Punctuation that failed to make its mark - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151104-punctuation-that-failed-to-make-its-mark <comment><USER2> I'd posit the idea that we primarily use the punctuation that we find on the keyboard of the device we use.

On Windows/Linux, I use a 101 key. We all know the symbols. And those are the ones I use. There are cases in which I can use an interrobang or kanji-related emoticons, but I'm doing a google search and copying and pasting. But long story short, I don't use these other symbols because they're not easily available.

Sure, I could remap my keys, at least on Xorg. (No clue how to do that on Windows. ) But then, those symbols just aren't used. It's also a reason I don't bother with APL, because the language uses dozens of characters that aren't normally on a keyboard. I'll mess with ones I can type.

Now, phones... Oh my. A phone will auto-substitute picture emoticons from things like :D . Technically, these are a Unicode character set with device implementations. It means even though the pic is a 32x32, it's only usually 2 bytes (unicode is fucky, urgh, so many bugs). I'm more leery in using unicode because of character handling and badness, but things seem to be moving that general direction.

But for the wider issue of Unicode, these "failed symbols" are right in there. But good luck exploring and finding them, since characters can be from 1-6 bytes, or 2^48 space... Alas, back to searching google and copying and pasting.

<comment><USER3> Primarily.

The major exception for me is em-dashes, which I use all the time.

There are also a few punctuation marks on a standard keyboard that don't get used very much outside of programming and other specialized contexts. {}\|

Another interesting thing related to punctuation is that the use of some punctation is really overloaded. Quotation marks in particular can mean literally quoting someone, a scare quote, an indication that something is a term of art, titles of certain types of works, and probably some other variants.

<comment><USER4> On some keyboard layouts (including Danish, which I use), we also have the ¤ on shift-4.

 _Nobody_ I know has ever used ¤ in any context at all, it seems like such an odd addition. I've used it sometimes as a footnote marker, since it's highly unlikely to clash with formatting, unlike an asterisk.

<comment><USER5> It is the international currency symbol, added to please Russia that didn't like $ being part of ASCII

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This made me think that smileys & emoticons are actually the new generation of punctuation marks :P

<comment><USER7> Some languages already have perfectly fine smileys as part of their alphabet.

Case in point: Ü (works better with sans-serif fonts but doesn't it look happy?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is from 2015.

So does the posting of this have anything to do with the recent Interrobang episode on the 99% Invisible podcast‽

(99pi is an awesome podcast btw!).

After listening to this episode, I even added a binding to the "C-x 8" map in Emacs[0]. This key map is mainly used for inserting various Unicode characters. So now in my Emacs, "C-x 8 ?" inserts ‽.

[0]: [https://github.com/kaushalmodi/.emacs.d/commit/a70dd6b7c39f0...](https://github.com/kaushalmodi/.emacs.d/commit/a70dd6b7c39f0ab6513d286b001245345be2636e)

<comment><USER9> I listened to the same episode. The interrobang seems oddly useful, strange that it hasn't caught on more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These are great. And they are expressions of type: "This is a different type of thing from a !. This type of thing is a (string of words that is represented by the new punctuation mark)".

Expressions of type give us new technology and increased leverage: We can further our inquiries because we can communicate those inquiries more objectively (i.e. more easily cross the subjectivity barrier). This objectified information is now information-technology-tooling. Though subtle, the use of these tools can eventually lead to new learning experiences and highly refined and promising new fields of work.

One of my current areas of interest is not so much punctuation, but what I call type-marks. These are unique markers that communicate the type of information that follows, or what is meant to be done with it. I find it's best if these symbols already exist in unicode tables. An example from bullet journaling is the hollow, upward-pointing triangle, which represents a meeting or event. I use other type-marks to indicate things like potential new models or leverage points in new models that may lead to useful new technologies. I use U+2295 or &oplus for that one in particular.

Anyway thanks to OP for posting the article--I love stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER11> _In 2001, a blogger named Tara Liloia wrote that sarcastic sentences should be ended with a tilde (~)_

Oh, how far you have fallen, tilde.

<comment><USER12> It only just now occurred to me that I have absolutely no idea what the tilde was originally for. I only know it as a shortcut for "user's home dir". I'm sure it must have had some kind of pre-computer use, but I can't even imagine what it might have been.

I guess I could check Wikipedia, but I almost don't _want_ to know. Like, finding out would take some of the mystery out of the world‽

<comment><USER13> My wild guess would be that it started as a composition character on typewriters to write things such as ã.

For those unfamiliar with how accents work on a typewriter: There'd be a couple special accent marks such as ~ and ` and whatnot that'd put down their accent _but not advance the carriage._ You could then hit a letter to get e.g. à or ē. It's a pretty clever system to prevent having to have a key for every accent.

<comment><USER11> Oh. Now I get why some fonts hoist the tilde up high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about /s for sarcasm? It seems any symbol not easily typed on the QWERTY keyboard will never be relevant.

<comment><USER15> The problem isn't the keyboard, it's the USB HID spec. You can easily make keyboards that can send arbitrary Unicode characters, but they still have to talk to computer in the same outdated language of scancodes.

<comment><USER16> Don't be so quick to dismiss something you don't understand as outdated and in need of replacement.

If keyboards would send characters instead of scancodes you would lose the ability to switch keyboard layouts in software (or it would be an ugly hack, which it was before we started to use scancodes). Many people use their computers with multiple languages and find switching keyboard layouts on-the- fly very useful.

<comment><USER17> While there might be a handful of people who switch keyboard layouts, I imagine that different keyboard layouts causes far more problems, lost time, and engineering effort. Overall it would still be better if keyboards sent Unicode characters.

<comment><USER18> You say you imagine different layouts cause problems and sending Unicode characters would be better, but you did not give a single reason.

I regularly use different keyboard layouts and it has never been a problem. It does not suppose any lost of time or engineering effort. When you have to usually communicate in different languages (which is common for the most part of the world), it is very useful.

I have also built several keyboards, and I cannot imagine the pain it would be having to define a key for every Unicode character.

<comment><USER17> I gave several reasons: Every time I install a new computer I have to select the keyboard layout, or the layout is wrong and I cannot type properly. Think of all the user and engineering effort wasted to support this corner case of switching keyboard layouts (so the keycaps don't even match the keys sent), used by a tiny number of users.

I personally know of how much work went into getting QEMU to support keyboard layouts. It has to convert characters back to scancodes so the guest OS can convert the same scancodes back to characters. It was a nightmare to get it right. Such a lot of effort for such a silly feature.

> I have also built several keyboards, and I cannot imagine the pain it would > be having to define a key for every Unicode character.

What? There's no reason you would define a key for every Unicode character.

<comment><USER18> Many users do not even know that keyboard layouts can be changed. I think you are hugely overestimating the effort spent in this. I understand this could be tricky for QEMU, but emulators are always tricky. They are exceptional, not the norm.

And what I don't understand, is how it would work in your ideal world. Let's assume we do not allow users to change keyboard layouts. How do I input characters for different languages? Am I supposed to have a different keyboard for every language or do I need a keyboard than can change layouts? Would those keyboards be included in laptops? How is this simpler than keyboard layouts in the OS?

I do not say you would have to define a key for every Unicode character, but if the OS is expecting Unicode, either you have to define some way to send it from the keyboard, or you implement in the OS some mapping, but at that point you would just be using Unicode characters as scancodes and we would be back at square one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me the interrobang just looks too busy and small, it needs some thought put into its appearance by font designers.

Maybe back in the days of typewriters you could overlay ? and ! but I don't think it looks good today‽

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I can't see myself using it because it looks so out of place and bold in a sentence.

