Ask HN: Do you have a daily cash stream? - <AUTHOR> I'm a web and software developer. Contracting and been running on and off various online businesses, with varying degrees of success. Just like everyone else, I had periods of feast and periods of famine.
A few days ago I was talking with a friend of mine who among other businesses in Ireland and Croatia runs a bar in Zagreb, Croatia. His reasoning behind running a bar is that the bar serves as a daily cash stream. Something definitely we all need and something that helps a great deal.
Anyway, do you have a side hustle like that, and what is it? <comment><USER2> > His reasoning behind running a bar is that the bar serves as a daily cash > stream

Of course the downside is that if things go wrong it acts as a daily cash sink, instead. Most businesses, especially retail/catering businesses, fail. Don't get into that unless you know what you're doing.

I have a daily cash stream; it's called a job.

<comment><USER3> With some few exceptions, in my experience, bars are awful investments. Did a tech company which sold tech solutions to this space and got to see the books and behind the scenes at many dozen bars (and restaurants / coffee shops / frozen yogurt stores / etc).

Even before pandemic few of them netted any real significant profit after all expenses, and those that did managed to pull it off largely because if highly, highly engaged owners constantly on-site day in and out.

There is a huge number of people who think they can invest $20K (or $200K) in one of these businesses and hire a GM and sit back and take profits. I can think of maybe one example of that I encountered in 5 years.

Is it technically possible? Sure. Is it even remotely likely? No way. Especially if you didn't cut your teeth "In The Industry" and know all the things you need to know about shrinkage, vendor fraud, the politics of liquor licenses, et al. Nightmare fuel.

<comment><USER4> I'm a bar owner.

I see some truths and some falsehoods both in your statement, for sure.

My business partners at the time and I started our bar for under 30k. It was an existing bar, but a terrible one--day drunks, no regular customers had a job, and the two taps were Busch and Busch. But it had a big unused area we wanted to get up and running, which we did quickly. But to be clear, we were rank novices. I was 26 and had never had a sip of alcohol. My family had zero entrepreneurs. I did not have a runway, I was all-in.

We worked our asses off, working behind our own bar for 100% of the shifts. Not only did we not have a GM, we didn't even have bartenders! Kept our own books, did our own taxes. Ran our own pool tournaments. Everything. For over a year, I think, before we finally hired one bartender a couple of nights per week.

I've since bought out my partners, and I make a good living at the bar, but still no GM. I have a "manager" I trust who mostly deals with scheduling the staff and ordering product. She's a bartender who spends about 8 hours per week on managerial duties. I still do the books & taxes, and make all the higher-level decisions. On a given night, if I'm not there, the bartender is the boss. Cooks and security guys answer to them.

Our state issues liquor licenses to basically everyone, very cheap. There's not a limited supply like other places. We think we made it through perseverance. The first few years were not good money. We're 10.5 years in now, and I've had other positions in that time, including being a remote web developer for five years.

I don't think I'd recommend it for most people, but I do think you can will your way through the rough times into a profitable business. Staying power is worth something in this industry.

Also, if anyone ever reads this, here's my best lessons distilled down. At least it's what makes my place work well.

1) Hire honest people. It's very easy to steal at a bar, so an honest person who can't make a drink is a much better hire than a dishonest bottle-flipping whiz kid. You can train (almost) anyone. 1a) Don't be afraid to let go of someone you need to. There's always a fear you'll piss off your regulars; it's highly unlikely and worth it regardless.

2) Stay open as late as possible, and never close early. People have to know, beyond a doubt, that you will be open if they drive to wherever you are.

3) Have a flat top and a fryer, and base a whole menu on that. Make good food, it's not difficult.

4) Own your own machines. Pool tables, juke boxes, etc. They pay for themselves very quickly. If you can have cherry machines and pay cash (probably a gray area at best), definitely do that. We can't, but maybe you can.

5) We went cash only about a year ago. Our sales continued increasing until covid, and by placing an ATM with no fee, nobody is disgruntled. Saves me countless thousands per year in credit card percentage fees, although I have to manage keeping the ATM stocked.

