Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/2/20895128/microsoft-surface-phone-foldable-screen-features-specs-price-release-date <comment><USER2> Between this and the Samsung Fold it feels like we have entered into the netbook (form factor) era* void. We're past peak smartphone development and are in this space where manufacturers are stumbling around for the next "it" device but creating nothing that is truly revolutionary. Yes, there are "some" use cases where a larger screen on my mobile device would be useful…. But by- and-large I still want it to fit in my pocket and be comfortable navigating single handedly . Adding dual screen & doubling the device thickness is not the solution I am looking for.

*Netbooks were low-powered mobile devices (basically mini laptops) that launched in 2007 and basically disappeared (as a viable market category) after the iPad and its kind were launched in 2010.

EDIT added "form factor" for clarification

<comment><USER3> I think the future is less/no screen. Typing on these folding phones seems like a worse experience. Typing at all isn't really natural, and neither is staring at planar, glowing glass.

I think the future is conversational computing. I don't own an Alexa/HomePod/etc (yet... maybe some open source on prem thing at some point), but I think that's where the puck is moving. It's just that today their capabilities are somewhere around a rotary phone vs. an iPhone. Better than a telegraph (which I guess in this analogy is _typing_ your words into a document) but still very rudimentary. All it needs is time and effort.

Similar to HomePods, we have AirPods and their equivalents. The phone is just a conduit through which can pass the data necessary for the OS to talk with you, to do what you need.

<comment><USER4> Strongly disagree with this. As someone who does own a number of Google Home devices at home and uses Siri on my phone... voice is a terrible interface.

For one, there is zero discoverability. I can ask Google today's weather. I can ask tomorrow's weather. I cannot ask yesterday's weather. Leaving aside why that would be (I would find it useful to know that it's X degrees hotter/cooler than yesterday) there's no way for me to know that without asking. It's the audio equivalent of fumbling around on a keyboard in a pitch black room. Just imagine placing a food order. It's going to have to read a menu to you and you're going to have to remember it all. No amount of tech improvement is going to change that fundamental fact.

Secondly, you can't multi-task. Or have more than one person using it simultaneously. Right now my wife and I might be looking at our phones at the same time, perhaps looking stuff up, maybe tapping out an e-mail. We'd have to go to separate rooms to do that.

But if I want to know today's weather or play a song, it works fine. As long as it recognises my voice correctly and there isn't too much background noise.

<comment><USER3> We definitely agree that voice interfaces are very rudimentary today. I try to run lots of things through dictation first that normally I would type out with my thumbs on the smartphone or on a keyboard on my computer. Text messages, search terms, commit messages, Slack conversations. Still, it can't perform very basic tasks like changing or backspacing a word or phrase, either because it misheard it or because you want to change it. (And actually as I dictated this paragraph on my 2018 MacBook Pro, it typed out everything I said twice and still required typing interventions, and eventually I just fell back to typing everything.)

You've laid out some good criteria though. I wouldn't say voice interfaces have really "made it" until it gets to the point where you don't have to ask how to ask it to do something (discoverability). You just ask it to do something and it does it. Although that's just one of many criteria.

The food menu problem is interesting, but pretty much everything that prints out on a ticket in a kitchen is structured data–it should be able to be efficiently conversationalized (preference notwithstanding, of course). Certainly there are many ways you could talk to someone about a menu: what kinds of dishes are there? Appetizers, grilled entrees, pasta, salads, desserts. What kind of entrees? Vegetarian, pork, beef, seafood. OK, but what styles of cuisine? Jamaican, Italian, Szechuan. There's probably an analog to the 5 Why's for figuring out what someone wants to eat! Asking yesterday's weather, though, is a specific case that could probably be solved by an intern, provided that data is easy to find on the Internet (FWIW, I've searched for the very same thing many times and it's much harder to find vs forecasts).

I concede that there will always be a need for graphical interfaces. How do you "speak" a map, or a CAD model? I guess I was just thinking of things that can accomplished with a keyboard. You can speak anything you can type, even if it's as rudimentary as today, where you have to say "period newline newline" to end a sentence at the end of a paragraph while dictating.

I agree it might seem tough to multitask. But consider WiFi routers serving multiple computers, or hell, even CPUs serving different processes, "simultaneously." If voice recognition and NLP become sufficiently sophisticated I could foresee being able to isolate multiple overlapping voices in an audio sample. If not, consider that you could ask it to look something up, immediately followed by your wife dictating an email to send–or one of you could even interrupt the other–and it could be able to handle the context switching and queuing at speed.

And I understand there's a lot I don't know, and I do remain skeptical that this could ever be perfected. Would it really be able to dictate poetry? Would the forms I create or creatively destroy in free verse just totally confuse the voice interface? Would it be smart enough to side step the confusion via some pseudo-meta-cognitive process and ask me what the hell I'm doing?

<comment><USER4> > Certainly there are many ways you could talk to someone about a menu: what > kinds of dishes are there? Appetizers, grilled entrees, pasta, salads, > desserts. What kind of entrees? Vegetarian, pork, beef, seafood. OK, but > what styles of cuisine? Jamaican, Italian, Szechuan. There's probably an > analog to the 5 Why's for figuring out what someone wants to eat!

To me this is the core of why voice interfaces will always be inferior. In the time it would take that voice conversation to happen I would have been able to scan a menu a dozen times over. Our brains are incredibly adept at picking out visual details - identifying the headers that note each section of the menu, picking out key words that may interest us and so on. There is no technological improvement that will help a voice interface rival that.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever watched a person with vision challenges using VoiceOver with the speed cranked up? I bet they could absorb the info they need to know about a menu before the average reader could, even before any hierarchical organization is exposed to the text-to-speech process. The visual hierarchical and keyword navigation you describe is just what I'm talking about with a voice interface, too.

Just yesterday a colleague I was pairing with was VoiceOvering JSON packed with API keys and stack traces. I, conversely, have many times stood with the fridge door open trying to find something that was plainly front and center. Of course, the answer for many things may be a combination of both hearing and vision.

I also wonder if this easily navigable menu you are thinking of is already cognitively mapped in your mind, and you know what to look for. What if the menu is in a foreign or second language, that the voice assistant could translate for you? Or is a completely foreign-to-you cuisine, or just creatively organized in a way you aren't used to, like by seasonality, emotion or geography? I've sat and stared at some dense menus, that I've had to reread multiple times to remember just a subset of the items. In the end I asked the waiter something like in my example: "something with shrimp" or "what do you like?"

I'm not so sure about the things you say will never or always be, and I don't even consider myself an optimist. Finally, thanks for taking this ride with me, it's definitely made me consider more things!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IMHO, the hinged - but separate - displays are a much better idea than the Samsung foldable display. At least for now.

I don't think the reliability of a truly foldable display (e.g. Samsung's Galaxy Fold) will be very good until another couple versions of generational improvements.

<comment><USER6> +1. IMO the move is to focus on this type of devices and then move to foldable screens if/when both the technology matures, and there is solid demand for this form factor.

The foldable display seems cool, but also seems to be, IMO, an expensive solution looking for something we don't know to be a problem yet. The problem is having no screen at the hinge. How big is this problem though? In theory it's nice but people don't even have foldable devices in these form factors yet. For all we know, most people might not mind the dual-screen approach, just like a lot of people have not minded the notch or other shortcomings of previous and current devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally I don't see the attractive in dual screen devices unless we reach Westworld-like devices that are super thin and can go from phone to large tablet that can potentially replace a laptop.

Otherwise it's just a thick phone that converts to 2 phones...

In case anyone hasn't seen Westworld: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3dD7jOLaes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3dD7jOLaes)

<comment><USER8> I'm excited for two reasons.

I find the ability to completely "close" my phone really appealing. It feels easier to ignore it, and the screens feel more protected to me.

I can also only describe the second benefit as "its like two monitors". I can watch TV on one and respond to messages/browse on another. I use a Note8+ already, so big screens for watching crap are already my preference though.

<comment><USER9> Clamshell phones let you close your phone completely, and have been around for a long time. Actually, are they still a thing?

