Ask HN: UK Startups – Are You Thinking of Leaving the UK Because of Brexit? - <AUTHOR> UK Expat here living in Munich.
Anecdotal, but many companies here (startups and corps) are getting more and more CVs from EU staff of Tech startups in London. Not sure if it's the same in Berlin or other EU hubs. Also wondering if UK citizens would move over to gain extra rights of EU movement when here during the transition. <comment><USER3> Currently developing a free app for UK citizens to relearn medieval methods of subsistence living after the imminent collapse of the economy and our National Health Service. Pro users will be able to get access to horse-and-cart-focused GPS, gamified witch-finding tutorials, an advanced plague management app and outbreak tracker, and an advanced AI-assisted voice app (voiced by Simon Pegg) that shows you how to cure just about anything with leeches. I predict business will be booming. If any VC funders are interested, please send a pigeon to my homestead in Brighton.

<comment><USER4> Do you support IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers)?

<comment><USER5> I haven't been following development too closely; what's the maximum packet size of an unladen swallow these days?

<comment><USER6> African or European?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a significant potential issue that might put off certain types of tech company considering the UK though only indirectly related to Brexit: encryption.

The EU is making motions towards privacy protection (see [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/19/eu- outlaw...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/19/eu-outlaw- backdoors-new-data-privacy-proposals-uk-government-encrypted-communications- whatsapp) amongst other similar proposals) where the UK under May and Rudd seems to be wanting to move towards the China model (if the government can't read it, it is illegal).

If that intent remains then once we split there will be a stark difference that will be of concern to any companies who handle (or intends to handle) private data & communications as it will put off their potential userbase.

I doubt this will make existing companies (including startups) move right now, or in the foreseeable future, but it may make brand new startups consider forming elsewhere or existing EU companies think twice if they were considering some form of a UK branch.

There are other concerns with regard to the unclear future of free trade which will have an effect too. But you have to consider the extra hassle of setting up elsewhere: an entrepreneur living in the UK will experience greater "startup friction" trying to setup elsewhere (as they'll have to move at least some of their life) which might be more disadvantageous in the short term.

If enough technical people move for similar reasons then we'll see a skills shortage that will put tech startups off, but that is a much longer term matter.

I note that you mention "EU staff" not "UK staff" \- if you are meaning to specifically exclude UK workers with that wording then the growth of people wanting to move may be due to the apparent glut of racist behaviour in the few months following the vote.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been thinking about it for a bit. I'm not affected by Brexit (Commonwealth citizen), but my partner will be (EU/Italian).

I think it's going to be a bit overblown. It's easier for EU tech employees to move their lives, than it is for London tech companies to up and move elsewhere. Because of this, I theorise that there will be an intermittent period where there will be a labor shortage in London, due to lack of EU workers to supplement the demand in London tech. This will balance out with time, with EU companies moving more of their offices out of London.

I think we have started to see this already, at my gig, we have found it quite difficult to get decent candidates through the door, and anecdotally a lot of our better candidates have been from the EU. We are about 50% Londoners, 30% EU, 20% World.

<comment><USER9> I'm a UK citizen contracting for London investment banks by day, and bootstrapping evenings and weekends. I'm looking forward to the London labour shortage. Regulatory driven work keeps piling up in banks, Brexit will only add to that, and short supply in the dev market will send contract rates through the roof. And if we get a really hard Brexit, and EU citizens are compelled to leave, then contracting day rates will be stratospheric!

<comment><USER10> I'm not at all criticising the parent post for the opportunity that they see in Brexit.

However, increased costs from complying with new legal systems and a shortage of skilled labour pushing up prices are two ways in which the average person will experience Brexit as a bad thing.

(Though personally I think the economic costs are not the most important aspects of Brexit.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> (EU national in London) Not at all. I think the doomsday threats are overblown and the negotiating parties will reach a mutually beneficial deal at the 11th hour.

Much more concerned about the possibility of the current Labour party gaining power actually.

<comment><USER12> This is wishful thinking, to put it mildly. What on earth concerns you about a labour government?

<comment><USER13> Aside from tolerance for Antisemitism, being soft on Russia, picking and choosing on human rights (e.g. Syria), and appealing to base instincts on immigration (Eastern Europeans are keeping your wages down), what's so bad about Corbyn-led Labour?

<comment><USER12> Oh I see. It's Corbyn's right-wing credentials that put you off him. Of course.

<comment><USER13> I'm neither left nor right. Corbyn manages to bring together the worst of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> (EU national living in UK). I was ambivalent on working at the headquarters (here in Birmingham) or in remote, and actually started looking for a house here.

Thankfully I waited until after the referendum. The ensuing social, political, and economical confusion was convincing enough. I bought a house not far from my hometown, somewhere in southern Europe. I'll move there after some major renovation, some time next year.

I might be biased, but I realized in the few years I lived in the UK that the services, health care, and general quality of life are overall better down there than up here. I obviously have only anecdotal proof of that.

On a positive note, it has been very instructive so far to live in the country where this is happening, and especially in an area that voted in favor of leaving.

<comment><USER15> > I might be biased, but I realized in the few years I lived in the UK that > the services, health care, and general quality of life are overall better > down there than up here. I obviously have only anecdotal proof of that.

You said you live in Birmingham. It's not a city known for it's fantastic services, health care, and quality of life. The UK is a very varied place in all of these metrics. I've known and worked with many EU nationals who've come to the UK, lived and worked in one place for a few years, and formed a strong opinion on things. You might not have a complete perspective.

<comment><USER14> Well, that clears the doubt on whether I'm biased or not ;-) Birmingham is the only UK city I've lived in.

Still, Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK, so its low quality of life affects a large number of people. Moving to a place like York or Oxford is infeasible for many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll move to London in about one month from Berlin, because YOLO and they will have a deal anyways.

In addition, those Brexit fears are overblown. UK leaves EU and apparently it's doomsday. Did it ever matter to anyone who considered a move there, that US/Canada/Norway/Israel/Australia/NZ/Switzerland/.. has never been part thereof? Was it a consideration in your decision? I bet it was not.

<comment><USER17> The key difference is exactly that those have never been part of the EU.

The problem isn't so much that the UK is leaving the EU but that the current government as well as other prominent Brexit figures don't have the foggiest idea how they're going to proceed. They have neither vision nor plan (other than "strong and stable", whatever that's supposed to mean) and that's quite a bit unsettling.

The UK hasn't been conducting its own trade negotiations for decades now. They neither have the time nor the personnel required for having trade agreements in place by the time the UK is supposed to leave the EU if everything goes according to plan. It's not even clear if the UK can - as is commonly stated - easily fall back to WTO rules in case no agreement comes to pass because while the UK is member of the WTO that membership currently is contingent on its EU membership.

So, while Brexit might not spell doomsday for the UK this completely haphazard approach of dealing with it doesn't exactly bode well either.

<comment><USER16> > They have neither vision nor plan (other than "strong and stable", whatever > that's supposed to mean)

Sounds exactly what my current government (Merkel) is successfully doing for years now.

<comment><USER18> The difference is that Merkel's main plan is to keep Germany plodding along more or less the path it's already on while May's goal is to head full speed off the path they're own, into the woods, and hoping that they'll find a new path on the other side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anectdotally I've heard of ARM an loosing entire team to Brexit. And being forced to open up a micro office in the teams country of origin.

Brexit is real, big players are feeling the pain.

<comment><USER20> If their loyalty is so shallow, let them go, train up some people that aren't so fickle.

<comment><USER21> Loyalty? Why would anybody be loyal to a country that's using them as pawns in negotiations, that's filled their lives in the UK with so much uncertainty and stress?

Loyalty is hard earned, and easily lost. We've (the UK) decided to throw away people's loyalty.

<comment><USER20> But come on though, the flipside of bringing in skilled migrants is that it enables employers/elites to maintain the status quo of not investing in the futures of British people - unless of course those people are members of the ruling class, in which case their entrance to Oxbridge, tasty internships etc. is more or less guaranteed.

Though the left tried to stifle this fact for years, it's now generally accepted that immigration has suppressed the wages of native British workers. Surely we should be more concerned about solving any skills shortage by training up the people that are here already? Or should we just throw them on the scrapheap and import cheap migrants? I don't often get roused to anger by debates like this but when it seems like immigrants are being privileged over native Brits it does seem like a pretty massive pisstake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That whole region, from Grenoble France through Zurich and into Munich is also just really hot right now. Tens of thousands of world class talented engineers and recent science grads. Coupled with the alpine idyll locales. the general atmosphere of Gemütlichkeit. Who wouldn't want to relocate there! Kinda longing for it myself on this cloudy NYC morn ;)

<comment><USER20> Personally I'm a bit scared of France and Germany what with recent terrorist attacks and mass immigration. Also these areas aren't cheap and Switzerland has a reputation of being pretty closed to outsiders. London obviously has terrorism problems also, but none of the places you mention come close to it in terms of global repute.

<comment><USER23> > Personally I'm a bit scared of France and Germany what with recent terrorist > attacks and mass immigration.

In 2017, 14 injured and 3 dead due to terrorists according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_France#21st_century)

In contrast, 329 people were killed on French roads in _June_ 2017 (3469 killed in 2016 total) ([https://www.thelocal.fr/20170724/france-road-deaths- in-june-...](https://www.thelocal.fr/20170724/france-road-deaths-in-june- up-154-percent-on-previous-year))

Your risk assessment is v.poor.

