The World Is Still Producing More Oil Than It Needs - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-is-still-producing-more-oil-than-it-needs-why/ <comment><USER2> I work in surface production facilities (rather than reservoir) but I think this article misses the point by a long margin. For the vast majority of oil reservoirs, shutting in is good for production. The reason is fairly intuitive - you drill into the oil-bearing part of the reservoir which is in the middle (beneath the gas but above the water). When you suck on the oil, you pull water and gas through with it ("coning") but when you stop, it all settles down again. When you restart production you get more oil (valuable) and less gas (far less value, possibly worthless) and less water (worthless).

Lifting costs vary a great deal but for my high-cost-of-living part of the world, we still don't spend more than about $20 a barrel to produce the oil. Most of the world would be far less.

I think for the vast majority of the oil industry, we still make a small profit on low oil prices. The economics of oil production is really that you spend a shitload up front (CAPEX) and then your continuing costs (OPEX) are an order of magnitude smaller.

And as our CEO said recently, when prices are low everybody expects to rise back to what we're used to again soon, because we're naturally optimistic. But that's not a law written in stone, it might be true that oil prices drop again in future, so we're better off selling it today.

Also what they mentioned about waxy pipelines doesn't affect most facilities. Usually we would do a shock biocide dose for preservation, which is not a particularly high cost. And if you've got a waxy crude, you're probably going to get your wax issue within 12-24 hours anyway as soon as you cool to ambient, so a long shut-in and a short shut-in would be dealt with similarly.

<comment><USER3> Your input is great but it begs the question: why, then, isn't production being shut down during this time?

<comment><USER4> If I've got this straight, the $20 per barrel cost of production includes the up-front CAPEX costs. However those costs have already been paid. The marginal cost of production per barrel is lower, so right now ignoring sunk costs $20 per barrel oil is still economical to pump for many producers. Is that right?

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's basically correct, but think less _econ_ and more _accounting_.

Keep in mind:

1) That the $20/bbl cost is likely with capex amortized on the assumption that the well _isn 't_ shut-in. You'd either have to add a one-time write-off for the capex balance (if you can afford to), or at least re-amortize. Either way, looking at the existing/assumed $/bbl cost vs market price isn't correct for most decision making purposes.

2) The act of shutting-in (and re-starting production) have direct costs to be accounted for. It's not as simple as pushing a button that activates a remote controlled valve. There's (almost) always physical work to be done, plus compliance / permitting work associated with any changes. More-so for restarts, if you assume the shut-in will be temporary, and want to account for that cost in decision making.

3) opex costs are largely still discrete to some extent (ie, not literally a cost in $/bbl, except pipeline transport and royalties), and can still be sunk costs.

Shutting-in wells doesn't necessarily reduce opex to $0, whether immediately or longer term.

Yearly maintenance might have been done last week. Tanker service already contracted for the year, or a direct pipeline already built. Lease and permit fees paid for the next X years. The lease might be contracted at some fixed cost plus royalties, for 10+ years, with the fixed cost guaranteed.

New for 2020: If the company took a PPP loan (or otherwise is trying to avoid layoffs) they have to keep surplus personnel, which then becomes a sunk cost.

Now if you look at exploration instead of production, it's much more likely to be a textbook case of if (cost > price), then (stop work immediately).

<comment><USER6> I recall years ago when people would argue about tape or spinning rust for safekeeping old backups and the drive people would talk about tapes sticking together, while the tape people would talk about bearings seizing if they don't spin the drives up from time to time.

Things that are meant to keep moving tend not to fare well when they are left to sit for too long. If you have a classic car you have to drive it or everything starts to seize, separate, or gel.

I expect oil well equipment is not so different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to work offshore in commercial diving / ROVs. The reasons are not so much technical problems, but there is demand/supply for people who can do that sort of job, as I wrote here[1].

people need many years of experience (recorded in a log-book), before they can do the next certification. Unlike SW engineering where you're promoted to Senior depending on company and sometimes for no apparent reason in oil+gas a lot of people are in their 40ies and 50ies. Our super-intendant on one job was 78. I was the youngest guy out there with 23 yro while the next closest was 12 years older than me (ans also only on one job. one all other gigs all were much older still).

Every 2 or so years you need to do a survival training. There are medical fitness tests etc ... You can't just quickly train a few on-shore engineers and then send them out there.

On the other hand there should be plenty of people "sitting on the beach" without work right now and from my experience it sounds like big oil companies rather not spend the money on this when they think there might be a chance of this blowing over in 3 months.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22619406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22619406)

<comment><USER8> Can you share the format of the log book? Interested in doing that for my career. Having a documentation of problems I faced, even not in detail, would help a lot in the coming years I think.

<comment><USER7> sure, it's fairly simple. You can see some screenshots of the pages with a google image search "commercial diver logbook" or "saturation diver logbook".

Has fields for name of ship/vessel, name of project, name of client, type of gear, date, and then time spent in bell or lock-out, and what you were working on, then you would calculate the total time spent in saturation at the end of the decompression (e.g. number of days/weeks etc). there would be signature field for yourself and supervisor/super-intendant:

[https://www.subsupply.eu/store/image/cache/catalog/logbooks/...](https://www.subsupply.eu/store/image/cache/catalog/logbooks/07_Commercial_divers- logbook-record-of-dive-600x600-w62--2-27-44-0.jpg)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=commercial+divers+log+book&h...](https://www.google.com/search?q=commercial+divers+log+book&hl=en&tbm=isch#imgrc=jXgN0VDsawC6RM)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=saturation+divers+log+book&t...](https://www.google.com/search?q=saturation+divers+log+book&tbm=isch&hl=en)

ROV log books are similar with the difference that you're logging the time of the vehicle and your experience as the pilot not the diver (so no saturation, decompression etc):

[https://www.google.com/search?q=off+shore+rov+logbook&tbm=is...](https://www.google.com/search?q=off+shore+rov+logbook&tbm=isch&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The elephant in the room is that the current crisis has revealed how dependent some producers are on high prices for oil. Basically the current crisis is a double crisis of first Russia deciding to stop voluntarily limiting their oil production to keep the prices artificially high so the US producers don't go bankrupt. And then the demand collapsed due to the lockdown. So over supply and demand collapse happened nearly at the same time.

What this means for producers in the US, that are increasingly relying on more expensive sources of oil is that Russia can collapse the prices to below their break even point any time they want. Same for the Saudi's. That used to be the nuclear option when Opec controlled the prices. This is also where the word oligarchy comes from. Once oligarchies stop fixing prices they are suddenly competing for cost per barrel. And the simple truth is that when it comes to fracking, the cost is too high.

What that means in turn is that oil related investments suddenly got a lot more risky than they already were. All the easy sources have long been invested in and the remaining sources are increasingly difficult to exploit. Institutional investors have already been divesting away from oil for a few years. Price fluctuations like we've seen in the past decade ranging from negative to above 100$ per barrel means it's a highly risky investment as you simply can't know if you get back your money.

So, shutting down right now may get a permanent nature for a lot of companies as they'll have a hard time getting investors to back bringing their plants online. The longer this lasts, the worse it gets. I expect a lot of recent investments to be written off completely. Also things like the Keystone pipeline are probably dead in the water as it is debatable whether the thing will ever be profitable.

IMHO that's actually good news and will force people to look at alternative technologies and accelerate the agenda on e.g. switching to electrical vehicles, battery technology, alternative energy etc.

<comment><USER10> _This is also where the word oligarchy comes from_

Im pretty sure the word oligarchy existed before humans relied on petroleum.

<comment><USER11> it comes from greek ὀλιγαρχία [0]: from ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning 'few', and ἄρχω (arkho), meaning 'to rule or to command')[1]

[0] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BD%80%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B3%C...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BD%80%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B3%CE%B1%CF%81%CF%87%CE%AF%CE%B1) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oil income is supporting many horrible regimes.

I have some hope a prolonged oil glut might make some of them fall.

A world where Russia or Iran or Venezuela was run by decent government would be a great improvement!

I wish the same for Saudi, but I think that regime is safe.

<comment><USER13> I like your sentiment, but it conveniently forgets the significant amount of bloodshed and instability that usually occurs when one such regime collapses.

Just look at Libya. The West got rid of Gadaffi and the country went from stability under a dictator to fractured chaos where tourism industry is dead and slave markets have opened.

<comment><USER12> I'm absolutely not advocating US invasions.

These petrostate governments get their power from controlling the oil wealth.

