Houdini: Maybe the Most Exciting Development in CSS - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/03/houdini-maybe-the-most-exciting-development-in-css-youve-never-heard-of/ <comment><USER2> > This subset will only include properties that can be read or set without > forcing the rendering engine to recalculate layout or style (for example, > transform, opacity, scroll offset).

I'm frankly skeptical of most of Houdini, but I'm especially not happy with this one. This is baking the limitations of current browser engines into the platform for all time. The provided justification seems pretty flimsy to me, because effort that goes into this (which is something that native has no concept of, for good reason) could instead go into fixing the problems that make it seem like this is necessary.

<comment><USER3> Don't just complain about it on HN, tell the developers directly (via GitHub or otherwise).

<comment><USER4> A fair point, but pointing out a perceived flaw on Hackernews often leads to good discussion, and is sometimes followed by the authors themselves. I can see both sides of it, but I'd personally like to start it here then carry it over to filing an issue afterwards (if it still feels it has merit).

<comment><USER3> Okay, let's start the discussion here. The premise is that the design decisions being made for Houdini now will hold back CSS functionality in the long run. Two questions:

1\. What is an example of a new stylesheet feature that couldn't be implemented with Houdini in its current design?

2\. Why will the current decisions being made on the Houdini APIs hold back further evolution of these APIs? In other words, why can't we go with a MVP and evolve as required?

<comment><USER2> The Paint API is a poor match for GPUs, so we're going to encourage people to write poorly performing features with the API as designed.

The compositing API is overly tailored to existing browser engine details. It's forcing complexity onto Web developers when the problem should be solved at the engine level. Having to do all the compositing logic in a worker is terribly inconvenient anyway. If main thread animations are untenable due to random main thread jank, let's fix that instead of adding difficult-to-use workarounds. We're not doing the Web any favors when competing against native by saying "you can get native performance, but only if you contort your program".

An "MVP" that is poorly designed is not an "MVP". There are designs that are flawed due to not having enough features; this is a reasonable candidate for an MVP. But there are also designs that are flawed due to fundamental design problems. Releasing these kinds of designs onto the Web is not releasing an MVP; it's making another mistake.

<comment><USER5> I really liked the video last month about webrender, which really looked like the future of rendering web content. It sounds like this Houdini stuff would not work so well with a webrender type infrastructure? That would be a real shame and sounds like short sighted thinking in this proposal.

<comment><USER2> That's right; Houdini does not work well with WebRender. It's designed for the traditional browser architecture.

The CSS Compositing API is basically creating a separate tiny DOM that runs on its own thread because the main thread is supposedly too slow. (It has event handling and everything!) This is counterproductive in my view: it's just poorly reinventing the DOM we already have. If you want to multithread the rendering engine, multithread the rendering engine. Let's not introduce a new tiny multithreaded part off to the side that badly replicates 1% of the functionality of the DOM; that's not a nice way to treat Web authors.

I suspect that most of the advantage of this API in practice would be that it's a thread for the main content to play in that ads can't get to. Until the ads start using it, and then we're back to square one. If the main thread is getting hogged by ads or whatever, let's fix that problem (perhaps via off main thread iframes and off main thread layout). The Web will always be worse than native unless we fix that, no matter how many hacks we pile on top of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting, and oddly reminiscent of the shift from fixed-function to programmable graphics APIs, right down to the restricted "worklets" being sort-of-analogous to shader programs.

I do wonder whether "as performant as native CSS features" is setting up unrealistic expectations. Same ballpark, maybe, but I'd have thought native will always be easier for browser vendors to optimize, even leaving aside the language/runtime differences (C++/Rust versus JS/WASM).

<comment><USER2> > Same ballpark, maybe, but I'd have thought native will always be easier for > browser vendors to optimize

It will be. And things like the CSS Paint API are based on APIs that are poor matches for GPUs (but are easy for browsers of today to implement). I expect that those who are looking for Houdini for performance reasons will end up quite disappointed.

More broadly, I have seen the "replace the native implementation with a JavaScript implementation for better performance" idea tried many times, and I can't think of a single time it's actually worked.

<comment><USER6> I didn't get the impression from that article that "replace the native implementation with a JavaScript implementation for better performance" was the goal at all. Rather, the goal seems to be "move away from a situation where one holdout browser (traditionally IE, more recently Safari/iOS) could scupper a new feature _completely_ , and toward one where holdouts are just slower if they don't support that feature natively". There have been lots of examples of that strategy working - jQuery/QSA, asm.js etc.

Is that a misleading impression? Does Houdini have another agenda not covered by the article?

<comment><USER7> No, that is an accurate impression. The ultimate goal of Houdini is to give developers the tools to innovate; unlike the current situation were all innovation happens at the spec level, and devs have to wait (often years) for browser adoption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What we need is a "strict mode" HTML. Number of APIs available to web platform is getting out of hand. Using ES6 module system we can clean up the web API landscape.

Here is the idea: you declare your document to be in strict mode:

        <!DOCTYPE strict>

In this mode you don't have access to any API unless you import it. You need to import CSS layout systems like regular box model or basic APIs like query selector. You also need to import each html element you use. This way browsers don't have to take into account every possible CSS property or html element when doing layout or painting.

After we got that, then you can import your own implementation of standard modules that is written using APIs introduced by Houdini

Here is an example:

        import "html/div"
        import  "css/flex"
        import  "dom/query"

<comment><USER2> > After we got that, then you can import your own implementation of standard > modules that is written using APIs introduced by Houdini

Reinventing the platform using JavaScript in that way is not going to be good for performance. At least right now, until at the very least shared memory multithreading is available.

I also want to call attention to this:

> This way browsers don't have to take into account every possible CSS > property or html element when doing layout or painting.

But in order to get good performance we _want_ to take every possible CSS property into account. Performance is about being able to make simplifying assumptions (especially on the GPU, where state changes are costly). We want to make global optimizations based on the contents of the whole page instead of having everything painted using programmatic APIs, which are black boxes to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe we should just transpile Flash into ASM.js and be done with it.

And yes, I am being sarcastic here. I understand the motivation underpinning such projects, but the approach of introducing yet another complicated API with dubious cross-browser support is not something that will move the web forward in a meaningful way.

</comment><comment><USER10> Behold the inexorable advance of the Atwood Law.

Next step would be having an ability to entirely reprogram the layout engine in newly-performant JS. And then more and more, until we have built an entire OS (again).

<comment><USER11> See HTML5 canvas.

That's what Google Docs switched to so they could guarantee a consistent UI across different browser platforms.

For the full OS implementation see NodeOS and Runtime.js. NodeOS is a V8 runtime built on top of a very minimal linux kernel. Runtime.js is a full OS implementation from scratch written entirely in Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quick question, what's to stop someone from reimplementing, say "float: right" to also spin up a banner ad? That is, this sounds great in principal but much like Microsoft's Tay taught us, the internet is full of *-holes.

<comment><USER13> I'd expect that anyone who has access to the page/app enough to extend CSS to spin up ads would also have enough access to the app/page to just put ads on it anyway, in much easier ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Currently, custom web components don't have a way to add styling hooks specific to the component, so solutions include hacks to pipe styles into the guts of the web component, or use pre-defined attributes to style the component, just like the late 90s. Perhaps Houdini would provide a way to give custom web components first class css styling.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems like a band-aid for CSS, which needs to go away. Styling the DOM in the fashion we have been for the last 15+ years needs to end. JavaScript has evolved, but we still need to use LESS and SASS and Modernizr and other tools.

CSS doesn't need abstractions. It needs to be replaced.

<comment><USER16> In my work doing frontend web development CSS is the primary language I use. I don't use Less or SASS, I just write straightforward CSS.

The only limitation I've run up against as far as responsive styling goes was that @media queries were always scoped to the browser's width/height, and I figured I could build much more advanced layouts if I had a way of scoping styles to individual elements. It turns out that's true, I have a plugin that lets me do this, so between regular CSS and these extra 'element queries' I have no issue styling anything I want. My plugin works down including IE8, so there's nowhere I need to write CSS where I can't use it.

I'm not aware of how/why CSS needs to be fixed or replaced, it's a great solution for what it does.

What do you propose instead of CSS? When you have well written HTML, it takes surprisingly few CSS declarations to add a good style!

<comment><USER17> Most of the time when I see people complain about CSS it's because either they don't know how CSS works, or they want it to do something it wasn't designed to do in the first place.

Most of the time it's because they don't know how it works.

<comment><USER18> Lack of ability to nest rules in CSS makes it harder to organize styles. Not being able to create mixins and such makes all too easy to have to copy-paste and memorize cross-browser solutions & vendor specific rules for certain browsers.

In short, there is a lot of inefficiency with the current system that preprocessors help alleviate.

