Strange earthquake waves rippled around Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/11/strange-earthquake-waves-rippled-around-world-earth-geology/ <comment><USER2> The twitter exchanges between the geologists mentioned in the article are great.

They talk in real life how hackers talk only in movies. Very jealous.

[https://twitter.com/matarikipax/status/1061590953876582402](https://twitter.com/matarikipax/status/1061590953876582402)

[https://twitter.com/ALomaxNet/status/1061637338709790721](https://twitter.com/ALomaxNet/status/1061637338709790721)

<comment><USER3> Googling the Mayotte Island that they tracked it to shows that a magnitude 5.0 earthquake occurred within the last hour:

[https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us1000hwxr...](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us1000hwxr/executive)

<comment><USER4> Tangent, but this place, which I knew basically nothing about before just now, appears to be stunningly beautiful, judging from the somewhat random sample of images on Wikipedia:

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

It's humbling... I feel like a bad citizen of the world for my ignorance of Mayotte. But also optimistic... the world is full of so many amazing places, there's always going to be some next amazing place to learn more about.

<comment><USER5> I lived there for 4 years and you shouldn't trust the random pictures you see on the internet. The place is a shithole.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to hear of some experiences!

<comment><USER7> Mayotte is a French oversea territory. And like almost all french oversea territory it is very poor, but less than the average neighbor countries leading to a lot of immigration which are difficult to control (even though Mayotte is an Island which make it a bit more controllable than Guyana for example). This usually end up in a increasing poverty and unemployment, leading to criminality, aging infrastructure, and public services not being able to handle the demand.

Like a lot of oversea territory, it has some beautiful landscape, but is crippled by the problems above. Living there is very difficult.

EDIT: Note also that I am not blaming immigrant. The problem being that adding more poor people in an already poor territory doesn't solve the problem of poverty. And France unwillingness to treat its oversea territory fairly and really invest in them is the main root of the problem.

<comment><USER8> As it is part of France, do people there technically have EU citizenship?

<comment><USER9> "Fun fact" this doesn't happen to some of the UKs crown dependencies like: the Isle of Man or Channel Islands

(though they're allegedly leaving so it won't matter too much anymore)

<comment><USER10> The UK situation with its dependencies is very complex. I found this short video helpful: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10)

<comment><USER9> Yes that video is excellent. (Also: "with its dependencies")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Clearly, the wave is from movement and noise generated by a large (multi-mile long) subterranean hard drive or processor or machine spinning to life after having been given the "wake on LAN" (or some other SSH/RDP-like) signal from Oumuamua [1] - who just got into wifi range earlier this year. The signal is just too clean for it to be natural; it must be artificially generated. So, its either aliens returning, or some Earthly code recently got deployed for Earth 2.0. (Oh, did you think we were living in Earth 1.0...Hmmm, interesting. Do you also think that's air that you're breathing?) ;-)

[1] = [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua)

<comment><USER12> I have some requests I'd like to see in the next update:

1\. nerf mosquitoes 2\. are hemorrhoids even necessary? I think we can just trash that feature. 3\. human ingestion is quite buggy. often times nutritional data gets routed incorrectly. plz fix

<comment><USER11> During recent sprint retrospectives, product owner continues to battle for the need to include hemorrhoid features, hence the constant addition of user stories. Needless to state, none of us is a fan of this set of hemorrhoid features...but product owner is quite, er, um, powerful. But the nerf mosquitoes; yeah we can put that one in! For human ingestion, we'd need a little more details for a user story there. :-)

<comment><USER12> "For human ingestion, we'd need a little more details for a user story there. :-)"

well, I was attempting to route some potato data to my food decompounder for processing and it was mistakenly sent to the air intake vent. suffice to say this disruption of the norm caused a break in workflow.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, this is clear now; and will be added as a user story for the next sprint.

By the way, i figure i should caution you that I've heard other users leveraging a temporary hack - while awaitjng this feature to be built/deployed - of routing potato (and other such) data via other intakes. In fact i think there was a SouthPark episode related to this hack; in that case using turkeys as the routed data.

This was fun, thanks! lol :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This happened before, i had forgotten about it. But it was posted on some forum, and they could track the seismic waves as they traveled from the eastern US to the western US - and they were exceptionally fast... but the interesting thing of when that particular event happened was that the speculation was it was the detection of secret underground high-speed transports, between DUMBS...

Other than it being an interesting fanciful thought to imagine if such a thing could be, i didnt think much of it.

But this is interesting in that the waves were also tracable from seismometer to seismometer...

Ill see if i can find it.

<comment><USER14> _between DUMBS..._

between what?

<comment><USER15> Deep Underground Military Base

<comment><USER16> This is my new favourite conspiracy theory. Was very entertained on my morning commute!

<comment><USER13> You should know that there was a patent filed in the late 60s for a tunnel- boring-machine which used a nuclear reactor as its power source, but also used the heat-output of the reactor to melt the earth surrounding the tunnel it was boring so as to make a structurally sound tunnel

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US3693731](https://patents.google.com/patent/US3693731)

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US3885832](https://patents.google.com/patent/US3885832)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I noticed in the article:

"Mayotte is on the move. Since mid-July, GPS stations on the island have tracked it sliding more than 2.4 inches to the east and 1.2 inches to the south."

If this isn't a mistake, it's also very interesting. 2.7 inches in four months is very fast. That's 20 cm/year. The fastest techtonic plates move about 10 cm/year. Also this island does not appear to be near a plate boundary, so what could make it move? The article didn't say what it was moving relative to.

<comment><USER18> Sure it did - relative to the GPS coordinate system.

<comment><USER19> Just because one uses GPS to measure position does not mean one is calculating position in WGS84, the GPS native geodetic datum.

For instance many survey instruments use Differential GPS to obtain a more precise location by using corrections from a receiver at a well-established survey mark. When using DGPS the coordinate system becomes that of the reference mark, not the GPS system.

So I think the question is relevant, and takes note of the context in which ground motion is studied.

<comment><USER18> But that ground point is located by GPS as well, which translates the more- precise location relative to the ground point right back to the WGS84 frame

<comment><USER19> No, the ground point is most often registered in either a continental or regional plate datum.

<comment><USER18> 'Most often'? By whom?

These things are in use in the 100's of thousands in agriculture now. Such base stations record their ground point by GPS location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This was my understanding from the article; there's probably a magma chamber shifting in some way, and resonance of pressure waves inside that chamber is causing outward waves to be projected around the earth. The metaphor I imagine is a boat in the middle of a lake having a sudden (non-explosive) hull breach that causes it to fill with water and rock rhythmically side to side. As it rocks, ripples from the boat extend outward in the lake at the same slow frequency that the boat is rocking, eventually spreading out through the entire lake.

<comment><USER21> Pardon, I know very little about fluid dynamics.

How would a hull breach cause a boat to rock rhythmically side to side?

<comment><USER22> The people using buckets to scoop it out, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please don't be the military...Please don't be the military...Please don't be the military...

<comment><USER24> I don't like feeling like a conspiracy theorist, but those signals look really clean [0]. Not necessarily the military, but... it's so intentional-looking.

> "They're too nice; they're too perfect to be nature," she jokes, although > she quickly adds that an industrial source is impossible, since no wind > farms or drilling are taking place in the deep waters off Mayotte's shores.

And

> For now, though, the lack of data makes it tough to say more about the > wiggly forms. Hicks' preliminary models hinted that the waves emanated from > subsurface inflation, rather than a magma chamber draining or collapsing. > But with a little additional data, the model flipped and pointed to chamber > deflation instead.

Does lend a grain of salt toward the military theory.

[0] [https://mobile.twitter.com/matarikipax/status/10615909538765...](https://mobile.twitter.com/matarikipax/status/1061590953876582402)

<comment><USER25> ""They're too nice; they're too perfect to be nature,""

Nature does on occasion surprise us with nice clean signals; for instance, the history of pulsars, where the initial signals were so clean that people couldn't help but suspect they were artificial (and I do not mock them for that, it was a reasonable thing to put on the initial pile of theories): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#History_of_observation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#History_of_observation)

The universe is still low-entropy, and will remain so for the forseeable future. Things like this can still naturally happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder as polar ice melts and the weight distribution on earth changes because of it if the planet wouldn't twist a little bit while spinning and cause earthquakes, even if just small ones.