If that becomes worthless, they have no power basis and serve no purpose anymore. Sure, what comes after, nobody knows. But in general, I think non-oil economies, that have to thrive of regular people working, produce much healthier governance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is hard to close, but is there no way to ramp down either?

<comment><USER15> The sources I've been encountering make it sound like ramping down is an option up to a point, and then fluid dynamics kick in and the next flow rate below ~60% is 0%. I'm giving them some credence because they're very obsessive about the oil industry, but a bit of skepticism because they feel a little apocalypse heavy.

<comment><USER14> That is, like rocket engines :) Those are not usually designed to be throttled below 50-ish% either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Walked past a petrol (gas) station earlier in the UK. Its still priced at £1.07 a litre.

<comment><USER17> Prices vary for a lot of reasons, and in the UK tax is a significant part of the retail price. Right now perhaps it's more than half of the pump price.

Some parts of the US are under a dollar a gallon. Couple weeks ago it was as low as 89 cents a gallon in some places in Oklahoma. Looks like it's up to 95-99 cents at Costco now.

But in Oregon, it's just about $1 more a gallon. And not much of that is taxes. We have a different refinery system for the western US, we never get the really good prices here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this why they pay to get rid of produced oil (negative prices)? I guess is better to lose a bit hoping things turn around than closing well /suffering long term damage.

<comment><USER19> It is a question of whether it will cost more to store the oil than it does to "sell" it at a loss.

That said, I doubt many producers truly sold for negative prices. The negative prices were a commodities market effect where traders were required to pay to offload their futures contracts in order to not take delivery of the oil. In other words, I suspect the commodities traders bore the brunt of the negative pricing.

<comment><USER20> "traders were required to pay to offload their futures contracts in order to not take delivery of the oil"

That doesn't seem accurate, since the expiring futures rebounded to a positive value the next (and final) day, right?

It seems more like people were panicking and _thought_ they had to unload at any price, but it was simply an error. Although I'm not knowledgeable about it.

<comment><USER21> If you were a speculative trader, and absolutely didn't want to have any oil delivered to you, it makes sense to sell at close the day before the futures become binding.

You _could_ wait until the last day, but you'd have a big problem if the market was closed that day becomes of unexpected circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My understanding is that at least some oil fields have a decay rate once drilled whether producing or not.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do we call it "producing"? Most of the oil is harvested not produced, right?

</comment><comment><USER24> People are extracting more oil from the planet than people are currently consuming.

</comment><comment><USER25> contractual obligations.</comment>


Apple iPhone 5 First Weekend Sales in China Top Two Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/12/16iPhone-5-First-Weekend-Sales-in-China-Top-Two-Million.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much they sell for there? I am guessing cheaper for various reasons?

<comment><USER3> In China, they are selling the cheapest model for $1kHKD more than it's sold for in Hong Kong. This weekend's launch in China was fairly disappointing as there were few line ups. This was the same across most of Asia. Apple really dropped the ball on the iPhone 5.

<comment><USER4> They actually sold more iPhone 5 than the two previous models. It's a new record for first weekend sales in China. There weren't lines because Apple managed to make enough iPhones and by letting other retailers and carriers sell, whereas when iPhone 4 and 4s were first launched here the Apple Store was pretty much the only place you can get them.</comment></comment></comment>


Remembering the Beautifully Boring MMO 'Star Wars Galaxies' - <AUTHOR> https://killscreen.com/articles/remembering-the-beautifully-boring-mmo-star-wars-galaxies/ <comment><USER2> Never played it myself, but I remember that a lot of people in Second Life were "refugees" from SWG and they harped on how great it was (for the social aspects) for hours...

Second Life appealed to them, but only because SWG had lost its charms, or was being closed down by Sony.</comment>


Bill Gates on making "one of the greatest mistakes of all time" - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/22/bill-gates-on-making-one-of-the-greatest-mistakes-of-all-time/ <comment><USER2> What I find interesting is that he still doesn't realize that _because_ Microsoft was dominant in specific plays (desktop OSes, productivity software, e-mail clients) it was precluded by internal culture from innovating on mobile.

Their success blinded them to the fact that mobile and tablets comprised a completely different functional and experiential environment, and so they kept pushing a "Windows everywhere, Outlook everywhere" strategy that failed to create a smartphone market they initially owned, failed to take advantage of the business mobile market Blackberry created, failed to take advantage of the premium consumer mobile market Apple created, and failed to take advantage of the mass consumer mobile market Android created (despite their last bite at the mobile OS apple — so to speak — being quite good).

Nothing breeds failure quite like success even, evidently, in hindsight.

<comment><USER3> Exactly right. Microsoft was profoundly ahead of the curve! They were pushing their tablet/slate stuff 5+ years before the iPhone and iPad. Their key mistake was attempting to _leverage Windows_ , which forced an awkward stylus mode driving a shoehorned desktop OS.

Apple blindsided them with a better cellphone instead of a worse computer, and so it slotted in naturally

Microsoft could only conceive of Windows devices. Apple's big idea was to _not_ make the iPhone a Mac. If anything, they overcorrected, dragged kicking and screaming into allowing apps at all.

<comment><USER4> > If anything, they overcorrected, dragged kicking and screaming into allowing > apps at all.

A lot of people forget this, but it's true: Apple didn't want _anyone_ to be able to make native apps on iOS except themselves. That they changed their minds and helped devs make a ton of money tends to erase this fact of history.

<comment><USER5> I have this conspiracy theory that I half believe: it was all a ruse.

Apple knew that there would be huge pushback against a walled garden appstore with Apple in absolute control, and huge pushback on them taking a 30% cut. So they started with "just write web apps". But of course, they also inexplicably made the first iPhone 2G only! Flagship phones that shipped many months before the iPhone had 3G. Why cut that particular corner, and not any others in their otherwise $$$-is-no-object new wonderphone?

You can do a much better job hiding low bandwidth and high latency in a native app, especially since app assets get downloaded once (probably over wifi) at app install time. So by essentially making app developers beg for access to their native platform, they radically reduced the anger at their wildly locked-down appstore and their 30% cut.

And it seemed a little suspicious how quickly they were able to deliver a 3rd- party SDK and developer documentation.

<comment><USER6> Wasn't Palm taking a 80% cut in their glory days? (My google skills fail me) I heard developers saying that 30% was a great deal at the time.

<comment><USER7> I think it was Handango that set the 30% expectation. They were the first with such a high cut I think, and was among the first app sites for most of the PDAs of the time.

30% was pretty offensive after years of shareware.

<comment><USER8> But then apps cost pennies compared to the software we were used to. Office cost many hundreds of dollars and I regularly paid £400+ for PC programs that did just one thing. £350 for Photoshop was a steal.

But then apps came along costing a small handful of dollars. They also did things you could not do on your PC due to the connectivity, the camera and the sensors. Everything changed when it came to price expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somehow nobody really seems to acknowledge the real reason Android won to my mind: that it was open source. Not for end users, but for OEMs. The whole reason they were willing to unify on Android as a platform was that it allowed _hardware_ differentiation and innovation in a way that Windows Phone didn't, because they could actually create their own features and add them to the OS. So of course the best hardware and the most unique features and the biggest marketing budget and most aggressive carrier deals were always going to come on Android first. Because Windows Phone nullified part of the reason for OEMs to exist in the first place. Microsoft tried to control too much of the market, I assume out of Apple-envy - something they didn't even do with windows. I don't know why they expected it to work.

<comment><USER10> You're right. That said, I am still so sad about Windows Phone going away. To my mind, it is still one of the best Smartphone UX that has yet existed, bested only by voice/passive-screen Moto X 2013.

The vision for Windows Phone was unified information, screen-time minimalism, and the most brilliant sound/rumble design I have experienced on any device. The Moto X was a close second by finding ways to avoid needing to look at your screen entirely. By contrast, Apple and Samsung have been focused on screen- addiction, not user efficiency/productivity. iOS Screen Time is the weirdest mea culpa, but works because efficient mobile experiences failed to sell.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. They perfected the UI with 8.1.

It appears Windows 8 was developed for mobile first and then shoehorned onto the desktop version of the OS. On desktop it felt like an ugly, unpolished incomplete mess, two OS running side by side at the same time.

Windows 10 brought much more polish to the desktop, the modern apps integrate much better, more and more setting dialogs get ported to uwp.