<comment><USER24> 2015 and 2016 in France averaged at over about 120 people killed in terrorist attacks per year. That's of course less than people killed in traffic, but it's still an extra threat to you that is (can be) constantly on your mind.

<comment><USER25> The absolute murder count in France is 10 times terrorism figure per year.

The murder _rate_ is less than a third that in the US and twice that in Germany. Are these really levels of threat that people worry about.

<comment><USER24> I'm guessing a lot of murders go down among gangsters and within bad neighborhoods. Terrorism, on the other hand, deliberately targets places where middle class (and tourists) congregate.

<comment><USER20> Exactly, all you have to do is read about what really went down in the Bataclan, and which the French government tried to suppress. Only for those with a strong stomach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not at all. Especially if the free trade and free movement agreements stay in place, or are expanded (EFTA, Schengen). These are not the same thing as the EU.

In fact, smart businesses will new open offices in UK (outside of EU), just to hedge their bets on the future. Buy low, sell high.

<comment><USER10> The UK is not in Schengen now, and it would be perverse to try and join, or become associate members of, Schengen after Brexiting.

Being in the EFTA would mean continuing to obey EU legislation, continued freedom of movement and paying money into the pot, ie. everything the Brexit campaign was against.

So, no, those agreements will likely not remain in place. The EU wil not agree to give the UK all the benefits of EU membership without the costs.

There may be other benefits to Brexit, but it will not be the case that Brexit will be good because the UK will negotiate a deal that, of itself, is better than the current deal the UK gets.

<comment><USER27> > Being in the EFTA would mean continuing to obey EU legislation, continued > freedom of movement and paying money into the pot, ie. everything the Brexit > campaign was against.

Not everything. For some people it was about symbolic sovereignty, or even about the legal structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile in Spain... lots of companies are leaving Catalonia for exactly the same reason. The fear to be excluded from the EU and the permanent feeling of uncertainty

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/catalans-to-defy-spanish- court-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/catalans-to-defy-spanish-court-in- push-for-independence-1507285158)

In the last two weeks around 400 big and medium companies (national and international) changed their tax domicile from Barcelona to other Spanish cities (Valencia, Malaga, Bilbao or Madrid). Including the biggest catalonian banks, and six of the seven catalonian companies in Ibex 35.

Could happen the same in UK? Nobody knows, but when it starts other companies will follow. No matter what they say now. If we can learn something from this smaller simulation of brexit is that money hates troubles and can run faster than politicians.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not because of Brexit itself but more because of how incompetently they're handling it thus far and the implications of that:

1\. No certainty that our customers will remain here or that they'll keep buying. We're seeing larger customers slow down spending.

2\. No certainty that we can hire the right people from wherever we need to.

3\. Little hope that the government will act in a pragmatic, pro-business manner (in fact, red-tape and the corporate tax burden is all but certain to rise for anyone who's not a large multi-national). HMRC (the tax man) are on some crusade to impose some MTD (Making Tax Digital) program and some other disasters on business, tightening up rules on the use of independent contractors, etc. This is not the government showing flexibility, this is the government going about business as usual whilst squabbling over what Brexit means and leaving the economy unattended.

<comment><USER30> Making Tax Digital's aim is to massively simplify tax returns (including VAT returns) for both individuals and businesses. It's whole aim it reduce time it takes dealing with taxes and give a live overview of tax obligations rather than waiting until the end of the financial year (or longer) to find out what you owe.

I don't understand how any of that can be considered contentious especially as it's been pushed back to beyond April 2019 for roll out?

<comment><USER29> Quarterly 'summary' accounts for small businesses that will almost certainly require software and incur penalties if made late or with mistakes.

Asking your average market stall trader or a small retail shop to now require that they keep their management accounts up-to-date quarterly (when at the moment it needs to be done annually and the average accountant charges several hundred ££) is why its contentious.

Edit: here is a short summary from CIoT: [https://www.tax.org.uk/policy- technical/technical-news/makin...](https://www.tax.org.uk/policy- technical/technical-news/making-tax-digital-vat-main-issues-consideration)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> No. The rhetoric and threats are off the scale for both sides at the moment. What gets missed in the (profitable) news din is that UK Gov has all but guaranteed EU folk can stay in the country as before.

This has been reiterated since day one. EU citizens will have a right to stay and UK Gov will do absolutely everything they can to see that through. The only reason they cannot put it to paper yet is they are waiting for reciprocacy from the EU. Once the EU agrees to provide UK in EU with exactly the same rights as the UK is offering them, it will go down in law.

There is so much bluster and threats from all sides. It takes a bit of digging and close examination to see what really is being said and offered.

<comment><USER32> > Once the EU agrees to provide UK in EU with exactly the same rights as the > UK is offering them

Will EU do this though? Seems strange to allow UK both to be in and out of the EU at the same time.

<comment><USER9> There are 3.2M EU citizens in the UK, and 1.2M UK citizens in the EU. So it makes sense for the EU27 to offer reciprocity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The government and companies based in the UK always complain about skills shortages and how the free movement of people helps to alleviate that problem. They've been saying this for the last 25 years and have done nothing to ease the situation by investing in training or education. Its just easier for them to import staff.

I feel London's a bit like Rome or Athens in as much as were a rich elite living off the back of a massive pool of slave labour, or cheap imported labour in this case.

Brexit is only going to have a short term effect on the tech sector, we'll still let highly skilled labour in and probably give them generous tax incentives to stay personally and at a corporate level.

</comment><comment><USER34> Anecdotal evidence and mass media will lead you astray, best to look at the numbers. VC investment in the UK since Brexit is ~$2.5B, about 2x that of Germany and 3x France.

<comment><USER35> This is true. Follow the money, ignore media noise. And if you follow the money it seems that a lot of investors are cautiously optimistic about brexit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have just moved to Berlin a month ago. If you have no family/other commitments in UK, I feel the threshold of reasons to leave UK has been crossed already.

</comment><comment><USER37> Along those lines, I have always wondered why tech salaries I see advertised for the UK seem so depressed (£40k-£50k) compared to the USA (typically > $100k). Is it because of EU labor mobility? If so, will Brexit push tech salaries up to USA levels?

<comment><USER38> In general cost of living is lower in London than major US cities like SF, NYC, Boston. For example, the cost of rent in SF is on average 30.96& higher than in London. Groceries 62% higher!

[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA)

<comment><USER39> The numbers look less impressive with Boston, which isn't a particularly cheap city. [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=United+States&city1=London&city2=Boston%2C+MA)

<comment><USER38> You're right, they aren't as impressive. But as a current resident in Boston, I'd say that this isn't my reality. See my comment below for details, but outside of petrol, which is criminally cheap here, everything else at least feels more expensive than in the UK.

Internet and TV ~1.5x as expensive. Mobile phone plan ~2x as expensive. Simple things like fresh fruit and veg at least 1.5x. Utilities ~2x as expensive.

<comment><USER39> I mean, I feel like part of that is that part of that is how small a part of metro Boston Boston itself is. I live outside of the city and the city is crazy expensive to me. I haven't spent time in the UK though.

Although, that said, we can keep going down the line and look at cities like Raleigh or Austin where wages are not that much lower than here and prices are way lower. Definitely have been tempted by that at times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> (UK resident on a Tier 1 Tech Nation visa)

I'm waiting to see what happens. It's already done a number on my relative wealth through the pound dropping, but just going to ride it out for a bit and see how dumb the govt. is in the negotiations.

As others have said, London is so ridiculously international and concentrated with tech experience and that eases my mind a bit, but if they do crash out and things go tits-up I'll seriously look at leaving.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yep I'm thinking of heading to Europe and to be living there on Brexit day. I reckon it'll be a reasonable time for the EU to say "OK, whoever was over here then can stay". I haven't decided where to go yet though.

<comment><USER42> Heading to Europe from where?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wouldn't consider it now since I'm kind of settled here (house ownership, kids, etc...). Also, the London scene is so international and diverse that I don't think I'd feel at home anywhere else now.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yes, not just because of brexit, but it was what tipped it over the edge for us. Have a few friends in tech who have left UK over the last year, more are planning to leave. We are not moving to Europe though, but to the SF area. We'll keep the R&D here for now (we are a deep tech company), and see how things with the negotiations pan out.

</comment><comment><USER45> Not the in the UK, but in New York. I was planning to move my company and myself back to the EU where I'm from, and London specifically. An English speaking country is a must for my partner, having previously lived in Germany we found it highly stressful due to not being able to interactive with the government/landlord/accountants/lawyers etc. in English.

Brexit means I won't.

<comment><USER46> What about Ireland if English is a requirement for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not a startup, but a small UK Ltd selling software services to a German company.

At the moment, selling to the EU just requires filling in VAT and EC Sales List tax forms. This paperwork is all automated by accounting software.

If selling from a UK Ltd company ever becomes a problem, it is a simple matter to create a company in an EU country so I can continue to sell services and products via that. Having residency isn't required to setup and run a company in many EU countries, so I suspect I'd be able to continue working without worry.

The only issue would be transferring over income from a foreign country in a compliant manner. If that becomes expensive, then it might be worth moving residency to a different country. But rushing to make a decision seems rather silly when the decision depends on details that haven't even been talked about yet.