<comment><USER16> Why do you need to nest things? The 'C' in CSS stands for 'cascading'.

Don't fear the cascade!

<comment><USER17> Well, it does clean up the code a bit, depending on your point of view. But it wouldn't necessarily interfere with cascade.

It's just right now, because CSS doesn't support it, that SASS code gets compiled into large selectors if you aren't careful.

<comment><USER19> It helps a little in the code organization, however, it creates new problems.

It makes deep nested code hard or impossible to reuse. It tightly couples style and markup, so a change in the latter can break the former, etc.

So while it is a nice feature to have, I'd recommend using it scarcely and with great care.

<comment><USER17> That's not a problem, that's not understanding how it works.

Any nested SCSS is impossible to reuse outside of its parent scope. If someone is using nested SCSS and expecting to reuse that code elsewhere then they are doing it wrong. It's the same problem that exists if one were to create a class as a child of an ID and then expect to use that class outside of the ID's scope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's not very exciting at all. Browser support for Houdini will be a new issue in the future if they manage to release anything.

<comment><USER15> XKCD 927.

<comment><USER21> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/) For the lazy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great! But sadly, I must keep working with IE8 compatibility. Government related clients update at glacial speed...

<comment><USER23> Government contractor here on site at somewhat large gov't facility, we're fully updated to IE11 on Win 7 now. Before that, we had a lot of people on IE9.

Microsoft support end dates are darn helpful. Kicks people into gear.

<comment><USER24> Yeah... Microsoft standing firm on support dates and actively encouraging people to upgrade seems to have really made a huge difference. I'm sure it also makes them a pretty penny to maintain support contracts for entities that refuse to upgrade past the official EOL.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft engineer here. I would assert we want people upgraded more than anybody else on the planet. Our extended support contracts were designed to be cost prohibitive to encourage this point and were nowhere near a money-making venture. The engineering matrix (cost) for a fix across old versions was insane: IE6, 7, 8, 10, 10 touch; 32bit, 64bit, ARM; Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Server, Mobile, etc.; 5.5/7/8/9/10 browser document modes; etc. A "single" fix often meant weeks of porting work for engineers after the initial fix was written.

Note that the Jan 12, 2016 End of Support date means there are no more security updates, non-security updates, _free or paid_ assisted support options, or online technical content updates. [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-I...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/tech/tmpdir.html <comment><USER2> As a sysadmin on a Windows network of ~100 computers, this story makes me want to cry, although maybe for the wrong reason:

I see weird problems of the sort "It _did_ work before I went on my lunch break" on a fairly regular basis. How often would I like to go down the rabbit hole and explore these problems in such depth, but if I did that, I would hardly get any work done. The frequency at which our users run into these problems is just too high.

It is so frustrating so restart a computer or maybe re-install it and see the problem disappear, because now all hope to understand what caused the problem in the first place is gone. And problems that disappear for no good reason have a tendency to return for no good reason, most often on a Friday afternoon, just when you're about to call it a day. ;-/

<comment><USER3> This is what I hate about closed source software in general. Every sysadmin out there has complaints about how terrible support is from XYZ vendor, but it's not just that the vendor can't provide support, it's that by going closed source, the vendor is the only one who can really track down these sort of bugs. With an open source stack, no matter what breaks in any software component, I'm not left high and dry hoping that some vendor who charges buckets of cash per incident is competent. As a sysadmin, I'm putting my neck on the line anytime something breaks. I need to be able to fix things when the vendor fails.

<comment><USER4> A good vendor will work with you to resolve the problem, not all closed source software is bad.

<comment><USER5> I'm familiar with that theory, but from my personal experience I'd put the number of good-vendor software packages around 1%. And in retrospect, I'm not sure those cases were so much "good vendor" as "vendor over whom we had significant financial leverage".

<comment><USER6> From my personal experience I've only gotten consistently good support from Cloudera and Jetbrains, out of some 20-odd companies that I've contacted for paid support. So, for me the figure is more like 10% instead of 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with "newish" features like capabilities, file attributes, SElinux is they haven't been integrated into the traditional _nix utilities and almost nobody knows what is going on with them. A few examples of the poor integration:

File attributes override the _nix permissions such that you can set the immutable flag on a file and even root can't modify it. `chattr +i FILENAME && rm FILENAME`

On distros that use capabilities copying a file doesn't copy capabilities by default. ie copy the ping program and it wont work unless you're root.

When SElinux blocks an action the error message is almost always wrong. ie A program tries to make a TCP connection which it doesn't have permission for. Instead of an error message like "SElinux violation" you get an error like "No route to host". To debug you need to look at the SElinux audit.log and try to match up timestamps of violations to when your program died.

<comment><USER8> _nix formatting suggests that the asterisk in_ nix needs to be escaped. Apparently on HN that requires putting a space after the * though, so you end up with * nix.

<comment><USER9> Apparently HN's markdown implementation is supposed to leave the * alone as long as here is not another the other end. But there seems to be no upper limit to where that end may be.

Also, it seems to only check if the * is near something else, not if it is before or after. Nor if the after is after a before (if that made any sense at all).

<comment><USER10> > Apparently HN's markdown implementation is supposed to

What made you think it's Markdown implementation? It's pure text, with paragraphs delimited with empty lines, code blocks being prefixed by space (or two, I never remember) and emphasis being marked by asterisks. There's _nothing_ more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great debugging, and an example of the sort of behaviour that long dependency chains can expose.

 _Or rather, I did until this week, when it suddenly stopped working._

When this happens to me, the first thing that I ask myself is "what changed?", and I'm usually able to track down the cause to some configuration change. Incidentally, this is also why I never like modifying a working system unless it's absolutely necessary.

The fact that it ultimately was caused by some security features that would be very important for a multiuser shared server but nearly irrelevant for the (presumably) single-user local machine that he is using suggests that perhaps we shouldn't be thinking of "one size fits all" paradigm for OSs, since a lot of problems like this one stem from the unnecessary extra complexity introduced by such thinking.

<comment><USER12> > Incidentally, this is also why I never like modifying a working system > unless it's absolutely necessary.

It's why I find auto-updating apps so infuriating. The trend is that every app, OS, and driver insists on being self-updating. It's going to be very difficult to maintain a reliable system if you're doing anything complex.

Privacy issues aside, that's another reason I never plan to use the continuously self-updating Windows 10.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, chasing after CVEs is _also_ infuriating, but in the opposite direction. auto-update makes it possible to live in an environment where security issues are found by the bucket load every day.

There really isn't a good answer either way, but between "breaks occasionally" and "needs a full-time admin, but updates are vetted", I prefer option 1 for my private systems, and option 2 for things that run in production.

<comment><USER10> This is where supported distributions come in. In Debian or Red Hat you can practically assume that the OS update will not break anything. (There are occasions where it does break something, but I don't remember anything major in a good few years.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No reference to the full quote? :)

"You can check your anatomy all you want, and even though there may be normal variation, when it comes right down to it, this far inside the head it all looks the same. No, no, no, don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to. " \- Buckaroo Banzai

<comment><USER15> The movie is quoting that from a neurosurgeon. I first saw that line in a book about the Massachusetts General Hospital.

<comment><USER14> In the movie the lead character is also the neurosurgeon :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > This computer stuff is amazingly complicated. I don't know how anyone gets > anything done.

Indeed.

<comment><USER17> In particular, the set of exported shell environment variables is a sinkhole of state that can potentially affect every program we run.

<comment><USER18> If only we had a way to deal with state without it being mutable...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's funny is that in this case the dynamic loader was sanitising something irrelevant to the actual capability granted, which seems to me should be a bug.

Also, I'll be an advocate for just starting emacs with systemd, and never worrying about it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> > What's funny is that in this case the dynamic loader was sanitising > something irrelevant to the actual capability granted, which seems to me > should be a bug.

EDIT: fixed incorrect description of the yak-shaving conclusion.

The dynamic loader did so because it ran with an extra capability that the user invoking it didn't already have. Most of that sanitizing exists to prevent the user from gaining those privileges themselves by invoking a more privileged program, such as by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Sanitizing TMPDIR prevents a somewhat different class of vulnerabilities, such as using those extra privileges to write to files you normally couldn't. However, I don't think it makes sense to have a complex special case like "if you only have one of this subset of extra privileges, allow TMPDIR but don't allow all the other potentially dangerous environment variables"; that adds a significant amount of complexity and subtlety to already security-sensitive code.

Giving /usr/bin/perl itself extra capabilities effectively grants them to every user on the system, since you can use Perl to run arbitrary code. At that point, it would make more sense to just allow all non-root users to bind to arbitrary ports. I'm somewhat surprised that there isn't a sysctl to disable the reservation of ports 0-1023.

