Google to Charge Phone Makers for Android Apps in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/technology/google-android-europe-apps.html <comment><USER2> > Google said it would sell a license for a package including its Google Play > app store, Gmail, YouTube and Maps. Another license will be available for > companies wanting to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser, > allowing handset makers to partner with rival services.

Still not decoupled enough for my taste. Manufacturers should be able to get only the Google Play store.

They also don't say anything about decoupling and shrinking the hundreds of megabytes of mandatory Google Play services constantly tracking you. (for example: will you still be mandated to make all Location Services go through Google if you want Google Play on your phone?)

<comment><USER3> > Manufacturers should be able to get only the Google Play store.

Why? Google is a for-profit company that puts time and effort into developing the store. The play store may not actually be self-sustaining in terms of revenue. Perhaps it is paid for by things like Maps and YouTube.

Shouldn't Google be able to specify the terms of use for its closed-source products? It seems sane that those terms might specify a package deal with other products.

By mandating that companies should be able to only get the Play Store, you're asking that Google work for free for others, and that doesn't seem fair.

<comment><USER4> > Perhaps it is paid for by things like Maps and YouTube.

This is why monopoly rules exist, and why it's not quite so simple. Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti-competitive behavior.

My retort to your argument would be: why even do hardware / Android at all? Because it's a distribution mechanism for _their_ services. If you leverage market dominance to expand that distribution network with fewer / no alternatives for consumers, that's like anti-trust 101.

<comment><USER5> > Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to > undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti- > competitive behavior.

Is it less clear how monopoly rules work if the price is "free?" If a company can offer a service for free by supplementing the cost with bundling (in a market where the going rate is "free") vs. not offering it at all, I'm not sure that's considered the same by US monopoly law (I have no idea of EU monopoly law).

<comment><USER4> It's a reasonable question - but the price can never be truly "free," because there's a cost to investment / build that product - meaning costs are non- zero. Therefore the negative profit in the short-term due to pricing is called "undercutting," as other companies (generally) don't have that luxury in the long run.

You have to ask: why is it free?

\- A thousand engineers working on a non-revenue product for Google is like "pennies," when it might be a whole company anywhere else.

\- How are you funding that negative profit? Using leverage and profit from strong market position elsewhere. Therefore: anti-competitive, as other companies in the space don't have similar leverage.

Now, a startup can, say, operate at negative profit and not count as "anti- competitive," because a startup most likely has fractional market share. But imagine you're building a startup in a brand new space, and Google decides to also enter that space. If you price your product at $10, and Google says "we're pricing at $0," you can imagine how no one could compete with that for the long-term. Hence why monopoly / anti-competitive rules are important.

<comment><USER5> If we're talking app stores, I think it's free because no consumer would pay for it. F-Droid is also free.

<comment><USER6> I don't think this argument holds generally. For example people used to pay for GPS apps (iGO, TomTom, etc.) before Google Maps/other navi apps were available for "free" on smartphones. Google, in fact, might have destroyed a market by making Google Maps "free".

<comment><USER7> _Google, in fact, might have destroyed a market by making Google Maps "free"._

Which is a good thing if it results in more people getting quality services. gcc and Apache destroyed the market for commercial compilers and web servers; should they have been prohibited?

<comment><USER8> >> gcc and Apache destroyed the market for commercial compilers and web servers; should they have been prohibited?

The difference here is that Apache didn't shove you a PlayStore, maps app and a browser in order to use their libraries. I want the products to "win" on merit not on reach. You also forget that Apache is open source which is not the case with Maps/youtube where your access can be denied at any time.

>> Which is a good thing if it results in more people getting quality services.

This gives no guarantee that Google won't start to charge its users for these services at some point in time. And there really won't be any competition as all the competitors have been killed by the "free" price.

Actually it seems they already set the price. You may argue that the end user doesn't pay for Playstore etc but we both know they pay...just like they paid for Windows. "Google said it would sell a license for a package including its Google Play...."

<comment><USER9> > The difference here is that Apache didn't shove you a PlayStore, maps app > and a browser in order to use their libraries.

That's a completely independent complaint that has nothing to do with Android being available for free. You would have the same tying objection if Android cost money, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has always felt very bizarre to me. From an anti-competitive standpoint it makes sense, but from an antitrust i.e. harming the consumer standpoint, it feels a bit nebulous.

Who is actually the beneficiary of this action? It seems pretty dubious that it helps customers, after all, the whole thing stems from the fact that the customers want the Play Store.

It says that they would offer would be financial incentives for partnering with chrome and google. Is it just gonna be like "access to Google Play is $10, but if you bundle our services, we'll give you $10!"

Or is the effect that it increases the leverage of other handset makers to essentially extract rents of digital real estate from Google like Apple does?

<comment><USER11> from: [https://stratechery.com/2017/ends-means-and- antitrust/](https://stratechery.com/2017/ends-means-and-antitrust/)

"What is the Standard for Determining Illegal Behavior?

"The United States and European Union have, at least since the Reagan Administration, differed on this point: the U.S. is primarily concerned with consumer welfare, and the primary proxy is price. In other words, as long as prices do not increase — or even better, decrease — there is, by definition, no illegal behavior.

"The European Commission, on the other hand, is explicitly focused on competition: monopolistic behavior is presumed to be illegal if it restricts competitors which, in the theoretical long run, hurts consumers by restricting innovation."

<comment><USER12> The only problem with allowing competitors to constrain their business rivals is, well, exactly that. They are unable to compete in the marketplace, thus they rely on regulation.

I always had a hard time with that notion. It feels too ripe for abuse to me.

<comment><USER13> It's not as simple as you are implying. Multiple times Intel made deals with PC vendors just to deny AMD access to computers. It is anticompetitive and in the ling run it damages consumers by limiting competition and innovation. Good thing that AMD wasn't killed during those moves and now we see rise of AMD. I would not be surprised that AMD was able to catch up just because of same regulations - Intel was punished for anticompetitive actions and now playing field is more or less level.

Google is dumping prices for all products and by that it kills competition unfairly - google maps as a standalone product would not survive because it does not generate ad revenues and it's free to use. Gmail was also unsustainable for really long time because it was free and without ads. So it's not as simple as you are saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google has used their position to strongarm manufacturers before. Skyhook Wifi Geolocation services was for a short time default on Moto/Samsung. Fearing loss of valuable essid wifi/cell tower scanning data collection, google forced Skyhook out. That was when wifi geolocation was still in its infancy on Android.

[https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android- skyhook-l...](https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook- lawsuit-motorola-samsung)

Edit: some corrections

<comment><USER15> Also, Google used their position to keep Android forks from gaining a competitive foothold in the marketplace.

>Google allegedly ran afoul of EU rules by deterring manufacturers from using Android forks. Google "has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google," the commission said.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/eu-google- illega...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/eu-google-illegally- used-android-to-dominate-search-must-pay-5b-fine/)

<comment><USER16> As far as I can tell that was a lie. Google allows OEMs to sell devices running "alternative Android versions", but it insists those versions must be fully Android compatible. It prohibits incompatible forks, which to me seems like an extremely good thing which they have relatively few ways of enforcing given the open source nature of Android.

<comment><USER17> You are missing the distinction between AOSP's license and google play services' license. You can do as you wish with AOSP. If you want google play services (which all OEMs do), a whole new set of things kick in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, that seems to have completely backfired on the EU. I guess there are at least a few companies that will be happy to use Android without Google, but my guess is for the rest this is just more bottom line money out of their pocket going straight to Google. Was this what they were going for?

<comment><USER19> > Well, that seems to have completely backfired on the EU.

I'm not sure how you arrived at this conclusion. This seems rational to me, and in line with the antitrust decision as the bundling of apps isn't any more mandatory for manufacturers.

<comment><USER18> I'm saying the premise as a whole backfired. I assume the end goal was to benefit end consumers. Now, end consumers will have to pay more for something that was previously free, since my gut says that most device companies will choose to pay the licensing agreement and just pass the costs along by increasing the sticker price.

<comment><USER20> If there's an actual cost to the items it now means other providers could actually compete, which is the goal. It would now be possible to sell cheaper than Google if you can make something the consumer wants at a lower cost. Competition benefits consumers.

More importantly was that Google were doing various forced things (like requiring installing all Google things on all devices, heavily limiting possible competition). Ending that is important, even if it shifts costs around.

Edit - a simple way of viewing this is if this makes more money for Google, why weren't they doing it anyway? If not, can it really be costing consumers more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "By obligating handset makers to load the free apps along with the Android operating system, regulators said Google had boxed out competitors."

This is some sloppy reporting. The 'Android operating system' is licensed under the Apache 2.0 licence[0]. Nothing in that licence obligates handset manufacturers to 'load the free apps'.