6) Ban people who are a problem, and ban them permanently. A guy who starts a fight once will always start a fight again. Cultivate a respectful environment where nobody (including single women) feels harassed or awkward or whatever.

I personally think that's a decent recipe for a can't-lose bar, as long as your lease payment is small enough. For reference, ours is $1610/mo for a 6,000 sqft building. Business can't lose, but your personal life and finances could if you aren't making any tips behind your own bar. Definitely worth thinking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Web guy here (more PM than developer). The two things I've done to keep the (unavoidable) feast/famine cycle at bay are:

1) keep two work bank accounts, one for daily use, one savings, and syphon off more than needed from daily > savings when invoices are paid. Example: client pays us £5k. We know we need to put aside corporation tax (we're UK based) of 20% on profit, but instead we put aside 25%. After a while of doing this you end up with a nice chunk of cash in the savings pot for any really famine-y times.

2) Retainers and ongoing "low effort" rolling work. We've got a bunch of clients on board who pay us for hosting, maintenance, the odd fix - they pay annually so it's a good "known" source of income without varience. I mean, obviously sometimes they churn and decide they don't need us any more, but for the most part it's solid. This second source is also good because we offer it whenever we do new work - so typically a project will pay for the project but then also for the ongoing retainer as well.

The second thing is important to note for developer type people I think - namely, people pay for things that you (as developer) wouldn't necessarily pay for. I'm surprised at the high percentage of clients who sign up to maintenance agreements (it's north of 95%), purely because they want someone onboard who will hold their hand / look after stuff that they don't understand.

So I guess I'm saying - do a side hustle, totally - but maybe start by looking closer to home. Existing clients are really, really easy to sell to, easier than a new project and probably easier than working in a bar, too :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nicely put. Retainers are indeed a great revenue stream. Yet, I was thinking more in terms of daily cash stream generated by regular quick cash transactions. That's why I mentioned by buddy running a bar as his side hustle.

<comment><USER2> Do you mean _literal_ cash? Why do you want that? It's extra work and cost to deal with, generally.

Though increasingly bars are shifting towards contactless electronic payment, anyway.

<comment><USER6> I hear car washes are a good option. If I understand what we're really talking about here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a daily cash stream. I call it a job.

Also I keep a large emergency fund and save/invest the majority of my earnings.

</comment><comment><USER8> A more reliable side hustle than a bar would be to own some residential real estate and rent it out to respectful people. There's a lot less work involved than running an operating business, and if the property cash flows (rent exceeds costs), you have a little bit of cash every month. There are also tax advantages via mortgage interest and other expense deductibility, and some "forced savings" as the mortgage pays down. The flip side is that real estate has been absurdly overpriced in most markets for the last decade (thanks Fed!) but the still-unfolding economic consequences of Covid19 may lead to an excellent entry point.

<comment><USER9> > the still-unfolding economic consequences of Covid19 may lead to an > excellent entry point

This kind of thing is what puts me off real estate investing. The idea that I would be a beneficiary of an enormous crisis leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not stupid, I know that someone is going to make that profit, but it doesn't have to be me. Similarly, the idea of putting myself in the position of one day needing to deprive someone of their housing if they're unable to pay is something I'd strongly prefer to avoid.

<comment><USER8> There's other ways to look at it. If someone is forced to sell, they likely took on too much leverage in the first place or didn't save enough for a rainy day. Those decisions aren't your fault, and by buying when prices are low, you are in effect giving them the liquidity they need which is a good thing.

Also, you never have to deprive someone of their housing if they are unable to pay. You can work out payment plans and all sorts of compromises to get through tough times and tenants will generally appreciate that flexibility.

The point remains - real estate is more stable for side income than a bar!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Around 10 years ago I wrote a mac app and put it on the mac app store, no amount of marketing spend seemed to drive sales up significantly to be break- even, but conversely even with no marketing, it makes on average $10 a day (less the apple cut and taxes).