<comment><USER27> Yes I also think a lot of things will happen, because of the climate change, that we never experienced before.

We know a lot of world wide events happened in history, so it also unlikely we never will experience huge events in the (near) future.

<comment><USER28> Any chance that magnetic field flips are related to climate changes in the past?

<comment><USER27> Yes this could be the case: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal)

Edit: by the way, I don't think humans should speed up climate change... but there also will be a lot of changes we can't control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm imagine a dragon that has been sleeping beneath the sea for hundred years just woke up, and nothing is gonna change my mind

<comment><USER30> Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

<comment><USER31> That was just Cthulhu snoring. When He wakes up, seismometers will start spelling words in ancient alphabets.

<comment><USER32> And just looking at the output is enough to drive you mad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The abstract on this [1] makes me think something similar could be happening here: low attenuation implies the resonance would take quite a number of cycles to die out like the one discussed in the article.

Here's another abstract [2] describing resonance with periods near 10 seconds lasting a long time.

[1]: [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/1999...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/1999GL005352)

[2]: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5615/2058](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5615/2058)

</comment><comment><USER34> I have essentially zero knowledge of how all this stuff works but I wonder if this is from something going on much deeper in the Earth, like perhaps the very core itself just gurgled on a chunk of Earth that fell in or something.

<comment><USER35> The bottom of the article is "99.9% just noise and 0.1% it's something" and says no one knows. Sounds like not a very big article

<comment><USER36> This is a quote from someone on the investigation not the author of the article.

You should read it all, it's a somewhat interesting read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _"They 're too nice; they're too perfect to be nature," she jokes, although > she quickly adds that an industrial source is impossible, since no wind > farms or drilling are taking place in the deep waters off Mayotte's shores._

Today I learned that seismologists have to take in to account wind farms when filtering noise.

</comment><comment><USER37> I just TODAY finished Nemisin's Broken Earth series.

<comment><USER38> Tracked down this reference to: N. K. Jemisin - the first in the series being The Fifth Season, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel 2016. Thanks for the reading tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ever since Oumuamua went thru, I've been thinking of Greg Bear's Forge of God.

Aliens spike the earth with a binary matter-antimatter neutronium weapon. They orbit the core for awhile...

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if it has to do with activity in the Great Rift Valley to the northwest? A continent being split in two must cause some odd behavior for an entire region.

</comment><comment><USER41> there we go [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-earthquake-today- anchora...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-earthquake-today-anchorage- tsunami-alert-issued-live-updates/)

</comment><comment><USER42> It's clearly the Forerunner portal to the Ark waking up.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder what the US Navy is testing!

<comment><USER44> The French Navy starting another round of nuclear testing might be more likely for this one, it's only 20 years since their last ones.

We should get greenpeace to send the Rainbow Warrior III over.

<comment><USER45> Not a nuclear test because there's no initial transient.

This is more like a forced resonance - the geological equivalent of an organ pipe.

So I'd guess there's a pipe-like feature or a chamber in the area (an old magma tunnel? - it doesn't have to be empty, it just needs to have a constant density significantly different to its surroundings) and "noise" from moving magma made it to ring.

With a 17s period and 6km/s velocity, for lambda/4 resonance the pipe/chamber would be around 30km long - which looks not-completely-insanely-wrong, possibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If it was in the Pacific I'd say it's Cthulhu rising.

</comment><comment><USER47> The comments here so far are one reason I prefer HN. If this was reddit the first post undoubtedly would have been a meme pic with the phrase "Aliens!!" :)

<comment><USER48> This thread so far has a sleeping dragon and bunch of Cthulhus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why strange?

If the theory cannot explain it, then fixit :-)</comment>


E Ink announces a full color electrophoretic ePaper display - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160524006209/en/Ink-Announces-Advanced-Color-ePaper-Breakthrough-Technology <comment><USER2> This will be perfect for electronic picture frames. I've given such devices to family before, but their significant drawback is that they are backlit, so they are much more distracting than normal print photographs and can't be put in a bedroom or anywhere else that needs to be dark. But a electronic picture frame with color e-ink would be an ideal use: Low power, no illumination, and no need for fast updating.

<comment><USER3> I have always wanted a large one (24" or more) to display whatever painting I find interesting on that day. I went looking several months ago without any luck. These look like they would be perfect for my use case.

I find the idea of having whatever art piece I want on the wall very appealing.

<comment><USER4> Hah, I got you all beat. I want an entire wall to be a display. I can set it to have wallpaper (!) of any sort. People can hike the continental divide with a gopro on their head, and I can have the wall display be the resulting video. It would be quite awesome!

<comment><USER5> Can you imagine? If you had your wall papered in e-ink panels you could have localised control too, cast something to one in particular or put up all your holiday photos, one after the other.

Would not be pleasant when your whole room is flashing though.

<comment><USER4> I'm actually a bit surprised that there aren't gopro videos of spectacular hikes that go real time step-by-step from start to finish, that one could use as wallpaper. Wouldn't you want to get one from, let's say, climbing Everest? Or mount one on the nose of a locomotive and film a coast-to-coast train journey?

<comment><USER6> Not GoPro, but Norwegian broadcaster NRK have filmed several train journeys as part of their "slow tv" offering. Original HD video files (200++ GB) are available [0], and there are multiple versions on Youtube, like a 10 hour trip with Nordlandsbanen from Trondheim to Bodø [1] and a 7 hour trip from Bergen to Oslo [2], including a 10 minute stretch from Finse where the scenes from Hoth in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back were filmed [3].

[0] [https://nrkbeta.no/2009/12/18/bergensbanen- eng/](https://nrkbeta.no/2009/12/18/bergensbanen-eng/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831Drz4YQdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831Drz4YQdQ)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR15x_ujuPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR15x_ujuPA)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2qXpNVTjw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2qXpNVTjw)

<comment><USER7> You can find more videos via searching for the phrase "minutt for minutt" on YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slashgear posted a video of the actual color e-ink panels in operation.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2V9iuTW3sA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2V9iuTW3sA)

<comment><USER9> It's unfortunate that it seems like the eInk flashing problem seems _so much worse_ than on monochrome displays.

Once the image fully appears it looks great.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if it's fast enough that they could do it line by line. It would be slower, but it might look better having the picture cut over fully, instead of flashing the entire screen over and over.

<comment><USER11> Or just have a layer over it that goes opaque for a moment until the pic below develops. Would be weird, but way less annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a neat trick: "The richness of the colors is achieved by having all the colored pigments in every picture element (pixel) rather than the side-by- side pixel colors achieved with a CFA. This eliminates the light attenuation, which can be quite significant." I believe this is why non-backlit colour LCDs don't work so well - too much light attenuation from the fact that the colours are side-by-side and so only let a third of the light through the colour filters.

<comment><USER13> Any idea how they manage to control which pigments are shown?

In traditional B&W E-Ink, black pigments are negatively charged, while white pigments are positively charged, so it's fairly straightforward to control which ones to show. I wonder how they do it for color, since they would need presumably 3 or 4 primary colors

<comment><USER14> It's easy, in our digital world, to forget: electric charge is not binary. A gamut of pigments that responded to a range of charges would serve.

<comment><USER15> That doesn't answer his question though. Let's say they have 4 types of particles: CMYK. If the charges are as follows: C > M > Y > K, you will always have C arrive to the front first. How do you make only Y go the front to display pure yellow?

<comment><USER16> If it's like the video linked above ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2V9iuTW3sA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2V9iuTW3sA)) it doesn't go straight from Y to C; the "pixel" has to cycle through all the other colours in between.

<comment><USER17> Maybe some kind of prism that flips one face at a time when it gets a pulse?

The other thought that came to mind would be some sort of resonance system... send the right frequency, and the cyan (e.g.) particles bob up and down hard enough to reach the surface, where they'd stick. Each particle would have its own resonance frequency.

<comment><USER17> This looks like it may be the patent in question:

[https://www.google.com/patents/US8797634](https://www.google.com/patents/US8797634)

<comment><USER18> So in summary, there are two layers. Top has white and magenta, bottom has cyan and yellow.

