The Electric Car Atop Europe's Sales Charts Isn't a Tesla or VW - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-24/the-electric-car-atop-europe-s-sales-charts-isn-t-a-tesla-or-vw <comment><USER4> Anecdote time:

I am driving a Zoe multiple times a week and thoroughly enjoy it.

Is it premium class car and will take me 600km? No, but that's not why I am driving Zoes. I drive them because it's short city commutes 99% of the time. Rarely more than 10-15km, usually transporting something or bypassing public transport in busy times/Corona/if car is just quicker.

I use them via Sixt Share, a car-sharing service. Always find parking within a few minutes with the privilege of getting the e-parking spots and the small size.

Zoe is perfect for European city dwelling and short commutes. Not as expensive as BMW i3 or VW e-Golf. Same type of car as the e-Up! which I haven't tried yet.

<comment><USER5> wouldn't electric bike/scooter without renting make more sense for you? unless you use it to do big grocery, though this could be resolved by ordering grocery online

I'm living in the Prague without car, only missing car when doing the grocery, but there is no point to buy car just to do big grocery once a week, might as well rent a car or take taxi or order grocery online, if I would be that lazy.

<comment><USER6> The problem with bikes in big cities is parking and theft.

Stealing an auto is a felony while a bike theft doesn't even get marginal attention form law enforcement.

Sorry to say but we'll need some large policy shifts to support ebikes despite how perfect they'd be.

<comment><USER5> you must live in odd country, here in Czechia is felony stealing of subject with "more than insignificant value" (read more than 200EUR although last year they wanted to raise it to 400EUR, not sure if they succeeded) regardless what is the subject, so while stealing old used car valued at 199EUR is misdemeanor (contravention), stealing bike worth 300EUR is crime

I don't think they would really treat cars differently, if they are in same value as some bike worth 10000 EUR, the thing is car is much bigger so it's more difficult to hide it and easier to notice/discover than bike and statistically most of the used bikes are worth few euros, so it would be really waste of resources, of course it's different now with ebikes, but it is same as motorbikes, much easier to hide and difficult to discover

<comment><USER7> Can't comment on OP's country, but here in Germany while technically different, in practice it's the same

Car gets stolen: often the case is solved, license plates help, etc.pp

Bike gets stolen: Police take the report, often blame you it's your own fault that you didn't properly lock it (happened to me twice), usually doesn't get solved even if you have the number. It's worth the hassle to report it but the chnace of getting it back are close to zero.

<comment><USER5> > Car gets stolen: often the case is solved, license plates help, etc.pp

Are you sure stolen car is "often" found? Here in Czechia they find like 20% stolen cars, bikes will be worse but not that much worse since 20 is already quite close to 0 anyway.

<comment><USER7> Often compared to bikes. Also I have heard of it, so non-zero. ;) No, I don't have numbers. My point was strictly that with a stolen bike you're out of luck. Also because insurance is mandatory for cars, people usually take this addon that will have them pay for your stolen car. For bikes again it's complicated...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's honestly not a surprise. The European market favor smaller car way more than the American one. You just have to see the sheer number of 206, Twingo & Clio on the road.

I still see some Tesla, but usually it is a status symbol, people who just want an electric car usually go for the Nissan Leaf or the Renault Zoe.

<comment><USER9> This. Commute cars are Aygos and Ups, not two ton sedans. The (original) Tesla is one of the largest vehicles you'll see around here, only beaten by the hughest SUVs. And the commute market is where people buy electric, so that doesn't match at all. Anecdatally the only people I know with Teslas are rich enough they have it as one of their cars, as an extra to see what it is all about. Very few buy it instead of their commute box.

Here is NL.

<comment><USER10> In the whole 2019 (with a crazy december) Tesla Model 3 was the first car by number of sale (electric or not)

[https://cleantechnica.com/2020/01/08/tesla- model-3-shatters-...](https://cleantechnica.com/2020/01/08/tesla- model-3-shatters-all-records-in-historic-month-year-in-the-netherlands/)

1 Tesla Model 3 29,922

2 VW Polo 12,920

3 Ford Focus 10,478

4 VW Golf 9,263

Number 2 to 4 are small cars.

But Tesla sale number per country just mean Tesla decided to allocate more cars to a specific country, as long as it is production constrained not much information about customer preferences from sales numbers.

<comment><USER11> Focus and Golf are both similar sizes, I wouldn't say the VW Golf is a small car. (Nor would I say that about the new Polo, it's actually quite big)

<comment><USER12> The new Polo is as large as the Golf used to be and the new Golf, especially the station is as large as the early model Passats. This is mostly an arms race, not so much on size as on crash safety, to maintain those precious stars car models creep up in their outside dimensions. Interiors are fairly static.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tesla Europe numbers are wildly variable. Tesla tends to build their European cars at the beginnning of the quarter so that they can be shipped across the ocean and into customer hands before the end of the quarter. The cars at the end of the quarter are shipped to Americans and the cars built in the last week are shipped to Californians.

So because of the COVID shutdown, that means that the only month that Tesla made cars for Europe this year was January. (And July, but those cars haven't been counted yet).

And, as mentioned the widely anticipated ID3 from VW isn't being delivered until September.

So Europeans chose to buy a Zoe now rather than wait for a Tesla or an ID3. And the Zoe is a nice car, so why wait?

<comment><USER14> I don't think there will be many who decided to buy a Zoe because a Tesla wasn't available. It's the price.

I doubt there is much overlap with the ID3 too. The cheapest model will cost you two Zoes.

<comment><USER15> VW were originally saying the ID.3 was going to be priced similarly to a Golf diesel. I wonder what changed.

<comment><USER13> Did it change? That was for the base model which they won't be selling until next year, and including the German government incentive. [https://insideevs.com/news/406682/vw-id3-cost-compared- with-...](https://insideevs.com/news/406682/vw-id3-cost-compared-with-ice/)

<comment><USER14> It seems live that government incentive hit really good because the price I read beginning this year was around 40k€ in Germany while you get the Zoe for 21k (without incentive): [https://www.renault.de/elektrofahrzeuge/zoe/preise- versionen...](https://www.renault.de/elektrofahrzeuge/zoe/preise- versionen.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Zoe is, sadly, at the moment, the perfect anti-yellow-jacket car: no matter how much rebates the government will give you, you need to put so much cash on the table that it's completely unaffordable to those who might benefit from it the most (daily short-medium commutes between peripheral towns.)

Instead, it's bought by already-affluent upper middle-class, who then get to feel better about their carbon footprint, while also saving on gas ! (Which, don't get me wrong, is great !)

As the saying goes, "it takes a lot of money to be poor."

The situation will, hopefully, get better, when there is a second-hand market for EV, or much cheaper vehicles...

<comment><USER17> Here in the US, used Nissan Leafs run around $10K. We don't have much call for another car right now (our main car is a plug-in hybrid Chrysler minivan), but if we did, this would be a likely candidate.

<comment><USER18> I see endless Leafs for sale (the older original ones) for only $5k. Granted their batteries are pretty degraded and I'm sure only gets 60 miles of range when blasting AC or heater.

<comment><USER19> Actually a lot less, more like 30 miles. Worse if it's cold, hot or uphill. I've owned a couple of leafs.

The problem is kind of interesting - a smaller battery in and of itself is painful but there's a deeper problem. YOu have to spread the charge cycle over the whole battery and you have to do more charge cycles. So a Tesla can discharge different cells each day, and any individual cell gets used less frequently. With the leaf, you're using every cell, every day. So it's compounding and much worse than people realize, forgetting all the other problems like no thermal control on the pack.

I actually loved my leafs (leaves?) but they couldn't even get to the city and back very quickly (I mean after 6 months the battery loses a bar). The newer ones are betterish.

<comment><USER18> At 30 miles range I think I'd rather just take my ebike instead, which gets 24 miles at 30MPH with zero pedaling if I bring an extra battery.

<comment><USER17> 30 miles is what we get on a charge with our plugin hybrid minivan before it switches to gas. The last time we bought gas was 28 Feb. It tends to prefer gas in the winter which is a big part of why we bought gas then (looking back over the records, we normally buy a tank of gas once a month in the winter and maybe one more sometime in the summer unless we take a road trip).

<comment><USER18> I don't think I'd ever get a plug in hybrid - most of the appeal to electric cars for me in the lack of maintenance and lack of things to break. Adding batteries to a gas car just seems like it's doubling the amount that can go wrong and makes the repairs much more expensive.