<comment><USER10> So Clamshell Android phones are a thing. The Freetel Mushashi is a T9-style Android phone with dual touch screens on either side.

Samsung has the Android W series phones which have a similar format.

Regarding the sibling comment, after the Droid 4 and the Motorola Photon Q, there has been a drought of physical keyboard landscape slider phones. Portrait sliders have been available for the Blackberry Priv and KeyOne/Key2, but aside from the soon-to-be-released Fxtec Pro1, not much landscape slider android phone action is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm going to pick one up regardless, but if they can bring Windows 10 X to this device, and provide a docking experience that expands to approximate a full PC, the result would be fantastic.

<comment><USER12> This is still my holy grail of computing device. I want a portable device (phone) that gives me a phone style interface when portable, but when docked, a desktop-like experience. Yes, there have been efforts, but I want this to be mainstream and well thought out.

<comment><USER13> Agree! Will somebody please make this!

I want to simply have a keyboard and screen that "looks like a laptop" but the brains is actually in the phone in my pocket!

And then when I have a proper dock, I just get a larger monitor(s) and larger desktop keyboard.

But the brains are still in the phone!

The key benefit (of the dumb laptop, especially) is I still want a laptop on the go, but..

1\. Why manage data flow across two separate devices. My phone becomes truth, always.

2\. My phone already has always-on data. Why worry about data for two devices. (To 4/5-g subscriptions, etc.) Searching for wi-fi.

3\. Better power consumption for my "dumb laptop" device. (Less processing power in the laptop, hopefully space for a bigger battery)

I would buy this in a heartbeat!

<comment> i-am-cjc I have a NexDock that I think was a kickstarter a few years ago that is a dumb laptop (hdmi in, usb for charging, bluetooth keyboard and mouse) that could be plugged into a phone. Used it for Raspberry Pis and Intel Compute sticks for a while.

I am hoping I can do this with the librem5 and a dock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I miss Windows Phone everyday.

The best designed UI imo, and a great alternative to Ios and android.

<comment><USER12> I wasn't a fan of the UI, but I can still appreciate the speed and fluidity of the phones I saw my friends using. We certainly need more than just iOS and Android in the market. But, I guess I'm wrong as the market spoke...

<comment><USER15> It wasn't even "the market" that spoke so much as US telecom companies. ("Vote with your wallet just means the rich and the mega-corporations have more votes.") Windows Phone had a good enough market share in Europe and Asia to remain a viable and competitive third place contender for a long time. It was the US where Windows Phone got locked out of the market duopoly by bad deals with AT&T and Verizon, and indications existed that all of the US telecoms were much happier with a duopoly than training/sales/marketing anything beyond that (whether or not that was an anti-competitive trust is left for your own imagination, it's not like the US has strong anti-trust teeth right now).

<comment><USER16> What you are describing is the usual problem of establishing a two sided market. You need users to make app developers care. You need apps to get users in the first place. From what I remember, MS already had to build some apps themselves / offer significant financial incentives [0]. This seemed hardly sustainable and thus the death of the product was, while disappointing, not a surprise.

So yeah, you don't need a conspiracy to explain this failure.

[0] [https://www.pcworld.com/article/2031384/microsoft-stokes- win...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2031384/microsoft-stokes-windows-app- development-with-cash.html)

<comment><USER15> You can't get users for a product no one can buy. Calling it a conspiracy was largely a gag, but if anything it _was_ a conspiracy of dunces.

Verizon refusing to sell _and_ refusing to allow on their network the Lumia 950 because of a hissy fit that they didn't like how the previous flagship performed and that Microsoft got an almost favorable AT&T deal for the 950 was dumb on several levels.

AT&T getting bored with their 950 deal and then refusing to advertise/market/sell the phone, was certainly _a_ death nail, partly because it was so much easier and cheaper to just micro-manage the Android platform.

It might not have killed the platform in the US if there were more than one phone manufacturer in Windows Phone at that point in time.

(That calls into question if the Nokia buy out was the right move. Which with Nokia last one standing already, it was probably the only move, but the platform had enough market share before Nokia was at risk of tanking that had a couple Android manufacturers gotten fed up with Google at the time things _could_ have gone differently. Though admittedly, armchair quarterbacking is easier with hindsight.)

The app situation was always something that could have been addressed if people were (capable of) buying the platform. The lack of OEM manufacturers and the lack of support/interest from the carriers certainly mattered more than apps at crashing marketshare of the platform below the critical threshold for active application development.

<comment><USER17> I don't think people were ever going to buy in to the platform. I liked Windows Phone, but it had basically no substantial feature that made people think "wow, it's worth it to drop Android and iOS for /this/."

You got Android if you overwhelmingly wanted the customization. You got an iPhone if you overwhelmingly wanted something that was smooth and worked well. I tried WP for a while and I missed nothing major by switching away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like how on the Duo and larger Neo Microsoft just embraced the fact that foldable OLED isn't ready for prime time yet and instead tried to engineer the seam with as much aesthetic and engineering quality possible.

<comment><USER19> It is definitely the right approach to the question "how do you engineer a folding display?".

The bigger question is "what do you need a folding display for?"...

<comment><USER20> I think this is the wrong approach to think about. Nobody needs a folding display.

What people need are actually two contradictory (until now) goals: compactness and large screen size. Folding is one solution to solve this contradiction.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. Which is why most people thought phones would have projection displays and/or keyboards a decade ago... I wonder where that all went?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It took almost 30 years since the kernel was released, but Microsoft is officially releasing something with a Linux based operating system. Pretty wild to think about.

<comment><USER22> They've had Linux Azure offerings for quite a few years, and famously contributed a fair bit of code to the Linux kernel to make some of that possible.

They also released those Nokia branded Android devices.

It is not like MS has been doing consumer hardware releases for that long or anything!

It'll be interesting to see the support, IMHO one thing that keeps people (software devs and consumers) from buying into a new Android OEM that is selling an "Ecosystem" (e.g. Samsung Note) is the fear of a product line being dropped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Partnering with Google" \- Be very interesting to see what that partnership entails.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems it can run Android apps.

<comment><USER24> It seems it runs on android (with a windows theme).

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I wrote that comment as I was watching the announcement live stream. It's still pretty much a prototype at this point but I hope they don't mess up that windows theme a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Remember the Courier?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier)

<comment><USER26> I remember reading something like:

Exec1: does it connect to Exchange?

Exec2: no.

Exec1: nixed!

Exec2 should have said: it will in the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was excited for moment thinking they were bringing back the Windows Phone OS as well, bummer...

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm so glad Microsoft is trying again in the Phone space. I wish Amazon would try again, too. It's nice to have choices.

<comment><USER29> No. Microsoft is much better at handling an ecosystem than Amazon. As far as I can tell, MS is using standard Android with Google Play Services(?) Amazon was trying to create its own ecosystem.

<comment><USER28> Amazon has a nice suite of services. A phone that has Music, Books, Shopping, Cloud Storage for Photos, and a few key apps (Uber, Lyft, popular games) but somewhat constrained otherwise, would be great for Seniors or people who don't need a high-performance general-purpose computer in their pocket.

<comment><USER30> > would be great for Seniors

How do seniors learn to use devices?

Mostly from peers or mostly from children? If from peers, how do they seed the ability?

I can't see how you could get seniors to start to use a "dumbphone" specific to them, unless the UI was spectacularly easy to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Video of announcement.

[https://youtu.be/dmaioTs0NH8?t=5111](https://youtu.be/dmaioTs0NH8?t=5111)

The bigger dual screen device is the Surface Neo.

<comment><USER11> Correction: The bigger device is Surface Neo (running Windows 10 X), the smaller device is Surface Duo (running Android).

<comment><USER31> Corrected, thx.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Given how badly they flubbed their entries into smartphones, I'm kind of glad they are trying again in this new form-factor. Given that it's relying on Android, it should have more staying power than before (and an app store that isn't awful).

<comment><USER15> Given it's relying on Android now and doesn't seem to have (based on this announcement) any compelling reason to exist long term in the ugly, over- crowded OEM market of Android marketing, it's a gimmick and shouldn't have any staying power at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's odd that they would announce it's powered by a Snapdragon 855--a chip which is already a year old, and will be two years old by the time this device actually launches. Hopefully they'll upgrade that before launch.