[0] [https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses](https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses)

<comment><USER22> The article is correct, you're mistaken. While AOSP is licensed under Apache 2.0, in order to bundle the Play Store and associated Google services you have to agree to MADA[0]. No major manufacturer, except Amazon, ships an AOSP variant without Google's Services.

Arguably many of Android's core APIs now flow through Play Store Services (e.g. Location Services).

[0] PDF warning: [http://www.benedelman.org/docs/htc- mada.pdf](http://www.benedelman.org/docs/htc-mada.pdf)

<comment><USER21> "The article is correct, you're mistaken."

No, I'm not.

"in order to bundle the Play Store and associated Google services you have to agree to MADA"

But "the Play Store and associated Google services" aren't part of Android. So you can ship Android devices without them.

"No major manufacturer, except Amazon, ships an AOSP variant without Google's Services."

Yup. Amazon shows that you can ship Android devices without the Play Store and Google services.

<comment><USER22> You are because you misread the section of the article you quoted:

> By obligating handset makers to load the free apps along with the Android > operating system

The NYC article said google was compelling handset makers to bundle free apps ALONG WITH the Android OS, they didn't say that Android OS's license required said bundling.

Google obligated handset makers via the MADA linked above. If you want the Play Store, Play Services, and all of Android's APIs to work, you have to agree to MADA which means bundling Google's apps with the Android OS.

<comment><USER21> "Google obligated handset makers via the MADA linked above."

Handset makers obligated _themselves_ by (voluntarily) signing up to the MADA.

<comment><USER22> When you get into antitrust scales of size nothing is voluntary, that's the whole crux of this issue. If you wanted your handset to sell you had to play nice with Google and do what Google told you.

Handset makers didn't really have much of a choice, they weren't big enough to compete directly with Google.

<comment><USER23> Samsung is a huge multinational conglomerate with hundreds of billions of revenue and tens of billion in yearly profits. They also sell over 20% of all smartphones switching position back and forth with Apple for leading market share.

I find it hard to believe that they were too small in comparison with Google to compete with their own mobile OS and app market.

<comment><USER24> > I find it hard to believe that they were too small in comparison with Google > to compete with their own mobile OS and app market.

They already tried, more than once, and all their attempts failed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This doesn't change the end result too much in the traditional Android ecosystem because nothing changes on the engineering side of things. You still need a system level play services blob to run most common android apps. And this doesn't change that. However, what's interesting is that if the non- compete exclusivity clause has been overruled, someone like Samsung can launch phones with their play services equivalent, or someone like Amazon or Microsoft can get more manufacturers to build phones with their play services equivalent. Any of these should theoretically reduce the reliance on play services.

<comment><USER25> Now they need to make Apple do.the same with their app store.

<comment><USER26> Unrelated and a bit whataboutist, but if the rules are triggered at a certain market share, Apple will price themselves as necessary to remain under that share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So let me get this..

Google allows 3rd parties to use their OS, allows 3rd party app stores, etc but gets a huge fine for bundling their own native app store.

Apple doesn't allow 3rd parties to do anything and you need to use their app store but they're totally fine here.

Good job Europe.

<comment><USER28> But Google can put the hell they want on the Pixel and whatever phones they make, the issue is forcing others to bundle your apps.

<comment><USER29> It's Google's operating system. Nobody would buy a Samsung, HTC, or Sony phone without Google's Research and Development.

Smartphone manufacturers are in the smartphone business _because_ of Google. If those manufacturers don't like Google's terms, they're free to go Microsoft's route and build their own OS.

Nobody is forcing these companies to do anything.

<comment><USER30> I can make exactly the same point in reverse: "It's the manufacturer's phone. If Google doesn't want to offer its OS on terms that comply with EU competition law, it's free to go the Apple route and simply build all of its own phones. Nobody is forcing Google to do anything."

Google and its smartphone partners are _both_ in the business _because of each other_. If Google had kept Android closed and limited to its own phones, it would not have become the #1 mobile OS -- we'd be using Palm or Microsoft or Nokia or someone else's product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So Google will charge Samsung $1,000 per handset for Play Services, but then pay Samsung $1,000 to have Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, etc pre-installed.

Result: Google meets its legal obligations to unbundle their software but in practice the handset manufacturers don't have a choice.

<comment><USER32> Yes, they will have the choice of also selling Android handsets without Play Services, which before they couldn't do.

<comment><USER4> This. Samsung has already done deals with Microsoft and Dropbox previously to pre-load their services on some Samsung phones.

Imagine if you could buy a "Windows" Android, with Office 365 + bing preloaded and optimized like a Windows Phone 2.0 sold next to a Google Android phone. As a consumer, I love having that type of option, and the manufacturer can also add their own software / services.

<comment><USER33> Historically speaking, if I remember correctly, Microsoft has paid phone manufacturers and cell networks to set Bing as the search engine on their smartphones _and completely disable the ability for users to change it_. I reckon a large part of the reason Google ended up paying to set their search engine as the default on mobile is because otherwise many users would have to jump through hoops every time they searched just to use it. If this goes through, you will use Bing for searches on mobile and you will like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I hope this is going to help to attract more attention to competing services. The only Google thing that I don't know of a good alternative to (at least because it already has so much valuable content uploaded) is YouTube. Monopolies are evil.

<comment><USER35> Respectfully I disagree.

Monopolies are good, they create lasting value (see google). All companies should strive to build monopolies and own their market.

Peter Thiel - 0 to 1

<comment><USER34> IMHO they should strive to by means of fair practices (that don't include using their dominant positions to suppers competition or use their wealth to buy-and-close other companies) but should never achieve that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is fantastic. By placing a cost on Google Apps, competitors have a viable place to provide an alternative offer at a lower price. This is exactly the sort of change we need here in the US as well. Mission success in Europe.

Probably the biggest question I have is that they still appear to be selling "bundles" according to the article, which seems contrary to the European decision. Is a phone manufacturer who licenses "the bundle" allowed to omit apps from the bundles? Or have the bundles been narrowly defined around the EU's current ruling of which bundles aren't allowed, and they're still going to force OEMs to carry specific sets of Google apps?

<comment><USER37> >"Android phone makers wishing to distribute Google apps may now also build noncompatible, or forked, smartphones and tablets" in Europe, Google said in a statement. "They will also be able to license Google Play separately from Search and Chrome, with full freedom to install rival apps as before."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand why Google are doing this. I thought the EU imposed that huge fine because Google had a clause in their contract with handset manufacturers that said, "If you want Play Services, you cannot sell a forked version of Android". Why can't Google simply remove this clause?

<comment><USER38> There were three separate issues, and they have now been addressed by Google:

1\. App bundling.

2\. Selling Android forks.

3\. Payments for exclusive installation of Google Search.

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-18-4581_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-18-4581_en.htm)

[https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google- europe/compl...](https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google- europe/complying-ecs-android-decision/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are we sure it isn't the other way around? You will be able to pay for permission to NOT install Google apps?

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, too bad, this means that as a customer, I'll probably have to pay for something I go out of my way to get rid of if I ever buy a new Android phone.

I hope there will be some way to get a refund like when not accepting Windows licenses on computers.

</comment><comment><USER41> 3 Choices for OEMS:

\- ASOP Vanilla or their forked version [Free]

\- Include Play Store and Google Services [Pay up]

\- Add-on Chrome with Google Search on top of Play Store [Free]

Prices of flagship phones are already higher than they are in US, now they will be increased again.

<comment><USER42> Is this speculation, or sourced? The article seems to contradict you:

> Google said it would sell a license for a package including its Google Play > app store, Gmail, YouTube and Maps. Another license will be available for > companies that want to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser, > allowing handset makers to team up with rival services. The company did not > say how much it would charge for the licenses.

<comment><USER41> [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17984074/google-eu- andro...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17984074/google-eu-android- licensing-bundle-chrome-search)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is silly. It's a much better experience to use the Google suite of apps on Android than the random shit browsers/email clients/music players/etc... that Samsung, LG and others put on their phones. At the end of the day, Android is open source and anyone is welcome to fork (Amazon)/not use Google apps (Chinese manufacturers in China), this is just handing Apple a massive advantage for being a closed ecosystem and a huge loss for consumers and OEMs.

<comment><USER30> > anyone is welcome to fork

This is wrong. One of the three major pieces of this case is the allegation that Google has hindered those who wish to fork by preventing them from making phones with any of the major phone OEMs:

 _" In particular, Google ... has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre- install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called 'Android forks')."_

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-18-4581_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-18-4581_en.htm)

<comment><USER43> They can fork if they don't want to pre-install Google apps. Lots of Chinese phones have alternative app stores.