But at the same time the mobile version of 10 felt less optimized than 8.1, almost like a compromise between desktop and mobile. While that helped getting closer to the goal of a unified experience between desktop and mobile, this was ultimately the wrong vision anyways. And ironically now that mobile is dead, what is even the point in continuing to transform Windows 10 away from win32 to uwp? I'm aware they still have the Xbox which also supports uwp apps but here I see even less of a reason to create this cross platform experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _In fact, Gates is still kicking himself for taking his eyes off the ball > and allowing Google to develop Android, the "standard non-Apple phone form > platform," as he describes it. "That was a natural thing for Microsoft to > win."_

That seems very out of touch, bordering on historic revisionism. Microsoft developed an OS for mobile devices and embedded use since around the mid 1990's, with a _feverish_ desperation.

Mobile-Internet-capable devices running Windows CE already existed at the time Google was just starting up. I worked on these damn things that time, doing mobile networking!

Phones running Windows Mobile existed years before smartphones.

Microsoft had more than a decade head start over Google and arguably had their eyes squarely fixated on some sort of ball the whole time. It was perhaps the wrong ball.

The problem with the idea that it was "a natural thing for Microsoft to win" is that it basically means this: "Microsoft won the PC desktop with a garbage operating system, and so it is natural that Microsoft can go on to win in any area by flogging another garbage operating system".

As if it were a matter of something resembling imperial succession? The platform dominance throne "naturally" belongs to none other than the future progeny of Microsoft by divine birthright?

In reality, it's just luck, timing and various economic factors. Now Google dominates with their garbage platform.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yeah, I used to think that things will crash and burn if I disappear for a week when I was younger. Truth is, not only do things not crash and burn, they in fact barely change at all if I go on a 2-3 week vacation. You think the company will land on the moon by the time you return, and then you get back and it's the same shit, barely anything has changed.

Nowadays, though, my friends at MS say that it's one of the best large employers to work for in terms of work life balance. They don't pay the top dollar, but there are many people who would gladly trade that for the work environment in which they can also have a life.

</comment><comment><USER14> Back in the 90's, I thought about small computers, maybe even handhelds. But I never connected that thought with a phone.

It just seems so thunderingly obvious today.

Makes me wonder what connection I'm not making today.

It's like when Henry Ford said if he'd asked what people wanted, they'd want "a faster horse". We're all constrained by what we're used to thinking about, and simply improving what we're already used to.

<comment><USER15> It was just timing, really. MS invested a lot in PDAs, at a time when the tech just wasn't good enough. The screens were bad, you had to use styluses, memory was low, batteries would deplete in a few hours, cameras and GPS were too big to even consider shipping... it was a niche market for a certain type of business user, and that was it. Those PDAs did much better than the Apple Newton, but didn't break into the mainstream.

Then technology improved, Apple made some smart acquisitions, and changed the UI game enough to become popular. It made Windows CE (and its competitors like Symbian) look terribly dated. MS fumbled their response not once, not twice, but three times: first they tried doubling down on what they had, then they rewrote from scratch, then they rewrote from scratch _again_. By the time they found a good balance, it was all over.

Meanwhile, Google was actually going through the early-MS playbook pretty religiously: get something that already exists, improve and rebadge it, then give it away as _free to the consumer_ (which MS did with oem deals and piracy tolerance), effectively commoditizing it. Spread it far and wide until it becomes _the_ platform, then leverage your ecosystem hegemony to achieve your true cashflow aims with higher-level tooling and apps. Massive availability made it the easy choice for oems, developers, and hobbyists/evangelists alike, turning the mobile OS in a commodity while competitors were still very determined to make a buck on it. This is what MS had done to hardware manufacturers in the '90s, and it's extraordinary how they failed to see the parallels until it was too late. Or maybe not - after all, MS by then was the new IBM.

<comment><USER7> I had a friend at work who'd been a big fan of the Nokia Communicators who got one of the early bastard phone/PDA/Windows CE spawn. Similar form factor to the communicator - sideways foldaway keyboard, but 99% of everything seemed to need the stylus. It even had a start button in the UI. HTC I think - this must have been back in the early 00s.

After he'd bought this thing there was... _So. Much. Swearing._ :)

From my recollection the only thing it did reliably was crash. A lot. An awful lot. Oh, and that the UI was comically fiddly.

He went back to the communicator, then later bought just a regular phone, the fancy Windows crashing thing became his in car map to run autoroute. It used to crash just running that.

A few of the guys in the office had used Compaq or HP PDAs and were keen on the idea of the then new Windows phones - his early adoption saved them all from an expensive mistake. Me? I stuck with the Psion 5. :)

<comment><USER15> I lusted after a few of those and eventually got an HP, around 2004. I loved the concept and could live with the stylus, but sync capabilities (ActiveSync, brr) were atrocious, even more so with anything non-Windows (I was on Linux at the time). Also it didn't have wifi, so I had to buy an expansion card, which stuck out very unsightly (and looked very fragile).

When the iPhone came out, I thought it was nice but overpriced, limited by not having expansion cards, and knee-capped by Apple's policy on rooting. It took me a couple of years to admit nobody really cared about those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't really understand what Bill Gates is getting at here.

Back in 2010, Android was still very clunky and sluggish. Windows Phone was sleek and fast. Both OSes allowed you to install developer tools and write software for free.

However, there's 2 differences that no one calls out! First, Android used Java as a way to leverage 15 years of software. Windows Phone v1 was c# only and back in 2010 no one except Stack Overflow was writing anything other than enterprise software in C#. So you literally had to write 95% of your software from the ground up.

Second, instead of quickly catching up, feature for feature with Apple and Android, only 2 years behind at the start, they stopped, not once, but two times to re-write their Phone OS still using the original feature set from 2010.

They should have 1, BENT over BACKWARDS to get every API they could and ship C++ and Java compilers. Talk to developers about what they needed to get their software written. In 2010 and 2011 there were hundreds of developers at every company that would have loved a small 20% project to bring up their software on a Windows Phone. Yet with it only allowing C#, it would have required developers 80% of their time and that was just not a reality.

Second, they should have continually added features and more features, and innovated on features that no one else had. 2010 still had a lot of room for owning the narrative of what a mobile device could be.

I don't know about you, but it frustrates me that they don't own up to their actual mistakes. It's not about the lack of companies building the apps, it's that whoever managed that Phone project was incompetent and mismanaged the whole thing. They treated it like just another 9 to 5 job with little expressed passion for winning.

<comment><USER17> Objective C wasn't really a big thing before the iPhone. I know MacOS used it but its not like it had the rich open source community that Java had, and most iOS developers were learning it for the first time. I think this failure wasn't about programming languages; if the platform had succeeded then C# would have been just that much more popular.

<comment><USER16> Obj-C was niche yes, but Obj-C worked really well with C/C++.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, and with OpenGL ES/OpenAL support it was pretty easy to port C++ games to the iPhone, with just a thin Obj-C wrapper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _It really is winner take all ... There's room for exactly one non-Apple operating system, and what's that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company G [Google] to company M [Microsoft]. -- Bill Gates_

Who'd have known in 2011 that by 2019, The Four Greatest Companies in the world (by cap) would be All-America [1], Microsoft would be back on top, and then combined together, they spell MAGA -- in almost perfect order too [2]...

         Symbol  Company      Cap         Rank

      M  MSFT    Microsoft      1.05 T    1
      A  AMZN    Amazon.com   940.99 B    2
      G  GOOG    Alphabet     779.39 B    4
      A  AAPL    Apple        914.60 B    3

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All- America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-America)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#Socia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#Social_media_usage)

<comment><USER20> Though funnily two of those 4 are founded by foreigners, both sons of immigrants (and Sergey is himself one).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bill always suffered from "NIH" (Not Invented Here) Syndrome.

Google took something that worked (Linux) and prettied up the User Interface. Apple had pretty much done the same sort of thing earlier with BSD UNIX and OSX. Bill was ideologically opposed to Linux right from the start because it was Open Source.

Consequently, Microsoft had to do 10 times the work to achieve success that Google needed to. Google was up and running while Microsoft was still struggling along to get things to work.

That's probably the main reason that Google dominates smartphones and Microsoft doesn't.

<comment><USER22> As someone who owned a windows phone and switched to Android, the reason was simple - no apps. Everyone would advertise the latest thing as on iPhone and Droid, windows phone literally wasn't mentioned. I can't speak to the bigger picture but as far as I could see there was little reason to further spend money on a platform no one cared for.