<comment><USER34> A high-end SoC from 1 year or 2 years ago is hardly the constraint on modern devices.

I doubt the average person can even tell the difference from a 660, to a 835, or an 855, given all the rest of the components (mainly storage) are the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 1\. Is Windows Mobile Dead?

2\. Does anyone remember the name of a similar Microsoft notebook that was teased 5-10 years ago? It was a foldable notebook and notetaking device kind of like Remarkable. I wonder if this is the spiritual child of that.

<comment><USER36> As for 2, you're thinking of the Courier concept, which got killed in favor of Windows 8: [https://www.cnet.com/news/the-inside-story-of-how- microsoft-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft- killed-its-courier-tablet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I like the idea of dual screen on the phone, its quite natural to browse two related pages at the same time and will improve that kind of experience. Will it have pen support?

However i'm very dubious of what the dual screen experience will be like bolted on top of Windows (NEO) and Android (DUO).

Somehow in my humble opinion Apple have been able to run rings around Google and Microsoft when it come's to pure UX in mobile tech and given the past history i fully expect that true in the future.

This is where i expect DUO will stumble, in the same way that Samsung fails with its extensions and bolt on's.

</comment><comment><USER38> All this time my old Nintendo DS Lite had been gathering dust in the drawer because I thought it was strictly for _games_ ; now I realize its true calling is to be a phone!

</comment><comment><USER39> Ah, looks like Microsoft finally got around to producing some more gimmicks.

The catastrophe that is the Samsung folding phone didn't send a strong enough message to the industry I guess.

<comment> dao- The MS device is a foldable phone with two screens, not a foldable screen. Samsung's (initial?) failure is irrelevant here.

<comment><USER39> It won't sell. It's a gimmick.

<comment><USER40> No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I really hope that we see a single-screen Surface phone in the future.

IMO, Microsoft have done a fantastic job with the Surface Book. If they could replicate that high-end build quality while providing a solid feature set and a clean Android build, I can't see it not selling well. Throw a headphone jack in, and I'd wait in line for it!

The dual screen is interesting, but I don't see its use just yet.

<comment><USER42> Speaking of the Surface Book, my aging MacBook needs replacing, and I was interested in seeing a Surface Book 3 release as an alternative. Sad it didn't materialise.

<comment><USER11> The Surface Laptop 3 looks very compelling though, especially with the Ryzen option.

<comment><USER43> The Surface Laptop unfortunately doesn't work as tablet.

I'm very "disappointented" by the event, as it seems that the Surface Book series is dead.

If this is the case, I guess that the reasoning has been that who want a powerful machine just buy a regular laptop.

It's a shame for those who use the SB both as tablet and dev machine (which is the intended audience). At this point, it's not sure how the SPX will be usable as dev machine (e.g. I guess it will have relatively little memory). The vanilla SP is an alternative, but 12.3" is small for me (and can't imagine for those who own a 15" SB).

<comment><USER41> I'm interested in how many people actually use their Surface Book as a tablet.

I know a load of people with the standard Surface that use it like a tablet, but very few people that regularly use their Surface Book's detachable tablet functionality. I can probably count the number of times I've ever wanted to take the laptop apart on one hand.

<comment><USER43> I use it a lot! The SB tablet is the state of the art (sadly, because evidently there have been no advancements). Nothing is so light: even the Surface Pro X is inferior (13.5"/730g vs. 13"/770g). This comes from the interesting design choice of stripping as much as possible from the tablet itself (the Surface Pro instead, is intended to be more functional, when in tablet form, since it's coupled with lightweight bases).

In the past, I used it primarily to read electronic versions of several paper magazines; this format is (IMHO) best read on a large screen - the sweet spot is around 14, so 13.5 is the closest (I reckon the 15" is too big; the SB laptop form factor has a bulky design).

In the present, I use it for studying (textbooks, mostly) - for textbooks, even 12.x" is fine, so even a Surface Pro would do.

Having said that, I like it as a tablet so much that I've pretty much ditched the base and bought another laptop for development. The SB laptop form factor just sucks (IMHO), as it's very bulky, and Microsoft has an insane pricing strategy, that makes it unjustifiably expensive for developers looking for a serious dev machine. Nowadays it's more competitive due to being old, but the 16 GB models have never been competitive, both in price and form factor, to competitors like the Dell XPS.

Of course, I don't imply that many people use it this way because I do, so I really don't know the general use cases :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Another android phone.

These are all just wrappers around the latest qualcomm snapdragon with whatever twist the hardware manufacture wants to add. Basic functionality in all of them will be badly broken and there's more or less nothing you can do to fix it.

At least the iphone ships with an ssh client and scripting environment now. (not that I'm an iphone fan, it has it's own problems.)

<comment><USER22> > Basic functionality in all of them will be badly broken and there's more or > less nothing you can do to fix it.

I disagree.

The performance and battery life differences between different phones running the same chipset is insane.

Read through [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14716/the-black- shark-2-revie...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14716/the-black- shark-2-review/2)

For some benchmarks, the top phones are 50% faster! Storage benchmarks (not shown in that particular review) can be even more dramatic. Battery life differences can be huge (multiple hours) at the same capacity.

Each manufacturer customizes the heck out of the kernel, and also attached firmware. LTE speeds can vary dramatically with "the same antennas". Same for WiFi speeds.

The current Android phone I am using works great. It is surprisingly fluid and rather nice to use, though I'd argue Windows Phone 7 was still _nicer_ (or at least more fun) to use, that ship has long since sailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Not buying unless it runs [fixed and improved] Windows 10 mobile. I'm still dreaming of a Lumia 950 XL with a good app store...

<comment><USER46> Then you're not buying. "It runs Android and will release holiday 2020" Literally the first line in the article.

<comment><USER45> Sure. Just expressing opinion.

IMO it was a mistake to give up on the Windows 10 mobile OS but it's also true that MS has made too many mistakes for it to ever take off at the point where Android and iOS have been developed for at least 7 years already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is the split screen device market a new upcoming segment or is it supposed to be replacing an existing one? I've never thought that I need two iPhones or two iPads connected to one another in a book like fashion like this. Who's the market demographic for this type of product?

<comment><USER48> The only way it makes sense to me is this:

Apple designed the iPhone to be a pocketable one-handed companion device to a real computer.

People started using them as their only computer. The changed the design parameters enough that it made sense to offer a less pocketable device with a much larger screen.

The thesis is: maybe that market can be segmented even further, by adding an even less pocketable segment with even more screen space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I understand why they went with Android but I'm disappointed they didn't go with .NET. I've avoided iOS and Android development because I'm not a fan of those development environments. I would actually develop mobile apps if it was .NET.

<comment><USER50> Give Xamarin a go then. All the benefits of .NET on Mobile especially now that Forms is mature and .NET standard is more prevalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ok this may be first time when Microsoft phone announcements generate more hype than iPhone

</comment><comment><USER52> > The Surface Duo features two 5.6-inch displays that can rotate 360 degrees, > allowing it to be fully unfolded as a miniature unfold to 8.3-inch tablet.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems like you wouldn't ever need more than 270 degrees.

<comment><USER31> Needs 360 degrees to get to this.

[https://andro4all.com/files/2019/10/Microsoft-Surface- Duo.jp...](https://andro4all.com/files/2019/10/Microsoft-Surface-Duo.jpg)

From this:

[https://livecenterimages.azureedge.net/livecenter- images/lci...](https://livecenterimages.azureedge.net/livecenter- images/lcimg-0fac6fe3-95ec-4837-86ae-c3b0c35c5847.jpg)

<comment><USER53> Seems like a nice way to protect the screen. I wonder how hard it would be to place a small tiny notification screen on the 2nd image. I guess that would make 3 screens then. I recall some similar prototypes that used a small e-ink screen for notifications & a clock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> If this releases now, I will buy it instantly. That thing is going in my pocket.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wonder if they will stop security patches after three years ?

