Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (1975) - <AUTHOR> https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm <comment><USER3> Dick was thrilled with his first glimpse of Blade runner on TV. In October 1981, he wrote to the producers [1]:

 _I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people -- and, I believe, _on science fiction as a field._ … Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches BLADE RUNNER. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day "reality" pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, BLADE RUNNER is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, _can_ be._

 _… As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you...and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible._

[1] Philip K. Dick official website, [http://web.archive.org/web/20121015191334/http://philipkdick...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121015191334/http://philipkdick.com/new_letters- laddcompany.html)

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I always found his book _Do Androids dream of electric sheep_ , which Blade Runner is based on, so much better than the movie.

<comment><USER5> If that's the only book of his you've read, you're really missing out - it's good, but not his best.

I would recommend, and you are welcome to ignore should you choose:

Ubik

Flow my tears, the policeman said

Dr Bloodmoney

Radio Free Albemuth

Time out of joint

A scanner darkly

Mary and the giant

And finally as an aside, 334 by Thomas Disch.

Fun fact: Dick shopped Disch to the feds for in his view pedalling anti- American views. These letters are fascinating - and Radio Free Albemuth might ring some bells.

[http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/07/neo-nazis-syphilis- and-...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/07/neo-nazis-syphilis-and-world- war-iii.html)

PKD has an uncanny grasp on the reality-busting nature of our current reality, and the above books are a decent primer in his way of thinking. The list is by no means complete, just what trips out of my head as "Good PKD".

His non-sf works, like _Mary and the Giant_ and _Confessions of a Crap Artist_ , I did not understand in the slightest as a younger man. Now I read them, and their realities are palpable, sordid, tawdry, and utterly real.

<comment><USER6> If you like Confessions of a Crap Artist, you should try to see the French film adaptation, Barjo. My recollection is that it was a pretty good version, but it is now more than 25 years since I've seen it.

<comment><USER5> Ooh, I had no idea that existed - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From a commentary about the linked article:

 _The common denominator in all of Dick's fiction is a world beset by an unconstrained and monstrous entropy that devours matter and even time_

Reference: [https://dynamicsubspace.net/2010/05/09/stanislaw-lems- philip...](https://dynamicsubspace.net/2010/05/09/stanislaw-lems-philip-k- dick-a-visionary-among-the-charlatans/)

And also from the linked article:

 _The writings of Philip Dick have deserved a better fate than that to which they were destined by their birthplace. If they are neither of uniform quality nor fully realized..._

Unlike Stephen King, Dick's books aren't very easy to read from cover to cover, but they're filled with rich references of dystopian tragedy.

William Gibson's Neuromancer is a little easier, but leans more stylistic similar to _A Clockwork Orange_ by Anthony Burgess, who relied on _a Russian- influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English_ to inject the character's language with a certain brand of nastiness to go with the subverted plot.

Stanley Kubrick successfully adapted King's The Shining and Clockwork Orange, but failed to wrap his mind fully around Dick, methinks, as he could never bring a Dick-influenced project to its feet, A.I., which Spielberg couldn't do much with either.

Part of the adventure in reading Dick is figuring out what the hell happened before the novel began to have such a devastating effect on the present he so vividly presents.

Since he died, the imaginative powers of Dick have been tapped and retapped by Hollywood, (Bladerunner, Blade Runner 2049, The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau, Screamers) ...and sometimes the results are even pretty good (despite the esoteric nature of his writing).

There's a lot to be learned about our existential existence from reading Dick, and I associate him more with Kafka and Camus, than his science fiction genre- mates.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Since he died, the imaginative powers of Dick have been tapped and retapped by Hollywood, (Bladerunner, Blade Runner 2049, The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau, Screamers) ...and sometimes the results are even pretty good (despite the esoteric nature of his writing)."_

Don't forget _The Matrix_ \-- though it wasn't directly based on any of PKD's work, his influence on it is pretty clear. _The Truman Show_ was obviously inspired by Dick's _Time Ouf of Joint_ (though Dick's book was a lot darker than the lighthearted Jim Carrey comedy). _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ is yet another PKD-lite (featuring Jim Carrey yet again). PKD's influence on Hollywood is vast.

<comment><USER8> PKD was such a visionary that I can pretty much take whatever SF book/movie/etc from the last 40 years and link it directly to his work.

Although his books are hard to read sometimes, the ideas expressed in them more than makes up for the fuzzy/bad form in the which they are conveyed.

<comment><USER9> He was such a visionary that I can pretty much take whatever _news headline_ from the last 10 years and link it directly to his work...

It hasn't been updated in a few years, but this site used to regularly take recent news articles and link them to story elements in Dick's stories: [http://fraser.typepad.com/frolix_8/philip_k_dick/](http://fraser.typepad.com/frolix_8/philip_k_dick/)

<comment><USER8> hah. this goes to prove that no matter what idea you have someone probably though about it before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coincidentally (though Dick himself would likely think not), I'm re-reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch right now. And looking at my bookshelf, I see that A Scanner Darkly sits next to His Master's Voice. Maybe it's time to chew some Can-D.

<comment><USER7> I do love me some CAN-D. Nicely played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel the essential importance of the arts, including literature, has been greatly diminished in the public's consciousness. People look on them as entertainment (Christie not Dostoevsky, using Lem's examples) and wonder why they matter at all, why they should be studied - especially the challenging stuff! But look at Lem's perspective:

 _No one in his right mind seeks the psychological truth about crime in detective stories. Whoever seeks such truth will turn rather to Crime and Punishment._

...

 _Joseph Conrad 's elevated description of literature as rendering "the highest kind of truth to the visible universe"_

To me the arts deal with the hardest questions, the ones that cannot be quantified, solved with an algorithm, or even with the infinite imagined powers of ML; the ones for which we often can't find the right questions. Despite all our technological advancements, the world around us seems to bend into pointless chaos and conflict, from peace and prosperity to war - <USER2> bizarrely with no enemy threatening us. I find the arts have more and more to say to me.

<comment><USER12> I don't agree.

Take Dick for example: whether his writing deals with "the highest kind of truth" is not important to me. I've read just about everything he's written because I enjoy his writing.

I think this is equally true for Dostoevsky, Conrad, and other acclaimed writers. When I read those authors, I have an emotional reaction. It's not research. I didn't come away from _Crime and Punishment_ with a better understanding of why people commit murder. I don't understand "nautical psychology" any better for having read _The Shadow Line_. I was moved by those novels. I'd say that makes them entertainment.

I don't think acclaimed literature belongs in a different category than teenage supernatural romance. _Twilight_ elicit an emotional response from its audience just like _Ubik_ does. The emotions, technique, and the audience could hardly be more different, but I see no reason that one of those novels should be categorized as "base entertainment" and the other as "high art". They're both entertainment.

Some literature may contain a thesis but, in my opinion, it mostly doesn't. If someone has to "study" a novel to "get the point" then that novel has failed, at least with regard to that reader.

Just my opinion.

More on topic: I enjoy Roberto Bolano's thoughts on Philip K. Dick: [http://www.electriccereal.com/roberto-bolano-on-philip-k- dic...](http://www.electriccereal.com/roberto-bolano-on-philip-k-dick/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, both are entertainment in that they provide enjoyment to their fans. However, the one deals with deep issues of existence, identity, reality, and meaning, while the other deals with superficial issues such as which vampire hunk is going to hook up with which vampire babe (or so I presume -- I actually haven't read/watched Twilight or any other supernatural romances).

To the extent that art deals with deep issues of critical importance to humanity, it at least strives to rise above the mass of "pure entertainment" which does not strive for anything more than entertaining and distracting its audience from just such serious contemplation. To the extent said art succeeds in what it tries to accomplish, and does so in a profound, engaging, and unforgettable way, it is great.

<comment><USER13> _...which vampire hunk is going to hook up with which vampire babe (or so I presume -- I actually haven 't read/watched Twilight or any other supernatural romances)._

With the sole exception of an added vampire _/ werewolf_ hunk you nailed it. The subject matter though is less problematic than the really abysmal writing. PKD didn't always have the best writing style, but made up for it with content. Twilight is derivative content delivered in appalling fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fun fact: Dick, for his part, thought Lem was the alias for a committee of Communists dedicated to destroying science fiction.

[https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem- is...](https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is-a- communist-committee)

<comment><USER15> He was diagnosed with schizophrenia to my knowledge

<comment><USER16> Indeed. Meth will do that.

<comment><USER10> PKD had amphetamine problems, not methamphetamine. Though of course they are related, meth is in a different class when it comes to potency. His hallucinations and mental issues started well after he finished a drug rehab program in Vancouver so it's not certain they are related.

As an aside, the dreary, rainy atmosphere of Blade Runner was inspired by Dick's residency in Vancouver.

<comment><USER17> Was he involved in the making of the movie? Or were the dreary and rainy scenes described in detail in the book?

<comment><USER18> He was not really involved. He was consulted a bit, and while he disapproved of the original script, it seems he liked the rewrite. He screened a preview and reacted positively to the general feel, however he died before it was completed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, I just finished reading "Mortal Engines", a collection of short stories by Stanislaw Lem, and have moved onto "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" by PK Dick. The kind of coincidence that would no doubt inspire Dick to write something!