<comment><USER15> But that happened because MS was late to the party, as parent poster said. By the time their "good" OS was ready, everyone was already writing apps for iOS and Android and nobody wanted yet another different platform to develop for. They tried hard to entice developers, even paying pretty good money, but it was just too late. Nokia had the same problem a bit earlier (well, among _many_ other problems Nokia had...).

<comment><USER23> Many developers HATED Microsoft. The anti-Microsoft chant was at an all time high. Android developer registration fee was a ONE TIME FEE of (?). The Android operating system was just like Windows - anything goes, no restrictions!

 _How Microsoft lost Developers_

Shitty & Successful VS Secure & Failure

Microsoft decided to recreate IOS because they'd been (and are still being) ridiculed for the security nightmare called Windows.

Balmer announced the developer fee and the scream (even here on HN) was enormous. Add the api restrictions and developers just said fuck it!

People on this thread are saying how nice it was to develop for Windows Phone compared to Android - bull. Screams about how you couldn't accomplish simple tasks - compared to Android was high. Till today, there are apps that show the message - due to Microsoft's restrictions (something) can't be accomplished - when the same thing was possible on IOS.

 _How Microsoft lost OEMs_

Android was free. Windows Phone wasn't. OEMs could modify Android and add whatever crap they wanted to make pennies. But WP couldn't. You didn't need Google's permission to build an Android device. With WP - you couldn't.

MS gave preferential treatment to Nokia. Karma - MS's reputation With Windows bit it hard on the ass here.

 _How Microsoft lost Users_

NOKIA - Nokia was in the habit of releasing this year's flagship with last year's specs. Only their cameras was worth something.

MS was SLOOW to respond to feature requests that IOS and Android got eons ago. Feature envy was high. Peeps celebrated addition of notification bar like the release of a new phone.

NIH syndrome - Apple and Google copied each other extensively and copied from Windows Phone when it made sense. WP stood like a statue

Pissing off developers resulted in fewer apps.

They couldn't survive writing brand new OSes 3 times. Windows phone 7 was different from CE. WP 8 - different from 7. And finally, 10 was different from 8.

There were minor issues Within sub versions. MS got the enmity of users who got burned and couldn't upgrade

 _Media, Influencers & Trolls_

I don't know what these guys had against Microsoft however, their role in killing Wp can't be understated - and Microsoft/Nokia helped. Nokia kept releasing dated hardware - media ignored the fact that the OS didn't need it. In fact, at the time IOS devices ran lower clock speed and used 500mb ram.

Everything MS/Nokia did was SHIT and the same shit became gold whenever Apple ended up doing the same thing. Nokia was trolled for the camera bulge on Lumia 920, but that's what companies are doing right now. The Lumia 920 weighed 180g and was called the "BRICK." They said 920 was best used as a weapon against burglars. Fast forward to iPhone XS Max which weighs 208g and they love it. They hated the flat design on WP but loved it when Apple co-opted it.

Everyone loves wireless Charging but Nokia was trolled for it.

This intense media hate made fans create windowsphone central and microsoft- news to balance the emotion.

The final nail in the curtain was the interface. WP was very intuitive to smart phone virgins. However for people already corrupted by Android and IOS, WP was alien, weird and difficult to use.

<comment><USER24> Lumia 920 had a 4.5in screen size and iPhone XS Max is a ginormous phablet with a 6.5in screen. Lesson of this entire post: you can't release things that have feature parity and worse specifications, but specifications aren't a barrier when you're providing features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm a Linux fanboy that hates desktop Windows with a passion.

However, both I and everyone I know that has ever used a Windows phone (there were several of us at work) absolutely loved the platform when compared to Android and iPhone. I'm running a top end Google phone and still missing my Nokia Lumia Windows Phone. That phone had a great OS and was Rock solid.

The problem was nobody wanted to give it a try. The hardware looked bad, but it honestly didn't need to be as good as Android as it wasn't as bloated. This is somewhat anecdotal, but dual core Windows Phone7 ran smoother than quad core Android at the time.

<comment><USER26> > However, both I and everyone I know that has ever used a Windows phone > (there were several of us at work) absolutely loved the platform when > compared to Android and iPhone.

Rubbish. Their CE phones were awful, and lots of people hated Micrsofts Windows phones and their laggy tiles.

<comment><USER27> In around 2012 we had a couple of smart phones at work for evaluation. The Windows phone made the most rounds because everyone was amazed at how bad it was. We would hand it to colleagues who hadn't seen it yet and watch them struggle and curse while trying to do even the most basic tasks. The platform was Windows 7, I think.

<comment><USER25> Now this I have trouble believing. What "basic" tasks did they struggle with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> All users of windows phone I know liked it, some outright loved it. It got a number of design decisions right.

Lumia hardware was good, and the camera was more than excellent. Software was lacking but it could be improved to maturity.

Too bad we now have two players and not three or four (blackberry). This is indeed not because of lack of engineering prowess or customer interest.

<comment><USER29> BlackBerry still out here making good hardware, runs Android tho. I love the KeyOne&Two, they are awesome business device.

<comment><USER20> It does sadden me a bit that they don't make their own software anymore. For productivity it's so hard to beat their older OS and even OS10 is slick (I still use it today). It was strange though because their architecture supports android apps but you can't download them out-of-the-box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought in 2007 and I still think today the fundamental reason why there was space for the iPhone to be the phenomenon it was is that 1) The success of the iPod let them dictate terms to AT&T and get subsidies no one else could while keeping the customer experience clean in a way competitors couldn't (US phones had an unbelievable amount of crapware in the mid 00s, including great ideas like flashing the firmware to prevent camera phones from transferring photos over USB and forcing you to use a carrier service that covost $1/photo) 2) Microsoft's antitrust hangover prevented their mobile department from strong arming carriers earlier on

Microsoft's real mistake post iPhone release (and definitely post Android release) was not immediately making Windows phone free, OSS would have been nice, but I think most manufacturers moved to Android as their flagship because they got it free.

<comment><USER31> It wasn't free they got paid. Google shared mobile search revenue with manufacturers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sounds to me like the antitrust actions were effective.

The world would _not_ be a better place if MS had overwhelming mobile market share or had won the browser wars.

</comment><comment><USER33> > You know, in the software world, in particular for platforms, these are > winner-take-all markets. So, you know, the greatest mistake ever is the > whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what > Android is, [meaning] Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform. > That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.

Perfectly in character for Gates to see the mistake as failure to enter the market with the copycat product rather than the product that creates an entirely new category.

I suppose the world needs people like this, but by golly there's no reason for them to get any more than acknowledgement for being one of many players.

If Microsoft had a history of doing things right consistently in the copycat position, that might be different. But as a generally mediocre player wielding a monopoly position to follow the technological lead of others Microsoft is really quite uninspiring.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, it is an especially silly statement because Blackberry and Apple ios both existed at the time Android came out, so obviously it was NOT fundamentally a winner-take-all market. He kind of backwards-admits this by calling it the "non-Apple" market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think one of his biggest mistakes was fighting so hard against the DoJ wanting to break up the company into separate App and Sys companies -- not that the lawsuit was justified (and being all but moot by the time it was settled), but that it would have been a good thing for the company, forcing more healthy and creative interactions and acting as a new model for 3rd-party interaction.

As noted, MS was early to research and market in several areas including tablets and mobile, but either lacked a creativity escape velocity or quit just before hardware was up to the task, then failing at a restart. As someone who has spent their early career creating voice recognition products, it's also frustrating that they were so far ahead with speech reco (hiring the CMU peeps, many versions of SAPI, etc.) and then totally failing to do anything interesting with it at the OS and app level. If not mobile, MS should have been first for in-home voice assistant devices. (My and others' protestations for multi-modal or voice-only devices landed on deaf ears.)

As for Windows Phone, not allowing Silverlight apps to load/run on it from the web was a horrible decision, as this would have allowed u/x experiences that were years away from happening in the mobile browser.

Personally, I miss the T-Mobile Sidekick and the Blackberry Curve devices -- really all you need is Select, ExecuteThis and ContextMenuThis to do everything -- I was disappointed when Android gave up on the context menu. However, Android is still leagues better than iOS where every app is an adventure game.

[disclaimer: my first stint at MS was during the aforementioned time from '90-95.)

</comment><comment><USER36> Biggest mistake was to let Ballmer to stall Microsoft progress, creativity and business for a decade.