</comment><comment><USER48> I bet there will some kind of "soft exit" deal. Neither UK nor the EU can afford to be at odds with each other, so the risks of a hard Brexit are blown out of proportion. Right now it's just business as usual, threats, arrogance and political grand standing. UK will be fine.

</comment><comment><USER49> Not really... I am not sure whether an actual "Brexit" will happen, given the recent breakdown in talks with our European counterparts. Politically, they may say that we've left Europe, but in reality, the ties are rather deep and difficult to sever (some might even compare it to chopping your own leg off!). I am looking forward to the dip in housing prices as the government flip flops on policy and interest rates begin to rise - that alone is a fairly good reason to stay in the UK! Also, from a business perspective, it's an easy place to get things going. I have a bit of experience with setting up entities in other countries, and the UK process is comparatively straightforward.

<comment><USER50> >I am not sure whether an actual "Brexit" will happen, given the recent breakdown in talks with our European counterparts.

I would say that any breakdown in negotiations means that Brexit is going to REALLLLY happen (i.e. Hard Brexit). We are on a 2 year clock and time is running out. Who knows - maybe the UK and EU will pull a rabbit out of the hat. However, I can't get my head around anyone being blasé at this stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm a Portuguese expat living and working in the UK and at the moment I'm not thinking of leaving but... It will depend on what happens in the next year or so.

<comment><USER52> I genuinely have no idea what the government is doing but I hope people such as yourself get some answers soon. I am feeling some of the limbo myself as my EU Bosses living in UK hire me.

I wish we could get rid of the whole rancid bunch of politicians, and hire some company to take care of it all with dignity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I know a handfull of folks that already moved to germany and france. Personally I would move as well but my SO really likes her job.

</comment><comment><USER54> (EU citizen living in UK) Yes. Brexit tipped it over the edge. Because of brexit GBP went down which become big lost for me when investing outside of GBP. Even more interesting, current startup that I am working for, decided that it's a good idea to move dev team to EU so essentially I will be working for the same company but from outside of UK.

</comment><comment><USER55> People will follow the money. Corporation tax is likely to go down further.

Its currently 19%, lowest in the G7, and will fall to 17%

[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/corporation- tax-t...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/corporation-tax- to-17-in-2020/corporation-tax-to-17-in-2020)

</comment><comment><USER56> (EU national living in UK)

Yes, I want to leave. I believe in the idea of Europe and want to help it succeed.

I work in London. It used to be a great place to be if you enjoy living in an open multicultural environment with fresh ideas. Now it's turning into an old boring and way overpriced place.

</comment><comment><USER57> I know three people who've already moved this year. Two to Germany and one back to Poland.

</comment><comment><USER58> My startup is basically a virtual company - meaning we're all remote - <USER2> officially based in London. I could be forced to change that after Brexit, depending on the terms.

</comment><comment><USER59> I know one person who moved back (to Poland) but even he said that Brexit was only part of the reason.

The only people I know who have moved to Europe aren't in tech.

</comment><comment><USER60> My company isn't contemplating it in the slightest.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm going to get an Irish passport with a view to it possibly being relevant for future academic funding or work.

(My grandmother was born in Ireland)

</comment><comment><USER61> UK Citizens won't be egar to move due to language barrier. UK Startups look at their market as English speaking countries. UK, USA, etc..

So we are not going to move to a none English speaking country for what? easier access to trade?... Just set up a EU based subsidiary company at a later date after launch and translation.

I dont think it's viable. Of course panicked EU citizens will return to homeland due to lack of certainty. Which is odd, that they think UK are not going to be as welcoming after brexit.

<comment><USER62> Is it really odd to not feel welcome when over half the population has voted saying that you don't belong there? It's hard to think of a less welcoming place in all of Europe right now.

<comment><USER61> Your right it is not but I certainly dont feel that was ever the case. A percentage of that 50% will want to send people home but to say "over half the population has voted saying that you don't belong there" is incorrect.

Many voted for sovereignty, not to be a star in a flag. They voted for democracy for there voice to be heard in London not a whisper in Brussles. They did not see the economic benefits that are supposed to be the cornerstone.

Where the message is confused is that many did vote to end freedom of movement suggesting unlimited immigration put downward preasure on wages. Though the message from Vote Leave (or other campaign groups) was ever to kick people out who are already here.

There are many of none-eu ethnicity that voted to leave the EU. Why can anyone from EU come? but a pakistani parent can be denied visa to live with children in UK. An issue echoed many times.

Like I was saying it is odd that this message you outline is resonating. I dont know any brexit supporter that would want to kick people out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> No

</comment><comment><USER64> Hurry! Get in line for the backlash against tech companies playing politics, before it's too late.

</comment><comment><USER65> Nope, actually moving back to the midlands since I'm fed up with London at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER66> Already moved to Dublin!

<comment><USER67> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I mean, people worked abroad also before entering the EU.

</comment><comment><USER69> Not exactly a startup, but I had well oiled Ltd running for 10 years in London. I shut it down and I am running my business via another European country. Clients are a mix of US, UK and EU projects.

</comment><comment><USER70> Moved out to US. Alvin5.com

</comment><comment><USER71> No. I work as an advisor for a ton of startups and I a co-founder myself. There is no better place in Europe to be than the UK.

<comment><USER46> > There is no better place in Europe to be than the UK.

Perhaps, for now. If hard trade barriers are in place soon that status will change dramatically.

<comment><USER30> Trade barriers won't really affect digital service companies as they're not moving physical goods around.

Digital services are affected by other types of regulation though which won't really change as a result of Brexit (e.g. if you're a British online accounting company selling a version optimised for German companies).

<comment><USER10> This is an untested assumption if ever I saw one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you know some great IoT projects related to water saving? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I checked an online store specialized in that area. 100 products and all are mechanical. Unless you count a plastic shower timer (3.50 USD), which already promises to save 400 USD/year.

This "smart shower meter" has a mobile app. About 70 USD. [http://amphiro.com/](http://amphiro.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw it, it's very great!! You also have [https://ecodrain.com/en/](https://ecodrain.com/en/) a tube heater who recycle the already heated water!! Have a look on the video: brilliant!

Give me more!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are also a lot of different projects about watering plants, gardens, or agriculture. But it's still kind of hard to search in search engines, and have great content...

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting question. I think there are a few things like showers and taps....possibly the odd toilet...but its certainly worth investigating</comment>


What Coke Contains - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-ingredients-2/221d449929ef <comment><USER2> Ok, bit of a bragging moment here: my grandpa, with two other gentlemen, created the process for machining seamless cans that is described here. Before them, cans had a lead seam in them. They discovered that you could draw down the aluminum and stretch it to form cans in one piece. He also invented the process for creating the bottom of soda cans, and his friend invented the modern tab on the top of soda cans.

<comment><USER3> Wow that's awesome. We live in a society where one person takes credit for something and in this case a Coke can is comprised of many inventions as are many things. You never hear about the guy who helped shape the process of creating the bottom of soda cans or the tab on them. I wonder who invented that piece of plastic that holds store bought bread together?

<comment><USER4> Loaves of bread were sold unsliced until 1928, when a guy named Otto Rohwedder figured out how to slice bread without crushing it. Rohwedder then wrapped the bread and inserted U-shaped pins on both sides of the loaf to make it look similar to an unsliced loaf. Sliced bread became a hit because you no longer had to worry about cutting pieces of similar thickness when you made a sandwich.

That's where the expression "the best thing since sliced bread" comes from. Obviously, people had been slicing loaves of bread for ages, but pre-sliced bread really is a relatively recent business innovation. The NYT magazine had a page about this in this week's issue.[1] Also, here is a Google ngram of the phrase "since sliced bread". You can see that the saying started in the 1950s. [2]

[1][http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/magazine/who-made-that- sli...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/magazine/who-made-that-sliced- bread.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0)

[2][http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=since+sliced+br...](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=since+sliced+bread&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=)

<comment><USER5> I can not remember where read it, but if I recall correctly, sliced bread did not catch on until the patent on the bread slicing machine expired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write._ <http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html>

<comment><USER7> I find it unfortunate that an otherwise interesting story is used to convey some silly neo-liberal ideas. Try that getting-stuff-over-the-ocean-cheaply trick without harbors.

<comment><USER8> OK, I'll bite: which are the silly neoliberal ideas?

<comment><USER7> "Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand."

/curtains

<comment><USER8> Are you saying that people don't act according to their own satisfaction (monetary, emotional, romantic etc)? That human activity is basically Gaussian noise?

<comment><USER9> That's a strawman - disagreeing with the concept of the Invisible Hand (or perhaps rather, disagreeing with the scale some attribute it) is not the same as saying humans are RNGs.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's a leading question.

From the other side of the debate I'd attack the concept of subjective value.

Why do people value this? We don't know. They just do.

How do you know they value it? Because of their actions.

Why do they take those actions? Because of their valuations.

But it's also difficult to argue the counter-case. Outside of corner cases such as depression, psychotic episodes etc, if people aren't acting to diminish discomfort or increase their perceived happiness, then what _is_ motivating them?

<comment><USER9> The problem with this argument is it's too simplistic. When you respond with "people will sometimes do things against their best interests out of a sense of duty", the counter is to reduce the human to a stimulus-response box and say "aha! but they must be doing _that_ because it benefits some psychological issue, so it _is_ increasing their happiness"

The issue comes when that extremely mangled definition of happiness isn't then injected into economic discourse - it becomes a matter of dusting off the hands and saying "well, we proved that people do what's required to be happy" and go back to the simpler definition.

