Nokia posts disappointing Lumia sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/27534/Nokia_posts_disappointing_Lumia_sales

<comment><USER2> I was seriously considering getting a Lumia 1020 purely because of the camera, which gets rave reviews everywhere.

I was even willing to abandon Android and put up with the Windows OS. But unfortunately, to buy it unlocked would cost $600, and the only carrier that was subsidizing it was AT&T, which I have sworn off.

In the end, I got a Samsung S4 Zoom. Its camera is second only to the Lumia, it's got a great xenon flash, I get to stick with Android, it cost only about $350 unlocked, and it works on a GSM network MVNO, so my cellphone bill ends up being $40/mo., instead of $85/mo. on AT&T.

<comment><USER3> > But unfortunately, to buy it unlocked would cost $600, and the only carrier > that was subsidizing it was AT&T, which I have sworn off.

All phones cost that much. 'subsidized' phones cost much more.

Unless someone's poor enough to need a carrier plan to buy a smartphone - which, then again, they should avoid going into debt even more - then an unlocked phone is by far the cheapest option.

A pity Nokia (and other companies that sell smartphones upfront) have to educate people in the basics of personal finance before they can sell a unit (not picking on you specifically, the belief that one 'saves money' by buying a carrier-locked subsidised phone is pretty common).

<comment><USER4> > an unlocked phone is by far the cheapest option.

That assumes the carrier provides equivalent but lower-priced subsidies-free plans. Otherwise the would-be subsidy ends up as additional profits in the carrier's pocket.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. If I'm going to go with a particular carrier anyway, then it's better to go with a subsidized phone, unless I get a discount for bringing my own unlocked phone.

The error that nailer thinks I made, I did not make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not too surprising; outside HN comments I have yet to find anyone actually liking these phones here (in the EU). Most people I know who have one (including me) like the hardware but not the software and they don't like the hardware enough to not get an iPhone or Android. I tried to like it but it's gathering dust only to be swept off when a client wants to order an app for it from us. After that it goes into the drawer again.

From non tech people I usually hear complaints about it still just not working all too well (annoying to hook up to computers, not being able to easily put movies and music on them compared to android/ios, no worthwhile apps compared, random crashes).

Like said; the only positive things I hear about it are raving HN'ers here or MS employees on Facebook.

<comment><USER6> As one of those raving HN'ers (although not an MS employee) who now uses an iPhone, all of those things you mention are legitimate issues, and I don't know many WP owners who would disagree. The real heartbreaker is that even with these seemingly show-stopping issues, WP combined with Nokia hardware is so good that it's hard to turn away from. Even though the software has so many issues that have been unresolved for so long, it's still _that good_. It was a tough choice to give it up, I only did so because it had let me down on more than a few occasions where I really needed it.

The last time I found a mobile OS that instilled that level of "so good it doesn't matter that it's bad" was WebOS, and I frequently compare the two. Unfortunately, I see the same future for WP as what WebOS got.

<comment><USER7> This was the feeling I had when I had played with the recent versions of WP. It felt like a fantastic OS, and the hardware ran it brilliantly.

My own personal showstopper isn't a fault with the OS, but with how the phones look. Nokia just seems so far behind in terms of designing an attractive phone.

If Nokia were to release a phone that looked as nice as my Galaxy Nexus, had a large screen, and didn't cost an absolute bomb I'd probably go for WP over Android.

<comment><USER8> I'll have to disagree with you on the design aspect. In my opinion Nokia N9 has been the nicest looking and feeling phone ever. When you have it in your hand the finishing feels great, especially the subtly curved screen that has deep enough blacks that blend into the black borders seamlessly.

[http://velmont.no/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/Nokia-N9.jpg](http://velmont.no/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/Nokia-N9.jpg)

<comment><USER9> Have you not heard of the Lumia 800?

[http://wmpoweruser.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/11/lumia-800-...](http://wmpoweruser.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/11/lumia-800-black.jpg)

The only difference (beside the OS) is the presence of tactile buttons (back, home, search).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On Windows Phone, one thing that I like a lot is Nokia's HERE suite (maps and turn-by-turn navigation). Free and really good. The hardware is good and the OS is nice too. One thing I was impressed is that it seems actually easier to develop for Windows Phone than for iOS or Android.

<comment><USER11> I have a Lumia 920 and I find the turn-by-turn navigation to be abysmal. It gives distances in yards and the vocabulary does not extend much past "keep right", "keep left", and "follow the course of the road". It's also flat our wrong more often than not where I live. Google tells you street names and exit numbers, which is vital in large metropolitan areas.

Also, map searching is no where near as good as Google Maps.

<comment><USER12> Two things: 1) you can change the distance units, and 2) the app will pronounces the names of many commonly-named streets, but it is certainly true that its vocabulary is much smaller than some other options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a better article, although in Finnish [http://www.hs.fi/talous/Nokian+puhelinihme+p%C3%A4%C3%A4ttyi...](http://www.hs.fi/talous/Nokian+puhelinihme+p%C3%A4%C3%A4ttyi+loppuvuonna+romahdukseen/a1390459401484?ref=hs- art-top-3)

I'm not completely surprised at the results. I've tried to be an advocate, but Microsoft's slow development cycle along with lack of apps frustrates me more and more. No Venmo, Uber, Lyft or almost any other new and useful app that comes out. The camera is still pretty great, but alone it's just not enough to get a Lumia at the moment.

<comment><USER14> I think the app selection has actually gotten pretty good, but I do not do much ride sharing. But, the problem for me is the ridiculously slow update cycle.

<comment><USER15> Slow update cycles are an advantage to some buyers, and some people prefer stability over churn. Among consumers, that's a minority though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lumia 928 owner and I love my phone, for me the OS/HW is great. To me, it feels like a lot of the dissatisfaction centers around the fact that WP is an MS product. Of course there are things that could be enhanced or done better but compared with my past experience with iOS and Android, WP is tops for me. That being said, it is a beautiful thing to have choice so more power to the iOS and Android users. Get in where you fit in!

</comment><comment><USER17> I am a bit confused by this, the author actually edited the numbers ( "Nokia has confirmed it sold 8.2 million Lumias in Q4" ) which is the double of 2012.

How is that "disappointing"?

<comment><USER18> Is not a surprise, the Osnews editor is well know for being anti-Nokia since their aliance with MS, so spect more from him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think porting my app to WP would be quite fun. I like C#/.NET, I like VS. What I don't like is Windows 8. I'm not willing to install Windows 8 just so that I can develop an app for a small number of users.

Surely MS would help themselves by letting Windows 7 users develop for WP? Their ecosystem is small but their development platform is, in my eyes, the nicest of the bunch. The bulk of the various mobile app stores are filled with apps developed as a hobby, and requiring Windows 8 is a huge hurdle for a hobbyist.

<comment><USER9> What don't you like about Windows 8?

As someone who developped for iOS, Android and Windows Phone/8, I prefer (by far) the MS ecosystem and tools. It's just nicer to use, and I can build an app in a fraction of the time (for the same quality) as it takes with other platforms.

With Xamarin, things will get even better (I'll get to use VS for 80% of my work).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> " tluyben2 41 minutes ago | link

Not too surprising; outside HN comments I have yet to find anyone actually liking these phones here (in the EU). Most people I know who have one (including me) like the hardware but not the software and they don't like the hardware enough to not get an iPhone or Android. I tried to like it but it's gathering dust only to be swept off when a client wants to order an app for it from us. After that it goes into the drawer again."

Nokia 928 is an amazing phone and Windows 8 phone is really smooth. An article on HN yesterday talked about the rise of these phones in specific markets one them being Europe. Most people I know that actually own one really like it and think its much better than Android. Obviously the previous comment is just an opinion and not fact.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the design language Microsoft came up with for Windows Phone. So I bought a Nokia Lumia phone. I quickly regretted it. This was before Windows Phone 8 was released but we were promised "many of the features" with Windows Phone 7.8. I waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually I was told that they had changed their minds and Windows Phone 7.8 wouldn't even be coming to my particular phone.

Windows Phone 7 is missing a lot of very basic features. It's time consuming and frustrating using it even for the most basic tasks. The web browser is terrible. It lacks most popular 3rd-party services and apps. And the camera seems to be programmed to take out-of-focus photos.

I will never buy another Nokia phone, or Windows Phone, again. They had their chance.

</comment><comment><USER22> My ex-neighbour is 'high' up in Nokia and I can remember having a conversation about how the Lumia would make a fantastic Android phone. I think he mentioned in passing that there was a team that briefly looked into making an Nokia Android phone, but this was killed off before the Microsoft buyout.

It's one of those phones I would buy immediately if they did an Android version. It's a very very nice piece of kit (in particular the camera) but if it doesn't run the apps you use on a daily basis, you are not going to touch it with a barge pole.

Unfortunately this will never happen. Microsoft would, in effect, be admitting their mobile platform is a dead end.

<comment><USER23> This sentiment that Nokia _should make_ or _should have made_ Android phones is common. I won't disagree with the article that Lumia sales are disappointing and that Nokia would have faced much harder decisions today were they not part of Microsoft.

But I find it surprising how often I hear fans of Android bemoan the dearth of Nokia Android phones. It implies that there is some hole in the Android market that would be filled by Nokia. That is remarkable—I'd go so far to say implausible—considering the wide spectrum of manufacturers already providing Android hardware.