Plus, how often do I really need to chain a question and exclamation mark together?

<comment><USER21> It seems to me that the right way to start would be to type '!?' If that gets popular, then you can have an !?-ligature.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Ligatures seem like a much more elegant solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ˙ƃuıɥʇ uʍop ǝpısdn ǝɥʇ s,ǝɹǝɥʇ uǝɥʇ pu∀

[https://www.web2generators.com/text-related-tools/write- upsi...](https://www.web2generators.com/text-related-tools/write-upside-down)

<comment><USER23> It needs to be upside down and back to front for all the linotype operators and lead type printers to read.

<comment><USER22> True. But I'm not finding a site for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> another-cuppa No example of the quasi-quote? I'm not sure how it would look, -"a bit like this"-?

<comment><USER24> They don't make it clear at that point, but the section on the interrobang makes it clear we're talking about old typewriters. "[backspace]- would result in the - being directly underneath the " on a monospace typewriter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interrobang survived, not as its own symbol, but in ?! form.

<comment><USER26> But in what order should they come!?

<comment><USER27> Isn't it obvious?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Now we have emoji.</comment>


How audiophiles lost out to audio files - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_bando/all/1

<comment><USER2> Whole thing reads like an advertisement for a company's super-expensive speakers and equipment, and ends with a note that they have a new super- expensive iPod dock.

</comment><comment><USER3> Articles I used read about B&O products were always rated as mediocre by audiophiles. Basically looks good but sound was nothing special.

This article is way to long and seems to contain nothing of note, other than history of B&O.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh, Wired... This article does not cover audio files at all, and there's a single passing mention of MP3 players. It's a rambling history of a company that markets to the "audiophile" gadget crowd. Reads like straight PR.</comment>


Webhook CMS is open to the public - <AUTHOR> http://www.webhook.com

<comment><USER2> Could anyone link to similar CMSs that allow "ordinary users" to create and link content "types" the same way Webhook does?

So far I've been watching [https://prismic.io/](https://prismic.io/) closely, but currently it does not have "internationalization support", which is a deal breaker for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm actually the designer of Webhook. If you have any questions please feel free to ask them.

</comment><comment><USER4> $25 per site/month?</comment>


Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/company-denies-its-robots-feed-on-the-dead/ <comment><USER2> Best quote ever:

"We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission," stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone's CEO

<comment><USER3> Then who's mission is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty much the best press release I've ever seen in my life.

On a much less apocalyptic note, there is some great lawnbot potential here. A robot that cuts your grass and eats it for fuel sounds pretty good to me.

<comment><USER5> You mean like a goat, that also gives you milk and love?

<comment><USER6> Chickens are better for that purposes, since their excrements are some of the best fertilizer around. They also smell better than the goat.

<comment><USER7> they have an annoying tendancy to destroy/tear up the grass though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, I'd like to see them get a cadaver and _prove_ that their robots don't feast on the dead. I don't trust a corporation farther than I can throw it. And I can only throw a dead body about four feet.

</comment><comment><USER9> I note that iRobot, Boston Dynamics and other robotics firms have _not_ yet denied that _their_ robots feed on the dead.

 _What are they hiding?_

</comment><comment><USER10> How much energy can a robot extract from biomass? I remember hearing about a similar technology a few years back, but the process didn't recover the energy used to gather it.

</comment><comment><USER11> How bout SlugBot, that runs on the garden slugs it catches? (from Wired 2001):

[http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/4715...](http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/47156)

<comment><USER12> Wow. I hadn't seen that before... That is actually quite scary!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Plants are a gateway biomass. One minute you're snacking on some grass clippings, then before you know it you're eating whole families alive.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, it worked in the Matrix.</comment>


The Python I Would Like To See - <AUTHOR> http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/8/16/the-python-i-would-like-to-see/ <comment><USER3> It's an interesting article, as a tour of some Python internals.

But it comes off as a rant without a real suggestion.

Python 3 was an internal interpreter cleanup. That's actually part of its lack of widespread popularity. The core developers didn't add a ton of unique functionality (and most of the new stuff was backported to 2.7 anyway), but they fixed some annoying problems in the CPython codebase and broke some things in the name of cleanup/unification of concepts. They made Python easier to maintain and easier to build new features atop. They sharpened the axe.

Yes, they didn't clean up Armin's pet thing -- slots. And they created new problems for library developers in their bytes vs unicode changes. But they cleaned up a whole lot of other stuff.

I personally think with the maturity of pypy and the stability of both the 2.7 and 3.4 lines of development, the Python ecosystem has never been more exciting. The advances in pypy make Python attractive for CPU-bound work and the inclusion of asyncio in the stdlib will make it more and more attractive for I/O-bound work over time. Python has long been a winner for mixed workloads, and the ecosystem around Python, especially pydata utilities like numpy and pandas, keep getting better. Stop complaining -- let's just build an awesome future atop this marvelous language.

<comment><USER4> > But it comes off as a rant without a real suggestion.

How exactly is that a rant? It's an exploration about a design decision / mistake that was carried through Python for 25 years and has left an impact. There is no complaint and there is no suggestion for Python.

As I said in the early paragraph it's something that's interesting for people that are interested in language design.

<comment><USER3> I think I mis-spoke. I didn't really mean "rant", I meant "nit-pick". It's akin to the frequent complaints I hear about `len()` being a function rather than a method on `list` and `str` types.

This internal detail you focused on solves real problems; it's also a wart internally. OK, we get it. It's also not a hugely important wart, IMO. I don't think it's holding Python back.

But, like I said, I think the article was an interesting walkthrough of the internals. I enjoyed it overall :)

<comment><USER5> I think this is a bad comparison, because len() vs. foo.len() is just syntax, and isolated syntax at that. It's valuable to get syntax right, but this particular decision doesn't really impact anything outside of itself.

In contrast, the article suggests that the implementation of method dispatch slots (not __slots__!) actually constraints the optimizations you can make.

I get that you're trying to suggest that they're both small, but I think that this analogy only serves to confuse things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I follow Ronacher's work, open source and posts and I agree with his arguments.

This post remember me of Spolsky's one ([http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)) though. When you get to a point where you get to know what's under the hood and why it's not working the way you are trying to use, however in a majority of cases you are just fine and don't need to know what's happening under the hood and maybe if this majority is big enough that's just fine.

<comment><USER7> I got a totally different impression from the post. What I thought of was ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F)).

In particular:

       In modern usage, this question also serves as a
       metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no
       practical value, or questions whose answers hold
       no intellectual consequence.

Python will (or won't) be used for a particular application regardless of whether some contrived test takes 0.158 usec or takes 0.256 usec per iteration.

This sort of misunderstanding comes up so often that there are a plethora of cliches for it. Here's another one: "Missing the forest for the trees.".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8>
        >>> original = 42
        >>> class FooProxy:
        ...  def __getattr__(self, x):
        ...   return getattr(original, x)
        ...
        >>> proxy = FooProxy()
        >>> proxy
        42

For anyone else who found this as confusing as I did ("wtf, how can proxy actually be 42?"), what's going on here is that it's calling `proxy.__repr__()` when it attempts to display `proxy`, which in turn calls `42.__repr__()`. (Similarly, `proxy + 1` calls `42.__add__(1)`.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm learning Python and I must say it is a wonderful language. Being able to concatenate strings by simply saying "a + b" is a great productivity boost (coming from C++). Python libraries are powerful. I can read an Excel spreadsheet with one line of code. I can create plots in PDF format with a half-dozen lines. Amazing!