<comment><USER20> No, it was the dynamic loader that did the sanitizing. Mark said that he thought of Perl's sanitizing, and had ruled it out, and then explicitly said it was the dynamic loader that did the sanitizing in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the correction; fixed. I misremembered that bit of the yak-shaving adventure when I went to write my comment.

The conclusion still holds, though: I don't think special-casing particular capabilities makes sense. And in the case of the dynamic linker, it doesn't actually have that information available; it relies on the AT_SECURE bit set in the process's "auxiliary vector" (see "man getauxval"), which the kernel sets when the process has _any_ privilege its caller didn't have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This drives home the point that (almost) no one actually knows the details of their full stack.

<comment><USER9> And that present day computing is damn hard to reason about, because oh so much happens silently in the background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You should definitely tug on things when you have a controlled test environment and the time to explore what-ifs.

Much like companies should try to replace their own products (before a competitor does), infrastructure teams need to force "predictable" upgrades in a controlled environment on a regular basis. For example: look at your dependencies, _imagine_ what upgrades are _likely_ to be required in the near future, and try making those upgrades on test systems to see what could go wrong.

That approach achieves three things. One, since you're not in emergency mode and you've used a test environment, any problems that you do uncover are not going to cause a crisis. Two, if you do this semi-regularly then you're likely to see only minor issues. Third, exploratory upgrades give you a lot of time to fix problems (whether it's time for your own developers to make changes, or time to wait for an external open-source-project/vendor to make changes for you).

</comment><comment><USER22> Environmental variables have caused some of my more troublesome debugging experiences:

1) On Windows, VisualVM not being able to find the IntelliJ IDEA process I had running. This happened because IDEA was started with Launchy, which had a different TMP directory set, because I used both RDP and the Console, or something.

2) On Linux, ibus IMEs not working at all in my browsers; happened because I was starting them in a tmux, and the tmux server was started in my previous login session, so the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS in the tmux was stale.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the end it seems that all complexity stems from trying to enforce access privileges on a system that do not gives a rats ass about anything beyond 0s and 1s.

IF we want to avoid said complexity we basically have to go back to running only one process at a time, loaded directly from dedicated, removable, storage when needed.

</comment><comment><USER23> I read this, but seemed to skip over the part where he explains why this changed suddenly, when the behavior was documented?

What changed to make the perl become capable whereas previously it lacked the low port capability?

<comment><USER24> He usually started emacs directly. In this case he started emacs via a perl command, very very indirectly.

Also, a recent change was an admin setting TMPDIR, previously it had been left unset.

So it was a combination of two things that triggered it, and not one alone.

<comment><USER25> > So it was a combination of two things that triggered it, not one alone

And this basically sums up all the troubleshooting time sinks I've experienced in my career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The real question is why in the world you'd move tmp.

</comment><comment><USER27> I almost hesitate to say this, but it seems to me that emacs needs a new command line parameter to allow the user to specify the location of the socket file.

<comment><USER28> In case you're talking about emacsclient, that has one, --socket-name, as the article says.

If you actually are talking about "emacs" and not "emacsclient", then the argument you want is --eval '(setq server-socket-dir "/what/ever")'

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I did not quite get why is he starting emacs with "git re-edit" with re-edit being some Perl script. What is the role of git in this setup?

<comment><USER30> Just that, when you run '$ git nonstandard-subcommand', then the git executable looks for anything executable in the path that is named 'git- nonstandard-subcommand'. Then it runs it. That's all. But at that point, git _could_ have been doing something to the environment before invoking the custom script.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A pretty good showcase that the more features you have the harder it is for them to keep working correctly together.

</comment><comment><USER32> > This computer stuff is amazingly complicated. I don't know how anyone gets > anything done.

</comment><comment><USER33> tl;dr Don't use unnecessary amount of scripts and tools to do what vim + git do just fine.

<comment><USER34> Why even bother to learn programming if you can't use it to automate common tasks?</comment></comment>


Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or "Merge" With Android - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/gmail-creator-paul-buchheit-chrome-os-will-perish-or-merge-with-android/

<comment><USER2> I like that the screenshot says "11 seconds ago". An idle thought while setting up my new MacBook Air became a TC post in record time!

<comment><USER3> When Google started to make noise about Chrome OS I had a similar thought - what company in their right mind would want two mobile operating systems?

<comment><USER2> It was a more plausible sounding strategy before the iPad came out. Now that it's clear that tablets are huge, and that Android will be Google's tablet OS, then you start to wonder why adding a keyboard sudden switches you to a different OS (losing all of the Android apps in the process).

<comment><USER4> "it's clear that tablets are huge". I agree but I'd say it's clear that the iPad _is_ huge, and that tablets _will be_ huge. So far there's no competitor to the iPad. I'm not sure why Google are arsing around with the Cr-48 (a netbook/laptop) - they need to get their resources behind a tablet.

<comment><USER5> Are tablets huge, or are touchscreens huge?

To know, we need some decent laptops with touchscreens.

It seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a tablet that docks to the bottom half of a laptop - so we get a laptop with a tablet that can be carried around.

I also think it's a fairly good long term bet. At the moment we're in this strange 'appstore' download applications era which is like being back in the 1990s. This current era will end once wifi etc is _everywhere_ and the novelty value of downloading an application has worn off.

Obviously for a hardware heavy device such as a mobile phone, you need some specific OS to be able to interface with all the hardware, take calls, etc. But for a laptop, where the user is mainly just surfing the web, things don't need to be so involved. That's why I think both are necessary.

<comment><USER4> I think Bluetooth keyboards might take off. What you're describing sounds exactly like the iPad docked with a keyboard.

Edit: And to test it out I've just paired a keyboard to the iPad and edited this. It works a treat - I might stop rolling with a laptop when I travel now. I keep reaching for a mouse though!

<comment><USER5> The hinge is kinda useful to angle the display.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paul, I will bet 1000 HN karma at even odds on the following prediction:

Chrome OS will not be killed or merge with Android in the next year.

 _(if it was in the next two years, I would give 80% odds on the existence of a Google operating system not called Android that was the successor of Android+Chrome)_

<comment><USER7> How exactly would you "settle up"?

<comment><USER6> IOU's

or something not very likely like myself founding a Y Combinator company making prediction markets using HN karma. It would take a lot to convince pg to allow for direct HN karma transfers. It doesn't mean we can't create a shadow market with words.

I created a similar fake prediction market on Less Wrong.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/1tr/creating_a_less_wrong_prediction...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1tr/creating_a_less_wrong_prediction_market/)

<comment><USER8> "Good morning. In WallNet news, the Karma continues its rise against the BitCoin in heavy wagering over whether cloud computing giant Facebook will kill the popular Java language following an acquisition of foundering Internet retailer Oracle corporation."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Prediction: Windows Phone 7 will merge with Windows 7 or perish. iOS will merge with OS X or perish.

Oh wait, I don't predict either of those things. In each case, one is a desktop OS and one is a mobile OS. Sure, they all include web browsers that use the same rendering engine, but that doesn't mean they need to merge. Mobile and Desktop are two separate problems.

There's a reason why Windows CE laptops were never successful; people don't want a phone OS on their computer.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if that comparison is completely apt. Chrome OS is very different from most "desktop" OSes. I can actually do _more_ with Android instead of less. I agree that the UI and interactions would be odd running off of stock Android, especially if the device (laptop/tablet/hybrid) isn't specifically designed for it, but I don't think it's as insane of an idea as you seem to be implying.

In all the other instances, a phone OS loses functionality and flexibility from the desktop, while it would gain it in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dec 13 2010: > Google co-founder Sergey Brin, however, has _very recently stated_ that Google will likely "produce a single OS down the road".

Linked article: "November 20, 2009 12:00 PM PST "

Not said ~1 month ago. Actually said ~13 months ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google ChromeOS and Google Wave share some similarities in terms of marketing messaging behind those products. In both cases biggest value of both products is in business - they should never be marketed as a consumer products.

I agree with Paul that ChromeOS with its current market target will fail - just like Wave did.

But there is still hope for ChromeOS. Google should target bigger companies with it. Make it a hardware extension of their Google Apps offering. IT departments and CFOs will love them.

And you know what? I think that they are thinking about this already - that is why we've seen Citrix client there.

</comment><comment><USER13> It makes sense from a marketing perspective considering how well the Android brand has caught on.

Also, Android is a more fully-featured OS considering it has local apps and storage as compared with the cloud-dependent ChromeOS. It's likely a consumer would prefer Web+apps to just web, especially if it means they can do things like play games while offline.

And whatever happens, this is good for Linux. At the very least, we should see much better drivers...

</comment><comment><USER14> To quote a friend about this story, "Man no longer at Google makes assumption"...

<comment><USER2> Actually, the word I used was "prediction": [http://friendfeed.com/paul/1af77944/prediction-chromeos- will...](http://friendfeed.com/paul/1af77944/prediction-chromeos-will-be- killed-next-year-or)

That I don't work at Google is not relevant. (though perhaps you are working on ChromeOS?)