A quick glance at Verizon's current offerings shows seven manufacturers offering Android phones via Verizon, many with multiple options. Meanwhile, for fans of Windows Phone—few of those as there may be—we have Nokia, Samsung, and HTC, offering one option each. And if rumors are to believed, Samsung may only be offering Windows Phone thanks to Microsoft paying them to do so.

To suggest that Nokia should offer Android phones implies there is some subtle quirk or distinguishing design element that would make a Nokia android preferable to the seven existing Android manufacturers' offerings. Certainly there isn't anything as substantial as a wholly new look and feel or new way of working with applications to distinguish the potential Nokia Android phone from those seven other manufacturers. So it would be something like the color of the case, maybe a few proprietary apps, the material, a few minor specs such as a good camera or wireless charging. Though many existing Android phones offer all of those things and more.

Meanwhile, being the principal Windows Phone manufacturer brings _actual_ variation to the consumer. In fact, taking away the operating system, the Lumia hardware is not very unique. Spec-by-spec, it's about on par with an average Android phone. But it piqued my interest because it's not-Android and I wanted something new to try having become tired of the same old thing. My wife is now waiting for the Icon to be released to replace her Galaxy Nexus because she too wants to move on.

So yes, Nokia's sales are disappointing. Maybe they will look up in the future. Maybe not. But as a consumer, I _treasure_ that they offer something more interesting than just another Android phone.

<comment><USER24> _" To suggest that Nokia should offer Android phones implies there is some subtle quirk or distinguishing design element that would make a Nokia android preferable to the seven existing Android manufacturers' offerings."_

There is: Nokia's Android phones would be the only ones with a Nokia name on them. Despite the problems Nokia got (itself) in, the Nokia brand still is very strong for some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I said it at the time: "Two mobile-losers' getting together doesn't automatically make a winner". It's still the case. When you go beyond hard- core Nokia fans and MS fans, who buys Lumia?

<comment><USER26> People who like me got tired of Android's fragmentation and constant "clunky" feeling (I got so sick of flashing roms just to get my battery to survive the day) and don't want to buy into the Apple ecosystem. I've had a Lumia 920 for over a year now and think its absolutely the best phone I've ever owned. Co- worker also go the same phone, and switched back to iOS so he could iMessage with his mom but otherwise loved the experience as well.

It's a solid piece of hardware with a reliable and easy to use OS, other than a few missing apps (I'm not big into them myself), it's an impressive entry into the market.

<comment><USER27> I have owned a Lumia 820 and 920. The hardware was absolutely great, but I have grown to dislike Windows Phone's shortcomings:

\- No separate volume control for the ringer, music, etc. I swear I've become almost deaf twice.

\- No notification center. I do believe tiles are great, but they are not enough alone. I quickly want to have an overview of new messages, if possible reply inline.

\- Sometimes I had random reboots (on both phones). Sometimes I couldn't turn the phone off (it would immediately start again).

\- You cannot put applications on an SD card, which was annoying, given the 820's 8GB.

\- There is a serious lack of applications. The applications that are there are generally of a bad quality. Even Microsoft's Facebook application is flaky compared to the iOS and Android counterparts.

I sold both phones and bought a Nexus 4, which I am very happy with, and has great battery life (not noticeably better or worse than the 920). I still like the iPhone the most (I had iPhones for 4.5 years), but the extra value of a 5s or 5c is not worth the price difference between an iPhone and a Nexus to me.

<comment><USER6> I like the "one volume control" feature best of all. I used a Nexus 4 and I now own an iPhone, and the volume behavior is... unexpected, to put it nicely. On my iPhone right now, I have the silent switch turned on, so the phone doesn't ring. I'm opening up a YouTube video to see something but I don't want to disturb the people around me. Thinking ahead at the home screen, I hold the volume down button until the volume is at the lowest. I then load up the video, and it starts blaring at full volume. I can't turn it down until it's already making noise? How does that make any sense?

While it might be better to have different controls for everything, at least on Windows Phone I know that if the phone is muted, sound _will not play_. At _all_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am rather sure that having so many phones exclusive to ATT is not helping their cause. I would call that sandbagging the numbers to have 1 phone (928), 2 "Nokia Generations" of releases behind on the largest (BY FAR) smartphone provider in the USA (Verizon). Lumia 929 has been FCC approved since November, WHERE IS IT? The holy grail 1020 still exclusive to ATT, if the numbers are so disappointing put a CDMA radio in it and SELL IT!

<comment><USER6> If I remember correctly, Verizon doesn't particularly want Windows Phones. They sure aren't pushing very hard to get them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The dubious comfort in the mobile phone market is that when you're weak, there's always someone doing much worse still.

While Nokia managed to sell 8.2 million Lumias last quarter, Blackberry sold only 1.1 million BB10 devices in the same timeframe. The old brands have certainly fallen quick and hard.

</comment><comment><USER30> Not surprising at all.

Nokia should have move to Android 5 years ago when Samsung did.

<comment><USER31> But moving to Android means they're running a commodity OS, and they're competing against all the low-price phones from China. That would kill the company. They needed to offer a premium phone with an OS that is just compatible enough with desktops to work.

I've had a Lumia 928 for several months now (after 3 iPhones in a row), and my concern is that Microsoft isn't releasing OS updates fast enough. I get updates from Nokia for their HERE apps, but the core OS needs some fixes (single volume control, compilation albums being split up in the music app), and I'm not seeing them.

<comment><USER32> What about Samsung and HTC? They have high-end successful Android phones. Though I haven't looked at the financials of the company or anything... are they not doing well?

<comment><USER33> Samsung takes 95% of Android profits. HTC, Motorla, LG, Sony etc get to fight for the rest. I wonder how long Google is willing to be Samsung's R&D department for free.

<comment><USER32> Wow, that's unfortunate. Those other companies have phones that are just as nice as the Galaxy line, in my opinion. Especially HTC with the One.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very poor article. Hopefully we get some better analysis from Asymco or someone else.

<comment><USER35> Here you go [https://twitter.com/asymco/status/426357753188466688](https://twitter.com/asymco/status/426357753188466688)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> But aren't they selling like gangbusters in Europe?

<comment><USER34> I don't think they released numbers per continent/region. Maybe they sold most of the 8m units in Europe.

For comparison, Apple expected to announce between 50 to 59m iPhones sold last quarter. The results are usually a little bit better than the official guidance so maybe 60m. That means Nokia sold around 13% of what Apple probably did with the iPhone.

<comment><USER37> Sadly for Nokia, the majority of their sales will likely be the low margin 52x and 62x Lumias.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Make Convincing Fake-Gold Bars - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-03/how-make-convincing-fake-gold-bars <comment><USER2> I have personally spent a good deal of effort trying to find out how to create convincing, counterfeit currency. I am reasonably sure that I have the major points nailed down: you have to create your own paper (preferably after chemical and visual analysis of the banknotes in question) and then get hold of some ferromagnetic and fluorescent inkjet inks. Intaglio plates and watermarks can probably be created through a photolitographic process. Color- changing inks are the most tricky part..they obviously use some application of interference, but I haven't quite figured it out. Holograms, for the currencies that require it, can be created with an incredibly expensive hologram machine, which is probably impractical.

You'd be surprised at how little of this information is available to the public; most of the information I've gathered I've had to figure out by myself from looking at the officially available information on the security features of paper money. A more paranoid individual would suspect a cover-up. Perhaps there are laws against discussing things like this.

If someone has ever read a good book on the history of counterfeit money, I would be glad to hear it. To me it seems as if there is an information desert on this subject - which just sparks my curiosity furher. Counterfeiting is a fascinating engineering discipline, even more so in regions where the economic loss is handled by vast entities (counterfeit money, if not discovered, is paid for through the resulting inflation, counterfeit gold, if done properly, would end up at the balance sheet of a central bank and hence the taxpayers of the country in question, etc.)

<comment><USER3> I wish I could remember where I read about it, but a common technique is to wash the ink off real bills to obtain the genuine blank paper.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but that technique is obsolete now. Most modern currencies print notes on paper of different sizes. I seem to recall that it was used to create US dollar bills of a higher denomination.

<comment><USER3> US bills are still the same size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gold is heavy. Reminds me of the movies like Indiana Jones where average-build actors lift up gold bricks that should weight 80-100 lbs. each like they were boxes of business cards

<comment><USER5> At Gold Reef City in Johannesburg, South Africa, a theme park built on a defunct gold mine, they do a presentation on gold mining and live pouring of a bar of gold. At the end, you're invited to walk out with a gold bar if you can pick it up by its sides with one (bare) hand. Last time I was there, nobody had managed to do it yet...

<comment><USER6> I'd superglue my hands.

<comment><USER7> (> (+ hands super-glue) bare-hands) => T

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Screw ad revenue! This is the new business model.

</comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of my least-favorite scene in my all-time favorite movie. In _The Godfather, Part II_ , there's a scene in Cuba where they pass around a 'solid-gold phone', and the actors have to pretend that it's heavy. Alas, it's clear from the way they handle it that the damn thing is just plastic, and very, very light.

Apparently they should have made it with tungsten. I hope they'll remember that if they ever make _The Godfather, Part III_. Wait... D'oh!

</comment><comment><USER10> Yet another way to bootstrap a startup!

</comment><comment><USER11> Why go to all that effort when "The Gold Kit" will pay you for... gold spraypaint!

<http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/gold_kit.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER12> As far as the theft of gold from the Ethiopian bank, an inside replacement job is probably the only possibility. There is no way that all of the bank officials, assayers/chemists, and so on could work together on that kind of conspiracy.

Very, very interesting article.

