (now D-polarized photon) going through the third V-polarizing lens is also 1/2 so the overall probability of passing through all three lenses is 1/4.

<comment><USER9> When considering a single photon the classical explanation certainly fails. However, this is different from the claim that an effect perceived at macro levels cannot be explained by classical theory and only by quantum mechanics.

The paper's result sounds to be along similar lines - claiming that a certain number "could only have come from quantum theory" while classical physics perfectly well yields the same number.

By virtue of being a super-theory of classical mechanics, all phenomena _are_ quantum phenomena with quantum explanations, so that's not what is being talked about here.</comment></comment>


For the New Team Lead: The First Six Things You Should Know - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarequalityconnection.com/2011/03/for-the-new-team-lead-the-first-six-things-you-should-know/ <comment><USER2> I was looking forward to this article based on the title, but I found it short on substance. It boiled down to "Communicate" which is the generic advice for any management-style role.

<comment><AUTHOR> just realized you gave one single word to hit those six things.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu phone - <AUTHOR> I've placed an order for an ubuntu phone. An Aquaris e5. I dont even have it yet and im feeling a bit of buyer's remorse. Mainly because there is no Whatsapp or Uber client for it. I can't find working ports either.<p>Do you know of work around? can you dual boot it to cyanogen? <comment><USER2> You can try [https://sublevel.net](https://sublevel.net) on it as well as other web based apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried the Uber mobile website [http://m.uber.com](http://m.uber.com) ?

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't you send it back within 15 days if you don't like it?

</comment><comment><USER5> TIL people have very different priorities to me when it comes to buying a smartphone.

<comment><USER6> Can you explain what you mean by that?

<comment><USER5> Having second thoughts about a smartphone platform because a specific taxi app and a specific IM app aren't available on it seems a little ridiculous to me, coming from someone who has been reading HackerNews for at least a year.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of people choose a platform based on these very criteria.

What makes you choose a platform over an other?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JS web applications: parse user content on server or client side? - <AUTHOR> In an Angular/React type application, where should user content parsing be done? By that I mean adding links, images, youtube videos, markdown, etc.
I can see the benefit of doing it on the server side, if you're serving from an API. You can generate the html and cache the response. The big problem with that though, as far as I can tell, is you have to render that html on the client side. Which means your server side parsing has to be very secure, or else your SPA will just render whatever the API gives it causing potential XSS issues.
Doing it on the client side happens every time and is less efficient (I guess) .. but presumably it would be easier to make sure content correctly gets parsed as an html element or textnode. <comment><USER2> Hey,

Every time I have to parse user content, I make it o both. Client and Server side.</comment>


Apple Wounded Flash. Google May Kill It. - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/app-economy/2010/02/23/apple-wounded-flash-google-may-kill-it

<comment><USER2> To be honest, I don't believe Apple have even wounded Flash.

Firstly, the iPhone/iPad aren't exactly dominating the market , and it's likely that iPhone market-share will suffer a huge blow to Android/Windows7Mobile over the next year anyway (who'd want to pay premium prices for a tablet which is severely limited). iPhone's only took off because Windows Mobile was rubbish, and Job's acted as though they invented multi- touch (despite a single gesture being the only use of multitouch for ages). These days though, the competition has definitely caught up.

Also, its quite clear that Job's is hellbent on destroying flash only because Adobe competes directly against Apple's main products (Lightroom vs Aperture, After effects vs motion, etc). By trying to get people away from Adobe, it helps increase Apple's market-share against Windows too (since Adobe's tools are the most commonly used in the multimedia market on Windows). I think we can safely say therefore since they are competing that we can't believe what Job's says. Safari crashes when flash crashes because unlike Google, Apple didn't have to foresight to design Safari properly. This wont be a problem once Chrome takes off and Firefox is improved.

Either way, the main problem for killing flash is that there doesn't appear to be GOOD tools to create HTML5/JS/AJAX/PHP/SVG applications/games. For flash, you drop a few images in a view, set keyframing and woot. For svg/html5/etc? You pull out your code editor and start messing around. Flash is easy enough for high school students to create, whereas other standards mostly require a degree. You also forget that flash is an open standard, that Android is getting Flash this year and that Google can index Flash now.

Sorry, unless Apple or Google develop a tool to replace Adobe's Flash Creation tool, I don't think Flash will be killed off so easy. Yes Google may kill of Flash for video playback, but Flash is so much more than that (furthermore, Google don't appear to have much interest in destroying flash anyway).</comment>


Ask HN: how do you export/share all your saved stories? - <AUTHOR>

I'm enough of a hacker to obtain them myself, but it seems like a typical task so I'm asking: is there a 'packaged' way to either make your 'saved stories' HN page public or simply export the list of URLs and titles to text file / browser bookmarks / delicious / whatever sharable? <comment><USER2> I believe ColinWright recently posted a notice that he had written scripts for that. If I needed it, I would check his recent submissions. If he has been too prolific for that to hit paydirt, I would search HN with something like "I have scripts for that" "saved stories" and ColinWright. (Still nothing? Refine the search. But you knew that.)