<comment><USER15> Paul and why do you actually think so?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't Chrome just an OS layer optimized to run Google Apps and logically intended more for enterprise use? Who really needs to deal with Windows and IT issues for sales reps? If they can use Salesforce & Google Apps all they need is a browser. No IT dept, no expensive licenses, viruses etc.

A free or dirt cheap OS with little to no IT configuration and that can run on cheap legacy hardware is probably a big win for many businesses.

For a certain segment of business use, it would render Windows obsolete and I think thats the point.

<comment><USER17> Centrally managed enterprise computing exists since the beginning with mainframe with dumb terminals. And you have Citrix thin client or vmware virtual client infrastructure for such purpose. ChromeOS is trying to solve the same problem, the problem of IT management rather than users need, experience and the advance of end user computing. ChromeOS if successful is not a good idea for the future of computing, where I believe an intelligent and powerful client is needed for the advancement of user-computing interaction design. ChromsOS reenforce the idea that computing is about the web with a screen and a keyboard. Cloud computing is more than just http right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This whole state of affairs is making me very, very sad.

I hope ChromeOS wins, only because it has a sane development model -- sans the whole being-stuck-in-the-cloud thing. If ChromeOS ever allows running local apps, that'd be tops. I'm not talking about offline HTML5 either, but exposing hardware/OS capabilities via JS or an FFI.

The iPhone/Android approach to app dev is antiquated and absolutely painful in comparison.

I really should be rooting for WebOS. Go HP!

</comment><comment><USER19> The problem I have with this theory is that Android just wasn't written as a general-purpose GUI framework/OS. It's very mobile and memory-constraint centric, and IMO would need a whole new UI layer, if not a major re-write at the OS level. Who would want to write tablet or netbook apps with the whole Activity/Intent structures, and listviews that populate dynamically when scrolling, or apps that the OS may kill at certain thresholds of memory pressure?

<comment><USER20> Actually, I think that th Activity/Intent structuring of applications is a very good idea, one that could be brought into the world of desktop applications too.

It allows to use parts of applications in a way that OLE/COM promised, but never delivered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why this the prediction goes this way.

Wouldn't the other way around make more sense? Chrome OS seems much more modern. But maybe too far ahead.

<comment><USER22> Why is it more modern? Its just a thin layer of Linux with chrom(ium) over the top. True, chrome is modern, but I am not sure the Linus layer is.

<comment><USER21> Everything works in the cloud. It works from every client. You have all your data everywhere. You have a well defined, powerful, standardized and cross- platform interface to it. All such applications will probably work on every computer also in the next 10 or 20 years.

You don't have those properties for most Android applications (they don't really work that well on your desktop PC even right now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In many ways, the most difficult decision would be how to merge the two different app development environments. Andriod is getting traction (in part) due to some excellent apps. These apps are developed in java that compiles to Android specific bytecode. So, from that, any merged OS would need to maintain the Android VM layer, otherwise backward compatibility would be hard.

On the other hand, chrome could be ported to Android quite easily.

So I see a Android like OS where Android Apps and Chrome web apps exist side by side (on the same desktop).

</comment><comment><USER23> Android is a platform for native applications and runs web apps out of necessity. Chrome OS runs nothing but web apps and has no support (in fact, it has anti-support) for native, non web-based apps.

The fact that these two systems come from Google is about the only thing they have in common. Why would they "need" to be merged, when doing so would do nothing but dilute each in turn?

I think Google has enough smart people on board to effectively support two platforms...

</comment><comment><USER24> But having one OS doesn't necessarily mean one recognizable product. I think it could just be the convergence of low level systems, drivers and creating a unified build system. Then on top of that they could plop a unique shell depending on the deployed platform.

Unify the developer tools, unify the build and deployment system, and merge the dev teams. You reduce duplication of work and streamline the whole process.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder why a Python/C/Linux mobile environment isn't here that could replace both Android and ChromeOS?

I'm going to assume if there's silence it's already being done in stealth mode.

</comment><comment><USER26> My favourite quote from that article is the following one:

        Update: more from Buchheit in the FriendFeed thread:

        ChromeOS has no purpose that isn't better served by Android (perhaps with a few
        mods to support a non-touch display).

        I was thinking, "is this too obvious to even state?", but then I see people
        taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some
        reason.

I fully agree with this one, and honestly don't understand the rage around Chrome OS. OK, so it's from Google, but it's still merely a crippled Linux- distro where you don't get to touch the local filesystem.

I doubt it will stay around for long.

<comment><USER5> It still makes an absolute ton of sense for people who _only_ use the web.

The browser on android is OK, but it's nowhere near Chrome afaics.

I believe ChromeOS is going after the non-techy market of people who don't care about all the bells and whistles of android. I think both could still be successful.

<comment><USER27> _It still makes an absolute ton of sense for people who only use the web._

How many people do you know who _only_ use the web?

<comment><USER28> My parents, my in-laws, and to some degree my wife and kids. I was lucky enough to receive a Cr-48 and it's been in constant use for the small time we've had it. Some of that is the 'new' factor but my wife has a regular laptop that she uses on the couch occasionally. Now she asks "Where is the Google laptop?" It is partially form factor but the boot/wakeup speed is addicting. Also the fast user switching makes it very easy to trade around. Last night I was using it for Google reader and my wife asked when she could use it. I was just messing around so I closed the lid and handed it to her. She lifted the lid, it was on instantly, she signed me out and signed herself in and was reading her mail in probably about 10 seconds.

Even with the problems with the trackpad and the stuttering flash I can see the potential. I would buy at least 2 Cr-48's today if they were for sale. Another one for my family to share and the other for my parents. I would set up a gmail account for my parents and ship it to them and be safe in the knowledge that I would only be doing application support for them, not system support.

<comment><USER26> > My parents, my in-laws, and to some degree my wife and kids.

Until they want to play some music not on youtube, dig up some pictures they didn't upload to facebook etc etc. Or just actually do a slideshow of pictures, since most web-pages don't really allow you to do slideshows.

There's a ton of use-cases I see most people do all the time which a no-local- storage platform will simply not support.

> She lifted the lid, it was on instantly, she signed me out and signed > herself in and was reading her mail in probably about 10 seconds.

I fail to see how this is different from any other laptop on the planet. I have a regular Windows laptop and this has _always_ been my experience. Heck, switching from my GFs account to mine I can be on in about 5 seconds. A _cold boot_ however will take me 10. SSDs are pretty cool that way.

Regardless. Back to the topic: I also fail to see how any of this relates to a platform being locked down to not allow local applications. Just where does the Linux-lockdown start providing real, actual benefits you don't get elsewhere?

I'm not saying you must be _wrong_ or mistaken, but what I do suggest is that there are normal use-cases which will benefit from having local-storage and applications and that I see absolutely no use-cases where having the local option completely blocked and removed provides any benefits.

Your "google laptop" is my Windows-laptop. Amputated. Without any benefits added what so ever.

<comment><USER28> We agree to disagree. I don't see any of these things as issues for my use case. My parents don't have a computer now. They don't want to listen to music and they mostly want to consume pictures of their grandkids which we would email to them or post to Picasa. The video chat through google talk is icing on the cake.

I can't get rid of my 'real' laptop because I need to interface with other hardware like my Arduino, etc. But for emailing and reading my news feed I like the Cr-48. Would the same purpose be served by a different netbook? Probably but I don't have one of those to compare to.

And my experience with fast user switching on windows is totally different from yours. Maybe it's the age of the laptop and not having an SSD but it's not even something I consider doing it's so slow. When my kids want to check their email, we fire up an incognito session on chrome on the existing windows session. Again, probably to do with my hardware.

<comment><USER29> I think it's important to not compare this to Windows. Windows is such a complete disaster on so many fronts of course ChromeOS seems like a better idea. The problem I and other have with it is "ChromeOS isn't really a better idea when compared to other operating systems." It's more crippled then iOS and Android for gains that aren't significantly better. Sure Chrome maybe a better browser but that's just a matter of porting Chrome not a new OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> unfortunately TC is both wrong and late as usual..let me explain..

Lets start with what android OS and Chrome OS share..lets see that would be that Chrome Browser..ever wonder why the browser in android is behind in build numbers compared to the iOS safari trunk as far as HTML5 etc?

There is a reason..its use new functionalities are added to me it a chrome browser..the same feature set that persuaded Google to start Chrome OS in the first place..

Thus, in-fact android OS and Chrome OS have already 'merged'..</comment>


TextIQ Raises $12.6M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/19/textiq-a-machine-learning-platform-for-parsing-sensitive-corporate-data-raises-12-6m/ <comment><USER2> It feels weird to see yourself hitting HN! I have joined Text IQ quite recently and it has been a great experience thus far. Cool tech with smart yet humble people.