</comment><comment><USER56> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmaioTs0NH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmaioTs0NH8) @ mark 1:26:00

</comment><comment><USER57> I've been missing my Nexus 7 since it finished dying and have been wishing for a device with this form factor for years... but with a heavily-skinned custom android distro I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole. MS isn't _awful_ about release cadence and bugfix latency, certainly not as bad as cell network providers or traditional phone OEMs, but there's a reason I run stock android on Droid/Nexus/Pixel devices. Maybe if I can install a stock android ROM on the thing.

(Disclaimer: work at Google, totally unrelated product, not the opinion of my employer, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER58> Microsoft has always been very good at making hardware! It would be interesting with oled/lcd on one side and eink on the other side.

<comment><USER59> This is often said by people who have never owned their hardware. I bought a Surface Book when it first came out. I disagree. It looks good on the photos if you've never used it, but it was kind of flimsy and buggy AF. I took it back for a refund 3 days after purchasing it. And it's a flagship device. I can only imagine what happens at the lower end of the product range.

<comment><USER60> > And it's a flagship device. I can only imagine what happens at the lower end > of the product range.

I wouldn't really expect any difference. It's not like Apple's lower end products are buggier than their higher end ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> this looks way better than the Samsung Fold. if you haven't yet, watch a durability video on the Fold. the display is plastic and will get scratched from basically anything (even your fingernail). Microsoft's version has glass. also nice that it's using Android.

but...how will I mount it in the car for GPS?

<comment><USER31> >but...how will I mount it in the car for GPS?

Just fold it?

[https://andro4all.com/files/2019/10/Microsoft-Surface- Duo.jp...](https://andro4all.com/files/2019/10/Microsoft-Surface-Duo.jpg)

I would get a bigger mount for the opened device though, maps are always nicer on bigger screens since you can see more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> What I don't understand is why the devices have huge screen bezels?

</comment><comment><USER63> This thing looks like a 1983 Multi Screen Game & Watch.

</comment><comment><USER64> It's ridiculous that there's a market for that monstrosity but I can't get a normal phone with a flagship SoC and a 16:10 display.

</comment><comment><USER65> How many years after Apple's Knowledge Navigator?

<comment><USER66> 32 years after Knowledge Navigator. 0 years after I first heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'm not sure if everyone forgot a day ago, but if Microsoft had just removed the offline account setting on Windows 10, what could be the likelihood that they could just enforce it in the Surface Line up, even including the Android products?

Nice looking Surface lineup and hardware nevertheless, but after Microsoft removing that offline setting, I think that was a big turn off and a no deal from me for now, unless they reverse that atrocious decision to using online accounts only.

<comment><USER68> They did not remove it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: UrgeZapper, a tool to mindfully deal with urges - <AUTHOR> http://www.urgezapper.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It all started as a prototype to help me learn AngularJS. I decided to polish it up a little bit and to publish it on reddit. People there raved about it, and I figured I could show it to you guys, even if it's not a new Julia Distributed REPL Blockchain Implementation (!)

It's completely free and anonymous to use. Please give it a try and send me feedback.</comment>


Betable: Bringing real gambling to social casino games - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/09/betable-could-disrupt-social-casino-games-by-cleverly-fusing-them-with-legal-real-money-gambling/

<comment><USER2> Is it definitely clear that it would be legal for a startup based in the U.S. and with American founders to use Betable? It wasn't until "Black Friday" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011)>) that it became clear the U.S. government viewed NLH poker as a game of chance, and Googling I've done in the past suggests that certain aspects of the government's intrepretation of online poker's legality remain vague. So is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble? Or was it that those casinos made money off of their American customers? I.e. would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers? (I assume not, but then I'm unclear what the alleged money laundering charges were.)

So to make a medium-length post short, I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable? If so, this is great news for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> "is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble?"

It is definitely that they were allowing Americans to gamble.

"would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers?"

This definitely would not be allowed.

You mentioned the money laundering charges a couple of times. Those were ancillary charges. The primary charge was that they were operating an illegal online gambling business i.e. letting Americans gamble on the internet.

"I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable?"

It is not illegal for an American company to offer real money online gambling to citizens of other countries where it is legal and regulated. So Zynga could get a UK gambling license and offer online gambling to UK citizens. It is a long, slow, difficult and expensive process - Betable has already done it and is allowing others to leverage their infrastructure (legal and technical).

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Would companies using Betable need to get licenses from the same countries that Betable already has licenses from (which so far means the UK) or would Betable's licenses mean that users of Betable would be covered as well.

Edit: Just discovered the 50/50 revenue share. That's going to turn away a lot of potential customers.

<comment><USER3> Also don't just jump into this shit unless, you know, you have legal counsel that specializes in gaming. It's _still_ a huge risk. E.g. U.S. customers could circumvent and bet on your site. Guess what, you're on the hook for that!

<comment><USER4> That's incorrect cellis. Betable is handling all gambling, so any gambling- related legal risk (such as US customers gambling) is strictly our problem. This is why we have advanced geolocation, IP and identity checks.

<comment><USER3> Incorrect that U.S. developers of a game implementing Betable could be targets of legal action? Or incorrect that your software is circumventable?

Here's another question. Is Betable willing / able to provide legal counsel to U.S. developers who get squeezed by the FBI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anybody explain to me how much value I can give the user in a "gamified" app before it is considered gambling?

<comment><AUTHOR> These are the three criteria, all of which must be met to be considered gambling:

-prize (they have to get paid money or something of value)

-consideration (they have to pay to participate)

-chance (so skill games are exempted i.e. chess)

If any of those is missing, it is not gambling.

Zynga Poker does not have a prize but they have consideration and chance, thus it is not gambling. There are legal subscription poker sites (i.e. clubwpt.com) that do not require people to pay, so no consideration - but they have chance and a prize. Not gambling.

We ran a leaderboard contest last month to get some more alpha testers and gave $500 to the top 10. It was free to participate (no consideration) and our game is (we think) a game of skill, not chance. So we were confident it wasn't gambling and thus was legal.

Consult your attorney before making any business decisions, but thats the gist of it.

<comment><USER6> I think the idea is that Betable lets you do real gambling, but for games of chance. Not sure how it works with their platform to make it legal, but that's what the article claims their service is

<comment><USER7> Only players in places where gambling is legal can participate. So a US developer could make a game using Betable's API, but it won't be US players gambling.

<comment><USER4> That is correct dminor :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you guys been evaluated/certified by an independent testing lab?

<comment><USER9> We're audited multiple times a year. Our UK Gambling Commission license compels us to be audited against their codes of practice and additionally we have the correctness and security of our systems audited independently.

<comment><USER8> Can you put your audit results and/or certifications on your web site?

We would like to use you but having been in the cash gaming business in Europe and to an extent in the US, we won't touch a vendor unless we know they are some way to GLI-19 compliant.

<comment><USER9> Betable's license number from the UK Gambling Commission <http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk> is 000-023328-R-307313-003. We're audited (by GLI, incidentally) against their codes of practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Was surprised not to see this on the front page. This is pretty big news:

"Today, the company has received an undisclosed amount of money from 25 investors including Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave Morin (ex-Facebook employee and current founder of Path) and Yuri Milner, the Russian investor who took big stakes in Facebook and Zynga. Those are big-name supporters who believe that Betable has a shot at raising the average revenue per user and average customer lifetime value for social games.

Among the other investors are CrunchFund (Michael Arrington's fund), Marc Abramowitz (first investor in Palantir), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance), Auren Hoffman (founder of Rapleaf), Sean Knapp (founder of Ooyala), Howard Lindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Matt Ocko (angel investor in Zynga), Joshua Schacter (founder of delicious), and Arjun Sethi (former CEO of Lolapps)."

<comment><USER10> misspelled my name again. damnit.

<comment><USER4> D'oh! We're sorry :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If there are any Android game devs that are interested in being alpha integraters for a similar (but better?) gaming layer, please email: email@example.com</comment>


Let's Encrypt was supposed to make things easier - <AUTHOR> https://www.disjoint.ca/posts/2015/11/22/lets-encrypt-was-supposed-to-make-things-easier <comment><USER2> Have you tried letsencrypt-nosudo[1]? Also, mind testing my new browser-based client, gethttpsforfree[2]?