In any case, reducing everyone to a stimulus-response box and stating that on balance, it must be beneficial to choose action X for the organism turns the definition of 'happiness' into something worthless and actually pretty banal.

Edit: I usually see this argument in the sense of 'maximising profit', but occasionally as 'happiness' or other beneficial emotion.

<comment><USER8> I agree with the shifting sands of the "self interest" view.

Economists, though, don't fuss as much about motives because they're not observable. I mean you can build a reasonably explanatory model by simply assuming people are greedy hyperrationalists. But nobody really does that because it's just too simplistic.

If I had a point, I guess it's that economics thinking is much more textured and subtle than people give it credit for. "Neoliberal" is a label that was invented by critics and so its meaning is basically "whichever strawman fits right now".

If we're naming names amongst the arch-neoliberals, I think these days I prefer Hayek to almost anyone else. I think he really spent time in the stew of ideas and didn't retreat from the revealed complexity of the world into equations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most interesting part of the story lies here:

"coca-leaf which comes from South America and is processed in a unique US government authorized factory in New Jersey to remove its addictive stimulant cocaine"

Consider the implications of one of the largest American companies being singularly authorized to buy and import hundreds of tons of coca leaf, which is banned in nearly every country and produced primarily by illegal drug manufacturers. Does anyone believe there's no funny business going on here?

(For the record, I think coca and cocaine should be legal.)

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/apr/19/20040419-093...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/apr/19/20040419-093635-4754r/)

<comment><USER11> Here's an article on that topic and some excerpts I thought were interesting [http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/9_3%20The%20Legal%20...](http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/9_3%20The%20Legal%20Importation%20of%20Coca%20Leaf.htm)

>The Stepan Company (a $400 million American Stock Exchange company) of Maywood, New Jersey imports 175,000 KG of coca leaves into the United States each year. The leaves come from some of the same farms that supply the Columbian drug cartels.

>Flavor scientists say that the mysterious essence has no significant taste of its own , but acts as an 'enhancer' PepsiCo Inc. does not use the coca leaf. Flavor scientist Nicholas Feurstein thinks that the average guzzler might well notice the difference if Coke stopped using it.

>The leaf is ground up, mixed with sawdust, soaked in bicarbonate of soda, percolated with toluene, steam blasted, mixed with powdered Kola nuts, and then pasteurized. The Coke-Cola company, forever fearful of the DEA and the drug lords, is a stickler on security and quality. Drug lords have a less formal way to extract cocaine: they use kerosene as a solvent; the drug leaches out like tea from a tea bag. Cocaine is then recovered by evaporation.

<comment><USER12> From what I recall, a non polar solvent such as kerosene is used in the crude extraction of cocaine. However, it's very very unlikely that "cocaine is then recovered by evaporation" since kerosene is obtained by the fractional distillation of crude oil starting at 150C. Even if it were possible to evaporate off the kerosene to obtain freebase cocaine it would be amazingly dangerous.

The actual cocaine refining process, I believe, is a fairly typical polar/non- polar acid/base extraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A more famous, and perhaps more interesting version of this observation can be found here: <http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> Curious as to why there's no mention of the secret formula, since the author is wrong about kola nut being an ingredient of the syrup: <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr2001447> (from the Coca-Cola wiki page), which interestingly is a component in many purported recipes.

It's also interesting to see a picture of a glass bottle coke when the American product rarely exists in such form. I've sworn off the HFCS version after discovering the Mexican recipe with cane sugar - it tastes so much better and comes in a glass bottle. When I was in Tijuana for a Startup Weekend, that's all they served.

<comment><USER15> This time of year you can buy "Passover Coke." It's made with cane sugar. It has no corn syrup in it whatsoever, while Mexican Coke actually has a ≈70/30 cane/corn mix. You can tell it apart from regular Coke by its yellow cap printed with a circle U (kosher symbol).

It's much cheaper than Mexican Coke (same price as regular 2 liter Coke), although it doesn't come in a glass bottle. And it's delicious! I actually stock up every year since I found out about this.

<comment><USER16> You should consider making your own cola. It's easy, and very rewarding. Recipe mentioned in my other comment [1].

Incidentally, there are some very good "alternative" colas. My favourite is Fentimans' Curiosity Cola [2], which NY Times once described as "the world's best cola", and which is made with a small amount of fermented ginger (fermented juices is their thing). I also really like Boylan's Cane Cola [3].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311790>

[2] <http://www.fentimans.com/>

[3] [http://www.boylanbottling.com/products/cane-sugar- sodas/boyl...](http://www.boylanbottling.com/products/cane-sugar-sodas/boylan- cane-sugar-cola/)

<comment><USER15> Fentimans' sounds awesome. I've had a lot of other cane sodas like Boylan's. My kids and I used to raid Bevmo's soda aisle once a week to try new things. That gets expensive though. Passover Coke is nice and cheap by comparison. I never thought about making my own. Maybe I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An interesting derivative of "I, Pencil":

<http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> > The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero

While I understand what the author is trying to say, I don't think that is true at all. I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves. Seems like the main hard part is the aluminium.

While I'm nit-picking, I believe natural cryolite has not been used in aluminium processing for decades.

Thought-provoking article, though; I typed this with a can of Diet Coke on my desk.

<comment><USER19> It's the same reason natural cryolite isn't used - it's not economically viable. Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products. Aluminum isn't hard, just potentially more expensive.

> While I'm nit-picking...

Me too, Pinjarra is where the _refinery_ for the largest producing bauxite mine is. And the refinery operates today because of cheap coal in Australia.

As is the case with many industrial minerals, it's often _far_ cheaper to ship raw ore or concentrates to smelters built where electricity is cheap. Aluminum is no exception, and electricity cost is the reason there is a refinery in Iceland, despite being far from any bauxite mines.

The story really isn't that no country _can't_ make a can of Coke, but _why they don't_. It's a fascinating story, unfortunately mostly told through feasibility spreadsheets.

I'm in the industry and it's not hard to think of all the steps ranging hundreds of millions of years to put an apple on my desk (there's volcanoes and inland seas! Dinosaurs if you stretch your mind!). This is a good summary. If he got any deeper, it'd be a book.

<comment><USER9> _Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products_

Who grows cinnamon, vanilla, coca, and kola? How many countries grow all four, because I doubt it's "lots". Do they also have some form of sugar and aluminium industries? (or steel/tin industries for different kinds of cans, or glass industry for bottles (with something for caps)?)

Besides, saying "oh, but countries could, they just don't" is having your cake and eating it too - the fact that countries _don't_ because it's massively uneconomical means that yes, it does take multiple countries to produce a can.

It's a bit like saying "it takes a superpower to land men on the moon". Oh, sure, you could say "no it doesn't - throw enough private enterprise together and get someone there", but the point remains, no-one will - it still takes a superpower to land men on the moon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> An enormous and sophisticated 'tool chain'. Surely it could never be implemented in a one-day-to-be-invented universal fabricator? One is reminded of those 19th C ppl who thought recorded music was impossible since any player would have to contain miniature versions of all the orchestral instruments (or things that resembled them: "humanity's choir") together with a horrendously large paper roll punched full of holes

<comment><USER21> If you have a large enough supply of electrons, protons and neutrons, and you can combine them at will, you can make anything.

<comment><USER22> Anything except for quarks.

<comment><USER23> If you bang some of the electrons hard enough into some of the neutrons or protons you'll even get quarks.

<comment><USER24> No you won't.

You need to bang protons or neutron together. Electrons don't participate in color force and can't make quarks.

<comment><USER23> Hehe, trust me for getting it wrong, you are absolutely right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think Mr. Ashton is trying to illustrate Sagan's dictum, "If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Except it's coke, and he doesn't go past bauxite.

</comment><comment><USER26> >>The top of the can is then added. This is carefully engineered: it is made from aluminum, but it has to be thicker and stronger to withstand the pressure of the carbon dioxide gas.<<

Eh? The pressure is greater at the top of the can?

<comment><USER27> It may also be a result of greater stiffness required for the captive pop-tab opener to work properly.

There's an interesting Slate article[1] about the complexity of what appears to be a such a simple feature; in order to achieve the force necessary to rupture the can opening, the tab pivot transitions between a first and second class lever. There's a good video somewhere showing the principles, but I can't seem to find it.

Returning to the 'pressure' argument, recall that most drinks cans have a domed bottom which provides comparatively greater strength than the flatter top.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/design/2012/09/can_tabs_h...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/design/2012/09/can_tabs_how_aluminum_pop_tabs_were_redesigned_to_make_drinking_soda_safer_and_the_world_a_cleaner_place_.single.html)

<comment><USER28> Here's a link to the mentioned video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekv0kprA3AY>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This instantly reminded me of:

<http://www.gburnett.unisonplus.net/Perma/indexp2.htm>

(The Industrial Cup Of Tea)

</comment><comment><USER30> For those who might be interested, here's a fantastic Scientific American (back when it was still good) article about the aluminum can and how it's made: <http://www.chymist.com/Aluminum%20can.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER31> See also: <http://thetoasterproject.org>

</comment><comment><USER32> It's incredible to me that an essay as detailed as this one had not one single citation. Regardless, it was a fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER33> This sounds something like an astroturf for a brown chemical drink which sure as eggs is eggs will rot your teeth and kill you sooner than if you drink clean water (or moderate amounts of wine for that matter). We can make the globalisation and connectedness point a lot more clearly and ideologically neutrally without promoting useless Lowest Common Denominator products that merely waste our resources and do not add to the total sum of human happiness.