<comment><USER30> No, until now, you were not allowed to fork just because you agreed not to install Google apps on that phone -- you were only allowed to fork if you didn't want to install Google apps _on any phone you made_. So, for example, Samsung couldn't decide to offer an Android phone without Google unless it was willing to shut down its entire current business.

The allegation is that because of this, anyone looking to fork Android had a very hard time finding good OEMs to make their phones. E.g., maybe the Amazon fire phones would have worked if they could have gotten a Tier 1 OEM to make the phones so they could have put out a better product. But nobody would agree to stop making all of their current Android phones to see (I assume; there is no public version of the decision yet so I'm making up the example).

<comment><USER44> AOSP is completely open for anyone to work. It's as simple as that. Nobody is forced to use Google apps. They are free to fork and come up with a way for people to install apps from their own app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > By obligating handset makers to load the free apps along with the Android > operating system, regulators said Google had boxed out competitors.

It sounds like a very good thing to me to prevent companies like Google from having such terms, which allow them to use dominance on one area to fuel dominance in many others. Each product should stand on it's own, and the idea that the entire ecosystem is one big product is frankly BS.

</comment><comment><USER46> Cool. Does this mean Android phones will run properly without any Google services?

</comment><comment><USER47> Fantastic. Can I have my Samsung phone retroactively switched to a Google-free O/S, with the option to install Maps and maybe a couple other services? I'd even pay extra for it.

<comment><USER48> Like LineageOS + Micro G? Yes, that's possible. Requires some work though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> What is the commercial motivation of Google to maintain AOSP now? They are just enabling their 'competitors'.

</comment><comment><USER50> If any phone makers actually have the courage to try to bootstrap a new non- google ecosystem, bravo to you.

</comment><comment><USER51> Who needs app stores anyway? Let's build progressive web apps and target all platforms.

<comment><USER52> Aren't PWAs only supported on Google's very own browser?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> They'll pass the price on to their consumers, or make their own stand-ins.

</comment><comment><USER54> This will be the death of Android. Thanks to EU bureaucracy. They are fine with Huawei sending data unencrypted to CN servers. Apple charging billions for their closed walled garden. While Google is giving the OS for free, can anyone name one OS with alternative app store which works better than Google platform ? Before anyone jumps about the data mining. How about we talk about the Google dashboard options vs M$ / Apple (draconian idol) / FB or <Any company>.

"They will also be able to license Google Play separately from search and chrome, will full freedom to install rival apps" Hogwash.

Look at Amazon phones preloaded with bloatware and lockscreen ads and stupid quality fork. Or the MIUI Chinese crap, Huawei local market and how can we forget that VLC banned Huawei for their aggressive background killing ? This puts more corporate companies to turn their rubbish grade services and ruin Android UX further, add more fragmentation due to no Google involvement in the Gplay app Targeting or the security scanning from Gplayprotect.

I don't use assistant and all the background services and logging are stopped, search tracking is off, location history is off. I can set the permissions with every app and they stick. Unlike the rubbish iOS asking for each and every app for location for eg - settings needs location for what ? And need of iTunes BS for using the phone itself. And unable to sideload, or basic copying of music ? Add the HW ecosystem lockdown, planned obsolescence with their trash book pros - sealed batteries to the chassis, BGA soldered chips, prone to fail KB, flawed VRMs, Proprietary chips for EC HW from Basic I/O to Encryption.

Google is already dying due to the scale of them and trying to being innovative (stocks) and comply with US GOVT (NSA) but this EU incapable of delivering something substantial on the same grounds is relegated to these stupid political policies (controversial Article 13/14).

Brainwash of Apple and their walled garden is so fruitful ever, $1Bn no one cards about Android because they think its cheap but the fundamental aspect of offering choice - Bootloader unlock. Running GPL v2 code, Linux kernel, side load, root and tons of control in your hand, no worries Google is already chasing the same path with ChromeOS trash with rehashed Ubuntu/Gentoo running a containerized OS, running Android apps blown up, but ashamed to name Android at the event ! Fuschia OS another MIT license, to make Google sole controller over the OS unlike Android with GPL which enforces the changes to be Open sourced as well unlike the former which doesn't stipulate anything like that, once you make the changes behind the closed source you don't need to push them.

Yeah, Slate doesn't have a headphone jack, Pixel 3XL ugly imitation, Android P's downgrade from draw over other apps, killing accessibility APIs hard SDK targeting, closure of the hidden APIs loss of the QS settings in P, aggressive sand boxing like removal of app mah level battery consumption with packages in the name of security. Not just Android. windows too with their WDDM2.x and UWP walled garden over Win32 and 6 Month EOL perpetual alpha mining Guinea pig OS called Win10 Home. Its a shame how massive Apple impacts due to their market cap. Add the Intel BGA push to the mobile laptops from inspired by Apple because until Has well Intel HM class chipsets all had rPGA sockets and MXM GPUs with modular batteries. All is past since Apple started their MacBooks they all used BGA.

Kudos to everyone who made this Orwellian era possible, all the Apple fans. Its inevitable that liberty and choice will be drained soon than expected and we will start living in world like the movie "Equilibrium"

</comment><comment><USER55> This is actually a good chance for alternative app stores, because that and the browser are the only essential software you'd be missing from the package, and the browser can be replaced for free.

I hope we see Google Play vanish. Their pricing and the way it's ran are cancerous.

Competition would be good, even if it's from Amazon or another major company. Phones with Amazon Apps and Firefox instead of the whole Google software package? Yes, please.

</comment><comment><USER56> Good news, everyone! I never wanted them. It would be swell if they could also start charging for syncing functionality and google account integration.

</comment><comment><USER57> Sounds like a good thing for consumers and Android device makers, who will no longer be coerced by Google to install its apps "for free". It's a pretty bad thing for Google in the long term, whose apps will inevitably lose market share.

Although some OEMs will initially "freak out" because they'll think people will stop buying their phones if Gmail doesn't come pre-installed (I find it extremely hard to believe, but I guess anything is possible with some people), eventually they'll likely end-up pre-installing Microsoft or Amazon or whoever else' apps instead - and _they_ will get paid to do it.

<comment><USER58> Many attempts at decoupling Google & Android have failed in the marketplace. Billions have been poured into a viable third mobile OS (Windows phone, meego, tizen, sailfish ...).

The consumers have spoken - they want iOS or Google's Android.

This is horrible for Europe - where end users will eventually pay more for their preferred 'Google Android'.

<comment><USER45> > This is horrible for Europe - where end users will eventually pay more for > their preferred 'Google Android'.

It won't be "horrible for Europe." Those users have always paid for these apps in one way or another.

<comment><USER58> What am I missing here? Google isn't _changing_ the data they gather via their apps. They're adding a $ cost for access to it.

You're basically paying twice - with your more expensive Android devices, and Google's regular data tracking. This is bad for Europe

<comment><USER28> Samsung may decide to use different apps not Google ones, they may decide to use a Chromium fork with Bing as search engine so your data will not go do Google, maybe Mozilla will manage to do a deal with a big manufacturer and put Firefox as default and nobody will have to pay.

<comment><USER58> What has stopped them from doing this all this while? A shell company by Samsung renders any deals with Google impotent - a strategy used by many Chinese OEMs who have Google Android for international markets and their own app stores within China.

This is _not_ my opinion. If you go to a VC or even YC with these claims, they will counter with the widely available data pointing towards the _high_ probability of a third ecosystem failing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trump orders Postal Service review after blasting Amazon deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17233024/trump-executive-order-post-office-amazon <comment><USER2> What they should do is review the subsidization of Chinese companies shipping to U.S. customers, often at the expense of makers and merchants in the U.S.:

 _According to the terms set out in Universal Postal Union treaty, the USPS in 2014 gets paid no more than about $1.50 for delivering a one-pound package from a foreign carrier, which makes it hard to cover costs. [1] The USPS inspector general's office estimated that the USPS lost $79 million in fiscal year 2013 delivering this foreign treaty mail. (The Postal Service itself declined to provide specific figures.)

In an effort to ride the e-commerce boom, the Postal Service signed a deal in 2010 with China's state carrier to sell a special service for small packages entering the U.S. For a small premium, the USPS offered tracking and delivery confirmation, an essential feature for online retailers, as well as expedited shipping.

... In 2012, USPS was paid only 94 cents on average for each piece of Chinese ePacket mail, according to a February report from the Postal Service's inspector general's office. That report estimated that the Postal Service was losing about a dollar on each incoming item, adding up to a $29.4 million net loss in 2012.

Forums on eBay are filled with angry notes about ePacket. "I must say that it is simply an economic disaster for US Sellers," one person wrote. "One product that we sell for 2.00 with 2.50 shipping a chinese company is selling for .99 with free shipping," another complained. _

Washington Post: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the- postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from- china/)

Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651884)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what you mean by "makers" here. To me the term means end users who tinker and build their own gadgets for fun, education, or because nobody produces the thing they want. Cheap parts from China are a benefit to that group, not an expense, although shipping should be priced sustainably.