<comment><USER20> Toyota plug-in hybrid cars are actually more reliable than comparable Tesla electric cars, despite the greater mechanical complexity.

[https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-3-vs-Toyota-Prius- Prim...](https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-3-vs-Toyota-Prius-Prime- reliability-comparison,1376-1393)

<comment><USER18> All I see here are two percentages and a happy face and a sad face. It doesn't really have anything compelling for me to see. And if I'm more likely to need to get a model 3 serviced for something like a panel gap, I'd gladly take that over the risk of total ICE failure on a Toyota. The website says nothing about the severity of the problems, and it's really just the severe ones I care about.

<comment><USER17> The plug-in hybrid is the non-plug-in hybrid with a bigger battery and an external charger. Before Toyota released their first plug-in model, this was a popular DIY hack. We had our non-plug-in Prius for ten years without a single problem before we sold it and bought the Pacifica. You're imagining an issue that doesn't exist. It's not some exotic technology, it's something that's been on the road for over two decades in its modern incarnation and has roots that extend back to the 19th century.

<comment><USER18> ICEs have a track record of decades of catastrophic failures due to major component failure. Water pumps, timing belts, gasket leaks, fuel contamination, the list goes on. I've only ever seen a few catastrophic Tesla failures and only because literally every single time it happens it makes the news. Your single data point doesn't mean a whole lot. I realize this comes across as abrasive but I don't meant for it to. Just being conversational

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That is probably because of the price, it is the cheapest of them all. I know many people that bought EVs already and the one thing they have in common is vast disposable income or they got it as a company car.

I have a car which I seldom use because I am located in a city and only use it to visit family or some groceries. Did cost 2000€ and has a life expectancy of around 5-8 years. It can go from A to B. I have no parking spot so I would never buy a new car. Wouldn't take a month to get bumps in it.

EVs need to do good on used car markets, otherwise they will remain a curiosity for the nearer future. But of course the cost for the battery life cycle could pose a significant problem. Renault offers battery leasing, which means people don't need to be afraid of it failing after a few years or very cold weather.

For a Zoe, I would still have to pay 30,000€. Convince me to spend 28,000€ more on a car. It isn't a status symbol for me, times have changed, I need to go from A to B.

<comment><USER22> Whichever company is the first to make a family EV with a +500km range for less than $20k will sell tens of millions of cars.

<comment><USER23> In the US most electric cars are charged on the driveway or in the garage. Most Europeans don't have these.

I'm generalizing of course, but it's a significant difference. Most folks I know would have to run a cable across the sidewalk. Electric is only going to work if all the supermarkets and pubs etc etc have fast chargers. Or maybe they put them into lamp posts.

<comment><USER24> Running electricity cables to streetside parking spaces and parking lots near apartment buildings is now considered key infrastructure that the EU governments are rolling out. It's slow at the moment, but we'll get there.

<comment><USER23> The scale is daunting...running new cables for probably more than half the households in the EU. Comparable to the effort to get fiber to the home.

<comment><USER25> In Europe at least regular outlet charging should be more viable than in the US. A typical installation is 230V with 16A breaker, which will charge a car twice as fast as typical 120V/15A installation. Thus, there is less pressing need to do installation upgrades for electric cars in Europe, running a long cord will be good enough most of the time.

<comment><USER26> 1 phase 16A is still not really good - only ~3.6 kW at best. But 230V still makes the cabling easier to handle and 3-phase power is common in residential buildings (at least in parts of Europe), so 11 kW (3x16A) or 22 kW (3x32A) are usual sizes for electric car chargers at homes.

Bigger restriction on that is how many people don't live in homes where they can just install a charger, but rather in apartments with either no charging or no dedicated parking at all.

<comment><USER25> Right, electric cars are too inconvenient for most apartment dwellers, but contrary to a popular impression, there are lots of Europeans who live in single family houses. Additionally, even residents of rural European areas are driving much less on average than rural Americans, simply because what counts for rural in most of Europe is already denser than rural America, especially in the west portion of it.

I think the biggest reason for relatively slow adoption of electric cars in Europe is simply that most European are significantly poorer than most Americans, while also having to pay high taxes and fees. Median household income in Mississippi is almost 50% higher than median household income in France, for example, and this is compounded by higher taxes in France.

<comment><USER23> Many live in single family homes, yes, but in the UK at least they very often have shared street parking across a pavement (a sidewalk). That is why I was thinking lampposts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The new 52kwh Zoe is pretty good, £25k for 200+ mile range.

Probably the cheapest 200+ mile EV in Europe right now.

The Tesla Model 3 is comparatively expensive due to importing. Cheapest Model 3 on the website is £40k. We're not even getting the Model Y until they build the german factory.

<comment><USER28> And that Tesla Model 3 price is not even so bad. The cheapest Model 3 (Standard Range Plus) here in Sweden is £50k/€55k/$65k.

The base Zoe, with the 52kWh battery, is £30k/€33/$39k.

I recently bought my first car and would've loved to go electric, but nothing with decent battery size and boot size in my budget yet. I got a Passat GTE Sportswagon for now. All trips inside Stockholm I can drive on pure electric so I'm still quite happy.

</comment></comment><comment> pi-rat Very interesting, the Zoe is all the way back on 7th place here in Norway (more than 50% of all new cars here are electric), I wonder why there's a big difference compared with "mainland Europe"..

Of all time: Leaf, Golf, i3, model S, Soul, Model 3, Zoe..

In 2020: E-tron, Golf, Leaf, Kona, Model 3, Soul, Zoe.

Could be because Zoe is a picky charger. It's made to AC charge on TN power nets, and Norway has quite a bit of IT power nets, some places you'll need a heavy transformer (size of a bucket) to charge it.

[https://elbilstatistikk.no](https://elbilstatistikk.no)

<comment><USER29> I wonder is it how the Zoe is viewed.

In most of Europe, I think it's viewed as the only Electric car that's competitive on price against Internal Combusion cars. For a bit more, an eco conscious person can get city car with good range.

In Norway, where as I understand all IC cars now are luxury cars due the taxation, the Zoe is just one of many EVs to choose from. If it was me, I'd choose a Kona or a e-Niro over a Zoe, but I cant afford them (If they were even ever in stock). At Kona e-Niro prices... in my country... I'd choose a sporty semi-luxury car... Maybe Zoe is just in that Niche in countries that aren't (yet) heavily taxing IC cars.

But it's probably about the cold weather performance. Other cars charge faster, and that's important (even psychologically) in Winter. Other cars are also more efficient per km, so you're getting hammered by both in Winter - <USER2> car that uses a lot of kw/h per km in good weather does even worse in snow/slush and wind, and then leave you at the charger for longer!

The orignally Zoe and ZE40 models weren't great either, I think they lacked heat pumps too (even worse cold weather performance!), but while I'm only seeing Renault heavily push the Zoe to regular folks now, maybe the Zoe brand name has already been tarnished in Norway?

<comment> pi-rat You could be right about that. Zoe is just one of many options. If you need the range you probably want a larger car as well (chargers are everywhere here, short range car for commutes isn't a problem.) Most other long range cars also have heat pumps and battery heater/coolers.

I've the Kona EV myself actually, great car. And to illustrate the ICE/EV price difference here, top specced it was slightly cheaper than a base model ICE Golf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not surprised - the Zoe is just a nice little everyday car ... not trying to be too much, just get the basics right of what a nomal driver needs.

I'm in the market for an EV next year and, if the competitors haven't stepped up their game, I'll get one.

No way will I buy a Tesla. Extremely bored of their brand and their online cult - very excited for alternatives. You can take your 0-60 and ... :)

<comment><USER31> Would the Zoe be your only car? Do you plan to do cross-country trips? If not, what would you consider other than a Tesla for long range trips (ignoring branding/marketing for a second)?

<comment> pi-rat Either go for a fast charging car, fastest Tesla moves 1000 km in 10h (incl charging), newest E-tron manages the same in 10h20m (Teslabjørn's tests).

Or go for something super efficient, like the Kias (Kona/Ioniq). Kona does 560 km on a single charge (64 kWh) in real life tests here in Norway.

<comment><USER32> Kona and Ioniq are Hyundai models.

<comment> pi-rat Haha, thanks! I was going to write the "Koreans" or "Kia/Hyundai" but apparently failed :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In the UK a Renault Zoe is about 30% cheaper than a Tesla Model 3 and is smaller and more urban. I.e. more in line with most cars you see everywhere in Europe.