<comment><USER13> Interesting article - however I am more interested in how to make real gold bars generally speaking. Although I suppose the first step is making the fake bars...

<comment><USER2> If you could somehow create a cheap and powerful particle accelerator, gold could concievably be produced in macroscopic amounts by irradiating mercury-198 (10% by mass in naturally occuring mercury) with 6.8MeV gamma rays. There are other ways of doing it, but economics and practicality needs to be considered. It is probably easier to build a badass particle accelerator than a nuclear reactor. I am reasonably sure that most modern accelerator laboratories have done this experiment, but it is probably not economical with today's accelerators. (And imagine the capital costs!)

This seems a very lucrative target for aspiring physicists. At a point in time this will probably become practical, but there will only be a small window in which it is economical to do so: once it becomes possible to perform large- scale nuclear gold transmutation, gold prices will plummet due to excessive supply.

<comment><USER14> _once it becomes possible to perform large-scale nuclear gold transmutation, gold prices will plummet due to excessive supply._

I suppose it depends on the economics and politics as much as the science. I notice that diamonds are still expensive, even though we can readily synthesize them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Always nice to have some backup 'gold' laying around in the event of a recession. Heh.

<comment><USER16> I suppose it would be legal to fake one's own gold bars? Maybe that would be a good idea. If shit really hits the fan, maybe you need the full fake gold bar and are desperate enough to not care about the legal issues.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg deserves praise for his noble stand on free speech - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/467563-mark-zuckerberg-deserves-praise-for-his-noble-stand-on-free-speech <comment><USER2> ha. He appears to suppress speech he doesn't like and support speech he does like, as so many humans do.

[https://theintercept.com/2019/10/25/mark-zuckerberg- facebook...](https://theintercept.com/2019/10/25/mark-zuckerberg-facebook- dinners/)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-axed-pro-vaccine- ads-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-axed-pro-vaccine-ads-from- hospitals-and-health-orgs-let-anti-vaxxer-ads-slip-through)

deserves praise for having roped half of humanity into his threaded chat website? perhaps.

praise for his stewardship of this responsibility? not so much.

Arguably, he is making the world a worse place with all his power: feeding viewpoints that empirically harm humanity, our biome/habitat, encourage tribalism/xenophobia/etc.

Survival of life should not be subject to political deliberation, as it's a primary value/resource required for anything else to occur "in life" (lol)</comment>


To Do List Advice - <AUTHOR> http://howtogetfocused.com/to-do-list-2/the-to-do-list-secret-everybody-ought-to-know/

<comment><USER2> TODO: Upgrade hosting account.

<comment><USER3> Time to invent a new term for 'slashdotted' applied to HN. (Especially since HN seems to drive a lot of referral traffic). Any good suggestions anyone?

<comment><USER4> ycombinated?

<comment><USER4> And then they can have this cool tattoo:

[http://theartoftattoo.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/y-combinat...](http://theartoftattoo.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/y-combinator.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was interested in the book.

[http://howtogetfocused.com/the-ultimate-focus- package-01/000...](http://howtogetfocused.com/the-ultimate-focus- package-01/000020812467511/)

Then I saw the long sale letter that people should realize actually screams "SCAM" and the $97 price.

But then googling the book title I found this:

<http://howtogetfocused.com/get-the-ebook-today/>

No sale letter (phew) and a $24.99 price. Does anyone know if this is the same book we're talking about? Or is it different because there are no bonuses? Which sounds strange since they are labeled "free bonuses".

</comment><comment><USER6> The secret that everybody ought to know is that "It seems your account is currently using too much CPU / Memory time"? :-)

Mirror: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=ubuntu&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER7> A similar concept is presented in the time management section of The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. He suggests minimizing reactive tasks and confining them to pre-allocated slots of time, rather than letting them interrupt you throughout the day. It's an obvious suggestion, but few people adopt it in their daily life.

</comment><comment><USER8> Coral content cache:

[http://howtogetfocused.com.nyud.net/to-do-list-2/the-to- do-l...](http://howtogetfocused.com.nyud.net/to-do-list-2/the-to-do-list- secret-everybody-ought-to-know/)

</comment><comment><USER9> this is spam.....really!!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @blatherard LOL. Do you guys have any recommendations on a hosting account? Sorry for the inconvenience...

I pay about $20 a month for Hostican, but still seem to be having problems when my stories get on Hacker News or Digg...

<comment><USER10> You can just hit reply below his post to nest the comments. No need to twitter style shout outs.

What kind of hosting do you have now? Is it a VPS or plain hosted webhosting? If it is a vps I would say to go with linode for the money it looks like they overprovision there plans at hostican but I am just guessing. the front page of digg will send a lot of traffic so even then you should be employing caching of dynamic pages, offloading large media to CDN's or amazon S3, or offering a static page stripped down when you are on the front page depending on how much traffic. If you are experiencing massive traffic in bursts you can do the amazon dynamic provisioning of servers to meet the spikes in traffic.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it illegal to release XSS-vulnerabilities (Germany)? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious about the 'Hackerparagraph' because it's blurred. <comment><USER2> If you know the answer please tell me here about it. I've send some XSS vulns to domain hosters in order to help them. They were friendly, but imagine a case where they decide to go awry instead and accuse me of "hacking" them.</comment>


IPhone fails to gain market share in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-11/iphone-fails-to-gain-china-share-as-samsung-lead-triples-tech.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone who knows anything about the way mobile phone distribution works will know that this doesn't matter. Android will capture at least 50% of the mobile market in the coming years, but Apple and the iPhone will capture the majority of the profits.

<comment><USER3> Would you (or anybody else who's deep in this) mind expanding? Does it have something to do with carrier subsidies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If not marketshare, it certainly has mindshare. I just returned from China and if you're in any of the major cities, you'll see iPhones everywhere, on the bus, subway, restaurants, etc. And if you're buying phone accessories, iPhone cases dominate.</comment>


The iFund Has Competition: $150 Million Blackberry Fund To Be Announced Soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/10/the-ifund-has-competition-150-million-blackberry-fund-to-be-announced-soon/ <comment><USER2> I know a couple of guys who worked on a trip tracking app for Blackberry. They collected GPS readings out of RIM devices and displayed them on web pages so you could easily tag your trips etc. They supported Blackberry and from what I heard from one of their dev's, it was a huge pain. The toolchain was just plain crappy. Lots of convoluted API calls, lots of incompatibilities between different versions of firmware and lots of weird bugs that were sometimes traced back to the libraries themselves. RIM also decided to create their own markup for "widgets" and they completely ignored web standards. It was all highly complex, convoluted and proprietary. RIM was also providing zero help in distribution and marketing. The startup eventually failed and the whole experience left a bitter taste in everyone's mouths.

If this is an indication of the current RIM developer ecosystem, I would bet much that they'll be able to change the environment in the next 6 months.

After playing with Apple's iPhone SDK, I can see why everyone's so excited. It's extremely dev friendly and a lot more fun to use (also, you avoid Java). The app store is huge and will make marketing and distribution of apps so much easier.

<comment><USER3> Both RIM and Palm (or PalmOS, AccessOS, Palm again, Garnet OS, or whatever their OS is now--Windows Mobile?) must think the complete definition of developer support is to enable third party access. The iPhone does so much more, with a Store, an SDK, a UI builder, and developer videos.

I've had three Palm devices, and the iPhone is a huge leap forward. The only thing Palm did 2005-2007 is announce a revolutionary new operating system that is the same as it was, doubling the onboard memory and camera resolution, and adding new color options is Palm's idea. As lame as that was, changes have been even less noticeable since 2006.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Blackberry has been around for ever, and development around their devices has been meh.... at best. I actually developed an app on their eariler 3.5 os version, and it was a nightmare. Network connections in some companies have to go thru this thing called Bes (blackberry exchage server), which can bllock anything, even your app, let's not go thru the "split pipe" problems, which the only way to fix them was for a user to wipeout all the date in their device.

Definelty not a user friendly experience.

I had to add: All these incentive funds exist for the simple reason: Mobile development is totally broken, and not profitable to startups. So many hooplas,workarounds, and redtape from the carriers.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Developers, Developers, Developers..."

It reminds me that we as developers are the king makers in the platform wars. Developers that make killer apps make the platform the standard which in turn makes the platform makers very, very rich.

The best quote of Startup School for me was from Sam Altman (paraphrased): "The VC's know that there's nothing quite so powerful in Silicon Valley as a developer who knows how to make a great product."

I'd add that the platform makers know that, too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Began, the phone wars have.

RIM: $150m VC fund

Apple: $100m VC fund

Google: $10m in give-away prizes

Microsoft: ???

Nokia: ???

</comment><comment><USER7> The Blackberry is losing customers quickly to the iPhone I think. Apple's more enterprisey plans with the iPhone, like the Exchange integration, must scare them a lot.

Getting a small chunk from a 150 million fund is nice. But it does not change the fact that developing for the Blackberry is so much less fun than developing for the iPhone :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> They should spend all $150 million to buy a new UI for the Blackberry. Seriously.

