The U.S.-China Tech War Could Cost Trillions - <AUTHOR> https://safehaven.com/tech/tech-news/The-US-China-Tech-War-Could-Cost-Trillions.html <comment><USER2> It will cost a lot more than trillions. Just like the US has lost its Textiles, Paper, Automobile, etc. industries, it seems hell-bent on throwing away its semiconductor industries as well.

Companies like Huawei were perfectly happy buying their semiconductors from the US.

Banning the sale of those semiconductors will hurt the US in several ways:

First, the loss of billions in semiconductor sales in the short-term. That won't be good for the likes of Intel, AMD, etc. There won't be ready capital to build new hi-tech fabs.

Second, Huawei and other other Chinese companies will set up their own semiconductor manufacturing which save them money by buying the home-grown product.

Thirdly, With those Chinese semiconductor manufacturers online, the sales of US semiconductors will be adversely affected by stiff competition from cheaper Chinese manufacturers. That would probably sound the death-knell for those US semiconductor companies, as has happened with the other industries mentioned above.

The US is hamstrung by preference for short-term thinking instead of long-term gain.

</comment><comment><USER3> This conflict is about more than one aspect of the economics. We know China is engaged in terrible human abuses. Time to stop using money as the reason for being complicit through inaction.</comment>


The Positive Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.rdegges.com/the-positive-programmer/ <comment><USER2> There's a reason developers complain and fixate on things that are bad or broken. It's because, for the most part, developers (and designers and UX people and many others) are natural problem solvers.

If something isn't broken, okay, great, no need to focus on it. But if something is broken, to a problem solver, this is inexcusable. Things that are wrong need to be fixed. So when you see people complaining about things like startup culture or sexism in tech or whatever else, it's because these people see a problem that can be fixed, so they focus their efforts on fixing it. Most people who comment on these types of things aren't just complaining, they're offering solutions or their thoughts on what the "real problem" is.

Personally, I feel the whole "positive attitude" thing is a detriment. People with "positive attitudes" tend to ignore problems because they don't want to upset others or make waves. These problems tend to fester until people like me (problem solvers) get so tired of it we just leave.

If all you want is to be happy, fine, be happy, do your thing, ignore the problems. But if you want to make an impact, if you want to fix things and make them better for yourself and others, you have to focus on the things that are wrong and you have to complain and offer solutions and build solutions and piss people off until things get better. Making things better is always a fight; it's always a struggle; and you're unlikely to be very happy while trying to improve or fix broken things. Some people think it's worth it, others don't.

<comment><USER3> I don't think there is any contradiction between being a problem-solver and having a positive outlook on life, as long as you are a competent problem solver and getting a lot of problems solved. Successful problem solving provides both an immediate joy from a "mission accomplished" feeling, and a long term positive outlook that comes with the feeling that because of you, there are less unsolved problems in the world, therefore life is better.

Don`t people become problem-solvers because they enjoy solving problems? And if that is a case, than being presented with a host of unsolved, yet potentially solvable problems should make a problem-solver scream with glee, right?

<comment><USER2> I find that people who tackle problems are those who are never quite satisfied. Even after solving a problem, they put it in their rear view and switch to the next problem to solve. There's always more work to be done.

I guess it depends on the depth of your compulsion.

<comment><USER3> I think you are confusing a problem-solver with a perfectionist. One solves problems because he or she enjoys it. The other because they live in a world that will never match an ideal they hold. The second is doomed to misery no matter what, and I think that is what the OP was saying he moved away from by focusing on the positive.

<comment><USER2> Or we just have different definitions of what a problem solver is. I define a problem solver as someone who, once taking note of something they identify as a "problem", feels a compulsion to solve said problem. Someone who identifies problems as inherently wrong and solvable. Your definition may be more lax than mine.

Also, I don't think he talked about moving away from perfectionism. He talked about moving away from "how unfair things were, how I deserved more, how other people were causing problems for me, and how I was vastly superior to everyone else." That isn't being a perfectionist, that's being a prat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working as a developer for about 10 years, and was involved in some tech communities for about 6 or 7 years prior to that (early high school, doing things like LAN parties, Linux install fests, and generally socializing amongst the "nerd" set). If there's an overwhelmingly common personality defect I've seen amongst tech aficionados, it's a proclivity towards the negative.

My observation is that people with highly logical thought processes can often end up developing an outwardly negative approach to most aspects of life. Perhaps it's due to frustrations of dealing with people not as logical as us. Perhaps its a genetic personality defect. While I can't say for certain, I know I'm certainly guilty of it, and though I've made an effort to be better about it (and am), it's still a kind of "default" response I have to the unexpected or things that don't follow the "path" that I imagined. I see a similar pattern amongst many folks in the groups I mentioned.

I will say if anything, the overall demeanor of those groups has become a lot more positive than I remember it being 5-10 (or more) years ago.

<comment><USER5> I think using "highly logical thought processes" to excuse (or at least explain) highly negative and antisocial behaviour is an unfortunate, but common, fallacy among some very intelligent people. It's great that you're taking steps to overcome negativity you've seen in yourself.

Did you notice, however, that the only explanations you went to for these negative approaches were "dealing with people not as logical as us" and "genetic personality defect"? What's the common thread in these answers? They're both examples of blame externalization (and thus perserving cognitive dissonance - you're great the way you are!). If it's other people, you're not in the wrong, you don't need to change. If it's genetic, then it's hard-coded, and try as you might, you're going to have a hell of a time fixing it.

Now maybe you're right, and maybe you're wrong. Who am I to say? Your points aren't invalid, just biased, and it's clear to see where it's coming from. But I think the best way to negate this negativity (ha, ha?) is by having people turn the mirror on themselves, first and foremost, before judging others.

How much of this negativity could be spared to begin with if people just thought about how they would feel in someone else's shoes?

It's awesome that you've seen an upward trend in positivity. You said you've been working on it yourself, you're definitely part of what's making it better!

<comment><USER6> >having people turn the mirror on themselves, first and foremost, before judging others.

Indeed. In any disagreement you have, there are two people at fault, but only of those faults is in your power to fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The more we tolerate this here, the more it will become the norm.

HN's most attractive feature from day one has always been the positive, intelligent, supportive community. Those are not traits you tend to find in your typical 9-5 programmer (in my experience, at least), and are the exact opposite of what you find in the communities that most of our early adopters fled from (Slashdot was already hopeless by 2007, and programming.reddit.com was already headed that way).

But those other communities are dying, and this place has taken over their role as The Place to Talk About Tech Stuff. So we see a lot of their users coming across, bringing with them the general depressive negativity and inclination to snark and hostility. This behavior sometimes doesn't get swatted down fast enough nor ruthlessly enough and bad comments are left to stand. People see these comments and think they're acceptable. And the standards erode.

There's not much to be done about it, unfortunately. We can't kick _everybody_ out, and it's not yet quite bad enough to form a new community and abandon this place to the rabble.

Still, it's worth at least trying to fight. Flag ruthlessly, downvote comments that don't belong here, based on tone rather than disagreement. Upvote the few good things that do in fact belong here. Write good comments and otherwise behave the way you want to see others behave.

<comment><USER8> I think that there is a clear distinction between pure negativity and "snark" or sardonicism. It is possible to be genuinely, objectively critical of things without being arrogant or sarcastic. Criticism is a necessary facet of discussion, and is indicative of a thoughtful community. "Asshole-sim" is not. I'm of the belief that the discussion on HN tends towards the former.

>This behavior sometimes doesn't get swatted down fast enough nor ruthlessly enough and bad comments are left to stand. People see these comments and think they're acceptable. And the standards erode.

>Flag ruthlessly, downvote comments that don't belong here, based on tone rather than disagreement.

I'm unsure of what you're advocating for. Are you for expunging the hyper- negative, misogynistic near-spam of Reddit, or for doing away with negativity entirely? (My hunch is latter, as fighting spam is trivially excepted and needn't be argued.) The latter is incredibly dangerous and will work to the detriment of the community inasmuch as HN, as a community of generally- intelligent individuals, is capable of analyzing a story to a greater extend than most news organizations or communities; and some sort of assault on negativity would remove the ability for one to introduce warranted skepticism or to dissent from general discussion. Skepticism, contrarianism, criticism, etc. are incredibly valuable tools and are fundamental to HN and to discourse in general. One should not have the merits of their ideas judged solely on the "tone" articulated by them, and HN should certainly not seek to create institutionalized positivity.

<comment><USER9> "Skepticism, contrarianism, criticism, etc. are incredibly valuable tools and are fundamental to HN and to discourse in general. One should not have the merits of their ideas judged solely on the "tone" articulated by them, and HN should certainly not seek to create institutionalized positivity."

Completely agree with you. I've seen way too many comments that where downvoted only because of the tone (even though the content itself was very relevant), or because it expressed a dissident, politically incorrect idea. When I see such a comment being downvoted, I automatically upvote it, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with the content. I don't hang out here to read opinions I'm already agreeing with. I'm far more interested in intelligently argumented opinions that contradict mine. So, no it's not fun to be bashed by the sarcasms of someone else, but if the opinion contained in the bashing is relevant, then we should just suck it up, and answer to the content.

<comment><USER7> You're mistaken. A comment with good ideas presented in an insulting/snarky/offensive tone should get downvoted here. In that rare case, it's often helpful to write a comment explaining why it was downvoted (perhaps even with a link to the guidelines), and encourage the poster to rewrite it in a tone that fits the room it was spoken in.