That doesn't seem like much but if I had 10 niche apps which did the same then I'd have a pretty nice income floor.

<comment><USER11> ~$3000 a year doesn't seem like nothing. Especially if you don't put much work into it on an ongoing basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I run a game server hosting company that loses me about $300 a month.

<comment><USER12> Do you have a plan to fix that?

<comment><USER11> I can pair down a machine if I migrate some users, however its a competitive market, and hard to sign up (and more so to maintain paying users)

<comment><USER13> That sounds like a good business not to have, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Daily is not really the frequency at which you should need cash. I have an online business which generates a lot of passive revenue. But I have no idea if it makes cash _every_ day. Pretty sure there are many days with zero sales.

But it reliably generates revenue. That's the important bit. Needing daily cash is actually likely a sign of poor personal cashflow management. You ought to aim to have a buffer such that you could survive with zero cash for a while.

Now, a recurring revenue stream: it's great! Highly recommended. But daily is not a good requirement.

And something like a bar has downsides:

* takes personal labour to make money

* High operating costs

* requires presence in a location

* currently, subject to pandemic restrictions

Now bars can be a great business! But for a software developer looking to develop a revenue stream, your best bet is....software. Basically zero cost to start. A bar would be a thing to do if you enjoyed it.

</comment><comment><USER9> The way your friend describes it is almost like money laundering or something. I hardly use cash at all, why is a daily cash stream "something we all need and something that helps a great deal"? I find that phrase kind of bizarrely vague.

Like I think most people, I have a job which pays me every 2 weeks. What this enables me to do is take some small amount of that money each day to cover my expenses. I suppose if you wanted to conceptualize it as a daily cash stream, you could simply divide the lump payment by (roughly) 14, but I'm not sure why you would do that. Some days I spend a lot of money (when making a major purchase, for example), and some days I spend none at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is also something you can kind of simulate through software, right? I haven't used it myself, but it seems along the lines of what software like YNAB is - setting future targets for budget categories, and then funding them as chunks of money come in, such that for any particular day per time period, you can see if you are ahead of or behind schedule.

Zooming out, there's a lot of tech theory on buffers and streams that apply. A "JIT" stream is something that doesn't need a buffer if it's perfect and reliable and consistent enough. The YNAB approach is more about using that buffer.

</comment><comment><USER16> Whether it's daily or monthly ultimately doesn't matter for anyone that has a shred of budgeting ability.

Looking to build a blog, but not optimistic that it'll generate any real money

</comment><comment><USER13> > Just like everyone else, I had periods of feast and periods of famine.

The answer is to have a buffer. Think of it like a queue. You are pulling things off the queue at some rate with some variation, and stuff is arriving at the far end of the queue with hopefully a slightly higher rate but with much higher variation. In order to always have queue you can pull from, you need a buffer in the queue big enough to handle the input variations.

Which is a way of saying, having however many months of living expenses in the bank (six to twelve months, usually). Spend money you have already earned at or below the rate that you are currently earning it.

Is having another income stream that makes regular money worth it? It depends. We can assume that it makes less money than your irregular income or otherwise deprives you of some benefit or need, otherwise you would ditch your irregular income and do just that. In that case it's purely about how much reducing the volatility of your income stream is worth.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not to steer the conversation, but perhaps what you are interested in, considering the friend story, is if people have wealth (invested or created) that provides them with some steady cash flow on a daily or monthly period while not requiring full time (or near full time) commitment. (in my case is an apartment that I don't get much rent out of, but is a very safe way to keep wealth)

<comment><USER18> Passive income

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you enjoy investing and can spend some time learning about trading options, it can provide a nice income stream in a taxable account. Somewhere around 0.5-1.0% income a month is possible and reasonable without taking on extreme risk.

Income from options on indices or futures is subject to 60/40 long/short term capital gains tax and really helps keep the tax costs down.

<comment><USER20> This is irresponsible advice.

Options are potentially the most complicated common financial instrument and modeling their risks is extremely difficult. Moreover, unlike equities, nearly every single options trader is an institution (versus just ~most equities trades being institutions). You are a tuna in a shark tank.