However, I am disappointed with the difficulty of turning a program into a Windows EXE. I wrote a small program (couple of thousand lines), tried Py2exe which failed to handle the Numpy (or Matplotlib, I forget which) imbroglio.

PyInstaller works, except that the EXE is 85MB, and takes one minute to start up. Not practical for customer distribution. I can't expect my customers to install the Python runtime. In contrast, my 500KLOC C++ program, with all its third-party libraries, is 19MB. Yes, I know, Python needs everything including the kitchen sink. Still, 85MB is not practical.

Too bad. Not all programs run on a server.

<comment><USER10> > Being able to concatenate strings by simply saying "a + b" is a great > productivity boost (coming from C++)

C++ has had this operator overloaded for strings for decades.

With regard to the size of compiled executables, I can't really say much except "that's not what it's made for". If you need to ship compiled executables to people, Python is an extraordinarily inappropriate choice; stick with C++.

<comment><USER11> Dropbox seems to be doing ok shipping python to customers.

<comment><USER12> If they were ok why should they had forked python?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was a bit puzzled by the "lightweight old style classes" remark, so I tried it out:

        >>> sys.getsizeof(OldStyleClass), sys.getsizeof(NewStyleClass)
        (104, 904)
        >>> sys.getsizeof(OldStyleClass()), sys.getsizeof(NewStyleClass())
        (72, 64)

I agree that OldStyleClasses might be simpler (while less featureful), but I think I'd care more for the footprint of instances, rather than class objects themselves

</comment><comment><USER14> I switched to Python 3 this year and I haven't looked back -there are some niggles, but overall its a great improvement.

A great feature that's not really talked about is the __prepare__ function in metaclasses: you can supply a custom type that stores all class members. You could whip up multiple-dispatch using this (it lets you handle classes with duplicate property names) in conjunction with signature annotations, which I think is pretty neat.

<comment><USER15> This has been one of the reasons why I'm not currently doing anything for Google App Engine, they still lack Python 3 support. It feels awkward to code in Python 2 after Python 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This post is surprisingly confused, it is phrased as a complaint about the language, then immediately degrades into CPython implementation specifics that have little bearing on the usability of the language itself.

Ronacher should also know better than to post microbenchmarks like the one provided here, especially without corresponding (C) profiler output. At the C level, slots allow the implementation constant-time access to the most common code paths for an object, and especially when you have C code calling other C code via the type system (IMHO the primary use for Python, and still its strongest use case), "interpreter overhead" is reduced to a few extra memory indirection operations.

In the alternative world, sure, perhaps some microbenchmark may behave faster, but now systemically, and for e.g. "reduce(operator.add, range(1000))" requires more hash table lookups than I can count.

Python is all about providing a lightweight way to compose bits of fast code (the kernel, network stack, NumPy, MySQL, whatever). Unfortunately somewhere along the way solutions like Django got popular, which are almost the antithesis to this old viewpoint. Ronacher seems to be advocating that we should punish the CPython implementation's traditional strong areas in favour of.. actually, he didn't even describe any vision that was impacted by his complaints. He just seems to want the CPython implementation to suffer.

Perhaps his complaint about new-style __getattribute__ would be better suited as a bug report, it seems the only substantial observation made about the language itself in this post.

<comment><USER4> > This post is surprisingly confused, it is phrased as a complaint about the > language, then immediately degrades into CPython implementation-specifics > that have little bearing on the actual usability of the language itself.

You might think that, but you are very wrong and I should probably make that point in another blog post. These CPython specifics are enshrined in the language. While PyPy does not have the actual structs, it needs to implement the same user exposed API as it slots were used.

PyPy cannot just say "a + b" means "a.__add__(b)", it needs to implement the exact same dispatch logic that CPython has because people's code depends on it.

//EDIT:

> Ronacher seems to be advocating that we should punish the CPython > implementation's traditional strong areas in favour of.. actually, he didn't > even describe any vision that was impacted by his complaints.

Maybe I did not make my point very clear but the whole last paragraph advocates about trying a version of Python that abolishes the internal slot system.

<comment><USER16> Once again, this sounds like a bug report, not a ranty blog post

<comment><USER4> And what exactly should the bug report be? "I do not agree with design decision made 25 years ago, please make backwards incompatible change?".

<comment><USER16> The first might be "Let's replace all use of tp_* with hash lookups", which I suppose would be closed quickly, amidst a storm of muffled giggles. But at least by then you'd know why the current implementation works the way it does.

The next might be "__getattribute__ mechanism has surprising behaviour in common use-case" (which itself would imply having a use case where any of this mattered). This one might actually result in some productive discussion regarding a fix.

Your second reply is basically a doc bug, one of "__getattribute__ optimization is not specified in the language reference" or "__getattribute__ optimization causes non-comformance with the language specification", either way, you would get the attention of the few people who can actually help you, rather than attention from the many more who can't

<comment><USER4> You're assuming I am not aware why the system works the way it does currently which is incorrect. I outlined what a Python could look like, not what I want the CPython guys to implement. I am perfectly aware that this is not going to happen.

<comment><USER17> I think if you had titled the post differently you would have ended up with a lot less argumentation about how what you propose isn't a good idea for python.

As it is, the title at least primes the reader to think you are asking for what you go on to describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think most of the things I'd want to see first would come in the standard library and in unicode handling.

I'd probably argue that most uses of metaclasses are a reason to step back and make the code simpler. There are a few cases where they come in very usefully, but at least in open source code, they create a barrier to understanding and increase complexity.

ython starts to get ugly when you start writing code that does "automagical things", and that's somewhat tolerated because it's not a language for building automagical things.

Or, to say it another way, if you have to think about how the interpreter works, your python has jumped off the idiomatic wagon a while ago.

That being said __slots__ as a performance enhancement is crazy useful - <USER2> I'd like to see more things in that area. Though for most people, the thing that would lead to cleaner code would be a more powerful and elegant standard library.

<comment><USER19> 1\. __slots__ and TFA have nothing to do with one another

2\. __slots__ are not actually useful, Pypy does what they do by default and deoptimizes as needed, CPython probably could as well

3\. the only thing __slots__ do is lower memory usage (by not allocating a dict per instance) and PEP 412 has already improved _that_

__slots__ is not "crazy useful" by any definition of the expression, it is somewhat useful when you have a huge living number of simple objects.

<comment><USER20> Sounds as, that you did not understand, that the author did not mean the __slots__ system, that allows to avoid the __dict__ on objects, but the internal slots-system that is intended to speed up the dispatching of special methods.

<comment><USER21> You missed his point 1.

<comment><USER20> Ok. Then my answer belongs to the first in the sub-tree. What I actually did not understand: What means TFA?

<comment><USER22> The Freaking Article.

<comment><USER20> Thanks! That helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the OP:

>>"In recent years there is a clear trend of making Python more complex as a language. I would like to see the inverse of that trend. I would like to see an internal interpreter design could be based on interpreters that work independent of each other, with local base types and more, similar to how JavaScript works."

Sounds like OP should investigate Lua (and LuaJIT in particular).

He might like Lua more than Python.

(Given that OP created Flask, I'd love to see a Flask equivalent developed in Lua)

Edit: typo

<comment><USER24> Good job not reading the article and skipping to the end, I guess?

>> This is in fact how many other dynamic languages work. For instance this is how lua implementations operate, how javascript engines work etc. The clear advantage is that you can have two interpreters. What a novel concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ah nice. I was always curious why __getattribute__ didn't fire for specific dunder methods. Made subclassing pandas objects much more complicated.