Some people will understand, rewrite, and become productive members of the community. Others will get offended, write back with an angry rant about censorship or something, and with luck find themselves hellbanned. Those are the people who just aren't ever going to be welcome here. Fortunately, the rest of the internet seems designed for them to fit right in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Or maybe we complain, to take the example of sexism, because there is a real problem. That needs to be addressed.

And given that the first _two_ items you address are code of conduct & sexism, I can't help but think "Of _course_ a white male programmer wouldn't see an issue with that". To be very clear, not because I think all white males are mean-spirited misogynists. Most of them are pretty nice people, in my experience.

But because being part of the majority blinds people to minority issues. And so, while I agree it's important to keep a positive outlook on life, I suggest that _especially_ for issues that don't affect you directly, you take a deep look if this is really just "negativity", or if there's a real issue lurking beyond that.

And then let's fix them. In a positive way :)

<comment><USER11> Author here. I completely agree with you that those are real problems. I have a great wife (and sisters) who have experienced varying levels of sexism in the technical world as well, and it really bothers me.

I didn't mean in my article that we should all be blind to the bad things going on, I just feel like people quickly jump to negative conclusions and go into pitchfork mode all too quickly. Constantly focusing on the negatives can be a real emotional drain. It's a lot easier to focus on the positives and solving problems. For instance, it's quite great that PyCon this year had over 20% female attendees! That's a big accomplishment compared to previous years' stats. In addition, the code of conduct and public outreach made a lot of people feel welcome and safe attending the event, which is a big win for everyone!

When bad things happen, they must certainly be brought to light -- but discussion around these problems could be far more constructive if people were to focus their efforts and energy on resolving issues and working together rather than blaming one another and becoming defensive or close-minded.

The first step to solving problems is always to identify the problem, but the attitude you take to solving problems can make a huge difference both to yourself and to your peers.

Thank you for the comment, I'm really surprised to see so many interesting viewpoints about this topic.

<comment><USER10> > and go into pitchfork mode all too quickly

Oh, I agree with you there.

> but the attitude you take to solving problems can make a huge difference > both to yourself and to your peers.

That's an excellent insight, and one that's hard to keep in mind, at times. Especially if most attempts at fixing a problem are greeted by essentially a wave of bile and hate. It's easy to forget that most people are decent, when the Internet makes it easy to only see the loudest ones.

That's where I'd say I disagree with you - it's not easy to focus on the positive. It depends on the reaction of your peers. Yes, we must be the change we wish to see in the world - but emulating Ghandi all the time is something only very few succeed at.

Thank you for the reminder that it's worth trying, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember sitting in a meeting some years ago and we were discussing a new issue tracking system that was being demoed on the projector. The editor component took a full 10 to 15 seconds to load into the page every time. So I said "that editor sucks". It was one of the few things I had said during the meeting.

The manager was very irritated and said something like "We don't tolerate that kind of negativity here". And continued, as if I had said something awful. He said something like "unless you have a solution to a problem" something something in the process of explaining why I shouldn't say that.

So five minutes after the meeting I found out how to disable the slow graphical editor and then the issue tracker became usable for normal people.

Well, I guess I am a negative person then. If it sucks, it sucks.

I will try to take some of this advice constructively though, because I do spend a lot of time focusing on problems that need to be solved. But I can't help but think that the reason a lot of people aren't so critical or 'negative' is that they have just given up on fixing things, or are just so generally ineffective at problem solving that they naturally accept everything as it is.

I would rather be a negative bastard who identifies and solves problems than a happy ineffectual drone who just goes along to get along and accepts the status quo no matter how broken.

<comment><USER13> The problem isn't that you raise the issue, the problem is the aggressive language "sucks". Not has problems, not is limited, "sucks".

The guy writing it probably knows it has problems. He's probably working really hard on it. Maybe he stayed late at work to try to improve it, instead of seeing his girlfriend. And you come along and just say "sucks". Even if he wasn't there, you're still having a go at him in front of other people.

Being polite, diplomatic, calm and considered is not being an "ineffectual drone". You're falling into that mindset that you have to be a cunt to get stuff done. You don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _> The first (and only) thing that immediately came to mind was that I wanted to be a better person: I wanted to be smarter, more successful, and happy._

When I read this, the first thing I thought of is, "Well _that's_ your problem."

To me, based on my experiences and what I've read and observed from other people, many people find the most happiness from focusing less on oneself, and focusing more on others.

What can I do to enhance the life of someone else? What can I do to make a positive impact on others? What can I do to make a difference on the well being of society?

But instead, it seems like the thought of the quoted sentence is focusing more on benefiting oneself -- make _me_ smarter, make _me_ more successful, make _me_ happier.

Don't get me wrong, I'm talking to myself as well, because I often find myself too focused on _me_. But I feel that when I instead start to focus on having a positive impact on someone else, _that's_ when I start to experience genuine happiness. _That's_ what I feel makes me a better person.

<comment><USER15> It's a little bit of a Catch-22, but focusing on self first definitely improves happiness. About 9 years ago, I had terrible anger issues, over weight and all the stereotypes of the computer dork. One day, after sitting on WoW for 4 hours waiting to buy Arena points, I thought "What am I doing with myself?" and shifted gears to working out.

That moment of selfishness, is what helped pull me out of whatever rut I was in. 8 years later, I have a black belt in one martial art, a blue in a second, and I'm offering nutritional tips to friends and family.

Happiness doesn't have to be volunteering at the soup kitchen every week, but the general "Don't be a dick to anyone" can really boost your mood. I'm not saying be a doormat, stand your ground, but don't be a dick about it either.

<comment><USER16> > _About 9 years ago [...] after sitting on WoW for 4 hours waiting to buy > Arena points_

I don't doubt your story, but your timeline is off. Arena was introduced with BC, which was Jan 2007 -- 6 years ago, not 9. It would have been impossible to buy arena points 9 years ago because they didn't exist.

That aside, I don't see that as selfishness, just introspection. If selfishness is doing something for your own benefit, then you did an _unselfish_ thing. You made the lives of everyone around you better, and contributed more to your family and society. That isn't selfish!

<comment><USER15> You're right, my math was way off, thanks for catching that. It was still Arena points, cause I remember quitting the next day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Loved this post.

I've noticed many of the characteristics Randall described about his "old" self, and in the past few months I have made it a goal for myself to be less negative, and make a conscious effort to notice when I am being very negative.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is stupid and nobody likes it. Go back to your terrible life as a terrible person who nobody likes.

But in all seriousness, I think you do have to take the negative with the positive, so long as both are constructive. It'd be stupid to take something sexist and cast it aside and make jokes about it as if it doesn't matter. Because it does matter. The technical community is negative because it has certain requirements that are not met. The government is doing bad things, as are private corporations. We cannot ignore these things because they are negative. But I agree that we should find positives. The trick is that, in good discussion, positive and negative are unimportant. What matters is constructiveness.

Saying 'This is great!' is just as useless as saying 'This sucks!'. Positive conversation is fine, but it is not necessary in intelligent discussion, because not every topic is inherently positive.

</comment><comment><USER19> > _"Accept the behavior of others as it is, and don't allow yourself to > project your desired behavior onto others."_

If you could only read one sentence in TFA, this should be it.

To it, I would also just add: "Instead, show others how you would have them behave by behaving that way yourself."

</comment><comment><USER20> I wholeheartedly agree. I've noticed it a lot over the last while where many people in the software industry who write blog posts or contribute to forums just have an air of negativity about them. That being said, I'm sure no matter where you look there will be plenty of people who focus on the negatives in life, that's just in their nature.

My preference is to be a positive person and focus on making my life (and hopefully other people's lives) happy and reading blog posts by similar minded people only reinforces that.

</comment><comment><USER21> There's a nice book about positive attitude, "Bright Sided" by Barbara Ehrenreich (IIRC). Follows the history of positive thinking from the epoch of calvinism up until today. Will be useful to read for you.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sure, frustration reduces happiness.

However, many things were created (or fixed) exactly because of frustration (sometimes it is the best motivation for solving real, burning problems, instead of artificial ones).

Likewise, perfectionism is almost always painful for both the person in charge (as things never get perfect) and co-workers, family, etc. But many times the effort is worth it, and afterwards it is better to look back at a masterpiece born in pain, than a slackly and broken thing created in a laid-back way.

Perhaps it is why many creators (both in tech and arts) were depressive, but still able to accomplish a lot (though, sure, it is not a requirement). And sure, it is a matter of balance - one one hand to be able to spot real problems, on the other - still be motivated enough to finish them (spotting but being not able to fix is the worst state of mind, arguably).

</comment><comment><USER23> It's also important to note how important positive behavior is on those around you. One thing I've learned since programming professionally is that it's a team sport -- doesn't have to be, but in most cases you'll develop along with others. When you develops habits of cynicism and negativity _it spreads_. To those junior, to your direct peers, and especially to non-technical teammates.

I've found that by setting a positive tone, _especially_ in somewhat negative situations, speaks volumes. Cynicism is easy. Pushing those feelings aside and remaining stoic in tough times helps tremendously.