The magenta particles let light through, the others do not.

The top layer can put white on top to make white.

The top layer can pull all the particles to the side to be completely clear. This allows yellow/cyan/green depending on the state of the bottom layer.

The top layer can put magenta on top and white on bottom to make magenta.

The top layer can put magenta on top and pull white to the side to be clear magenta. This allows red/blue/black respectively, when the bottom layer is yellow/cyan/green.

Edit: But the initial article specifically says "The display utilizes a single layer of electrophoretic fluid" so it sounds like it's using a different tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone have a link to a good behind the scenes history of E Ink?

I've loved following them over the years. They were one of the first "startups" I read about (in the Boston Globe) as a kid growing up outside Boston in the 90's.

It seems like it's been an incredible uphill battle to make the tech work. I love my Kindle screen and do hope that someday passive color screens can rival light emitting ones.

<comment><USER20> It was way oversold at first. It was going to be really cheap, and flexible, like a sheet of paper. It ended up being a front layer on an LCD-like device. Early versions were dark grey on light grey, like cheap newsprint. The contrast has been improving, but it's still not as good as printed paper.

Other than E-readers, the big application has been retail price signs.[1] With a passive display, they can be battery powered and have a long battery life. They only need to wake up and rewrite when the price changes. (Most of the ads for these displays show something like "30% off!")

[1] [http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/](http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/)

<comment><USER21> > it's still not as good as printed paper.

Perhaps not as good as a glossy full-color textbook, but a few days ago I bought a paperback and I was surprised how much I wanted to read it on my Kindle instead. Paperbacks often have terrible resolution, and the contrast isn't much better (paperbacks often have ivory-ish colored paper).

<comment><USER22> Okasaki's Functional Data Structures book, as an example?

<comment><USER23> Theres nothing like a good hardcover book easy on the eyes. I just ordered 3 hardcovers circa 1940. Cost me a bit but worth the nostalgia and ease of reading

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm still waiting for the economically priced A4 black and white e-reader for reading research papers on.

<comment><USER25> Your comment just made me realise how much I want such device. An A4, 300-ppi ereader would be godsent.

<comment><USER26> This 13.3 inch device which is 300ppi and runs on Android is in pre-release, expected to ship in volume within a month or so. [http://www.amazon.com/Onyx-13-3-Android-Flexible- Handwriting...](http://www.amazon.com/Onyx-13-3-Android-Flexible- Handwriting/dp/B01EVACVHY)

<comment><USER27> Android 4.0, obsolete and out of any form of support since late 2012.

I hope you don't plan to connect this to the internet.

<comment><USER26> "Android 4.0, obsolete and out of any form of support since late 2012.

I hope you don't plan to connect this to the internet."

I'll ignore the snarkiness of this comment. There aren't any other 13.3 inch e ink readers out there that run on the latest version of Android. Furthermore, Onyx have announced upgrades are coming for the Boox Max. Also, Android support contrasts this device to say the Kindle DX which you can't use with your favourite reading apps etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I saw a few prototypes of Mirasol-based displays [1] over the year. So amazing, however they never got a broad adaption.

I still would love to have a comic reader with Mirasol.

[1] [https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mirasol](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mirasol)

<comment><USER29> That's probably because Apple bought up Mirasol. [http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-taken- ov...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-taken-over- qualcomms-imod-mirasol-display-lab-in-taiwan)

<comment><USER28> Huh, I did not know that. But an interesting move, let's see if it pans out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd love to have an e-ink monitor someday. I wouldn't need video-speed refresh (probably?) or even color, but programming without staring into a flashlight all day sounds really nice.

My monitor's brightness is already set at 4%.

<comment><USER31> > I wouldn't need video-speed refresh (probably?)

My biggest barrier here would be the mouse. My mouse is an extension of my hand. Imagine how hard it would be to manipulate objects in real life if you had a half a second delay on what you felt and saw your hand do?

Similarly, you'd better be very accurate at typing- you won't notice a typo until half a second later, by which time you've written 5 or 10 more characters. You could go back and fix each one later, but again, with the slow refresh the need for accuracy in knowing where you're typing now would be problematic.

That said, I'm still excited. This tech is so lovely (I joined Amazon in part because I love my Kindle).

<comment><USER27> > My biggest barrier here would be the mouse. My mouse is an extension of my > hand. Imagine how hard it would be to manipulate objects in real life if you > had a half a second delay on what you felt and saw your hand do?

To test, connect to a remote site with 1Mbit uplink via RDP or VNC. It tends to drive you stark raving mad after an hour or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't wait for the refresh rate to catch up with other display technologies. Imagine seeing a movie in subtractive color, it would be like watching a moving painting.

<comment><USER33> E-ink wall with high refresh rate at home. That would be awesome for daytime movies!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> They say low power, but also a fluid, is this tech going to be capable of the /no/ power display b/w eink does? That has always been one of the most interesting aspects of it to me.

<comment><USER35> The article mentioned the displays being reflective, so that would likely mean that they're making low/no power devices.

<comment><USER36> Some LCDs are reflective and they still draw power. Being reflective is orthogonal to to the amount of power being used. The question here is whether an active current is necessary to keep the fluid in position, or if it will maintain its image with zero power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Magazines and newspapers.

Just in case it wasn't obvious why this will type of tech will be huge.

Also - IoT displays. Hell, in the long term, _all material that is graphically designed and may need to change. Advertising, signs, dashboards, frickin' everything.

<comment><USER38> Magazines and newspapers are here today... it's called a kindle, or an ipad, or an iphone. This doesn't change that game. It also still has the same limitation of it's black and white brother. While the ink part scales, the electronics behind it don't.

Don't get me wrong, I think color makes this a much better value proposition... but I don't think our world is going to be wrapped in it anytime soon.

<comment><USER39> The ink part doesn't scale either — try pricing larger sizes. This is the failed promise, that they'd be able to just manufacture sheets of the stuff cheaply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wow, I had no idea e-ink had come so far.

Has the latency improved any?

<comment><USER19> Yes, though I couldn't find good numbers with some quick searching. If anyone finds a good source please share. FWIW, my new Kindle Voyage seems to turn pages about 10x faster than my second generation Kindle.

<comment><USER41> Serious question: what caused you to purchase a Voyage vs. an Oasis or regular Paperwhite Kindle?

<comment><USER42> I have almost every model of the Kindle (got rid of the DX, but have the rest still) and definitely like the Voyage over the paperwhite. The responsiveness and the overall crispness is better IMHO. I still really like the Paperwhite, but if you use them side by side you'll see a definite difference IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Kindles where you can read comics, this is something I've wanted for a while.

</comment><comment><USER44> Does anyone know what frame rates and power numbers this can achieve?

<comment><USER45> It takes a few seconds for the screen to change for the color display. [http://the-digital-reader.com/2016/05/24/up-close-with-e-ink...](http://the- digital-reader.com/2016/05/24/up-close-with-e-inks-new-high-resolution-color- epaper-displays/) (Watch the video--the flickering are the colors changing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Now we need good e-readers which can process PDF properly and fast. An iPad with this screen would be a great alternative if video is not important. But it probably will be Android that's going to drive these screens.

</comment><comment><USER47> Comics. This is for comics.

Marvel should partner with them.

<comment><USER33> Or Disney. Would be nice to revisit the classical Carl Barks and Don Rosa stories from my childhood. Though I'm not sure if Disney still owns the stories or is somehow licensing the characters for independent publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can we have a laptop with transparent LCD in front of a color e-Ink?

So that when stuff happens quickly LCD shows it, but when nothing happens for some time - LCD turns transparent (maybe even just for the region of screen that is static) and ePaper keeps showing it.

I'm thinking mostly static IDE with small debug window scrolling all the time.

Wonder if energy savings are worth it, but it could maybe be done just to make it easier on the eyes.

<comment> yoz-y My dream screen would have an OLED display behind an e-ink screen or something similar. So you can choose whether you want each pixel to be reflexive or lit- up. This would make for amazing experience. Of course both would have to be able to run at at least 60Hz.

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r They don't say how many bits per pixel they achieve. I suspect it's quite small, maybe as low as 3 - the sample image shows some posterization. With high resolution and dithering it should be sufficient for the intended use case of signage.