</comment><comment><USER26> Armin for BDFL!

(Just a joke, people. Just a joke.) Anyway, I wonder why Armin's not more involved with core Python things, his perspective should be valuable. As someone doing some Python stuff on the side his articles are always worth reading carefully.

The Python community has always been the best part of the language, but the important subcommunities like NumPy, Twisted and PyPy has always seemed like they are a bit outside looking in. I don't know why. Perhaps the language would have evolved differently if these projects were a bit more involved in the actual language development.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seems pretty clear to me that we're ready for Python 4 by now. Experienced Python devs know the problems. We even have some solutions.

So I think it's about time that leaders of the community like Ronacher, Rietz, Gaynor, etc come together to talk about the next generator of Python.

We have PyPy now; why not use the tremendous advances there in the next Python?

We have Go and Javascript to compete with and we understand a lot of why they're winning; it's time Pythonistas fought back instead of just leaving.

Python 3 was supposed to be "the next thing" five years ago; it fizzled. Let's make the real "next thing" for 2016. Python 4.

<comment><USER3> Go and Javascript are "winning"? That's news to me. They might be buzzier right now, but their compiler/interpreters only appeared in 2009 and Python has been around since 1991. Is it really such a surprise that the hype period is over for Python as a language spec?

Now people are just getting a lot of stuff done with this productive language and nobody needs to be convinced any longer how good a language it is. Most people already know.

Now, we're onto the good work of building a huge ecosystem of open source modules atop it. Call me when Go and JavaScript have the equivalent of the PyData stack and rock-solid drivers for every database technology on the planet. Then maybe I'll look at them for anything other than niche use cases. (Obviously JavaScript is still the only game in town inside the browser and Go seems like a pretty interesting alternative to C for UNIX system utilities.)

<comment><USER28> > _Go and Javascript are "winning"? That's news to me. They might be buzzier > right now, but their compiler/interpreters only appeared in 2009 and Python > has been around since 1991. Is it really such a surprise that the hype > period is over for Python as a language spec?_

It's not about "hype period". It's about moving on with the times to avoid becoming the next COBOL or TCL. Being even older and problematic than Python haven't stoped a language like C++ to ease its users problems and make them happy with C++11. Javascript, almost as old as Python (1995 vs 1991) got 20-100x speed boost with the 2006-era generation of JITs.

A ho-hum remake, like Python 3, that breaks compatibility without much important to offer, doesn't cut it. If you're gonna break compatibility solve real problems people have. A large speed boost (entirely possible as V8, LuaJIT and co have shown even for a most dynamic language) is a great thing to entice upgrades. A good async/multicore story also. The removal of GIL. Etc. Those are things people have been nagging Python devs about, not improved Unicode or print as a function.

> _Now people are just getting a lot of stuff done with this productive > language and nobody needs to be convinced any longer how good a language it > is. Most people already know._

Languages that nearly vanished from the job market and current use trends, like Smalltalk, TCL and Perl also said the same thing...

<comment><USER29> _A ho-hum remake, like Python 3, that breaks compatibility without much important to offer, doesn 't cut it. If you're gonna break compatibility solve real problems people have._

Exactly this. Python 3 was an unfortunate triumph of purity over practicality. We'd be in a much better place if half of the effort expended in the Python 3 transition was instead focused on the issues you listed, and I'd also include browser support by compilation to JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really would like to see, when the suggested, simpler system would be tried. It is sometimes amazing, how by simplification gains could be reached _against_ common wisdom. And even, when no gains or little losses would be there with the new, simpler system, it could be worthwhile to change, since the current system has his huddles, that I also already stumbled about, and which are not clearly communicated, since it is such a deep implementation detail of CPython. Also it was mentioned, that a simpler system could be even more powerful.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thanks for the very informative post. I've been a full-time Python developer for only the past 7 or 8 months now. I had not in that time learned about the slot system or the CPython implementation.

Also, <3 Flask. So good.

</comment><comment><USER31> tldr; method calling is unnecessarily expensive in current Python due to debatable design decisions.

</comment><comment><USER32> I moved from Javascript to Python 2.7 and haven't looked back since. I now strictly use Python in all of my projects, Javascript only because browser doesn't support it.

I wish that Python would introduce a few things from the Javascript world. Easy async, and a real-time Meteor like framework.

<comment><USER33> Improved async is the biggest new feature in 3.4</comment></comment>


Spaced Repetition to Increase Programmer Productivity (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://super-memory.com/articles/programming.htm <comment><USER2> I actually made an Anki deck when I was learning CSS two and a half years ago and I found it was well worth the effort. Since CSS isn't something I'm nearly as interested as programming, I didn't go that far with it—just the basics of the flow, the box model, display, positioning and the most frequently used portions of CSS.

Absolutely everything I memorized, I could have just looked up. I still did have to look things up sometimes. But it really is a lot better to know something than to have to Google it. Not only is it faster, but it also lets you start grouping the things you know well together and think in larger chunks. Just SRS isn't enough to learn anything, or especially how to apply it. But SRS is super efficient at improving you on one dimension that has a positive effect on others. In that sense, it's much like weightlifting is for sports.

</comment><comment><USER3> This paper was published in 1993, and not 1998, as the HN title currently says.

You may wish to read the excellent Wired article from 2008 about the somewhat eccentric author of this paper, Piotr Woźniak.

[http://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/](http://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff- wozniak/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks; year fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh jeez, if I ever needed spaced repetition to be a programmer, I'd find a new profession, stat.

<comment><USER6> Every programmer needs to memorize the core of their language and framework. Sure, you can use documentation and IDE suggestions, but having plenty in your memory will make you much more productive, and if it need be the case that you need space repetition to memorize, then it's worth the effort.

<comment><USER5> I feel that using spaced repetition is counter-productive to learning a language / framework, meaning that using it would be worse than not using it. That is directly counter to the article's argument, though I'll admit to not having actually read it.

But even if it wasn't, then the time trying to memorize things would assuredly be better spent solving problems using whatever recall you already have and referring to the documentation when you come up short.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have seen 'Janki method' earlier: \- [http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki- method.html](http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I can see how a memorization aid like spaced repetition could actually improve your productivity in 1993, but in 2015, it's neither feasible nor necessary for programmers to memorize all the stuff we use, so I'm not seeing this as terribly useful nowadays.

<comment><USER9> So, I'm a SysAdmin, and compared to my UNIX knowledge, I'm a terrible programmer, so it's possible that everyone else is just using better tools than I am, but I've had jobs that were more programming than systems.

My impression was that in the '90s, when I started my career, everyone used IDEs where you could type your object and it would bring up a menu showing you the methods and the options to that method. I mean, with something like FoxPro or Borland Delphi, even 16 year old me could whip out CRUD apps with very little programming knowledge at all, and without spending too much time looking shit up in the documentation. It was _easy_

But... my impression is that nearly everyone has switched away from the IDE, and especially has switched away from editors that reduce the need for memorization. Most of the programmers I know spend most of their time in text editors that only do a very minimal amount of the programming work, meaning they've gotta memorize (or look up) a lot more than I had to when I was writing CRUD apps in the '90s. I spend a _lot_ more time in documentation now than I did then, when I'm learning a new language or writing in a language I haven't used recently.

I mean, this is just my impression... maybe I'm just not watching the right programmers. But yeah; my impression is that the need for memorization is growing, not shrinking.

<comment><USER8> Depends on language; what languages are used in your company?

<comment><USER9> >Depends on language; what languages are used in your company?

Python, mostly.