The last story in Mortal Engines - "The Mask" \- ranked easily as good as Dick's work and perhaps even bested it in its narrative of eccentric psychological states.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's a lot to unpack in this article, since the article is embedded in a given point in time (1975), translated (from Polish), and is itself a critical examination... of critical examination ... of early 70s Science Fiction.

There's a few themes here that are interesting. Firstly, it's Lem's early recognition of Dick as a genius. I'd like to think that one of the things that Lem had in common with Dick was that they were both mentally traumatized (Lem, barely surviving Nazi-occupied Poland, and Dick, suffering from intense depression and psychoses). They both wove stories around the mind dealing with situations that were pervasive and inescapable. Lem went on to translate Ubik into Polish. Dick responded by accusing him of being a Communist party stooge/pseudonym, and held Lem personally responsible for financial shortfalls from the publisher. So much for kindred spirits!

Neither one of them wrote "entertaining" stories, at least not according to popular trends. The main thrust of the article is how to consider literary greatness in the midst of contemporary entertainment. But, the striking thing to me is that Dick's works _are_ entertainment now. It's one thing for genius to be recognized after the author has passed, but why are Hollywood and Netflix churning out Phillip Dick (and related) stories decades later? Most ideas about future technology from that period are laughably wrong or outdated.

After the events of the past few years or so, I have to wonder if people feel the same sense of paranoia and dissociation echoed in the stories. It's pretty clear modern society is unraveling, and we're heading towards some awful disaster, whether it's ecological, technological, or political. Dick's stories follow those mental patterns and somehow feel familiar.

Finally, I am grateful for taking Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's Science Fiction class at Depauw all those years ago. He maintains this page and the rest of the archives : [https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/index.htm](https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/index.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Most ideas about future technology from that period are laughably wrong or outdated."_

Not only that, but science fiction editors back then were actively hostile to the direction Dick's stories were headed. Here's what Dick himself had to say about it:

 _" At the beginning of my writing career in the early Fifties, Galaxy was my economic mainstay. Horace Gold at Galaxy liked my writing whereas John W. Campbell, Jr. at Astounding considered my writing not only worthless but as he put it, "Nuts." By and large I liked reading Galaxy because it had the broadest range of ideas, venturing into the soft sciences such as sociology and psychology, at a time when Campbell (as he once wrote me!) considered psionics a necessary premise for science fiction. Also, Campbell said, the psionic character in the story had to be in charge of what was going on. So Galaxy provided a latitude which Astounding did not. However, I was to get into an awful quarrel with Horace Gold; he had the habit of changing your stories without telling you: adding scenes, adding characters, removing downbeat endings in favor of upbeat endings. Many writers resented this. I did more than resent this; despite the fact that Galaxy was my main source of income I told Gold that I would not sell to him unless he stopped altering my stories--after which he bought nothing from me at all."_

<comment><USER6> Gold had a fantastic eye for talent and published many classic stories in Galaxy, but his habit of making unapproved changes to stories was well known and he drove writers nuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> His book Valis had the most profound effect on me,two years ago I wrote some interesting quotes down: [https://www.danieljakobian.com/valis/](https://www.danieljakobian.com/valis/)

<comment><USER22> VALIS is quite a ride. The really scary thing is that it is clearly heavily autobiographical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Alright to all that, but sometimes all you really want to read is a damn good space adventure.

Something well-written of course, like _Consider Phlebas_ [1]. But good literature doesn't necessarily need to have "more self-knowledge than talent". The Odyssey and the Illiad, are not particularly known for their deep philosophical understanding, and yet they were passed down generation to generation, mouth-to-ear for thousands of years. There is something precious and unique to be found in great stories that are nothing more than great stories. We should welcome and celebrate work that goes a bit further than that, but well-crafted tales of a specific genre also have value.

Also, they're much easier to write and read.

_____________________

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

</comment><comment><USER24> When I was reading A Scanner Darkly before the movie came out, I remember wondering how they would ever be able to represented the "scramble suit" in a movie, since it was so impressionistic and subjective and mundane looking, that anything you actually drew and animated would be too concrete and objective and freaky looking.

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=997](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=997)

>The scramble suit was an invention of the Bell laboratories, conjured up by accident by an employee named S. A. Powers... Basically, his design consisted of a multifaceted quartz lens hooked up to a million and a half physiognomic fraction-representations of various people: men and women, children, with every variant encoded and then projected outward in all directions equally onto a superthin shroudlike membrane large enough to fit around an average human.

>As the computer looped through its banks, it projected every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure - the entire shroudlike membrane took on whatever physical characteristics were projected at any nanosecond, then switched to the next...

>In any case, the wearer of a scramble suit was Everyman and in every combination (up to combinations of a million and a half sub-bits) during the course of each hour. Hence, any description of him - or her - was meaningless.

When the movie came along, I was disappointed in the scramble suit effect they used, since it looked like a bunch of flickering concrete glimpses of different people, instead of an abstract glimpse of one generic unmemorable person. If somebody looked like they did in the movie, you'd sure notice them in a crowd, which is the opposite effect the scramble suit was supposed to provide.

It was a great try, it looked really cool, but it couldn't work because Philip K Dick wrote something that was easy to imagine, just impossible to draw.

Scanner Darkly Scramble Suit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqWBCsWRdw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqWBCsWRdw4)

A Scanner Darkly - FX: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWne23FfKW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWne23FfKW8)

>They wear these suits called scramble suits, where it hides their identity, and instead replaces pieces of parts. It gives you the idea that you're seeing the person, but you just can't focus on it.

>You read in the novel and it describes it as a vague blur, or millions of different representations of people. That makes sense when you're reading it. But then we have to visualize that, and actually present that, how do you do that? A blue eye for one second, and I'll shift it to a brown eye, to a different mouth, to a mustache, to a full beard, to nothing.

There's just no way to capture the "just can't focus on it" part of the scramble suit on film, because the scrambling on film draws your attention instead of repelling it.

Rare Philip K Dick interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ewcp6Nm- rQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ewcp6Nm-rQ)

>The position which writers such as myself hold in America, those positions are very lowly. Science Fiction is considered something for adolescents. For just high school kids, and for disturbed people in general to read in America. So we are limited in our writing to books that have no sex, no violence, and no deep ideas. Just something of an adventure kind of nature, which we call "Space Opera", which is just Westerns set in the future.

I still can't imagine how they could ever make The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, or Faith of Our Fathers into movies. But that's more because of the plots and the subject matter, than the visuals.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch)

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_Our_Fathers_(short_st...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_Our_Fathers_\(short_story\))

</comment><comment><USER24> Mark Weiser once told me that Ubik was one of his inspirations for Ubiquitous Computing.

[http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html](http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html)

>Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

[https://blog.canary.is/from-tesla-to-touchscreens-the- journe...](https://blog.canary.is/from-tesla-to-touchscreens-the-journey-of- the-internet-of-things/)

>One year earlier, in 1998, Mark Weiser described it a little differently, stating that, "Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world," Weiser asserted,"ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people." This wasn't the first time someone broached the idea of IoT. In the early 1980s, students at Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science department created the first IoT Coke machine. Author Philip K. Dick wrote about the smart home in the 1969 sci-fi novel Ubik, and four decades before, inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla addressed the concept in Colliers Magazine. In an amazingly prescient 1926 interview, Tesla said,

>"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain…We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance…and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

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

"Five cents, please," his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn't changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city … if not the whole world.

He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago.

[…]

"I don't have any more nickels," G. G. said. "I can't get out."

Glancing at Joe, then at G. G., Pat said, "Have one of mine." She tossed G. G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness.

"You sure shot me down," he said as he deposited the nickel in the door's slot. "Both of you," he muttered as the door closed after him. "I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when —" His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence.

[…]

"I'll go get my test equipment from the car," Joe said, starting towards the door.

"Five cents, please,"

"Pay the door," Hoe said to G. G. Ashwood.

[...]

"Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?" Joe said. "So I can eat breakfast?"

"Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as —"

"Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this."

</comment><comment><USER25> an insane prophet revealing the madness to come.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjG0iy1vx9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjG0iy1vx9U)

</comment><comment><USER26> The writing style seems to be unnecessarily complex, and, in my mind, dilutes and obscures the message of this piece.

<comment><USER27> This is due to poor translation - Lem is generally regarded as a master of style. Polish sentences tend to be longer, not unlike German, because highly inflective grammar allows for it. It is not the case for languages with simpler grammar like English, of course.