Say it, Bill

<comment><USER37> One of the biggest examples of how a leader of technical people will influence their performance by either bringing them up toward a lofty leadership level, or in the case where a leadership position is held by a party less technically qualified than the ones they are in a position to lead, the performance will be ground down to the lesser level, with the relative bozoness becoming more prominent than the underlying technical ability of the workforce through time.

Even with smaller "organizations" or institutions the momentum of the time factor involved when reversing between wisdom and foolishness can really obscure the true sources of the wisdom or foolishness to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I briefly had a Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows 8 Mobile, and I loved it... except for the apps. I otherwise really liked the device, the UI, the overall user experience. It was a nice alternative to the multiple iPhones I'd owned up to that point.

I've now been an Android user (Nexus 5, Moto X Pure, Nokia 6.1 Plus) for a few years. I've never been quite satisfied with the platform and the various quirks of the phones I've owned. Everytime the iPhone SE's make their way back to Apple's refurb site I almost purchase one for myself and my wife. I wish Windows Mobile had managed to generate enough interest and gravity to sustain as a viable alternative.

</comment><comment><USER39> Disappointed. I thought it was Clippy.

<comment><USER40> Clippy was the brainchild of Microsoft employee Melinda French whom later changed her name to Melinda Gates. needless to say, Bill is not going to admit that one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> That's a bit like saying "I wish I had had the idea for a search engine before Google, then I would have been the next Google." It doesn't work like that in business.

You could have given Microsoft everything they needed to dominate in mobile and they still would have screwed it up because of the Microsoft mentality back then. Even after iPhone came out, Ballmer famously said iPhones were stupid.

</comment><comment><USER42> Everybody eventually will make a graveyard mistake as you really just can't win all the time. It's just part of the cycle isn't it? Steve Ballmer was on the path to destroy Microsoft, and they were very lucky to have found Satya Nadella before it became all too late. He's truly their savior.

</comment><comment><USER43> > In fact, Gates is still kicking himself for taking his eyes off the ball and > allowing Google to develop Android

And those in Google are probably also kicking themselves for taking their eyes off the ball and allowing Oracle to acquire Sun

<comment><USER44> Whatever for would google want sun. Java is open source, Solaris and sparc are struggling

<comment><USER20> Perhaps all the lawsuits (or I guess one lawsuit that has been going on for more than a decade with all the appeals). At this point I'm sure it would have been cheaper to acquire Sun than to drag this out and still potentially face fines in the billions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > You know, in the software world, in particular for platforms, these are > winner-take-all markets. ...There's room for exactly one non-Apple operating > system

Would there be a general rule here that he is not thinking of? The general rule being that there is only room for 1 closed-source platform?

I can imagine that the winner of the closed-source platform race will be the team that doesn't take vacations of weekends, but does the same hold for the open source alternative platform? It seems to me that speed is less essential in the open source world and that it's more of a long-term battle.

<comment><USER46> Lots of variables what can change that duo dominance theory. For example when China closes their borders and grow their own phone OS and at the same time spread it in Africa and South America. Not unlikely to happen.

<comment><USER47> Will they actually develop from scratch or just clone android?

<comment><USER48> It's already done.

[https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei- co...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-confirms-it- has-built-its-own-operating-system-just-case-us)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Microsoft owned the smartphone market with CE, once palm went under. But they let it languish. You can see this happening today with Google's decisions to pull out of tablets, and close a number of products.

</comment><comment><USER49> Actually I expected this to be about his current activities. What would be his largest mistake with respect to effective altruism?

A mistake there is about the life or death of thousands of people. Maybe more.

</comment><comment><USER50> Now that Android is what it's become my biggest disappointment with Microsoft is that Nadella killed Windows Phone. Having used Android for close to two years now it blows my mind how bad Android UX is, given it's age, and how insanely good Windows Phone was, given IT'S age.

Not even starting to talk about the privacy side of it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Looks like he'd agree with Jack Ma about "sacrifices" in early years... Let's see how much flak he'll get for that.

<comment><USER52> Gates was clear in the interview, that it only applied to him. He said "for my makeup" it was applicable. He also explained that he believed: "it was possible to over mythologize the idea of working extremely hard." He also said point-blank that he doesn't recommend it.

That's the only correct position to take. Quite simply to each their own. Who is anyone else to tell me how to spend my hours? Gates is careful to make a distinction between projecting how others should be, and stating how he chose to be.

<comment><USER53> Some people work better in short bursts. Some people work better in sprints with longer breaks in between. That's why I don't feel bad when I work hard for a few weeks and slack off for a bit afterwards. I'll never personally understand the idea of a strict 9-5. It seems to go completely against everything I've learned about people in my life.

<comment><USER54> > It seems to go completely against everything I've learned about people in my > life.

Have you ever met people with children?

Generally, strict hours enable simple, well-defined coordination with others. You often _need_ that kind of agreement when others are taking care of your children in your behalf, e. g. schoolteachers, partners, grandparents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> MS is still making the mistake of not pushing the Laptop-Tablet combo device. The "Surface Pro" series are ideal for merging Laptop+Tablet+Phone devices. In this day and age, i do NOT want to carry three devices but NEED a multi- functional device.

<comment><USER56> And you have compromises. Windows sucks as a tablet OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Another huge mistake was they tried to incentivize app development instead of good app development. There were good apps on the windows phone, but it had so much rubbish the good apps were hard to find.

<comment><USER58> As opposed to the fart apps on iOS? No there were rubbish apps on all other platforms just that Apple created the iFund to promote startups based on apps and Google also had issues with app quality and quantity early too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Feels like there is an opportunity cost to not have time off early on in your life. Even if you somehow end up a billionaire later, you can't get your twenties and early thirties back.

<comment><USER60> I gave my twenties to the tech startup founder life. I won't be giving my thirties to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> With android we can at least replace few parts, and get a functional unix terminal even without root. If you can degoogle and / or root, android is great.

And BillG didn't deserve it...

</comment><comment><USER62> Google didn't invent Android, they bought it. Maybe Microsoft's big mistake was to let that happen.

<comment><USER63> It seems[0] that the Android bought by Google was a camera OS with cloud storage. Not a phone, nor did it have apps. All that came from Google, and was being developed before the iPhone was announced.

[0] [https://www.androidauthority.com/history-android-os- name-789...](https://www.androidauthority.com/history-android-os-name-789433/)

<comment><USER20> If you read Battle of the Titans, you'll see Android was left to its own devices once acquired, so you could say it was a team that what would eventually build the Android we know, regardless of who bought it. Google contributed cash but didn't do anything Microsoft couldn't if they had acquired them.

<comment><USER64> Completely disagree. Google shared mobile search ad revenue with carriers and device makers using Android OS. Microsoft couldn't (as a matter of practicality) offer that advantage.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough, but do be careful of founder revisionist history. Independent research is usually better at digging up company origins than the "tales from the inside" that founders tout. (Though I'm not disputing the revenue split advantage)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Just imagine combining this attitude with start-up unlimited vacation policies.

<comment><USER66> Unlimited vacation is literal for me. I will abuse the shit out of it until told otherwise. Quite frankly, it doesn't bother me one bit.

<comment><USER65> I don't understand. Are you saying you're unbothered by the disingenuous use of unlimited vacation policies by start-ups and others seeking to avoid payouts on unused PTO while also creating a culture that implicitly pressures workers to take less vacation?

I'm not making a normative judgment about your comment (for example, you are clear that it's totally down to your personal use of the vacation policy, and that you don't consider how it affects others when deciding whether to be bothered by it ... this is not bad or good, just one particular way to attach an evaluation to the policy). I'm just asking to clarify b/c it's not clear to me which aspect of my comment you're replying to.

<comment><USER66> > Are you saying you're unbothered by the disingenuous use of unlimited > vacation policies by start-ups and others seeking to avoid payouts on unused > PTO while also creating a culture that implicitly pressures workers to take > less vacation?

I am saying that I am unbothered by exploiting an exploitative system that is not internally consistent.

If a company tells me unlimited vacation, that means unlimited vacation. If they tell me two weeks it means two weeks. If I am expected to infer that a policy is the opposite of what it says, then how can I remain sane?

<comment><USER65> What do you do in a company that tells you "unlimited vacation" but then takes subtle retaliatory or punitive action towards you, in ways fully insulated from any kind of worker appeal for wrongdoing?

Usually you'll be pressured not to take much vacation, and passed over for promotion or raises, etc., if you don't comply, and they'll just manage you out, probably feeling happy when you eventually quit or something.