<comment><USER34> >This sounds something like an astroturf for a brown chemical drink which sure as eggs is eggs will rot your teeth and kill you sooner than if you drink clean water (or moderate amounts of wine for that matter).

...Did you just make that up on the spot?

>We can make the globalisation and connectedness point a lot more clearly and ideologically neutrally without promoting useless Lowest Common Denominator products that merely waste our resources and do not add to the total sum of human happiness.

Oh, good grief, I responded to your _exact_ type of comment by another person further down, but I'll repeat the summary here: _Your comment makes no sense._

I don't know if you're just the type of guy that needs to cut down everything to justify your ego, or maybe this is just a form of the engineer humble brag, but honestly, "Lowest Common Denominator products that merely waste our resources and do not add to the total sum of human happiness." Really? You going to stand by that? Did you even read the article?

I'd say the fact that it requires all of the distribution and production means describes in the article to keep up the demand of its product a tick in the "Brings Happiness" column. I myself very much enjoy having a Cherry Coke Zero when anytime I visit the theater. Have I, along with the rest of the world, been deluding myself? I didn't actually enjoy that product, and got no happiness or enjoyment out of its consumption? Who knew!

Further human happiness is a strange thing to use as a measuring stick for a product's "worth." What is the 'level' of human happiness that a product must bring before it is of value in your book? Obviously, being that coca-cola product represent 3% of all beverages consumed around the world (I looked it up), we need something that, what, hits that 4% mark before we can acknowledge that it actually does deliver some marginal level of happiness to the population?

What is your opinion on restaurants? Those seem to provide the same type of happiness as a coke. Maybe we should tell all those people to go out and do something worthwhile that gives _actual_ happiness. Whatever that fuck that actually means.

<comment><USER33> I read the whole thing. Yes, wow, impressive supply chain. But then the supply chain for something useful like an aircraft, or mechanical digger would be a lot more useful.

I'm a very positive person... for things which improve the su of human happiness and creativity, in the spirit of the Bay Area, rather than just selling sugar for the sake of finance.

wrt your ad homines, I'd examine the psychological projection of your own ego onto ohters: why get personal when this is jsut an interesting deate about values, economics, production and globalisation? Have a lovely day!

<comment><USER34> >But then the supply chain for something useful like an aircraft, or mechanical digger would be a lot more useful.

By what metric? Please, do explain. What does it mean to be "useful." Is a chef useful? Is an artist useful? Comments like yours get under my skin because they seem purposefully vague, which allows plenty of room for high browing, and faux elitism.

>rather than just selling sugar for the sake of finance.

Ok, so what is your cut off? Should all food manufacturers switch to aerospace engineering so they can finally contribute something useful? Bakeries? We should probably laud them as well. After all, they are, pretty much by definition, sugar in return for profit. Art is probably out too, I suppose. The film industry, despite is fantastically complex tool chain, at the end of the day, isn't really "useful." It contributes a kind of arbitrary happiness. Feel free to let me know if I'm off base, or if you feel as though I'm strawmanning. It's just that "sum happiness" and "useful" are so vague and poorly defined that I have no idea what you mean.

>jsut an interesting deate about values, economics, production and globalisation?

Dismissing something without reason is not a debate. That is the issue I took with your comment. "sum happiness" means nothing at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I didn't realize that they were adding caffeine; I was under the impression it was a natural by-product of the ingredients.

<comment><USER36> cocaine is the natural by-product. caffeine was the replacement after cocaine was deemed illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I believe most of the cryolite used now is synthetic (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hexafluoroaluminate>).

</comment><comment><USER38> eh, I just don't feel like the writer understands or cares to explain how that whole process is actually detrimental to the world despite the fact that it "unites" it. Coke is just addictive sugar water that does nothing for anyone. When has coke given you something other than diabetes?

Kevin Ashton fails at pointing out the impact of this collaboration. Couldn't all of these talented people that made such a sophisticated product put their energy towards something.. I dunno, useful?

<comment><USER39> > Coke is just addictive sugar water

It would be somewhat healthier if it actually contained sugar (as opposed to high fructose corn syrup).

<comment><USER40> In the UK it still uses sugar, and imho tastes a whole lot better than the HFCS version.

<comment><USER41> Most countries still do, except the US, where we have corn subsidies and sugar tariffs to artificially lower the price of corn and artificially raise the price of sugar (to protect a few growers in the south US).

The other year when sugar prices were near equal to corn, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper distributed soda with sugar only throughout much of the United States. I haven't followed the prices of sugar since, but I would gather the price went back up either naturally or through congressional means.

<comment><USER42> The commodity price of sugar is ~1.5 cents per can of soda, so I think they could get away with it whenever they wanted (meaning that they would have canceled the products because they weren't making enough volume on them).

Now I looked it up, Pepsi markets "throwback" brands which use sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This reminds a lot of Milton Friedman's pencil story (<http://youtu.be/R5Gppi-O3a8?t=15s>)

</comment><comment><USER44> And what Coke no longer contains: alcohol, cocaine. Also without sugar and caffeine if you want, sometimes I wonder what's the point of drinking it.

I remember reading it would be more interesting to use steel cans because it's easier to catch them using magnets. Are we now able to sort and recycle aluminum cans better ?

</comment><comment><USER45> Reminds me of a passage from Richard Powers's novel "Gain" where the process by which a disposable camera is manufactured, packaged, distributed, ad sold serves to explain everything that is at once miraculous and broken about our world.

</comment><comment><USER46> First it was an interesting article, but the last paragraph made it an amazing article.

</comment><comment><USER47> Well, this article gives yet another reason to stay away from sodas.

</comment><comment><USER48> > on the Murray River in Western Australia called Pinjarra

always jarring to read something you know to be so obviously false so early in a piece. *waves to fellow Sandgropers

<comment><USER49> A little knowledge is a dangerous thing [http://www.smh.com.au/news/Western- Australia/Pinjarra/2005/0...](http://www.smh.com.au/news/Western- Australia/Pinjarra/2005/02/17/1108500208647.html) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_River_%28Western_Austral...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_River_%28Western_Australia%29) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinjarra,_Western_Australia>

<comment><USER8> It's jarring because there's a much more famous Murray river "over east".

<comment><USER49> I know, it borders my state. But the article specifies the one in Western Australia. Seems OK; but maybe I'm just getting too accustomed to the unhelpfully concise style of mathematics papers.

It was surprising to me too, but concluding it to be "so obviously false" seems unwarranted, especially online - where it's so easy to check. Dismissing surprises as incorrect narrows the world into one's model of the world. And to me, the unknown is more interesting than the known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "The second ingredient, caramel coloring, gives the drink its distinctive dark brown color. There are four types of caramel coloring — Coca Cola uses type E150d, which is made by heating sugars with sulfite and ammonia to create bitter brown liquid. The syrup's other principal ingredient is phosphoric acid, which adds acidity and is made by diluting burnt phosphorus (made by heating phosphate rock in an arc-furnace) and processing it to remove arsenic."

Hmmm... arsenic

I'd rather there were no lethal poisons at any point in the production process.

I'm never drinking another glass of Coca-Cola. I'm not touching PEPSI either.

<comment> iso-8859-1 There's _a lot_ of stuff you can't ingest, if you'd follow that criterion.

<comment><USER24> Of all things for him to stop drinking....

But if you are worried about arsenic don't eat rice, and be careful of the ground water (depending on where you live).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm curious if coca cola contains real vanilla extract vs. synthetic; seems implausible for them to use the real plant product.

</comment><comment><USER52> Further reminds me that if you love something, even an everyday item, researching it's origin can be rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER53> I love these kinds of threads, where software engineers pretend they are experts in economics, etc.

</comment><comment><USER54> By contrast, you can make wine from a single ingredient. And it's an awful lot better than coke.

<comment><USER55> The glass bottle, cork, label, etc do not grow on the vine.

<comment><USER56> Nor do sterilized equipment, reliably dominant yeasts, clarification agents, additional sugars and yeast nutrients often required to balance or complete fermentation, or environments that maintain and/or remove suitable temperature ranges for desirable yeasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> An obvious omission: salt.

<comment><USER58> Well, salt being common (now, not historically) is probably sourced close to production to reduce its transportation costs. There is a large salt mine within 35 miles of my house, and they are located all along the gulf coast in salt domes, a by product of oil exploration.

<comment><USER57> You make a good point about it not fitting the international narrative, but then water can be sourced anywhere and they mention the word twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I read it and then thought "Why Coke?" That's the story of every manufactured product assembled from multi-sourced vendors. It's not news, and it's not unique to Coke. If you think it is you'll probably have an orgasm when you learn how pencils are made.

<comment><USER60> Right, this same story gets re-hashed every few months on the popular news sharing sites as a way to "blow people's minds" and there is never a shortage of people who lap it up. It _is_ amazing how stuff is made, but not mind- blowing.

<comment><USER61> Who said anyone is trying to blow anyone's minds? It's just an article which has been posted which is interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> a great example of capitalism. think about that the next time you have a knee jerk reaction towards business.