[1]: [https://github.com/diafygi/letsencrypt- nosudo](https://github.com/diafygi/letsencrypt-nosudo)

[2]: [https://github.com/diafygi/gethttpsforfree](https://github.com/diafygi/gethttpsforfree)</comment>


802.11ah Wi-Fi Standard Approved - <AUTHOR> http://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-halow <comment><USER2> Summary:

802.11ah: Better range, lower bandwidth

802.11ad: Better bandwidth. Doesn't go through walls.

802.11ax: Successor to 11ac expected in 2019

<comment><USER3> 5ghz AC doesn't go through my plaster walls now. I've got two walls between me and my Airport Extreme and about 10 physical feet and have half signal showing on my phone.

<comment><USER4> In this case, what they mean is that the signal will be truly line of light. As you go up in frequency, radio starts to behave more like light so while you may get some convenient reflections here and there, for the vast majority of the time, if the antenna doesn't have a clear path to the transceiver, you won't know there even is an access point.

<comment><USER5> I suspect this can be quite convenient for various places where you want to limit access to individual rooms etc, but don't want to deal with the tangle of cables and ports that a wired network would require.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where do you keep up to date with the latest carrier/wifi/networking news? (besides HN of course)

<comment><USER7> networkworld.com (click on the 3 bars icon, to the left of the NETWORK WORLD text at the top, to view by category)

<comment> vive-la-liberte [http://www.networkworld.com/](http://www.networkworld.com/) clickable link because we're lazy like that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see this is 900MHz, how will that fair in countries that utilise GSM900 as that may certainly be a restriction in adoption for some countries due to frequency clash, would it not?

<comment><USER9> GSM900 is 890-915 MHz; 802.11ah gets around this by using region specific frequencies that sidestep GSM900:

902-928 MHz in the US (26 MHz bandwidth)

863-868 MHz in Europe (5 MHz bandwidth)

916.5-927.5 MHz in Japan (11 MHz bandwidth)

Limited bandwidth, especially in Europe, will to lead to both higher power consumption and lower real-world range.

>The PHY layer will allow devices and APs to operate over different sub-1GHz ISM bands, depending on the country regulations: 863-868 MHz in Europe, 902-928 MHz in the US, and 916.5-927.5 MHz in Japan. China, South Korea, and Singapore also have specific channels.

Reference: [http://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless- infrastructure/sub-...](http://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless- infrastructure/sub-1ghz-wireless-the-low-power-wifi-solution/a/d-id/1315850)

<comment><USER10> I am assuming the new for more bandwidth is only required if you have many information to transferred, which isn't likely the case here for 802.11ah?

<comment><USER11> It also means they'll be less channels available, so more noise. These frequencies are commonly used by things like door bells, burglar alarms, garage door openers, car locks, etc. I'm more worried what the effect will be on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My main issue here is that each new wi-fi standard requires new hardware. I remember reading something within the past few years about revolutionary new wi-fi antennas that will be able to adapt to any frequency such that new hardware wouldn't be an issue. I wonder if anyone has seen anything similar?

<comment><USER13> What do you expect from advanced radio equipment?

Each new hard drive standard has required a faster motherboard to take advantage of it.

WiFi standards are backwards compatible in the sense that they work with older hardware to send at the maximum speed that those radios were capable of transmitting.

<comment><USER12> That's simply not true. Each standard doesn't require a faster motherboard, only some changes to code and possibly a different communication frequency. Changes to code do not require different hardware while changes to the communication frequency do.

The crux of my initial comment is that it would be _awesome_ if we could some how get around the last issue and not have to replace hardware in order to use a different frequency, which @walshemj points out is a physical impossibility, but I believe I read an article a while ago in which someone had gotten around this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool. I'd rather see a standard capable of carrying gigabit traffic. Sure there is ac, but after noise & overheads it comes nowhere close.

So you've got people like me that can both get and afford gigabit but opt for 100mbps because the wireless tech isn't keeping up.

<comment><USER15> That's what 802.11ad is for, which can transmit over 60GHz (which limits it to basically one room, as it's quite readily attenuated by even air).

That said, at 60GHz of course bandwidth is awesome. TP-Link has a router:

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/5/10721550/tp-link-talon- ad72...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/5/10721550/tp-link-talon- ad7200-router-ces-2016)

<comment><USER16> At that router - LOL. "7gbps wireless throughput". Great. "1gbps ethernet port"... err?

Assuming your device can support 802.11ad, too, of course.

<comment><USER14> Thats actually OK. Advertised wifi speeds usually manage 20% of that in real life so sounds about right.

<comment><USER17> Bullshit, your device is at fault and not the protocol. I bought a 802.11ac dongle with external 10dbi gain antennas and have been enjoying _extreme_ speeds and connection strenght throughout the house, not to mention to the routers of 30 of my neighbours.. And that's only 5GHz. For comparison, at my desk three walls away I used to get about 40-50nW signal level off my built-in adapter and antenna in my Lenovo laptop. With the new setup - 60mW... The router sends at 100mW. We're talking pushing 90MB/s+ constantly no matter where in the house with absolutely no connection drops.

<comment><USER14> >Bullshit

Well thats not nice.

Speeds will vary greatly depending on whether proprietary booster tech is in use, which in turn will depend on the combination of hardware both on the sending and receiving side.

oh and while we're on the topic of bullshit (seeing how you were so blunt to go there) - signal levels are measured in decibels, not nW. nW is a measure of power fed to the antenna. Your comment is about as plausible as someone claiming their car is 40 gallons fast.

<comment><USER18> RSSI -- Receive Signal Strength Indicator -- is reported in dBm, which is a log-scale unit of watts. +20dBm is approx. the max transmit power for WiFi, and equates to 100mW. 1nw is eqivalent to -60dBm which is a pretty decent signal strength for WiFi, but won't provide max data rate. By comparison, the minimum power to operate at 1Mbps is about -98dBm.

Then again, receiving at 60mw (+17dBm) would overdrive any of the WiFi devices I ever tested and path loss of just 3dB (assuming +20dBm transmit power) is not achievable over the air, even with a near-field antenna. Keep in mind many devices actively tamper with the RSSI value reported up through NDIS, so while it's possible for a card to report it is receiving at +17dBm, unless you have hard-wired the hirose connectors between AP and STA it's not actually the case. Nor would a receiver work very well with so little path loss in any case, it would be completely over-driven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Twice the range".. Is that a doubling of the radius or a doubling of the diameter _(edit: oops, I meant area)_ of a ~ circle surrounding the access point?

Am I being spoiled thinking either of those options aren't super impressive for a whole new standard? Where's the 10x (order of magnitude) improvement? Will it take 3-5 further complete iterations of incompatible standards? :)

<comment><USER20> As usual with Wi-Fi you won't get close to theoretical range and distance in practice. 802.11ah includes support for relay access points [1]. Most probably it is a requirement for "nearly doubled range".

> Am I being spoiled thinking either of those options aren't super impressive > for a whole new standard? Where's the 10x (order of magnitude) improvement?

802.11ah is not the "mainline" standard. 10x improvement is left for 802.11ax. 802.11ah is for IoT applications: low bandwidth, low power consumption, high distance.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah#Relay_Access_Poi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah#Relay_Access_Point_.28AP.29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Where is it? Can I read it? All I'm seeing is a press release linking to other articles that are mere low-effort copies of the same press release.

Also, previous discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10838973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10838973)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, I didn't find that one when I searched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> At 900Mhz I imagine there will be lots of interference problems, or is there something I'm missing?

<comment><USER22> I don't believe we really use cordless phones in the 900MHz anymore and I believe the consortiums determine which spectrums are sufficiently unused before targeting them.

Verizon and T-Mobile have some LTE spectrum in the 700MHz range for building penetration and range so I expect to see great things at the 900MHz range for lower power devices.