A lot of people are also stuck in the sense that they don't have the financial freedom or job market liquidity to quit because of this, and are essentially forced to accept it or else go unemployed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> All of this paved the way for Nadella. I count it as a net gain.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is disturbing. One of the wealthiest and most successful businessmen in the world is still beating himself up about missing out on one important market, mobile phones.

That is strange, but what is most disturbing is how he is utterly certain that Microsoft deserved to have that market, that it would be better if Microsoft dominated that market as well, and that Microsoft missed out on that market because of high-level managerial errors, not because people didn't like Windows phone.

<comment><USER69> _what is most disturbing is how he is utterly certain that Microsoft deserved to have that market_

Words you're putting in his mouth. He did not say anything about deserving or certainty; when he says "we did screw up" that's an acknowledgement they had to compete for it, and failed to do that. People who think they deserve things, don't think they have to work hard and compete for them, and they don't reflect on what they did wrong but instead get affronted that the universe didn't simply hand them what the still feel they deserve.

<comment><USER70> Gates wrote:

> _So, you know, the greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I > engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is, [meaning] > Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform. That was a natural > thing for Microsoft to win._

It's not quite a sense of entitlement, but Gates definitely thinks Microsoft could have won mobile if Microsoft made better decisions. He doesn't seem to be leaving much room for the idea that Google would have won even if Microsoft had done its best.

<comment><USER69> Microsoft had been building consumer hardware and software (X-Box, Pocket-PC, Windows Mobile) since ~2000 and Windows XP Tablet edition since 2002, and Zune, just about before iPhone. They owned the frontend on desktop and mobile, office and consumer. They had Exchange ActiveSync, one of the few possible competitors for Blackberry messaging, and they had hardware makers on board - just look at the list of companies which made Windows PocketPC devices, and the number of devices out for literally years before Google moved in the market at all:

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

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

It took them _three years_ after iPhone to pivot to something multi-touch, (Windows Phone 7 in late 2010) and on release it had the limitations of the original iPhone release - no copy/paste, no custom rintones - and _five years_ to get something with Windows NT kernel to compete with Apple's "It runs OS X".

If Microsoft had made better decisions, i.e. done what Apple did, and released a multitouch full-not-hobbled-software device as soon as the hardware was up to it, tuning Microsoft hardware and software together like they do now with the Surface range, there wouldn't have been a market gap for Google to enter.

And when Google did enter, the first Android released was the HTC Dream - coming out 18 months after iPhone release - and 6 months after iPhone had been discontinued and superceded - and being designed like a device from 2003. - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Dream)

If you'd asked people in 2005 who were the contenders for dominating the next decade of consumer mobile computing, what would they say? Would anyone seriously suggest Google anymore than Yahoo! or AOL or Compuserve?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Ugh. This is somehow going to get translated into "vacation = failure" and thats a tragedy. Im used to a culture of 2 weeks max a year because thats whats legally required, and that amount of time gives you no time to reflect, no time to relax, and little time to come up with unique ways to solve problems. I really hope this was taken out of context.

<comment><USER72> Enjoy your two-weeks. A lot of companies in the valley now have "No Allocated Vacation" \- which, in many scenarios, means you get Christmas off and that's about it for quite a stretch. (And also, of course, means they don't have to pay out your vacation when you leave - as you never had any coming to you)

<comment><USER73> I assume you're taking a dig at "unlimited vacation".

You should really redirect your anger at your company culture.

We have "unlimited vacation" where I work.

Even a couple years back when things were not looking good most people took about 4wk which in practice is more like 5wk if you utilize the days off we get before/after major holidays. It's common for the H1Bs to pick a random month and use that time to go home to visit family. I took 3wk or so and it came up in my performance review and I was encouraged to take more if I wanted to. It's not just my team that's like this either.

One of the many reasons I prefer to do tech somewhere other than the overpriced west coast meat grinders.

<comment><USER72> Companies have "No Allocated" vacation (By no stretch of the imagination is it unlimited) - for exactly _one_ reason - so they don't have to carry the pay- out liability on their books.

But, an ugly side effect, is because there is no allocation, there is also no forcing function for people to "use-it-or-lose-it" \- which also means when you are in crunch-time (which defines every startup I've ever worked for in the first 4-5 years) - it effectively means no vacation, excepting Christmas, which still seems to be untouchable (so far).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> His greatest mistake was allowing UX and quality of the windows platform to descend into the plague that it was for the better part of 2 decades. I can't imagine a world where my phone were as unreliable and vulnerable as, say, windows Vista.

<comment><USER75> You are getting downvoted, but there's truth in what you say. Microsoft's idea of a phone OS was always simply a port of Windows. If fact their early efforts failed in part because they insisted on making it a port of Windows.

<comment><USER74> it's also telling how Gates' phrasing implies a false dichotomy where there's Apple's platform plus room for only _one_ other competitor. The only reason it's that way now is because of abuse of patent law and other anti-competitive business practices. We could just as easily live in a world where there are 6 proprietary mobile OS vendors plus several open source versions built on easily-interchangeable interfaces (thanks to FTC-mandate) all vying to be #1 among onsumers by offering the best UX and features. To me, his language indicates he can't even comprehend a world where MS has to compete on a level playing field by developing a superior technology that users prefer.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft gives company access to telemetry from every device running Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/610583/can-fireeye-change-cyber-security-stakes-through-microsoft-partnership/ <comment><USER2> previous discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13036084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13036084)</comment>


The Starlight Lines Employee Forum RPG - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/the-secret-douglas-adams-rpg-people-have-been-playing-f-1681986562 <comment><USER2> Hey, folks. I'm Yoz Grahame, the chap in the article who coded and (very badly) ran the forum. Many thanks to Lewis for writing such a great piece, and to dnetesn for posting it here!

If you're interested in learning more about Starship Titanic and the Employee Forum, I recommend this MetaFilter post: [http://www.metafilter.com/98848/The- Post-That-Cannot-Possibl...](http://www.metafilter.com/98848/The-Post-That- Cannot-Possibly-Go-Wrong)

Rhaomi put together an amazing collection of links, including a guide to getting and running the game today. I also have a big mess of a comment halfway down the thread with some extra info and stories.

My one main addendum to Lewis's piece: I was far from the only person behind the ST sites. The content was written by Michael Bywater, Neil Richards, and Alison Humphrey. Design & development by Alison Humphrey, Cynthia Miall, Claudio Calvelli and (whenever I got in before lunchtime) me.

<comment><USER3> Hey, yoz! Thanks for the shout-out. That is probably my favorite post of mine on the site (out of 100+ and counting). So wonderfully serendipitous and fun. Everything about that game is a joy.

I was actually looking back into some of the Starlight Lines forum stuff a few months ago when I discovered with dismay that the original URL (starlightlines.com) was down. I was thrilled to figure out you'd managed to resurrect it! (Did you ever see that email I sent you back in September?)

Anyway, the story of that hidden community is so great, I did my level best alerting anyplace that had originally picked up the story for a correction on the new URL so people could know it was still around. Apart from the fine folks at H2G2:

[http://h2g2.com/feedback/A388334/conversation/view/F47997/T8...](http://h2g2.com/feedback/A388334/conversation/view/F47997/T8310537)

...I didn't get much success -- including no response from Kotaku UK when I mailed them offering help for their pseudonymous writer on H2G2 who had been asking for leads on the apparently dead forum:

[http://h2g2.com/entry/A452125/conversation/view/F55683/T8309...](http://h2g2.com/entry/A452125/conversation/view/F55683/T8309967)

It's good to see he ended up doing something with the story after all -- though it would be nice if he'd hat-tipped the MeFi thread where he apparently lifted that "sentient tomatoes" quote from verbatim (unless of course that's just a favorite turn-of-phrase of yours). Lately, MeFi needs all the Google juice it can get.

Cheers, and thanks for all the great stories!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I administer a small vBulletin forum that I inherited from a friend who inherited it from... well, whatever, this thing's been around for over a decade now.

A few years ago we discovered that we had _parasites_! Apparently, that version of vBulletin had some sort of secondary built-in way for users to register - totally bypassing the moderation tools I used - and a whole secondary forum which these vermin could use! It didn't show up on the main boards, and was only discovered by accident.

Apparently they'd hitched a ride on our forum to start discussing some pokemon-like game.