It is also possible to lease the battery instead of buying it along with the car, which seems to be a popular option (although it seems they've removed the option, apparently).

<comment><USER31> A Zoe is a nice city car that sells well but only as a second car. It does not compete with the Model 3 which does replace ICE vehicles as a main car. You simply wouldn't do a cross-country trip in a Zoe -- say, from Belgium to the French Riviera -- so most families would need another vehicle (ICE, PHEV or long-range & fast charging Tesla).

They just don't share the same market. EV compete with ICEs alternative more than they compete with each others.

<comment><USER34> > You simply wouldn't do a cross-country trip in a Zoe -- say, from Belgium to > the French Riviera

What percentage of people actually do that at all regularly? I would have thought a lot of people would fly or take the train for that.

<comment><USER33> From what we see on European roads it's quite common for people in Belgium and the Netherlands to drive to Southern Europe for the summer holidays.

Usually these are big wagon cars, though because they need to fit the family and luggage in there. So I think that people will stick to ICE until there are family-sized EV with the range and the price range. Teslas are not really an option at the moment, IMO.

<comment><USER34> I don't doubt that _some_ people do it, but I would seriously doubt that everyone, or anything approaching everyone, does it. This would imply a much smaller market for small cars than actually exists.

So, yeah, the Zoe wouldn't be suitable for those people, but it might be suitable for people who buy small cars anyway (which is most of the market, AFAIK).

<comment><USER33> Obviously a lot of people take the train or fly. I'm just saying that a lot of people drive, as well. I'm not sure EVs are ready for this sort of trip in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I ordered one :D. I love the size of the car, it's small enough to navigate in a town and AC charging speed is high (22 kw, no one else, besides a SMART offers this in this price range). I can't charge at home (as I live in an appartment in the city) and I don't want to wait 6 hours for a full charge. Fast chargers ( >= 50kw) inside towns in Germany are (still) rare and there are more 22kw chargers available around me, also free ones at supermarkets. I occasionally drive more then 500 km, but maybe 3 times per year, and then I would propably take the train anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes the new Zoe is a good EV, can do some long distance but is limited by its 50 kW DC charger. Peugeot e-208 has 100 kW so a bit better for the same price range.

Zoe is also a nice proof of battery price drop, Renault kept the price constant but battery capacity went from 22 kWh to 52 kWh

[https://www.electrive.com/2019/07/01/new-battery-old- price-u...](https://www.electrive.com/2019/07/01/new-battery-old-price- updated-renault-zoe-in-germany/)

</comment><comment><USER36> IMO the real sleeper of the EV race has been Kia. They've been serving up reasonably priced, practical EVs with decent ranges for years now to very little fanfare.

</comment><comment><USER37> My wife has one of these and she absolutely loves it. I've only driven it a few times but seems like a great car. Price is really good too.

</comment><comment><USER38> They're building some good experience in the field. Renault made quite a revolution years ago when they introduced the Twizy, which to me was the perfect small car for commuting. Unfortunately it was ahead of its time, mainly due to the high costs of the car itself and the batteries, sold either as a product or as a service, so despite its minimalist appearance it was out of reach for normal office workers who would also need a bigger traditional car for their families. As a 100% motorcycle rider, if I had to buy a car today, I would choose the smallest possible one anyway; over here in the EU most modern cities are built on, or around, historical ancient ones where roads were made just for horses and carriages, and when a road is surrounded by buildings of historical importance, which is almost always the case in city centers, no way they're demolished to make a bigger road, so small cars are a must.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would expect Toyota or Nissan to be in the top spot, though not sure if they count hybrids or only fully electric cars.

As fore Renault, are we sure these numbers are not driven be some big purchases of some (French) car rental companies for their fleets? It would make perfect sense especially in France.

I'd really like to see which countries contributed to this success of Renault and in what countries it holds the top place.

EDIT: at least in Germany it's tight victory for electric Golf over Zoe - <USER3> vs 7066 cars sold in first half 2020, third place far behind Tesla Model 3 with 4367 cars, in UK is winning Tesla, in France Zoe [https://www.best- selling-cars.com/germany/latest-germany-bes...](https://www.best-selling- cars.com/germany/latest-germany-best-selling-electric-car-brands-and-models/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Model 3 is great in the US, but here people prefer BMWs because of more service locations and much better service (we can get new parts easily from Germany, don't need to wait for parts from the U.S.), and pay extra costs from importing from outside E.U.

The Berlin factory will help with all of these problems.

<comment><USER33> From what I hear, for the same price range BMWs, Mercedes, etc. are also much better quality than Teslas.

<comment><USER40> In terms of quality of finish and materials, yes. But those are status differentiators rather than functional differences and the Tesla brand name has a status all of its own so they appeal to people with slightly different preferences around status signalling.

<comment><USER33> Quality is definitely not a status differentiator. The brand is. Usually higher price goes hand in hand with better quality, because that's what is expected of a more expensive car for quite obvious reasons.

<comment><USER40> If the quality is functional, then it's not a status differentiator. If it's just about appearance, then it is. The interior materials in a BMW of a similar price are more expensive, more "premium", and the tolerances in the way the interior is assembled are tighter but none of those things affect how the car functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is a great car! We have the original version (same car but smaller battery) and it still runs so good after 4 years or so. Love driving it. It's a perfect car for day to day needs around the city/shopping/commute but I also love going on longer trips of 200+ KM.

Always a new discovery of different places thanks to the need to charge. Runs about 150 KM on a single charge on eco mode so when we go on a longer trip we find a nice and interesting place to have a break and explore while it charges.

</comment><comment><USER42> The Zoe has a short range in part because when it was first designed batteries were relatively low in power density and very high in prices. When batteries improved on both of these, the range was upgraded.

Battery density and prices are going to continue to improve, and so we can expect the Zoe will be upgraded in the future. And the battery progress means that larger and longer-range cars will become affordable to a broader public in Europe and elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER43> Citroën AMI might be a killer electric city car. It comes at 6k euros with 45km/h and 70km range.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/28/21157346/citroen-ami- elec...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/28/21157346/citroen-ami-electric-car- light-quadricycle-two-seater-rental-buy-online)

</comment><comment><USER44> Let's hope Tesla builds a cyberbug. Stainless to last forever, tiny and cheap as chips.

</comment><comment><USER45> Sadly the Zoe is just a little to small. It may be an attempt to keep the weight down, but the interior of the Zoe is just a little shorter than that of the Clio, meaning that I can't physically fit my legs behind the wheel.

</comment><comment><USER46> I know about a dealership that sold 50 Zoes in a day last month. And they are located in a small city in Germany, almost rural. I can only imagine how much they are selling in bigger cities.

</comment><comment><USER47> Tesla will only really start competing in Europe once their factory is up and running. It messes with their financials to have lots of vehicles being transported. That should give them some high volume but the cars are still not perfect for the European market, but at least they should make a good margin.

It will probebly be 2 more years before they have a 'small' car for Europe and China in production. Only then they will really compete with the shorter range city cars.

<comment><USER48> Even worse, they have to pay 12% taxes on any imported Tesla (10% import duty + 20% VAT on the duty)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> and it's not a Leaf!

<comment><USER50> It's actually surprisingly hard to buy a leaf here - Nissan isn't a popular brand. Renaults are everywhere though - Clio is one of the most popular cars outside DACH region and Zoe being is its electric counterpart.

<comment><USER51> DACH is Germany (D), Austria (A), Switzerland (CH) by the way.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_German_speakers#DACH_countries)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Zoe is not a car where you would want to carry rear-seat passengers very often. I'd compare it more with a Fiat 500e that ID.3 or the Leaf.

<comment><USER53> Maybe not adult passengers every day, but it's more or less the same as the previous generation of Clio inside, which is the standard workhorse for damilies of 2 adults + 2 kids across europe

<comment><USER54> 2 kids and one in a car seat fit in the back of mine.</comment></comment></comment>


Socioeconomic Inequalities in Disability-free Life Expectancy in Older People - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gerona/glz266/5698372 <comment><USER2> 100 years ago the difference in life expectancy between the wealthy and the working class was narrower.

With the much larger body of knowledge today around health & wellness combined with the fast growing anti-aging sector, the wealthy can afford lifestyle & healthcare options previously unavailable.

Here's a Machiavellian question:

What does the National balance sheet look like if intervention leads to life expectancy of the poor matching that of the wealthy?

Is it a net positive or a net negative?

If it's net negative, then will anything be done to change it or will it be conveniently ignored?