<comment><USER49> 'Including eight primary colours' probably means 3bpp indeed. However, 1600x2500 at 150 ppi is indeed enough to make it practically seamless with dithering; especially on E Ink displays. I can hardly make the individual pixels on my 1920x1090 phone, so I expect a higher resolution to achieve a good effect regardless of the bpp.

<comment><USER50> Not a correction (given that they posted after you), but if krasin's mention of 32k colours is right then it's 5bpp.

<comment> mark-r That's actually 5 bits per channel, or 15 bits per pixel altogether. Quite an achievement if true.

<comment><USER50> Ah, I meant per channel but I wrote per pixel - thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> E Ink had already color and support for (small area) motion videos support E Ink displays in 2009. At that time I got a Kindle 3 and there were hopes that the next Kindle would get such an improved screen. Sadly, Amazon ditched the bigger Kindle entirely and introduced Kindle Fire based on IPS display.

One day I would like a non-backlight color e-ink display ebook reader. And large screen (non-backlight/optional-backlight) e-ink displays would be great for various purposes like electronic wall painting that refresh once a day, info screens, third monitor (eg reading ebooks on PC on a special eye-friendly third monitor), etc

</comment><comment><USER52> This is great news, awesome for textbooks etc... I've been waiting for this for so long as e-ink Triton has been way too expensive and low resolution.

<comment><USER39> Nothing about this indicates that they've solved the "too expensive" part, unfortunately.

<comment><USER52> Very true, here's hoping!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Did anyone see a link to where/how to order a kit?

<comment><USER8> This is from SID 2016. SID is the equivalent of SIGGRAPH for display technology companies. So it would typically be 12 - 18 months from the time a technology is demonstrated at SID to the point that it becomes available as a development kit. For example, last year E-Ink demoed their 42" panels, and they're now available as development kits, albeit at USD$6k per panel+kit! So not exactly raspberry pi kind of pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Sounds promising. Are there any hackable e-book readers which use E Ink by the way? I.e. where you can install Linux for example?

</comment><comment><USER55> Nice news, but I doubt this'll be any easier for hobbyists to acquire without harvesting them from devices

<comment><USER33> So the black and white e-ink screens are not currently being sold separately?

<comment><USER55> they are, but like, they are usually ultra tiny (smaller than a business card), or prohibitively expensive.

The best way of getting screens is to hop on ebay, and get a replacement screen, then reverse engineer the connecter they use

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is so cool. I had always imagined these to replace my monitors. Looks like its on its way soon.

<comment><USER57> Refresh will be way too slow... unless you are doing something unusual with your pc.

<comment><USER58> If you don't mind line-by-line or paginated scrolling, it will be fine for most applications. Not video or gaming, of course, but software development, web browsing, email, word processing, and spreadsheet editing are by no means unusual use cases.

<comment><USER59> Software development and web browsing seem like they would be a bear (depending on the software you're developing I guess, anything with a GUI would be tough). A touch based OS would be a must, cursors would be way too laggy.

It would make a dandy comic book reader though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> What are the practical applications of this in the near term though?

Can't really think of any. Signboards would be good but I doubt the scale/price/size works out well (for now). ereaders don't really need colour IMO though it would obviously be a benefit.

<comment><USER61> E-Readers don't NEED color, but neither does your phone. Color is fun.

<comment><USER62> Color also conveys information more efficiently per pixel than black and white.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> > ACeP achieves a full color gamut

Which gamut?

</comment><comment> Gabriel-Lewis I can't wait to see this in Kindles and Innovative ideas like popSLATE [http://popslate.com](http://popslate.com)

</comment><comment><USER64> But, I just want a black and white Eink monitor.

</comment><comment><USER65> With good latency combined with pressure sensitive display this would be exceptional for artists and just for everyday taking notes.

</comment><comment><USER66> This will be huge in adverts on the streets, if UV does not degrade the display. Electricity costs cut thousandfold.

</comment><comment><USER67> its always refreshing to see incremental improvements in technology unfolding before me.

</comment><comment><USER68> Weird that the official E Ink Corporation website has no mention of this.

</comment><comment><USER69> does anybody know on which patent this technology is based?

<comment><USER70> A combination of any of these 1500

        https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E-Ink+Corporation&sort=new

This is the first one that comes up mentioning "color":

        https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160116816A1

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Really like it.

</comment><comment><USER72> Use cases?

<comment><USER73> colored ebook reader, low powered electronic bill boards, camouflage armored tanks, and planes, smart phones, smart watches e.g. Pebble, store signs, laptop, monitor, tablet...

Basically, anything you can do with a LCD. This however uses way less power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Let me know when I can 'wallpaper' my house with it. I hate painting rooms just to change the colour.</comment>


The Burden of iOS - <AUTHOR> http://thew.me/writing/the-burden-of-ios <comment><USER2> With no offense intended to the author, this post is 500 words of unsubstantiated generalities. Not that it's terribly written. It's just looks more like a preface to an article that contains the actual substance.

The author makes this statement: "...that focus on instruction...has become something of a burden. iOS is pinned down by its early interface decisions..." and doesn't offer one example to back up the claim.

We've heard the 'Apple design is too skeuomorphic' for years now and I just don't see how writing another generic article about it is noteworthy enough to make it the top of HN.

Yet, here I am commenting on it.

 _EDIT:_ And another thing! If Apple changed their design philosophy to a less skeuomorphic, more trendy, metro, flat style they would simply be accused of copying Google and Microsoft. Lose, lose.

<comment><USER3> You're witnessing the evolution of a group-think! It starts off innocently enough, with people stating their opinion on various things, then a couple of opinions become common and coalesce into one, until it is "reality". Then others build off of that truth and the process repeats itself until we have a complete narrative about something that is built upon nothing more than a series of speculative opinions. The internet and social networking in particular are big drivers of group-think; how can you possibly have an opposing opinion when the most retweeted bloggers have established a narrative that contradicts your own?

Here's a speculative opinion of my own that goes against well-established facts as presented in this article: Apple does skeumorphic because Steve Jobs liked it. And when given a choice between designs, he favored the more skeumorphic ones. Designers noticed this and went into that direction. The design community, being overwhelmingly Apple fans, but also liking the flat trend, needed to create a narrative for when Apple was behind the times in design, hence this article.

<comment><USER4> I truly believe there is some sort of industrial designer's cabal that decides what color schemes will be used that year. Just by looking at the devices in my home I know which year they were designed based on the bezel alone. 2002: white, 2005: gunmetal, 2006-7: piano black, 2009: flat black.

Even in computer GUI design we from the early OSX, XP Luna, candyland overdose to the extremely understated ICS and Windows 8 2D rectangles. I'm not a far of the flat trend but I'm not that hung up on skeumorphisms either. And I still don't understand how Mathias Duarte went from the truly, awesome interface in WebOS to this bland design in Holo. Put them next to each other and you wonder if he was just phoning it in when he got to Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author has clearly never seen a PalmOS device. Outdated now, sure, but they were a massive hit, and everyone - still - knows the platform. Put in its correct perspective - i.e., computers were less ubiquitous during its heyday - the Palm Pilot and its successors were a massive hit. It's a clear case of revisionist history to say that the iPhone is the "first comprehensively successful attempt to create a mass-market, consumer-friendly, always-on, pocketable touch screen computer".

<comment><USER6> > _Put in its correct perspective - i.e., computers were less ubiquitous > during its heyday_

Now this is some historical revisionism. Palm's "heyday" was the late 1990s through the early 2000s. Computers were already extremely ubiquitous at that time. Laptops weren't quite as common, but the dream of "a computer on every desk and in every home" had long-since been achieved in developed nations.

> _the Palm Pilot and its successors were a massive hit._

Relative to what came before it, but not what came after. Palm's PDAs were very much still a niche market when smartphones came along and made them irrelevant. In 2003-2004, PDAs (across all brands) sold about 2.6 million units[1]. This was probably the peak, but I can't confirm that. Three years later the iPhone launched and Apple sold 6.1 million units of the 1st generation[2]. Just last _quarter_ they sold 47.8 million iPhones[3].