I think if they (very quickly) build a non-crap UI for the Blackberry, they'd have a shot... Given that Jobs is adamant about his ridiculous on-screen keyboard.</comment>


LinkedIn is not a dating site - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-dating-site-george-hotz/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what that article is supposed to mean, but certainly I see bits of other social media norms cross the streams / platforms here and there...it can be jarring when someone goes full Twitter on LinkedIn or the other way around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Context:

Famous hacker George Hotz has this in his LinkedIn profile:

 _UPDATE. LinkedIn is too full of faux career climbers and not enough dating opportunity. Follow me on Instagram @georgehotz

PLEASE READ PROFILE. While some people use LinkedIn for "networking" and advertising their "personal brand," I use this site exclusively as a dating platform. If you are intelligent, attractive, and perhaps a bit out of the norm, I might be interested. Send me a message and invite me out for a drink! (and please make it clear you are asking me on a date) All non-dating related messages will be ignored._</comment></comment>


The Singularity is Far: A Neuroscientist's View - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/14/far.html?dlvrit=36761 <comment><USER2> I see a big parallel with the predictions for advances in neuroscience with all the predictions that were made prior to the sequencing of the human genome (the author touches on this a bit too). Lots of smart scientists really believed that once the human genome was sequenced, we would have the keys to the biological kingdom. What has actually happened is that we have discovered that the complexity of the system is probably an order of magnitude more complex than previously thought. Knowing the sequence of a gene turns out to be important, but a pretty minor factor in explaining its function. Plus we are learning that all sorts of simple rules we thought were true aren't always the case.

I suspect a similar thing is playing out in neuroscience. As we peel back the layers of the onion, ever more complexity will be revealed. The things Ray Kurzweil predicts may well come true. He is a brilliant guy. But the timetable is very optimistic.

The march of biological progress is very slow, in part because all the experimentation involves living things that grow, die, get contaminated, run away, don't show up for appointments, get high, etc... Lots of people from other scientific disciplines, especially engineering related ones underestimate just how long even the simplest biological experiments can take.

<comment><USER3> "Lots of smart scientists really believed that once the human genome was sequenced, we would have the keys to the biological kingdom."

Here's my (a computer scientist's) view on the matter:

Imagine that you have a relatively complex computer system written with object oriented principles. Now, imagine that you are looking at the binary representation of this system and trying to make sense out of the whole thing. Also, imagine that you have no knowledge of how computer systems work and how the layers between the computer program, programming language, possibly virtual machine, and native code work.

There are layers involved between these objects and their binary representation. I imagine that there are also layers between our genome (analogy to binary code) and the leveraged representation of ourselves (analogy to object oriented system).

I think that this is why it is hard to make much sense out of the genome, even though the human genome was sequenced.

I also imagine that this is why it is hard to make sense out of the brain by looking at the brain directly. An analogy would be that we are again looking at binary representation of information.

It would be far more useful to figure out how this stuff works. I am not sure how this is done at this time.

<comment><USER2> Your example is a good one, but as others point out, the computer has been designed logically. Biology hasn't been. And even then, there's just really oddball crap that comes out of left field. I'll give you a good example (which admittedly may require a few trips to wikipedia depending on your biology background):

The codon used for translating DNA/RNA code to protein is well established. It's a three-base degenerate code, meaning that there are several three-base DNA sequences representing a given amino acid [1]. This code is very well understood. If your DNA/RNA sequence has any of the three bases combos for alanine, your protein gets an alanine in that position. It follows from this that different DNA sequences can code for exactly the same amino acid sequence in a protein. However, proteins with the same amino acid sequence are chemically and biologicalally identical (ignoring things like post- translational modification).

A few years ago, I read a paper [2] where the group hypothesized that in a specific case, a rare codon for for an amino acid in a specific protein caused the cellular machinery to stall at that position. They suggested that in the intervening time, the protein misfolded into a different 3D shape. The resulting protein therefore had different chemical properties despite having identical amino acid sequence. Basically shredding what is often known as the "central dogmal of molecular biology".

Now, this specific example probably needs to be confirmed, and might not be very frequent. But it makes total sense when you understand how all the pieces work. However this explanation would be very low on most biologist's lists of reasons why a certain protein isn't functioning properly. In fact, when people do genetic analysis looking for diseases, they routinely throw out all synonymous changes before doing the stats. It makes you wonder how often we miss this when looking for disease genes.

My larger point is that lots of biological science is a collection of edge cases. We know so little about the systems we're studying and have such crude tools to investigate them, that we get blindsided by things sitting in plain sight all the time.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code> [2] <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/315/5811/525.abstract>

<comment><USER3> "Your example is a good one, but as others point out, the computer has been designed logically. Biology hasn't been."

I'll do a little play on words here. Are you saying that biology isn't logical? Does it defy the laws of the universe, physics, and the axioms in math? Certainly not. I think what you are saying is that it isn't the same as a silicon chip and follows different rules. We just don't know enough about biology to peel away the layers, but there are definitely layers. There has to be at least a one-to-one mapping between the genome and a live being, but I would bet that the layers are far more complicated.

I read a study a while back which monitors the different areas developed inside a mouse's brain. The study concluded that a certain part of the brain gets more developed as the mouse tries to run threw a maze vs a mouse that does nothing at all. I gather that the study is trying to point out which area of the brain is responsible for memory, and perhaps certain type of memory.

I fail to see how this study could tell us something meaningful regarding our ability to take information from our senses and store it into our memory. How could we understand more about how this process works? Are we that far away from understanding the inner workings of the brain that we need to do studies like this? If so, then I tend to believe that we are far from the singularity.

"My larger point is that lots of biological science is a collection of edge cases. We know so little about the systems we're studying and have such crude tools to investigate them, that we get blindsided by things sitting in plain sight all the time."

I understand. From my previous example, I would probably come up with edge cases too if I was trying to look at binary code for the first time and trying to figure out how a complex computer system works. Perhaps I would poke the system and monitor which part of the file ended up with more 1's and 0's.

<comment><USER2> Since I can tell this topic is interesting to you, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend "Brain Rules" by John Medina: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0979777747/>

It's a fantastic read that I think would do a much better job of discussing this topic, especially in the realm of human cognition than I can.

<comment><USER3> Thank you, I will read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He would be correct if creation of AI depended on a thorough understanding of neuroscience. But I hope we needn't wait that long.

It's the old "Birds fly. To fly, man must fully understand bird flight." argument. Yet today we still don't completely understand bird flight but planes _do_ fly.

The analogy is not complete: we have yet to find the "air", the "turbulence", a "Bernoulli principle", etc. of intelligence. That is to be determined. But this approach is the only reasonable one.

As the author implies, waiting for neuroscience is like waiting for Godot.

<comment><USER5> Exactly, we've had airplanes for a _century_ but working orthnocopters are still something of a black art. Like so many things in engineering, it is easier, _and better_ , to not pay naturally occurring phenomenon undue attention. We are capable of engineering better.

<comment><USER6> The lack of AI progress in the last 30 years is not a good sign. You're also ignoring things like the materials that have come out of studying the pads on geckos' feet.

<comment><USER5> There has not been a lack of AI progress in the past 30 years, but rather some sort of 'True Scottsman'-esque raised expectations phenomenon. Natural language processing, computer vision, etc have seen _dramatic_ improvements in recent years but every time there is an improvement people say "well that's just standard stuff, not _real_ AI". As long as a technology is real, people seem weirdly unwilling to accept that it is also an example of AI. The "real stuff" seems to include "fictional" as an integral part of it's definition.

<comment><USER7> Well, when people say AI, I think "Turing Test", not computer vision.

<comment><USER5> But surely you actually understand that there is more to the field than emulating humans.

<comment><USER7> I guess that's a matter of definition. If humans are the only example of "intelligence" that we know of, then it seems natural that artificial intelligence would concern emulating humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not interested in arguing about his time table, but the example of DNA sequencing only affording a linear increase in undersanding is bogus and he ought to know that. It has _significantly_ accelerated genetics research by making mapping a matter of a browser search. As an example, the fly lines developed by Gerry Rubin _et al_ , which can be manipulated to express any reporter gene in any genetically defined brain locus. That would have been completely infeasible prior to complete genomic sequencing of the fly.

</comment><comment><USER9> The OP asks reasonable technical questions about medical nanorobots. I'm not going to defend Kurzweil, but some less-sloppy thinkers have written about this kind of stuff, like Merkle, Freitas, and Drexler. E.g. <http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html> <http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMIIA/220.127.116.11.htm> They do tackle questions like how do you power these things; I wish he'd read and criticize them instead.

A 7-micron-long medical nanorobot sounds pretty damned big to me, btw -- in _Nanosystems_ Drexler fits a 32-bit CPU in a 400nm cube, less than 1/300 of the volume if we're talking about a 1-micron-radius cylinder.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article was a very similar one to ones that biologists were publishing in mid 80's when Kurzweil predicted the mapping of the human genome within 15 years. It's interesting how exponential progress is counter-intuitive even for those who have been experiencing it in their fields for years.

<comment><USER11> I always thought that was Kurzweil's main and strongest point. We tend to predict linearly when a lot of progress appears to happen exponentially. The rest are embellishments.

The main call to action should be how to protect, organize, and invest in ourselves given possible developments from the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My big problem with Kurzweil's singularity is the massive handwaving he does between 'computers are getting exponentially faster' and 'AI will arise'.

This depends on the assumption that 'intelligence' (and nobody can really agree on what that means, which is a bad start) is representable in algorithmic form. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the lack of progress in hard AI in the last 30 years isn't a good sign.

<comment><USER13> There's never _any_ progress in AI, because once we figure out how to do something, we stop calling it "AI".

In the last 30 years, computers have won at chess, won at Jeopardy, learned to recognize spam with better than 99.5% accuracy, learned to recognize faces with better than 95% accuracy, achieved semi-readable automatic translation, figured out what movies I should add to my Netflix queue, and started to recognize speech. We've seen huge advances in computer vision and statistical natural language processing, and we're seeing a renaissance in machine learning. Most of this stuff was considered "hard AI" as recently as 1992, but the goalposts have moved.