As price drops and efficacy grows for anti-aging lifestyle & active treatment options, surely it's going to start having non negligible impact on the national balance sheet.

I wonder what contribution the relative physicality of employment( occupational health & safety risk) has on this result?

And can that be comparative physiological wear and tear be substantively changed?

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't editorialize titles. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Submitted title was "Richest people in US andUK live 7-9 years longer without disability than poorest".

<comment><USER4> You've inverted the meaning though. Actual title is "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Disability-free Life Expectancy in Older People from England and the United States", which may be too long for HN, but presents a very different impression of what the study may be about.

Perhaps "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Disability-free Life Expectancy in Older People in US and UK" would be better?

<comment><USER3> HN's title limit is 80 chars, but I've taken the largest prefix of that. Thanks!

We don't have time to look closely enough at every article to gauge this sort of thing, but are always happy when readers do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The study doesn't seem to do much to attempt to disentangle cause and effect. Poor health can be both a cause and a consequence of poverty and there are correlations between traits that tend to lead to better health and to better career outcomes. These are quite complicated things to separate but this study doesn't really seem to even try.</comment>


Ask HN: Multi-tenancy in software vs. infrastructure for SaaS - <AUTHOR> What would be the best approach to be multi-tenant for $100k+ customers using your SaaS? (around 500 customers at scale)<p>Should you build your platform to be multi-tenant? or should you just run the whole stack separate for each customer in something like Kubernetes namespace and build an interface to easily create such environments? <comment><USER2> Recent thread but focus on the db side:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305111)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really awesome! thanks for this :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you expect to continue to scale, the multi-tenancy should be in software.

One reason is overhead. Each instance of the system will have overhead, and as you scale to more and more customers, that overhead will eat up your profits. If it's a well-engineered multi-tenant system, you won't have this issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with multi tenant software is the overall complexity which should also translate to cost . Also releases requires having to keep adding feature flags/config.

I'm a bit afraid that this may lead to a very brittle software/architecture in long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Both are valid. It depends on the footprint, type of SaaS (e.g. running complex offline-processing vs running heavily customized web-shops), your PII regulations and your ideal customer type and size.

It can be easier to have custom subdomains running separate instances, since this will limit how outages/upgrades/security affect customers. You also can intentionally keep a customer on an old version, which can be a bug or a feature.

But it can also be easier to have tenants, since you can update all users at the same time and you will pay less overall for infrastructure.

Having done both, I personally prefer tenants since it's easier to write, support and scale. But if you're B2B, you should carefully investigate the other option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently have a mix of both. Mostly shared but some dedicated for only the ones who absolutely needs it (majorly due to regulatory restrictions).

However, like you said separate instances is easier to setup but I'm afraid of the extra management hassle of managing 500 different instances (including different micro-services, DBs, etc)

Multi tenancy has introduced a lot of config flags to enable/disable features for different customers - since they wont all agree to switch at the same time.

Both approaches have their pros/cons. I'd love to find a place to read about people's experience like you with both approaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You will need both. Cloud is for on boarding, enterprise is on prem. So build your cloud where ever and how ever, don't expect it to make money, prepare to deploy in all major clouds, and then take in the EE dollars.

Kubernetes is a great choice here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even on cloud - What do you think about running shared infrastructure (multi tenancy) vs running every customer on separate instance managed by us?

<comment><USER5> Multi-tenancy k8s is popular, but requires some protections to be in place and then you have to calc billing. Separate is easier for both security and billing, but requires more management you get in k8s. It also depends on what multi-tenancy actually means to your product, business, and customrts

<comment><AUTHOR> In my case specifically, the product is logistics operation management software with different types of users like operations team, drivers, customer support etc. The product automates pickup, routing, delivery of packets etc. So it's an operational heavy product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that 100k monthly or annually? Also how much data is that for each customer ?

<comment><AUTHOR> $100k Annually per customer on avg. Around 3 months of our customer's Data is 200GB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify this is 200GB per customer.

<comment><USER6> so every 3 months you collect 200GB of data... do you need to keep that data around forever or like 12 months you'll have around 800 GB per customer... Maybe ec2 api to spin up specific customer db then... seems worth it... but also maybe look into ways to reduce that data size...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This Album Changed My Life and Career Path:ATCQ 25th Year Re Release - <AUTHOR> http://ambrosiaforheads.com/2015/09/a-tribe-called-quest-are-releasing-a-special-25th-anniversary-edition-of-their-debut-album/ <comment><AUTHOR> A Tribe Called Quest is a seminal group in Hip Hop History. Without their production, we would not have a Pharrell Williams or Kanye West.</comment>


Facebook moves into the classroom - <AUTHOR> http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/9/25/facebookMovesIntoTheClassroom

<comment><USER2> Also see this discussion:

[http://weblog.fortnow.com/2007/08/impact-of-facebook- platfor...](http://weblog.fortnow.com/2007/08/impact-of-facebook-platform-on- cs.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I go about getting T&C's for my new startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm bootstrapping a company and have landed some customers, but need T&C's to present to their legal departments.  What's the best way to go about creating T&C's and a Privacy Statement for my new company? <comment><USER2> Consult a lawyer, of course. You could pull in the T&Cs from firms that seem similar to yours, analyze them, learn a bit about contract law, and aggregate them to match your preferences, but the cost of the time you'll have to spend is quite likely to exceed the cost of getting a lawyer to modify some boilerplate to your particular needs.

You could also consider looking for a legal team member or mentor that could either contribute directly or steer you towards an attorney experienced in this space. As I've said for a while, having a plan for your legal needs is just as important as having one for server infrastructure etc. There are more legal grads than there are legal jobs at present so this might a good time to seek a business-minded cofounder with legal training.

If you're not sure where to start, call the bar association in your state and ask for a referral. You could also consult DIY legal texts such as the NOLO series, which are often quite well written and helpful, but knowing nothing about your business it's very hard to say how well or badly they'd fit your needs. Also, they're mainly aimed at consumers so I don't know if they'll cut it for B2B stuff.

The Small Business Administration has general resources: [http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting- ma...](http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing- business/managing-business/business-law-regulations) or this affordable book provides an excellent introduction to the general principles of business law and the sort of situations any business owner should be prepared to encounter (the whole series is good in fact): [http://www.amazon.com/Business-Law- Barrons-Review-Series/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Business-Law-Barrons- Review-Series/dp/0764142402)</comment>


Show HN: Software Developer's Journey Podcast - <AUTHOR> http://podcast.devjourney.info <comment><AUTHOR> The purpose of this podcast is to get inside the head of amazing coders, speakers, architects, thought leaders, agilists and much more, and listen to the fascinating stories of their journeys!

It is built up as a discussion, following the flow of their tales, the forks and bumps they lived through and of course the successes they had on the way.

I'd love to get your feedback on this project of mine!

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting. I hate that it's not getting more attention on HN.</comment></comment>


Show HN: YouFM - A new way to listen to music on Youtube  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youfm.org <comment><AUTHOR> A little background: <http://ashraful.me/?p=7>

<comment><USER2> >YouFM is a simple music streaming site that searches Spotify for the data and then plays the music video from Youtube.

No wonder it couldn't find anything for most of the artists I tried, then, despite a whole lot of their stuff being on YouTube... And for the one it did, the song matching seemed incredibly spotty (try searching for Huoratron and playing the song A699F, for example).

Some other feedback: You should probably add some tooltips (I assume the circling arrow on the far right of the bottom bar is for "repeat" but it'd be nice to have a tooltip confirm the assumption), and for some reason the volume slider seems pretty unresponsive - you need to hit it in a rather exact spot to set the volume automatically to a specific level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually in the next update, I'll add direct results from youtube for searches that doesn't return anything from Spotify. I just have to figure out how to get the song metadata in a meaningful way for those.

<comment><USER3> Have you taken a look at <http://www.discogs.com/developers/> ?

<comment><USER4> also last.fm: <http://www.last.fm/api> and musicbrainz: [http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development/XML_Web_Service/Versi...](http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development/XML_Web_Service/Version_2/Search)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Good stuff. I'm giving it a try. I like to listen to a wide variety of music and like to give things a good number of listens before I part with my money. I like the idea of sourcing from YouTube as it takes all the guess work out of what is legal and what isn't (as least from a listener point of view) so I can focus on listening. So thanks for building this.