We ended up flushing them all out. In hindsight, I really regret this. It wasn't anything as neat as the Starlight Lines forum, but it had only been going for about a year. On the one hand, I probably should have let them continue. On the other hand, I would have to be the benevolent admin of a bunch of people that weren't a part of my community, who were using a server I was personally paying for, and posting god-knows-what. Considering I'd already had to ban several regular users for posting awful things, I didn't want to double my workload.

edit: did a little research; the feature they used was "Social Groups", and they still had to sign up normally, via the moderation tools. I guess they had just signed up far enough in the past that I either had moderation disabled, or I had forgotten about them.

<comment><USER5> Hilarious! I have a forum that's been around for a similar amount of time and at the beginning it was on vBulletin. At least in the old days it was possible to have hidden forums that didn't show up on the main index, but would show if you went to a specific URL/forum id. Those became little secret forums that the users went to talk shit about other users.

It was hilarious and I'd forgotten about that.

Nowadays there might be twenty or thirty of us left. It's pretty slow but it's a nice little community.

<comment><USER4> I was about to ask whether you and I were on the same forum, but then I realized that there's maybe five people who even bother signing into mine once a week these days :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh, cool. (The only time I ever met Douglas Adams, I was in London and dropped in on TDV, where a friend of mine was working as a sysadmin -- this was around summer 1997 -- and I got the tour, which included the man himself, who just happened to be in.) IIRC the novelization was going to be written by Robert Sheckley (who was also there, one of the great SF satirists of the 1950s to 1970s, up there with Harry Harrison in his early period):

[http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sheckley_robert](http://sf- encyclopedia.com/entry/sheckley_robert)

TDV had enormous energy back in mid-1997, but as I understand it everything fell apart very rapidly after Douglas died; he was the main driver behind the whole project, so rather than being an independent games house -- which it had the potential to become -- it died with its founder. (There's a lesson in here for startups, I think: try not to depend exclusively on a single creative vision?)

<comment><USER7> >try not to depend exclusively on a single creative vision?

I guess if you have an unmatched creative genius like Douglas Adams in your team, that might be the only real option. Especially since a lot of creative geniuses seem to have problems cooperating with other creative geniuses (at least in my experience).

But I generally agree. Just look at Apple.

<comment><USER8> It must be scary having a company so dependent on one creative mind. But how would Apple look today if they tried not to depend on Jobs so much? My guess- much smaller, much less significant.

<comment><USER9> Apple seem to be doing just fine without Jobs:

[http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/01/27Apple-Reports- Reco...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/01/27Apple-Reports-Record-First- Quarter-Results.html)

<comment><USER10> Now it is, but look back at Apple's share prices in 2000 and what Apple was when Steve Jobs came in. It was a struggling company trying to figure out whom to please, their offering of computers is what HP is now: a multitude of options that does could do anything for everyone.

Steve Jobs' personality and drive created Apple and then saved it by having the executive power to focus the brand away from the various iterations of computers to get to one idea: Beautiful products that people want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am not sure why this game was labelled a secret. I remember it coming out! I also remember it being praised for the AI but don't recall any of the reviews saying why it was so good.

I suspect we'll soon have an article about the secret Lucasarts game called Grim Fandango....

Douglas Adams wrote some interesting books (I fondly remember the 5 book series of Hitchhiker's Guide and listened to the radio show from my dad's cassettes) and thought Dirk Gently's first book was funny but lost interest in the second. I was surprised that this game was labelled as Douglas Adam's creation though - did he write any code? :-)

<comment><USER12> The actual game the article talks about is so secret that even when presented with a detailed explanation of how it works, you managed to miss it.

<comment><USER11> Haha valid point I did skim read the article thanks to the abundantly rubbish Internet connection I am stuck with where half of the images never load.

I deserve the stick I'll get for making that comment. I'll reread the article; thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember playing this game when I was younger, and being impressed by the interactivity of the AI. Though honestly, I mostly just swore at them creatively.

I have to wonder, though, if the game did actually have especially good AI, or if I just wasn't familiar with text-based adventure games enough to recognize Starship Titanic as essentially being one.

<comment><USER14> I relate to the dilemma. When I was playing Half Life as a kid, I remember being blown away by the "smart enemy AI."

These days I find it odd when enemy AI does NOT react in a dynamic, networked way. Interesting how my expectation has changed over the years. I wonder if the same applies for video game graphics, too?

<comment><USER15> > _Interesting how my expectation has changed over the years. I wonder if the > same applies for video game graphics, too?_

How can you wonder? Isn't it obvious?

Graphics that would leave us impressed in 1985 or 1995 or 2000 are considered nothing to write home about a few years later...

<comment><USER13> While this is true, I find the distinction between graphical fidelity and art style to be important in these matters.

While the graphics of Super Metroid might not be anything spectacular, the pixel art is phenomenal, and replaying it recently I gained a whole new appreciation for how future-proof the art direction in that game is. I think there are many more examples of this out there, too. For instance, people often bemoan early 3d games (Nintendo 64 games especially) for aging horribly. On the whole, that is true. But there are certainly exceptions, such as Majora's Mask, where (again) the art direction saved the game's graphics from the awkward low-polygon limitations of the system.

<comment><USER16> Each mode has a time when it gets "good enough," and everything on top of that is gravy.

IMHO, for 2D, that was achieved with the NES generation. And for 3D, with the GameCube generation. (My son fired up Metroid Prime yesterday on the Wii, and it took me a while to realize it was a GC game, not a Wii game.)

But, yeah, Super Metroid is amazing. I only played it recently (~6 years ago), never the original, and I still enjoyed it thoroughly.

<comment><USER17> In this particular case note that the Wii hardware is, to a large degree, a straight repackaging of the GCN hardware with a bit more RAM and a higher clock speed. That the Wii is not an extreme graphical advance over its predecessor is to be expected. :)

I do agree with you in general, though. Which isn't to say that graphical advances aren't still perceptible (compare SNES-era sprites to any of the positively _gorgeous_ sprites from Odin Sphere or Rayman Legends), but at some point you cross a threshold where graphics cease being cringe-worthy and start being merely dated. FFVII is a cringe-worthy example, whereas The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion remains breathtaking to behold (as long as you don't look anyone in the face, that is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The book may be out of print but it's available for Kindle: [http://www.amazon.com/Douglas-Adamss-Starship-Titanic- Terry-...](http://www.amazon.com/Douglas-Adamss-Starship-Titanic-Terry- ebook/dp/B0012D1DLO)

</comment><comment><USER19> Some day, I'll come back to Hacker News with that same longing...

<comment><USER20> Will we though? HN is for commenting on articles, which in several years will have their links broken. We don't develop characters, carry on stories or create a memes. Is a community based around commenting on things as durable as one that has to create their own content?

<comment><USER21> > create a memes

"Did you win the Putnam?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We attempted to tone down the baity title just a little, but if anyone has a better suggestion, we'll change it again.

<comment><USER23> the new title is actually incorrect, the "secret" RPG is not the released-to- the-public game but actually "[The] Starlight Lines employee forum" if one is going to be literal about it. I'd personally just keep the article's title.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the correction. I've made that the title, but if anyone has a better suggestion we can change it again.

(The reason for not using the original is that we don't want clickbait tropes like "The Secret Celebrity Foo That Bars Have Been Bazzing For A Bazillion Years". A good HN title is accurate and neutral.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So its not really secret anymore is it?</comment>


Amazon Kindle is a Hit - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2008/07/10/amazon-kindle-is-a-hit-12-of-book-sales-on-amazon-doubled-since-may/ <comment><USER2> _"On a title-by-title basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles…"._

So, it is 12% of those 130K titles, not 12% of _all_ book sales on AMZN. I am not sure how many titles Amazon sells overall but it's probably much greater than 130K which means that the Kindle's share is lower.

Just wanted to point out that the post's title might not be entirely accurate.

(Update: it looks like Amazon stocks several _million_ book titles)

<comment><USER3> Agreed, the title is misleading. But you're also misleading by saying that these are merely some 130K out of millions of titles.

Those are 130K of the highest-selling books by volume on Amazon - I wouldn't be surprised if they accounted for 30-50% of sales, even though they're a much smaller fraction of the millions of titles

So it's not 12% of Amazon sales, but still a significant fraction of that.

<comment><USER4> Are they definitely the highest-selling books or just the ones that Amazon could get licensed to in electronic form?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I could buy the black and white screen used on the OLPC XO in bulk I could make a better ebook reader (for geeks, wi-fi and USB will have to do for connectivity, CDMA is way too much money and hassle though it is what gives the kindle such broad appeal) and sell it for $199.