And if intelligence can't be represented in algorithmic form, then what's the brain doing? Even if we have immaterial souls that don't obey the laws of physics, why do some brain lesions cause weirdly specific impairments to our thought process? A huge chunk of our intelligence is clearly subject to the laws of physics, and therefore can be wedged _somewhere_ into the computational complexity hierarchy.

<comment><USER14> Half of your examples are, in the grand scheme of things, trivial applications of decades-old techniques. Recommendation, for example, is based on techniques which are almost 100 years old (SVD). Winning chess has been rendered possible through increased machine power, the algorithms necessary for it are hardly ground breaking. If this is AI, then many things are AI: almost any quantitative usage of statistics is AI, for example.

There is no agreement on this, but some leading AI researchers consider that most AI problems should be solvable with decades old computers (i.e. we need some completely new paradigms that nobody has yet thought about). See Mc Carthy for example: <http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html>

<comment><USER15> That was exactly his point, wasn't it? His examples _used to be_ considered problems in AI. Now that the problems are understood, they are simply considered to be algorithmic problems. Lots of output of the MIT AI labs in the early days is now simply taught in algorithms courses, yet back then, those researchers considered themselves to be doing AI research.

 _That_ is the moving of the goalposts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice to see a post on this topic from a neuroscientist, as I am very interested in this area but know little biology.

One question though--the author says "while the fundamental insights that have emerged to date from the human genome sequence have been important, they have been far from evelatory." While not guaranteed, doesn't it seem likely that we will understand _much_ , _much_ more about the human genome once the economies of scale come into play? The price of sequencing a genome is currently on the order of about $10000, and if they continue to fall at the rate they have (which seems likely, based both past price decay and in-development technologies), the cost to sequence a genome will be on the order of $100 well before the end of this decade. Once we sequence millions-billions of genomes and compare the information in said genomes with data from the corresponding human subjects, I suspect we will learn a lot more than we would by trying to understand a single person's genome. Moreover, given that the human genome is on the order of roughly a gigabyte, it would seem difficult, but not unreasonably so, to try and understand most the information in our DNA.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've never been impressed by the "simulate a single human" approach to AGI.

I don't know why it appeals to people. Has Christianity infected people with a desire for personal immortality? Are people inured to flushing billions and billions down the drain on biomedical research?

Another issue is that humans aren't that great anyway. The "game of life" is really about statistical inference and people aren't that good at it -- the success of Las Vegas proves it. If you can eliminate the systematic biases that people make dealing with uncertainty, you can make intelligence which is qualitatively superhuman, not just quantitatively superhuman.

It's much more believable that steady progress will be made on emulating and surpassing human faculties. This won't be based on any one particular methodology (symbol processing, neural nets, Bayesian networks) but will be based on picking and choosing what works. Progress is going to be steady here because progress means better systems each step of the way.

Sure, the Richard Dreyfuses will be with us each step of the way and will diminish our accomplishments... and they might still be doing so long after we're living in a zoo.

<comment><USER18> > The "game of life" is really about statistical inference and people aren't > that good at it -- the success of Las Vegas proves it.

Las Vegas is run by human beings. Having members of your species be worse at a task than other members of your species doesn't prove that your species as a whole is not good at the task.

Now...

> Has Christianity infected people with a desire for personal immortality? Are > people inured to flushing billions and billions down the drain on biomedical > research?

Why wouldn't one want personal immortality? To be fair, religious groups are those least likely to support personal immortality of many sorts (e.g. brain uploading) because of questions such as "what happens to the soul", and "isn't this meddling in our creators work?".

Rather, I'd think that anyone who believes that _this_ life is all that exists would want to prolong it indefinitely. It's better to be than not to be.

Do you have an argument against that?

<comment><USER19> _Do you have an argument against that?_

Certainly: quality of life. Immortality may be a miserable, horrible existence. Most of the things we derive happiness from in life are an integral part of our normal life-death cycle of events, disrupting that cycle may not be very pleasant long-term unless we can supplant those innate desires with something equally fulfilling. We don't really know, it's never happened.

<comment><USER20> _> Most of the things we derive happiness from in life are an integral part of our normal life-death cycle of events_

Most? Do you mind elaborating?

<comment><USER19> Most of your desires and goals are related to the scarcity of time. In a broad sense, having children for example is a rewarding experience for people, we have an innate desire to reproduce and rear children (talk to any childless post-30 woman who didn't explicitly choose that situation, you'll see it's innate), but it's also something we probably wouldn't continue to do should death be removed from humanity, there'd be no need. But in a smaller sense, even something like enjoying a nice meal with friends would be called into question. Your enjoyment of food only exist because we've got a biologically programmed taste for foods that assists in our survival, and social interaction in an infinite time scale even gets weird, everyone would eventually know everyone and know everything there is to know, unique life experiences would become commonality, etc.

Things get weird on infinite scales.

<comment><USER21> there's a lot of assumptions in that particular view of immortality. It assumes that it would also mean infinite memory, a loss of senses and certain capabilities, and that we cannot modify ourselves to create new urges. All of these are possible and plausible, but for example in the simulated AI situation only the loss of senses is likely to be true (as well as perhaps the inability to modify ourselves, depending on the approach)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find two aspects of the singularity compelling.

Singularities have happened in the past when life evolves a solution to a local problem such as photosynthesis, the social primate and agriculture.

Kurzweils singularity is just one of many potential signularities but the near future seems either contain major innovation with great generality or collapse.

</comment><comment><USER23> The likelihood of Kurzweil's particular vision of the singularity in this case doesn't say anything about the likelihood of the singularity in general, i.e. by the creation of artificial intelligence through methods that are nearer at hand than nanobots or whole brain emulation.

</comment><comment><USER24> For me this complexity problem could insurmountable. I think the best approach may be to side step this issue and try selective breeding of virtual (increasingly) intelligent beings.

</comment><comment><USER25> Before knocking Kurzweil's predictions, review his predictions of the 1990's and the people who mocked them. Kurzweil does not have a perfect track record. I think his accuracy in predicting the future is way above average.

Also, I find his views of the future enlightening and useful, as he illustrates lots of "just out of reach" engineering projects for me to consider tackling.

Between the years of 1990 and 2005, Kurzweil predicted the following:

        * People will mainly use portable computers.
        * Portable computers will be lighter and easier to transport.
        * Internet access will be available almost everywhere.
        * Device cables will disappear.
        * Documents will have embedded moving images and sounds.
        * Virtual long distance learning will be commonplace.

Mock his current predictions with care. [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8181399/the_predict...](http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8181399/the_predictions_of_ray_kurzweil.html)

<comment><USER26> Weren't all of those just obvious in 1990? Seriously, I don't think this is the benefit of hindsight speaking.

<comment><USER27> It's not as obvious as it sounds. If it is, then this will be an easy question to answer:

What will technology be like in 2030?

<comment><USER28> Well lets see, I have high hopes for brute force computation approaches to scientific research. More IBM Watson-like systems, which teach themselves, and more full automation of complex scientific experiments. Industrialize, automate and computerize science, in other words.

If we do that, we have a chance of increasing the rate of scientific discovery. And it does not require true God like AI, just a bunch of really clever and domain specific Watsons.

Alternatively, the future looks much like today, except with a lot more and better gadgets, but people still grow old and die.

Also we've either started massive C02 sequestering actions, like fertilizing the oceans with iron, and using tons of charcoal in our farms, or nuclear power provides a much larger % of global power, or Siberia is balmy.

And lastly the US and several other industrialized nations have gone through a terrible economic/financial crisis and reform like the UK did in the 1970s and Sweden at the begging of the 19th century.

And China is the world's super power, with India close behind, and no one cares much about the EU (or what's left of it) and the US.

Tuna is extinct in the wild.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would agree he's certainly right about Kurzweil's unrealistic optimism, but I'm not sure our understanding of the brain (and other aspects of our biology for that matter) isn't increasing exponentially. Perhaps rather it just seems linear compared to the turbo-charged progress of these enabling technologies? Certainly we've come a lot further since Phineas Gage than a linear trajectory would allow.

He should have thrown around some numbers while he was at it. I wonder if he'd agree with clinical immortality by the end of this century, and mind-uploading by the end of the next?

<comment> azza-bazoo I think you might be missing the point, though. The argument is that we're collecting exponentially more _data_ about the brain, but that data doesn't translate directly to understanding.

You mentioned Phineas Gage. That case led to the idea of regions of the brain controlling different things, which led to lobotomy as a psychiatric treatment, which was used up until the 1960s or so. Then chemical methods improved, and people came to understand that neurotransmitters played a role too, which led to antidepressants and other drugs. Those drugs have improved, but their design hasn't changed _that_ much in the last few decades. Obviously this is over-simplified -- but it doesn't sound like an exponential growth of understanding to me.

<comment><USER30> At the end, we can't talk about exponential or linear growth. We have no 'mesure' for scientific advance. and we need mesure for mesuring something. Or maybe somes exist but I'm not... okay so I googled it before posting some stupid stuff: It seems that there's no 'real' mesure.. scientific paper to prove it: <http://www.springerlink.com/content/m1h2150x02u153x3/></comment></comment></comment>


African Countries (With Cities) API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/babajidemm/african-countries-api <comment><AUTHOR> Currently, I am working on a personal project and I needed a list of all African countries and their cities and some other data. I needed the data all together. I searched and couldn't find a library/API that offered this. So, I decided to implement it myself.