<comment><USER21> Private enterprise != capitalism. And planned economies have done this kind of thing, too.

<comment><USER8> They have, but not as well as a rule.

Plus, not every country has every resource. Even the vast internal resources of the USSR needed to be supplemented by goods and services purchased on the open market (and vice-versa, the USSR got most of its hard currency by selling oil).</comment></comment></comment>


Android map - What does Google know about your router? - <AUTHOR> http://samy.pl/androidmap/index.php android map exposes the data that Google has been collecting from virtually all Android devices and street view cars, using them essentially as global wardriving machines.<p>When the phone detects any wireless network, encrypted or otherwise, it sends the BSSID (MAC address) of the router along with signal strength, and most importantly, GPS coordinates up to the mothership. This page allows you to ping that database... <comment><USER2> Seems to be FUD. I've been using multiple Android devices for years with my router and it's not listed on there at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> it is not fake.</comment>


Show HN: Supernotes – The Social Notework for collaborative knowledge management - <AUTHOR> https://supernotes.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm one of the (two) makers behind Supernotes. We first started building Supernotes when we were in college and wanted a way for students to more easily share learning content with each other in a granular way. Once we actually built our solution, we realized that the use-cases reach far beyond students and that our unique features work well for anyone that wants to do (semi-)social knowledge management.

Quick overview of what makes us different from some of the other great tools in this space: 1\. Built around cards rather than documents, which allows for a lot of interesting and flexible features. 2\. Granular sharing – on Supernotes, you can share an entire collection of cards, or you can share one card at a time. We also have recently introduced a "friends" features that allows you to quickly drag-and-drop cards onto your friends to share with them. 3\. Multi-parent nesting – there is no folder-style filesystem on Supernotes, we allow you to nest cards inside of each other. On top of this, we allow for this nesting to be multi-parent, so different users can fit the same cards into their own unique structure. 4\. Public vs. private tags – cards can be tagged with public tags that everyone sees, but can also be tagged privately with only tags that you can see. This same idea is reflected across the platform, where we want the underlying content to be the same for everyone but want to allow users to personalize the metadata/structure to suit their own workflow. 5\. Focus on speed – we have spent a lot of time making Supernotes speedy quick, and try to make it faster every time we release a new feature.

We also have lots of the cool features that are shared by other products, such as: \- bi-directional inline links \- markdown / LaTeX / code-highlighting support \- many more

...and are releasing new features every month[1]!

Happy to answer any questions you might have.

[1] [https://supernotes.app/changelog](https://supernotes.app/changelog)

</comment><comment><USER2> What's changed from when you posted three months ago?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22929251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22929251)

<comment><AUTHOR> So we push a new feature update every month[1], but the main things that we've added since then are:

\- friends

\- re-designed UI

\- drag-and-drop

\- command prompt

\- archival

\- backlinks

\- new community forum[2] with SSO

[1] [https://supernotes.app/changelog/](https://supernotes.app/changelog/) [2] [https://community.supernotes.app](https://community.supernotes.app)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your website looks awesome, and I think this is a great product. I've signed up. What software/languages/tools did you use to build this?</comment>


Why Alto? Butler Lampson's Historic 1972 Memo - b-man http://www.digibarn.com/friends/butler-lampson/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a huge fan of Butler Lampson, but I must confess the thing that most struck me at the beginning were the machine specs in contrast to today's machines. 48-64K of 16-bit words with a 10 MB hard drive, woohoo!

The display size and orientation is a little disconcerting, though. You mean there was a time when computer screens weren't optimized for playing widescreen movies?

<comment><USER2> I remember that the monitor for the first computer I had -- a Mac IIci -- was in portrait format, and could show a full page of a word document. I thought all monitors looked like that, until I went to a friend's place and saw a landscape monitor. I asked him, "how do you survive without being able to see a full page?!" His response: how do you survive without being able to play games?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Imlacs are wiped out."

Priceless. \--Chuck</comment>


You Got Footage,Then You Crashed Your Drone. How to Recover the Footage - <AUTHOR> https://www.lc-tech.com/pc/got-amazing-footage-crashed-drone-asked-expert-recover/ <comment><USER2> Interestng</comment>


Category Theory: Who Needs Types? - <AUTHOR> http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/11/24/types-and-functions/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read this article ([http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/11/24/types-and- functions/](http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/11/24/types-and-functions/)) , and the first article in the series ([http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/11/04/category-the- essence-o...](http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/11/04/category-the-essence-of- composition/)), and the introduction ([http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for- pr...](http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers- the-preface/)). They've all gotten a significant number of upvotes here on HN, but no commentary about the contents.

Reading them makes me fear that I simply lack any proper capacity for abstraction. I liked thinking about the throwaway line that "an object should have more surface area than volume", but there hasn't been anything else that I've been able to grasp hold of. Nothing seems wrong, but so far, nothing seems particularly right either. He could just as well be discussing typography as type theory.[1]

Could someone who understands where he is going with this series jump ahead and talk about how a better understanding of category theory has improved their programming? Insights that wouldn't have occurred without it? I'm all for pure math as pure math, but I'm struggling to see how he's going to make the leap to practical programming. Or perhaps that isn't his intention?

[1] Come to think of it, his comment that Haskell accepted a double colon or the single unicode character equivalently was one more thing I felt I grasped. It struck me as a dangerous design decision, though.</comment>


Clipper Card Web SNAFU: Now Everyone Knows Your Card is Expiring - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/11/clipper_card_snafu.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the apology email:

 _Sent: Tuesday, November 1, 2011 4:56 PM Subject: Clipper® Correspondence

Dear Clipper Cardholder,

On behalf of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the managing agency who operates the Clipper® program, I would like to apologize for an error that occurred this morning. You and approximately 1,700 other Clipper® customers received an e-mail that showed the e-mail addresses of all recipients. The purpose of the e-mail that was sent this morning was to inform you that your credit card is expiring in January. In no case was your credit card number or any other personal information disclosed.

We are aware of how this error took place and have taken steps to help see that it does not happen again.

Again, I am sorry for this mistake and for the concerns this has caused.

Sincerely,

Andrew B. Fremier Deputy Executive Director, Operations Metropolitan Transportation Commission firstname.lastname@example.com _

Looking at the cc: list on the original email I received, I counted 2,766 email addresses.</comment>


After voting for Brexit, residents realized EU won't give them $85M/yr - <AUTHOR> http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/council-news-room/media-releases/news-from-2016/news-from-june-2016/council-to-seek-urgent-confirmation-from-ministers-on-eu-funding-allocated-to-cornwall/ <comment><USER2> > we were reassured by the 'leave' campaign that a decision to leave the EU > would not affect the EU funding ... that Cornwall would not be worse off

That's so immature. They were innocents and bad people deceived them to vote against EU and now they have no funds.

</comment><comment><USER3> they'd rather have 85 million from the EU than the 13 billion that England will no longer be obligated to give the EU? They need to spend the difference on math classes.

</comment><comment><USER4> doesn't this basically mean you are $85M/yr short on your own finances and are relying on external sources to keep the books balanced? Which defacto means you have a negative cashflow and thus are essentially insolvent?</comment>


How to bring science publishing into the 21st century - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-to-bring-science-publishing-into-the-21st-century/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_ARTC_BLOG <comment><USER2> 1\. Get rid of the publishers.

Considering the WWW was _created for the purpose of sharing physics papers_ , the rest will take care of itself. The problem isn't technology, it's oligopoly.

<comment><USER3> > The problem isn't technology, it's oligopoly.

The problem isn't technology, it's copyright laws.

<comment><USER4> The problem isn't technology, it's intellectual property.

Really any sort of property is just a way to concentrate power. We are just making the calculation that the result of this accrual will produce benefits for all. Often this calculation is off by a few orders of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mechanics of creating a manuscript are not the big problem. Meaningful and honest peer review, assignment of credit among authors and from future developments, better matching between manuscripts and readers are some of the things that I would rank higher.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but a lot of those are tied up in the current single-blind extraordinarily-slow editorial-thumb-on-the-scales system that primarily benefits for-profit publishers.

Platforms like Authorea and Overleaf combined with preprint servers can help society journals compete with glamour journals without going broke. Essentially the society journal is destined to become an "overlay" journal where the editor suggests what preprints to look at while they're under review. This should, in principle, encourage actual review. Open review offers another type of incentive. Of course the actual society journal editors can be dinosaurs (and I say this after speaking directly with some of them), but eventually most of them get with the program.

I don't know what to do about the glamour journal fetish. Many of my papers in non-glamour journals have dozens of citations, which I think is great, because the glam journal papers (which, granted, have thousands of cites) are mostly cited by people who barely read them. So perhaps you say, well obviously that means the glamour journals have higher impact. Maybe. But I look at similar papers to ours in similarly glamorous journals and they have, say, 2 citations. Or 34 citations. Or whatever, after fighting through review for months. Meanwhile I have preprints and software manuals with more citations than that. But those aren't "for credit" because... shit, I don't even know why not. It's just an administrative quirk. Or something.