The Playlist seems a bit dodgy. There is no indicator that the item was added. After I added something (and didn't get confirmation) I went to the playlist to see if it added... but it said it was empty. So I went back and added it again. Again, no indicator and still showed as empty. So I went back and added a different song. And now the playlist has 2 items (the first one I tried to add twice and the second one). So I removed one item... and now the playlist says it is empty again. I added another song and now it says two again. So it seems there is something wrong with the count to determine if a playlist is empty or not. And without the indicator that something was added, I was quite confused.

I think it would be cool if you could incorporate some way to link to somewhere to buy songs/albums. Not sure how others feel about that. But if I was going to buy something, I'd gladly click through an affiliate link to support the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, there are some quirks with the UI particularly the BackboneJS bits. I'll be fixing them soon.

I'm holding off on the monetization stuff (buy songs) until I can work out all the bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't work if you type something with a space in it. For example, typing "Municipal Waste" gives you an error page, and the URL looks like this:

<http://www.youfm.org/#/search/municipal> waste

<comment><AUTHOR> It does work actually. Although when you share the link the space messes up the hyperlink, I should probably turn spaces into "+"s.

If you're getting an error that says "Oops something went wrong", thats something that pops up now and again (Can't figure out why). Refresh the page and it should work.

<comment><USER6> Hello,

Got the "oops somethign went wrong" error on my first search.

Searched for "Hoodie Allen", and did not work. When I added underscores in the link, it worked. Searched again from the home page with the same term and it worked..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well done! I think I'll use this. A few suggestions:

\- You should add custom page titles for each album, search result, etc. It's hard to figure out what's what in the Back menu in my browser because they're all the same.

\- Would be nice to have a way to drag multiple songs, or an entire album into a playlist.

\- When dragging, droppable zones (playlists) should highlight, and when hovering over them the highlight should get even stronger so I know it's ready to be dropped.

\- History doesn't seem to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestions, I'll definitely make these improvements. I also need to make some improvements to the UI (didn't get a chance to test it properly outside chrome on osx, seems to have a lot of annoyances on other browsers and platforms)

Ctrl click or Cmd click should let you select multiple songs that you can then drag onto playlists.

<comment><USER7> Cool, thanks. I guess I tried to use shift. Might also be nice to let me drag an album name and include all the songs if I do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks nice! Looks a lot like Youtify though, which is open source and welcoming contributors.

<http://www.youtify.com/>

<comment><USER9> Awesome site, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. I made something similar awhile back and been meaning to update it. It allows you to search by artists and then see all of their albums and you can easily add an entire album to a playlist.

Click "Album/Artist" search. Or youtube search to search like you normally would on Youtube.

<http://tunesicles.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> "Oops something went wrong!"

If anyone is seeing then same error and wants to make some quick youtube playlists while waiting for youfm.org to overcome the "HN spike" you could check out my little thing at <http://www.cueyoutube.com/> :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I started working for a company late last year involved with providing an online radio experience. We tackle the same problem of providing a seamless music listening experience.

<http://www.earbits.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks alright, a bit off putting the picture of Bonno at the start, but heh ho.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice UI. Please fix the issue when a song is blocked by copyright holders. In Germany it happens a lot and then a player just keeps retrying to play a song.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's a similar rough thing I made but it uses last fm data : <http://fmix.heroku.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> I have made something similar, but not as finish.. :D<http://songbird.apphb.com>

</comment><comment><USER17> You have a competitor, in case you hadn't already noticed: <http://www.tubalr.com>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Youfm was actually (partly) inspired by Tubalr back when it was first launched (almost 3 years ago I think).

<comment><USER18> Glad to have inspired you :). Tubalr was launched Sept 12, 2010. Just curious, how are you able to embed vevo videos?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a german music radio station by that name. If you get popular with this you should check what kind of trademarks they have.

</comment><comment><USER20> YouFM v1: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4404007>

<comment><USER21> Missed it the first time, I am almost glad it was reposted.

<comment><AUTHOR> More info: <http://ashraful.me/?p=7>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice site, one of the nicest looking youtube streaming sites. Good clean UI.

You need a favicon though, was hard tot find it amongst all my tabs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Its a nice project but I was wondering if there's any larger objective to this than just creating this for the sake of it

</comment><comment><USER24> It doesn't like Beethoven apparently and says "oops something went wrong", same goes for Moonlight Sonata.

<comment><AUTHOR> That error comes up randomly (internal server error). Not sure why it happens or how to prevent it.

I ran a search for "Moonlight Sonata" and got results just fine: <http://www.youfm.org/#/search/Moonlight> Sonata

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Simple and responsive UI, I like this site. Please add favicon for easier bookmark navigation.

</comment><comment><USER26> How do you solve authentication considering it's run against a backend on a different domain?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its not on a different domain. Everything's on youfm.org which is hosted on heroku.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very nicely done. Feature suggestion: importing playlists from other services, e.g. Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't know what's going on anymore. I can't get it to NOT play 2 songs simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's nice, but how is this different than from any other yt player out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> The interface is better for listening to music (I hope). Also, the search is run on Spotify so you only get music results.

<comment><USER30> Good idea using Spotify to get metadata. I did something similar a few years ago, mine was a bit different in that instead of searching for a specific artist you get different channels you can watch, similar to MTV. One of the issues I had then was that you don't just get the official videos in results for popular songs [0], how do you solve that?

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=PJ+%26+Duncan+Le...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=PJ+%26+Duncan+Lets+Get+Ready+To+Rhumble)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't. I simply play the first result that youtube returns.

For more obscure artists/songs or for those with generic names, YouFM might play the wrong video if Youtube returns the wrong result. I'm not sure if there's any way to fix it except crowd-sourced curation.

<comment><USER31> > I don't. I simply play the first result that youtube returns.

I had thought of a similar idea to what this website does (using song metadata from a cleaned source like Spotify and then play the song through YouTube).

The way I'd imagined doing the song to YouTube mapping was through crowdsourcing - you could rank the YouTube results for each song based on number of listens and votes on your website. By default you would play the top ranked video for a song, but allow users to see alternate video links (probably hidden behind menus) and play those instead if they want (or if they have accounts, you could allow users to individually mark a video as being their preference for a particular song, etc.), probably also incorporating these plays into your ranking. You could also use crowdsourcing for further metadata about the video - e.g., some music videos have long intros/outros that you wouldn't necessarily want to hear when you're just listening to music, so you could allow people to submit and vote on start/end times for the 'song' part of the music video.

Anyway, I really like the interface! It's much cleaner than any other attempt at this I've seen.

Edit: I missed your mention of crowdsourcing at the end of your post, whoops - sounds like you've probably already thought of most/all the ideas in this post :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I did consider making the exact process you described for videos. Held off on it to launch earlier. Maybe in the next version I'll finally add this.

I'm primarily a designer (just learning to code php and ruby) so I'm happy that you liked the interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> in all honesty its similar to grooveshark. There are so many of these types of sites and my issue is just that I don't want to keep searching and creating playlists.

</comment><comment><USER33> I feel this will be shutdown before the end of the week.

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason for it to be shutdown. All music videos are from Youtube (provided legally by the original artists, their labels or Vevo) and I followed Youtube's requirement of not hiding the video player when playing songs (which a lot of similar sites do, and is against Youtube's TOS)

<comment><USER34> Is this the smallest allowable size you can make the videos legally?

<comment><AUTHOR> 200px by 200px is the smallest allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Beautiful site :) Really well done on the UI/UX side.

</comment><comment><USER36> Are you planning on making a mobile friendly version?

<comment><AUTHOR> It should work on mobile devices, although a few tweaks in the CSS is needed to make the UI adapt properly. I'll make those in the coming weeks.

If I find people using the site regularly, I'll create a mobile app for it.

<comment><USER36> I'm sure with this been on front page HN it will gain some traction =P Also although the site loads find on an iPad..it seems to be very off. Just FYI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I really like the idea :) Interface looks great.

</comment><comment><USER38> Make a turntable.fm for YouTube videos.

<comment><USER19> That already exists. It's called <http://plug.dj>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> how did you manage to remove the ads? and how long did it take to implements ? BTW impressive project!!

</comment><comment><USER40> I am trying to use it but the "working" image is still spinning. Anyway, what happens when /if Youtube shuts you down? Google is getting into streaming music and has Play so they might consider you a competitor.

I am hoping that you have a plan B and didn't spend all your time and savings in this.

<comment><USER41> Buzzkill</comment></comment>


Tim Berners-Lee and the Toilet Paper Protocol - <AUTHOR> http://darrennix.com/tim-berner-lee-thoughts-on-the-toilet-paper-p

<comment><USER2> Related: a 1984 paper by Knuth, "The Toilet Paper Problem".