</comment><comment><USER24> Whats up Ran!, Great read on a day of bad news. But I agree with Jader201, its hard to be happy even if I'm personally successful. There are so many struggling. Maybe its cause I grew up playing competitive team sports. But seeing so many smart engineers out of work or pushed around is a shame. Its a choice to help others and make their happiness a priory. There are just so many people having a hard time right now. Personally, It hurts to see.

I just cant put blinders on and focus on myself. Wish I could.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, there are people plain dumb who needs me to be angry and help them correct their behaviour - they might not even be aware of that yet.

In a more serious manner, drama is one thing that gains attention and strong, opinionated, emotionfull articles are getting attention. Add some mediocrity to the article by choosing a general, unspecialised subject on which everybody is able to express an opinion and that's it, you have a front page article.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a natural cynic and old ex goth, let me say that being positive is _really hard work_. But worth it.

I noticed one day in an old job that two distinct things happened when management presented an idea to the engineering teams. Nearly everyone (self included to a greater or lesser extent) would start racking their brains for reasons why this, whatever it is, is a terrible idea that must be argued against, or why it just straight out couldn't work.

All except one guy, a friend and one of the brightest sparks on the team, who would start thinking of how he could implement it and what new, interesting tech he could use to get there. Sometimes he would come to the conclusion it was a bad idea, or impossible, but he didn't look for that first. As a result he did more novel, interesting work than the rest of the team(s) who generally spent their time mumbling and complaining.

That's when I decided to try and be that way too.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reading this article reminded me of this post from Myles Recny:

<http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/be-nice-to-programmers>

Both that article and this one resonated with me on a certain level. Software development can be such a hypercritical field, involving so much self- recrimination.

That, in turn, reminds me of Alan Cooper's characterization of Homo Logicus in The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. Programmers are forced to look at all possibilities, and are trained to point out even extremely unlikely cases. This emphasis on edge-cases is confusing and counter-intuitive to non- programmers, who tend to think in terms of probable cases.

Perhaps too much concentrated attention on possible cases is turning us all sour.

</comment><comment><USER28> I feel like most programmers have trained themselves to expect the worst. Pessimism forces you to write robust code. I'm not saying it's the only way to produce robust code, but it definitely helps. I think that's why a lot of HackerNews posts are pessimistic (negative).

</comment><comment><USER29> Despite not getting into programming until I was 26, having come from an arts background of study, I've been programming applications that are used by hundreds of people since then. I don't code through the night, am not good enough to be hired by a start up or use rails or the latest tool the bullies of the tech world are going on about. No one I write for gives a flying fuck about anything except an application that is easy to use and does everything they asked for. Any of the incredible languages out there are capable of giving users what they want right now so no need to keep banging on about the latest version or giving out about the other camps.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's a culture thing, and mob mentality. A few leaders set the tone and then everyone runs with it, eager to make their mark. Every major event, especially those with strong emotional content, starts with a trigger post, followed by a deluge of "my take on X" posts, complete with 600+ thread comments, after which it slowly fades away, with only a few hardcore people shouting "why doesn't anyone care about X anymore!?"

That's human. That's culture. The negativity will eventually fade once the general startup mood improves from massive infusions of cheap money again, at which point the same fad cycle will continue to occur, but with a much rosier tint.

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who feels this post is also negative, but only in a meta- sense?

</comment><comment><USER32> Highly recommended books: [Think on These Things](<http://www.jiddu- krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things>) and [The First and Last Freedom]([http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/the-first-and-last- free...](http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/the-first-and-last-freedom)) by Jiddu Krishnamurti

</comment><comment><USER33> People differ. Different people are also valid and can get things done, and may have unique strengths. Lincoln was classified as "melancholic." Pessimists may have more accurate views of many things. Do we really have to demand that everyone have the same personality as ourselves?

<comment><USER34> There's no sort of demand in the article. The advice there is to be a passive observer of human behavior rather than getting angry and engaging in flamewars.

Given the current climate I see on HN, this advice is spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great post! especially after the week-long PyCon rants on HN front-page.

</comment><comment><USER36> Snap out of that filter bubble, programming community != hacker news and hacker news != programming community.

Upvotes for scandal outrages don't mean we've all become grumpy.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is NOT new. You could see this same problem on usenet in the 80's and on Slashdot. Programmers are often negative, it's pretty much an archetype.

</comment><comment><USER38> _The How of Happiness_ is a research-backed yet very practical/usable book describing several techniques for finding happiness in life.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thank you for this very enlightening post.

</comment><comment><USER40> There is so much irony in this post and these comments. Pretty funny if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER41> pro tip : To gain the twitter followers start tweeting positive views .

</comment><comment><USER42> When I discovered Hacker News, I loved it because it seemed to be 100% about technology and internet startups. It doesn't feel like that to me any more.

I've been involved with other sites where the political discussions overwhelmed the core topic, and the audience just collapsed in a tailspin of high emotions.

I hope Hacker News doesn't go that route.

<comment><USER43> I kind of like the mixed bag that Hacker News seems to be.

I'm pretty new here, but I enjoy reading about the future of programming languages alongside posts about Marcus Aurelius' writings. It just seems that it's mostly content about being the best you that you can be and having a broad range of knowledge.

<comment> eric-hu Do you think the recent "Inappropriate comments at Pycon 2013 called out" thread contributed to that mixed bag in a good way?

I worded that carefully. I don't want to draw out sides on that thread topic, just whether it contributed to an educational atmosphere and meaningful discussion on HN.

<comment><USER44> I think it's a discussion that needs to take place. I am not sure HN is the place to do it, but where else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The internet is dehumanizing. I see the effect in myself. We'd never say half the things in person that we say online. The instantaneous nature of computers has made us all impatient brats.

Especially _you._

</comment><comment><USER46> I read that and felt that it was a negative post about negative posts.

</comment><comment><USER47> Thanks, weeaboo

</comment><comment><USER48> Vacuous, Zig-Ziglar-esque handwaving with an unnecessary bad anime drawing.

Way to get on HN, though. Everything else looks really educational in comparison, so I'm sure the rest of the authors appreciate it.

<comment><USER49> Alright Debbie Downer.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Facebook app I made that maps your friends' locations. - <AUTHOR> http://apps.facebook.com/friends_mapper/

<comment><USER2> I've largely given up caring, but there will be people who notice ...

      > app I made that maps your friend's locations.

This implies that your users only have one friend each, which might be true for some, but is unlikely for poeple who use Facebook, given the implicit defintiion of "Friend."

It's irrelevant, but I thought you might like to know.

And I haven't logged in becuase I don't use Facebook, so I guess I don't have any friends ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! Good catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to check this out, it sounds kind of cool but I never authorize apps that request " __may post status messages, notes, photos, and videos to my Wall" It is just to vague for my tastes.

Can you tell me when exactly the app would be posting things to my wall? Is there a way to opt out of that bit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

That permission is there because I have a share button- if you click it a popup will open where you can choose to post the app to your wall.

You have a point though- I will see if I can split the permissions such that I only request wall posts after you choose the share option.

EDIT: fixed, I took out the wall publishing permissions and the share button still works. Enjoy!

<comment><USER3> Cool, thanks for the clarification. I checked it out and its pretty cool, It looks pretty complete as far as my friends list goes and definitely accurate.

The one suggestion I'd make is to see what you can do as far as adding more to the location markers. Ideally, something that IDs my friends without requiring me to click would be best. Maybe incorporating tiny profile images, or names (maybe truncated). I know it could get crowded pretty quickly so it would be something to experiment with for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I just switched from click to mouseover- I'm not sure if it's better or not. It makes it jump around a bit. I'll leave it up and let me know what you think.

(p.s. thanks for the feedback!)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the jumping is definitely jarring.

Are you able to reserve a space outside of the map that is dedicated to displaying friend thumbnails? You could update that section with new thumbnails when the mouse hovers over one of the nav markers. It would prevent the pop up/map position adjustment from being necessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's ambitious push into gaming is floundering - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-google-stadia-2020-2 <comment><USER3> It's really interesting if you compare it to Epic's entry into the game selling business. What they did was:

1\. Appeal to developers by making exclusivity deals with them (e.g: we give you a bag of money upfront if you only sell your game via our store for a year) which is really beneficial for developers as the game business is quite risky. The developer gets guaranteed cash and Epic gets everyone who would buy that game on their platform (minus the people who are outraged by the exclusivity deal)

2\. Appeal to the customers by giving away free games every week. Epic pays developers for you, so you get a free game while the developer also gets paid. Epic wants you to have a library on their platform so you keep coming back, and because you need to visit the store to claim the free games they literally train their customers to use the store, from there it's a small step to convert them to paying customers with good deals.

It's absolutely baffling to me Google didn't do anything like this, they have literally more money then they could spend, yet they didn't do anything to get people to actually use their service. Compare it to the Gmail or Chrome launch suddenly there was this 'free' product you could jump onto, it was technologically superior and exciting and it came out of nowhere. Imagine if they did _that_ with Stadia, just suddenly release it without fanfare, all your favorite games are on there and you can play X hours a week for free or something like that.

<comment><USER4> Epic's entry into the game storefront business has been a drama filled shit- show. It has not been well received by very vocal swaths of the gaming community. In fact, their strategy of buying out developers for exclusivity rights is one of the reasons they've drawn so much ire.

See the controversy where Borderlands games were getting review bombed on Steam, because Epic secured exclusivity rights for Borderlands 3.