<comment><USER15> They say 900MHz but that's really just a rough ballpark, presumably it will use the 915MHz ISM band in America and 868MHz in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recently bought an 802.11ac wifi adapter promising a nice theoretical 600Mbs in the 5Ghz band and all I was able to get from it was a practical 65-70Mbs (at 2 meters from an 802.11ac router) using the best drivers under Windows. Under Linux the (5Ghz)AC mode didn't work (buggy driver; no vendor support) so I was back in 802.11n mode. Quite underwhelming after spending 200 euros on router and adapter. I will definitely not "early adopt" wifi 802.11ah whenever it appears..

<comment><USER24> If you get a reasonably good combination of hardware/drivers, 802.11ac works well. I'm able to get 407.99 Mb/s Down, 462.39 Mb/s Up on a 2012 Macbook Air + RT-AC87U WiFi Hotspot on 5 Ghz to speedtest.net in Singapore.

<comment><USER25> I can confirm similar local measurements with MacBook Pros and a D-Link DAP-2950 across a room with a wood partition blocking line of sight. If the AP is advertised as 600Mbit/s, chances are it only supports 1 or 2 streams (MIMO antennas) per band. Most laptops only have 2, but even so the signal quality will be much better wih a 3- or 4- way MIMO setup on the AP end. (The D-Link has 6 antennas, so 3-way MIMO for both 5GHz and 2.4.) In addition to number of antennas, orientation also makes a big difference.

Finally, wireless access points seem to be one of those things where quality varies a lot. I hated wifi for its unreliability until I bought a decent (professional/small-to-medium-business grade) AP 8 months ago. Not a single connection problem since, even with the notoriously affected Mac hardware and OSX software versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if its too late though, perhaps the licensing is easier than Zigbee?

</comment><comment><USER27> How does this compare to 802.15.4? It seems like the two have similar purposes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't often better powerline than WiFi through walls?

</comment><comment><USER29> How will IPv6 affect all these new wireless standards/specs? Going from small to huge frame sizes must have a significant effect on performance.

<comment><USER30> IPv6 Has nothing to do with frame sizes (except that too large packets now get dropped instead of being fragmented into two parts)

<comment><USER31> IPv4 lets the MTU get as low as 68 (but you're only sending 8 bytes of data per packet); IPv6 prevents it from getting any lower than 1280, but permits "link-specific fragmentation and reassembly" as long as IPv6 itself doesn't see any smaller fragments.

IPv6 also permits (but does not require) jumbograms that make full use of the 32-bit packet size field, but across a wireless link, having to retransmit 4 GB at a time seems like a bad plan... this only seems useful for short- distance wired connections among hosts that know they've got a quality cable between them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When can I buy wireless headphones based on this standard? I hate the short range of 2.54 and 5 GHz headphones.

<comment><USER31> The 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz audio protocols seem to not be wifi-based. (Which makes sense, you don't want them to be IP-based.) They just transmit uncompressed analog audio over probably something like FM.

900 MHz headphones seem to be readily available, and to have been readily available for years.

<comment><USER33> Really? Does this mean a radio tuned to the right channel would be able to play the audio stream?

<comment><USER34> No they don't use simple radio, all of them will use a packet based protocol either proprietary or some sort of a standard digital (audio) streaming protocol. Encoding and packets don't add up any substantial latency just look Bluetooth A2DP headsets and AirPlay speakers (which uses Wifi as a carrier) headsets.

If your headsets did use just normal 2.4ghz radio like say a basic walkie talkie the downside is that you would've been able to hear any other transmission on that band e.g. an old baby monitor(new ones are digital too).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also to note is that a potential hacker doesn't need to be within the visible range of the home WiFi network with the increase in coverage.

<comment><USER35> That's already the case with directional antennas.</comment></comment>


Color.com should have been called Around.me - <AUTHOR>

Around.me is a mobile app for viewing videos and pictures at a specific location.
Pictures and videos are only viewable where they were captured.
No social network, no followers, no friends, and no check-ins. Just capture the moment and leave it for another person to find.
Fire up the app at a new location and see if any moments have been captured there before. I believe it would work great for touring/guide locations, events, and vacation spots.
Any takers? <comment><USER2> Me and a buddy wrote something like that app at TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year. We didn't get photos in place before the deadline, so nobody batted an eyelash. We looked at around.me but ended up buying stached.in (don't ask).

And now Color has $41m. Looks like we were on to something.

</comment><comment><USER3> LOL nice try, but it looks like the domain is taken. I hope you have $350k.</comment>


Fred Wilson hasn't done a 2012 deal - <AUTHOR> http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/10/fred-wilson-hasnt-done-a-2012-deal/

<comment><AUTHOR> Related to his latest post: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/putting-2012-to- bed.html></comment>


undocumented "ultravisor" mode in POWER9 CPUs raises security concerns - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/justinrwlynn/status/953157546977591296 <comment><AUTHOR> This is pending official confirmation from IBM that the feature is enabled and accessible to openPOWER chips.</comment>


Teresa Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi Discuss Building Online Communities - <AUTHOR> http://www.asaecenter.org/PublicationsResources/ANowDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=47920

<comment><USER2> This is a strong interview and should be more highly rated!</comment>


Safety incidents at Tesla plant were higher than industry average in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-workplace-safety-20170524-story.html <comment><USER2> I made a spreadsheet out of the PDF of injury rates by industry, which is much easier to sort and compare. Google removed the indentation I had added from the original, but it should be clear enough; the number of digits in the NAICS code is the indent level. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LKE00PJDDE_ZnDb1Slpq...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LKE00PJDDE_ZnDb1SlpqRX-31OjF9pZOPWZjx0O-ZXc/edit?usp=sharing)

For the record, in 2016, the injury rate per 1000 workers for "automobile manufacturing" as a whole was 6.7; "Animal (except poultry) slaughtering" was 7.2; "Sawmills" 7.3; Tesla's was 8.1, on a level with "psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals", just above "heavy and civil engineering construction", and just below "correctional institutions", to name a few. Tesla claims they're down to 4.6 in 1st quarter 2017, but of course we only have their word for that.

The document further breaks out cases with days away from work, restrictions, or transfers (DART). That's 3.9 for the auto industry in general, 4.9 for non- poultry slaughtering, 3.9 for sawmills, and 7.3 for Tesla (from the WorkSafe report linked in the article).

So it sounds like there may actually be something to this. Weird that they decided to go with clickbait instead of just presenting the data.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The scores don't account for severity, however. The injuries at Tesla appear to be related to long hours and ergonomic design."

Not to say that any harm to your health should be avoided, but by auto industry standards (other than Tesla) to this day serious incidents involve losing limbs or death. I know they're pushing everyone at Tesla as the company is still losing a lot amount of money, but it's not clear that anyone being pushed is taking really serious risks -- at other auto companies, they are and the result is literally loss of limb and life. Moreover their loss is for "greedy capitalists" as the workers earn very little, have incentives to take risks, are not trained appropriately, and traditional car companies are quite profitable unlike Tesla.

The photos in the recent Businessweek coverage of auto industry safety of people missing limbs are horrible (Tesla was not mentioned therein btw).

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/inside- al...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/inside-alabama-s- auto-jobs-boom-cheap-wages-little-training-crushed-limbs)

<comment><USER4> In _Understanding Human Error_, Sidney Dekker points to a study done at the time (many decades ago) that within an industry, the guys with the most frequent small accidents had the least frequent big accidents. Of course at the time, it was not fully known that covering up small incidents would mean you almost inevitably faced a catastrophe.

Just an interesting thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title itself uses a basic framing technique intentionally written to fool you into a false conclusion.

1- "worse than slaughterhouses and sawmills" is more catchy than "better than X" (chose any X automaker) 2- Is the safety level of a slaughterhouses or a sawmill comparable to a car's ? They are things not in the same category, with different sophistication level and different purpose, how many times a day an average person will enter a slaughterhouse or a sawmill ?

<comment><USER6> Of course they aren't. Working on a slaughter house requires gear, starting from chainmail gloves so you don't lose fingers and on.

Have you ever entered a sawmill? Don't get me started.