<http://www.jstor.org/pss/2322567>

<comment><USER3> for those who encounter a paywall: <http://lts.cr/bzJ> to direct dl the pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Donald Norman (of The Design of Everyday Things fame) talks about the various strategies for this in his newest book, Living With Complexity. It's an interesting problem because it turns out enough people follow the antisocial strategy of taking from the larger roll (what Berners-Lee calls K in his protocol) that both rolls will often run out within short intervals of each other (less than µ).

Norman proposes the strategy of "nearest roll first" instead of "smallest roll first", which is an easier strategy to accommodate through toilet paper dispenser design. Many public stalls hide the spare roll inside a contraption for this purpose.

<comment><USER5> I'd go for the smaller one because of physics. It has a smaller moment of inertia, and so less force is required to pull out an adequate length of paper.

When I attempt to pull out a proper amount to cover my fat programmer's butt there is a significant breakage problem with large rolls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've met Tim a few times, this doesn't sound like something he would write. But whether it is or isn't, it is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER7> Tim's email address is firstname.lastname@example.com. Is this faked?

<comment><USER8> Its Tim Berners-Lee, of course he has a w3 email address. And yes, that is the real one.

<comment><USER7> I know he has a w3 email address -- I've just never seen him use timb@w3 -- always timbl@w3.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Human domain idea needed for new social network. - <AUTHOR> I've spent some weeks developing a new social network to make connecting with friends much more "personal". Now looking for a stellar name to compliment what I've built.
My theme is something like "Built for You" or "For humans. By humans." The goal was to build a social directory site focused on connecting real friends, business associates and other groups using a few simple layers instead of placing everyone in the "friend" category.
Example: Everyone you know is a "contact". Some of those are friends, some are associates and some and almost strangers. I need a name that reflects natural relationships. "TheHumanFriend.com" is too long and too redundant. Any ideas? <comment><USER3> Circles :-p

Seriously, a good name is the cornerstone of your branding, and there are services that charge _many_ thousand$ to develop the right one and make sure it's not already someone else's trademark etc.. Offer a reward - <USER2> necessarily monetary, but put up some value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, excellent idea! I think I'll try outsourcing this project first to one of those crowd-sourcing sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't necessarily need to have a domain name that means or provide meaning as the theme of your website. Basically, you can chose any domain that you think is good to pronounce and spell and may not offend.

</comment><comment><USER5> > using a few simple layers instead of placing everyone in the "friend" > category. So basically Circles in Google+?

<comment><AUTHOR> Close but not exactly. My product takes the layers concept (also known as groups, circles or tribes) a bit more seriously. Instead of using layers as a way to organize people, what I've developed will place users into distinct categories with certain "rights" automatically.

Sorry I can't be less vague but think about it as a "citizenship" of sorts. Once born in a country, you'll always be of that country no matter how much you change your labels. Groups and circles simply haven't done what people desire for their social tools. Hope that makes sense...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> morequaintance.com

withregard.com ($1200 on godaddy)

incrowdly.com

Confero.us (I own this)

</comment><comment><USER7> Tribes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, yes. My network simply makes it dead easy to have your "contacts" in the right "tribes" with the right privacy settings from the start.

Honestly, people have been complaining about security on social networks since the beginning. Its been solved on paper (with all the "available" settings) but I'm solving it for real users in real life.</comment></comment>


A Moon of Saturn Has a Sea, Scientists Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/science/space/a-moon-of-saturn-has-a-sea-scientists-say.html?hp&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The last paragraph is good writing.

 _The challenges are to make sure that the interesting particles would not break apart, to take precautions that any alien life would not infect Earth, and to fit it into the $500 million budget of one of NASA's lower-cost planetary missions._

It frames it all beautifully. Engineering feats solving problems you don't quite understand. Sci fi potential. Budgetary drudgery.

</comment><comment><USER3> If there is an sea on Enceladus then there will already be microbial life there [0]. Microbes can survive for ages in space [1] and there are plenty of rocks moving from the earth and all of the other planets and moons of the solar system [0,2].

One of the more interesting stories about microbes in space is that some survived on the moon for almost three years inside a camera [3]. It is not 100% certain that the microbes cultured were not from later contamination, but I know from working with them that microbes are really tough and I can believe that they could have survived!

[0] [http://users.tpg.com.au/horsts/transpermia.html](http://users.tpg.com.au/horsts/transpermia.html)

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19854226](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19854226)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reports_of_Streptococcus_mitis_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reports_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_Moon)

<comment><USER4> Transpermia seems like a theory rather than a fact. While I think you're _probably_ correct, it's better to be ultra-conservative on questions like this.

<comment><USER3> Of course it is only a theory, but a very plausible one given the frequency of rock transfer between planets and the toughness of microbes that allow them to survive in space for long time periods (both empirical facts).

There is really no way of proving transpermia - even if we to travel to Enceladus and found microbial life there how would we ever prove how it got there.

<comment><USER5> If we find DNA based microbial life it could certainly be amazing evidence in favor of transpermia. We would at least compare to DNA on earth and analyze similarities. Even plant and animal DNA are very similar (double helix shape)

<comment><USER3> Actually the easiest way to find life is to just look for DNA (or even better RNA) in the environment of interest. This is basically the way life is found in some of the amazing environments here on earth like the "lost city [0] or far under the earth [1].

Because of the technical simplicity and sensitivity of looking for DNA, any probe sent to any planet or moon would look for DNA first, basically assuming transpermia is true.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_City_(hydrothermal_field)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_City_\(hydrothermal_field\))

[1] [http://aem.asm.org/content/74/1/143.full](http://aem.asm.org/content/74/1/143.full)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool shot of the ice jets from 2005: [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091124.html](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091124.html)

Plus NASA's actual release about the sea: [http://science.nasa.gov/science- news/science-at-nasa/2014/03...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science- at-nasa/2014/03apr_deepocean/)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Dr. Tsou devised a way to capture comet particles and bring them back to Earth for NASA's Stardust mission and has been suggesting a similar method for a spacecraft that would fly through Enceladus' plumes and then return to Earth for scientists to examine.

The challenges are to make sure that the interesting particles would not break apart, to take precautions that any alien life would not infect Earth, and to fit it into the $500 million budget of one of NASA's lower-cost planetary missions."

Why bring it back to earth? Wouldn't it be safer & less expensive to return it to ISS instead, (or is that what's implied) ?

Didn't know the carbon & nitrogen part of the story, read the article thinking only 1 thing: "when are you going to mention Europa".

<comment><USER8> > Why bring it back to earth? Wouldn't it be safer & less expensive to return > it to ISS instead, (or is that what's implied) ?

No, that would involve a very complicated and expensive breaking maneuver to slow down the spacecraft, not to mention getting in exactly the right orbit to rendezvous with the ISS. It's much, much easier to just the payload sturdy enough to survive atmospheric entry and a crash landing.

<comment><USER9> Expensive breaking is precisely what they're trying to avoid!

(Sorry, normally I wouldn't nitpick spelling when the meaning is clear, it was just a funny error!)

<comment><USER8> Hah! I had to reread twice to spot the mistake. That's too awesome; I'm going to leave it as-is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is amusingly relevant to my life:

 _Dr. McKay, who was not involved with gravity measurements, noted that only Enceladus was known to possess the four essential ingredients for life, at least as it exists on Earth: liquid water, energy, carbon and nitrogen.

"I would say it's our best bet," he said.

Mars has a dearth of nitrogen, found in amino acids and proteins, and the surface today is dry and cold. Europa, which also possesses an under-ice ocean, may have all of the ingredients, but that has not been confirmed._

Amusingly, I have Europa as a colony in a comic I write. In mentioning this elsewhere just now, a physicist has suggested this resource to me: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_in_fiction#Comics_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_in_fiction#Comics_and_animation)

I shall have to learn yet more about our solar system so I can make up dumb bs for humor's sake.

(Not that I expect anyone here to really care. I am just cracking up over this.)

</comment><comment><USER11> "They found that the moon's gravity was weaker at the south pole. At first glance, that is not so surprising; there is a depression at the pole, and lower mass means less gravity. But the depression is so large that the gravity should actually have been weaker."

They found the gravity was weaker.. but it should actually have been weaker. So is it weaker or stronger?

<comment><USER12> I think that they mean that they gravity should have been even weaker than it was.