[https://kotaku.com/borderlands-is-getting-review-bombed- on-s...](https://kotaku.com/borderlands-is-getting-review-bombed-on-steam- over-epic-1833818454)

In the gaming world, you're basically damned if you do, damned if you don't. If Google had aggressively gone for exclusives, they'd be getting the same backlash that Epic has gotten/is getting. But since they didn't they might be getting an equal but opposite sort of backlash now.

<comment><USER5> The epic approach gets a lot of hate from a vocal minority. Everyone else has had multiple storefronts for a while, and having -one- more is borderline meaningless. As long as they don't jack up the price, how many people give a shit which executable they have to click on to launch a game?

<comment><USER6> The Epic Store isn't supported on Linux. When they turn existing games on Steam into Epic store exclusives I can't play the games I have purchased.

<comment><USER5> > vocal minority

> Linux gamer

I fail to see the contradiction. Per Steam's October 2019 user survey, all Linux distros together total 0.43% of their users. I am using the notably pro- Linux Steam as a benchmark for how many gamers are affected by this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" This concern — that Google might just give up on Stadia at some point and kill the service, as it has done with so many other services over the years — was repeatedly brought up, unprompted, by every person we spoke with for this piece."_

That's a terrible reputation for any company to have.

In addition to Stadia, it seems to be killing off Improbable's Spatial OS, which is a back-end system for very large world MMOs. Originally, that had to run on Google Cloud. Three of the first games shut down, partly because the costs for that service are high. Nobody big is using it.

<comment><USER8> When Microsoft launched Xbox they suffered pretty terrible losses for a number of years but they always knew that was going to happen[1], and they were willing to accept it because they were playing the long game.

This worked out not only because Microsoft had the money but, critically, because they had the will to make Xbox a success. They resolved to slog through the years of losses, failures (anyone remember the Japan launch?), and missteps in order to build a successful business.

Whilst Google have the money, more than enough money, to do the same, I don't think they have the will.

From my own perspective, as a gaming enthusiast, Stadia simply isn't solving any problem that I have, and I don't believe it's going to be around long enough that I want to invest in it.

 _[1] I 'm sure they would have preferred if it wasn't._

<comment><USER9> I have an incredibly good internet connection since I'm working from home, but because I only play like 2-4 hours a week I can't really justify investing in a very expensive gaming computer. I need a laptop for work, and investing in an extra platform just for those 4 hours? Stadia might be a very good compromise for me, and I think there are quite a few others like me out there, especially in the youngest generation who mostly use mobile in the first place.

<comment><USER10> "A very expensive gaming computer"

You already have a laptop/PC. A lot of gaming can be done with iGPUs so the cost for you would be zero.

If you really want to play big titles, then you are looking at a delta of 300$ (the price of a good GPU) for 5 years, which amounts to 5$ a month.

I don't see why anybody who has already a computer would pay _more_ money to vendor lock-in themselves into an online-only service, one-store-only, no- mods-allowed, Internet-quality-dependent service.

I can see the appeal for people that wasn't into computers before that, though. But still, if I were in that case, I would choose a non-locked-in platform at all costs.

<comment><USER11> Where would that GPU go? My laptop doesn't have a place for it, and doesn't have the connections for an eGPU. A $300 delta would only be true if I had a desktop.

I use Paperspace + Parsec for a regular Windows cloud desktop so I'm not locked into anything and pay just a few dollars per month for my gaming.

<comment><USER12> Next to the laptop, believe it or not.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208544)

 _eGPUs are supported by any Thunderbolt 3-equipped Mac1 running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 or later_

The key is to realise that modern cables coming out of laptops are basically extensions of the PCIe bus. The bandwidth through them is phenomenal. It's entirely feasible to run an external GPU.

However, you don't really need one. I am a casual gamer who uses my laptop (got an Xbox too though), and even with the embedded GPU strategy/city building/etc type games work fine and look great. The Mac isn't a good platform if you're a capital-G "Gamer" but if you just want some entertainment on long flights and the like it works just fine. Go grab Steam and off you go. I don't think I'll be using Stadia any time soon as a consequence.

<comment><USER13> God it's so frustrating to see posts like yours.

[https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share.asp...](https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx)

<comment> throwaway-9320 Thunderbolt 3 based eGPU-s work very well on Windows-based machines, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have Stadia! Here are a few impressions:

1\. The game catalog is totally the most important thing and they don't have any really big games. I'm not a Fortnite person, but they don't have that, nor Apex, nor PUBG. Battle Royale may not be the biggest thing in gaming anymore, but this is the type of game that at least a lot of people enjoy and they have none on the platform.

2\. They sold Stadia as being able to achieve higher quality than local hardware at a fraction of the cost. Yet it's been shown multiple times that the games running on Stadia are running at less than promised quality, with techniques like upscaling being used for 4K instead of native 4K: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-addresses- comp...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-addresses-complaints- of-sub-4k-image-quality-on-stadia/).

3\. As a person who wants to play with a keyboard and a mouse on a computer, I get really frustrated that the Stadia output resolution is fixed. You can't output 1440p to a monitor at all, and 4K is only available if you have a Chromecast. Why?

I've also tried Shadow and GeForce now. Shadow is easily the best in terms of quality, because you can run at arbitrary resolutions and pump the bandwidth up to a max of 70Mbps down, which is astoundingly good looking compared to what Stadia offers. GeForce Now is great too, but point 3 applies to it: you can't run at non-preset resolutions, which really stinks if you have a bigger monitor with a higher native resolution. However, both Shadow and GeForce Now leverage existing game libraries, look better, and are generally more approachable than Stadia's "rebuy everything, run at lower quality, and lack significant features" plan.

<comment><USER15> >Yet it's been shown multiple times that the games running on Stadia are running at less than promised quality, with techniques like upscaling being used for 4K instead of native 4K

I remember having tons of fun playing Portal and Left 4 Dead with buddies in my dorm room when 720p was pretty high end. Is 4K really that necessary to have a good time with a video game?

Or perhaps I'm... officially old :(

<comment><USER14> I don't really care for 4K personally. I just want "native" because I can't stand looking at blurry interfaces. I can definitely tell when I'm running a 1080p game on a 1440p native monitor and everything is being stretched up. I would take lower settings just to have a clear UI, but I can't do that.

In terms of raw quality with streaming game services, bitrate matters much more than resolution. 4K mandates higher bitrate to deliver the pixels in a timely fashion. All of the services have some upper cap on bitrate, and if you can drive that up (can downstream clients support it?) then you can increase the streamed game quality to be closer to what's actually being output. This is most noticeable in areas where it's extremely dark or shadow detail is important, less so in light settings.

But either way, quality is a combination of the game settings (what is being output to the card), the output resolution (the scale of things you see), and the bitrate (what is being sent down for you to actually view). If these three components are mis-tuned, the quality of the image you're looking at will be lower due to one of those components.

<comment><USER16> I agree with Linus from LTT where he said it's because the TV and Phone industry have effectively ignored 1440p as a resolution. Movies are either HD (1080p) or 4k and so TV and phone panels are made in those resolutions. Monitors may be 1440p (which I find most useful) but only native PC games actually output at that resolution.

This really goes to show that Stadia is a video streaming platform (i.e. something to help compete with Twitch) rather than a game playing platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm both bullish and bearish on cloud gaming, if that makes sense. I have Stadia, and the tech is really nice, but as pointed out, there are no games. Further, you have to buy/rebuy all your games just for Stadia, which may not exist soon(ish).

Then there's Geforce Now. Their system is simply awesome, with similar tech but two key advantages. First, you can use any controller, which is a big win. But biggest of all, most of the games are just via Steam. So buy it once, play on PC or ShieldTV, your choice. This was, as it turns out, too good to be true. In the last month, at least two huge publishers pulled out, essentially disabling the ability to play a purchased Steam game via Geforce Now. Now their fate is looking questionable as well.

One month ago, I would have said Geforce Now is absolutely the way to go. Today, I'd tell anyone curious just to wait and see what happens this year.

<comment><USER18> Give it 5 years and xbox and playstation will have their equivalent cloud offerings, but far more refined and with their expansive and ever growing catalogs. The players in the market now are doomed, but at least it can be assured the industry giants pick up the pieces from when google inevitably cancels this project and make a better product like they tend to do.

<comment><USER19> Playstation already has it and they've been operating it for many years.

<comment><USER18> I'm putting 5 years on when it overtakes buying the console in market share.

<comment><USER16> It will never overtake having a local device which you can play games on, and people that think so are delusional or are trying to sell you something on subscription.

There will be people streaming the games they are playing, there will be people playing streaming games, but it won't ever overtake playing on a local device. (I include handheld consoles, phones, consoles, PCs in this).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's say I'm a casual gamers, without a console or a gaming PC and I briefly heard of Stadia. I imagine this is their target audience.

I went to stadia.google.com and there's no catalog with the available games on the platform. There's nothing that show me, with trailers, videos, what's on there and why I should buy this. Remember, I am a casual gamers, so I don't know much about what is out there in terms of games.

What I see is some images of games that tells me nothing, a link to buy the service and links to both App stores. That's it.

Basically, this is Google assuming, once again, that because they're Google, that people would be tripping over themselves to sign up for this. Total lack of empathy.

I ended up closing the tab.

<comment> 100-xyz I visited the page. Pathetic. I think someone did that page in an hour?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unless it's a game I really, really want to play right NOW, I wishlist it and wait for deep discounts, then purchase. This leaves me with a large back catalog of games I haven't played yet, from which I choose when I'm done with one game and want to choose another.