So, if Tesla is a higher injury place than a sawmill, somebody shoduld send inspections and audit the place thoroughly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Title here is misleading. Actual title of article at LA Times is "Tesla had worse safety records than slaughterhouses and sawmills" \- note "had", past tense. The records in question are from 2015, and as the article says, they are working on improvements.

<comment><USER8> And even then, the records are for number of incidents rather than severity. The two specific things they mention are tendinitis and carpal tunnel, which suck, but aren't the sort of injuries one associates with sawmills...

<comment><USER9> The title is clickbait.

It's analagous to saying "Elon Musk's mouth has worse bacterial contamination than petri dish of Lyme Disease." Sure, by number of bacterial agents, Musk's mouth is more contaminated... But that's not a very useful statement unless you want to mislead people.

<comment><USER10> Agree, could also have been written Tesla had lower than average safety incidents in ..2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016.. Nothing to see here

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly, Tesla's approach is to hire ergonomics experts to help address the repetitive stress injuries (severe tendinitis and carpal tunnel).

Compare that with the slaughterhouse industry:

"In recent years, the industry has bragged about dramatic reductions in worker injuries. What they've failed to report is that the OSHA injury form was recently re-written to omit the category of repetitive stress injuries – the most commonly reported injury in the industry."

[http://www.foodispower.org/slaughterhouse- workers/](http://www.foodispower.org/slaughterhouse-workers/)

So, Tesla is being compared on reported injury rates to slaughterhouses, whose standards have been re-written to exclude reporting the most common types of injuries, which just-so-happen to be the types Tesla is reporting?

(Note that the quote above comes from a pro-vegan site, so it isn't unbiased).

NPR similarly describes widespread under-reporting of injuries in the meat processing industry: [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/25/479509221/we-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/25/479509221/we- dont-know-how-many-workers-are-injured-at-slaughterhouses-heres-why)

I'm inclined to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt here, though we should not minimize the effects of repetitive stress disorders.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Tesla did not dispute the numbers.

> we now have the lowest injury rate in the industry by far

This article seems to be misleading readers into thinking that Tesla has unsafe working conditions, despite being the best in the industry.

<comment><USER13> Tesla alleges they have the lowest injury rate for 2017. The report analyzed data from 2014 to the end of 2016 and found Tesla's injury rate to be higher than the average. They allege that there is not enough data released for 2017 to substantiate Tesla's claim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the average auto company's safety record worse than slaughterhouses and sawmills?

<comment><USER15> Per the article they're "as much as 31% higher" than other auto companies.

<comment><USER16> This doesn't answer the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't it? If Tesla is about as dangerous as slaughterhouses and sawmills, and Tesla is more dangerous than other automakers, then it follows that other auto makers are less dangerous than slaughterhouses and sawmills.

<comment><USER17> The headline says "worse than slaughterhouses and sawmills", not, "abous as dangerous as".

So no, it doesn't answer the question. It could be that slaughterhouses and sawmills are really safe—say 3 on a 1-10 scale—while automakers are 6 and Tesla is 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Even the new title, "Safety incidents at Tesla plant were higher than industry average in 2015".

Who cares? The very definition of "industry average" means that someone in the industry will be above or below the average. Why would I want to read about that? Why pick on Tesla? because they're popular?

<comment><USER19> _Why pick on Tesla? because they 're popular?_

To answer your last question, because two weeks ago Tesla said the opposite: [https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car- factory-i...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car-factory-in- the-world)

<comment><USER20> Did they claim otherwise about their 2015 numbers anywhere? The only thing they mention is about Q1 2017. The 2017 numbers seemed to have improved drastically, something the article recognises (but the HN headline does not :S).

<comment><USER21> Read the report and you'll find out Tesla frequently has to update its numbers after the fact. So, yes Q1 2017 might look good NOW but in 3 months after injuries manifest and other claims come in (IBNR), it could turn to total shit. Tesla wants you to forget they frequently have to raise their numbers after the fact.

So, if history is any indicator, Tesla should shut its trap until it has a full year, after revisions, that show it's genuinely superior. Oh, I made myself laugh.

<comment><USER22> " _Tesla did not dispute the numbers. "We may have had some challenges in the past as we were learning how to become a car company, but what matters is the future," a company spokesman said. "With the changes we've made, we now have the lowest injury rate in the industry by far."_ "

Here in the future, past trends are irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Charley Briese said his job involved pulling down a hanging drill three times a minute for 12 to 16 hours a day, causing severe tendinitis

12-16 hrs a day?

<comment><USER24> That's unusual in the auto industry. Usually, plants run a second shift rather than paying overtime to the first shift. It's cheaper. Accident rates go up and quality goes down as employees get tired. You have to have a meal break in there, which costs more line downtime than a shift change.

<comment><USER25> Tesla must have a hard time hiring. I'm shocked they aren't running three shifts with the production backlog they have.

<comment><USER26> They started running three shifts some months ago.

<comment><USER25> Why did that guy say he was working 12-16 hrs per day? I'm out of the loop on internal Tesla matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Shocking revelation reveals that up to half of car makers have below average safety records!

Edit - I know safety is a serious matter, but it does look like this is a historical issue that Tesla takes seriously and has under control.

<comment><USER28> That would be "below _median_ safety records."

<comment><USER29> "Average" is a colloquial term referring to any measure of central tendency. The arithmetic mean is just the most common kind of average, not the only kind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The Guardian reported on the same issue recently:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla- wor...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers- factory-conditions-elon-musk)

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the key point here is Musk is moving as quickly as he can towards automatic and robots. Unionization will only push him to do that harder, speeding up until humans are factored out of the equation along with their jobs.

</comment><comment><USER32> There have been numerous articles over the last few weeks, all in the same vain.

And all with very click-baity negative headlines and articles that don't exactly seem like neutral reporting of an issue.

I'd bet that there is some PR firm trying to drum up anti Tesla sentiments.

(I'm not saying that there wasn't or isn't an issue at Tesla factories, but the kind of reporting stinks like PR campaign).

<comment><USER33> > _I 'd bet that there is some PR firm trying to drum up anti Tesla > sentiments._

Anything anti-Tesla is part of some PR conspiracy. Meanwhile, 10 vapid, fluff- pieces from Electrek or random Musk tweets show up on the front page every week.

Have you considered that, perhaps, it's not all rainbows and unicorns with this company?

<comment><USER32> Maybe, you know, read the last line of my comment?

> (I'm not saying that there wasn't or isn't an issue at Tesla factories)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Prior submission, link to PDF report:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14412360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14412360)

<comment><USER34> Yeah and that PDF: misleading graphics, and no standard deviation. Someone has to be above average and it intuitively makes sense that the rushing upstart would be, but how bad is it really? You can't tell without more statistics

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Tesla's safety record had been worse than slaughterhouses and sawmills."

OMG

"The scores don't account for severity however."

Oh...

<comment><USER2> EDIT: Moving this to its own top-level comment. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422326)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Now what I would really like to see is the numbers for "factory worked hours" / "car assembled" Tesla Vs Industry average.

Anyone reckon there would be a surprising number in this ratio? (i.e. is their automation level higher than the traditional car makers?)

</comment><comment><USER37> The union should do something about it.

</comment><comment><USER38> TL;DR: clickbait article.

<comment><USER39> I mean that's not really the conclusion I draw from injuries being almost one- third higher than industry averages, personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees.

Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's _worth_ it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay.

It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change that Tesla is after without such back breaking sacrifice. But I think the fact remains there's too much non- linearity in the means of production to get where Elon is trying to go without pushing his people to the limit.

The only "answer" I can give is just that I hope TSLA employees are getting enough equity to make it all worth it.

<comment><USER41> What, exactly, is "worth it", though? SpaceX, sure, that could be worth it. They're actually innovating.

But Tesla? A goddamn car company? What the hell is so important about fancy cars for rich people that they have to screw the workers for?

Sure, they call themselves an "energy company", and they have made "amazing advances in energy technology", but both Tesla's fancy solar panel AND battery "advances" are literally just licensed Panasonic tech.

I don't get it.