      * There's a depression -> gravity weaker.
      * Less of a difference than expected from the depression size -> something denser
      * Water is denser than ice, and in a known relation -> size/volume of lake.

<comment><USER13> A bit more on this, from the abstract at [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6179/78](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6179/78):

"We determined the quadrupole gravity field of Enceladus and its hemispherical asymmetry using Doppler data from three spacecraft flybys. Our results indicate the presence of a negative mass anomaly in the south-polar region, largely compensated by a positive subsurface anomaly compatible with the presence of a regional subsurface sea at depths of 30 to 40 kilometers and extending up to south latitudes of about 50°.

And a little more on methodology, from the full article:

"The design of the Cassini spacecraft does not allow radio tracking from Earth during remote-sensing observations. Therefore, only 3 of the 19 flybys of Enceladus completed so far have been used for gravity measurements. In these close encounters, the spacecraft was continuously tracked from ground antennas while flying within 100 km of the moon's surface, twice above the southern hemisphere (in the flybys labeled E9 and E19) and once over the northern hemisphere (E12). We determined Enceladus' quadrupole gravity field and degree-3 zonal harmonic coefficient J3 from measurements of spacecraft range- rate.

And further detail on the effects modeled:

"Microwave links between the onboard transponder and ground stations of NASA's Deep Space Network enabled precise measurements of the spacecraft range-rate. In addition to gravitational forces, our analysis accounts for the main nongravitational accelerations, most notably neutral particle drag exerted by the substantial gas plume formed by the jets of the south-polar region. Flying by the moon at latitudes below –70°, the spacecraft interacts with the plume at distances of up to 500 km from Enceladus' surface..."

Amazing results. They're flying ~100 km from the moon's surface, while at a distance of 1.3 billion km. And getting very accurate velocities due to the mighty Doppler effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting! Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER15> why did you not just say Enceladus? Surely HN doesn't need reductionist titles.

<comment><USER16> It's against the current guidelines that say that you should use the exact title, but I don't like this part of the guidelines. (But there are some horror stories of heavy editorialized titles.)

On the other hand I didn't know Enceladus until today. (I fist thought the story was about Titan.)

My preferred title for the HN submission would be "Enceladus, A Moon of Saturn, Has a Sea" or "A Moon of Saturn [Enceladus] Has a Sea".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings there. Oh, and stay off Enceladus too."

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.</comment>


Which Country Ex President Joyce Banda Belongs To? - <AUTHOR> Which country Ex President Joyce Banda belongs to? <comment><USER2> Malawi, why? You could just google it.</comment>


Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition - <AUTHOR> https://jackschaedler.github.io/handwriting-recognition/ <comment><USER2> This a cool exploration of technology, and I don't want to take away from that.

> The program was efficient enough to run in real-time on a IBM System/360 > computer, and robust enough to properly identify _90 percent_ of the symbols > drawn by first-time users.

I just want to point out that 90% accuracy is, from a user's point of view, _awful_ handwriting recognition performance. It means you will be correcting on average about 10 words per paragraph! Even 99% percent accuracy is not nearly good enough to give people a sense that the computer is good at handwriting recognition.

I also want to point out the difficulty and danger in interpreting strokes when doing handwriting recognition.

In the last demo box, try writing a capital Y without lifting the pen. You'll have to go "up and down" one or both upper branches. Because of this, the recognizer will call it a K, A, or N even though it is obviously a Y when you're done.

This demo is constrained to only using one stroke per letter, but systems that permit multiple strokes still get into trouble when the strokes don't match what they are expecting--for example if you draw an X using 4 individual strokes outward from a central point.

This also happens with words. In Microsoft's handwriting recognition in Office in the early 2000s, writing the letters of a word out of order completely borked the recognition. For example writing "xample" and then going back and adding an "e" at the beginning would not produce a recognized word of "example."

My point with all of this is that there is a reason you probably don't do all your computing with natural handwriting. It's a surprisingly difficult problem. Users do not expect it to matter how they form letters and words on the page. And they have very low tolerance for correcting computer mistakes.

<comment><USER3> > This demo is constrained to only using one stroke per letter, but systems > that permit multiple strokes still get into trouble when the strokes don't > match what they are expecting--for example if you draw an X using 4 > individual strokes outward from a central point.

Arguably, an X drawn this way should NOT be recognized as an X--that's not how an X is spelled.

If the task is communicating with the computer, then recognition of the gesture is a valid approach. Just as there are conventions regarding the spelling of words, there are conventions involved in the formation of letters. Why not use them? It would even seem incorrect to leave these out.

<comment><USER2> The human convention of written language it to interpret the symbols after they have been completed, not during the act of writing them.

A computer that interprets the behavior of writing, rather than the final symbols, is going to violate user expectations at some point.

Why? Because people do not always write as linearly as you might expect, especially when writing fast. They might drop or mis-write letters or words, then go back and fix it. Or quickly jot down just enough letters to remind themselves of what they heard, then go back and fill the rest in. A routine that interprets actions in order is going to have a hard time with actions that the user completes out of order.

<comment><USER4> "human convention of written language" is a bit much. Stroke order is almost as important as what the actual strokes are in the definition of a Chinese character, for example. Of course unless you literally watch someone write you observe the characters after they're written, but the most predictive latent mental representation of a character does include an order component. I know this because I made the mistake of memorizing many characters almost like bitmaps and have had to go back and learn how to reliably write/read hand written characters.

<comment><USER2> I don't know what to say other than that the entire purpose of written language is to carry information between people who aren't in a position to directly observe each other writing. (If they were, they could just talk and would not need to write.)

<comment><USER4> There exist counterexamples in the broader world. Historically in the Sinosphere it was commonish that two people might share a command of written Classical Chinese but not really be able to speak to each other. For a modern example, consider the paper below: [https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED515291](https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED515291)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Handwriting recognition is a great example of technology whose development seems to have plateaued before it became "good enough." Stroke-based recognition has been in development for half a century now, but my iPad Pro still makes errors at least a couple of times per line, which is enough to make it pretty much useless unless you're writing only for your own later consumption. That and voice recognition. It's shocking how bad Android and iOS still are at that, even after decades of work on voice recognition technology.

</comment><comment><USER6> >I think it's worth asking why anyone in their right mind should care about mid-century handwriting recognition algorithms in 2016.

Lots of people care, specially in Asia(Chinese and Japanese). It is just that the problem is incredible hard.

We put 5 very smart people working for a year on that, and it was totally impossible meeting people's expectations, specially people like doctors taking notes fast(and ugly).

We thought that the market was in creating mindmaps or something instead as people could write slower and better.

But people write a double u and expect the computer to see an "m". With deep learning is possible but extremely flimsy.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is kind of interesting. I had a through about how to approach the handwriting recognition problem a few years back and surprisingly I though of this curvature based approach also. I never implemented it (too lazy to try...) but its cool to see how well something like that might work.

</comment><comment><USER8> The linked demo is by far the most impressive thing I've seen all week. I wish a certain Microsoft chart editor was as easy and unfinicky to use as this demo from 1966 (52 years ago), and that's still one of the better editors out there.

<comment><USER9> Comparing this with the Graffiti system on my old (2000-ish) Palm Pilot, this is somewhat more reliable even on a first attempt than that was after I'd made a concerted effort to learn it. Very cool!

Edit: I think where the Afterword says "inputting text with a stylus is likely slower than touch typing", they're forgetting that we still don't have a really acceptable way of inputting text on mobile devices. Swype and its ilk are close, but still hamfisted at times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I missed it the first time, but the article has linked source code (github.com/jackschaedler/handwriting-recognition) for all the D3.js demos that is worth a read.

</comment><comment><USER11> All this constant talk of AI and singularities and whatnot.

Reality check: Our machines do not yet accurately manage simple reading tasks.

</comment><comment><USER12> I did something like this in Visual Basic and submitted it to PC PLUS in the UK, back in the early 90's.

It was (yay!) published as recognit.bas (VB) and I'd be really happy if someone still has a copy.

It recognized just numbers but the basis of operation was similar to the linked article.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if it was possible to use Hinton's idea of local features (where a 3 is recognized as an E in a 180 rotation map and a W in 90 deg. rotation map) to make the recognition partially rotation invariant....

</comment><comment><USER14> so much time spent on manual feature engineering which could be implicitly picked up by RNNs.</comment>


Pythia: Open-source framework for multimodal AI models - <AUTHOR> https://code.fb.com/ai-research/pythia/ <comment><USER2> I had a project named Pythia as well in my previous company. It was a prediction service and I needed a name that was related to predicting future, hence I chose the name of Oracle of Delphi. I am guessing that's where even Facebook got the name from.