We do a little bit of bash and a fair amount of proprietary internal-only DSL, and a fair bit of non-proprietary DSL like puppet. Maybe a homeopathic amount of C. (I actually got them to let me write something in C the other week so that I could interface with the C api of a mostly closed-source thing we use, rather than using the really hokey and broken python-to-C auto-API-generator thing, and it was totally the highlight of the month, maybe the year.)

But really, python is my problem. The other stuff it's generally acceptable for me to look up, it's just all my reflexes are still perl reflexes, so things that would take me ten minutes in perl end up being half-day projects or better, 'cause I have to look everything up (or because something doesn't quite translate) - I think a good editor could help a lot with the former (the latter, probably, much less so.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No One Likes Levi's Stadium - <AUTHOR> https://theringer.com/san-francisco-49ers-levis-stadium-santa-clara-c29a140a1726#.cjfcad11e <comment><USER2> This article gets a lot wrong. (There is plenty _genuinely_ wrong with the stadium without going fictional). To wit:

1) "the 49ers are averaging 70,178 fans per game"

As with all major league sports, reported attendance represents _tickets issued_ , not turnstile counts nor butts in seats. In 2014, the 49ers claimed that all available seat licenses were "sold out".

2) "the stadium is an hour away from San Francisco, when there's no traffic, and there is always traffic."

True, but largely irrelevant. Back when the stadium was being planned, I was in a focus group of 49ers season ticket holders, and among the statistics given was that over 50% actually lived _south_ (including the East Bay south of Oakland) of SF County, so the location change was of minimal impact to the majority of attendees). And as for traffic, games are mostly Sunday, where commute traffic is not an issue.

3) "(Santa Clara) has threatened to seize the stadium from the 49ers." Um, no. The linked article says that stadium _management_ may be taken over, not a repossession of the building.

4) "The freakin' sun is a problem. They didn't think about the freakin' sun. The stadium has a north-south alignment so TV cameras can avoid glare,"

I doubt that the TV glare claim is valid -- after all, Candlestick had the same orientation. The _real_ purpose was so that _suiteholders and home-side Club seat holders would never have to look into the sun_ and would always have the sun _behind_ them. A side effect of this is that the other side, where we mere plebs sit, are _in the sun the entire game_.

That was already a known negative even from Candlestick, which got far less direct sun (due to cloud cover pouring through the San Bruno Gap) -- even there, fans prioritized avoiding the east side of the stadium. Seat rights in Lower East were always easier to obtain than on the west (home) side concourse.

From the second I saw the new design, I was livid. It's a hideous mishmash of architectural designs above the lower bowl, with the suite building and the east structure looking like they were made from different brands of children's erector sets, but there are massive gaps between all structures, which means that there can be no concentration of fan noise. Hence, no Home Field Advantage. A _majority_ of fans are exposed to full sun for your brutally hot August and September games and have no coverage at all from rain.

5) "Traffic and parking are bad at all stadiums, but the situation at Levi's is impressively bad.... Levi's is in a location that's difficult to access and without ample room for the cars of all the people going to the game."

No, that's not the problem. The location has _more_ access than Candlestick and has far more paved parking (my Candlestick parking passes would routinely sell for 3 to 4 times what my Levi's passes do).

The _problem_ : pedestrians and vehicles (and VTA rail) all compete for the same surface streets, and pedestrian cycles cut vehicle thoughput by probably 60+%. Candlestick had _pedestrian overpasses_ and one-way traffic routing to maximize flow, plus a single, massive paved lot inside the traffic perimeter -- people in the paved lot didn't cross any road at all to enter.

I foresaw both issues and raised them with both the season ticket department and Legends (the sales agents for Levi's); neither could have cared less for any advice.

6) "The stadium is pretty close to the San Jose airport, so it falls under the flight path of many incoming planes." False, at approach or takeoff altitudes, anyway. SJC's runways run north-south; Levi's is to the west. Air traffic is the least of their problems.

7) "It's expensive as hell." Well, Club seats and suites certainly are. The cheapest seat ($85) is much more expensive than Candlestick ($29!). The lower bowl isn't unreasonable by modern standards, but end zone seats are a hard sell now, and I think those SBL holders are doomed to lose money.

8) "Does (the 49ers record) have anything to do with the stadium? No, but it's a fun coincidence." I disagree! I think the loss of any home-field feel had a _lot_ to do with the 2014 collapse. No visiting team will be intimidated by this sterile, fan-suppressing stadium.

The headline claim of "It's one thing to build an expensive stadium with taxpayer money." is also inherently misleading. The stadium itself was all _privately funded_ , although there were land and services concessions by the city.</comment>


Uber Is Headed for a Crash - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/will-uber-survive-the-next-decade.html <comment><USER2> Uber is a technology company with a taxi service attached. I don't know if everyone investing in Uber, or writing about investing in Uber, appreciates that and the resulting risk.

Investors should be hoping for a pay-off from developing technology rather than profiting purely from taxi fares.

A company that was primarily a taxi service would probably realise sooner that to be profitable by paying humans to drive is much more likely than developing, building, maintaining and improving self driving cars for themselves.

The company gets valued like many others: on their user numbers and potential future earnings, but not profits. (See also Tesla.) I don't think that's right but that's how the system works these days.

<comment><USER3> > I don't think that's right but that's how the system works these days.

That's not how "the system" works, that's what the investment climate is like at this point in the business cycle. Money is cheap and investments are equally unwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Uber bets on autonomous driving arriving sooner than later and I think they have miscalculated.

<comment><USER5> > ...they have miscalculated

Yes, if by 'miscalculated' you mean 'lied'.

Driverless train technology has existed for decades, and is battle-tested in production.

Yet no place uses driverless trains today.

Figure out why and you can move on to driverless cars.

<comment><USER6> Well firstly, there are autonomous trains. The DLR in London is autonomous, there are plenty of train systems that are autonomous. But here's a key to why autonomous trains are not important and autonomous cars are: A traditional train requires 1 driver. An autonomous train requires 0 drivers and 1 guard (generally). In both cases trains have a capacity of around 1000 people.

Autonomous cars won't need guards, and have a capacity of 1 driver per 4 passengers. So the saving per person is 250x higher for autonomous cars than autonomous trains.

That's not even taking into account that the technology for autonomous cars is almost identical to autonomous HGVs - who have huge problems due to the limits of how long they can travel before the driver can rest.

<comment><USER7> > a capacity of 1 driver per 4 passengers

Most rides are 1, maybe 2, passengers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author doesn't cite growth rates, customer acquisition costs of lifetime value of the customer and without that it's not clear they know what they're talking about. If CAC << LTV and you have a high growth rate and your cost per ride is coming down then they should be doing exactly what they're doing. The investor around the table are not dumb. They're probably some of the smartest people around and they can do the math themselves.

There's a reason I don't even go to Lyft anymore—Uber is way better than it was a few years ago.

<comment><USER3> > The author doesn't cite growth rates, customer acquisition costs of lifetime > value of the customer and without that it's not clear they know what they're > talking about. If CAC << LTV and you have a high growth rate and your cost > per ride is coming down then they should be doing exactly what they're > doing.

If, if and if. There's no reason to believe that costs come down with significantly with (even larger) scale, or that people will prefer Uber over competitors or ordinary taxis, once they raise prices. The main reason why Uber has so little competition is that it's simply a bad business model, but massive growth in todays environment attracts enough investors to keep the ship above water for a long time.

> The investor around the table are not dumb.

That's not implied, the idea is that enough greater fools will be found once the stock goes public.

> There's a reason I don't even go to Lyft anymore—Uber is way better than it > was a few years ago.