<comment><USER2> Global warming. We're at or past the tipping point already, but electric cars and solar houses are definitely the direction we need to be going if we want to avoid disastrous and irreversible climate change. If-- _if_ \--Tesla can help make that happen, it'll be worth a lot of sacrifice.

<comment><USER42> What caused climate change before there were people?

<comment><USER39> Fires have started without human intervention in the past. Therefore, arson is a myth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The Simpsons explained unions many years ago. It's spot on:

 _Waif: You can 't treat the working man this way! One of these days we'll form a union, and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we'll go too far, and become corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!_

<comment><USER44> japanese did not eat us automotive industry alive because of unions. japanese primarily eat the us automotive industry alive because of far superior manufacturing innovation.

<comment><USER45> And of course, unions have _never_ been known to stand in the way of manufacturing innovation.

<comment><USER46> German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. It's one of the sectors with the strongest union presence. They also outcompete US manufacturers. Maybe, just maybe, unions are not to blame. Maybe, just maybe, data indicates that management may have something to do with it.

<comment><USER47> I can tell you that German automotive unions (OEMs and suppliers) are among the main opponents of electromobility. ZF, Mahle ... a lot of components are just no longer needed for a gearless EV where the motor consists of a large coil instead of thousands of high-precision parts.

They are also responsible for making sure that government grants flow into OEMs instead of generic EV charging infrastructure.

We regularly have reengineering projects for end-of-line testing equipment and other test benches where we are contractually required to guarantee that the new version does not make the personnel operating the equipment redundant (i.e. it may not be more efficient than the 15 year old version). (I won't blame anyone for disbelieving this.)

So, yes, they are very much against manufacturing improvements.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SwissEduc - Informatik - Programmieren lernen mit Kara - <AUTHOR> http://www.swisseduc.ch/informatik/karatojava/download.html <comment><USER2> I only speak a little of German, so I have to read the English translations.

Home page: [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.swisseduc.ch%2Finformatik%2Fkaratojava%2Fkara%2Findex.html)

Screenshots: [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.swisseduc.ch%2Finformatik%2Fkaratojava%2Fkara%2Fscreenshots.html)</comment>


Apple moves to trademark the term 'startup' in Malaysia - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/apple-moves-to-trademark-the-term-startup-in-malaysia

<comment><USER2> Oh FFS, not the bullshit again; it's a month old article at that.</comment>


Eliminating opportunities for BGP accidents with traffic hijacking - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/company/qrator/blog/442264/ <comment><USER2> Without path, origin validation is next to useless in live BGP. Its great for provisioning and filter config, but thats the low-bar goal. signing attestations about adjacencies is the basis of a deployable, works-in-partial- deployment method which doesn't overload the router with crypto at runtime and can pass the info in BGP extended messages so its transmitted at the speed of BGP.

Whats not to like?</comment>


Ask HN: How did the Erlang articles disappear on HN yesterday? - <AUTHOR>

Were we censored or did we flag the articles by ourselves, or did the admin remove all the Erlang entries from appearing on the front page? How did we get rid of the Erlang articles? I'm just curious about it. <comment><USER2> I guess enough people flagged it to take it away.

There is a lower limit where stuff will get auto killed if enough people flagged it.

What bothers me most about these silly flooding tactics is that you've potentially burned a lot of good content about Erlang from ever appearing on HN.

Erlang is a neat concept, and I think that those that flooded the 'new' page with Erlang stuff have done more damage than good.

What you could have simply done is to flag the articles you thought had no place on HN instead of trying to monopolize the discussion by flooding.

<comment><USER3> I think its pretty certain the articles were manually removed, they all went at the same time along with every new submission almost immediately.

I dont disagree with having them deaded though, although my site was one of the ones that someone submitted, and I actually think it was submitted because it was useful.

<comment><USER2> Imagine a series of counters as attributes to the articles submitted. If enough people decide 'enough Erlang, let's flag that stuff down' then you can imagine a flurry of activity by a limited number of users (say 10 or 15 or so) that would remove all the articles within a minute or so, which is when the _last_ person to be able to do so clicks 'flag' for the relevant articles.

Don't attribute to 'divine' intervention what you could easily achieve with the tools at hand.

<comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=686303>

_pg: "If a story has enough flags, that alone will kill it, without moderator intervention. I just added a point threshold to prevent this happening to stories that have received a significant number of votes."_

On the other hand this change doesn't seem to be in the latest news.arc from arc3.tar, whether it was removed, not included in that distribution yet, or I'm just looking in the wrong place.

<comment><USER2> What's distributed is not necessarily what is running on the site. I think there may be some secret sauce, if only to make it a bit harder to game the system.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where Americans gathered, the coronavirus followed - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/28/us/covid-virus-cluster.html <comment><USER2> Is the horizontal scrolling really necessary for this content?</comment>


Researchers prove Huygens was right about pendulum synchronization - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-03-huygens-pendulum-synchronization.html <comment><USER2> "Another new discovery is that pendulum clocks are not only synchronous but also move more slowly over time and thus are not very reliable timekeepers."

Wait, what? That's surely not a "discovery"...

<comment><USER3> Not sure if this is what you mean, but pendulum clocks work because the pendulum "... swings back and forth in a precise time interval dependent on its length, and resists swinging at other rates."[0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_clock)

<comment><USER4> The fact that a particular mechanism _resists_ the effects of friction doesn't mean it's _unaffected_ by them.

<comment><USER5> But (approximating at small angles), the pendulum's period is _constant_. Friction will have the effect of reducing the distance that it swings, but the amount of time it takes to swing it doesn't change.

That's a simplified model of a pendulum and isn't completely accurate, but even if your pendulum has a 30° swing its true period is only 1.7% off of the approximation.

And pendulum clocks don't just let the pendulum lose energy to friction until they swing down and stop. Take a look at this deadbeat escapement: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_escapement#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_escapement#/media/File:Scappamento.gif) (one of several pendulum mechanisms)

There are three main actions going on here. 1) A weight is hung so that its downward force is trying to drive the escape wheel's rotation. 2) The side face of the anchor (swinging part w/ pendulum attached) moves in front of the escape wheel tooth and stops it. This locks the motion of the clock mechanism to one tooth per swing (and is the reason the weight doesn't just drop immediately). 3) As the anchor swings off the dead face, the tooth applies a slight push to the sloped impulse face at the end of the anchor. That repeated nudge transfers potential energy from the weight to the pendulum swing, and keeps its swing distance consistent against friction losses.

Mechanical clocks are actually pretty clever.

<comment><USER6> See my response to grahamburger. Friction does not only cause decay of the amplitude, it also changes the frequency.

edit: But you are right, the mechanical clocks are still pretty amazing and quite precise given the limitations of the technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> julien-c Relevant video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5eBf2KwF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5eBf2KwF8)

<comment><USER7> More than relevant, it's a fantastic video of 32 out-of-phase metronomes sitting on a shared surface "magically" coming into (seemingly) perfect sync over several minutes. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have observed crystals and oscillation circuits syncing up on PC boards because of tiny noise on the power supply. This is a direct analogy of the Huygens observation.

<comment><USER9> Were those crystals and oscillations circuits independently driven by the power supply, or were they mutually connected?

<comment><USER8> The only thing connected was the power line. I have heard of oscillation circuits with no common power syncing up because of RF from coils.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Such effects have been pretty thoroughly studied in the quantum mechanics of Bosons. Bosons are particles or quasi-particles that follow Bose-Einstein statistics, including photons and phonons, i.e. quantised electromagnetic and acoustic vibrations, respectively. This phenomenon of pendulum synchronization on a shared acoustic surface is not completely unlike that of photon synchronization in a laser cavity.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course, the clocks need to have compatible internal time constants (pendulum length) for this to work.

<comment><USER12> How close do the natural frequencies need for this to happen? There must be some relation between how tightly coupled they are and how close their frequencies must be. Is it a sharp cut-off? What happens near the breaking point?

Easier to explore in electronic systems than kinetic ones, as we did in a lab in college. You get some fun phenomena, with chaos and fractals arising: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_tongue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_tongue)

<comment><USER11> Good points. This would certainly be interesting to figure out.</comment></comment></comment>