The name was so bad that no one got the reference. I changed the git repo to Sybill, alas that also never clicked.

Edit: was supposed to be a reply to `davrosthedalek`

<comment><USER3> I made a prediction service called Pythia in 2009. It's not exactly an obscure name.

<comment><USER2> Not obscure but certainly not well known as well. Most are aware about the Oracle but not the name.

PS your name sounds Greek so it would definitely be more known in your circle I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The project pages are notably lacking images or interesting examples. Here is the most recent paper showing what they use this system for: [1] _Toward VQA Models That Can Read_ [VQA == Visual Question Answering]

[1] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.08920.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.08920.pdf)

<comment><USER5> It has example images with Q&A now:

[https://github.com/facebookresearch/pythia](https://github.com/facebookresearch/pythia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do people not do a google search before they name things: [http://home.thep.lu.se/~torbjorn/pythia81html/Welcome.html](http://home.thep.lu.se/~torbjorn/pythia81html/Welcome.html) Edit: Also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PYTHIA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PYTHIA)

<comment><USER7> I named a project Pythia also. It's a pretty obvious choice for a python project. Name duplication is common. We will all live. No one will mistake this project for a particle accelerator sim.

<comment><USER8> You are assuming it wasn't intentional, which is not clear at this point (and probably never will be)</comment></comment></comment>


New wing invented in Belarus. Look for the pictures. - <AUTHOR> http://www.vsr.mil.by/index/dfgvjbyu343.html Its 40-60% better for almost any type of airplane <comment><USER2> We used to make paper planes a bit like that. Paper tubes, actually: [http://www.10paperairplanes.com/how-to-make-paper- airplanes/...](http://www.10paperairplanes.com/how-to-make-paper- airplanes/07-the-ring.html)

<comment><USER3> You beat me to it. That was my favorite design for distance competitions with my brothers and cousins when I was a kid. When you got it right it really sailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_wing>

<comment><AUTHOR> well, then not 'invented' but 'developed' :)

gives a new spin to the idea and hopefully will make air travel more safe and enjoyable

<comment><USER5> Sorry, Belarus cannot even claim "developed". I saw that style design on homebuilt aircraft at the 1999 EAA Oshkosh Airshow. "Commercialized" may be the only verb left to claim...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google translation of article: [http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vsr...](http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vsr.mil.by%2Findex%2Fdfgvjbyu343.html&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)

</comment><comment><USER7> That's brilliant looking, and I bet it gets rid of drag from wingtip vortices and stuff.

How cool! I hope this makes it into airliners, it'll be all Jetsons!

</comment><comment><USER8> What are the engineering advantages of this kind of wing?

<comment><AUTHOR> from the article:

1) it increases the angle at which army planes can attack (now its only 13%, but will be twice more)

2) it stands up to 2 times stronger side wind

3) reduces fuel spending

4) easier to make as the normal wings have a lot of mechanicks in them

5) less space needed to take off, also can take off on uneven surfaces

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google says:

Small plane looked very unusual. Silver fuselage with Zadornov protruding propeller blades, the wheels of the chassis, almost invisible in tall grass, and ... the complete absence of wings! Because neither the language is not turned to name or pen to be raised on a strange chart «pribambase», literally wrapping the fuselage, a noble word «plane». Puny «body» plane is placed in a huge, slightly flatten the top metal «down» with the bottom and the lid!

More at [http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vsr.mil.by%2Findex%2Fdfgvjbyu343.html&sl=ru&tl=en)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its 40-60% better for almost any type of airplane, including the big ones

<comment><USER10> I also like the reduced cross section of the plane...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does it actually fly? It's not airborn on the pictures.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its ready for manufactoring. The work started 15 years ago.

<comment><USER12> Is that halfway between manufacturing and refactoring?

<comment><USER13> I think it means you need to break the airplane into components by hand...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its just a biplane with the wind tips curved up/down eh?

<comment><USER15> the article says its incorrect to put it like this

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> the reality is that aircraft wings are pretty well thought out by now and 'new' ideas such as this usually have significant drawbacks that are already known. usually that information is left out of the marketing hype of the 'new' concepts. the drawbacks usually include one or more of the following : heavy, active system (you don't want a airplane that won't glide when the power quits), difficult or expensive to build, and the ever popular flying- qualities-not-as-good-as-a-regular-wing-despite-overblown-claims.

</comment><comment><USER17> reminds me of Fanwing. <http://www.fanwing.com/>

</comment><comment><USER18> That's the heart of innovation.

We should definitely think different, even if we fail.

<comment><USER19> Semi-related: Burt Rutan's TED talk has a mention of early aircraft design and how many different designs there were (with slide pictures). Worth checking out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In Soviet Russia, loop flies plane.

<comment><USER21> Oh, please. Keep these stupid cliche jokes off HN.

<comment><USER20> Oh, please, spare me your elitism. It was an especially good one.

<comment><USER22> Chiffonade, this is simply not the forum for that. It contributed nothing to the discussion and actually took away from it in some regards. This forum is for intellectual discussion, it'd be really appreciated if you respect that in the future. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How tcmalloc Works - <AUTHOR> http://jamesgolick.com/2013/5/19/how-tcmalloc-works.html <comment><USER2> Interesting stuff. These guys made some of the same conclusions around management that we made when implementing per-thread caching for libumem[1] (in particular, around summing all per-thread caches and managing that number). It would be interesting to benchmark these two allocators; we do some dynamic code generation that allows for cache sizes tuned without sacrificing performance.

[1] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/rm/2012/07/16/per-thread-caching- in-...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/rm/2012/07/16/per-thread-caching-in-libumem/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _This blog post is incredibly long._

It's not. It's really not. I don't know whether to feel slighted that the author assumes my attention span is so pitiful, or bemused that the author feels the need to mention the length of the post at all. I suppose someone who feels the need to open a post with the new hip way of saying "Summary" or "Abstract" has already given up on his audience anyway.

<comment><USER4> Given how it is mentioned at the outset and conclusion, I almost have to think it's stated ironically or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> IMHO one of the nicest things about tcmalloc isn't the performance it's the profiling. It samples your allocations and records the stack trace where an object was allocated, and records that information over the life of your process. This can be invaluable when tracking leaks or performance problems suspected to be due to excessive new and delete.

[http://gperftools.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/heapprofile.h...](http://gperftools.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/heapprofile.html)

<comment><USER6> Have you tried valgrind for this?

<comment><USER5> Yes and my experience is that valgrind is a tremendously slow way to do one- off debugging of a suspected memory leak. The instrumentation in tcmalloc is really different as it has almost no cost (depending on the size of the system you might want to adjust the sample parameter for highly multithreaded programs) and is running at all times so you can use it to troubleshoot in production. When I've used valgrind the program was so slow it wasn't the kind of thing you could put under a live workload.

<comment><USER6> True. Valgrind slows things considerably.

In the end, what to use is a matter of workflow and convenience. Good to know how tcmalloc makes debugging memleaks easier.

Just for for completeness, a third option would be a tracing tool that hooks into the kernel syscalls (e.g. the lttng project). They have nearly zero performance penalty as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> James is one of the two hosts of the Real Talk podcast, which is by far the best podcast I've ever listened to. Such a shame they only made half a dozen episodes. Check it out: [http://realtalk.io/](http://realtalk.io/)

<comment><USER8> I actually found their podcasts to be extremely rudimentary. I listened to week 3, where they discuss an article on "high scalability". I feel these guys try to hard to sound like hipsters, and are lacking any fundamental training in computer science. Every three minutes, Joe would state "I don't know what a unix kernel is"...or "I don't know what having a large application on a 4 core kernal locking up is".

To be completely honest, i was so excited when I saw your link for a "technical podcast". I thought, "hey, i finally have something with a lot of content to listen to on my way to work!". There were expectations that weren't met...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html](http://goog- perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html) had less of architecture insights</comment>


Show HN: Democratic vs. Republican professions – interactive chart - <AUTHOR> http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/index.html

<comment><USER2> Many of these I would expect but for Bartender I am surprised at the overwhelming lean to the left. What about the old salty barkeeps at all the old salty dive bars across the country? Perhaps they don't give to campaigns (listed data source). I wonder about absolute counts for each occupation in the data and relative amount of contribution across occupations. I'm guessing that there are far fewer Bartenders donating than Neurosurgeons or Chairmans.</comment>