Uber simply has more money to burn. Enjoy your rides while it lasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The true cost of an uber is some multiple of what their charging. If that multiple is around 2 or 3, taxis suddenly become better for a lot of people.

<comment><USER10> Buses too. Uber and Lyft have been killing bus ridership. It's a simple replacement when ride-share costs increase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll tell you one thing: I really don't appreciate an article that just continually asserts investors are idiots. High end retail! They're stupider than Saudis!

I'm sympathetic to the idea that Uber has lots of headwind. As mentioned, the majority of costs scale with revenue in a way that isn't true of real tech companies and the autonomous driving thing is basically dead. But there's lots of reasons companies could fail - it's not enough to list them.

One glaring hole I see in this analysis is the monopoly view. Uber is establishing itself as a monopoly in some markets and pulling out of the ones that it's failing to achieve that. A pretty straight forward step would be to start jacking up prices in areas they have a monopoly whilst simultaneously driving out the competition. That would be profitable and it addresses the problem the article proposes.

<comment><USER11> > A pretty straight forward step would be to start jacking up prices in areas > they have a monopoly

But what's to stop someone like Lyft or any other cab company coming into that market and undercutting them?

<comment><USER6> Capital. Assuming the article is right and there's no fundamental efficiency saving of any particular taxi company then to challenge Uber's monopoly in a market you need to sink money into subsidizing fares until you drive Uber out of the market to establish your own monopoly. Why would someone do that? It's far more effective for Lyft to put it's capital into where it can establish itself rather than just having a cash burn contest.

This is why Uber left South-East Asia to Grab in exchange for a stake.

<comment><USER12> > sink money into subsidizing fares

This assumes there is no way to undercut Uber's costs. If Uber wants to be a 100 billion dollar company then someone could be happy with being a 100 million dollar company and aim for a much smaller market.

They don't need to win every city, just take a slice of the most profitable city from Uber. Suddenly your 10 million per year profit is costing Uber 10 times that as they can't undercut you and still be highly profitable.

After that either the small guy expands, or someone else aims for the 2nd most profitable city. Eventually, Uber is left with a monopoly on the least valuable markets and steady competition on all the profitable ones.

And that's assuming they can kill off Lyft, and all other significant players which already have network effects and cash on hand.

<comment><USER6> >They don't need to win every city, just take a slice of the most profitable city from Uber. Suddenly your 10 million per year profit is costing Uber 10 times that as they can't undercut you and still be highly profitable.

If Uber is operating in 100 cities and you turn up in their most profitable one, they can just drop the prices and make a loss in that city until you leave.

I agree with you, maybe they don't kill off lyft and don't get to the point that they have the scale to implement their strategy, but that doesn't stop it being a decent strategy to aim for.

<comment><USER12> > If Uber is operating in 100 cities and you turn up in their most profitable > one, they can just drop the prices and make a loss in that city until you > leave.

That gets insanely expensive in their most profitable city as you not only forgo profit you also need to drop the pice enough that people pick you. And it's never going to be just one company in just one city that tries to compete. The might be able to pull it off, but not while being a 100 Billion dollar company.

Remeber, long term their options are be profitable or fail. They can't continue to attract money if they had a monopoly and still can't be profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> no mention of Waymo's announcement today - that's the bigger threat IMHO.

<comment><USER14> Is Waymo's announcement even worth mentioning?

[https://mashable.com/article/waymo-one-self-driving-taxi- lau...](https://mashable.com/article/waymo-one-self-driving-taxi-launch)

<comment><USER15> Yes, even though it's the same early testers, they are confident enough to pull the NDA and allow additional riders. I think you'll see them progress pretty quickly in adding more users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stripping everything away, the basic question is how they will make money. Raise prices? They have local competition pretty much everywhere, there's no moat around the rideshare business. Food delivery? Maybe, but will that be enough to justify their valuation?

<comment><USER17> Autonomous trucking is the only thing they're currently working on that I can see being a game changer. Everything else is a highly-competitive, marginal cost business with no moat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know the last time I read an article so snarky and without substance as this.

Just a few points below:

> After nine years, Uber isn't within hailing distance of making money and > continues to bleed more red ink than any start-up in history. By contrast, > Facebook and Amazon were solidly cash-flow positive by their fifth year.

Amazon was founded in 1994 and reported a quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2001 and, at $5 million. It then went back into the red for several years. [0]

> The app is not technically daunting and and does not create a competitive > barrier, as witnessed by the fact that many other players have copied it. > Apps have been introduced for airlines, pizza delivery, and hundreds of > other consumer services but have never generated market-share gains, much > less tens of billions in corporate value.

So its easy to copy, is regularly copied, but none of them made any market- share gains? Maybe it's not so easy to copy?

> Nor, after a certain point, does adding more drivers. Uber does regularly > claim that its app creates economies of scale for drivers — but for that to > be the case, adding more drivers would have to benefit drivers. It doesn't.

For drivers the economy of scale is that they are in a market. They can be in their own market, a market of 1, and alas, they'll have no competition. But saying that a market adds no value to producers as it grows large is backward economics. The benefits of economies of scale for the passengers is more obvious and completely ignored by the article.

> Unlike digital businesses, the cab industry does not have significant scale > economies; that's why there have never been city-level cab monopolies, > consolidation plays, or even significant regional operators.

There are no benefits to scale economies in taxi markets, that's why one never existed. Oh, except Uber, which does exist and is worth a lot but is stupid.

> Uber has never presented a case as to why it will ever be profitable, let > alone earn an adequate return on capital. Investors are pinning their hopes > on a successful IPO, which means finding greater fools in sufficient > numbers.

This is just a cynical view of anything financial. I believe something is stupid. If others agree, good. If others own it, it's just because they know other people are stupid and they'll pass it on to someone stupider.

[0] [https://qz.com/1196256/it-took-amazon-amzn-14-years-to- make-...](https://qz.com/1196256/it-took-amazon-amzn-14-years-to-make-as-much- net-profit-as-it-did-in-the-fourth-quarter-of-2017/)

<comment><USER19> 1) Profit != cash flow.

Amazon was cash flow positive significantly before they became profitable. They made a conscious choice to not be profitable (the cynic's take on this is that they didn't want to pay taxes).

2) Lyft has made market share gains in the US. Other companies have made market share gains in other countries, to the point that Uber has had to withdraw from several countries.

3) A larger market does not necessarily provide economies of scale for the individual driver. The larger market does not help an individual driver reduce their costs. A larger market adds some value to the drivers, but the actual fact is that the value added so far has been consistently outweighed by the downsides. This is clearly evident in the significantly less money they are making.

4) Your argument that Uber is worth a lot is exactly what is being contested. You can't use that assertion (whether right or wrong) to prove the assertion. And Iber is hardly a monopoly anywhere. Yellow cab services still exist. Left and other competitors still exist and are growing.

5) Has Uber presented a case showing how they will be profitable? How is it cynical to point out this obvious fact?

Also, with the IPO market they don't need to sell to someone stupider. They just need to sell to an entity whose decision makers' interests are not aligned with the owners of the funds they are investing. In other words, pension funds, mutual funds, investment banks, etc. But yeah, there are enough stupider people as well who could lose money on this.

<comment><USER18> 1\. Uber could be profitable by not expanding. They stated that there are a number of markets in which they're profitable. It seems to be a decision as well to aggressively expand. These arguments seem to be backing into an argument why Uber is not like other things.

2\. I'm commenting on what the article wrote. Of course there are competitors. I was pointing out the logical fallacy in the article. Easy to copy but no one successfully copied it.