<comment><USER28> Partially, yes. But I'm a native Polish speaker who reads a lot, and still consider Lem a challenging writer. He _did_ like long and complex sentences with diverse vocabulary.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup_Toolkit_Info.png (1200×6400) - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Startup_Toolkit_Info.png <comment><USER2> Very US centric. e.g. hetzner.de would get like 100% in webhosting within Germany. But still a nice summary.</comment>


Computer Keyboard from Bananas [video] - <AUTHOR> http://vidinterest.com/video/3124/keyboard-using-bananas-makey-makey

<comment><USER2> A better link would be to Makey Makey's own website: [http://makeymakey.com/](http://makeymakey.com/)

The project started about a year ago on Kickstarter and raised $568K [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joylabs/makey-makey- an-i...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joylabs/makey-makey-an-invention- kit-for-everyone)

It's a lot of fun to play with and a great educational experience. They usually have a fun booth at Maker Faire.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know Vidinterest is, but here's the Youtube link referenced: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQqh7iCcOU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQqh7iCcOU)

The site referred to is: [http://makeymakey.com](http://makeymakey.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> @speeder Wacky musical instruments? Mireia installed a pencil-piano and played the tetris song, for example :) [http://blog.mmontanyola.com/?p=73](http://blog.mmontanyola.com/?p=73)

Makey Makey is awesome..

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm thinking if this could be easy to replicate by re-purposing an old keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER6> I own one of these, does anybody have any questions?

</comment><comment><USER7> Whoa! It is VERY interesting! Maybe it can make even easier to make your DIY arcade cabinet?

Also, obviously you can make your own DDR dance pad (not with water though... I would use metal plates, make more sense).

Or create some wacky musical instruments...

Too bad it only interfaces with keyboard it seems, thus lacking some serious analog input... Although I don't know if it CAN track analog input anyway.

<comment><USER8> According to the end of the video, it looks like you can have it interface as a mouse too. So you might be able to make so more fancy analog input.

And I think it also said it can interface as/with an arduino, so I imagine a lot more is possible if you are creative!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> wow, this is amazing !!

<comment><USER10> And this is a shill account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davcj](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davcj)

And here are vidinterestcom's other accounts:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nirajan](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nirajan)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=garbagegigo](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=garbagegigo)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bibek_p](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bibek_p)</comment></comment>


Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-faces-morale-challenge-1448326486 <comment><USER2> Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone.

So they need to build a new business from the dying ashes of the current revenue. At the moment it does not look like the CEO has any good ideas on how to do that.

<comment><USER3> > If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it?

Should I guess that you were not adult yet when Yahoo! started?

When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo! filled that vacuum. It was the go to place for finding the sites in your area of interest.

Some of the sections of Yahoo! for example: Finance and Sports are still go to places for me and I am sure countless others. I haven't come across any other sites that even come close to those two sections on Yahoo!. Even today, there is no single directory site with curated list of relevant sites, news and information from such sites. So, I will say there is still a need for a Yahoo! like portal with curated information. What Google spits out in search and associated sites is SEO crap. Google has inability to differentiate among 14,777 news articles on a topic and which one is the most relevant and comprehensive.

IMO, Yahoo! need to go back to their roots which was portal of curated information. If they wait too long and the direction FB is heading, they will fill the void left by Yahoo!.

<comment><USER4> > I haven't come across any other sites that even come close to [sports and > finance] on Yahoo!

You haven't been able to find any other sites focusing on finance or sports on the internet? To be clear, yahoo does a decent job curating finance and sports sections, but it is _extremely trivial_ to find sites similar to Yahoo. Here are a few, I found:

Finance:

</comment></comment></comment><comment>==

Marketwatch[0], is very similar to yahoo finance. Owned by WSJ and Dow Jones.

Google Finance[1] is like Yahoo! finance, only done by google.

MSN Money[2] almost the exact same thing as Yahoo.

Then you have your more niche honorable mentions like motley fool, seekingalpha, zerohedge, etc.

SPORTS:

</comment><comment>=

Without repeating Google and Microsoft offerings, there is of course:

ESPN which is the second largest sports news provider, also they have a tv network about sports. They sports fairly hard.[3]

Bleecher Report is not to be out sportsed, sort of a hipster pitchfork media type sports player.[4]

CBS Sports[5]

NBC SPorts[6] This, and the preceding offering are large entrenched media rent collectors, which is similar to yahoo, except that they are profitable.

So, in finality, I find that statement absurd, but I am glad you enjoy yahoo. I am rooting for it as it is an under dog for sure.

[0][http://www.marketwatch.com](http://www.marketwatch.com)

[1][http://www.google.com/finance](http://www.google.com/finance)

[2][http://www.msn.com/en-us/money](http://www.msn.com/en-us/money)

[3][http://espn.go.com](http://espn.go.com)

[4]BleacherReport.com

[5]CBSSports.com

[6][http://www.nbcsports.com](http://www.nbcsports.com)

<comment><USER3> I was pretty sure someone will make a comment like yours. You didn't disappoint. You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo! Can you get Bleacher Report articles on ESPN? I will suggest comparing Yahoo! Finance and Sports with the sites you mentioned. You might be surprised that most sites you mentioned feed to Yahoo! and not vice-versa. I can go to all the sites you mentioned or just go to Yahoo!

Each mentioned site is missing something that is available on Yahoo! Either you browse through all the articles on Bleacher Report or you can see the most relevant ones on Yahoo! That is the difference.

Remember the keywords Portal, curated information, relevant information, comprehensive. None of the sites you mentioned are at a level of Yahoo!

<comment><USER4> I meant each site is as good as yahoo! not that you would have to go to each one, but I don't really care about sports. The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo finance.

As for sports, if you want the same information but the caveat you seem hung up on is that it must come from different domains, just go to a reddit like aggregator. I get it, you like yahoo. Yahoo does a good job, and I also like yahoo. My point is it is patently rediculous to claim there is no other space on the internet that is close enough to Yahoo sports or finance.

Companies don't survive being ~10% better than the competition, and the stuff you are talking about sounds like it is moire about habit than anything tangible.

<comment><USER5> > The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo > finance.

I completely disagree with that. I tried for over a year to switch from Yahoo to Google for finance and found it completely lacking, despite the nicer UI. The only site that can match Yahoo finance in my opinion is the Motley Fool. I still use both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sometimes, well it actually happens quite often, a company just runs its course and is better off just winding things up and closing shop.

IMHO it looks like the likely end game for Yahoo is:

\- taken private by a Private Equity firm

\- divest Yahoo Japan and Alibaba

\- any divisions that aren't making an actual profit, (tumblr, flickr, fantasy sports, etc, will be shopped around and sold if possible, or shuttered if not possible.

\- search, email and the yahoo front page will be sold to Microsoft

Yahoo has done everything by the MBA book to turn around the company, they are at the step of brining in Mckinsley consultants, never a terribly good sign.

Sometimes, time just passes a company by and you can't do much to turn it around, its not the leadership's fault or the engineers fault. The market just says the company is no longer needed.

This doesn't mean the company is un profitable. Corel was a company in the early 2000's that went this route. A company can circle the drain, making slightly less and less profit each year, slowly laying off people which causes them to miss their next quarter, which necessitates more layoffs and the circle continues until someone buys them out.

I think this is the likely fate of Yahoo.

The next step is to engage an investment bank to find them a takeover partner if Silver Lake doesn't want to be the one to take them private.

What other possible route is there?

They've brought in 4-5 CEO's each with their own vision of what yahoo should be and all of them has failed to turn the company around.

What is Yahoo's area of expertise that they make money at and can do better that Google, Microsoft, Facebook or Amazon?

<comment><USER7> It depends on who is trying to resurrect it: Marissa Meyer or Steve Jobs. Imagine a reality show: Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around, and the rules were that they would only have access to Yahoo's internal resources and cash. I would bet with my money buying Yahoo stock that they would reverse the curves.

<comment><USER8> > Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around

Assuming either of them was actually given the mandate to do so by the board of directors, etc, I imagine they'd fire like 50-80% of the staff, get rid of anything that's not profitable, and produce one highly refined product at a time, something that hasn't been done well before.

Source: Am both a Jobs and Musk fanboy and have done an unhealthy amount of reading about their histories and decision-making. I particular like this video of Jobs at NeXT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfRgSlhIW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfRgSlhIW0)

<comment><USER9> That was a really good video and I say that as someone who is no fan of Jobs.

Did NEXT manage to execute the plan and sell 50k workstations in 1991?

<comment><USER10> Seems not - from Wikipedia "The NeXT computers experienced relatively limited sales, with estimates of about 50,000 units shipped in total" "NeXT withdrew from the hardware business in 1993 "

So I'm guessing more like 20k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can bypass the paywall with this link: [http://bit.ly/1XdzZgO](http://bit.ly/1XdzZgO) (Google search the original URL in quotes in future)

Sounds like she's in a tough spot. You're pretty much forced into a situation of focusing on the good numbers when you're a public company or you'll get beaten up by the shareholders and shorts. So it's difficult to shine sunlight on the bad stuff to disinfect because that's not what public investors want to hear.

Going into search? That's just crazy talk. Google has the space completely wrapped up.

I think Yahoo has some excellent properties like finance.yahoo.com which is amazing and could unlock a deluge of cash with the right biz model. Retail investors visit the site in droves daily. Right now it's an advertising disaster. Prime space taken up by spammy link-baity ads injected into the main center content: "10 most popular fitness models on the planet". And prime spaces on the right taken up by amazon ads. The most targeted ads by etrade, scottrade and ameritrade are the smallest ads on the page with tiny icons on the left. They relaunched yahoo finance in September and sounds like their users hate the new site: [https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/315477-finance- dd-3](https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/315477-finance-dd-3)

The WSJ article isn't going to make life at Yahoo any easier unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> You can also bypass the paywall by clicking the 'web' link under the post title on HN.