Oh and a small correction, it is spelled Text IQ. With the space!</comment>


The Pollen Detective: A Scientific Murder Mystery - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/the-pollen-detective-a-scientific-murder-mystery-6325151f112

<comment><USER2> Very interesting story.

I started my MSc thesis on palynology, but for reasons unrelated to pollen, I changed the subject of the thesis after a few months. (I could not get comfortable working with HF)</comment>


What do you want in a new social network? - <AUTHOR> Looking for your ideas on how to build a better social network <comment><USER2> The HN crowd always suggests technical aspects they want out of online communities. No one cares about that crap.

Instead, what about online communities that: don't incentivize shallow responses, don't incentivize like or karma gaming, do encourage great content, do encourage participation to a slightly greater degree than most places where 80% lurk.

I think good online communities are actually small. At a particular point in time, as population scale goes up, you don't find people familiar anymore and as a result no one has a reputation. The site has a reputation.

How do we create good online communities? Someone has done this homework, yes. At least, I believe there are studies out there somewhere which talk about the threshold of people that we can recognize with any meaningful context.

<comment><USER3> I agree with everything you're saying, but what you're describing isn't a social network. It's a private, invite-only community and those have serious limitations when compared to an open social network.

IMHO, HN and Reddit are at their best when random people whose opinions you wouldn't ordinarily hear from decide to comment. For example, It's pretty common here on HN for open source authors to chime in on threads where their product is being talked about and answer questions. On Reddit, you'll occasionally get highly detailed comments from people with hands on knowledge of the topic being discussed. One that stands out in my mind right now is when an LA city planner commented on a thread about building high rent condos vs building low rent units. He laid out all of the city building codes around new buildings and why the finances don't work out for the low rent units. It was one of the best comments I've ever seen on the topic on Reddit and it would never have happened had the subreddit been closed off or invite only.

Of course, then the problem becomes how much crap you have to sift through to find that nugget. But, If you deleted all the crap as "shallow responses", would the lack of posts still attract those nuggets of great content? I think a high comment count and a high karma count actually attracts higher quality commenters because there's a perceived greater chance a lot of people will read it.

The only solution I can think of is to have a lot of moderators constantly auditing threads, marking the high quality comments so they stand out at the top and outright blocking or banning anything too egregious. Crowdsourcing doesn't work for this because it gets weaponized and/or abused.

Ultimately, what makes or breaks a social network rests entirely on the decisions the mods make about what kind of content they want on their site.

<comment><USER2> You make some really good points. Thanks for your thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess I'd want a social network where people aren't constantly tracked for monetisation purposes and where their personal information isn't sold to the highest bidder. Where any creators there can actually do well on the platform, and where the recommendation systems aren't ridiculously unfairly tilted in favour of the already super popular types.

And hell, one where the moderation system is fair all round. No preferences, no biases towards the rich or popular or whatever, just simple rules they enforce equally for all users, maybe with a nice way to counter the claim and get a person to listen to your response.

Plus somewhere a bunch of interesting people are posting interesting content on a regular basis. As in, stuff that isn't purely political in its nature, and isn't all about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin but about everyday topics instead.

That's not too complicated is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha it shouldn't be that complicated! This is a lot of good stuff...thanks for replying

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't want a new social network. I want Web tech to be accessible enough that even the least experienced computer user can have their own website with RSS feed, IM over XMPP, group chat using IRC, and secure, spam-free email.

I want to the internet itself to be a social network using open, standardized protocols that have been proven to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you not think these things already exist? Seems like what you're asking for is solved. But o could be missing something

<comment><USER5> The tech exists, but the average schmuck has no idea how to use it, so it might as well not exist.

<comment><USER6> Plenty of average schmucks managed in the early days, though.

Granted, it was through services like Geocities and Tripod, no one was building their own server by intstalling and configuring Linux through a VM or anything, but "having your own website" has never been _that_ complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Distributed / self hosted. Information pattern like Git or Scuttlebutt. UX abstracted enough that the underlying infrastructure is never exposed to non- tech savvy users. _Optionally ephemeral[1]_. No dark patterns.

Also, I don't think I want a social network about humans lives, ala Facebook. I want a social network that is constructive. I want a social network that is about storing information, learning, discussing, growing together, etc. With the attributes I mentioned above.

[1]: I recognize that in almost any distributed system data inherently can't be truly ephemeral. Yet, I think there's a meaningful distinction between the system ensuring everything you ever say or do is recorded forever, vs just not caring to keep anything labeled as "ephemeral" past a month or w/e.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really like the part about being constructive

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Decentralized, peer to peer social network.

Basically preventing any platform ownership to go awry or sneaky against user's or group needs.

<comment><USER9> How would you deal with misinformation and malicious campaigns under this situation?

<comment><USER8> I'd steer more toward "use it at your own risk" vs. "we're good because we'll be policing things for you".

Certain self-policing, engaging communities proven to be quite an efficient in that. Sort of like multiple downvotes will kill the post quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A strictly reverse-chronological feed.

<comment><AUTHOR> This would be great

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Our mission at overlooked.com is to build the social news network that ends fake news. We have every major news organization, run all articles through our Bias Detection Algorithm, and give each user their own personal profile, where they can like, comment, and rate news articles based on political bias. Shortly, users will be able to friend one another and tag their friends in news articles in a much safer, more efficient platform than Facebook or Twitter. Let me know what you guys think! We hate bots too

<comment><USER3> How do you define "Fake News" or political bias? How do you protect against malicious users who will flag anything they don't like as "politically biased"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It should have more in common with traditional forums than Twitter or Reddit. It should also be decentralized to avoid monopoly-producing network effects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Decentralized seems to be a big one

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want less bots

<comment><AUTHOR> Bots are fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> friends that expire. that's where the trend is, private social groups where people come and go. perhaps its reflective of a broader social trend , dunno

Alternatively built on top of urbit: [https://urbit.org/primer/](https://urbit.org/primer/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Ownership of my own data: It is not ok that Facebook gets control of everything i upload and write to the site and I have a hard time getting it back.

Censorship resistance: Even Nazis should have free speech. Also slippery slope, censoring Nazis and then more and more people also gets censored.

Decentralization: Trusting a single party to "be nice" is, as experience proves, unwise.

</comment><comment><USER15> Downvotes and RSS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everybody, I was wondering what do you guys think about cloning a US startup for a european market ?<p>There is this american startup that has a great product, but there isn't any equivalent in my country ( France ). I'm thinking about cloning it because I felt in love with the product and think it could be a success in my country. Originally I didn't want to "clone" any product, but seeing this one really made me want to develop it. Anyone has done it before ? What are the different things to consider before starting such a project ? Would it be viewed as "bad" to do such a thing ? <comment><USER2> It happens all the time and it's a great business model.

There have been a lot of successes with this. I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often.

There's no moral imperative saying it's "bad". In fact, quite the opposite. Just don't violate copyright.

<comment><USER3> _Just don't violate copyright._

Or trademark, or patents, for the sake of completeness.

<comment><USER4> although software patents would be ok to violate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I (and a friend of mine) cloned digg/reddit (it's something like a mix between the two) about 4 years ago, as there was nothing alike in the Italian market. It worked very well and the product (called Oknotizie, <http://oknotizie.virgilio.it>) did a successful deal with Telecom Italia.

</comment><comment><USER6> Go for it, just do it! If it's an useful service, you'll make people in France happy. They are your customers. No reason to feel bad because the US services don't want to provide their services locally in European countries (and no, translation does not equal localization).

</comment><comment><USER7> It's probably fine as long as you stick to mainly cloning the idea or functionality, ideally perhaps modifying or extending it to fit your understanding of the local market.

The main place people go wrong is also cloning the look-and-feel, or making the name be an obvious pun/derivative/translation of the original. Not only for legal reasons (though it matters for those too), but it can make the clone feel _too_ derivative, like it's a generic-brand knockoff instead of a product in its own right.

</comment><comment><USER8> It can work but you need to evaluate the local market and see the differences. I had a few projects were this strategy failed because the market was different and I ignored it because was so convinced it must work. Also, I have one project which I still think will work but will take time (maybe years) before it can start to be profitable as the market is not mature enough.

<comment><USER9> Please don't sign your posts. It's against the guidelines. If people want to know more about you they can click on your username.

See: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click on it to see your profile._

<comment><USER8> Sorry, my bad. Signature removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please clone mint.com :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> For this I would need an equivalent of Yodlee in France ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm french too, and currently involved in "cloning" (although there will of course be some differences) a US concept, so I just hope it's not the same one!