STAP and #arseniclife and the recent "MS gene" paper in Neuron provide endless examples of the fallacy that "peer reviewed" is necessarily better ("peer review is boosting with three weak learners"). But maybe that isn't the point. As has been said previously, Deans may not know how to read but at least most of them can count. :-/

<comment><USER7> Thanks for mentioning Overleaf[1] - we started it to help solve a problem we were having collaborating on LaTeX documents with co-authors based in different timezones - it helped avoid the 'multiple copies of the same doc in multiple email threads' issue, amongst other things.

Since we've grown (now at half a million users worldwide), we're now also working to help solve and streamline the submission & publishing process, for many of the same reasons discussed in this article.

Feels like change is finally happening, which as a scientist myself is great to see!

[1] [https://www.overleaf.com](https://www.overleaf.com)

<comment><USER6> Yes, Overleaf is awesome. I feel bad but I stopped paying for the Premium version with git-to-Dropbox syncing because the "stock" version is already so good. We put up a paper on biorXiv recently with Overleaf and two days later sent it off to a journal with minor reformatting. I only use Word for clinical collaborators these days, Overleaf is so, so good.

I still wish you'd support Markdown so that I could ditch Word completely. I hate that fucking program so much. I'd pay for Premium again just to use Markdown. :-)

<comment><USER7> Native markdown support is planned -- in the meantime you might like this tweet :)

[https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763395560682364928](https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763395560682364928)

and for something more light-hearted, here's a D&D template in LaTeX!

[https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763524947339800576](https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763524947339800576)

<comment><USER6> I saw the D&D template earlier. That was hysterical.

I had not seen the markdown Beamer proof-of-concept. Very cool. Overleaf is the single best thing that has ever happened to my collaborative authorship skills, partly because Google Docs doesn't have a decent equation editor ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Science publishing needs to be coordinated by the major funding agencies. Those who give the money are the rightful ones to say how the output gets disseminated. If they want to make their own journals and stipulate that I publish there to keep my funding I'm totally cool with it.

The funding agency and general population gets its research, I get my tenure, and the university gets its money and prestige. It's a win-win all around.

<comment><USER9> _Science publishing needs to be coordinated by the major funding agencies. Those who give the money are the rightful ones to say how the output gets disseminated._

I could not disagree more. Even if funding agencies were unbiased, they should be independent of where and how the results of research are disseminated. Funding agencies don't own that money, they only re-distribute tax-payer money. So it's tax-payers who have the final say (through elected officials).

 _If they want to make their own journals and stipulate that I publish there to keep my funding I 'm totally cool with it._

This might create dangerous isolation and conflict of interests. The editors must be independent of the funding agencies to ensure quality of the research

 _The funding agency and general population gets its research, I get my tenure, and the university gets its money and prestige. It 's a win-win all around._

The general population would get the research that was steered by a small group of people from funding agencies (DARPA, NSF), so possibly biased by the people on the agencies' committees and the government. I get my tenure if the tenure committee is aligned with the funding agency's guidelines; the university lowers prestige as the results appear lower-quality in an international settings. It's a lose-lose-lose, humankind's knowledge losing the most.

I don't even want to think about private funding agencies commissioning an article on their own journals to further their own economical interests, especially if said journals become the state of the art because other, better journals who would deserve to get the research published on them end up without submissions.

Sorry, but I don't see any scenario worse than this.

<comment><USER8> > So it's tax-payers who have the final say (through elected officials).

And currently, that taxpayer money is going to for-profit companies. What I propose is better.

> The editors must be independent of the funding agencies to ensure quality of > the research

While often well-meaning, editors have almost no role in quality control. That is in hands of academics who review the work. So the review process is already independent of the funding agencies.

> The general population would get the research that was steered by a small > group of people from funding agencies

Again, publishing is already steered by a small group of people who are independent of the funding agencies, the reviewers.

> I don't even want to think about private funding agencies commissioning an > article to further their own economical interests

What? The vast majority of funding agencies are non-profits who genuinely want to help the world. They are motivated to produce research towards AIDS, alternative energy, etc. They are economically motivated? Relative to the for- profits who currently control the academic publishing world?

<comment><USER9> _And currently, that taxpayer money is going to for-profit companies. What I propose is better._

No, research money is going to researchers, publishers get (other) money for different reasons. The cost of maintaining journals would have to be paid as well, so journal subscription money would only go to different for-profit organizations. What you propose does not solve the problem of paywalls, it just moves them.

 _While often well-meaning, editors have almost no role in quality control._

Editors choose the reviewers, and actually do a pre-filtering of the submitted papers. The final decision (reject/revise/accept) on a paper is theirs, and sometimes can be different from the sum of the referee reports. So they do have a strong role in quality control, both in theory and in practice.

 _That is in hands of academics who review the work. So the review process is already independent of the funding agencies._

As it should be.

 _Again, publishing is already steered by a small group of people who are independent of the funding agencies, the reviewers._

Most academicians are reviewers, so they are no small group. And they do not steer publication, they just decide whether a paper should be rejected/revised/accepted. There's quite a difference.

 _What? The vast majority of funding agencies are non-profits who genuinely want to help the world._

You assume funding agencies are genuinely trying to help the world, but everybody else (editors/academicians/reviewers) are not. I think there's good and bad in both sides

 _They are motivated to produce research towards AIDS, alternative energy, etc._

I agree, but they depend on their employer, i.e., whoever is in power.

 _They are economically motivated? Relative to the for-profits who currently control the academic publishing world?_

Not as greedy, that's out of question, but giving them all controls on who publishes would be dangerous. I do _not_ defend publishers, I do strongly believe the current system is bad. I just think your solution is wrong, and that there are ways to make research really public without giving it in the hands of any of the players in the arena, especially those that might influence what is published and where. Paywalls are bad, but what you're proposing would lead to self-censorship.

<comment><USER10> University libraries are supported in part by taxpayer money. Which largely goes to pay for journal subscriptions (whose costs are rising far faster than inflation). So the taxpayer-money->private publisher conduit is a very real thing in our current system.

<comment><USER9> I know money is money, but _that_ tax-payer money I was mentioning is the research funds themselves, not the money used to pay subscription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Met one of the founders at a conference last spring. Great guy and dedicated to improving how papers are written. While Authorea can help with interchange formats and publication formats, by itself it cannot begin to rite the ship of science publishing.

<comment><USER6> Well, you can't apply a technical solution to a social problem and expect it to stick, but the former can make the latter easier to fix by removing (some) inertia.

The GitHub approach (free for open, pay for private) seems sensible. I worry sometimes whether that is sustainable for GitHub, but given the competition out there (e.g. Overleaf, which I use quite regularly), I'm hopeful it will work out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does this feel like creating a new gate keeper to anyone else? What happens when the start up closes?

</comment><comment><USER13> Please do not get acquired by one of the publishers.</comment>


This Chinese Stock Soared 4,500% on Nasdaq and No One Knows Why - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/this-chinese-stock-soared-4-500-on-nasdaq-and-no-one-knows-why <comment><USER2> Could it be that the float on this stock is so small that when index funds try to buy the stock, the price is pushed up massively?

A theoretical problem with market-cap-weighted index funds is that a fund that holds x percent (usually very small) of the world's wealth will want to buy x% of each company. If a company has less than x% of stock outstanding, the fund will push the price up indefinitely</comment>


Git 2.5 - <AUTHOR> http://git-blame.blogspot.com/2015/07/git-25.html

<comment><AUTHOR> There's the direct changelog also on HN today[1], but Junio Hamano's own notes are usually a better way to understand the highlights than the often obscure changelogs.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961668)

</comment><comment><USER2> Old discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961668)</comment>


Amid Unprecedented Controversy, W3C Greenlights DRM for the Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/amid-unprecedented-controversy-w3c-greenlights-drm-web <comment> Paul-ish > It's great to say that if you know where all the strobe effects are in > 10,000,000 hours of videos, you could add warnings to the timelines of those > videos to help people with photosensitive epilepsy. But unless you have an > unimaginable army of people who can watch all that video, the practical way > to find all those strobes is to feed the video to a computer, after > bypassing the DRM. Otherwise, most video will never, ever be made safe for > people with photosensitive epilepsy.

I wonder if there is a case to be made here under the ADA in the US. By making it impossible for someone to use their own assistive measures, and by not providing their own assistive technologies, companies that employ DRM are essentially closing their services off to a significant portion of the disabled population.

<comment><USER2> I remember a similar argument made about locked down e-books that could not be read by blind people.

<comment><USER3> That sounds silly, but that's when they killed the audio reader functionality so as to not compete with the audiobook industry right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In reality it is Google, Apple, and Microsoft who decide what web technologies will be implemented and users who decide what browsers to use.

Pretending like the W3C could actually change anything by not ratifying this is ignoring the reality of the marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this affect any modern browser?

don't they all follow [https://whatwg.org/](https://whatwg.org/) over W3C after W3C wanted to lock in HTML5 rather than a living web standard that evolves with the web

<comment><USER6> Every major browser ships this already. In Firefox you can choose not to download it, but in the rest it is always there I believe.

The reason it was implemented is that Microsoft and Google both also make and sell the DRM systems that EME requires, so they of course shipped it first. It's hard to compete against a browser that works with Netflix when yours doesn't, so everyone else shipped it too.</comment></comment>


Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic-Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers <comment><USER2> A thread from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330462)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9182332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9182332)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7297195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7297195)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6351681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6351681)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6102782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6102782)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5817713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5817713)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm quite familiar with deep learning because it's so highly hyped up, but am less familiar with Probabilistic programming and Bayesian methods. So, I have a general question: is anyone using Probabilistic Programming in industry? Have people ditched it for DNNs? Are people taking hybrid approaches to try and mix the two?