<comment><USER13> I am not new at all to HN and never knew this, cool :)

<comment><USER14> It was added a couple of months ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yahoo started as a couple of people who said "This internet thing has a lot of content now, let's try to organize it for people." They should go back to doing that, and throw 20 years worth of technology and cultural growth at the problem. Along with as much manpower and machine learning tech as hundreds of millions of dollars can buy.

I do enjoy the drama of the Mayer Saga, but it doesn't seem like any of Yahoo's attempts at innovation are working. They shouldn't be competing with Google in search. They should be _redefining_ search. Some times the best way to change the game is to go back to basics. Of course if I knew exactly what that looked like, I would be too busy walking the path to wealth to write hn comments. But it does seem like Yahoo isn't doing anything innovative right now. Their most valuable properties, mail and the yahoo home page, are simply good enough versions of products that have become commodities. They began by offering a service that no one else was providing, and have ended up being relegated to being the internet's generic alternative to everything.

It's Hail Mary time. If I were in Mayer's position, I would find a way to burn a few hundred million dollars of the alibaba money on a moon shot before the board had time to vote me out. The odds against may be overwhelming, but it's better than slightly slowing the angular velocity of their circle around the drain. With the recent tone of press articles about her tenure and what that does to an executive's reputation, I don't see what she has to lose.

<comment><USER16> >But it does seem like Yahoo isn't doing anything innovative right now.

Aren't they starting to stream nfl games for free? The first one they did was from what I heard handled very well. I thought there was talks about more.

<comment><USER17> With their brand equity, is it possible for them to innovate?

It isnt hip enough to be cool, it's not big enough to be Facebook or google, it's a $30billion company that some how has the branding of the internets AOL. If yahoo "innovates" it will immediately be uncool.

Morale issues definitely can make things more difficult but are things really that dire there? Best thing I can see they've got going for them is the analysts are still foolish enough to rate Amazon as a tech company and not as a Walmart competitor that does some tech; they don't have great ways to classify these companies. It doesnt seem like yahoo is doing foolish things, it might be more of a bellwether for the free everything and monetize the traffic industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Ms. Mayer called a meeting with senior executives in August and asked them to sign a written agreement to stay with the company for at least three more years, according to two people familiar with the meeting."

Is such an agreement enforceable? Or is this some meaningless pledge?

If you want people to stay, give them a decent financial incentive.

<comment><USER19> It's not enforceable. In the US, you can't enforce an employment contract if it involves forcing someone to work for you. This was partially legislated as a legal defense against indentured servitude.

<comment><USER20> You can't get "specific performance," where the court physically forces you to uphold the agreement.

But it is enforceable in that Yahoo could sue for damages. The damages probably wouldn't be all that high though. It is more of an issue when the employment is something unique. Like a start athlete or movie star. You can't just find another person to play Tony Stark in Iron Man 4. But there are plenty of people who can be a Yahoo executive, relatively speaking.

<comment><USER21> But Batman gets replaced all the time... The only thing that would give leverage would be a clawback provision on the retention bonus and/or vesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that Yahoo took a chance on Marissa Mayer. The thing that I can't overlook is none of the stories I have read indicate this was a matter of a perfect vision that was just poorly executed.

All of the stories I've read lead me to believe there has been a somewhat muddled vision and less than spectacular execution on top of that.

Then again it was only mid-2012 that she was appointed CEO. Not enough time IMO, though the stories these days make one wonder if allowing a full 5 years (I think a reasonable minimum term for CEO of a large corporation like Yahoo) is going to be more destructive than constructive. Especially when there seem to be many documented failures, and not much to hang one's hat on, in the form of successes, to this point.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure that "perfect vision that was just poorly executed" is worth much. If execution is the hard part, then any sort of vision that didn't include execution is just nonsense.

<comment><USER22> In terms of assessing a CEO's impact on an organization I think it could play an important role.

For example if people are trying to knock down the doors to purchase / use what Yahoo is working on but they're abandoning because of scalability issues or buggy systems or continuous delays in delivery timelines, this sounds to me like we're dealing more with execution issues.

On the other hand, if the site / products hum along without glitches, yet are receiving little to no attention or traction from the outside world, this could be a sign that the company is on the wrong track in a more fundamental way. Perhaps more directly linked to the "output" / "work product" of Marissa Mayer as CEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I feel like Netflix understands how to keep morale high, and that's paying top of market and firing people who don't deserve that pay. Free lunches, massage rooms, etc are all marginally important compared to good pay. Perhaps Yahoo could innovate further by offering private offices.

This isn't the panacea for innovation or a large company, but if the goal is to raise morale and hire top talent - I know those two things combined would get some experienced candidates to consider joining Yahoo.

<comment><USER25> Or, you know, allow remote work. There are lots of talented programmers that don't live in the SF Bay area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yahoo's fantasy football was super popular, why was no effort put in to make a competing product to Draft King?

Tumblr acquisition was not a good one. It was too web oriented and users were moving more to mobile.

It takes a long time to reverse momentum, and to try a lot of things.

<comment><USER27> I work on Daily Fantasy at Yahoo and would just like to point out that we do compete with DK/Fanduel :) [https://yahoo.com/dailyfantasy/](https://yahoo.com/dailyfantasy/)

<comment><USER3> Daily fantasy has very annoying pop up on Yahoo! Sports. Also, I guess daily fantasy product resulted in killing of NCAAF and NFL picks against Yahoo! Experts and Yahoo! Users. The Picks link goes to message "something went wrong, we are working on it" page now for several weeks. Instead it Should be 404 and Picks link removed.

<comment><USER27> don't know why this is broken, but I'll file a bug. thank you! One of these days, I'm going to run a bot that crawls all pages on yahoo.com and reports non-200 responses...

<comment><USER28> Why write a bot? Doesn't yapache log such events? Just run a Hadoop job on the error logs.

<comment><USER27> I'd run it across the entire site. Sure, we do have logs, but it's not easy to access them for all *.yahoo.com. Logs from each property are ingested into different places. The infrastructure is way more complex than it should be making bare-minimum monitoring like alerts on non-200 responses on all properties difficult to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It would be worthwhile to read Paul Graham's essay now, if you haven't already done so: "what happened to Yahoo"[1]

The thing that jumps out at me is the lack of "hacker" culture at Yahoo. Sure, they have a few really smart people there; but the culture is missing. As long as this is the case, Yahoo will continue to wander aimlessly.

Marissa (or the next CEO) would do well to work on putting together a hacker culture, and get rid of most of the PMs, Directors and VPs. Yahoo is too management-heavy, and hacker-light.

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> From my extremely limited knowledge, and mainly from reading, and reading between the line on others people's view.

I think Marrissa will be a great COO, but she lacks the vision.

Even people who used to work with her ( Eric Schmidt) had said she is the most quantitative CEO in silicon valley, if not the world. And from many other pieces of information she likes to measure everything, from colour, design or human aspect.

But that is the problem. You cant measure something now and tell you what happens in the future. If you could do that you would be rich in no time. You want to steer the ship to the right direction.

She believe she can Buy into talents with the so called talent acquisition. But if the company are doing some work they love, they will leave. It really is that simple. Talents have no problem finding different Jobs, so you need to do something rather then paying them higher.

Sense of priority, what needs to be done first, it seems to me they are lack of focus. Google too, but google dont have the financial problem yahoo has.

The lack of taste. There, quote from Steve Jobs. I dont know how to say it better.

Sometimes I wish i could get to say a few words direct to Marissa. From a user perspective.

<comment><USER30> >I think Marrissa will be a great COO, but she lacks the vision.

Remember Fiorina? The same situation of a midlevel absolutely mediocre exec getting lucky at catching a huge wave bringing her straight to the top. Just a female, ie. charming, version of a "Yes"-man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The morale problem is a symptom of bad leadership. It's not going to be fixed with more bad leadership.

<comment><USER32> Steve Jobs could come back from the dead and he would be utterly helpless to revive the abject piece of crap that is Yahoo.

<comment><USER33> Warren Buffett once wrote: _With few exceptions, when a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact._

It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in.

<comment><USER34> > It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics > because I don't quite know what business it's in.

Buying, say, tumblr didn't help with that because it's not like a free blogging engine would appear to be a great money spinner. Suggesting you want to make it less R18 then suggests you didn't look too hard at what people use it for.

Similarly, when flickr has a lot of people who are prepared to pay to host photos spattering ads all over it seems like... a lack of understanding of how it works.

flickr makes me particularly sad. The user authentication fuck up was appalling. The ads were moronic. It only needs a couple of minor tweaks, some of which (like albums for groups) to make itself a Facebook alternative on the side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would recommend anyone interested in this story to also read the Forbes article about Mayer's problems and potential exit at Yahoo ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/11/19/the- last-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/11/19/the-last-days-of- marissa-mayer/)).