3\. So the market doesn't benefit drivers but the market is growing in drivers? Apparently the downsides of joining the market is less than the upsides evidenced by the fact that it's growing

4\. The article claims there are little or no benefits to markets in Cabs. The fact that Uber has grown to this size questions that assertion. And your statement that there are other competitors also questions the articles assertion. So we're in agreement here

5\. No idea but I assume the skin in the game that has invested billions has reason to believe so. Or maybe everyone else is stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The app is not technically daunting and and[SIC] does not create a competitive barrier, as witnessed by the fact that many other players have copied it."

I would say the app and and [SIC] its server-side framework is one of the most sophisticated in computing history. The companies that have something similar can be counted on one hand.

</comment><comment><USER21> Many of the sillier criticisms of the New York Magazine article have already been properly addressed but here are a few more. <Dominicr> "Uber is a technology company with a taxi service attached." Complete utter nonsense. Uber has not developed any "technology" products except what's needed for its taxi service. It doesn't sell any "technology" products on open markets. Its "technology" is a tiny portion (probably around 5%) of the total cost of providing customers with taxi service. As the article mentions, its dispatching and pricing software is trivial compared to what airlines had decades ago. Since no other consumer product app has ever had meaningful competitive impacts, it is ridiculous to claim that any meaningful portion of Uber's $70 billion value is due to its wondrous technology. <rdlecler> "The author doesn't cite growth rates, customer acquisition costs of lifetime value of the customer and without that it's not clear they know what they're talking about" You obviously didn't read the article. It emphasizes, based on published financial data, that Uber's costs aren't coming down, except to the extent that they can push driver compensation to (or below) minimum wage levels. It any of the points you raised were actually important, Uber's losses would not have ballooned to $4.5 billion in its eighth year of operation. <traster> "I'll tell you one thing: I really don't appreciate an article that just continually asserts investors are idiots" At no point does the article say (or suggest) that the investors are idiots. Obviously the vast majority of VC funded companies fail to produce returns for investors. It does clearly suggest that their original vision of outsized returns on the $20 billion investment base won't be realized unless the IPO succeeds in finding a lot of "greater fools" willing to bail them out. And you fail to provide any logical basis for why Uber would ever be able to produce these outsized returns if the investors hang on. Or why anyone should invest in next year's IPO.</comment>


AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff - <AUTHOR> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATTs-Expansion-of-1-Gbps-to-100-Cities-is-a-Big-Fat-Bluff-128628 <comment><USER2> I had an AT&T salesman come to my door just a few days ago to try and sell me their new "fiber" they had just installed in my area (I'm in a large city mentioned in the article), telling me all of the benefits of having fast internet. I had to lie and tell him I didn't own a TV in order to get him to stop talking about the 300 channel TV/internet bundle.

When I finally squeezed the actual speed of it out of him the answer was 18 Mbps, for $60 a month (of course he could get me a special deal of $40 for the first 3 months, which is the same deal as on their website).

I've used them before (AT&T Uverse) and they require an ATT router/modem, for an additional fee of course, even though using their hardware is technically completely unnecessary.

I actually told him that Time Warner was currently cheaper and more reliable than what he was offering, which is true unfortunately.

AT&T is a joke.

<comment><USER3> They run fiber to their Uverse nodes and then apparently tell their salespeople to sell this as a feature. I remember one telling me the benefits of a "fiber optic signal" somehow going to my house over copper. I still ended up switching later on since they're cheaper than my local cable provider, though network performance doesn't seem to be as good.

<comment><USER4> Maybe they're using Monster cables, for a better digital signal? (Kidding, hopefully obviously)

<comment><USER5> Nay, ATT would need 2x the GDP of the entire universe to acquire enough Monster Cable for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is spot on. I've had countless reps try to sell me on U-Verse "It's fiber to your neighborhood, so it's faster"! My next question is of course "How fast?" "Well, you can get up to 18mbit/s".. I have faster than that with cable. wtf

That's not to even mention their HORRIBLE modems that they force you to use after migrating to U-Verse. Search for "nvg510" and you'll see how happy your service will be afterwards, assuming they aren't using old unreliable DSL pairs that make it so your specific house can only get 6mbit or 1.5mbit, despite your neighbor getting 16mbit

Oh, and also in my city you can't even buy just U-Verse internet. you have to buy into their crap "digital" (another word for heavily MPEG compressed) TV service

<comment><USER7> Yup. I had to specifically buy another router to use with the modem because the U-Verse default routers don't even let you set custom DNS servers and AT&Ts were significantly slowing my connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In short, if your city plays nice and gives AT&T what they want > legislatively (namely gut consumer protections requiring they keep serving > DSL users they don't want so they can focus on more profitable wireless)

I think the author is being hypocritical in holding this against AT&T while ignoring the fact that Google is only rolling out fiber in cities that agree to basically leave them alone from regulatory standpoint. And while the author complains about AT&T not upgrading legacy DSL users, you don't exactly see Google or anyone else going after that "lucrative" market.[1] You don't see Google, or anyone else, jockeying to offer service in cities with insane build-out requirements.

The author, Karl Bode, clearly understands _why_ nobody wants to roll out these services: [http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Baltimore-Still- Begging-V...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Baltimore-Still-Begging- Verizon-for-FiOS-123588) ("Baltimore is one of many cities who simply want somebody to come in and provide better broadband service, but don't offer an attractive enough return on the investment for any large, investor-forcused private company to bother.") That's true for Google as much as it's true for AT&T. Google's ability to cross-subsidize with its advertising business changes the numbers a bit, but at scale, that's the bottom line.

That said, I think Google Fiber adds a lot of value. I don't think they're going to shame AT&T/Verizon into doing deployments that don't yield an attractive return on capital. It may have the more important effect of putting municipalities on notice that if they want fiber, from anyone, they need to cut the strings attached.

<comment><USER9> The $200 Billion Rip-off: [http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html)

The telcos have already promised to lay fiber, received concessions for it, and delivered little to nothing. Google may start ripping off taxpayers like that, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until I see it.

<comment><USER8> The $200 billion figure doesn't represent real money that changed hands. It's an estimate based on taking the actual profit margin of the telecom companies since deregulation in 1996, and calling everything over 9-10% to be "excess profits." The premise is that telcos "promised" to lay fiber in return for being deregulated, and that if their profit margins had been limited to rates typical of a regulated utility, they would've made a lot less money.

Of course, it's easy to play this game with any company. Google's profit margin is over 20%. According to this reasoning, every year Google is "ripping off" the public to the tune of $6 billion. Obviously it's ridiculous to just pick a number as the "right" profit margin for an industry and call everything above that number "excess profits." But that's precisely the premise underlying the $200 billion "rip off."

There was no "rip off." The premise of the 1996 reform was that deregulation of the industry would create an incentive for companies to invest private capital. And that has proven true. Over the last two decades, telecom and cable companies have been among those with the highest capital expenditures. What happened is that nobody predicted wireless would become such a big deal. So instead of going into fiber, all that money was invested in wireless instead. That's the major reason why fiber deployment never really materialized--spending that money on wireless made a lot more sense.

And from a consumer standpoint, it still mostly does. I don't even have internet service at my house--but I've got two different LTE subscriptions.

<comment><USER10> > According to this reasoning, every year Google is "ripping off" the public > to the tune of $6 billion.

This comparison is invalid because Google's business is fundamentally different than a telecom in every relevant dimension. Telecoms sell a commodity product with technology they source entirely from third parties, the only form of product differentiation they have is geographical monopoly, and it is a zero-sum game: basically none of AT&T's budget goes to R&D [1], and all of it goes to operating AT&T's existing business exactly as it is now [2]. Meanwhile Google's core business is basically the opposite in every dimension.