Given the frequent discount sales model popularized by Steam (and maybe Humble Bundle was first to that?) I think a lot of avid gamers are in a similar position.

As a result, game streaming services that doesn't let me bring my own games is a complete non-starter for me. Especially for a sales model like Stadia where I really don't own it. GoG is an excellent storefront to safeguard your library with DRM free games and archiveable installers. Even Steam has made sounds about finding a way to let you keep your library if they were ever to go under. But past failures like Onlive have left gamers bereft of purchases. I think I lost some games when Direct2Drive had some issues or transfer of ownership years ago.

If Google really wants to make a viable product, they should be looking at integrating Stadia streaming tech into compute instances that let me install Steam or any other storefront or stand alone game.

If you're looking for such a service, you could do worse than Shadow or Paperspace. I demoed GeForce Now and liked it better, but they're also running into some trouble over not firming up publisher agreements, so I'd wait for the dust to settle there in the next months.

<comment><USER22> The frequent discount model is popular in most retail now. Many people don't shop for clothing unless it is on sale because they have been trained that it will be on sale soon enough.

<comment><USER21> Very true. I know I can get work casual clothes from the usual shops if I wait a few weeks at a 30-40% discount.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article seems misguided.

It's assuming Stadia is "floundering" because it doesn't have a ton of indie titles, assuming those are "critical" for success.

But are they? The article is clear that Google is working with "EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, 2K Games, and Rockstar Games".

Google is obviously consciously choosing a product strategy of starting with major publishers rather than indie ones.

Now I don't personally know if that's the right strategy. But it's clearly the strategy Google is pursuing, so they should be judged on whether that's working.

Judging solely on the presence of indie titles just seems weird.

<comment><USER24> I paid for the Founders Edition, eagerly awaited its release, played a couple games for a few hours and haven't touched it since.

I want to play games like I watch Netflix, free with lots of variety. Indie game makers would keep me coming back for no other reason than I want to try new things regularly and I have zero interest in paying $60 for titles I've already played or had no interest in in the first place.

Dr. Kate Compton articulates what I want well in this twitter thread:

[https://twitter.com/GalaxyKate/status/1197227916158996481](https://twitter.com/GalaxyKate/status/1197227916158996481)

<comment><USER25> Twitter won't load for me right now, but it sounds like you want Apple Arcade.

<comment><USER26> Twitter will load differently for me depending upon referrer; try reloading by selecting url and hitting enter to make it a direct thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "This concern — that Google might just give up on Stadia at some point and kill the service, as it has done with so many other services over the years — was repeatedly brought up, unprompted, by every person we spoke with for this piece."

There it is, right there. Nobody takes Google seriously on any new initiative outside their core wheelhouse. We've all been burned too many times.

<comment><USER28> I find this point so overplayed lately.

Can someone here name "so many other (paid) services" that Google has killed? And even for free ones, how many major services can you name of the scale of Stadia? G+ is really the only one, and maybe Allo. Hangouts is still not killed though its future is uncertain, GPM is apparently being migrated and Inbox was mostly a UI over Gmail.

Other than those, almost every other item in those cemetery site is a trivial side project, not even close to being comparable to Stadia.

<comment><USER29> Out of interest, what is the alternative to Hangouts from Google? I have Duo but I don't want to video call all the time. I would like to IM and send pictures (without WhatsApp).

Does Google have an alternative or are they just ditching it for no purpose?

<comment><USER28> It's still not clear, but I doubt they will fully ditch it. My understanding is that Hangout Chat is going to replace it, but the current iteration is very enterprise centric (feels like Slack). The fact that they still haven't killed Hangout makes me think that they will adapt Chat to be closer to the old Hangout and swap the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article does not support the title. The facts also do not support the article.

Stadia launched with 3 indie games, one of them exclusive. In just the last week they added 3 more indie-ish games (Spitlings and 2 titles from SteamWorld). They also announced at least 4 more indie-ish titles to land soon (Lost Words, 2 more SteamWorld titles, and Stacks On Stacks). So how can one claim that indie developers are not porting games to Stadia? At least some clearly do.

Speaking of Business Insider - in my personal opinion, they are a click factory. They'll write anything that drives clicks, just look at their landing page. "Stadia is DoA" drives clicks and Business Insider wrote quite a few articles to that extent. They know how to run business.

Speaking of this specific article: if devs and 'executives' believe Google is not serious about Stadia, why no-one agreed to speak on record? Is it possible that that these contacts actually think there is a path forward for Stadia and they don't want to burn bridges? Or maybe these industry contacts are imaginary?

Disclaimer: happy Stadia user, playing indie games on it and confused when someone says that indies are not porting games to Stadia.

<comment><USER31> 3 indie games is not exactly a lot. 3 indie games is what's launched on Steam any given 10 minutes. If you mean _huge_ indie games, Steam gets about one or more of those a day.

And it seems like the Steamworld developer is quite serious about porting games to Stadia, since 4 games out of the 10 you mentioned are all related to Steamworld in some way. That doesn't strike me as a healthy indie market if it's so heavily sustained by one developer.

And announcing 4 more indie titles coming soon doesn't leave me with any confidence. It's not much.

<comment><USER30> I agree that the number of games compared to established platforms is small.

But what can you expect? This is a new entrant, all the new platforms faced similar issues. Some overcome it, some didn't, we'll see how it goes here. For what I know, Google already invested a lot and has deep pockets.

<comment><USER31> The facts seem to indicate that it's floundering if nearly half of its indie titles are from one minor developer. Indie devs often readily hop on new platforms (given that development isn't unreasonably difficult) since it's a wide open market and they have a fresh chance to get in before it's too crowded.

Nobody is eager to put anything on Stadia. As an indie developer myself, Stadia would at best be an afterthought long after I've comfortably released my games elsewhere. It doesn't seem worth the time investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just don't see the market for this. Powerful computers are becoming cheaper and cheaper; the PC game market is continuing to expand.

I don't see the comparison to other cloud media services like Netflix or Hulu- on Stadia, you have to pay for the service AND the individual items, instead of just the service. As far as I know, there isn't any other business like this. I don't think this is appealing to consumers.

<comment><USER33> Some of the most exciting potentials for cloud streaming for me are some of the things they've toted as not possible on consumer hardware.

Most of these are just related to scale (like 1,000-person Battle Royales, 500-car races, MMOs that don't have to shard players in the same area into separate "worlds", etc), but there's other features that'd be exciting to see when games have effectively unlimited resources (instead of having to worry about what's available on each consumer's PC); Google's got a lot of resources in NLP and language recognition/generation they could apply to NPC dialogues, massive amounts of resources could make enemy/npc AI way more impressive than what you'd see on local hardware (I'd love to play against DeepMind's Dota 2 bots!), or even something as mundane as Maps-like navigation as a first-party feature to help you navigate through game worlds.

I'm less excited about some of the streaming-based features they've advertised (streamers being able to share save-states with viewers that viewers can click to start playing from, viewers being able to instantly jump in and play live with streamers, being easier to stream at 4K while also playing in 4K, etc), but I guess those are probably appealing to some people also.

<comment><USER34> Things that aren't possible on consumer hardware are implausible to be financially viable as an on demand service.

Even for Google, it will never affordable to spin up giant clusters of servers for one person playing a video game.

The basic premise of Stadia being able to match and surpass a high end desktop gaming machine makes no sense. The cloud isn't magic, and it takes people thinking it is magic to buy the pitch. Stadia reminds me of SimCity 2013 promising it had to be online based because of all the magic cloud power they needed to make it work, which was almost immediately proven to be utter bullshit.

There's no way to offer the power of a $1,000 GPU without your own $1,000 GPU, and their promise of 4k at 60 FPS takes a very serious amount of specialized gaming hardware.

<comment><USER33> >There's no way to offer the power of a $1,000 GPU without your own $1,000 GPU

I think the whole idea of economics at scale (and much of cloud computing) is predicated on the idea that users want to use that $1,000 GPU without having to pay $1,000 to own it, and that companies can sell access to many users per $1,000 GPU to recoup the costs of that GPU, both over time (as the initial cost gets amortized over recurring subscription/usage revenues) and horizontally (selling access to many users who timeshare that GPU, maximizing its use compared to owning one you'd only use N hours per day).

Scale that up to thousands of GPUs making a profit from hundreds of thousands of users each accessing those resources at a cost cheaper than what it'd take for them to purchase those resources for themselves and you've got the magic of the "cloud".

tl;dr Users can pay <$1,000 for access to a $1,000 GPU and companies can afford to do so because the number of users multiplied by what they're paying exceeds the cost and upkeep of that GPU. Everyone* wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Google is now starting to feel the economic impact of being a known "mercurial company" that cannot be trusted with any long term strategic partnerships. see [https://gcemetery.co](https://gcemetery.co)

As a customer, why would I "buy" a game that I will never own, on a service that is likely to close on a whim. As a game developer why would I invest time and effort supporting a new platform from a company without a proven track record in the game industry.

This will severely limit their impact on the industry, and the executives have nobody to blame but themselves for the lack of trust.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm glad to see that Google is finally paying for their actions by having market forces reject them for retreating so quickly. Anything they try can't be just a toe-dip now. They need to actually invest heavily otherwise no one will trust them. Good. They have fucked over way too many developers by dangling a promise and then cutting support quickly.