For this, I decided to use Node. I released the package yesterday on GitHub: [https://github.com/babajidemm/african-countries- api](https://github.com/babajidemm/african-countries-api)

Your feedbacks and suggestions are very welcome. I'd also like to hear from people that will be using this module in their projects and experiences with it.

#africancountries #api #africancities #nodejs #nodemodule #africancountriescities #africancountriesapi</comment>


Swintec Typewriters - <AUTHOR> http://www.swintec.com/5-typewriters <comment><USER2> Not a very informative page. What is the printing technology? Typebar, daisy- wheel, dot-matrix? (The ribbons look like they would fit either of the latter two.) What does the "display" provide, one line of type you can correct before printing?

<comment><USER3> > What is the printing technology? Typebar, daisy-wheel, dot-matrix?

Judging by the ribbon cartridge type and the spec of 20-22 characters per second I expect they're daisywheel printers. Also if you look closely at the clear cased versions you can see the head assembly which has a daisywheel loaded

[http://www.swintec.com/clear-typewriters/21-2410cc- michigan....](http://www.swintec.com/clear-typewriters/21-2410cc- michigan.html)

[http://www.swintec.com/15-print-wheels](http://www.swintec.com/15-print- wheels)

> What does the "display" provide, one line of type you can correct before > printing?

If you have a read of the spec here:

[http://www.swintec.com/48-2640-electronic-display- typewriter...](http://www.swintec.com/48-2640-electronic-display- typewriter-.html)

 _700-character Correction Memory ( within 10 lines)_

You can do some basic correction. I used to maintain/repair this kind of thing back in the late 80's early 90's when I worked as a field service engineer. Some more advanced units could store whole documents and do more clever things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not really sure what the point of this link is. Are people really that surprised that typewriters are still in use or still manufactured?

There are still many valid use cases, especially with carbon (or carbonless) copy forms where you need an impact printer.

<comment><USER4> I was surprised. I had no idea typewriters were still in use, or at least in enough use to be sold new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't know how they are now but about three decades ago I had a Swintec desk calculator that was just the best. Great feel to the keys and you could key in numbers as fast as you wanted and it would never drop a digit.</comment>


SCVHA: Recording Silicon Valley's History and the High-Technology Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> "The only surprises are the history you don't know." Harry Truman

There is a lot of good stuff here, you get a sense of the repeating cycles of innovation and entrepreneurship.</comment>


Sqlite Database Speed Comparison - <AUTHOR> https://www.sqlite.org/speed.html <comment><USER2> "This document is very very old ... The numbers here have become meaningless"

It uses SQLite 2.7.6, which was released around 2003.</comment>


Does AI make strong tech companies stronger? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/12/19/does-ai-make-strong-tech-companies-stronger <comment><USER2> Depends on what model you use for the AI and in what field. With ML you have a model that dictates your constraints and how it applies what it learns. If you have an AI that models let's say Hannibal and his tactics on a battlefield, well you may do well against many opponents in a battle simulation. On the other hand if you modeled "Bevis and Butthead" and had that AI run a restaurant, you may have a colorful but disastrous result. You would have to find an appropriate context for the model to be useful.

</comment><comment><USER3> If not done right it can end up being a huge resource sink that never lives up to the promise</comment>


How to Start a Startup? - <AUTHOR>

The real question is where does one begin? I'm sure there are several of you out there with the next BIG idea but have no idea where to start. I'm in the same position, and like many of you I have an internal dialog that goes something like:
"I'll build web applications for clients for another year and continue saving up so that I can bootstrap my venture."
or
"What if it goes to hell, and I'm left with nothing?"
Basically, I'm procrastinating. These are obviously real issues but I'd like to hear from others on the best way to actually approach starting a start up. Where should one begin? Raising funding first? Setting a side a limited budget that you can afford to lose?
Curious to hear your thoughts.
Cheers! <comment><USER2> Startups are extremely risky. They're a terrible way to make a living, and they're an even worse way to get rich. For the vast, vast majority of people, I'd suggest not starting a startup at all. It's difficult, painful, tedious, and frustrating. It requires a huge amount of sacrifice.

If you're determined to do it, the book Lean Startup lays out a good methodology for actually building your product and minimizing the cost of failure. It's not exactly a "start here" kind of book, though.

There's a series that's been on HN recently called "How to Start a Startup" that you might want to check out.

Regarding your question, "What if it goes to hell, and I'm left with nothing?" Chances are EXCELLENT that it will go to hell. If you can accept bankruptcy, that might not be an issue for you.

If you have a day job that gives you lots of flexibility and extra time, you may be able to bootstrap something on the side. You'll need access to customers for quick revenue. A good rule of thumb is that, if you can't build it in a weekend and sell it to someone, you should look for something simpler and more needed by your target market.

Note that when I say "access to customers", I mean intimate knowledge of those customers as well as personal connections. I've never worked on construction, so I wouldn't build a SaaS for construction foremen. Who are the smartest people in your network who would instantly understand the value of a new software product? Do they have a lot of money? Are they in industries where they adopt new technology quickly?

To answer your question about where to begin: find a group that you know that struggles from a problem. Ask them about it. Then spend a weekend building something that solves their problem. Then ask them to pay for it.</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I learn about Nikola Tesla? - <AUTHOR> Documentaries, books, podcasts, or websites? <comment><USER2> I just finished this book: [https://books.google.com/books/about/Tesla.html?id=5I5c9j8BE...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Tesla.html?id=5I5c9j8BEn4C)

I thought it was really thorough and quite technical, so if you're interested in the early day of electricity more than just personal anecdotes, then this book might be for you :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Read his life in his words:

The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla

[https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Life-Nikola-Tesla- ebook/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Life-Nikola-Tesla- ebook/dp/B00IJJBD82)

</comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately most of my books are in storage at the moment and I can't get the exact details for you. But I do have a book on Tesla's inventions and patents. I found that very interesting. The diagrams and descriptions are very informative. I think the book is: [https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Patents- Nikola-Tesla/dp/1566...](https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Patents-Nikola- Tesla/dp/1566192668)

</comment><comment><USER5> Best is to experience it in person at Nikola Tesla museum in Belgrade, Serbia. It keeps his remains and many documents and ideas and attracts like-minded fans from around the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://nikolateslamuseum.org/en/](https://nikolateslamuseum.org/en/)

[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla)

</comment><comment> chupa-chups [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) is not too bad to start with :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I might suggest this documentary. It focuses on the Wardenclyffe tower, crazy stuff if you never saw it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_to_the_People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_to_the_People)

There is a trailer available here. [https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nikolatesla](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nikolatesla)

</comment><comment><USER8> Check out this Ted Talk for some nice facts and awesome storytelling: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-WkUKP1l3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-WkUKP1l3c)

</comment><comment><USER9> I viewed the PBS documentary of Nikola Tesla a few days ago. It had useful information and I enjoyed it: [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/tesla/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/tesla/).

</comment><comment><USER10> I'll put in a vote for Wizard: the life and times of Nikola Tesla. I knew very little other than "Tesla == weird genius", and the book gave me a much deeper view of his work, from trying to run power through the ground to building drone boats.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've read a few biographies and other books about Tesla. I recommend Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney

</comment><comment><USER12> What kind of research did you do on your own?</comment>


Most important Leadership trait  - <AUTHOR> http://techexile.com/the-most-important-managerial-skill/

<comment><USER2> Facilitating take on the age old problem of management and leadership. The best managers I have known have always known when to fight and when not to fight.

But I feel like there is a deeper trait that could be pulled out of this. Perhaps it is "understand your staff's emotional states" or "how to effectively persuade".

After all, "winning" an argument is rarely about proving who is right and who is wrong. A lesson that took me way too long to learn alas.</comment>


Changes to Fusion 360 for personal use - <AUTHOR> https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-personal-use-changes?%20mktvar002=3899427006%7CEML%7C%7B%7Blead.ID%7D%7D&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ops&utm_campaign=3899427dmmarcomsf360personalcampaign&utm_id=3899427006 <comment><AUTHOR> The biggest impact for me I think is the lack of ability to export STEP for KiCad 3D models.</comment>


100,000 iPhone applications, Do we need so many? - <AUTHOR> http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2009/11/100000-iphone-applications-do-we-need.html

<comment><USER2> Are the AppsFire statistics only valid for apps that are used by AppFire users? It'd be useful to compare statistics for how many apps are used more than once or twice after installing too.

Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones last quarter alone. A single digit percentage of total users is still A LOT.

Do I need 100,000 apps? No. I only use a dozen non-Apple apps, but I'm willing to bet that even if you use only a dozen apps, we're not going to be using the same ones.

There's a lot of junk in the App Store that maybe no one uses, but quantity doesn't necessarily mean there isn't quality in numbers either.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend a simple (& free) solution for tracking feature request votes? - <AUTHOR> I just want a SIMPLE tool/service/solution that lets my users vote for and submit feature requests. There are tons of overly complicated and overly priced solutions for this. I just want something simple and free. Does it exist?<p>The closest I've found is wantoo.io, but their admin dashboard broke after 5 minutes of me using it, and they said "it will not be fixed very soon"... great... Any suggestions? Otherwise I guess I'll have to roll my own. <comment><USER2> I feel as if people are much more likely to engage with a chat bot. I tried surveys on my site for the exact reason as you, but no one would click them.