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking of the type of person who makes small-batch products and sells them, which kind of was the model for Etsy before cheap imported goods took over right around the same time the post office began subsidizing overseas carriers.

Wired uses the term "maker" interchangeably with "crafter" in the following article, which gives some of the history:

 _That Etsy began allowing manufacturing partners in 2013 underscored the reseller issue that has plagued the site for years. The Marketplace Integrity, Trust & Safety team—which has the unenviable task of policing sellers for adherence to Etsy rules—is unable or unwilling to weed out sellers of mass- manufactured goods._

[https://www.wired.com/2015/02/etsy-not-good-for- crafters/](https://www.wired.com/2015/02/etsy-not-good-for-crafters/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The package delivery business side of the USPS is a profitable venture. The USPS is in the state it is in not because of Amazon or last mile delivery that is doing for other businesses. The core problem is Congress and the requirement they put is the USPS that they prefund 75 years of pensions. A requirement placed on no other institutions in the US.

<comment><USER5> > The core problem is Congress and the requirement they put is the USPS that > they prefund 75 years of pensions. A requirement placed on no other > institutions in the US.

Why is this? Did the USPS have some kind of retirement funding scandal, or was someone trying to smother it?

<comment><USER6> Two reasons... it's tranfers postal revenues to federal cash flow via bonds, and key GOP lawmakers want to make the service unsustainable to enable privatization.

<comment><USER7> Privatization is a key goal here. By making USPS appear to struggle to make money it improves the argument that UPS, Fedex and anyone else who could make more money would be "better" at delivery. But the requirement that all Americans have access to daily (6) deliveries which is a core requirement for the Post Office is in the way of privatization as no one can honor this requirement for so little money as a stamp and make public company profits. So this can be buried in this "review" by proposing doing away with daily or even direct to home deliveries of mail.

Interestingly enough by eliminating the daily delivery of mail also kills the DMA business, which while everyone hates spam mail, is still a vital business tool for small and local businesses. Fedex will not deliver mail to your house that costs a nickel.

<comment><USER6> Remember that saving money isn't usually a privatization factor.

FedEx will deliver mail for a nickel when they get a dollar from the government to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the last week I've received packages shipped via DHL and via Fedex that used SmartPost, where the USPS actually delivers the package. I don't remember ever having a UPS-to-SmartPost shipment. If the USPS is cheaper than these global shippers for the last-mile deliver, it might be a sign that they're not charging enough. At least in my town, they also don't seem to be very efficient - two Saturdays ago I was working in the yard and the post office went by four times during a six hour period. I can understand that the package delivery might be a different than their normal service route but shouldn't the three package deliveries have been one vehicle on our street one time? UPS is a master of route efficiency.

<comment><USER9> If what the USPS charges for packages is "enough" depends entirely on your definition of "enough":

Does package delivery lower the USPS' losses? Absolutely!

Do they charge enough for package delivery to spin it out into a separate, viable business? Probably not.

This unusual situation stems from the fact that the USPS is mandated by law to pass by every house in the country at least once a day, six days per week.

<comment><USER8> Yes ... and the best way to make money delivering packages is to include them with the regular mail so that you're passing each house exactly once. I might also agree that the package delivery is stemming the USPS' losses but you'd have to show that it's not actually causing more losses - our little village now has three USPS trucks (there used to be one). I'm also assuming additional personnel are needed for all those extra runs and we now see USPS trucks on Sundays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a government service, not a business. It's not supposed to be profitable. It's supposed to provide a service.

<comment><USER11> As a voter and taxpayer, then I demand an end to this service. The last time I received an actual piece of valid mail was probably years ago. The USPS has become an ad-delivery network subsidized by my tax dollars. Perhaps charging bulk-mailers full price could end the problem of junk mail or create financial solvency. Why should junk mail literally nobody wants be subsidized? For official notices, the government could contract with a commercial carrier for far less than paying billions to operate a fleet of trucks that mostly carry junk.

<comment><USER12> They don't get any of your tax money.

<comment><USER13> Who is "they" here? USPS? Commercial carriers? Junk mailers?

<comment><USER12> USPS. I'm responding to "The USPS has become an ad-delivery network subsidized by my tax dollars."

I should mention that USPS does get tax money when other agencies use their services, but they're paying for it just like anyone else does. It's not _subsidized_ , other than indirectly by their monopoly on letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It'd be fun to see Amazon US spinning off their own delivery service if they are backstabbed by UPS/FedEx/Postal service

<comment><USER15> Oddly, I disagree. Package delivery is one of the few remaining 'low skill' professions that pay well. UPS pays their drivers exceptionally, and has very strict rules and safety standards. USPS also pays relatively well. In exchange, we consumers get service from generally trusted, uniformed individuals. I'm afraid Amazon would create a race to the bottom, which would leave us accepting subpar service like we have in other industries(retail, fast food, etc). The employees are paid less, and the service as a whole gets worse, all in the name of 'cost-savings.' I know that's the free market for us, but it'd be nice to not lose every segment in a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER16> I'm a Fedex Express courier in a rust belt city. Fedex pays well enough that, even when I started part-time, I was able to afford a mortgage payment on a three-bedroom in a quiet neighborhood.

That's a big deal for low-income folk who usually have limited options.

<comment><USER15> That's awesome. Similar story...location in profile. Parents had a house, 2 cars, and raised 3 children on UPS salaries. Until one retired, both still worked there, and doing quite well for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Short term bump in the road for Amazon. They will not need USPS in the long run anyway:

\- Build out own network (AMZL, Amazon Flex)

\- Buy UPS/Fedex/etc

\- Drone delivery

It is unfortunate that AMZN is taking the fall for whatever this executive order is actually trying to accomplish.

<comment><USER18> Politics always needs a enemy.

So is the next question: should USPS be merged with AMZN? What happens if a high volumn of packages disappears from the USPS revenue stream?

If AMZN delivers it can also pick up. Feels like a new Prime add-on, doesn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Guessing they'll find some unrelated things to complain about instead of admitting amazon makes Usps a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazon is going to rush in with its own delivery service, Amazon Flex: [https://flex.amazon.com/](https://flex.amazon.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is one of those things where, even if it were an issue, shouldn't there be about 4,321 better ways for the federal government (much less the president) to choose their focus?

And it's not like he has to go far to find bigger problems. How about "ordering a review" on poverty and homelessness for instance?

</comment><comment><USER22> The Postal service seems to be a stepping stone for Amazon. It appears that before human delivery people are replaced with drones, Jeff Bezos plans to replace postal employees with people at least contracted to Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looking at the bigger picture here, US has always been the closest thing to the Free Market idea, but lately, the government has been taking some measures that go against this idea, this is one of them.

</comment><comment><USER24> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16826446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16826446)

</comment><comment><USER25> Slimy hit piece at Trump. But it does raise some interesting points for discussion.

As a consumer, I love Amazon. The convenience and selection are incredible.

But jobs have clearly suffered. (This is a point often raised by those on the left side of the political aisle).

What's the right thing to do, regardless of who's president?

<comment><USER26> Amazon isn't the only company using USPS this way. It might be worthy of investigation, but Trump's motive here is to get back at Bezos for things that The Washington Post publishes. The president using the power of the executive branch to fight personal political enemies is never the right thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They may find that Amazon is keeping USPS alive.

</comment><comment><USER28> The whole "USPS is a in a fiscal hole" thing is part of the privatization playbook. It _is_ in a hole, but it's a deliberately created hole:

[https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/the-right-wings- assa...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/the-right-wings-assault-on- the-post-office-smashing-the-myth-that-its-in-financial-trouble.html)

Note who owns the newspaper cheerleading for privatization:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal- eye/wp/2015/09/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal- eye/wp/2015/09/28/should-the-postal-service-be-sold-to-save-it/)

I wonder if they have any ideas about potential buyers?

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if he's trying to distract people from other news that makes him look bad.

Can anyone think of any news or investigations he'd want to distract people from?

If this attack doesn't work, he may start a war, which is guaranteed to distract.

<comment><USER18> Um. We're engaged in 5-7 foreign conflicts at the moment. No one I know is distracted.

Tweets are cheaper and far more effective. That said, Stormy Daniels was one of the best distractions yet. Sex sells...and it distracts? :)</comment></comment>


QuakeCon 2011 - John Carmack Keynote - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28&feature=player_detailpage#t=54m00s <comment><USER2> just make sure you don't do stupid things to quiet static code analyzers or compiler warnings.