> _It's a clear case of revisionist history to say that the iPhone is the > "first comprehensively successful attempt to create a mass-market, consumer- > friendly, always-on, pocketable touch screen computer"._

No, it's clear that the iPhone's sales absolutely dwarf those of Palm. Relatively speaking, Palm was not a "successful attempt to create a mass- market ... touch screen computer". Even current BlackBerry sales absolutely dwarf Palm's best-ever sales rates[4].

[1] <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9004592>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(original)>

[3] [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/23Apple-Reports- Reco...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/23Apple-Reports-Record- Results.html)

[4] [http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/research-in- motion-r...](http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/research-in-motion- reports-year-end-and-fourth-quarter-results-for-fiscal-2012-nasdaq- rimm-1638090.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really hope this is the year we realize that debating about skeutomorphism is a waste of time. Whatever its merits, I'd like to hear about a single case where an anti-skeutomorphic design was elemental in disrupting a market leader. I've been using a prime example, Ableton Live, for the better part of a decade, and while it's done well, it hasn't exactly left highly skeutomorphic competitors like Reason in the dust or enabled stunning usability breakthroughs. If skeutomorphism is not actually that important in the market, then let's just acknowledge that we're talking about personal taste more than anything.

<comment><USER8> Relevant: [http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/...](http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd- hackers/19991003.freebsd-hackers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be great if this article provided some examples of outdated UI elements so that we can have a discussion of alternatives.

The camera UI, for example, has been updated in iOS 6. Holdovers from years ago might include the UINavigationBars and the status bar but they've also been subtly updated and themselves don't seem too outdated. Any good examples?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Thanks for the feedback.

I didn't intend this to be a comprehensive argument, just wanted to draw some connection between the environment that iOS launched into and (what feels like) a lot of recent criticism of its design and behavior. Not specifically skuemorphism (which I realize isn't really worth debating in a vacuum, maybe I shouldn't even have used that word), but just instructive design in general (single-screen apps, limits on configurability, etc). Anything that can be seen as prioritizing teaching the user through interface decisions.

And, I completely agree that the market for new smartphone users is still huge. Point being that iOS now has to manage that market alongside the market for existing smartphones users (which it help create/grow).

That said, probably should have included some specific examples of what I was talking about.

Thanks again.

</comment><comment><USER10> My dad is a baby boomer, and hasn't touched a computer for over fifteen years. I just sent my parents my old iPhone and he hasn't put it down. Within an hour of unboxing it, he was facetiming, looking stuff up online, listening to podcasts... There are still a _lot_ of new users out there.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's an interesting claim to say that iOS has aged poorly. I tend to agree that the use of skeumorphic design does make the standard apps look a bit out- of-date, but is that really a problem? How many powerusers are really bothered by this? If you don't like the Podcast app, just get Downcast. If you don't like Calendar, just get Fantastical. And using your claim that skeumorphism helps smartphone newcomers adopt the platform more easily, isn't the current situation a sort of a win-win for the iOS ecosystem? Newcomers get an easy entry and more versatile users can enjoy the great results of third-party developers.

<comment><USER12> It would be much less of a problem if iOS allowed one to actually replace stock apps with new ones. There's no way to make GMail my default mail app, Chrome my default browser, etc.

Lack of intents is also a serious problem, apps have to specifically support sharing to each source.

A related issue is the lack of system accounts. One has to log in to each app separately, even if many of them use the same account.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand Android allows nonsensical sharing options - there's no way to launch the email app, you have launch a ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE which will launch Skype, or GMail or Mail or various IM apps.

<comment><USER14> And why should the developer have to care if I want to send something via Gmail, Skype, or carrier pigeon? As long as Android abstracts the data properly within the Intent, the target app should be irrelevant.

<comment><USER15> That's true, but the Android approach for accomplishing it is kind of horrible. For one, far too many apps respond to message types that don't really make sense to me. I don't know that this problem is avoidable with freedom, but the lists of available apps for any particular action are often long and very confusing.

I have witnessed this confusion with users, and it really hurts the platform in a lot of cases, IMO.

I can select one to be the default "always", but this doesn't work well either. If there are five applications that can receive a particular intent, my selection of "always" will be lost every single time that ANY of those five applications are updated. So, in practice, my "Always" selection typically only lasts a couple of weeks.

There HAS to be a better way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are two arguments in this article: 1) skeumorphic design, 2) does teach the user how to use the hardware

Both 1) and 2) are pretty OK in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER17> This blog post should be titled "Skeumorphism is Holding Back iOS UI". At least that way readers could see the clear lack of evidence.

There may be a growing anti-skeumorphic trend on the Internet, but I could reasonably imagine most iPhone users either being okay with skeumorphism, or frankly, not caring at all.

<comment><USER18> Agree. Most iPhone users don't care at all. This non-issue sounds to me like a designer who has gotten tired of the look of iOS. Which is fine, but don't make it sound like a technical issue with the platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The author's big miss, IMO, is discarding the number of design choices that may appear to be aimed at helping new users, but also simplify mobile use- cases (big tap targets, one clear way to get from A to B) and prevent the accumulation of detritus and the effects user self-sabotage, that tend to accumulate on PCs and Android devices.

iOS remaining large problems (no 'services', no way to change defaults, awkward inter-app workflows) are unrelated to 'teachability' of the core interface, as they're almost all concerns that only crop up for power-users or normal users who are months or years into their new device.

And they're solvable even if Apple clings to the big candy-like buttons, no widgets, skeumorphic app design, etc. So that bit is neither here nor there.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's nothing wrong with skeuomorphism when it informs the user, the problem is when the skeuomorphism imposes limitations and lack of clarity.

For example, on iOS the dialer is fine, the podcast app sucks.

</comment><comment><USER21> How is iOS less modern than it's competitors? This article lacked examples.</comment>


Ask HN: Does Covid-19 spread in a bacteria culture? - <AUTHOR> Currently published mode of transmission is still officially via contact with infected or getting the virus into airways and face.
There are now reports that there could be faecal transmission too, does this mean that COVID-19 spreads via bacteria?
Anyone have research links? (I have searched for hours now, yielding nothing much). <comment><USER2> You should read how influenca virus infections work. The virus doesn't spread via bacteria. It's the weakened/stressed human immune system (by the virus) which evventually suffers from bacteria which live in and around us all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for responding - appreciate it.

Please forgive my repeat: does COVID-19 attack bacteria (does it replicate in bacteria)?

<comment><USER2> I cannot tell without doing the research on my own. You might want to use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus) as a starting point for the broader group of corona viriae or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage) for the general phenomena of viruses attacking bacteria. My gut feeling is that corona viruses are not phages.</comment></comment></comment>


Wipro Says Americans Are Better Than Indians in Coding, 65% New Hires from USA - <AUTHOR> https://trak.in/tags/business/2019/07/23/wipro-says-americans-are-better-than-indians-in-coding-65-of-all-new-hires-are-from-usa/ <comment><AUTHOR> >During the April-June quarter this year, Wipro hired 6500 freshers globally.

>Out of this, 65% or 4225 freshers were Americans.

>This leaves only 35% of the freshers as non-Americans, which can include Indians as well. This makes employment opportunities for Indians less, and for Americans more.</comment>


Google Bus Protesters' Manifesto: 'Get Out of Oakland' - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-protesters-manifesto-get-o/ <comment><USER5> I'd like to share a message specifically for the Googlers on HN.

I am a poverty fighter. I run a nonprofit that helps kids in high-poverty communities. I just want to say that I know that there are tons of googlers who care deeply about helping fight the persistent causes of and horrible effects of being forced to struggle with poverty. I see it every time a googler volunteers to help a school, donates a dollar to a charity, or builds something that could help people in need. And because volunteers are a primary part of our program, I see Googlers giving a lot. I just want to say thank you. I think you can guess why these protesters have decided to pick you to focus on. I just hope that you keep in mind that their opinion does not represent those in the greatest need. Please continue working to make the world a better place for those who are struggling to break out of a cycle that's incredibly hard to beat. Even if they protest, please keep volunteering. Please keep donating. Please keep building. Please don't stop keeping the poor in your thoughts.

Thanks.

<comment><USER6> All right. GiveDirectly refused to process my debit card. Where do I donate?