However, I have had success with Drift ([http://www.drift.com](http://www.drift.com)), the free version. Paid version has polls, but in free I am asking one simple question right now.

my site: [http://www.averageweather.io](http://www.averageweather.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah but a survey isn't what I'm looking for. I want something like this: [https://wantoo.io/paperworks/ideas/](https://wantoo.io/paperworks/ideas/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Polldaddy.com?

Create a poll, add option to allow custom answers, and you can promote any suggestions to poll options

</comment><comment><USER4> I've seen some companies use Trello for this. There's voting 'power-up' which enables people (not just admins) to vote on cards.

<comment><AUTHOR> I gave that a try, but it felt too "clunky" and the voting part felt hidden. Other than that it's a good suggestion.</comment></comment>


IOS Goodies - Week 8 - <AUTHOR> http://ios-goodies.tumblr.com/post/71972109038/week-8

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty interesting, the whole blog idea in general! Thanks for sharing it with us, I didn't know it and it seems like a good addition to the fabulous [http://nshipster.com](http://nshipster.com).</comment>


AI poses greater threat to college grads than people without degrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-poses-greater-threat-to-college-grads-than-those-without-a-degree/ <comment><USER2> > AI poses greater threat to college grads than people without degrees

Is it me or the title structured as it is implies that "people without degrees" are a lesser threat to college grads than AI is? That AI and people without degrees are a threat, and AI is the greater one. I'm not a native speaker but I would have put "AI poses greater threat to college grads than _to_ people without degrees", but it also sounds weird.

Incidentally I wonder if current AI are capable of inferring the actual meaning of the sentence. (AI threatens college grads more than it threatens people without degrees).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think after my generation, the value of a college degree is going to drop like a rock. Most people I've talked to who do hiring haven't been impressed with the knowledge of people coming out of bachelors programs.

<comment><USER4> Why should the trend reverse rather than reaching a stable equilibrium?</comment></comment>


The Jet that Ate the Pentagon - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/26/the_jet_that_ate_the_pentagon <comment><USER2> You know something - I just tried to load this website as the article looks interesting. But it was taking _forever_ to load. So I downloaded YSlow to find out what on earth was causing the problem, and the site has:

* 41 external javascript files

* 22 external CSS files

* Totals to 2106.9K of files, of which 1151.4K are javascript files, and 598.9K in images. It took 204 HTTP requests to get this page to load.

* has about 37 different DNS lookups to get access to all the files

One of the websites that host external javascript files took over 9 seconds to load approximately 350K.

On top of this, I've never seen so much analytics and tracking on any website - ever!

Seriously, someone needs to have a good look at the way that this site is constructed. Such a massive bandwidth hog - and noticably slow!

<comment><USER3> I'm actually the guy responsible for this site (Web Director at FP).

The reason for all of this is that it's a kitchen-sink Drupal install, plus every ad industry service in history.

We've been working to cut all of this down, but I haven't been on the job for very long =P. A fair number of the images aren't even properly minimized! You'll see it improve soon though =).

<comment><USER2> Nice - welcome aboard :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Visiting Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for the first time, their Vietnam War museums reminded me of the consequence of a tactical advantage (like air superiority) in the context of a failed strategy (like invading without a good reason).

 _You lose wars_.

The life and business on the streets there reminded me what happens when you don't invade for no reasons.

 _Capitalism flourishes_.

At least from what you see on the street level, capitalism is doing better there than in the bailout-laden U.S.

Did I oversimplify? Of course. But until the U.S. shows some strategic intelligence like "don't invade countries without a reason" its tactical choices will always fail too.

By the way, they call it the American War there.

<comment><USER5> The US was an ally of South Vietnam at their government's invitation, and never did actually invade North Vietnam. If they did, maybe the war would have gone differently.

<comment><USER6> _> The US was an ally of South Vietnam at their government's invitation_

Oh come on. South Vietnam was an American client state from the word go. American advisors helped run Ngo Dinh Diem's campaign in the 1955 referendum that set up the South Vietnamese government. When Diem didn't turn out to be the man the U.S. government had hoped he would, American money helped finance the 1963 coup that killed him.

 _> and never did actually invade North Vietnam_

No, we just bombed the holy hell out of them: see Operation Rolling Thunder (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder>) and Operation Linebacker II (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II>) for examples.

<comment><USER5> And North Vietnam was a Soviet client state from the word go, that's how the Cold War worked.

There was still no invasion of Vietnam. The entire operation was hamstrung by politically imposed restrictions.

<comment><USER7> I can't believe you're not downvoted to oblivion. Your oringal response was as close to incorrect as you can be while still being factual (we installed a new regime when the old regime stopped liking us), and you response with "the soviets did it too"?

"We weren't any worse than the soviets" is not a moral defense, and given that we couldn't hold south vietnam against insurgency, you'd need a hell of a case to support the idea that we could have held north vietnam.

I mean, given that we were dropping napalm and agent orange, what kind of "politically imposed restrictions" would you say held us back from winning?

<comment><USER5> In military terms, the US _did_ hold South Vietnam against insurgency. The problem is that the source of support for that insurgency was in North Vietnam, and it was impossible for US ground troops to advance there and eliminate that support.

The war effort was also politically micromanaged--for instance, every airstrike had to be individually approved by the White House. This led to delays and, frankly, interference in military affairs from incompetent politicians.

Fighting a counterinsurgent war on the defensive is never strategically sound; one is always better served by being on the move and taking the initiative. This was politically impossible in Vietnam, which is why it took so long.

Now, perhaps there were valid political reasons not to invade north Vietnam. In that case, the answer is not to get involved at all. You either do the job right or you don't do it at all. In either case, the mistake _wasn't_ that the US invaded Vietnam without a good reason--there was no invasion, and there was a good reason. The mistake was that the US didn't fully commit to the objective, and that the White House didn't let the military do their job.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'm not a military scholar but I'm pretty sure everybody who is disagrees with you here. The battle was entirely political, and armchair general troop movement stuff is completely beside the point.

Here's the fact: Nobody wanted us there. South vietnamese were informing on the US and killing our troops. You think having a few airstrikes being more effective would have made a difference for that? Like if we just killed enough of the bad guys, the rest of them would have given up?

That's not the way asymmetrical warfare works. Every guy you kill has brothers and cousins who want to avenge him. Losing the political battle is losing the war. That's why we won in Iraq (Al Qaeda in Iraq were flown-in nihilists who alienated the population), and that's why we're losing in Afghanistan (the Taliban are a local movement with a local base).

You're seriously saying that had we invaded North Vietnam and bombed more stuff, it would have been fine? Like we could cut the supply of an army that was living off the land? Looks like we would've just been occupying twice as much ground with the same number of troops, unless you're advocating killing every last man, woman and child in the country.

<comment><USER5> The Viet Cong was broken by their failure in the Tet Offensive. But they would have been broken much sooner if their source of support in the north was eliminated.

And no military can be effective when it's micromanaged from the White House.

<comment><USER7> Given that we were fleeing our embassy by helicopter in 1973, I find it hard to believe that the VC were quote "broken" in 1968.

If you're living off the land, conducting guerilla warfare, you can't be broken. "Broken" is for standing armies. Guerillas just leave the field of battle and then bomb your patrols when you try to occupy.

<comment><USER5> It's easy to lose a war after you withdraw all your troops from the country. In any case, guerrillas can't and don't hold territory--it was the North Vietnamese regulars who overran Saigon in _1975_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      F-35 lacks the F-16's agility in the air-to-air mode and
      the F-15E's range and payload in the bombing mode, and it
      can't even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude
      close air support for troops engaged in combat.

"jack of all trades, master of none". :(

<comment><USER9> You sound like my wife... she says I lack the good looks of Hugh Jackman and athletic abilities of Michael Phelps, and I can't even compare to Bill Gates in the amount of money I bring in.

Not defending the F-35 though. My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all.

<comment><USER10> > _"My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all."_

I don't usually find myself defending defense spending... but war-related technology is something you don't know you need, until you do, by which time it's too late to procure it.

If the US is going to continue its M.O. of attacking countries whose military air presence can be counted on two hands, and consists mostly of old Soviet cast-offs, then sure, the current level of tech is more than sufficient. Overkill, even. I don't think there has been a _single_ loss of U.S. military aircraft to enemy action since... Kosovo?

I think a main impetus of this particular project is because both Russia and China are rapidly developing their own 5th-generation fighters, and while a head-to-head with China doesn't seem entirely likely, it's certainly less farfetched than the idea was 20 years ago.

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not defending this particular boondoggle of a project, but the need for a 5th-generation fighter is entirely understandable.

On the plus side, it doesn't look like other countries' 5th-gen fighter projects are doing much better... The Chinese project has faced delay after delay after delay, and the Russians too.

<comment><USER11> Do we really need to outspend China by almost 5x? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

Isn't the more likely scenario that China overtakes us economically, not militarily?

<comment><USER5> The US is never going to fight China because both countries have nuclear weapons. That tends to put a damper on things. As a Chinese general reportedly put it back in the 90's, "You care a lot more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei."

Even if you did compare the two, the US is a richer country (so it costs comparatively more to train and outfit the same number of men to the same amount) with a stronger cultural valuation of human life and a stronger cultural and political desire for short-term victories. If the Chinese got into a prolonged military conflict, not only would they be less sensitive to heavy losses, but if it took more than a couple years, no one would be worrying about reelection the way American politicians would. China is content with simply being able to win; the US needs to immediately overwhelm the enemy while suffering minimal friendly losses, or else the war will be lost politically if not militarily.