<http://digitaloffense.net/tools/debian-openssl/></comment>


When it comes to privacy, proof is better than promise. - <AUTHOR> http://the.longaccess.com/blog/2013/10/24/when-it-comes-to-privacy-proof-is-better-than-promise/

<comment><USER2> I applaud their commitment to privacy, and this is definitely a step in the right direction. However, their pledge to publish the client app's source code seems pretty meaningless for proving privacy unless all their users plan on compiling from source. How do their users know a pre-compiled binary doesn't have a backdoor?

<comment><AUTHOR> The source code is in Python. Any user who is really concerned about the privacy of their data, should install directly from source. Or, use a trusted distributor: for example, if the client is distributed as part of a Linux distribution.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Longaccess.

<comment><USER2> You could also figure out a deterministic build and publish a checksum. That would assuage concerns about backdoors without forcing everybody to compile from source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This would be a good way to look at the Dropbox/DMCA issue. [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/30/how-dropbox-knows-when- your...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/30/how-dropbox-knows-when-youre- sharing-copyrighted-stuff-without-actually-looking-at-your-stuff/)</comment>


The Best And Worst Programmers All Perform At the Same Level - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-the-best-computer-programmers-have-in-common-2012-8

<comment><USER2> This is from a study done between 1984 and 1986. Case closed. Here's some more information about the study: [http://dwp.bigplanet.com/pdkconsulting/nss- folder/pdfdownloa...](http://dwp.bigplanet.com/pdkconsulting/nss- folder/pdfdownloads1/Why_Measure%20_DeMarco3.20.01.pdf)

It is interesting to note how vastly this has changed in recent times. I'd wager that at that point, there really wasn't that much to learn about programming, it was a field in its infancy; hence, any differences between programmers were purely based on their inclination towards programming. At this point, there is so much to learn and so many different perspectives to see things from, that knowing the right things might be a huge factor in productivity. Also, its possible that when the study was conducted, programming wasn't sufficiently developed to require significant skill.

Very interesting to see overall, I'd love to hear others opinions on this.

Also, business insider apparently has no clue that this is a 30 year old study. No mention of that at all. ><. 30 YEARS!</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone written a TN application with out a lawyer. Tips appreciated - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> TN?</comment>


Sparkfun down under load of SparkFun Free Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the issue is pretty widespread <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sparkfun>

Seemed like a good idea at the time... Back to bed for me

</comment><comment><USER2> Dude, you put a link to an overloaded site on a popular link aggregator, this doesn't really help anyone.</comment>


A Beloved Integer Sequence - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/you-know-youre-a-nerd-when/

<comment><USER2> When you flag lousy fluff stories off of HN?</comment>


AT&T/T-Mobile: is the merger in peril? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/attt-mobile-is-the-merger-in-peril.ars

<comment><USER2> One can hope.</comment>


The Forces Behind Toutiao, China's Content King - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-hidden-forces-behind-toutiao-chinas-content-king/ <comment><USER2> Hi Anu,

1.) Does the machine learning algorithm behind toutiao abide by the censorship effort from Beijing? For example, are any of the contents about the disappearance of the wife of the nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobao censored?

2.) What happens when the Chinese government demand board seats, much like Tencent and Alibaba? Or is toutiao already working with the Chinese government closely?

3.) Do you know whether or not toutiao is allowing this technology to be outsourced to other dictatorship countries that would allow their leaders to effectively control the contents people read every day?

4.) Are you aware that toutiao is spreading its influence into East Asia, and possibly India, and is it possible that it would spread Chinese government's message through its apps?

<comment><USER3> Nobel Peace Prize is more political and ideological than any other Nobel Prizes. I don't consider it to be a 100% valid one. Not like academic ones where people send proofs. And that guy is named Liu XiaoBo not XiaoBao. His wife is fine, and there are no reasons to do anything about his family.

Toutiao is just another company who runs for profits. Profits are focused. I don't see its popularity outside China even in East Asia.

You may worry more about your own right-wing Indian government.

<comment><USER4> "wife is fine"

Hu told BBC that three years of house arrest had thrown Liu into deep depression and a health professional had been prescribing anti-depressants medication for her. [1]

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-25206137](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-25206137)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First of all, I wouldn't consider Toutiao content to be "quality content", as the article says. It's still pretty much all "soft news". Secondly, this 100% engagement-driven algorism of content recommendation doesn't serve to inform readers in any meaningful way, as a proper News app should do. But rather, it just makes ppl keep clicking and wasting their time.

<comment><USER6> There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.

\-- 1984, George Orwell

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is what stuck out most for me:

> The engine learns quickly – for most users, it takes less than one day to > successfully learn their interests (indicated by 80% read rates).

That is insane. I don't know of any other platform (except for maybe image heavy subreddits?) that have that rate of content consumption. Facebook obviously tries, but they are so focused on their limited content sources that they frequently don't have the content people want. Twitter has similar issues, if there aren't 50 tweets you want to read in a row, as you keep scrolling Twitter has to drop the quality of content down to make sure the feed shows something.

But by being willing to surface any type of content (give users what they want), it sounds like Toutiao has been able to fully leverage AI, removing constraints on what content exists naturally leads to better results.

Also, it is a miracle if they truly solved ad targeting. In comparison, I am still getting ads for a belt I bought 3 weeks ago.

<comment><USER8> > That is insane.

No, it's not. It's just easier to learn to entertain the average people, than to entertain the smaller group of more tasteful people, or to learn and sell things.

I was also quite impressed when I learnt the figures, and am still impressed at the fact that it managed to capture the mode of people's interest, but my every attempt to use Toutiao has ended in pain. I certainly spent longer than one day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an avid user of Toutiao, I am super impressed by Toutiao. It is super easy to use and shows the content I am mostly interested in. I use it daily to get information. I am a little bit worried that I would not get broad views if Toutiao only shows articles I am interested in.

<comment><USER10> Fliboard's recommendation engine is really good, I would say it has already solved the content discovery and recommendation piece of the puzzle. The key is to keep us engaged early on and let them keep using the product.

The main differentiator is the Toutiao is able to leverage AI to write good grammar article ... in Chinese when there aren't enough content already. The China has SO MUCH data required for deep learning due to its population and omnipresent of mobile devices. Other countries just couldn't compete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> TL;DR; Does engagement equal success?

I have an account on Youtube that I used for only a specific interest.

Youtube's suggestions are pretty bad. And they've declined in quality. And Youtube makes a strong effort to selling me mainstream content that I uniformly reject. And I can find better recommendations on suggested videos fitting my interest than I find on the Youtube landing for my account. And I'd be for Youtube to keep a list of search terms and such for further viewing.

My deduction from this is that Youtube is more interested in pushing content of other people's choice than giving me what I want. And that's pretty standard for how all media has worked since the early days of radio.

So it seems like it would be easy for a content company to get engagement by giving people what they want to view. And the challenge problem is often what people want to view doesn't garner much payment per views. And so having a bunch of engagement by itself doesn't give you success, rather what makes money is careful balance of desired content and pushed-content (IE crap).

<comment><USER12> Very much disagree. Youtube's suggestion algorithm are improved incredibly over the years. It is increasingly surfacing content that I find interesting. I spend much more time on Youtube nowadays, easy more time than Facebook. I regularly just go to Youtube.com landing page to see what it wants to show me and always shows great quality content. Youtube has done an amazing job with their algorithms, and its showing.

Check out this article: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/30/16222850/youtube- google-b...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/30/16222850/youtube-google-brain- algorithm-video-recommendation-personalized-feed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How many "social features" does Toutiaco have in comparison to Facebook or Twitter? I thought that was the essential feature to get user engagement, but Toutiao blows both Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat out of the water.

Toutiao stays true to Asian usability dogmas and opens all links in new tabs (target="_blank")[1].

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. They did not have many social features at the start - especially in year 1 (no followers, no friends, no chat). Over time they added like, dislike, retweet, comments functionality.What made them really stand out in the first year was the catchy title, delicate product design and pretty much the first personalized news aggregator with recommendations in 2012. They also iterated heavily to remain as one of the top apps in the app store during the first year. In the first month - users gravitated towards the app as it became the destination to read all top trending news /stories that were going viral that day (it solved a gap in the market, no one else was doing it). Over time they recommended stories to users and tracked data to ensure only relevant stories were being pushed which helped increase engagement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Huh, More time-killing than social media. Feeding people content that they like. Putting them in the bubbles and reap the profits. Much of the Internet has been on this track for years. Last year's election fully testified how much all of this kind of media can do.

<comment><USER14> Reminds me of this [https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of- intern...](https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet- chum/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Toutiao is solving the Internet's current most pressing consumer-facing problem - the discovery of relevant content.

It's a problem orthogonal to what Google solved earlier in the millenium, which is roughly "How do I find an answer on the Internet to a question I already have in mind?"