<comment><USER5> If you want to find poverty, there are a few ways to go. The obvious ones are to support education (helping kids break out of poverty), to support what we call "survival" which includes things like soup kitchens and shelters (which are designed to help people cope with poverty), or healthcare in countries which don't have free healthcare like the US (which help prevent late-in-life entrance into poverty due to unexpected health problems). My nonprofit organization CareerVillage.org helps kids get career advice [https://careervillage.org/about/#make-a- donation](https://careervillage.org/about/#make-a-donation)

<comment><USER6> 40x18 ($720), donation completed.

<comment><USER5> Wow that's a lot of Chai!!! Thank you so much _eli_gottlieb_ we'll put it to very good use helping kids in low-income communities. I'll send you an email separately with more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gosh, wouldn't the world be such a nicer place if society solved its housing problems by _building more housing with a higher density_ instead of having these pointless zero-sum dominance contests?

But of course, that would defeat the whole purpose. The point is not to build more housing, it's to have a zero-sum dominance contest and come out on top!

</extreme cynicism>

<comment><USER7> The point is not dominance contests, the point is people want to keep their low density housing even as housing costs rise in their city.

Imagine if you lived in Hawaii, and the island was just starting to become popular because it is so nice. Everyone was moving there, and rents were going through the roof because there is nowhere to expand. What you want isn't Manhattan sky-rises on your little island; you want cheap, pre-discovery Hawaii with its thatch huts and casual atmosphere back.

<comment><USER8> >The point is not dominance contests, the point is people want to keep their low density housing even as housing costs rise in their city.

I was told by an SF native that the problem was also one of wanting to keep older housing rather—some historic styling reasons.

Does anyone know more about that aspect? I mean every city / town has historically designated homes, is there a more aggressive form of general legislation like that preventing new housing?

<comment><USER9> FWIW, the unhip parts of San Francisco have had relatively stable rent and housing costs. It's just the 'cool' parts that took off, and then the 'cool' parts of Oakland.

The last time I looked, it was only slightly pricier where I live in SF, compared to even 10 years ago, when I moved here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Already seeing the responses about how their worldview is simplistic, how the protestors are acting out against people who are there to help them... but does anyone want to comment on the actual complaint that the influx of tech money is increasing the cost of living for those not working in the industry? It seems equally simplistic to just dismiss their complaints when they seem to have a very valid problem.

This is always the downside of gentrification. It's not like their claims haven't been heard before, but I don't know if it's ever happened so quickly. Does anyone living in the bay area want to comment on whether their claims are actually valid and, if so, what can be done to help it?

<comment><USER11> If nothing else, they are implying that they are entitled to living there indefinitely.

<comment><USER12> Um, that is exactly the same claim the counter arguments are making: "we're entitled to move in wherever we want"

I know I'd be pissed if my community - not the place I happen to live, but the actively built relationships I have with people in my neighborhood (years of freindship, acquaintance, understanding and so on) - were disrupted because a bunch of new people showed up and forced that community to be scattered by mechanisms such as "we can't afford the rent anymore".

There is a lot of value that is destroyed. It isn't monetary, but it is a form of wealth. That is a real problem.

I get that a lot of people don't give a shit about interpersonal things, and think the notion of community is pointless. But a lot of us do care. Basic decency should suggest paying attention to this sort of thing. Just because you have more money than someone, doesn't mean you get to kick apart their world.

Building a new community for oneself, a deep one anyway, is not easy, and gets harder when you have to keep doing it - you start to say "what's the point - <USER2> don't have enough money and time to do this again the next time the better off need a new playground".

<comment><USER13> If that's such an important value to you, why do you live somewhere with such a large proportion of renters who do not own their homes? If you really want to build long-term stable relationships with neighbors, wouldn't the best way to prevent people leaving due to rent changes be to live somewhere where you own your home, and so do most of your neighbors?

I feel like I'm missing something significant here. Renting an apartment is a conscious choice to me, a trade-off between a temporarily-convenient location and long-term stability, or at least that's how I've always approached it in my personal life. It's baffling to me that people will sign a rental agreement for a limited term, and then be so upset at the conditions of that agreement not being guaranteed beyond that term. Perhaps I'm confused about the nature of the complaints? Do you object to rental housing entirely?

<comment><USER12> For a lot of people (you aren't one of them, by your statements, that doesn't mean you represent the majority, or even that there isn't a significant minority!) renting makes as much sense, or more, as owning. Further, in my neighborhood, the prices have been relatively stable (roughly tracking inflation) for a long time. It isn't trendy place. Whatever. Whatever the case is - there are a lot of long-term renters. People come and go, sure, but it is a slow replacement, and there are many people who've been here as long or longer than me (6+ years for me at this location which I own, 9 in the neighborhood). I like it here. I like the people here. There's a nice community and it's partly due to the stability. Whether or not it was a the best long-term plan to make friends with these folks, to build those ties, it's what happened, and it works pretty well.

So now you're saying that should that get disrupted by things outside of my control, and the control of my neighbors, it's our fault? Isn't that kind of ridiculous?

<comment><USER14> You just spent a paragraph explaining how it was within your control, but because of some nonsense reasoning, you chose to do it anyway.

It's a very simple concept. If you are renting, you have relinquished any guarantee of stability.

<comment><USER12> No - I made choices based on the best I could. However other people can make choices that undo my best efforts, and that would piss me off. It seems you think that somehow I am the centralized control for everything, which is awesome but unfortunately un-true.

Even if I could minimize the impact of people coming in and disrupting the community, say causing them to put in a bunch of high cost living stuff a few blocks away, it still drastically affects all sorts of other factors. Property values go up anyway - taxes go up. Prices of things go up locally. Net impact - same shit.

I'm not saying that it should stop. You seem to think I'm against progress. I'm not - I'm just for sensible community preservation as well.

It's an even simpler concept: it isn't progress if it fucks up a bunch of people's lives for no good reason.

What do you have against letting people be happy with their lives - <USER3> it may take a little more effort to respect people, but it still seems decent to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was hoping to find a statement of some sort of achievable goal or solution. I did not expect to find one. This is mere sound and fury, of no significance.

The influence of this influx of wealth can be likened to a rising tide, and as Canute demonstrated, it is not terribly accomodating: the flow of dollars does not hear this outcry. I'm amenable to a discussion on whether markets are the most appropriate solution to the allocation of housing, but I doubt many others would be, and that is not the argument being made. If these people are angry about serving coffee, they should learn programming -- I taught myself, in the poverty of a third world country no less. If they are less able to learn programming than, e.g. the children of the Chicago Public Schools, then I would consider it reasonable to charge a far greater rate for the services that they do provide. If their services being provided are not of sufficient value to afford them a new apartment (rent controls already being in place, as far as I am aware) then 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche'.

I'm no Horatio Alger character; I probably can't afford to live in the Bay Area even now -- so I don't. You want to talk about grinding poverty, let's bloody well talk. You want to talk about the evils of capitalism, you will find no more willing audience. If you merely want to rage and riot, and not stir a finger to help yourself otherwise, well...I'm not going to resort to invective, but you may have to live elsewhere, Canute.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is the wrong fight. Protester vs. Googler is a distraction. There are other, root causes of the problem that make the protesters angry, and doing this might relieve some frustration for them, but it does no good, and arguably does harm to their cause and gets us no closer to real solutions.

Back in the 70's, Berkeley, a close neighbor, decided that rent control was the answer. It turns out that it helped, but it had too many unintended consequences (people living in $200 nice apartments for decades when they made really good money, thus completely defeating the purpose of rent control).

So, rent control didn't work, at least not in the way it was done in Berkeley. Did it work in SF? Doesn't seem to have. NYC? I hear nightmare stores of their issues.

It's the dialog of the greater problems we need to have, not these stupid little fights.

<comment><USER7> Abolishing rent control might be the big-picture answer, but in the micro- scheme, the protestors will never rally for that.

They really don't have a winning play that I can think of; the spat is basically just them lashing out at the only thing they can think to lash out at. They are in the unenviable position of living at low cost in low density housing in a locality that is shooting up in value, and all they can do is attempt to forestall the inevitable.

<comment><USER17> Or they can get elected and introduce more rent control.