There are so many ways to blow up your account with options even if you think you're not doing anything too risky. Volatility crush, long tail risk, complicated positions (butterflies and condors etc) that can be complicated to enter and unwind. Etc etc the list is so long. Brokerages can try to paper over some of these issues but the playing field here is inherently a highly leveraged minefield. ~80% of all options expire worthless.

Retail investors should not trade options, it is not something to do lightly, and is is certainly not something to do for pocket money.

<comment><USER19> I disagree. Not with the facts stated, but your interpretation of them. With defined risk positions, the risks are easy to understand. Of course you can't compete with the institutions, but should that be a reason not to invest at all?

Again, with defined risk positions there is no way you can blow up an account. Options expiring worthless works for you if you're a net seller. Others have written extensively about strategies: [https://earlyretirementnow.com/2019/03/27/passive-income- thr...](https://earlyretirementnow.com/2019/03/27/passive-income-through- option-writing-part-3/)

This is not something someone should do without the prior research. It's not for everyone. But compared to something like opening a small business (which I haven't done, but would consider very risky) at least in this "business" your risk can be defined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If it were me I'd focus on how to charge more money and how to get it sooner. Negotiation, marketing, contracts etc.

And as others have mentioned: budgeting.

You shouldn't need a side hustle to buy your milk and pasta. A side hustle is more like a bet or lottery ticket.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER22> What is the purpose of a "daily cash stream" to you?

To me, it just sounds like a savings account. I have money in the bank because I have good financial management.

Why would I need to augment that with a risky side hustle?

</comment><comment><USER23> I recommend "The Money Book for freelancers"</comment>


What's your favorite music to program to? - <AUTHOR>

I was just wondering what everyone's favorite music to program is.  Most of the time I prefer silence, but sometimes a little music is nice. <comment><USER2> [http://www.reddit.com/comments/6l9t9/best_background_music_f...](http://www.reddit.com/comments/6l9t9/best_background_music_for_programming/c0462ru)</comment>


I'm a CEO, and This Is What CISA Will Do to My Business - <AUTHOR> http://m.mic.com/articles/127718/why-tech-ceo-elissa-shevinsky-of-jekudo-privacy-and-secretcon-hates-cisa <comment><USER2> Good that she's getting word out. Can't understate enough how a committee focused on intelligence-gathering is pushing a bill without security benefits for computer security.

Unfortunately, it won't get anywhere because Americans only care about how things affect them. That hasn't been communicated enough. The only thing close was John Oliver's Surveillance video where he mentioned the "dick pic program" and other real-world risks lay people get. Another was about how metadata let people guess your key political believes. INFOSEC community needs to stop talking about issues people don't care about and focus almost exclusively on presenting risk government surveillance poses to masses.</comment>


Show HN: Mailform Checkout API – post a PDF, we'll handle print, mail, & payment - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailform.io/docs/integration/checkout/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just shipped this in the last few days - please give it a try. There are lots of print and mail APIs out there (including Lob, Click2Mail, Clicksend, Letterstream, and others). We're integrated into lots of these.

They all assume that you want to take on the work to handle payments, validation and everything else.

We're extending them by one step - handling the last mile, so all you need to do is hand us a document. Think of it like the Stripe Checkout, built on top of Stripe's APIs.

questions, comments and feedback are welcome.</comment>


Show HN: A site that automatically aggegrates all great GIFs - <AUTHOR> http://gifster.io

<comment><AUTHOR> For those wondering: This site was built with the help of [https://github.com/maxgfeller/giffer](https://github.com/maxgfeller/giffer) and some adapters and plugins ([https://github.com/MaxGfeller/giffer/wiki/Modules](https://github.com/MaxGfeller/giffer/wiki/Modules))</comment>


Bayesian ranking of items with up and downvotes or 5 star ratings - <AUTHOR> http://julesjacobs.github.io/2015/08/17/bayesian-scoring-of-ratings.html <comment><USER2> The method described here is simple because it's only looking at the mean of the belief about each item; it uses the prior belief as a way either to sandbag new items or to give them a bump. I tend to advocate methods that take into account the _variance_ of the belief in order to minimize the risk of showing bad stuff at the top of the heap.