On top of stories about large number of executives have left over the course of 2015 ([http://recode.net/2015/10/19/yahoo-talent-exodus- accelerates...](http://recode.net/2015/10/19/yahoo-talent-exodus-accelerates- as-marissa-mayers-turnaround-flounders/)), the lack of vision/planning that contributed to executive discontent:

> But perhaps none of these incidents damaged morale more than Mayer's > reorganization of Yahoo's product teams. When Mayer launched the effort last > fall, everyone agreed the existing structure had outlived its usefulness—for > instance, mobile products was partitioned from other groups. But Mayer > embarked on the process without laying out a grand vision for it. Instead, > she began sketching out different scenarios in one-on-one meetings with > various executives, floating one plan by one exec and a different by > another. Unable to make up her mind, the process dragged on for months. "She > went through 20 different permutations," says an executive with knowledge of > the process. "The product guys were twisting in the wind, not knowing what > they were going to run."

> Product releases slowed to a trickle, and a turf war brewed as executives > became concerned with their futures. Jon McCormack, a star executive who had > joined Yahoo in January from Amazon and was promised a broad engineering > portfolio covering critical areas like mobile, landed in the vacuum created > by Mayer's indecision. He was gone by the end of February and now works for > Google. When Mayer announced the new structure in April, it was too late. > "That was the beginning of everyone losing faith," says another senior > executive. "That's when people started to look for other jobs."

I don't consider being the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that's still trying to figure out where it fits in the 21st century a job anyone could possibly do, but it seems like Mayer's strategy has been a little all over the place with no real gain in any segment. From the WSJ article:

> As her strategy has shifted, Ms. Mayer has variously cast Yahoo as a > challenger to Netflix Inc. in online video content and as a threat to Google > Inc. in Web search, but has made little progress toward either goal.

I'm just not sure where she's trying to push Yahoo towards. What is their vision?

</comment><comment><USER36> I see a lot of parallels between Marissa Mayer's tenure at Yahoo and Dick Costolo's tenure at Twitter. Dick left two quarters ago and Twitter is still struggling to meet investor expectations.

I have a feeling that there are structural problems at Yahoo, like Twitter, that even a unicorn CEO would have difficulty fixing. A lot of analysts and investors seem very leadership oriented in their blame anyway.

<comment><USER37> There's a strong cult of personality around our industry, in general. The belief that a special CEO can make a billion dollar company. It ignores the role of luck, the other employees (sometimes there are thousands of employees, as in the case of Yahoo!, and every single one of them can make or break the company in small ways every day), changes in the market, etc.

Steve Jobs is the epitome of the Magic CEO archetype, in this school of thought, and yet, he founded expensive failures, too, and almost rode Apple into the ground, to boot.

There are so many variables that it seems harmful to the industry and the world as a whole to place so much value _and_ so much blame on CEOs when things go right or wrong.

All that said, I'd like to see an experiment where a CEO steps in, cuts C-level salaries dramatically (taking the hit from people leaving who care more about the million dollar bonus than the company itself), including their own, and re-directing that money to higher wages for employees and deeper, further ranging, research and development. Kinda replicate the history of HP, in reverse: Start with high executive salaries, awful outdated products, and defeated company morale, and start building a culture that looks toward the future, takes care of everyone in the company (before C-levels get bonuses) and treats them all with respect from top to bottom, and build products that define the market not follow it.

But, I've never built or run a billion dollar company. I might be an idiot that no one should ever listen to.

<comment><USER38> I wouldn't call NeXT an expensive failure, especially seeing how it laid the framework for Apple's current success. It is hard to say what would have happened if Steve Jobs stayed at Apple in the 80s....he was never actually CEO before 1997 (see [http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples- ceos...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-ceos- from-1977-to-2011/)).

<comment><USER39> NeXT effectively replaced Apple's leadership post-1996. Arguably NeXT affected the single most successful 'reverse takeover' of all time.

<comment><USER37> Still too complicated of a story and too much tied up with time and place and team for it to be "Steve Jobs did this". And, there were many points during his story where he was catching more flack than Marissa Mayer has ever had directed her way, and probably ever will get. Kinda reinforces my point that CEOs get too much credit and too much blame.

But, you're right, I guess. Steve Jobs' life is a long story arc that ends in massive success, with many smaller successes and failures along the path. In all cases, the credit and blame should (in a just world) be distributed a bit more widely than it is. Apple without Wozniak (or any of the several dozen other superstar engineers that Apple attracted in the early years) would not have become Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> You need to own and exploit a monopoly in order to grow into a true tech heavyweight. Facebook has social (and all the traffic and user data that comes with it), Microsoft has the OS and utilities, Apple has the OS, hardware, and apps, and Google has search and (tbd) Android apps. Unless you monopolize something of extreme value (user data or a platform), you should focus on just making money, although unfortunately Wall Street doesn't value this very highly (see IAC). Yahoo has a bunch of great second and third place properties (search, news, weather, email) but no monopolies, and for this reason even the transition to mobile under MM was unlikely to move the needle for them. If they slimmed down and brought in the right kind of management the core properties could be extremely profitable.

<comment><USER41> I think you're missing the forest from the trees. Monopolies in software are created through excellence.

If Facebook "has social" that's because they were and still are the best social network. Of course, now that they are big, they've got a huge lock-in effect, but that's besides the point. Microsoft "has the OS" (and I might add Office) because Windows really has been the best general purpose, generally available OS. Other attempts had potential, but they either keep failing to be as polished or stable for end-users (desktop Linux), or have not been available for all PCs (Mac OS, OS X), or they didn't survive for long enough (OS/2, BeOS). Not sure what monopoly Apple has, but it's no point in arguing that most of what Apple does is technically excellent and beautifully executed. Google "has search" because they had and still have the best search engine and their search engine is indispensable for most people. People talking about DuckDuckGo never tried doing searches from outside the US. Google also has Android, Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Maps, all of which are excellent.

<comment><USER40> No doubt you need to be excellent to create a monopoly (maintenance mode is much easier). But you also need the ingredients for it to exist in the first place (network effect, high value/exclusive/monetize-able data, high competitive barriers). Did Yahoo ever have a market like that, except with search early on? (They might have been able to do something interesting with messaging or mail early on to lock in those users, but they didn't.) They had a lot of eyeballs, a lot of ad salespeople, a lot of ad dollars, (later) a lot of ad network tech, a lot of great content, a lot of great niche sites (flickr). But nothing that competitors couldn't enter and replicate fairly quickly. If you were Yahoo today, and you could execute flawlessly on a single area of your current business or something closely adjacent to one of your current businesses (excluding search, which they continue to exit), what would you pick?

<comment><USER41> I think Yahoo has had multiple interesting projects of enormous potential.

Yahoo.com, the homepage itself, has been and still is amongst the most trafficked websites on the Internet. Even now it's in top 5, coming before Amazon, Wikipedia or Twitter. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

Yahoo Mail existed before Gmail and I don't know what happens in other countries, but in my country Yahoo Mail is still the most popular web mail. But they've been bleeding marketshare, because frankly, Yahoo Mail sucks due to poor UI, poor spam filters and stupid restrictions (like they wouldn't allow POP unless you had a paid subscription). Compare with Gmail and the rise of Google Apps. Gmail with btw keeps people locked in Google's ecosystem, along with Android, insuring that Google's search engine also dominates mobile, because that's how complementaries work.

Yahoo Messenger was a natural extension of Yahoo Mail. In my country everybody was on Yahoo Messenger. It had enormous potential for building a social network and they even made a half assed attempt. Nowadays that's been replaced by Facebook and Skype. Even Hangouts is more popular amongst my acquaintances, because Yahoo Messenger also sucks and it's basically dead.

Flickr has been and is still is the best service for amateur and even professional photographers to share their stuff. Photo sharing is a really big market. Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, Imgur, Reddit all of them have a place in photo sharing, plus I feel there's still enormous untapped potential in this place. But ALAS they let it stagnate, though I appreciate that in 2015 we finally have mobile apps. But then the Pro subscriptions are now more expensive and make absolutely no sense, as you're paying for something you can get with an ad-blocker - a fatal combination IMHO. I was a Pro subscriber in the past, but not anymore.

Their Search could still be a credible competitor. They just made a deal with Mozilla for distributing Firefox with Yahoo's search by default. But on one hand they ditched their own technology, now relying on Bing for their own results. And also they bring nothing new, while being inferior. They could at least take a stance on privacy, I mean if you can't compete by being superior, at least compete by being the ethical choice. But no. And I'm pretty sure many Firefox users simply switch back to Google, just like myself.

Delicious, just like Google Reader, had enormous potential for a specialized social network of things. They couldn't see value in it and sold it. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Couldn't read the article because it appears to be behind a paywall.

On the topic of Marissa Mayer though, has any analysis been done that's an overview of Meyer's major decisions/actions? I seem to see pieces come out almost monthly on things she's been doing at Yahoo, but as someone who doesn't follow executive movers and shakers too much, I don't want to come to an early judgement without fully understanding what her impact is.

That said, I can't help but feel that many of her early "successes" were coincidental and overly hyped, mostly as a result of Yahoo's fortunate investment in Alibaba. If I were currently seeking employment I would be extremely dubious towards anyone trying to convince me that Yahoo isn't still running on fumes, despite all the hype.