<comment><USER7> More rent control doesn't help them. Rent control for everybody means the wealthy pay less on rent too. Rent control for only the poor doesn't work, and Section 8 is too unpopular for them to roll out a widespread program like that for everybody who doesn't work for Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > ... see the violence and degradation out there? This is the world that you > have created ...

No, that is the world that the current tenants have created. These are the people here to turn it around.

<comment><USER18> If I were trying to encourage folks to not invest in local real estate, I would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

If I wanted to destroy the tax base supporting my school, I would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

If I wanted to drive my coffeshop or cheeseburger stand out of business I would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

If I wanted my theater to be empty, I would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

<comment><USER19> I agree with the gist of what you're trying to say, but:

> _" If I wanted to drive my coffeshop or cheeseburger stand out of business I > would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town."_

Yes, you really would. One of the chief problems with gentrification (where "problem" is highly subjective) is that the incoming population sometimes doesn't want the businesses you already have.

Your local cup-o-joe place is going to shut down in favor of organic, fair- trade coffee that comes with a brochure (and 5x the price). Your local cheeseburger stand is going to shut down in favor of a quinoa kale salad stand (and 5x the price).

Edit: The oxymoron of Bay Area gentrification on the other hand is that the protesters don't really want the old hood back, they want first-wave- gentrification-hood back. Nobody really misses the cheapass coffee stand, nobody really misses the cheapass taco stand. They miss that little temporary state where the artisanal coffee shop opened and the organic grocery got started but before the real rush came in search of it.

<comment><USER20> Anecdotal story time:

I lived in a rough neighborhood in Philly probably at the beginning of the first wave of gentrification in that area. Our house was a recent rehab, there were several houses next door that were completely vacant. We would frequent a terrible, dirty, cheap hoagie (or sub for you non-Philadelphians) shop owned by an immigrant family. I was always worried that they would get displaced by the incoming 2nd generation of gentrifiers.

Instead they rehabbed their business and now serve expensive sandwiches made with organic ingredients and have a large selection of pricey craft beers. It's still owned by the same family.

Now I'm not saying that the gentrification process isn't destructive to a neighborhoods culture, but I don't think it has to be this way.

<comment><USER18> Wealthier patrons are good for business. Most are happy up selling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My favourite part is line "But look around, see the violence and degradation out there? This is the world that you have created, and you are clearly on the wrong side."

Umm...Really? If one side is full of violence and degradation, and the other side has catered lunches and free massages, I'm going to choose the catered lunch side 10 times out of 10.

<comment><USER17> Did you miss the point about getting kicked out and getting forced to leave with nowhere to go ?

That "might" be the violence and degradation they're talking about.

Just saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Playing victim while infringing other people's rights and intimidating people with violence in the name of "revolution". Talk about Irony.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes, that developer earning a relatively modest, yet maybe comparatively high, six figure salary is the root of all that is wrong in the world.

Also I assume the author is implying their gentrification of Oakland is cool and acceptable but Google employees gentrification is so not.

This vitriol really needs some perspective, although I'm pretty convinced this has to be a troll.

<comment><USER23> In 2011, a $100,000 salary gave you a higher individual income than 93.4% of all working-age Americans. It seems strange to describe an individual income in the top 6% as "relatively modest."

Cite: [http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01...](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm)

<comment><USER20> Regardless the point I was trying to make is that if the author wishes to rail against inequality, they picked a poor target in their new neighbors.

By relatively modest, I was referring to the salaries earned by people in actual places of power.

If the author wanted to bring up the extreme disparity between the really- wealthy and the rest of us, I am all ears, instead they've focused on the harm done to them by the new gentrify-ing population; yet I assume at one point the author was a gentrifier of the same neighborhood they now wish to protect.

People were upset when the hippies moved in to SF too.

<comment><USER17> Googlers, by far more left than most of the country, cannot fathom that they are part of "the rich" most of them rail against. Some of these people are getting kicked out of their apartment, can't find a new place that's anywhere near their job, so they're getting kicked out, forced to move away, forced to quit their job and sent packing to nowhere with no job, no roof over their heads and no money. Plenty of these will be homeless for a while to come.

My opinion is : stop fighting this discussion. You can't win. There are no words anywhere that will make people accept being forced into homelessness without fighting. Just shut up, go to church sunday and pay a few hundred bucks on collection, because that will actually help them for a while. Lots of churches help people relocate because they've got lots of locations, and this is (part of) what they do.

TLDR: These protesters are right. Google, or googlers, techies in general, are forcing the lower rungs on the social ladder into homelessness.

Sorry to say, but you're lucky you're in America. In Europe, I cannot imagine these protests would have remained peaceful. A few tires and one window does not count as violence. Visit the poor parts of Brussels once with what a techie normally walks around with in San Francisco and you'll know what violence is.

Of course the reason this doesn't happen in Sanfran is that this is just the n-th time the poorest are being forced out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thesis: If the bay area had a viable transit structure, the current housing crisis would be less problematic.

People either need to work near their jobs or be able to commute to them. Housing density is low in most places, so "working-class" people get pushed out of "nice" areas, so they need to commute. Commuting is bad because transit is bad: there isn't an interconnected, pervasive mesh of transit with capillaries reaching into neighborhoods and arteries connecting cities. We've got Bart and Caltrain, but they're each for the most part single corridors, and the local transit doesn't link up well with it. So, taking public transit costs lots of time and money. The alternative that people have is to drive, but there are too many cars on the road, so driving takes lots of time and money. The result is that people feel like they don't have anywhere to go.

I'm not sympathetic to the argument "I've lived here for NN years so I should be allowed to stay living here as long as I want, realities of economics aside".

I wonder if it would help if there were a governing body between county and state that comprised "the bay area". Individual cities and counties have to strike deals between each other to link transit, with all the usual crappiness that politics entails. If a few counties (or cities that aren't in the same county) have a disagreement, do they have any place to air their arguments aside from the state level? People in LA don't care about the bay area's transit problems. People outside the major metro areas (central valley, far- northern california) don't care about the bay area's transit problems.

Part of the problem is that low density begets low density: all those cars need a place to be parked all day while their drivers work, so we have ~40-50% of the space in cities devoted to roads and parking. Further, low density makes mass transit economically infeasible.

I don't have a solution to offer. I can't see a way from where we are to the bay area I dream of, given the state of the economy and the politics involved.

Conclusion: we should collapse the bay area into a point mass. Then everybody gets to live in the nicest digs in town!

</comment><comment><USER25> These people aren't doing much to generate sympathy for their cause with poorly informed rants like this. So the people who work for Google are to blame? And not the politicians who legislate policies that inhibit the construction of additional housing, thereby exacerbating the affordability problem? Or maybe these folks want something that they aren't entitled to: a world where everything is, and remains, exactly the way they want it - <USER4> where the normal economic supply/demand mechanism doesn't apply.

Either way, if these protesters care about generating more interest in helping them, I think they should consider a different tack.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow. I'm not surprised that a lot of Googler's drink coffee but I didn't realize so many visited prostitutes.

<comment><USER27> Hah, yeah I thought that was a weird addition.

We are those that service you, even your loins!! for your money! You bastards!

WTF.

The sad part is that public transportation is so horrible in the Bay Area that companies are spending MILLIONs per year to have private bus lines.

The Transport services at Facebook were amazing. But when I left and then was working in Mountian view and had to take bart+caltrain it took me 2.5 hours each way!

After riding the trains and transport in Hong Kong recently, just how bad BART is was really driven home.

Bart is so abysmally poor y comparison to the HK train system, it makes me angry that I am punished by having to use BART.

It would be great if the rage that these protesters had were re-directed at the piss-poor management of public services and infrastructure.

Google and FB wouldnt have to spend millions on busses if the bay area were an actual urban planned region with real transportation services.

The fact that CalTrain and BART can't even sync schedule in the ___ONE_ __single location where they intersect is atrocious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This class warfare is ridiculously mistargeted. Google employees may be well paid but they are still members of the proletariat, the class of wage slaves who exchange their labour for money, the same class as the protesters. It's the banksters, politicians, privileged guilds and company owners whom they should both should be rallying against.

</comment><comment><USER11> Having such a simplistic worldview must be relieving.