I have a newer article (not mentioned here) that ranks 5-star items using the variance of the belief. It ends up yielding a relatively simple formula, or at least a formula that doesn't require special functions. Like the OP I use a Dirichlet prior, but then I approximate the variance of the utility in addition to the expected utility:

[http://www.evanmiller.org/ranking-items-with-star- ratings.ht...](http://www.evanmiller.org/ranking-items-with-star-ratings.html)

The weakness of the approach (as well as the OP) is that it doesn't really define a loss function for decision-making (i.e. doesn't properly account for the costs of an incorrect belief), which one might argue is the whole point of being a Bayesian in the first place. In practice it seems that using a percentile point on the belief ends up approximating a multi-linear loss function, but I haven't worked out why that is.

<comment><USER3> _I tend to advocate methods that take into account the variance of the belief in order to minimize the risk of showing bad stuff at the top of the heap._

Penalizing variance would be the opposite of my intuition. Given a boring low- variance item with 10 3-star votes, and a divisive item with 5 1-star votes and 5 5-star votes, I'd think you'd want the one at the top to be the one with the medium chance that they'll "love" it than a high chance they'll find it passable.

If you further assume that the average person is going to check out the top few results but only "buy" if they find something they really like, the risky approach seems even more appealing. A list topped by known mediocre choices has a low chance of "success". What's the scenario you are envisioning?

<comment><USER4> The kind of divisive item you describe is rare, at least on Amazon. What happens most commonly is that everyone loves something or everyone hates it, with some noise (e.g. 10% 1 or 2 star reviews). In this case, it makes sense to promote the item that has a 4.5 mean score and 100 reviews over one that has a 4.7 mean score and only 5 reviews. You want to account for the uncertainty when there are few ratings. If you don't, all the items at the top of your search results will be 5-star 1-review products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a paper that analyzes various ways to rank items using upvotes/downvotes; and comes up with a way to determine which method is the best: [http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~dell/publications/dellzhang_ictir2...](http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~dell/publications/dellzhang_ictir2011.pdf)

Also related: [http://planspace.org/2014/08/17/how-to-sort-by-average- ratin...](http://planspace.org/2014/08/17/how-to-sort-by-average-rating/)

<comment><USER6> To summarize and paraphrase the paper:

> Every upvote should increase the score, every downvote should decrease the > score and the more votes there are the less an additional vote should > matter. Only "adding pretend votes" satisfies this.

That really puts into words why "adding pretend votes" just felt right to me in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _So if we want to maximize the expected utility we get out of the top spot, > we should put the item with maximum expected popularity there._

Really? If users only ever look at the top 10 items, you'll never find out that item #33 would end up much higher if it got some attention from voters. This is not only a statistical problem, but also a policy/intervention problem. There is an explore/exploit trade-off to be solved.

A very popular policy for similar problems is to use Thompson sampling, e.g. don't sort items according to their expected score, instead draw a score at random and sort according to those. (At random from your current belief about the plausible true scores, e.g. the beta distribution you have learned.)

</comment><comment><USER8> > A beta prior is equivalent to assigning "pretend votes" to each new item. > Instead of starting out with 0 upvotes and 0 downvotes, we start out with a > upvotes and b downvotes. If we expect that most items are bad, we could > start with 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. After getting u real upvotes, and d > real downvotes the posterior distribution is Beta(a+u, b+d).

Fascinating. Does this follow as a straightforward consequence of how the beta distribution is defined? Otherwise, is there a proof that someone could point me toward?

> The popularity of an item has a Beta(a,b) prior

Is there an optimal choice of a, b given, say, a specific utility function?

<comment><USER9> Beta is conjugate prior of binomial distribution. That means is you start with prior beta, and likelihood has binomial distribution, then posterior obtained using Bayes theorem also will have beta distribution (with different paramters).