(I am on an Android and HN gives my browser serious indigestion. I don't happen to love you deeply enough to go through the torture it would involve in finding the link for you. You will have to do your own searching. Sorry.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Found it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060631>

Still surprised that this is not an officially supported workflow, though...

<comment><USER2> It used to be. I don't know when or why it stopped working. Fixing bugs on hn is not a high priority for pg. Nor do I see any reason that bugs which are merely inconvenient should be.

Glad you found it. Thanks for posting the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How can you save stories on HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> By upvoting. Upvoted links are listed under 'saved stories' link on your profile page. Hence the name.</comment></comment>


Make meaning your vocational goal - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2019/07/why-you-should-stop-trying-to-be-happy-at-work <comment><USER3> I've found I can really dig in to any task no matter how trivial, offered to me at work and get enjoyment out of it. The work part of work is the funnest part. The issue the makes work unpleasant is PEOPLE and the inherent complications that accompany that. Managing up and managing down. Politics, poor leadership, meetings to plan other meetings, open offices, promotions based on allegiance instead of skill, office parties that are a pretense, I could go on etc, etc. If I could just work...that would be glorious, but people always seem to get in the way. Maybe like Sartre I'm a misanthrope and 'hell is other people' for me. This emphasis on 'teamwork' over creative individuality and self-expression these days really just bugs me. It's also early and I'm just drinking my first cup of coffee.

<comment><USER4> Remote work is your friend.

<comment><USER5> The meetings won't go away, you'll just have to join them over Skype/Hangouts - with shitty audio where you're guessing what people in the room are saying half of the time.

However, I think that, for people who really despise meetings and all the coordination with other people, startups are a place to be. There's just way less stakeholders there to allign for any given initiative, plus the founders are super-conscious about wasting time and money, so they minimize devs involvment in meetings that could be handled solely by management/product people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with the focus on the work part as useful - due to the focus of society. A high majority of human effort and focused work is non-useful to a singular goal of evolving humanity, and therefore not fulfilling. Repurposing a society solely built around evolving humanity - where each person's individual actions contribute to a collective improvement would solve this issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> My opinion: meaning comes from religion and philosophy, not a job. Do a reasonably good job at work and take your career seriously, but don't think it's something that it's not.

<comment><USER8> Honest Q: where does that leave me as an atheist?

As one such, the only meaning I can find in life is "it's about other people, and sentient creatures. Treat them well"

There is nothing else.

<comment><USER7> Well then you have to figure out what treating someone well is. Which probably takes a lifetime and more of living and studying religion and philosophy. And then a lifetime of getting yourself to actually do it.

<comment><USER9> I would argue that treating someone well doesn't require a lifetime of book study.

Rather it requires the opposite, to see the person fully as what they are _right now_, and to respond accordingly without a trace of ideology. To do anything else is to be engaging with your idea of the person, and your own idea of what is "good", rather than what actually is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr: happiness is fleeting. Seek meaning in work. It leads to fulfilment. People will take less pay and work a job longer if it is meaningful.

<comment><USER11> Abaolutely but with a limit. Dont seek your life meaning in work, try to have a life outside of work as well.

<comment><USER12> Different strokes for different folks. Some extraordinary people poured everything into their work. Might not be for you or me, but doesn't mean it's the wrong way to live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The unspoken prerequisite to all of the advice here is to have a job where you can spend a nontrivial amount of time doing things that feel deeply meaningful to you. I doubt most people have that.

<comment><USER14> Anyone can seek meaning in their work, regardless of the circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The title is a little bit clickbait. What she's really getting at is more like—the way to be happy at work is by finding meaning in your work.

<comment><USER16> Besides that, the whole article feels like a collection of platitudes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I sometimes see this traditional, but somehow unpopular opinion, that is only required meaning of work is to bring bread home.

Meaning in life, however, comes from different things: family, spare time. It is called thus work-life balance.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like just another capitalist shill piece where they tell you that happiness will only be achieved through finding "meaning" in your work instead of being well paid, with benefits, good management, and good coworkers.

<comment><USER19> I'm reminded of a CEO who, when our small consultancy was acquired by the Wal- Mart of our industry, insisted that the acquisition would benefit us all because we'd have "more cool projects." He never said anything like "you will all be paid more"!

<comment><USER20> He must have hawt wife. I envy him so much lol. If only I could be a CEO. Just think of it from the girls angle lol. Damn my life is such a disappointment lol. May as well eh whatever lol

<comment><USER21> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it a ton, and we ban accounts that do that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> pi-squared This is shifting the problem - there is no meaning so whatever you say to yourself will be your meaning. It's the same as deciding to be happy - <USER2> moment you decide to be happy, you are happy. Done.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well I've always been happy at work. So I don't think happiness is fleeting for everyone. "Work" is really work if you like what your doing.</comment>