</comment><comment><USER37> Shouldn't a potential user of this service just expect it to be unceremoniously discontinued, like so many other Google products?

<comment><USER18> Yep, but then you can switch to xbox cloud in a couple years and it will probably be excellent with a huge catalog of current and legacy titles and supported until the end of time, or whenever you can no longer afford $10 a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Google is an engineer-driven company. They're great at building solutions, but terrible at packaging them up as products. Making them desirable, and easy to understand, and just having any kind of unifying vision at all. Nobody who understands this fact is the least bit shocked about how Stadia is turning out.

<comment> martin-adams I agree with this, but only for their consumer products. I gave up on the Google Home and went back to Alexa. It was like they just don't try to use their own products themselves, and once they tick the box of releasing, improvements seem to be nonexistent.

Admittedly, most of my issues were because I have a GSuite account, but when it can't read my own calendar or set a reminder, you realise they just don't care. Alexa can read my GSuite calendar just fine.

I always approach Google products with caution.

<comment><USER39> Could it be possible that employees designing the google home ecosystem can't actually afford homes in the bay area? If everyone is renting, then they likely have to make do, and just imagine what owning a home might be like.

<comment><USER40> What does owning a home have to do with the comment above? Calendar integration has nothing to do with whether you pay a mortgage or rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's interesting to me how a company like Google can still do things so half- assedly. You'd kind of expect with their resources, they'd to flirt with an idea, then if they commit, to do it fully. Like, wildly cheap, subsidized gaming solution until they own the market and then turn up the price.

The only answer I can come up with is, "this _is_ their version of flirting with an idea." In which case I think the problem is nobody else realises that given the scale and price tag.

<comment><USER42> Maybe this is silly given Google's vast resources, but I do worry about the future of a company that seems to consistently fall short when it comes to marketing and product management.

Google probably still has a lot of the best engineering talent in the world, but without coherent product strategy and marketing what good does it do? When was the last time Google made a big bet that achieved the same level of success as their earlier products? Does Google's inability to diversify its revenue stream make it more vulnerable to disruption than say, Amazon, in the long run?

<comment><USER43> > Does Google's inability to diversify its revenue stream make it more > vulnerable to disruption than say, Amazon, in the long run?

Yes. If ads went away, Google would collapse. Google's core search experience is not _that_ good any more, though it's still the best in town; you have to wonder what would happen if Amazon or Facebook decided to actually go after search in a serious way.

<comment><USER44> They do. It is deeply irritating to Amazon that people mostly search Amazon's product catalogue via Google, and only actually navigate to an Amazon controlled page when they go specifically to the product page. Amazon has thrown tremendous resources into building a search experience over _their own databases_ and it still sucks compared to the one Google produced by scraping their website.

<comment><USER43> I'm sure some part of Amazon must be deeply irritated, just as some part of Google must be deeply irritated that so many people buying products after searching on Google go to Amazon rather than through Google Shopping. But both Amazon Search and Google Shopping suck badly enough that I struggle to believe they are high priorities for their respective companies, whether that's based on an objective view of their own business or because (tacitly or explicitly) they've decided to avoid fighting each other directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Google has consistently been terrible at large corporate deal making. It's the same reason I have no faith in Google Cloud as a future product. Their tech may be interesting, but they can't court and maintain strong relationships with other large corporations. And Stadia's success will ultimately come down to their ability to make deals with the largest publishers.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think the other problem with Stadia, and why both consumers and developers are wary of it, is simply due to its streaming idea.

Even within major cities, internet connectivity can suck a lot. Couple that with data caps, and streaming games becomes a chore to play. Nobody wants to play a game that "buffers"( we already have to deal with loading screens! )

I don't think this is feasible in the States, and even other western countries.

The exception would be Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, where there are no data caps and internet is much faster and cheaper. The market is different, however, so I don't think there would be much success.

And then there's the ownership argument.

</comment><comment><USER47> Despite its failings, Stadia has few complaints about its killer feature: streaming at decently high FPS. Whether Google pulls it off or not ultimately isn't the question- the question is whether game streaming over the web will be the norm in 10 years, and I think that Stadia's initial rollout has proven the tech out.

I'm rather fond of physical game media. I like the way it looks on a shelf, and how I can always trade it at a local store for something else. I like that I can demo titles via Redbox. I like that I own my hardware and can get some value out of it if I sell it. Downloadable games don't have those qualities, but at least they can (generally) be played offline and still allow for permanent ownership. That said, all of those qualities have essentially vanished with music and video streaming and gaming isn't fundamentally different than those mediums. Look at home stereo systems over the past 50 years, where audiophile quality has given way to convenient delivery almost universally.

Any player in the game streaming business needs to have big metal, fat pipes, and money to burn on acquisition, so it does seem like a somewhat of a natural monopoly.

<comment><USER48> My experience with the technology supporting YouTube TV being so lackluster, I am reluctant to ever consider Stadia. By lackluster I mean buffering on episode load, waiting for the rewind feature to start working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I bet at least one googler's ambitious push into becoming a director or a VP is succeeding though.

</comment><comment><USER50> The article throws up two problems: the obvious one is that no-one trusts Google not to lose interest in a year or two and flush everything into the Google Sewer that all sorts of other killer products have been dumped into.

The other, though, is even harder for Google to solve: it's their culture of contempt for creators. Google's most successful products are all founded on the idea that content is worthless, and that whatever Google brings to the party is so valuable that paying in exposure, or the opportunity to participate in surveillance capitalism via advertising, ought to be enough to make you happy.

Search increasingly repackages other people's work, and Google are happy to leverage their monopoly to delist you if you don't like it; AMP ditto. News is wholesale the same story. YouTube spent years turning a blind eye to rampant copyright violation (particularly for music videos) to build itself into a monopoly. Google Scholar, Google Books - almost every Google success story is based on the same formula: take other people's work, repackage it, tell them you'll see them in court if they don't like it, and drop you from search (hell, at one point, Google banned a news outlet for a story about concerns with Google Maps' privacy aspects, if you want to understand how freely they'll use their monopoly).

Here, though, the creators have many outlets competing for their output, and an audience who are well-engaged with Steam, the Windows Store/Xbox, PlayStation Store, and so on. But Google's culture appears to be too arrogant to actually recognise the value of creators.

<comment><USER51> "tell them you'll see them in court if they don't like it, and drop you from search"

You tack on "drop you from search" as if it were an afterthought. But the "copyright violation" or "taking other peoples' work" _is_ the process of making it searchable. What logical possibility is there other than doing it or not doing it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I rent a Shadow instance for $35 a month, and play my entire Steam library on a MacBook Air. New games, old games, whatever. It just works, given good broadband and an Ethernet cable.

I think the future of "cloud gaming" looks a lot more like Shadow than Stadia.

<comment><USER53> Don't underestimate the importance of marketing. History is full of very successful products that are dogshit compared to competitors but have flashy marketing and celebrity endorsements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Still an accurate headline if you replace "gaming" with...

\- music streaming

\- chat

\- phone hardware

\- ISP

\- health

As far as I know, they have two profitable products: ads and G Suite.

<comment><USER55> And according to many reports, they are losing market share with GSuite...

[http://www.cloudcomputing- news.net/news/2018/may/30/office-3...](http://www.cloudcomputing- news.net/news/2018/may/30/office-365-usage-goes-and-leaving-g-suite-behind- says-research/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > But where are the dozens of indie hits that helped bolster the libraries of > Sony's PlayStation 4, Microsoft's Xbox One, and Nintendo's Switch? Where are > the games like "Bloodstained," "Shovel Knight," "Dead Cells," and "Untitled > Goose Game" — the blockbuster indie games that sell millions of copies and > inspire sequels?

I think this points to a somewhat more important problem for Google. As the article points out, to incentivize developers and their studios to do the work to move their games to the Stadia platform, Google would need to offer to them the benefit of a base of dedicated users. If we consider that many prospective users may already be using Steam or home gaming consoles, the question becomes: how does Google attract these users to their platform? In my opinion, as someone who has played games from an early age, the best way to do that would be to either develop a game for the platform themselves (however feasible that may be) or hire a studio to produce a game for the platform with at least a temporary exclusivity deal. I've known many young kids throughout my childhood who were inspired to go out and get a game system simply because there's that one game that can't be played anywhere else. Whether it's Mario on Nintendo, Halo on Microsoft, or Uncharted on Sony, every gaming platform has historically had exclusive games that can't be played anywhere else. Imagine if Google Stadia had secured Fortnite as an exclusive game - <USER2> would probably have not been as successful as it is now, but Stadia may likely have received a serious boost in consumer attention, all things staying the same.

<comment><USER57> And that's exactly how steam was introduced, via half life 2

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> No surprise here, even their Android game related tooling is a joke compared with what Apple offers on iOS SDK.

SpriteKite, SceneKit and MetalKit aren't without their share of bugs, however on Android's side they are just inexistent.

At any GDC, or IO, the only thing Google seems to be able to talk about is PlayServices, even the Vulkan support on Android is a joke, asking developers to clone github repositories and compile shaderc from scratch.

They just don't know how to talk to game developers.

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't know about anyone else, but if any of these cloud gaming services want me as a customer they need to give me access to my existing Steam/GOG/Epic/Whatever library on their cloud system.