When is that screen technology going to move beyond the XO?

<comment><USER6> The screen on Kindle is _nothing_ like a computer screen, XO or otherwise. To make images, it arranges colored particles using an applied electric field. To illustrate just one implication, it does not have any backlighting whatsoever, which means (1) there is no eye strain and you can read in direct sunlight, (2) it never becomes hot so you can read for hours, and (3) it holds images indefinitely without drawing electricity so battery life is very long.

<comment><USER5> The black and white XO screen doesn't have a backlight. When you turn the backlight on the screen becomes lower resolution and color. Not to get into a spitting match about which screen is more unique, but the XO screen is pretty damn unique.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only person who thinks that the subjective "WOW" is unnecessary from the post title?

</comment><comment><USER8> I was just talking about the kindle with one of my housemates. I don't have one, but my boss does, and apparently loves it. E-Ink is definitely a cool technology. I've heard some people say there are some things that should be changed in "Kindle 2.0". Any word on if/when the next version's coming out?

</comment><comment><USER9> It costs 359 dollars, which is insane for something which has capabilities somewhat short of the 386 laptop I bought many years ago for 40 dollars. Yet...print is dead. I've come to this conclusion as a long-time book-reader and semi-ludite. There's just no reason to haul around wood pulp at a storage efficiency 1/1,000,000,000th of the state of the art.

So, I guess things are bound to change. But 359 dollars? Cripe.

<comment><USER10> It sounds expensive until you try to estimate the cost of my book collection. Double cripe.

The number of O'Reilly books that can be bought for $359 is depressingly small. If and when O'Reilly fully supports Kindle (and vice versa) Kindles will _really_ start flying off the shelves:

[http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/select-oreilly-books-soon- on-...](http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/select-oreilly-books-soon-on-kindle- and-as-drm-free-digital-bundle.html)

UPDATE: Of course, some of the _book_ pricing is going to need a reality adjustment. $10 _more_ than a used paper copy is too much. And the catalog could use some proofreading too: did you know that Don Roberts wrote "Refactoring"?

[http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design- Existing-...](http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design-Existing- Code/dp/B000OZ0N4Y/ref=pd_sim_kinc_2)

<comment><USER11> Also, the ebooks are just as expensive as the paper books, which just doesn't seem fair. Especially since I can sell my paper books, but not the ebooks (I presume).

<comment><USER12> You could probably just sell the Kindle itself, with the books embedded, as long as you close your credit account afterwards. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lies, damned lies, and statistics. It's 12% of "sales" not 12% of revenue (or even profit). Does Bezos have so much invested in making people believe Kindle is a success that he's willing to basically lie?

<comment><USER14> Bezos isn't lying. Though it's true that the article's author is exaggerating things a bit, the reality is that Kindle's doing fairly well. I personally believe that the primary roadblocks it's facing are the lack of color (which I believe is due to cost issues with the technology, since the e-paper stuff is pretty new), and the price tag.

However, it also hasn't been on the market for very long, so I'd say that although it hasn't so far been a "killer" product, it HAS been generating enough revenue that it will probably justify a v2. (That's what I'm hoping for, because I'll probably be in line for a v2 model... though if the price tag came down to $200, I might get one now.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazons is still hiding the number of Kindles sold. Why do you think that is? Kindles are probably not selling well at all.

<comment><USER16> DRM makes it a no-go for me. I'd love to use an eBook reader but the current lock-in strategy from the major vendors is a huge turn-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is the competition? iRex? There must have been some new devices coming out since the kindle launched?

Is the Amazon ebooks shop compatible with other ebook readers, or do they do the iTunes thing?

<comment><USER17> The Sony prs-505 is very similar but without the full keyboard and ability to get books without a pc. I got one earlier this year and I like it.

<comment><USER11> Does it have a touch screen? I think the first Sony Readers didn't have one.

<comment><USER15> None of them do. It's eInk.

<comment><USER11> I thought the kindle has one, and I am pretty sure the iRex has a touchscreen.

<comment><USER18> pretty sure kindle doesn't have a touch screen

<comment><USER11> Yeah I couldn't find any references for a touchscreen via Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been wondering if enterprises are going to start using kindles for positions that deal with a lot of traveling paperwork.

</comment><comment><USER20> right to read.

[http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of- re...](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-reading)

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love the thing. I've played with it hands on and it's a remarkable gadget... BUT I have two complaints:

1) I'd love a backlight that can be switched on to conserve battery

2) I would pay for ability to surf the net / access blogs without the Kindle- subscription service

<comment><USER21> Re #1, I presume you mean "switched off" to conserve battery. The thing is, a backlight wouldn't really work with the eInk screen. eInk is an ink technology designed to mimic ink on paper. Like paper, you read the screen by light bouncing off it, not through it. Think of reading a backlit sheet of paper, like a transparency on a projector -- more pleasant to read the reflection than have it lit from behind.

I have a Motorola MOTOFONE F3, which also uses an eInk display. It has a light source -- an LED between the display and outer plastic. Works ok, but direct reflected light (like a flashlight) works better in low light conditions.

I think you can just use a normal booklight with the Kindle.

<comment><USER16> Booklights are so awkward. Some sort of integrated lighting solution so I can read while curled up under the covers would be great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I rather have the convenience of an iPhone and download books at 99cts from the App Store.

Some will say "the eyes blah blah the ink blah blah" but I tell you, I surf ten hours a day in my old monitor and have had no eye problems for the past 20 years.</comment>


Facebook Bans Operation Payback Page - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/Anon_Operation/status/12629197184831488

<comment><USER2> Which is fair enough, no?

Surely organising a DDOS attack is illegal?</comment>


Panic as panic alarms meant to keep granny and little Timmy safe prove a privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/11/panic_alarms_hackable/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://fidusinfosec.com/exploiting-10000-devices-used-by- br...](https://fidusinfosec.com/exploiting-10000-devices-used-by-britains- most-vulnerable/)</comment>


How one site beat back botnets, spammers, and the "4chan party van" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/how-one-site-beat-back-botnets-spammers-and-the-4chan-party-van/ <comment><USER2> The story has absolutely nothing to do with 4chan and doesn't even understand what "4chan party van" means:

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/4chan-party- van](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/4chan-party-van)

<comment><USER3> If anything it would be the internet hate machine ([http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-hate- machine](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-hate-machine)), but I don't see 4Chan mentioned. I doubt they'd participate in dDOSing a Tor provider, not your personal army and all that.

<comment><USER4> TorGuard isn't a Tor provider. They're a VPN provider that specializes in BitTorrent.

This is a common enough misconception that I'm surprised the Tor Project hasn't enforced their trademark.

<comment><USER3> Uh OK my bad, thanks for the clarification. Still, I'd doubt 4Chan would take down a torrent-friendly VPN provider ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before you have to read the whole article: even though the title suggests otherwise, the attack is not related to 4chan, but rather a "rival VPN service" as suspected by one TorGuard administrator. (TorGuard was the attacked website, a VPN provider)

<comment><USER6> They also don't know what the 4chan party van is, unless by "pizza and plumbing" they meant "arrest by the FBI".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Umm... errr... the 4chan Party Van is the FBI. Back in The Day, 4chan had basically only one real rule -no child pornography- and the people running the site were extremely conscientious about cooperating with law enforcement when people broke that rule. I assume they still are: it's just there there are more rules now, though most aren't the sort that will incur the wrath of the FBI when you break them.

The harassment described in the article also occurs, of course, but that's not the party van. It's more like what they'd call a raid.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting as it is, this article reads as one long-form advert for CloudFlare.

<comment><USER9> jgrahamc works for CloudFlare

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So nothing they did actually worked before shelling out to cloudflare? Nice advertisement but now I hate the author for misleading me that the article contains anything instructive.

</comment><comment> ryan-allen If CloudFlare think they can stop 4chan from griefing them, they have another thing coming, I think. Calling out 4chan like this is like drawing a picture of Muhammad: just don't!

<comment><USER11> The irony is, that 4chan itself uses cloudflare according to moot > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682625)

<comment><USER12> When people say 4chan they usually mean "4chan users", so this is not very ironic IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is like when I was watching the Champions' League and got a hankering for some tasty Gazprom.</comment>


Sign web content using PGP - <AUTHOR> http://www.sajalkayan.com/post/pgp-sign-web-content.html <comment><USER2> Nice guide!</comment>