A much better comparison would be to a water company or power company that has "too high" of a profit margin. And of course people _do_ complain about that.

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/meet-the-group-trying-to-make- at-t-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/meet-the-group-trying-to-make-at-t-very-un- at-t-like/)

[2] [http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_20...](http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_2013ar_completefinancialreview.pdf)

<comment><USER8> This data point shows that AT&T spent about $1 billion on R&D in 2010: [http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/print- edition/2010/11/19/f...](http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/print- edition/2010/11/19/five-cos-spend-39b-on-rd.html?page=all). Yes, it's a "drop in the bucket" compared to their $20 billion in capital expenditures, as noted in your article ([1]), but it's hardly "basically none." Also, a lot of sophisticated engineering goes into building out infrastructure, even if it's accounted to capital expenditures and not R&D.

Water companies and power companies are generally, true monopolies, in that they're protected from competition and guaranteed a rate of return on their investment. AT&T and the other telecoms are very different. They might have certain geographic advantages, but AT&T is rarely the only wireless or telecom provider in any given market, and its capital expenditures come out of it's own pocket. It can't turn to a rate setting board like a power company or water company to guarantee cash flow to cover investment.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to develop telecom as a regulated monopoly, which worked just fine in the U.S. for the better part of a century, then you need to give companies monopoly protections. If you want to have a market, then you can't regulate rates of return. When you pretend to have a market, then encumber it with excessive regulation, you can't complain when companies don't invest private money into expanding infrastructure.

<comment><USER10> Your source states that AT&T spent "0.8 cents" "of each dollar of revenue" on R&D. Secondly, if you dig into the source [1] of your source, you find that R&D spending for North American telecom companies in 2013 are dead last against every other industry as a percentage of revenue. I renew my claim that "basically none" R&D spending is a fair and accurate description.

> AT&T is rarely the only wireless or telecom provider in any given market

That is technically true, but I would paint the same facts as "approximately 96% of the population has at most two wireline providers". [2] This is an _optimistic_ estimate: "the data used here do not provide adequate information on price and performance to determine if multiple providers in a given area compete head-to-head".

> If you want to have a market, then you can't regulate rates of return.

I don't disagree with you there. I think where we disagree is that you think a competitive market for wireline broadband in the US in 2014 is a possible scenario. In my mind, the regulated monopoly (or public utility) is the only viable model.

[1] [http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we- think/glo...](http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we-think/global- innovation-1000/rd-intensity-vs-spend-2013-v2stage)

[2] [http://books.google.com/books?id=l8oI5rA_NpQC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA...](http://books.google.com/books?id=l8oI5rA_NpQC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=broadband+competition+more+than+one+provider&source=bl&ots=HknYAyaKQL&sig=VEUkjObhaBXsGMJcB5cEsRvkSaE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=J5xVU8L8A8q92gXrpYDoAw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=broadband%20competition%20more%20than%20one%20provider&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ATT UVerse is the one of the biggest disappointments I've faced as a consumer.

When Verizon FIOS first came about I was super excited. And then I learned that since my town is part of ATT-land, I'm forever locked out of obtaining it.

A few years later ATT announces UVerse (fiber-to-the-home) in select markets. Again I'm super excited, and I anxiously await the day it's available for my street.

Years later that day finally comes. Only then do I realize that they have since re-branded their entire DSL product line as "UVerse". So all ATT customers can get UVerse, great! But only a very select few will actually get fiber-to-the-home.

What a load of crap.

<comment><USER12> Most of UVerse is FTTN, after which it is VDSL2 to the premise site; hence bandwidths that are 24Mbps at most. I have U-Verse and get around 18Mbps at most but since the line is shared with their TV service it can drop down from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> AT&T's door-to-door salespeople told me that my 30-year-old single-family house in Austin will be eligible for GigaPower in the summer, so maybe it's not quite as bad as the article says.

Charging $30/month to not spy on me is bullshit, though.

<comment><USER14> I would happily move to get faster internet speeds, but all of the neighborhoods AT&T are targeting seemed to be expensive when I checked them out.

This jives w/ what the article says:

>>What's actually happening is that AT&T is upgrading a few

>>high-end developments where fiber was already in the ground

>>(these users were previously capped at DSL speeds) and

>>pretending it's a serious expansion of fixed-line broadband.

On the other hand, Google Fiber seems to be planning connectivity all over the place, since they're tasked w/ providing free service to various community hubs selected by the city which are widely spread out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've already seen some sites like TheVerge falling for AT&T's BS, and just parroting their press release. I don't know why anyone would take what a company like AT&T is saying for _granted_. You should be doing the opposite of that and question everything they're saying.

</comment><comment><USER16> AT&T has made it their goal to trick the average consumer by having their reps go around telling everyone in Austin they now have fiber in their area!

The reps won't even give the speed of the line until asked and the majority of responses when asked are Download Speeds of 15-30Mbps. Time Warner has cable options doubling this and the price is better.

AT&T is basically trying to confuse their customers before google fiber hits Austin and it's the most immoral thing I've seen in a long time.

<comment><USER17> I live in Austin, and I have had U-Verse for months. I've got ~40Mbps down, and that's pretty reliable and with low latency.

I had AT&T sales reps come by the house a few weeks ago to try and sell me U-Verse, and I was able to tell them more about my service that I already had than they were told to offer to anyone else in my neighborhood.

The only thing they had to hook me on was TV, and I told them we were getting rid of all TV service.

And no, I didn't really feel sorry for them at all. Three nice young people out for a neighborhood walk where they will probably make a years worth of sales commissions in just a few hours. They don't deserve any pity or sympathy from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I live in an area of suburban Dallas, TX where the city and telcos laid fiber over 7 years ago. U-verse has always been capped for us. I'm hoping we get on the list for Gigapower but any attempts to get information on this have been futile. Local reps know nothing about Gigapower and emails to corporate get no response.

I had such a poor experience with Uverse when it first came out that it made even TWC internet look significantly better so I've stuck with Time Warner.

</comment><comment><USER19> I live in Austin, TX.

I have Grande and AT&T fiber to my home.

AT&T will not sell me their (current 300Mbps, future 1Gbps) service.

Grande will.

When Google Fiber arrives in my neighborhood, I'll probably keep both Grande and Google. (Because it makes for an excellent test of pfSense, and as co- owner of the company behind pfSense, I'm into testing it.)

</comment><comment><USER20> The recently deployed AT&T fiber infrastructure for U-Verse is first class and very well built. It will handle 1Gbps+ when it needs to.

But not over CAT-3 neighborhood wiring.

The fact is nobody, not AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, or anyone else, is eager to deploy fiber to each home's "de-marc." It's expensive, time-consuming, and labor intensive.

The last mile is a good place for municipalities to get involved, possibly under some form of revenue sharing plan with the carriers.

</comment><comment><USER21> The definition of vaporware. Powered by at&t

</comment><comment><USER22> I hear it's actually going to be 1.21 Jigga-bps.</comment>


Facebook Is The New Nielsen Family - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1771291/could-nielsen-s-new-measurement-system-finally-prove-the-worth-of-online-advertising

<comment><USER2> First was the introduction of Like/Share/Recommend buttons for third party web sites. Now Facebook is providing a data engine for third party ads. It seems clear that the next step is for Facebok to become an ad provider for external networks.

I think this new deal is a pretty smart way for them to test the waters with regard to privacy + third party ads.</comment>