</comment><comment><USER29> How is blaming Google employees any more righteous than blaming gays for wanting to live in Oakland and driving up prices? How is bullying in general a better strategy than attacking the root of the problem – conservative zoning policy?

It seems clear that the issue here is that more people want to live in Oakland than places to live and this drives rent up. If you want to bring prices down you need to build more housing, specifically denser housing.

Some people oppose this because it changes the character of the neighborhood, and that's a valid criticism. But the consequence of that stance is constrained supply which drives prices up, gentrifying the poor. Doesn't it make more sense to blame those who oppose high-density zoning?

Unless you want everything - strong local economy, low density, low prices – then I don't know what to say, that seems pretty naive.

</comment><comment><USER30> Says the guy who prints it out using a computer (and some sort of word- processor).

<comment><USER7> Google doesn't really make computers, printers, or word-processors.

<comment><USER30> Actually, they do (Google Docs, Chromebook?), but you're totally missing the point.

<comment><USER7> Ok, you're right on Docs, but they don't make Chromebooks.

Not missing the point, just thinking the point is not very strong.

<comment><USER31> A lot of "makers of things" don't really make their things, they just sell their brand.

<comment><USER7> Either way, is an HP Chromebook something Google has "produced"?

<comment><USER32> Google most likely collaborated with HP to create it. Provided they did (because they might not have) I would argue they helped produce it.

Discarding the HP Chromebook, the Moto X and Moto G are arguably Google produced, as are the entire Nexus line of phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How can increased housing prices create foreclosures for the people who have been living in the area? If housing prices double overnight, the mortgages don't change a cent. The only way Google can create foreclosures is that they create unemployment. That doesn't seem likely. Getting more wealthy engineers to an area will likely increase jobs.

</comment><comment><USER33> Can someone enlighten me as to what a Google bus is? Googling it doesn't shed any light...

<comment><USER11> It's a bus shuttle service for Google employees which takes them to work. It has become some sort of symbol of the socio-economic divide between tech employees and the rest of society in the Bay area.

<comment><USER34> It's also a symbol that the area's public-transit infrastructure is only marginally useful.

On a related note, I'm off to catch the R train. [/nyc]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I know economists talk about people choosing places to live in terms of "amenities," and businesses want to headquarter where people want to live. At what point is it cheaper to import amenities to, I dunno, Wyoming than to keep fighting the rising costs and politics of the metropolis?

I guess the answer is basically never? I wonder how much it would cost to keep the museums and clubs running with a lower population, just a whole planned city of entertainment...

(Maybe because businesses also benefit from sharing a tradeable talent pool with other similar businesses...)

</comment><comment><USER36> I think it makes Googlers uncomfortable to be lumped in with the 1% by the 99% they drive away from in private buses every day.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am sure the original has a #ThroughGlass hash tag ;)

</comment><comment><USER38> > You, your employers, and the housing speculators are to blame for this new > crisis, so much more awful than the last one.

This is harmful to the fight against fraud and speculation in finance. Thanks.</comment>


Math Envy and CoffeeScript's Foibles - <AUTHOR> http://johnbender.us/2012/11/27/math-envy-and-coffeescripts-foibles/

<comment><USER2> Very cool post -- looking forward to part 2.

For what it's worth, the syntax foible up for discussion here is intentional. Because CoffeeScript allows you to pass an argument on the right hand side into a function on the left hand side without having to use parentheses, there are several cases where we need to disambiguate:

        f / a /i

Repeated division, or a function being passed a regex with space in it? CoffeeScript treats it as:

        f / a / i

The example in the post is:

        func (arg1, arg2) ->

We disambiguate by saying that if the parentheses are attached to the identifier on the left, then they're part of the function call, otherwise they're part of the argument list as usual. It seems fiddly, but is useful for writing code like this:

        load(url).then (response) ->
          handle response

... as well as code like this:

        reduce(list, {}) ->
          for arg in arguments
            ...

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an important point, and I'm glad I can expand a bit on it here.

Considered as purely a syntactic issue there's not much for discussion. Fix the parser. But! Conceding that method/function application is useful along side the invocation operator `()` (which it certainly seems to be) makes this an interesting semantic issue. That is can two terms mean different things but look "similar"

I have no interest in telling anyone how to build a programming language or that one approach is subjectively "wrong", but knowing that certain term pairs in a language could be ambiguous with respect to each other seems like valuable information. Provided to the creator at the right time it might help with language design.

<comment><USER2> Eh? This is where I don't follow. What exactly are you recommending should be changed when you say "fix the parser"? Choose the other disambiguation, or simply use an entirely different function literal in the first place?

For what it's worth, this particular ambiguity was discussed as part of the original language design. It was decided that having parentheses for both argument definitions and argument application was useful parallelism, and that function literals shouldn't have to have a "def", "func", "function", or other prefix. From those two ideas:

        # Definition
        (input) -> output

        # Application
        function(input)

... the rest of it falls out naturally.

<comment><AUTHOR> s/fix the parser/change the parser/, meaning choose not to support both types of invocation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This post left me feeling pretty bad about Coffeescript. Those semantics weren't well thought out at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> In defense of CoffeeScript, I'm not convinced that semantic issues like this are at all obvious during the creation of a programming language. Honestly it'd be dumb luck landing on this one in particular since you can imagine that the grammar definition for lambdas and invocation/application aren't sitting right next to each other. That's what got me thinking about how you could explore the term space automatically.

<comment><USER4> Flaws like this arise from trying to be too clever with syntax. Function application with parentheses, literal regular expressions without clear delimiters, etc. Syntax should be describable in a handful of universal rules. Lisp is the extreme in this regard, the rule is simply: parentheses nest properly. But you can build surprisingly rich syntax with a simple set of rules so long as you lay out those rules first and conform the syntax to them as you go.

<comment><USER5> Io language is another great example of a language with a minimal set of universal rules yet incredibly rich metaprogramming.

<http://iolanguage.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Commenting a little late, but I just got around to reading this. One question, if anyone is still reading:

How is looking at distance between derivation trees any more useful than just looking at distance between whatever ASTs the coffeescript parser makes? In other words, why involve operational semantics if you can just talk about the trees produced by a BNF grammar for your language?

</comment><comment><USER7> dear god, please do not ever do any of that

</comment><comment><USER8> Why a long essay on semantics to argue a point about coffeescripts choice of whitespace syntax?

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally fair question, which I'm reading as, "why did you take the time to write this?"

1\. I've been reading through Types and Programming Languages in fits and starts over the last year or so. Operational Semantics is one of the topics covered in the book and I wanted to test my knowledge of it. I did the same thing with Category Theory and jQuery

2\. I get a kick out of "teaching" (that's an overestimation of what I'm doing) things like Operational Semantics using examples that developers can relate to out of their own experience. This is also part vanity. I like people to read/enjoy/approve of my ideas, but that requires that they be able to understand them.

3\. Writing is a difficult but rewarding exercise. It makes you better at thinking through and conveying your ideas in all mediums.

Hopefully that answers your question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is probably just going to be buried, but I think someone needs to tell you, Mr. Bender, that you are failing to see the forest through the trees.

In this work and in other projects of yours that I see on github, I see an incredible amount of effort wasted on semantics, formal theory, notation and attempted minor refinements to syntax.

Maybe your obvious intelligence would serve us all better if you focused more on creating new programming languages or software development tools rather than refining existing systems that are quite functional.

Have you ever created a tool that has anything approaching the utility of CoffeeScript? Because I think that unfortunately in your blog post you've proven that your study of mathematics was actually wasted.

Math is just obfuscated code that doesn't compile or run.

<comment><USER10> John Bender created Vagrant[1] with me back in 2010. I don't consider it even close to the caliber of CoffeeScript, but I'd say that is a pretty solid contribution to the world.

I should also note that basically the only part of Vagrant that hasn't changed in the past 3 years are the parts John came up with based on some pretty impressive mathematical underpinnings.

Research almost always appears useless on the surface, but it is what makes all of what we do on these clicky-clacky machines possible today.

[1]: <http://vagrantup.com>

<comment><USER8> How is vagrant not close to the caliber of coffee script? Vagrant solves an actual problem.</comment></comment></comment>