That's why we _have_ things like the F-22 and F-35; in combat exercises small numbers of F-22's can singlehandedly wipe out entire wings of enemy aircraft without the enemy getting as much as a missile lock on the F-22. The US is in a weird spot--if [one telegenic fighter jock gets shot down](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_OGrady>), it becomes national news for a week!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just assume they're funneling huge portions of that money into secret projects. How else do they get their hands on a spare $100 billion without anyone noticing?

Better to seem incompetent than reveal you've got a warp drive/time machine/transporter project.

I know it's kind of an optimistic view, but it does make me feel better.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have a look at all the bells and whistles that pop out for vertical take off: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm7_PPE-8nk>

Those are all intricate mechanisms that need to withstand severe levels of stress.

<comment><USER5> That's what happens when you have a reasonable idea, i.e. let's replace the F-16 and F/A-18, and all of a sudden someone says "hey, the Harrier is getting old too" and you realize the politicians aren't going to pay for _two_ new planes at once, especially not after how much they've already spent on the F-22 and B-2, so you just throw all the requirements together, so by the time it lands on the desk of an actual engineer who realizes what a hash of things you've made, it's too late to change course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The clusterfuck of competing requirements reminds me almost exactly of the space shuttle, a similar disaster that barely worked.

The shuttle could have been really awesome had its requirements only been set by NASA. Instead they had the NRO and other agencies jumping in there with space-irrelevant stuff that never even got used.

<comment><USER15> Please elaborate on what was added by whom and not used?

<comment><USER16> For the Shuttle the big unused and underused capabilities were "retrieval to cargo bay and return to earth" and "launch to polar orbit".

I believe that this was imposed on the program by the US Airforce due to the need to collect spy satellites for service and put large payloads into polar orbit.

I think that the polar orbit requirement was never used, and had a very significant impact.

<comment><USER17> The first polar orbit was supposed to be Discovery, about six months after the challenger disaster.

One of the things that was to enable the polar orbit was a new set of solid rocket boosters, the 'Filament-wound' models that had a lighter weight outer case, and more propellent.

The book Riding Rockets was written by an astronaut who was in the middle of prep on that discovery mission when Challenger happened, and has a few details on the proposed polar orbit launch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is kind of an unfortunate title for those of us that still remember 9/11.

</comment><comment><USER19> Software isn't the only thing that suffers from feature creep (or bloat). The V-22 Osprey has similar problems, driven by their attempt to meet the requirements of all the branches of service.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really like the F-22 - they should've kept building it and maybe modified it for different purposes. The F16 are also pretty capable.

The only way the F35 will pay for itself is if it can turn into a space fighter :-D - otherwise, with all those components onboard, it will cost even more to maintain it over the next several decades.

Heck, in a real war, I'd rather take something simpler that is easy to build and cheaper to repair - Russia seems to have it right with the SU/MIG 3X, which are just perfected 2X designs...

</comment><comment><USER21> This story will also have strong significance for Canadians, whose government is currently in the throes of a controversy over how much we're planning to spend to buy a fleet of F35s.

</comment><comment><USER22> They'll never admit that war is an outdated business model.

But the military industrial complex needs to be slowly starved to death.

<comment><USER23> The business model isn't fighting the war, it's selling stuff prior to prepare for a war that may or may not happen.</comment></comment>


Disrupting "Disruption" Rhetoric - <AUTHOR> http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2013/09/disrupting-disruption-rhetoric.html <comment><USER3> Starting something with the goal of disrupting an existing industry is like becoming an actor or singer with the goal of making it to the Top 10 charts: both types of efforts are doomed to fail because they focus on the wrong thing.

The right thing to focus on would be to try to do the best job possible. A musician who tries to create the best music possible and to connect with his/her fans at the deepest level possible is much more likely to actually become famous. In other words, things like "disruption" and "becoming famous" are best treated as byproducts, rather than the main goal.

<comment><USER4> The narrow definition of disruptive technology is probably something like "a new entrant who through a low cost product, depowers much more established and high end players." That's a bit different than just trying to be top dog.

<comment><USER5> The "disruption" that people are talking about in Silicon Valley these days is more similar to the common sense meaning and less similar to Christensen's concept of "disruptive" innovation. [http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/stop- reinventing-disruption/](http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/stop-reinventing- disruption/) [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/disr...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/disrupting_disruption_a_once_useful_concept_has_become_a_lame_catchphrase.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm just tired of hearing the word "disrupt". It just feels so juvenile and faux-edgy to me. Just provide be innovative and provide something that improves people's lives.

<comment><USER7> It is juvenile. And it is inherently carnal. A business shouldn't need to screw with other businesses to be successful. It's much better to have a business that stands on its own merit rather than one that parasitically targets other businesses. Disruption is a natural process, not a goal. Making it a goal just causes impurity in the realm of what the company actually is vying to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Christensen did good descriptive work in his early books. Disruption was a thing. He tagged it, studied it, and described it. All that was very helpful. I actually am sympathetic to his later prescriptive works, I think they are seeking to solve social problems through disruptive change. I think what's happening in this essay though is that Pasquale sees the effect bound to the prescriptions, or even some alliance of pundits. That's just not the case. We can argue suggestions, but disruption will keep happening where we don't expect it ... because it is a thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Meh... I don't think the problem is focusing on "disruption", and I don't see that making any attempt to defocus "disrupting" existing power structures is any sort of improvement. The problem is, it's _fucking hard_ to actually "disrupt" big, powerful, entrenched structures and institutions! Disrupting health-care, for example, isn't as simple as, for example, setting up an EMR site and enabling the ability for people to seamlessly and transparently share their medical records across providers, etc., etc. You can build all the Electronic Medical Records tech you want, but that shit is highly regulated, and their are large, powerful companies with dominant positions in health- insurance, and health-care providers who have to be onboard for things to become widely adopted.

And, of course, there's not much competition in the health-care field, largely due to... wait for it... government regulations.

I posit that our focus should be on making the changes in our society that would actually _allow_ disruption to occur.

<comment><USER5> It seems like every good idea eventually becomes a buzzword which is used not as a description but as an aspirational substitute for the activity that it originally described. If you need to say that you're "disrupting" you probably aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why does disruption(1) seem not to work in healtcare:

1\. Disruption means offering something with less quality(but good enough). People are less willing to make those compromises in health care.

2\. Industry players(big businesses, doctors, nurses) have huge amount of political power, partly because of 1, In an highly regulated industry - <USER2> means disruptors aren't allowed.

3.insurance makes people disregard the costs of treatment, again stopping disruptors.

If I remember correctly,Clayton Christensen is aware of those issues, and his first silution(before democrats came to power) was health vouchers.

I think he believed they will enter price competition into the market, hopefully people will be willing to use disruptive innovations, and maybe with the potential new money, disruptors will succeed in lobbying and changing the rules.

That is one solution.

Anyway, if anybody want to lower the costs of medicine, those issues are need to be dealt with. The author just uses a lot of big words, and says nothing but blaming vague power structures. Not a very useful article.

</comment><comment><USER10> Given that the author of this article is "Schering-Plough Professor in Health Care Regulation and Enforcement", it should be obvious why disruption rhetoric may appear threatening to him.

<comment><USER11> Are you suggesting that would weaken his argument?

<comment><USER10> Given that the author uses the cui bono argument quite extensively (see, for example, "unfortunately, the "disruptions" pursued by Silicon Valley giants ... often have little to do with challenging the biggest power centers in society. And why would they?"), I see no reason why the same logic can't be applied to his own words.</comment></comment></comment>


First Steps Towards Post Scarcity - <AUTHOR> http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/economy/first-steps-towards-post-scarcity-or-why-current-financial-crisis-end-world-we-know

<comment><USER2> This may seem to be OT but it's going to affect most people deeply. What does it mean when most goods are very cheap or meaningless. We have been edging into post-scarcity since the 1960's, but we dont realize it yet. We shouldnt need two income families just to tread water. We have a lot of surplus, but it has been sucked away. The biggest offender has been housing. Not just that houses are larger than we need, but that speculation has driven land prices to outrageous highs. Now we are at the point where we can live anywhere and telecommute. Does the value get sucked out of the suburbs? Does the value of a university education become meaningless because we can learn off the web? What to the whole automotive/energy industry when cars are electric and long lived, may be one or two cars last your whole life? Do we all become service workers or do the service industries collapse, because we can do it outselves? What do we do with 20-hour workweeks?

<comment><USER3> although people here may have an aversion to the word 'anarchy' - "Post Scarcity Anarchism" is a great book on this topic: [http://www.amazon.com/Post-Scarcity-Anarchism-Working- Classi...](http://www.amazon.com/Post-Scarcity-Anarchism-Working-Classics- Bookchin/dp/1904859062)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scarcity is infinite. Post scarcity is, as they say, not even wrong. Totally meaningless.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you -- decades of psychological research show that people acclimate to what they have, and then want more.

Imagine cavemen postulating about what we'll do when we have these big machines that can carry us around at great speed, and when our food is already made for us and no hunting is required. Could they have guessed we'd work in glass office buildings so we can buy iPods and McMansions?

I suspect we're in no better position to guess how we'll use our future economic output, only that we will definitely want to spend it.

<comment><USER3> yes, but not everyone in the world currently has this set of things: [1] shelter,[2] food, [3] water. there are some things that are basic to our survival and experience, and from there we build the 'more.' when i think post scarcity, i think post-scarcity of life essentials. the quest to explore and build new things is infinite.</comment></comment></comment>