<comment><AUTHOR> Drop me an email, check out my profile ;)

<comment><USER12> There's no email in your profile. You should put it in the ``about'' field, the ``email'' field is not visible to other users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Corrected. Thanks for noticing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Go for it, some will view it as bad but just ignore them.

Interestingly enough we thought about offering localization services for international startups, the complete set (marketing, strategy, translation, management, sales, partnerships)as a package to get started at least far enough to make the market entry for clones unviable.

Any thoughts on that?

</comment><comment><USER14> watch Fabrice Grinda at TedXParis <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJK3_vpfoQc> (in French) - implementing ideas taken from one country into another is what he does for a living.

</comment><comment><USER15> Go for it. Just make sure you are not violating the copyright.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cloning a concept is fine, but cloning the (entire) interface is not.

As with all things moral, the moment you have to ask if it is moral, guess what, it isn't!

</comment><comment><USER17> I often think about that many times. But I believe the best solution is to get in touch for a collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER18> How about contacting the original site, maybe you can become its affiliate in France?

</comment><comment><USER19> This has been in my mind too, in another european country not France.</comment>


Gravity (weighted blanket) passes $500k on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1620645203/gravity-the-weighted-blanket-for-sleep-stress-and/description <comment><USER2> Does it come with a Juicero also?</comment>


Ripple Stock Anomaly: is $1.6B Valuation a fair price? - <AUTHOR> At the time of this writing the price of XRP/USD is roughly $0.25.
It is a well known fact that Ripple Inc has roughly 55 Billion XRP in its possession.
Ripple has roughly 160 Million Shares outstanding, yet the secondary market for shares of Ripple Inc are trading around $10 to $12 a share, which implies roughly a $1.6B valuation. This reverse interpolates to the same thing as XRP roughly if we wave our hands a bit, being valued at $0.025/XRP.  Yet the total market cap of all XRP in the world is $25B (100B XRP @ $0.25).  How can this be?  Do investors on the secondary market really think that XRP should be discounted by this much?  Wouldn't it clearly be a better investment to buy shares of Ripple Inc than XRP itself?  You would also get exposure to revenue from software Ripple sells too, which XRP does not capture at the moment. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/12513-ripple-stock-anomaly- is-...](https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/12513-ripple-stock-anomaly- is-16b-valuation-a-fair-price/?tab=comments#comment-129368)</comment>


Show HN: Hack Assist - Monthly Hack Night in Upstate New York - <AUTHOR>

Despite the recent Startup Weekend in Saratoga, the startup scene in and around the Albany area of Upstate New York is still pretty light on the ground.
I'm starting a monthly meetup for anyone working on a startup or side project that might turn into a startup for anyone in this area. Called Hack Assist, the idea is that even if you're not working on an idea of your own, you can come along and for one night assist someone who is.
The first meetup is this Wednesday night (3/13) starting at 6pm in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Designers, developers, marketers, business folks ... everyone is welcome.
I'm not sure how many people in the area read Hacker News, but it can't hurt to announce things here right?
For more details: http://www.hackassist.co <comment><USER2> Near Albany, here. Wednesday nights don't work for me, but glad to see there's some more startup and technology events happening in the Capital Region.

Troy seems to be the place where a lot of the area startups are focused, with some more in Saratoga and Albany. There were also a few coworking spaces trying to open up in the area, haven't heard much news on them for a year or so.

If you get an email list setup for future events let me know! matthias [at] 2helixtech

<comment><USER3> There's actually a few, beehive in albany for example. Also there's a buildguild that meets regularly. More going on that I used to think!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clicky: <http://www.hackassist.co></comment>


The Spinning of Spinvox - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/07/the_spinning_of_spinvox.html

<comment><USER2> This article has brought me a vision of a (matrix-like) future in which corporations clone and train humans specifically for these kind of call center jobs. Customers, of course, are told that they're interacting with an AI software.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google Voice used machines and while it is nowhere near perfect it works surprisingly well. You only need a few parts of most voice mails to get the point of them.

Google Voice is an excellent service and I am happy to be a user.

</comment><comment><USER4> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719311>

<comment><USER5> This bit:

"one of the problems with letting people go is, they lose their equity, so it can create quite a few angry people out there and it's part of the pains of growth and building a business."

So give them 'equity' so they work hard and then get rid of them? Nice practice</comment></comment>


Banksy Shredder Built with CSS Grid - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/leemartin/pen/pxNvod <comment><USER2> That is not CSS Grid! A true CSS grid would use shorthand notation.

(This is constructive criticism, all mention of CSS Grid is good)

Instead of:

        grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr;

Use the easy to read, maintainable syntax:

        grid-template-columns: repeat(11, 1fr);

The rest of the CSS might as well be 'built with Flex' or 'built with block layout'. It is okay to mix and match but 'as advertised' one expects more Grid-ness to it.

You could build all of it in actual CSS grid with no block/flex layouts, plus the quantity of javascript libraries is a bit excessive for 'grid'. CSS grid assumes an evergreen modern browser so you can use modern javascript without adding in large chunks of stuff that older browsers might need to download.

The CSS definitions on a per-strip basis are also a bit excessive, if you wanted 12 instead of 11 strips then you would need to update a dozen lines of CSS, not so good for whomever maintains the shredder code. Perhaps use javascript there if you want to animate everything?

I wouldn't be posting this comment if I wasn't impressed and a little entertained.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh shit, I didn't even know about shorthand notation. That saves me a line break in my Medium writeup. THANK YOU. Thanks for the in-depth critique! I'd be worried if you saw the code I wrote for a living.

<comment><USER2> Don't worry, you haven't seen mine and mine is not finished, at least your pet-project code is!

I enjoy the learning and discovery that goes with CSS grid, if I look at my first attempts I realise how I wasn't thinking straight then...

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you approach adding physics to the shreds? Someone asked me for cross-cutting.

<comment><USER2> Back to the drawing board, sometimes you need a better starting point.

How is your 3D modelling?

If done in 3D and made web possible with ThreeJS then the world is your oyster. You could model the frame, the reflection on the glass, maybe even add a gentle breeze. The strips would be low polygon count squares with the vertex normals set to smooth shading but fully 'cut-able'.

Add some physics engine and you could have the cut pieces of paper behave like confetti.

As for a starting point:

[https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_animation_cloth](https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_animation_cloth)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Everything old is new again:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto- destructive_art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-destructive_art)

</comment><comment><USER4> For reference.

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BomXijJhArX/?utm_source=ig_share...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BomXijJhArX/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=qvhqfchno3hl)

</comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat related question: how do we know that Banksy's art is all by the same person? What prevents others to publish art under Banksy's name (with or without approval)?

<comment><USER5> I once had a job in which I was asked to modify the girl with a balloon. I was never given any contact details except for an email address to who I was told was Banksys manager. Considering the extent to which I butchered the artwork for a specific event I was quite shocked at how quickly I was given approval to show the piece that I had modified. I guessed that there probably was no such manager. I also guess a few people do help out with the projects but I think it's one person conceptually behind it all.

<comment><USER3> Interesting story.

Perhaps Banksy needs to read this:

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

<comment><USER6> I think part of the point is that Banksy doesn't really care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty neat, but I think the shredded part would have been much easier/clean to make using linear-gradient, instead of having 1 div per shredded piece.

Lynn Fisher has a great project[1] that shows great usage and powers of linear-gradients.

[1] [https://a.singlediv.com](https://a.singlediv.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh, for sure. This was a quick little hack and I suspect my original thought was that I would animate each piece, hence the individual elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks @leemartin - i used this already for a quick blog post on Hortonworks + Cloudera:

[https://www.logicalclocks.com/the-hortonworks-cloudera- merge...](https://www.logicalclocks.com/the-hortonworks-cloudera-merger-and- hopsworks/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Something about the linked page breaks my Chrome scrollbar. Going there, then back button to the HN page and it looks like this[1] and no longer moves as I scroll.

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/ac8BMfG](https://imgur.com/a/ac8BMfG)

</comment><comment><USER10> this is broken - it should shred only half of the painting xD

</comment><comment><USER11> Anybody that felt this was interesting should check out Jean Tinguely.</comment>


Forgotten Notebooks Chronicled the Lives of Congolese Trees for 20 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/congo-notebooks-trees-climate-change <comment><USER2> > Forgotten Notebooks

Am I the only one who immediately assumed that this was an electronic sensor setup logging to some sort of ruggedized laptops that were somehow forgotten and later retrieved? I started thinking about the circumstances that would lead to such abandonment, possible measurements the apparatus might perform, the method for protecting the laptops from the elements, the power-generation strategy, etc., but it didn't even occur to me that the notebooks could be of the paper variety until I clicked on the link.</comment>


PyCon 2012 Branding: A Design Timelapse - <AUTHOR> http://gazit.me/2012/02/01/iterations.html

<comment><USER2> I only watched about 3 minutes, but I'm already floored by the amount of work and attention to detail that goes into concepts that eventually get scrapped. I respect the amount of... character? humility? experience? that it takes to spend hours on something, and still be able to look at it with a critical eye and be willing to give it up in favor of something better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the concept, Idan. You should do more of these, they give an amazing glimpse into how design work actually gets done.