As the Internet has developed, the cost of content creation and data have decreased dramatically. And so the sheer quantity of content has exploded. Every consumer tech company has partially recognized this problem - Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Instagram, Snapchat, and Medium all want to recommend you relevant content, all have adopted feeds of articles and posts and pictures, and all desperately want your continued attention.

At this point, there's likely good content on the Internet for every single person's taste (like Anu said, there's a very long tail of content creators). The service that provides the most relevant selection of it will win consumer interest and usage at the largest scale.

And it certainly seems that Toutiao has leapfrogged everyone else in this regard. I'm very excited (but also a little wary) to see what they come up with in the future.

<comment><USER16> google absolutely sucks at it, probably because they don't see any value in it given their user base (everyone) and lack of competition.

i.e. my youtube front page just shows the same 100 video links over and over and over.

there isn't even a really good way to discover relevant content _in the channels i 've already subscribed to_. it's pretty lame.

<comment><USER17> YouTube makes me want to punch my computer.

The related videos are never relevant, letting a child meander through YouTube invariably winds up showing my kids super inappropriate content. The YouTube mobile app sucks horribly (ios) I literally think that YouTube is one of the worst ubiquitous services there is.

<comment><USER18> This isn't a great solution, because kids are pretty good at getting out and into whatever app they want, but there is a YouTube Kids app. It's more like streaming TV than YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Toutiao is one of the names often bandied as a potential candidate for having a US-based IPO, alongside Best, Roku, CarGurus, and some 100+ other Chinese consumer internet unicorns ;)

Your insightful analysis of Toutiao's AI depth is enough to tempt one to dip a toe should shares trade publicly. But the revenue growth (contextual ad based) is phenomenal as well. Any clues as to how they might seek to expand into paid content or media? Or otherwise grow beyond Chinese language centric markets?

Chinese startup Toutiao raising funds at over $20 billion valuation

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-toutiao- fundraising...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-toutiao- fundraising/chinese-startup-toutiao-raising-funds-at-over-20-billion- valuation-sources-idUSKBN1AR0DE)

<comment><AUTHOR> Toutiao is now focused on video as it is increasingly becoming more important (more supply of video content and more consumption as well). Outside of Chinese language centric markets they have an investment in India (which they have announced publicly). India is definitely a market that could potentially benefit from algorithm based content discovery (several different states/languages and a long tail of content that is not easily available to users).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Anu here, a Partner at YC's Continuity Fund. Happy to chat about anything discussed in this post and would love any feedback.

<comment><USER20> I'm a little disappointed in this post given China's penchant to controlling news/media/content.

I see how this could easily be manipulated into an extremely powerful propaganda tool - especially hiding behind a guise of "algorithms" are doing all the work - and yet it is not mentioned at all in the post.

We have already seen how content systems like Facebook, Google, and Twitter can be manipulated via botnets, but when a central power manages this it can obviously get significantly worse.

Does this concern you as an investor who lives in America?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am afraid I cannot do justice to this question by answering it in a few sentences in this forum. Toutiao is one of the first apps in China to enable creators to write content and find audience without having to go through other media outlets. So in a way they are transforming the way information is made available to people. If you would like to discuss more email me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER20> I agree it's tough to do justice in a few sentences in a forum, which is why I assumed it would be done in the very in depth and otherwise interesting article you wrote :)

In my opinion it's the absence of this topic from the article that makes YC look tone deaf once again by glossing over a serious repercussion that technology can have on society for the sake of self-promotion -- especially given current events regarding the manipulation of social networks by foreign entities and a very serious history of censorship and media control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> The average user spends more than 74 minutes each day in Toutiao

so many wasted lives

<comment><USER22> I'd guess many of us spend 74 minutes a day on HN

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure there's research on this already, but just a thought - it seems to me like it would be easier to do NLP on Chinese, vs English. (I speak both). Much easier to recognize the author's meaning in Chinese characters, and more often than not people use the same words to describe something.. vs. the frankly disgusting mess that is English. Misspellings abound, the same words can mean all kinds of things, grepping for strings is hard because sequences of letters aren't unique, etc.

<comment><USER24> Do you speak Chinese? NLP for Chinese comes with it's own set of challenges.

Because word boundaries aren't marked, you need word segmentation, which requires understanding in lots of cases. (Can't tell where a word ends and the next one begins if you don't know what they mean.)

Many words have a literal meaning and a metaphorical one (e.g. 纠结 can mean both "tangled" and "confused").

Different synonyms being used for the same concept are common as well, especially when you contrast formal vs. informal writing.

Misspellings can happen too, where a character is substituted with a similar character that has the same pronunciation. Sometimes completely different characters are used as a kind of pun.

Grepping is less likely to yield false positives (unless you're looking for a single-character word that can appear in compounds), but there is no easy way to do fuzzy matching to account for misspelled words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hi Anu,

Most probably this might not get a reply but I still wanted to know about this statement - "During the 2016 Olympics, a Toutiao bot wrote original news coverage, publishing stories on major events more quickly than traditional media outlets. The bot-written articles enjoyed read rates (# of reads and # of impressions) in line with those produced at a slower speed and higher cost by human writers on average."

1\. What does writing original news coverage entail? Did the bot put together couple of news source to create an article or do you mean it transcribed the news from the live video feed as it happened?

2\. How much of the bot feed works due to high declension? [1]. Because normally bot structure and output tend to make less sense as the sentence structure comes out all wrong.

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

Additionally, there is quite a lot of focus on getting user to stay on the platform. Not to sound alarmist here but doesn't it mean you are most of the time helping people reinforce their world views? News should be reported as is but then if user engagement is so important news will be written right or left wing just to keep the user on platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> First, writing stories on Olympic game results required data, and Toutiao pulled it from three sources: [a] real time score updates from the Olympics organization, [b] images from an image-gathering-company it had recently acquired to find relevant visual media, and [c] monitoring live text commentary about the game. Second, Toutiao had to figure out how to combine data from these three sources to ensure an internally consistent and relevant story. As a result of these efforts they were able to publish news story of a game approximately 2 seconds after the event ended as they collected and processed the information as the game progressed. In Toutiao's case news is the element with which they launched but today there is a lot more reason why users use the app (much beyond news). Local news, weather, information on agriculture, etc. are surfaced regularly which is why the app is quite popular nationally in China and not just in Beijing and Shanghai.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> AI just got a resurgence in the last couple years and it's interesting to see how quickly they have adopted the technologies to build a company. Simple AI techniques applied at key areas can generate huge result.

</comment><comment><USER27> "While timing is everything for a startup, it takes deliberate effort to build an addictive app"

Anyone else deeply uncomfortable with this? Not a useful app, an addictive app. :/

</comment><comment><USER28> Off topic:

[http://www.toutiao.com/a6474835351272686094/#p=7](http://www.toutiao.com/a6474835351272686094/#p=7)

The (Beijing?) smog pictured here is somehow more poignant since the article has 0 to do with pollution... just people living their lives. Scary.

<comment><USER29> That is Mountain Taijun, 7000+ feet peak with national AAAAA-rated tourist attractions (and not in Beijing). So no, I don't think that's smog, probably just fog.

<comment><USER29> Peak's Wikipedia page: [https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%80%81%E5%90%9B%E5%B1%B1_(%...](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%80%81%E5%90%9B%E5%B1%B1_\(%E6%A0%BE%E5%B7%9D\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not to discount their achievements, but it's important to note that as the content creator (instead of an aggregator or a content platform), it's much easier to have control over the quality of metadata, which is immensely useful in recommendation engines.

</comment><comment><USER31> Checked out Toutiao's website, I think registering if you don't speak Chinese is nearly impossible - google translate doesn't seem to work on the login page.

You can copy/paste each string into google translate individually, if you're patient enough ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a mobile first app :) I don't think they want anyone going to their website!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > read rates (# of reads divided by # of impressions)

Why does Toutiao use this metric to measure quality of an article?

<comment><USER33> Not a measure of quality, but a measure of potential profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How can we trust any of the analytics coming out of mainland China? Can you be 100% positive that Toutiao is not controlled by the Chinese government? They can easily funnel all internet traffic to Toutiao and control it, and use it to their advantage. Curate the news to whatever way they want.

Toutiao is a privately owned company held in Beijing. Am I being paranoid? They can claim machine learning (and they probably do). However, until we can be 100% certain the Chinese government is not involved, I wouldn't personally trust any of the stats.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't convince you to be a believer :) That is totally up to you!</comment></comment>


Google's WebP Takes on PNG - <AUTHOR> http://siliconfilter.com/googles-jpeg-alternative-webp-gets-smarter-takes-on-png/

<comment><USER2> My first impression was that the combination of lossy compression and transparency would give WebP better traction (because before designers would have to choose between JPEG and PNG for those features). But lossy compression is mainly useful for photos, and transparency is mainly useful for graphic art. How often would a designer want to apply lossy compression to graphic art? How much would would lossy compression compress graphic art anyway?