I'd also _much_ rather build my own system though, unless they put a datacenter in my suburb I don't see this ever being a better experience than my own machine.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't get the concept of buying a console or using a service that streams the games, meaning I cannot play them offline (I play games mostly in Transit, buses, subways, etc that don't have wifi) - and meaning I ultimately don't own the games I buy, and when Google predictably shuts this service down as it is notorious for doing, I don't have anything to show for my investment?

I would never buy a serious console game on anything but hard media.

In a couple years, all the money people spent on games for Stadia will literally have been completely wasted - and my Sega Genesis I got when I was six, and the games I paid for 20 years ago will probably still work (I'll admit bitrot is a concern, but that's a hugely different issue), along with my PS5 or whatever I'm using at that point.

This is a zero-value, long-term net-loss concept for me. It boggles the mind.

</comment><comment><USER60> I feel a bit like the world needed this in the 90s. I remember when you needed to constantly upgrade kit to play the latest games. Processors, RAM and the GPU all had a lifespan of about 2 years before they were obsolete. That was part of what pushed consoles: you knew you'd get 5 plus years of Sony PS? games even if they looked a bit blocky by year 4.

But hardware has out run gaming needs now. My 6 year old PC plays the latest games and streams 1080p at the same time without issue. I could probably mine some crypto in the background.

If I was constantly upgrading, a "rental" service like this would make sense. But I'm not. I'm struggling to justify any changes to my setup. So why would I pay to rent someone else's?

And thats without the fact that Steam already offers games virtually on demand or that consoles have a big chunk of the market sewn up...

</comment><comment><USER61> I think I'm one of the target markets for stadia. A big time gamer in my teenss and college/early post college days before career and family made me feel out more casual games. I only play a few AAA title to completion in a year now but have a large library of games on Steam, Epic and GoG that I never had the time or interest to finish.

I was excited about Stadia when I first heard of it but needing to buy hardware for a service that will likely be languishing in a year and sunsetted in two just didn't interest me. I'm more likely to spend money on a 8 times more expensive VR set than a cheap piece of hardware that will be collecting dust in a drawer soon.

Google's reputation for discontinuing projects already influences me. Is this something that people outside the HN bubble think about?

<comment><USER4> You don't need to buy hardware for Stadia (sort of). At the moment, I do think you need to be invited by an existing member, to get an activation code , without buying the "founder's edition" \- which is a controller and a chromecast ultra.

But in general, you don't need either of those things to play games on stadia. You can use any controller (or kb/m, and any device that runs chrome, AFAIK).

<comment><USER62> I don't think this is a good defense of the service, in fact quite the opposite. The fact that you can't just buy access to it without buying the chromecast ultra hardware bundle just shows how half-baked the whole thing is.

Especially since the chromecast ultra doesn't support non-Stadia controllers, so if you do want to play with say an Xbox controller google is bundlefucking you with hardware you will never use, which certainly doesn't make the service look any more attractive to people who might otherwise be interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> IMO the biggest mistake they made was going with Linux instead of Windows. They were aiming to be Netflix for gaming but while Netflix could add any title to it's service as soon as they got the rights for it, developers need to port their games to Linux(& Vulkan) to run on Stadia. This is not an easy feat. For Destiny 2 Google had to depute a couple of its developers to work out of Bungie's office for over 6 months.

[https://ajit.dhiwal.com/2020/01/google-stadia-shouldve- used-...](https://ajit.dhiwal.com/2020/01/google-stadia-shouldve-used- windows.html)

<comment><USER64> 1) Microsoft has no incentive to cut a deal with or assist Google since they have their own online gaming service.

2) Google would be highly unenthusiastic about using Windows both culturally and because of the need to hire large numbers of engineers with deep Windows expertise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I do genuinely wonder what the appeal was to build an entirely new and slightly different hardware platform (using AMD hardware, like PS4/Xbox) when they could have easily licensed Gamestream like what Shadowplay did? Was NVIDIA not willing? Google probably already has massive data centers full of Nvidia GPUs.

Stadia is DOA, because of its absurd pricing and rollout, really strange design decisions (usb controller for select phones, but wireless for Chromecast?)

<comment><USER66> I already own a Chromecast Ultra. Why would I want to pay for another one? I have no idea why I can't buy a controller by itself for $69.

It will be interesting to see how they treat paying customers when they inevitably shut this thing down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Looks like they underestimates the power exclusive AAA titles to bring people in their platforms. Platforms like Steam and Epic without exclusive games is like buying bananas from the super market, I get them which ever is convenient. Having exclusives is like traveling, it brings people to you because certain things only that locale has and you must be there

</comment><comment><USER68> The main issue is streaming services have too much latency to attract core gamers. I barely find Steam Link playable on my home network. Nothing breaks immersion more than lag. It's like page load times. The occasional jitter matters. The lag spikes and compression artifacts are killers not the average latency.

</comment><comment><USER69> At the end of the day, I think it boils down to simple arrogance and entitlement.

When you're the owner of a successful indie game company and you've got some partnerships exec treating you like "big me little you" because I work at Google and you're an indie who needs me and will work for free, it's a real turn off.

</comment><comment><USER70> I think Stadia would make a good platform for virtual desktops running a fun blown Linux OS with Android App support. Almost every app you'd need for Windows has an Android app that is comparable. Maybe they could even support Windows too as a paid add-on.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm surprised Google still didn't use something like Wine (+dxvk) to bring more games to Stadia sooner, while the library of native Linux/Vulkan games is gradually growing (which isn't going to be super fast process). Is there a reason for that?

<comment><USER28> You can't just "bring games to Stadia". First off you need the approval from the devs. We've seen Blizzard and Bethesda pulling out their games from GeForce Now. Next, the way Stadia is designed, it requires actual porting to use its APIs, which is a non-trivial amount of work required from the devs.

You can argue if it's the right design or not, but as it is, it takes time and effort to move games to Stadia, so it's not as trivial as just running them on Wine.

<comment><USER71> Adding support for Stadia SDK (for remote input and video streaming and such) is not as difficult, as writing a Vulkan renderer in the first place, for a game that doesn't have it. Incentives are measured against the difficulty of the whole work.

I'm sure, using Wine+dxvk as a first step for existing games is a lot easier than writing native Vulkan renderer. In this sense, Google can actually provide one level of incentives for native games (higher one), and another for Wine use case.

I.e. developers can first release it in Wine (phase 1), and then make a native version for example (phase 2) to improve performance.

What Google could do, is to provide integration of their SDK with Wine for phase 1 above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Well, username checks out, since many people considered Stadia to be a physically _impossible_ endeavor. The napkin math/physics behind Stadia barely checks out, but I still think it's worth continuing development on it.

</comment><comment><USER73> Gaming is hard. It's hard to disrupt when we have PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo. Xbox was able to break in because they had Halo. Nintendo has tons of games people love.

PlayStation has a great ecosystem. You need more than just a Google name to break in.

<comment><USER50> Xbox also had Live, an easier dev story, and a willingness to persist - it's been around since 2001. And it took a long time losing money!

<comment><USER74> And Microsoft were already in the gaming space, both as a publisher and via PC technologies like DirectX.

<comment><USER50> Yes, and I imagine they learned from their involvement with the Dreamcast, as well.

<comment><USER75> That's a persistent myth; the team that launched the Xbox was an entirely different set of people in a different division from the team that worked on the Dreamcast collaboration with Sega.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> As with every area where google didn't have a dominant offering in place before strong competitors existed. Android being a possible exception because device vendors rallied around it so as not to be extinguished by apple.

</comment><comment><USER77> Can't someone go take a look at the Commodore 64/Amiga and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and make a new _programmable games console_ for the modern age?

Even something like a Raspberry Pi inside a keyboard enclosure would be good.

</comment><comment><USER78> Google used to use the term beta a lot in there past. I don't understand why Stadia wasn't tag with the beta or early access this would of put the problems and the media more at ease until the product was stable

<comment><USER79> The MBA took over and is afraid to show weakness with labels like "Beta".

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Shame, they have such an opportunity on so many fronts.

I am actually very intrigued by the hardware, a powerful linux box which may make a cracking console in it's own right. Wouldn't mind one of those at home.

</comment><comment><USER81> Google doesn't really kill pay services. So while projects and random free services are killed all the time (too often probably), it's kinda unfair to apply that reputation to Stadia.

</comment><comment><USER82> Starlink implementation (best case scenarios) will be the only thing that saves Stadia's latency issue. Maybe Google knows something...

</comment><comment><USER83> Early adopter of Stadia here. Even I am surprised they haven't shut down the service yet. I wonder when they'll pull the plug.

</comment><comment><USER84> Google Stadia reminds me of the old adage: "Good business can save bad tech, but good tech can not save bad business."

</comment><comment><USER85> Stadia works surprisingly well but has literally 0 games I'm interested in. Considering cancelling my Pro subscription soon.

</comment><comment><USER86> It's hilarious. Many people commented on how long it would take before it ended up in killedbygoogle.com.

I don't trust a single product they launch these days. Usually it's best to wait 5 years and get a sense for its longevity.

What products do Google make that last longer these days? I feel the majority of new stuff ends up canned because it just doesn't hold up to the tech debt and costs for running the service at such huge scale.

<comment><USER87> Stadia is already dead. I don't know anyone in Europe who is using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> This whole sector is currently just super weird.