<comment><USER43> Click the "Web" hyperlink under the title of the post. It saves you going to google and typing in the name of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A genuine question for you. What exactly does Yahoo do? When I think of Google, I think of search. With Amazon, an ecommerce giant for my shopping needs comes to mind. But with Yahoo, nothing comes to mind except all the spams I got when I had their email...

<comment><USER45> For me, they're:

(1) the owner of Flickr, an acquisition they've tried to futz around with, but haven't actually managed to damage too much yet. (True, the site design's become much more heavyweight, but that's a general web design issue) Interestingly, whilst they tried to go ad-only, removing "Pro" accounts, they later reinstated them - but with an oddly tone-deaf press release that trumpeted that account level's availability again, and that rates wouldn't go up for two years. Fair enough, except Pro had been $25/yr, and they quietly noted they'd be $50/yr in the future. Is ad-only revenue _that_ strong to consider dispelling paid accounts?

(2) The original curated web index. Fiendishly difficult to scale, absolutely, but while it lasted, it was remarkably useful. Could such still work? It'd be a tremendous challenge, but, Wikipedia might suggest so - it's not as if Wikipedia is free of dead/changed links, but the footnote links do indeed tend to be useful.

Yet, as I recall, their finances are/were quite robust - we may well simply not be Yahoo's audience.

<comment><USER34> > Could such still work?

Effectively it would competing with Reddit, HN, Metafilter, and similar sites where the owners have an army of people curating the web for them, for free. Which makes it a hard ask. Obviously there's a demand because Reddit, HN, MF, etc, exist, but enough to make money off of?

<comment><USER8> Actually IMHO the curation of Reddit and HN is pretty bad. Just my $0.02. My problem is that it's focused on what's new and relevant. The web sorely needs (IMHO again) really well curated paths that are organized from first principles rather than novelty. But I'm not an expert, just a random guy with an opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There hasn't really been a "focus" at Yahoo in a long while - it feels like the new HP, where almost all the folks who built previously successful businesses within it have moved on, while at the same time the company is too big and integrated to make any meaningful changes or grow new profit centers (given that their cash cow is stalling).

Its corporate stagflation. They are too diversified and have too many products to move quickly, generate almost no enthusiasm between either users (all old guard) or engineers/employees, and there's very little that any executive or employee can do.

</comment><comment><USER47> my perception is - they dont love the internet.

they are missing the whole "fuck you, were yahoo, were building the internet" chutzpah which was so charming, and for which we all have a little glowing candlewick in our hearts for.

For example .. I really wanted YUI to be usable .. it was so close.. but they didn't listen when people gave them feedback - eg. telling them to polish the table grid widget, this control was arguably the reason people were even using yui at all.

The internet pluggable data feed pipes thing was promising.. almost there but not quite gelling in the developer group-mind.

They have to hire some really opinionated people and let them loose on skunkworks [ but realworld ] projects .

I look at the yahoo front page once every 3m to see if its still dead.. I check my email there due to nostalgia.

They need to forget about ad revenue bullshit, get fired up and make stuff.

I can guarantee there are great people at yahoo gnawing their arms off because they have nothing to rally around.

They are dying anyway .. its time to hit for the bleachers.

<comment><USER47> I read the article - There is not a single bullet point I give a shit about, that isn't summarized by their share price.

I look at the yahoo.com front page, I look at msn.com front page - they look similar and are both spam to a first order approximation.

If they wanted to, they could turn sentiment around in 3 months.

There are so many things they can do :

\- become the datafeed API for the internet

\- buy a startup thats kicking ass [ and leave them alone to win ]

\- buy a tech video review media site thats growing fast

\- put up a $200k prize for best Yahoo innovation app

\- take 7 devs / designers / product people, put them in a room and let them have at it to make an app

For any of these to work, they have to build a firewall around it, insulating if from the process of a big company, so it feels like a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> IMHO Yahoo's biggest mistake was never grokking search. And they had two opportunities.

First: When Larry and Sergei wanted to sell their search engine to them for a few millions, in the late 90s. They said they are focused on _curated content_ , which was the future they apparently believed in. (Just paraphrasing from memory, the stories read in various articles and books on Google & search). But I also wonder, even if Yahoo had bought them out then, would the world be different today. Perhaps, the inevitable future of search would have been just a bit delayed. May be evolved like social networks.

Second: Killing their own search engine in early 2000s, when they had some 30% search share. That was after they tried using Google's search API. Then they started to use Bing. I clearly remember that although Google was the best, but one knew people (lazy friends) who would use Yahoo search. DDG has shown, there is always a market.

edit: typo

</comment><comment><USER21> Things we need: 1\. There needs to be a viable YouTube alternative. 2\. They should take their experience with NFL streaming to expand that market for the NFL and add in other TV type content. This can be delivered through apps and apple tv like devices. College football is a market that would do well with this. Make a deal with the NCAA. It is impossible for cord cutters to watch their college team unless they are on watchespn or fox sports go. And even then you need to borrow your credentials. 3\. Facebook M, Google Now, Siri, Cortana.. Yahoo needs to have a play here. You might integrate this tightly with #2.

Buy and/or integrate: Crackle, Pandora, Roku, maybe Spotify, Cinemax.

Why? All these need to be integrated into a consistent platform, each offer ad revenue opportunity, consolidation. In addition you can ramp up subscription revenues or on demand revenue.

</comment><comment><USER49> If you strip out the Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes, the market is valuing Yahoo's "core" at less than $8bn. It has $5.88bn of cash, cash equivalents and short-term marketable securities on its balance sheet, which means that the core business is valued at less $1.5bn.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UHMfzlmE7HXY_ph9BN68...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UHMfzlmE7HXY_ph9BN686gOCiji1bQ- rsbnjtKD3oho/edit?usp=sharing)

The balance sheet figure for "Property and equipment" is higher than that.

[http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/YHOO/900583056x0x1637...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/YHOO/900583056x0x163717/e3b6723a-7d29-4a37-8dff-5bcf3a67d1d3/YHOO_III_BalanceSheetGAAP.pdf)

<comment><USER50> In fact it doesn't mean that. Its the assets on Yahoo's balance sheet that are being discounted by investors. Yahoo's business receives a multiple rather than a discount - whether that's a multiple on sales or earnings.

Cash and assets held on a corporate balance sheet are basically never $1 to $1 accounted for in a market cap. You can easily see that in action on the balance sheets of: Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Comcast, Time Warner Cable.

Are we to pretend that Berkshire Hathaway's business is worth ~$140 billion after we strip out all of its assets (cash, stock holdings etc)? So its earnings are getting a 7 or 8 multiple? Obviously that's not actually how valuations work. If you stripped out all of their assets, they'd very likely still get a fair market valuation on the operating business and its potential, perhaps 13-15 times earnings.

A similar bogus claim was made that Yahoo was worth less than zero, when its Alibaba stake was at its peak. That's not actually how things work in reality, that scenario solely exists in a calculation.

In reality, if you spin off all of Yahoo's assets (specifically Japan / Alibaba), the business would still be given a multiple, a meaningful valuation. Even lowly AOL was still worth $4.4 billion in the Verizon acquisition, and Yahoo's business is two to three times more valuable than that.

There isn't a single example in the public market, in which a corporation with a relatively clean balance sheet, and $4 billion in sales, is given a negative ~$X billion valuation - much less a company that has historically been given high valuations as a semi-tech company. Which proves how absurdly wrong the negative value premise is (or the $1 to $1 asset discounting method applied to the assets, which are clearly not worth $1 to $1 in the market cap given taxation issues alone).

<comment><USER49> _> In reality, if you spin off all of Yahoo's assets (specifically Japan / Alibaba), the business would still be given a multiple, a meaningful valuation._

I'm sure it would but right now, the sum of the parts is greater than the market value of the whole. That says something about investors' expectations for the future prospects of the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Am I missing something here? Isn't Yahoo still highly profitable? So some senior execs left, so what, I'm sure they'll still have plenty of people wanting to work for them.

Look beyond the spin from the WSJ. Look at the profits. Are Yahoo losing money?

</comment><comment><USER52> Marissa comes from Google so I'd like to see more developer focus. Here are some ideas:

\- Buy Joyent. Get's you into the cloud game and you gain SmartOS and Node chops.

\- Buy BitTorrent and capitalize on its growth and the new sync technology.

\- Make YUI popular again in the responsive web era. Tumblr, Flickr, Develpr?

\- Probably should stop trying to out-Netflix Netflix. Community was never going to work but I understand the thinking.

\- Somebody is going to buy Groove Music (Xbox Music). I hope it's not Yahoo.

<comment><USER53> I say none of these.

* Too many "cloud" competitors, enough with trying to squeeze a margin.

* I wouldn't want to compete with Box, DropBox, GDrive, S3, OneDrive, or BitTorrent Sync. To support enterprise customer at this level, I think is something Yahoo! not too familiar with.

* Another Javascript framework to resurrect, probably time to rethink about how many JS developers you have to hire to to maintain the high visibility and demand from the community.

* Community was a good show, but Yahoo's UI for their video content is just bloat. Too much information, graphic wise not too appealing. They have a shot, but so few people in my circle know about Yahoo video. But I think it still has a shot.