For someone like me that has worse-than-amateur photoshop skills, this is a goldmine. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER4> I thoroughly enjoyed watching it; I've never seen the process a designer goes through when creating posters like this. It's what I imagine watching a code cast would be like if you have no programming experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> " _TL;DR it turns out that design is a lot of work, just like code._ "

The funny thing is that as much work as Idan is showing here, he's making the design process look a lot shorter than it is or can be by only showing part of it, the pixel pushing. Often the art direction (doodling on paper for ideas, surfing the web for inspiration, etc) can take at least as long or even longer, especially if it's a side project where you can wait for the muse to strike.

<comment><AUTHOR> So true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like timelapses like these, because often, finished work can appear obvious to people who aren't designers. They can't imagine that it would take several hours to complete something seemingly simple or minimal. But watching a designer work reveals interesting parts of the thought process and the myriad decisions involved.

<comment><USER7> It's a lot like programming in that way. I've done enough of both that it bums me out when I see programmers looking at designers and saying "what's the big deal, it's just drawings" and designers looking at programmers and saying "what's the big deal, it's just logic".

Simple stuff tends to be hard because tiny mistakes are easy to spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like most others in the thread I really enjoyed the time lapse. This reminds me of the popularity of Notch's (Minecraft creator) live stream of his entries for Ludum Dare.

There seems to be a lot of appeal in watching a talented practitioner do their work. Even more so if there is a way for the audience and the "performer" to communicate throughout the process.

Given the number of live streaming services that already exist like Justin.tv I wonder if there is merit in creating an aggregation site that allows people to screencast their work organized under different disciplines.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does not work for me because Dropbox is blocking the image & video due to high bandwidth consumption: <http://i.imgur.com/omLAq.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, I moved media to S3, should work again

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Loved it.

Incredible to watch. Offered a rich perspective into your design process. Demonstrated to me unique use cases of Photoshop. Documented change in vision and approach. Showed me how to do simple things I never thought to try.

Made me feel at the end that with enough work, vision, and the creativity to evolve, I too can create something beautiful.

<comment><USER11> Just as an FYI -- That's not Photoshop. It's Illustrator.

Use Photoshop for pushing individual pixels around (ie Photos), and Illustrator for Vector art (ie - drawing on a tablet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That was awesome. A couple of times there I thought to myself, "he nailed it", but then you went and made it ever better. This is why I will always have a healthy respect for good designers and programmers. It's never done until it's perfect.

</comment><comment><USER13> Imagine how long it would have taken if he was constantly interrupted with email and facebook!

I was mesmerized watching this video. Very cool. I kept wanting to tell him "Make sure you press save!"

</comment><comment><USER14> He like totally copied that picture of a snake :-)

I enjoyed the time-lapse as well. And especially liked the evolution of the python.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry -- video fixed, dropbox capped the bandwidth. It's on S3 now, should be working.

</comment><comment><USER15> Eyes are hard because they convey a ton. This was fantastic to watch.</comment>


Show HN: HammerJS for React Native - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/longseespace/react-native-hammerjs <comment><USER2> You should probably add a one-liner about what HammerJS does to your readme. Saying you've made a port of something that is somewhat obscure doesn't really help someone find your thing, if they don't know HammerJS does what they need.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, I still have no idea what HammerJS is.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't help that there are apparently _two_ unrelated HammerJS projects that do completely different things.</comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's liberal bubble has burst, and the culture war has arrived - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valleys-liberal-bubble-has-burst-2017-8 <comment><USER2> Is tech really the most left-wing industry? That surprises me.

Women are generally more left-wing than men, so you'd think a gender imbalance would tilt rightward.

And there's a strong libertarian streak (which I always assumed was due to being wealthy, white males, which is the libertarian base). I guess that would seem "left" if you were looking only at attitudes to drug prohibition or other social issues.

I guess if the industry leans younger then that would have an impact too, but still be interested to see the data for that claim</comment>


Amazon hits $1T market cap - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/amazon-hits-1-trillion-in-market-value.html <comment><USER2> Okey Dokey, so I'm assuming Amazon has to reach singularity in order to sustain that value?

Something is not quite right. We are reaching significant highs and the US dollar is getting stronger. Several economies are collapsing mainly due to their currency crashing against the USD (Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, etc...).

I'll probably fail to find the comment but I was very bullish on tech stocks a year or more earlier. I'm _still_ VERY bullish on them. Albeit I have to say that the risks now for a substantial correction is starting to go up.

Here are two possibilities:

1\. Things go back to normal. Tech Stocks go up a bit more and then we correct. Possibly getting into a bear market. This time is not different.

2\. This time it is different. Tech stocks carry on the bull market. Everything is a bull market even the US dollar. This crashes pretty much the rest of the world stocks and economies. The US economy and dollars crashes several economies and makes a come back as the most powerful economy on the planet.

<comment><USER3> How does the USD getting stronger lead to economies in other countries collapsing? This is a real question, I really don't understand how or why this would happen.

<comment><USER4> Weak economies often have some inflation and thus high interest rates. During the time of almost zero interest rates in the US, people borrowed Dollars and not their local currency to get money cheaper.

The problem arises now that the value of the Dollar is rising. People have to exchange their local currency back into Dollars to pay back their credit loans. They have to pay more than they expected which can be a problem.

<comment><USER5> Is the value of the Dollar rising, or the value of the local currency falling? I'd say the latter.

<comment><USER6> To out-pedanticize (?) your pedantry, by convention currencies are valued against other currencies - this is why the tickers at the bottom of Bloomberg show USD-EUR, USD-CNY, et cetera.

In the context of this thread, you're expected to interpret "the value of the Dollar is rising" as "it costs more Turkish Liras to buy a dollar today than it did yesterday."

<comment><USER7> I feel like this is missing his point, and he was actually asking if the change in currency value was mainly due to America getting stronger, or due to the other countries getting weaker. So far this comment thread has been fairly US-centric, and I believe he was suggesting it's more that these other countries are just failing, rather than the US doing particularly well.

<comment><USER8> Currency values don't necessarily correspond to the strength or weakness of a country. Sometimes countries that are strong in terms of GDP, military power, or other metrics intentionally drive down their currency value in order to improve their balance of trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can justify Apple's valuation through cash flow. You can't do it with Amazon. However it has always traded at a high valuation. Lets suppose it becomes the size of walmart which close ~500 bil in revenue. On the retail end their margins aren't really any better. So that is ~300 billion dollar business. That would mean AWS + prime video/music + amazon ads are worth 700 billions?

<comment><USER10> I'd say the bias is the other way. Apple is a one trick pony that is only growing through raising prices, in a market where their value added vs competition is becoming very thin. Not convinced their margins are sustainable in the long term.

Amazon on the other hand, between cloud and online retail, not only still has room to grow, and is building a moat around their business through the sheer scale of their infrastructure (logistics + datacenters).

Both are fairly pro-cyclical though (retail & luxury products). If anyone thinks the peak of the cycle is close...

<comment><USER11> > _I 'd say the bias is the other way. Apple is a one trick pony that is only > growing through raising prices_

For a company that started from computers, moved to media players, added music stores, added smartphones, added app stores, added tablets, add cloud services, added watches, and managed even the smallest of those categories (e.g. watches) to be the size of a Fortune 500 company (4-6 billion) and growing, it's rich calling it an "one trick pony".

<comment><USER12> Sadly, that man is dead. The accountant they have running things now is very good at making money, but not very good at creating new products. They are already selling $999 phones, it's hard to see how he can squeeze any more money out of the iPhone.

<comment><USER13> So exactly what in the foreseeable future is going to be more impactful than the cellphone (not necessarily the iPhone)? What other product is owned by close to 2/3rds of the worlds population and growing? ([https://www.statista.com/statistics/274774/forecast-of- mobil...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/274774/forecast-of-mobile-phone- users-worldwide/))

What other consumer electronics company is doing anything innovative?

<comment><USER14> It has nothing to do with apple being better or worse than other consumer electronics company.

It instead has everything to do with the fact that high end consumer electronics is only so big of a market, and is one that Apple has almost entirely tapped out.

Apple won the market, overwhelmingly so. But they can't win twice as hard, when they've won already as much as they can.

<comment><USER13> I agree and this is already priced in as well as the expectation of dividends They are trading at a much lower multiple than the other tech companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I plan to start slowly getting out of tech stocks.