Now I'm thinking that the combination of lossy compression and transparency will mainly be useful for adding transparency to photos (as demoed in the article).

<comment><USER3> From the article:

 _With today's updates, WebP now offers a lossless mode as as well as support for transparency... According to Google's test, the new lossless mode offers a 45% reduction in size when starting with PNGs found on the web, and a 28% reduction in size compared to PNGs that are re-compressed with pngcrush and pngout (both of which are popular tools for optimizing PNG files)._</comment></comment>


Explosive Devices Found in Mail Sent to Hillary Clinton and Obama - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/nyregion/clinton-obama-explosive-device.html <comment><USER2> Why don't the explosive packages these two sent 1000's of others via drone delivery service (DDS) ever make the news?

> The devices were similar to one found on Monday at the home of the > billionaire philanthropist George Soros

Also calling Soros a "philanthropist" is another war crime imo.</comment>


Can V8 annotate source with Closure Types as it runs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.barricane.com/2011/10/06/google-v8-to-annotate-source-with-closure-jsdoc-type-expressions.html

<comment><USER2> (If I understand correctly) I'd write transcompiler (based on Narcissus or whatever) to instrument your code with statements at the top of each function to check and record the types.

I think a basic version of this could be built in a day.

Advantages of instrumenting the code:

1\. No mucking around in V8 internals.

2\. Works on any JavaScript engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't heard of Narcissus - this may do the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Puzzled why you'd want this. So you trace the execution of a dynamic program in an attempt to determine all possible variable types, only to annotate its source with those types, so that on next compilation.. the compiler can statically enforce that the same code that created that trace doesn't violate the types deduced from it? (It seems to me the only possible use for doing this would be to test the tracing implementation is sound!)

Or perhaps it's for documentation or something. In that case, it'd be a hell of a lot of hand-editing to remove noise from the output.

Another side, the set of types used by any variable may be affected by program inputs, so the result can never be complete, unless you run V8 for every possible program input (likely an impossible task).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, mostly for documentation, and also to spot any unexpected types.

I would like to run this during automated testing. For modules where code coverage is 100%, it could be possible that most input-dependent type paths are covered.</comment></comment>


Lawyer Fighting Against Libertarian Cities Project In Honduras Assassinated - <AUTHOR> http://m.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/honduras-human-rights-lawyer-who-opposed-private-cities-murdered/2012/09/23/059ff77a-05a5-11e2-9eea-333857f6a7bd_story.html

<comment><USER2> The article suggests he was killed over a land dispute. Which, really, exemplifies the point of the Canadian-governed cities: mediating property disputes in first-world legal systems, not anarchic violence.

<comment><USER3> First-class Canadian-run legal systems, oh my! Sounds so wonderfully egalitarian and efficient, you almost want to move there... except that things aren't always what they seem:

 _The problem is there are no clean slates. Honduras does not have untouched expanses of territory awaiting homesteaders to lay claim. Trujillo, the site most often mentioned for the first Charter City, has long belonged to afro- indigenous Garifuna communities and campesino farmers, and suffers from a long history of attempted usurpation, from the Republic of Poyas to the United Fruit Company.

...

Trujillo's Garifuna and campesino communities have, over the past 20 years, been preyed upon by violence unleashed as a consequence of a set of rules inspired by one of Michael Strong's ideological cohorts, and co-author of a book promoting 'entrepreneurial capitalism,' Hernando de Soto.

In the heart of the region apparently now proposed as the future home of a Charter City, on August 27 the Garifuna community of Vallecito awaited government officials, who never came, to measure a small portion their land, to which they hold full legal title. The huge majority of their lands has been taken over by businessmen and drug traffickers, mostly, they explain, through violence and fraud. The measurement would be a first step in recovering possession of the land.

The Vallecito community was surrounded by armed bands firing off weapons through the night. A group of heavily armed paramilitaries snuck into the middle of a Garifuna drumming circle, made their presence known and left, the death threat established with clarity. The armed bands have continued to circle the community.

The scene was typical of the region since the 1992 Land Modernization Law unleashed paramilitaries against agrarian communities. The law altered the Agrarian Reform Law from the 1960s, which prohibited the resale of land acquired through the agrarian reform program. Businessmen and drug traffickers, with deep ties to the military intelligence death squads infamous for political killings in the 1980s, used armed bands and other forms of coercion to force Garifuna and campesino communities to sell their land, illegally, and used their political clout to maintain control of the land despite the illegal title transfers._

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/privately-owned-charter- cities-...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/privately-owned-charter-cities-in- honduras-entire-urban-areas-handed-over-to-corporations/?print=1)

<comment><USER2> Your example only _reiterates_ my point, that violent gangs sieze property by force, and that the failed Honduran government is incapable or unwilling to defend its citizens and their property rights.

<comment><USER3> I think the basic point you've failed to notice is that, not-so-paradoxically, it's the "Free Cities" entrepreneurs who are seeking to _benefit_ from, i.e. are openly acting in direct collusion with, these very same forced expropriations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last time the Friedmanites tried to impose neoliberal economic doctrine in Latin America it resulted in wide-scale repression and murder [1]. It is tragic, yet not surprising, that it's happening again.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War#The_Disappeared_held_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War#The_Disappeared_held_under_PEN)

<comment><USER5> What do "Friedmanites" have to do with military dictatorship?

Oh, right: nothing.

On the other hand, communists are DIRECTLY responsible for the deaths of millions. Millions.

<http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM>

<comment><USER4> What do they have to do with military dictatorship? They filled several important roles in Pinochet's government in Chile and Videla's government in Argentina. There are more examples in Latin America, but these were the most horrific.

My comment was unrelated to communism -- I don't need to be convinced that communism is bad.

<comment><USER5> "They filled several important roles in Pinochet's government in Chile and Videla's government in Argentina."

That's reasoning on the converse. I suspect that left-handed people "filled several important roles" as well. That doesn't make left-handed people responsible.

If you have any evidence that Milton Friedman was in favor of military dictatorship (or, indeed, government coercion of any kind), I'd like to hear it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is the word "Libertarian" in the posted title? I can't find it in title of the article or in the article itself.

<comment><USER3> Because the whole "Free Cities" thing is part of the old Libertarian wet dream of establishing instant Utopias on whatever scrap of "unclaimed" land they salvage from somewhere (some rock or coral reef somewhere... or in this case, lands belonging to an indigenous group seen as too weak to defend itself). Where the world will finally see how efficient and truly egalitarian we can all live once the bane of Coercion has been abolished once and for all. And the sun will never stop shining, etc. You know, John Galt and his valley in Colorado, etc.

In any case, the current generation's de-facto "John Galt" (Peter Thiel) is one of the key backers of the Honduran project, so (despite the abuse of posting guidelinbes) that makes it very much a Libertarian topic.

<comment><USER7> Except that the Free City concept wasn't dreamed up in a libertarian vacuum. It's worked over and over again, building wealth, growth, and sustaining economies for centuries.

Having a guy wacked b/c he's a nimby definitely misses the point though... </facepalm>

<comment><USER3> _Except that the Free City concept wasn't dreamed up in a libertarian vacuum._

Except the way Thiel & Co mean it, it was. There's no way you can compare their schemes with historical examples with HK, Trieste, the Hanseatic League etc (if that's what you're thinking).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The following is from a letter that was sent on the 7th of September 2012 - <http://chartercities.org/blog/231/honduras-update>

_"You should know that we, as individuals, continue to believe strongly in the vision behind the Honduran RED initiative, and we stand ready to be of service when the impediments to the full establishment of the institutional framework of the REDs have been resolved._

 _Sincerely yours,_

 _Paul Romer"_

I guess this news means that impediments to the full establishment of the institutional framework of the REDs are currently being resolved.

[edit] From the same link we have this -

 _"the decree formalizing our appointment was not officially published, in deference to the Honduran Supreme Court, which has been considering a challenge to the constitutionality of the RED law."_

Which is somewhat enlightening given this line from the article -

 _"Trejo had also helped prepare motions declaring unconstitutional a proposal to build three privately run cities with their own police, laws and tax systems."_

I wonder who else was helping to prepare the motions, and how long they might have left to live.</comment>


Balance of Power: Mueller Unfriends Facebook as Probe Zeroes In - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/balance-of-power-mueller-unfriends-facebook-as-probe-zeroes-in?utm_campaign=Newsletter%20-%20Mi5M%20-%20Q3%202017&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=56316530&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9eY9Ay0DXDXSFeHPqCIjYBBlKPPj_kom__U9TOpXohpD2q6Bj-9j7nPkBbvVB1-1i_CYc3I1RGn6jhLbsInp-8HjOR1w&_hsmi=56316530 <comment><USER2> Two things:

1\. Russian money (or any foreign money), if it gets scrutinized for buying disinformation advertising in the US, will just find a way to hide itself better. Facebook should have a duty to vet ad buyers to an extent, but if Russia implemented this and now reports are coming out, you can bet they're proactively going a bit deeper now.