GeForce NOW has been somewhat successful but has had support from both Bethesda and Activision recently pulled.

Meanwhile, Google is just kinda half-arsing it around, even tho they would easily have the money and infrastructure to create something like a "killer- app" for the scalability of gaming in the cloud.

But apparently there isn't any attempt at something like that, so what's even the point?

</comment><comment><USER89> Google has a growing track record of ambitious half-measure projects.

Game streaming is very appealing to me on paper for competitive games. Compared to the traditional dedicated server scenario, cloud multiplayer gaming could nearly halve the player to player latency.

<comment><USER90> Wait, how is adding _more_ servers into the mix going to _reduce_ latency?

<comment><USER89> I shoot. It takes 15 ms to show up on my screen. My shot then takes 50 ms to make it to a server, which then takes another 50 ms to be sent to an opponent. What the opponent sees and what I see are off by 100 ms. If all inputs were handled by the server then everyone would agree on what they see, but delayed by their latency to the server. Interpolation is exactly that. It has significant error and is a serious threat to low time-to-kill competitive games.

<comment><USER91> > If all inputs were handled by the server then everyone would agree on what > they see

You can already have that; no need for streaming. For example, original Quake handles all input on the server and movement feels kinda like skating on ice with the latency. You can feel the latency when you shoot; your gun doesn't actually fire until the server acknowledges it. _I 've played Quake online somewhat recently, and I absolutely hate how it feels._ I can't imagine anyone wanting to play like that. There's a damn good reason why newer engines added client side prediction, even if it makes different players' view of the game inconsistent.

Unreal Tournament, up to UT2004, (maybe later -- I'm not familiar enough with newer ones) are similar. I think they added prediction for player's movement at some point, and that alone makes it feel much better, but jump pads (and such) are still unpredicted, shooting still has latency (I can't recall the details; it's possible that your firing animation/sound is instant but actual projectile only appears on your screen once the server acknowledges it).

It's great when you're playing with <20ms ping but it absolutely sucks to have little to no prediction with higher ping. I much prefer unlagged Quake 3 engine games, where hitscan weapons hit what you see on your screen (they're latency compensated on the server). Otoh some people argue for Unreal because everything's synchronized and you don't see the ugly side effects of prediction, like getting shot right after you leap into safety behind a corner.

Notice that interpolation and prediction are two different things! Interpolation actually _increases_ latency; I turn it low or off in Quake 3. The result is that everyone's movement is jerky (they update when the server sends an update; higher packet rate is better). If you enable interpolation, then their location is going to be interpolated between two most recent updates.

<comment><USER79> When you say "interpolation" do you mean "smoothing"? Interpolatiin is filing in missing data. Smoothing is adding error to eliminate discontinuity.

<comment><USER91> Why not both? The data you receive from a server is discontinuous. You interpolate (and potentially extrapolate) to fill in missing data to eliminate discontinuity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> The correct word is foundering.

</comment><comment><USER93> Google needs to just give up and realize they're an ad and marketing company, and continue to be very, very good at it.

<comment><USER94> Honestly their work on fringe projects like this seem more like PR than anything. It makes them look like an innovative company with consumer-facing products, rather than an ad company.

<comment><USER93> Interesting idea. It would be sad to be an engineering team working on these poorly managed products, then.

<comment><USER43> Having worked in a company that was more of a PR exercise than something intended to actually generate revenue, it's an interesting mix. You get the time to engineer everything really well, you're encouraged to use the latest technology, go to conferences, and improve your own skills. At its best, it's the same kind of "blue-sky engineering" that you hear about people having done at Xerox Parc or Bell Labs. But without that bit of pressure to actually deliver something, it's very easy to get lost in overengineered architecture, and if someone high up makes a bad design decision it's very hard for the consequences to be brought to bear in a way that matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Wow, what a surprise.

/s

</comment><comment><USER96> Ambitious or half-assed? You'd have to know literally nothing about gaming to call Stadia ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER97> No visible content with JS disabled. Bleah.

</comment><comment><USER98> If they really want to reach gamers, they should buy Discord and integrate it into their platform.

And then we can make fun of them for having yet another chat app. It's a win- win.

</comment><comment><USER99> As a gamer I have bigger issues with Google. I would rather prefer Japanese or Chinese companies to be better custodians of gaming industry than Google. Microsoft too in my opinion has done a better job.

It is only matter of time before some google snowflake would call a game transphobic or "too violent" etc. and write lengthy posts that the game be pushed off Stadia. Right now this is not a problem but if google becomes 1st or 2nd largest player this would be increasingly a problem.

I am a big lover of violent video games and Google is not good for such games IMO.</comment>


Owner of photobomb horse demands share of £2,000 selfie prize - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/02/owner-photobomb-horse-demands-share-2000-selfie-prize <comment><AUTHOR> "I'm not giving them the holiday either. They would have to come on the holiday with me – and that isn't happening unless we're both in a saddle together on the horse."</comment>


NoSQL, meh - <AUTHOR> http://www.agmweb.ca/blog/andy/2254/ <comment><USER2> Basically, he used to use Zope, and didn't like that you needed to instantiate an object to get it out of the DB. Then he complains his coworkers had some kind of ambiguous problem with this that only the author was smart enough to solve, then the author recognizes that this isn't at all a problem with modern NoSQL solutions (unless you want it to be).

Color me confused, what was the point of this diatribe? ZODB sucks? His coworkers suck because they only understand SQL? NoSQL might suck because ZODB sucks?

For the record, SQL is a beast, and far from intuitive. I hardly think most NoSQL is too hard for the masses (for that matter considering that NoSQL encompasses so many different techs its hard to say anything about NoSQL as a group), it sounds like no one at his shop wanted to really learn another DB since they could just ask this guy to help them out.

<comment><USER3> He is just saying that existing mindshare and support tools matter a lot, and it's a week spot for NoSql.

<comment><USER2> That may be, but all the specific shortcomings he mentioned in the article are definitely _not_ there with CouchDB, which he specifically mentions. The futon (builtin) interface to Couch solves every one of the gripes he mentions with ZODB.

I feel like the author may have a point, somewhere, but not in this article, which feels off the cuff, and just isn't really a well constructed argument about anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, because he used a horrible "NoSQL" system years ago, the NoSQL concept now is going to be the same. Is it just me, or is the quality of HN links going down?

<comment><USER5> Yes, next question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A good reminder for us who haven't been around as long, ideas and tech tend to come full circle.

Hopefully this time around, the tools are better and the limitations are well- known (and I think they are).

[edit] I think I misused the term "come full circle" -- I meant something more like oscillation.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think he explains the issues very well even though he mentions some of the symptoms.

A common characteristic of NoSQL systems is that they don't use a normalised schema. That has certain scalability benefits and in a few cases it may be easier to understand. But it also means that there are going to be redundancies and that the database itself does not check consistency.

So not being able to use a generic tool to change some piece of data is not down to immature tools or lack of knowledge, it's a fundamental characteristic of denormalised data structures.</comment>


Show HN: Tweet a photo every time your mac wakes up with a simple hack - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/tweet-a-photo-every-time-your-mac-wakes-up-with-a-simple-hack/swizec/1543

<comment><USER2> Like "Taking pictures with your MacBook every time the lid opens."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2089294>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that's where I originally got the idea. Then I made it also tweet the picture :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What could go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER4> I can understand the desire to hack on that, and props to you Swizec, for creating something and sharing it is always cool, but... Well, the final result is quite mind-numbingly narcissistic.

I guess it fits current trends in social websites, but isn't it a bit over the top?

<comment><USER5> The line between narcissistic and introspective is always thinner than we think. Something I've noticed recently is how few pictures I'm actually in: I take loads of pictures but I was only in a handful.

While I'm not personally inclined to Twitter a picture of myself every time my mac wakes up (several times a day), I can see the benefit in this to some people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I have made a terrible mistake."</comment>


Intel Compute Card (95mmx55mmx5mm) PC in Your Wallet - <AUTHOR> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-card/intel-compute-card.html <comment><USER2> I always get excited about these things, like the Intel Compute Stick line, but when I get them I feel like I'm having to work around the limitations of the cpu or integrated graphics. It kind of feels like the netbook push that happened about 8-10 years ago where you would get a computer that couldn't even run the OS much less do something productive on it. I just feel like, at least the base models, of these Intel products are just a bit under powered. I hope it isn't the case with this, because it looks awesome.

<comment><USER3> It's all about the software. Even "embedded" computers of today are faster than the workstations of yesteryear. Modern desktop Osen squander that power - particularly Windows. Imagine what you could do with this if you ran Forth on it!

Saying that, I have a 2007 EeePC that runs Debian very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was hoping it was going to be a standard smartcard format with a general purpose Intel/Linux system inside.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be AWESOME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't find any concrete specifications on the webpage. Can somebody provide a link with actual details and without all the nonsense buzzwords?

<comment><AUTHOR> Intel did not provide specifications yet.

Only thing I could find was 6W for CPU.

<comment><USER6> BBC Click has some specs [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38515472](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38515472)

Intel Core m3-7Y30 1.0 - 1.61 GHz 4GB RAM 64bit Includes storage, WiFi Apparently runs Windows 10

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those interested in this kind of thing, these are a lot like the EOMA68 cards ([https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro- desktop](https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop))

</comment><comment><USER8> Someone should make one of these with an integrated projector and integrated laser keyboard.</comment>