Since 2012, I've held stocks in Apple, Amazon, Google, and Tesla (also, Microsoft and Intel, but sold those). I was skeptical about Facebook, so didn't purchase.

I attribute my buying decisions to my knowledge gained from Hacker News. Thank you everybody:)

Back then, the everyday person didn't have a clue what these companies were doing. (My dad's friend was still betting on HP, and no one knew about AWS.)

Oil companies fail because they think they're in the oil business. When in fact, they're in the energy business.

Toys "R" Us went bankrupt because they thought they were a toy-selling company, instead of a child entertainment company. These companies fail to innovate.

The great thing about tech companies... innovation is in their blood. The problem is when that blood gets diluted and their purpose gets lost in "making toys" instead of "entertaining children".

As I said above, I'm looking to get out of tech stocks. Looking for multi- family property real estate options. Years ago I purchased and lived in a duplex, then sold.

Looking for opportunities providing cash flow, and a proven product that's been around for 1000's of years. If you know of anything, please see my bio.

<comment><USER16> > Oil companies fail because they think they're in the oil business. When in > fact, they're in the energy business.

Correction, successful oil companies realize that they are in the financing business. Exxon Mobil has the uncanny ability to earn billions of dollars without selling a drop of their own reserves.

In this sense, the successful technology companies have realized that they are also in the financing business. This is why I think Apple and Microsoft will outlive Intel -- Intel innovates in their own market while Microsoft buys into any profitable market and can capitalize on the arbitrage the comes from being an established player.

<comment><USER17> I think we can take this principle more meta. Once every business gets big enough it should go in the finance business.

There is simply no easier way to make money than charging interest on something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Damn, Bezos is worth $166B. Also shocking, AAPL is already worth $1.1T and MSFT is worth more than GOOG.

<comment><USER19> > Also shocking, AAPL is already worth $1.1T

This is why shorts on FAANG are so high.

Seeing GM, who has a gigantic infrastructure that is paid off being worth 60B, but Apple has... fans? Patents?

Tech if anything can be changed in years.

I believe in Amazon and Google due to the sheer use from consumers and business, but Apple is not like these.

They have a segregated population of non-business consumers using 1 product in an increasingly saturated and competitive market. I dont know if I'm allowed to say this on HN-

My (work) iphone has significantly less features than my pixel/android. Apple needs to innovate NOW.

<comment><USER20> There is no lock on the door of Apple's walled garden. Speaking as someone who lives quite happily inside - I have no plans on leaving.

Different people like different things. You liking things that aren't Apple is no stranger than me liking things that are Apple.

<comment><USER21> There are no locks because there are no doors, only walls.

You can't seriously suggest that leaving Apple has no costs, that leaving a tightly integrated ecosystem that doesn't work well with anything else outside its walls is a low barrier to exit.

<comment><USER22> After 7 years, I switched from Android to iPhone 26 months ago. The only thing I missed was the Swipe keyboard, but then I downloaded the Google keyboard for iPhone, and I was satisfied.

Today, I still use FB Messenger, Text (iMessage by accident, but I just think its Text), Gmail (+ Calendar), Spotify, Venmo, Dropbox, FB Events and a random suite of utility applications that exist on both platforms (Chess Clock, etc).

My Androids were more robust and in 7 years never broke. My iPhone has broken it's screen twice. It is harder for me to chrome cast onto my roommate's TV. My iPhone is less configurable. My iPhone cost more.

Next time I buy a phone, I will not have any lock-in, but I'll buy a used iPhone. No questions asked. I can't put my finger on why, but the experience with the iPhone has been that good.

<comment><USER23> well i was not expecting that ending... Can you elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seeing the beast from within makes me question everything.

<comment><USER25> I'll bite. What's not in public domain that would question the cap?

<comment><USER26> My guess is that the grandparent is just commenting on working conditions inside parts of the Amazon org, the details of which are well-publicized at this point.

<comment><USER27> ..or the great grandparent works in finance / accounting and has seen some troubling numbers that are not public.

<comment><USER26> One seems likelier than the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting to compare to the other Trillion dollar company:

Apple (AAPL) earned $11.04/share last quarter and trades for ~$228 today

Amazon (AMZN) earned $12.63/share last quarter and trades for ~$2,040 today

edit: formatting

<comment><USER16> For a more complete picture:

Amazon

        Revenue		52.89B	39.34%
        Net income		2.53B	1186.29%
        Diluted EPS		5.07	1167.5%
        Net profit margin	4.79%	821.15%
        Operating income	2.98B	375%
        Net change in cash	2.92B	-
        Cash on hand	19.82B	50.14%
        Cost of revenue	30.63B	30.62%

Apple

        Revenue		53.26B	17.3%
        Net income		11.52B	32.14%
        Diluted EPS		2.34	40.12%
        Net profit margin	21.63%	12.66%
        Operating income	12.61B	17.12%
        Net change in cash	-13.09B	483.36%
        Cash on hand	31.97B	72.16%
        Cost of revenue	32.84B	17.64%

Revenue for Amazon is climbing faster than for Apple. And Amazon's cost of revenue is growing significantly slower than revenue while Apple's costs of are growing slightly more than revenue.

<comment><USER29> Could someone explain the math here. So amazon is worth almost 500 times their income!? That doesn't make any sense even if they are growing like crazy and investing their profits or something.

<comment><USER30> Net Income, not Income

They traditionally operate on low net incomes so they can kill other products with low or negative margins, and own entire categories, instead of wasting funds paying taxes and shareholders.

<comment><USER27> > They traditionally operate on low net incomes so they can kill other > products

Or as Walter White says in Breaking Bad. "Corner the Market, then increase the Price. Basic Economics."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> @SiliconHBO - 3 comma club Real Life - 4 comma club

Apple welcomes Amazon to it's club [https://t.co/eRkWs8LkZB](https://t.co/eRkWs8LkZB)

<comment><USER32> [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-28/tech- inve...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-28/tech-inventories- are-near-pre-crisis-levels-as-growth-is-slowing)

Amazon doesn't have slowing sales and increasing inventory problem like appl though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 30,000 ft view. [0]

It's interesting to see market's reaction post management issues were brought to light.

[0] [https://imgur.com/ZdRpdiZ](https://imgur.com/ZdRpdiZ)

<comment><USER33> What do you mean by management issues?

<comment><USER25> Something along the lines of

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside- amazon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon- wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html)

<comment><USER34> These are all pros, not cons, to Amazon's valuation. They are telegraphing the idea that Amazon will destroy everything that stands in its way, up to and including its own employees or even investors.

There is no kind of labor abuse or environment abuse in any sense that would not be taken as evidence of Amazon's character (and not a weakness). And again, this sociopathic behavior is what's being selected for by the market. Amazon abusing people and situations is good, according to the market.

<comment><USER35> Spoken like Gordon Gekko. That's sadly true though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The US has too many monopolies. This is bad for everyone _except_ those monopolies, including workers, consumers, and smaller competitors.

It's time for a new wave of trust busting.

<comment><USER37> I'm curious where you feel Amazon has a monopoly? Google and Microsoft offer compelling alternatives for cloud infrastructure and the retail market has tons and tons of competitors. I have a lot of concerns about the power corporations like Amazon, but I'm not sure I see where the monopoly exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> wow, that value is hard to imagine

<comment><USER15> It's all made up. Perception. (Disclaimer: I own both Apple and Amazon stock)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Amazon undoubtedly benefited from google attracting the bulk of regulatory scrutiny which is in large part because they have the same business model as newspapers and they didn't much appreciate it.</comment>


Open source, command line file encryption program - <AUTHOR> https://nrosvall.name/secret/ <comment><USER2> I see this tool places a filetype signature in the first four bytes of each encrypted file. Doesn't this hurt plausible deniability?</comment>


The Birk Economic Recovery Plan- bad math warning - <AUTHOR>

This email has been going around.  I don't know of an official webpage or its original source.  Google turns up many copies.
"The Birk Economic Recovery Plan" basically says that $85 billion given to AIG equals $425,000 for each U.S. adult (assuming 200 million adults).  The email includes much discourse on what Americans could do with this cash instead of using it for corporate welfare.
Of course, the math is wrong.  $85 billion divided by 200 million is $425 per person, not $425k.
But take this general idea and assume the bailouts reach $700 billion to $1 trillion.  Then the per person amount is $3500 to $5000.  Is it interesting at this level?
Would it be more interesting if the amount given each adult American forced you to pay off debt first prior to making other spending choices? <comment><USER2> Sure as you say the math is bad and numbers are old and too basic. But the IRS issued around 76.4M (as of June 2008)stimulus checks and expects to issue as many as 124M by year end. According to the irs.gov FAQs The next bailout is now looking like $700B -- so $785B total - divide that by the IRS numbers and -- Tell me that isn't an even more interesting level.</comment>