2\. Provided that Facebook ad platforms operate similarly in other countries, is there rampant disinformation and foreign influence among non-US countries? When does the US become entangled in this as a facilitator?</comment>


How would you invest $500k at 30? - <AUTHOR> I want to more aggressively invest some cash but unsure where to put it. <comment><USER2> Do some serious homework on the markets before putting that 500k on the line. Some, but not all, and probably not half of the stocks in the S&P 500 will continue to gain this year. Bonds have run up recently, so they also have more immediate risk of decline / low yield.

Also, consider things not so obvious: option selling strategies. Warren Buffet does it, so smart is as smart does.

<comment><USER3> Yes, tempting to hold in cash and wait for the market correction - if it ever comes.

<comment><USER4> The market is fine. There is no recession here. SPY support is $249.57 right now.

Inflation eats cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine my surprise this morning when I created a throwaway account to ask HN how I can actively invest $500K, go to the "Ask HN" tab to see how these posts are usually formulated, and someone's asked almost the exact same question (I'm a couple years younger than 30 and I'm looking at small businesses).

<comment><USER6> Work or worked at lyft? Haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> VTSAX or VTI: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index.

<comment><USER6> Serious question: what happens when everyone invests in index funds?

Would appreciate if one can point to research related to this scenario

<comment><USER8> The logical conclusion seems to be that individual stock picking becomes more attractive (there are overperforming stocks, but the vanguard funds can't take advantage of it).

<comment><USER9> This -- you'd expect that actively managed funds would start, on average, to give better performance than the low-cost passive indexes. In the long-run this would likely reach an equilibrium where, on average, results are comparable -- minus fees. We are not there yet. Maybe we never will, because reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The same way everyone should invest 10'000 USD: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcqlCoreWi8&t=12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcqlCoreWi8&t=12s)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you need the money in short-term (2-3 years), I would split it into 2x250K and just park them in online savings accounts which currently give about 2.25% APY.

If you have a bit longer horizon, I would go for VTI.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you have time to watch the market? If you want to go with aggressive growth, and $500K you are willing to risk, then options trading. Put $20K per trade and it should double in a year.

<comment><USER12> Any suggestions on how to properly learn how to do this?

<comment><USER4> The easiest way to do it is follow my plans. The harder way to do it is watch the stock market and look into technical analysis. It takes a while but if you start with a small account you can look for an edge and utilize it. It takes a while and you have many losses early on and then over time you narrow it down to what works. I'm not sure if anyone can do it the same way I do but I don't know of a better way to answer your question.

Main items we focus on are price-action and price-volume. In essence, for every minute the price goes up, what's the volume? For every penny the stock goes up, what's the volume? For every 100,000 shares what's the change in price?200k? 300k? 1m? and so on. Also, weighted factors for all the different indicators, MA/SMA/CCI/RSI/VWAP being of most pertinence. Pitch fork trends weighted at a lower level. Also several other proprietary indicators based on stock correlation (i.e. BABA vs AMZN, if AMZN is moving down, BABA should as well because of what it relies on). Sentiment Analysis to look for bad news.

<comment><USER13> OP - tread carefully, this "advice" is from an individual afflicted with a case of Dunning-Kruger.

<comment><USER4> :) Some people are meant to be employees and lack the ability to think for themselves. Stay in school.

[BB] The PLAN is to enter the Jun 21 $10.00 Calls if BB crosses above 10.50 if you like

[HD] The PLAN is to enter the Apr 18 $190.00 Calls if HD crosses above 193.00 if you like

[AAPL] The PLAN is to enter the Apr 18 $192.50 Calls if AAPL crosses above 193.00 if you like

<comment><USER4> For anyone looking at the statistics here.

BB never met the entry point.

HD did 150%.

AAPL is up 60%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Golden Butterfly portfolio: [https://portfoliocharts.com/portfolio/golden- butterfly/](https://portfoliocharts.com/portfolio/golden-butterfly/)

Or some other portfolio among the many options on the site. The nice thing about this site is that you can simulate how your allocation would do historically.

</comment><comment><USER15> Depends on your event horizon.

If you are planning to invest for retirement, then I would put it into a collection of Growth funds.

If your objective is to get a constant payout, then some dividend based fund.

If you want to throw it away: 1) send to me :) 2) buy a business you think you know but do not really. Everyone thinks they can run a restaurant. It is the winner for failed businesses.

</comment><comment><USER16> >>> aggressive

BI provides a list of tech IPOs coming down the pike. No need to buy at all once.But a price-action-averaged, market-cap-weighted basket of securities from this pool could achieve 20%+ IRR through 2024

[https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-startups-going- public-2...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-startups-going- public-2019-rumored-ipos-2019-2#beyond-meat-1)

</comment><comment><USER17> You can look into investing them in Amazon resellers. you can use a platform like upfund.io, or loan it out to Amazon sellers you know personally, from my experience investors can expect 40%+ annual returns. This is because the FBA business models can yield 200%+ yearly ROI for the resellers themselves.

<comment><USER18> Aren't signups closed on upfund?

<comment><USER17> not sure, I am a seller using their services, not an investor. Are you not able to invest in new deals?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd look for an industrial warehouse in the Midwest with strong credit tenants and long-terms leases (e.g. like a publicly traded company serving a utility function).

You'd have to start with a small property, given your capital. But returns are stable and can be relatively high -- 9-15%.

</comment><comment><USER20> In general, invest in things with higher returns and lower risk. They're not necessarily correlated.

Things which you understand better than anyone, that you believe in but others don't.

</comment><comment><USER21> FZROX or VTSAX. Perhaps not in a lump sum right now, but that amount divided into weekly deposits to mitigate risk a bit.

<comment><USER22> Why would weekly deposits mitigate risk?

<comment><USER21> I read somewhere they used previous outcomes to simulate lump sum investments at the start, and weekly/monthly deposits.

End result wasn't that much different - the lump sum did do better, but not significantly. The weekly/monthly deposits was smoother.

<comment><USER23> icedchai summed it above but the reason for this isn't to maximize return - it's psychological. If the market drops, you now can buy more at a cheaper price. If you spent it all, you probably would be tempted to cash it all out to cut your losses. of course, you shouldn't, but we're talking about our lizard brains here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would buy some blighted properties in West Baltimore, fix them up, then rent it out through AirBnB.

</comment><comment><USER25> Donate at least 100$ to Greenpeace.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's your unfair advantage? What do you know that most people don't? Rhetorical questions of course!

</comment><comment><USER27> make sure to watch this

> > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCc1n90ntWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCc1n90ntWk)

</comment><comment><USER28> Buy Decentraland

wait 8 years ... x100 return?

sounds like a joke, and it kind of is, but I did it myself with 10k. With $500k you're going to fluctuate $10k everyday anyway. You never know.

</comment><comment><USER29> buy shitcoins.

<comment><USER30> Which ones?

<comment><USER31> shitty ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What is your horizon? Can you afford to lose a big chunk of it? No risk, no return..

If you have a long horizon (>15 years), invest part in crypto, part in index trackers, maybe take a few small angel investment stakes and some REIT.

Shorter horizon but still want to do aggressive? The half in Crypto, and several early stage companies and keep a half in cash or bonds.</comment>


1961: First CS Thesis in France, defended by Miss Créhange - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/mcampourcy/the-first-french-computer-science-thesis-author-was-a-woman-but-nobody-knows-ho7 <comment><AUTHOR> Another « hidden figure » of Computer Science. Her Wikipedia page was deleted on a technicality of Wikipedia's. Let's keep women in the kitchen, even on Wikipedia!</comment>


The Hybrid Hypothesis of Human Origins: Are We Hybrids? – Independent Research - <AUTHOR> http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html <comment><AUTHOR> I found this site randomly in a way that reminded me of the Old Internet, and indeed the site's design reflects that, too!

Thought-provoking research here. And I like supporting scientists who do their work outside of existing dissemination structures.</comment>


Could Bondsy Become eBay For The Instagram Era? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672649/could-bondsy-become-ebay-for-the-instagram-era#1

<comment><USER2> The problem with "like X for Y" analogies for startups is that I have literally no idea what business model the headline is implying.</comment>


OpenBCI: Open Source Brain Computer Interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://openbci.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Proof of concept real-time wireless quadcopter control using eye movement:

Imperceptible electrooculography graphene sensor system for human–robot interface

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41699-018-0064-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41699-018-0064-4)</comment>