* Why would Microsoft sell Xbox Music?

I think the best thing for Yahoo to do, is to do sports and finance. They can continue to build contents around it. Yes there is ESPNSport, MLB, NBA etc but Yahoo can probably do better if they focus on building a community. They already have a huge sport community, why not use it? They already have content makers so make finance more attractive, try to go after Bloomberg.

Social is dominated by Facebook and Twitter (and their acquired products like Instagram and Vine), but there is still much to explorer around social, not just adding friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Google is getting platform locking, much like Microsoft. Even if Yahoo did come out with a world class Docs, or Email, or Youtube, or Blogger, or Sites, or AppEngine - I would still stick with the Google equivalent because I am all connected. I sign into Chrome or an Android device and everything just works and syncs.

I am locked into Google and I don't even have a Google+ account.

<comment><USER55> All Yahoo has to do is commit to no tracking of users and I would switch in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER56> So create a product that is hard to make money off of and impossible to track how users are using the applications in order to improve them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> See also news this morning that y-mail is blocking users who are running ad- blockers; I'd bet their confidentiality terms are headed for a revision too as the user info fire sale gets underway.

</comment><comment><USER58> the fact that the SVP of marketing left to join the lowest grade studio Hollywood have is worrisome. so much so I'd think it was a demission and not someone leaving on will...

</comment><comment><USER59> For the less gifted, such as myself, at getting around paywalls:

[https://archive.is/8NoAM](https://archive.is/8NoAM)

</comment><comment><USER60> "The CEO has hired management consultant McKinsey & Co. to look for areas of the company to cut, said a person familiar with the matter."

Shudder.

</comment><comment><USER61> Can anyone share the article? cp /wsj/article /hn/comments

<comment><USER62> [https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo+CEO+Marissa+Mayer+Face...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo+CEO+Marissa+Mayer+Faces+Morale+Challenge)

<comment><USER61> Shit I am dumb. Thanks for the lesson. *Facepalm.

<comment><USER62> Even better, just for this sort of thing there is a link called "web" at the top of the page that links to Google with the title. It's in the same line as flag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is the story available to non-subscribers?

</comment><comment><USER64> Has Yahoo! stopped the lay-offs?

</comment><comment><USER65> Morale challenges tend to go hand in hand with moral challenges.</comment>


Show HN: Instaly, Instagram (Viewer) - <AUTHOR>

View Instagram photos no app required. HTML5 works on any smartphone / tablet/ computer.
Great for family, friends and new people to see your photos without needing to install apps or a follow.
http://Instaly.com <comment><AUTHOR> <http://instaly.com></comment>


Ask HN: Tools for collecting events data (Snowplow, Segment)? - <AUTHOR> What would you use to collect events data on the website/app. I know Segment and Snowplow, is there anything out there you have tried and it's worth considering? Thank you! <comment><USER2> My startup is in this space [1]. There are tons and tons of analytics tools so it really depends which ones you're interested in using. The value of adding an event router is highest when you want to use client-side and server-side clickstream analytics integrations. It's overkill if you just want one analytics service like Google Analytics or Mixpanel, but most companies want more than one.

You might also think about pricing models - some services use per user pricing which can be expensive if you have a high number of users but with a small amount of monetization per user. Astronomer uses per event pricing so we're generally a better fit for that use case.

Snowplow is in the data warehouse space where the other main competitors are Amazon Redshift (most popular) and Google BigQuery. If you use a clickstream router like Astronomer or Segment, you'll get data warehousing "for free" out of the box.

[1]: [https://www.astronomer.io/](https://www.astronomer.io/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For basic use cases I like mixpanel. You need to be a bit careful about how you structure your events to get the most out of the reporting it provides - but its very flexible when you do.

The triggered messaging is great too if your into automated marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We used to use Mixpanel, as you mentioned it is good for basic use cases - totally agree. Now I'm researching for some solutions to collect events data and put into SQL warehouse - either Redshift or Big Query.</comment></comment>


Python Dictionary Anthology - <AUTHOR> https://py.checkio.org/blog/python-dictionary-anthology/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for this, but I stopped reading at 'synthetic sugar'. (The link points to the correct article on Wikipedia.)</comment>


How Soles4Souls doubled their Twitter followers to 20k in less than 1 year  - <AUTHOR> http://williamgriggs.com/nonprofit-notables/social-media-strategy-soles4souls/

<comment><USER2> Is there a scribed version of the video? (text)</comment>


Twitch officially acquired by Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitch.tv/p/thankyou

<comment><USER2> While I am happy for the Twitch employees on the news of acquisition, I fear this is going to hurt the user base more than it will help it. With the recent changes to VODs and music issues, people are already starting to leave. This news could push more people to leave. We've already seen services change after being acquired by a large corporation (YouTube is an often-cited example). The best case scenario is that the extra money helps to make the service better, but history has shown that that is not always the case.

<comment><USER3> At least there won't be any google plus integration.

<comment><USER2> I don't think they would do it, but they could somehow integrate Amazon accounts. I don't think that would change the platform as much as G+ accounts did to YouTube, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At least for acquiring companies, Amazon has better reputation in keeping them as it is, instead of tearing apart and integrating into something else. Twitch is a great service though~Good luck!

<comment><USER5> Are you talking about Google? I'm glad that it was Amazon instead of Google too, for the same reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What an amazing team, and an amazing outcome. Who would have thought there was such potential in viewing gaming - and of those, how many teams would actually be able to pull it off?

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats to the Twitch/Justin.tv crew!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm happy that it's Amazon that got Twitch and not Google. Google is a great company, but they already have a huge monopoly on video streaming.</comment>


Microsoft hit by Office 365 login issues in A/NZ - <AUTHOR> https://www.itnews.com.au/news/microsoft-hit-by-office-365-login-issues-in-a-nz-549256 <comment><USER2> Some discussion on this issue.

\- [https://twitter.com/MSFT365Status/status/1272314872307408896](https://twitter.com/MSFT365Status/status/1272314872307408896) \- [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/h94652/office_365...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/h94652/office_365_sign_in_issues/)</comment>


Simple bouncing ball puzzle, with $50 prize - <AUTHOR> http://sam.ai.ki/ball.html

<comment><USER2> edit: I thought this over more, here is a new answer.

Spoiler: _it bounces an infinite amount of time in a finite space._

Actually, the horizontal distance it travels is proportionately decreased with the decreased time in the air. If the ball is now in the air for k<1 times as much time, it goes to the right a factor of k times as much. I forget but I think these recursive series converge to a finite sum, they definitely do if k<0.5. So the height and length of each bounce decays exponentially, and _it bounces an infinite amount of time in a finite space._

\---

Old, wrong answer.

Spoiler: It keeps going to the right to infinity, just at a height that is vanishing and asymptotically approaching zero.

Each time the ball bounces, it loses 40% of its vertical kinetic energy. But the problem statement ("the ground is flat, and each part of the ball's path is a parabolic arc. Don't consider friction, atoms, relativity, quantum, etc!") indicates that the horizontal energy doesn't change, even though the figure would suggest otherwise. So it will keep going to the right at the same rate.

<comment><USER3> Of the responses so far, this one is closest to being correct. Rather than "asymptotically approaching zero," however, the height of the bounce will quickly converge precisely to zero. Assume that the previous bounce (up and back down) took time t. Then the ball will stop bouncing after time t/(1-sqrt(0.6)) ~ 4.4t. After that, the ball will simply continue moving ("rolling") to the right. This follows from summing the geometric series 1 + sqrt(0.6) + sqrt(0.6)^2 + sqrt(0.6)^3 + . . . , where 0.6 = (1 - 0.4) is the ratio of the height of the next bounce to the current bounce, and we take the square root since height and time are related by h = 1/2 at^2.

Incidentally, for anyone who has a ping pong ball handy, this is very close to what happens in real life.

Edit: To clarify, it's the parent's "old, wrong answer" that's closer to being correct. btilly (below) also has it right.

<comment><USER4> No, you are making the same mistake as some of the other people. You are summing a geometric series so you are saying the ball bounces infinitely often and the time it takes for the ball to bounce infinitely often is blah. But if it bounces infinitely often then it never stops to roll on the floor because if it did stop and roll on the floor in a finite amount of time then you wouldn't have an infinite series to sum which would mean that the potential energy in the horizontal direction would be zero in a finitely many bounces which contradicts the problem statement and part of your original reasoning.

<comment><USER5> The series is infinite, but the sum of the series can still be finite. These two things are not at odds.

<comment><USER4> Ya, and what are the terms in the series representing? Is it air time of each bounce? Your calculation makes it clear that it is. So you are saying you are calculating the air time for _infinitely_ many bounces, the key word here is _infinite_ , i.e. the ball bounces up and down, up and down infinitely often. So if the ball bounces infinitely often how can it stop and roll on the floor because _infinitely_ many bounces means not stopping after finitely many bounces and rolling on the floor. Your calculation for the time is confounding two things, air time and bouncing. You can calculate the air time assuming infinitely many bounces but then you can't go and claim that the ball stops bouncing after t = whatever because you calculated t = whatever assuming the ball never stopped bouncing and then after the calculation went back and changed your assumption, that is a logical fallacy if I ever saw one.