<comment><USER4> Can't answer for the whole industry. The two methods have very complementary strengths and weaknesses—so which one you apply will depend on the constraints of the domain (eg: large amounts of training data vs intelligent priors). If you're lucky, and the situation enables it, you could build out both and ensemble them and hope to get the best of both worlds.

I still think the software stack for probabilistic programming has a ways to go before it becomes as easy to use as a NN using PyTorch, but it should get there in the near future. I'm personally very very excited about the probabilistic programming approach — conceptually it's a very smooth segue from structured numerical algorithms, and allows you to really exploit problem structure if you have good domain understanding.

For me, it helps organize a lot of well-known algorithms as special cases of a general framework—which is worthwhile in itself. If I can code in the generic framework, and have the compiler generate the appropriate (optimized) special case algorithm (as one hopes), that's icing on the cake.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for explaining. That seems to be the neat thing that I'm picking up on about what Microsoft Research people keep calling "Model Based Machine Learning" [0], in that you construct a model based on your assumptions about the problem, and by implementing it, the compiler can fit it to an appropriate algorithm.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKUFSKRjTIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKUFSKRjTIo) and also [https://github.com/dotnet/infer](https://github.com/dotnet/infer)

<comment><USER4> Yup! Their WIP book is a _fantastic_ introductory read: [http://www.mbmlbook.com/](http://www.mbmlbook.com/) (Needs only high school background)

Helps gain very nice and concrete intuition, before getting lost in math or code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first time I saw this phrase I thought it was going to describe something like software branch prediction, speculative execution, self tuning algorithms, or heck even Bloom filters or hyperloglog. That was a direction my first mentor and I used to talk about and it's one of my regrets that I never did much in that arena.

My brain wants this term to mean something else and I become momentarily excited every time this topic gets reposted.

<comment><USER4> You might find this book very interesting: [https://www.amazon.com/Probabilistic-Data-Structures- Algorit...](https://www.amazon.com/Probabilistic-Data-Structures-Algorithms- Applications/dp/3748190484/ref=mp_s_a_1_2)

I'm unrelated to the author; just came across the book on a Reddit discussion and found it interesting. There aren't too many (collected) discussions of these kinds of topics, AFAIK.

<comment><USER6> Might also be worth reading into fuzzy logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A corresponding framework in Julia - Turing[1][2].

[https://turing.ml](https://turing.ml)

[https://github.com/TuringLang](https://github.com/TuringLang)

</comment><comment><USER8> It has been a few years since I looked at this, and it looks like a lot has been added since then. It's certainly worth a look. But at the time I found Allen B. Downey's "Think Bayes" to be a more thorough and comprehensive resource: [https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- bayes/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-bayes/)

</comment><comment><USER9> For anyone interested in learning more, Stan is an excellent alternative probabilistic programming language:

[https://mc-stan.org](https://mc-stan.org)

with thorough documentation:

[https://mc-stan.org/users/documentation/](https://mc- stan.org/users/documentation/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh, I've been meaning to go through this book as we used PyMC (I only did reviews and this went over my head a lot) on my last job to build an AB testing system.

I recently started going through it again and it's pretty fascinating as someone not familiar with the field.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing! I have been wanting to get into the field in order to play around with Monte Carlo Random Walks.</comment>


Ask HN: Collections Alternatives to Google Productions? - <AUTHOR> I want to replace google apps <comment><USER2> You may check this post [https://www.techspot.com/news/80729-complete-list- alternativ...](https://www.techspot.com/news/80729-complete-list-alternatives- all-google-products.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Where's the outrage? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone else making web apps concerned that they'll now have the iPad to contend with in just a month or two?
A lot of your web app's UIs/UX will have to be overhauled for finger touch instead of point & click. Many web apps will still work of course but they certainly won't be optimized for the iPad - its display or its method of input.
Sure, Jobs showed off the New York Times iPad optimized website during the presentation but where were the web apps at? I wonder if web apps will be a side note in the coming iPad revolution..
It seems we may all be forced to write native iPad apps to stay competitive. <comment><USER3> A standards compliant mostly-open-source web browser? No outrage at all.

<comment><USER4> Just think: Everyone who brings an iPad to work is that much less likely to use Internet Explorer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Outraged? Not really. As a webdev I'm glad the display has a standard 1024x768 resolution and not something weird. (As a consumer, I'm disappointed that it's 4:3 and not widescreen.)

The iPad display's 132dpi is what I'm more worried about. Most images on the web are 72dpi.

<comment><AUTHOR> My larger point was that web apps will take a back seat on the iPad as they have on the iPhone. If you want something that looks great and performs - <USER2> have to go through the Apple ecosystem. I think that's pretty clear.

This is in direct opposition to the upcoming Chrome OS netbooks where web apps will be at the forefront and central to the device's operation, being given better access to the GPU and so forth...

<comment><USER6> I actually think that web apps are almost perfectly suited to the iPad. With HTML5's local storage engine and users locked in to Safari* there should be some great innovation in this space. The line between native app and web app may even start to blur with this technology.

* I agree that user lockin is usually a bad thing, but knowing the full and unchanging specs of the machine should allow developers to do some really interesting things.

<comment><USER7> Just wanted to add that you can create an icon for a web app that on the home screen and it will look and act like a native application (e.g. the mobile safari tool bar and address bar won't appear).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a little list, not from a web developer's perspective, but from the perspective of someone who _really_ wanted to write apps for the iPhone OS but is turned-off by the AppStore. Did I say turned-off? I meant outraged. Offended. Disgusted.

1\. Neither the iPhone nor the iPad are going to replace full-blown computers. They're neither powerful enough nor comfortable enough for serious work. Of course, the situation could change dramatically a few years from now, but I'm sure we'll figure something out when the time comes. For now, get a Mac and have a blast hacking it :)

2\. If you think Apple's touch devices have taken the world by storm and everything else pales in comparison, I humbly suggest you come to New Delhi and count the number of iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad owners. Most of the world just can't afford to spend cash on shiny entertainment devices. People are still going to buy and use computers. You can still write apps for Mac OS X/Linux/Windows. The world has not yet ended.

3\. Most of the apps you find on the AppStore could conceivably be written as webapps. Why bother with ObjC and Cocoa when you can just use JavaScript+HTML5? A large percentage of apps just pull data from a server and display it in pretty boxes. On the other hand, if you're writing a game, you're already a "special case" and have to play by Apple's rules -- which are not different from what Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony impose on their developers. So, for most of your programming needs, JavaScript+HTML5 should be enough.

4\. Have we forgotten that these days, Apple are an entertainment and content distribution company who just _happen_ to make computers? Apple are not marketing the iPad as a general-purpose computer; they want to sell it as an entertainment device. Since it's a niche device, in the grand scheme of things, the closed nature of the iPhone OS doesn't really matter.

This list doesn't do much to allay the major concerns of the tech community: the iPad _is_ , in fact, a full-blown computer that is hopelessly locked-in by Apple and their delusional policies, that it could be much more than just an entertainment device, that we have something radically different from the traditional model of computing but cannot exploit the thousands of possibilities this gives us. This list is just an indication that we mustn't lose hope yet. Let the guys in Cupertino figure out when - if ever - they want to loosen their grip on the iPhone OS ecosystem. In the meantime, we'll just write web apps :)

EDIT: In a previous comment, I mentioned I don't want to write JavaScript. It's true. But I can put up with JS if it means I don't have to sell out to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER9> No outrage here - and honestly, no overhauling necessary for most of my work. Touch-enabled devices have been with us for years, so most companies writing software, sites, and web apps to be used with them have long since adapted. Over-reliance on hover states is annoying, anyway.

I develop on a Mac and use an iPhone, but I have no strong feelings toward Apple's new product and don't fully understand those who do. Perhaps you'd be happier if you took the announcement less seriously?

But yeah, no outrage here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Outrage.... why, exactly? Technology is always changing things. This is just one more example. Adapt or die.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am way too excited about the possibilities to be outraged that I'll have some interesting work to do.

</comment><comment><USER12> Offering iPhone optimized sites is important because there are 75 million iPhone/Touches out there give or take. I'd be surprised if there are more than 3-5 million iPads out there by the end of 2010 so it's probably nothing to get too bent out of shape about.

<comment><USER13> Making an iPhone or BlackBerry app or version of a site is usually a no- brainer, as you can assume that anyone who owns such a device is a pre- qualified customer. It'll be the same with the iPad - anyone who owns one can be assumed to be a high-spending consumer, therefore desirable as a customer, therefore worth producing original content for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Likely Apple designed the iPad to work with most of the existing web, and wasn't naive enough to believe that the web will design itself around Apple's iPad.

EDIT: The iPhone was one of many mobile devices, so it warrants sites having mobile versions.

<comment><USER15> Yeah I agree, excellent point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I write a general-purpose web app, so I don't need to worry about what new devices are on the market in order to "stay competitive". If you tie yourself to a single device, you have to accept the consequences.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't seem like a big deal to me. If there's a multitouch api available from JS (is there?), you could do pretty much everything demoed in those apps.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the outrage hinges on how popular you think the iPad will be. Hence, my lack of outrage. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's always possible it will be irrelevant.</comment>