<comment><USER6> 1) The ball stops bouncing in a finite _amount of time_.

2) The ball bounces an infinite _number of times_.

3) This is not a contradiction, no more than the idea that a projectile passes through an infinite number of spatial points in finite time. Please go and read about geometric series and Zeno's paradox on wikipedia, as another commenter has already suggested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So I did some math starting with 100J of potential energy and summed a geometric series to see how long it would stay in the air if we had infinite time to sum the geometric series and it was some finite number. Then I assumed the initial velocity in the horizontal direction was 1 m/s so if we had infinite time the ball would travel some finite distance because it would bounce infinitely often and in every such bounce it would be in the air some amount of time and would travel at a speed of 1 m/s in that amount of time. But this assumes that the ball doesn't roll along the floor when it comes down and immediately bounces up as soon as it hits the floor which is unrealistic because it means I'm assuming infinite impulse on each bounce because the momentum of the ball changes and I'm assuming this takes 0 seconds. So the best I was able to do was give an upper bound on the total distance the ball would travel if the universe were to last forever. It's a lot like Zeno's arrow or is it Achilles and the tortoise.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any horizontal component to the motion can be ignored. The only thing of interest is the vertical motion of the ball in a gravitational field.

There is an elastic collision between the ball and the flat surface. Unlike an inelastic collision, energy is not conserved. Energy is lost when the ball hits the surface and rebounds; it shows up as heat in the ball and at the surface at the point of collision. Assuming the surface is very hard, most of the heat goes into the ball.

At some point the kinetic energy remaining is not enough to lift the ball against gravity so the ball does not get lifted off the surface. If you follow the center of mass of the ball, it continues to oscillate, compressing and expanding elastically until the remaining kinetic energy is expended as heat. As the size of the oscillations get smaller and smaller you eventually reach a scale where the idealized model of the ball begins to fail; at that point, things become complicated.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love how there's so many calculations with energy and time. Here's my offering with just concept.

The first thing they teach you in projectile motion in grade 12 physics is that the horizontal component is independent from vertical component. That means, if you ignore friction, and you throw a ball in an arc, you'll find that the horizontal speed is linear! This surprises many people, since it's not very intuitive. You would expect the horizontal speed to be quadratic or non-linear, which is not the case. If the ball loses 40% of its _vertical_ energy, it means that it'll just keep bouncing, but at lower and lower heights, but the horizontal speed is continuous. In fact, if given the initial velocity and angle, you could calculate the horizontal distance traveled by the ball for any point in time.

</comment><comment><USER9> The little boy picks it up and throws it again?

<comment><USER10> There is no air resistance in this world, hence no air. The little boy asphyxiated shortly after the first time he dropped the ball. :-)

<comment><USER9> Hah! Let's hope it wasn't the little boy on his home page then... <http://sam.ai.ki/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The ball has horizontal energy as implied by the parabolic arc. Assuming no friction the ball's horizontal velocity will be constant, hence it will just roll away at whatever initial horizontal velocity it had.

<comment><USER10> _just roll away_

Technically, it will _slide_ , since without friction it can't obtain any angular momentum.

<comment><USER11> yes, you are correct: the ball will not "roll", it will continue in a straight line at constant v and ang. momentum, whatever it had initially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm no maths/physics geek so I'm just guessing here, but I'd assume that it loses energy at a far more rapid rate and maybe bounces once more and then just rolls along the ground.

My reasoning is based on the fact that while the ball absorbs 40% of the energy on the higher bounces there is a minimum amount of energy it absorbs and on the smaller bounces the energy left meets the minimum amount of energy the ball will absorb and then simply stop bouncing.

Like i said this is pure conjecture and I may not have even articulated it right.

<comment><USER10> Generally things tend to get more elastic at low energies, not less; so I think your 'minimum amount of energy the ball will absorb' hypothesis is wrong. However, in the real world, there are other factors which drain energy from bouncing balls -- air resistance, for example.

But this is all irrelevant, since the problem is explicitly in a non- physically-accurate world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is indeed a very nice puzzle.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to know how many people have swamped him with the correct answer so far. Any junior high physic student could answer this.

<comment><USER10> I'm more curious to know how many people have sent in _incorrect_ answers. My immediate guess disagreed with my mathematics.

<comment><USER14> My immediate guess agreed with my mathematics. But I have the advantage that a variant of this problem had occurred to me some 20 years ago, and I worked it out.

In fact, pick up a bouncy ball and drop it on a flat surface. You can observe the fact that bounces become smaller and more rapid, and then they stop bouncing entirely. There may be some residual vibration that is not apparent, but it sure seems to act like this toy model of the situation says it should.

<comment><USER10> _In fact, pick up a bouncy ball and drop it on a flat surface. You can observe the fact that bounces become smaller and more rapid, and then they stop bouncing entirely._

Indeed, I've done that -- but my intuition told me that it was stopping due to friction, not due to the exponential decay of an infinite number of bounces. :-)

It's oddly disappointing to realize that the model actually acts more or less the same as the real world for once.

<comment><USER14> _Indeed, I've done that -- but my intuition told me that it was stopping due to friction, not due to the exponential decay of an infinite number of bounces. :-)_

But your intuition was correct! Without friction the bounces would be perfectly elastic and wouldn't go into exponential decay! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Where's the spoiler?

<comment><USER14> Here is a spoiler.

Energy = force * distance

After each bounce you are left with 60% of its energy, so it comes back up 0.6 times as high as the previous bounce.

Distance falling in time t is proportional to the square the time, so each bounce takes sqrt(0.6) times as long as the previous bounce did.

Thus the timing of the bounces forms a geometric series. It is well known that the sum of such a geometric series is 1/(1-r). In this case r = sqrt(0.6) which is roughly 0.774596669241483 and so from the time it first hits the ground to the time it it finishes bouncing is approximately 4.43649167310371 times as long as the time for the first full bounce. But we didn't start with a full bounce, we dropped the ball. Thus we start with a half-bounce, followed by a full bounce that takes 2 * sqrt(0.6) times as long, followed by the rest of the sequence. This works out to be 7.87298334620742 times the time it took to initially fall to the ground the first time.

Hopefully I haven't made any silly mistakes. If I have, correct the error and the general analysis is correct.

<comment><USER4> Same mistake as everyone else. Geometric series means infinitely many bounces and infinitely many bounces means it never stops bouncing. Everyone is making the same logical fallacy.

<comment><USER14> I refer you to Zeno's paradox for an example of how a geometric series can allow an infinite number of things to happen in a finite time.

In this case the time taken forms a geometric series, and the total time taken is the sum of that geometric series. Which means that, for the same mathematical reasons that let Achilles catch the tortoise, it stops in finite time.

<comment><USER4> I am familiar with Zeno's paradox and all other things Zeno and infinite series summing to finite things but there is fallacy here that nobody seems to get. Yes the time taken is indeed a geometric series but if the time taken is a geometric series, an infinite one at that, then that means there are infinitely many bounces, no? So if there are infinitely many bounces how can you claim the ball stops bouncing? You are confounding two things, air time which is indeed finite because it forms a geometric series, and the number of bounces. You can not have an infinite geometric series to calculate the time and only have finitely many bounces.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ball bounces infinitely many times, in a finite period of time, and then stops! :) You can model this completely, i.e. describe height as a function of time. You can know exactly where the ball is at any particular time, and it follows a continuous curve. So it does make sense as a model, although it is perhaps a bit mind-bending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Congratulations to everyone who figured it out, and especially to Glenn from Alaska who was the first to email me with the correct answer, and wins $50. In his words:

"The ball makes an infinite number of progressively smaller bounces in a finite amount of time, and then proceeds to slide (roll?) along the ground at a constant speed."

I was just looking for "infinite number of bounces in a finite amount of time/distance".

I think it's a nice puzzle, because it illustrates Zeno's 'paradox', with a simple model of an everyday occurrence. The answer makes sense, but it is not obvious unless you understand limits. I thought of this puzzle while playing with a pool cue, you can really hear/feel them bouncing faster and faster.</comment>


Invasive, secretive "bossware" tracking workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/inside-invasive-secretive-bossware-tracking-workers <comment><USER2> Same discussion at same link.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717964)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anybody have experience with Veriato? Would like to know if/when it's running and which processes to kill. Could run a script in the background that checks for and kills the bossware. Assuming the worker has local admin on a typical Windows PC.

<comment><USER4> > Assuming the worker has local admin on a typical Windows PC.

Big assumption. I feel like most places that would install bossware wouldn't give you local admin.

<comment><USER3> It's not necessarily that the privileges have been given freely, moreso that they were acquired.</comment></comment></comment>


Founder Who Is Determined for Women to Stay in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2016/03/31/stayintech-nina-patkai-women-in-tech/#7ef6e39963bc <comment><AUTHOR> Founder of StayInTech.com here, happy to discuss about the topic.

<comment><USER2> Curious what metrics drive the business practices of Stayintech and if there is an interesting story behind its creation.</comment></comment>