If you look up definition of beta distribution and then write down formula for posterior it should be quite clear that result is also beta distribution - modulo normalizing constant which may be a little more tricky to determine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> See this related article for another Bayesian method that can account for time of submission if you don't want to penalize new submissions as much for having less voting time: [http://camdp.com/blogs/how-sort-comments-intelligently- reddi...](http://camdp.com/blogs/how-sort-comments-intelligently-reddit-and- hacker-)

<comment><USER10> This blog post is an excerpt from the following chapter of his ebook, if you want more detail and cool analysis: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabil...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic- Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for- Hackers/blob/master/Chapter4_TheGreatestTheoremNeverTold/Chapter4.ipynb#Example:-How- to-order-Reddit-comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me that "hot or not" style ratings, where the user is asked to pick a preference between two items, would be more informative and easier to interpret than star ratings or thumbs up/thumbs down ratings. I wonder why it isn't used more often.

Star ratings have problems with compression of scales at the top and bottom. You'll never know which item is someone's favorite (or least favorite) with star ratings, because typically there will be several items with the maximum or minimum number of stars.

Pair-wise comparisons are also more fun and easier for users. When I'm doing star ratings, I often find myself trying to remember what star ratings I've given to similar things that I liked a little more or a little less so that I can try to be consistent.

Pair-wise comparisons probably make more sense for items in similar categories, though. It makes a lot more sense to pick a preference between two novels than it does to pick a preference between an ice cube tray and a camp chair.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are looking for more about this approach, "additive smoothing" might be a good search term not mentioned in the article. Also "Laplace smoothing" or "Lidstone smoothing". "Dirichlet prior" (add an 'h' to the spelling in the article) might also be on topic.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been using an equivalent method, after reading about imdb's method for comparing the best movies of all time.

I extend it, hackily, to allow categories to be declared to apply to objects with arbitrary confidence at any time, and to declare the same categorization multiple times.

I then consider both the confidence amounts and number of declarations in comparing the overall confidence in different categorizations.

I use a 0-1.0 scale for confidence, then product adjusted confidence for each potential categorization as (sum of confidences) / (num confidence declarations + 3).

This is equivalent to assuming a prior of three declarations of zero confidence; this effectively rewards higher binders of votes, such that a single declaration for category A of confidence 1.0 will tie three declarations for category B of confidence 5.0.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've always considered "bumping" to be the perfect scaling algorithm for content sorting. If a comment is added to a thread, it will show up at the top of the page until a comment is added to another thread. Thus the probability of seeing a thread on the front page is proportional to the responses it gathers. New threads will be seen immediately and will generate responses if interesting. Unpopular threads will still get a small chance at reaching someone rather than never being seen by anyone. Finally, two threads that would otherwise generate equal number of upvotes or stars would be scaled by how deep and worthwhile their content is, since a simple like is less meaningful than a like and a long comment.

<comment><USER14> I have seen many forums where this is exploited by users who like to keep their threads on top. They do not submit the whole story and then keep adding new pieces into comments, bumping the thread whenever it gets off the front page.

So, I wouldn't call it perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> IMHO ordinal values as the most misunderstood ones - their are neither categorical nor numerical (even if they happen to be represented by numbers). Setting utility by hand is at best - a questionable way to do it. The educated way is to use Item Response Theory (see e.g. [https://github.com/philchalmers/mirt/wiki](https://github.com/philchalmers/mirt/wiki)).

</comment><comment><USER16> I suspect that people are more likely to rate an item when they have strong negative feelings about it, and I guess this should be taken into account too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Only one error

300 / (300+100) = 3/4 And not equal to 1/4

Nice read!

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average- rating....](http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html)

<comment><USER19> You realize that link was in the first line of the article, right?</comment></comment>


We created a cereal box to meet with Airbnb's Brian Chesky - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@camwiese/we-created-raisin-brian-to-meet-with-the-ceo-of-airbnb-1620ee4dcbac#.me7lmn67h <comment><AUTHOR> It's always difficult working with schedules. Any suggestions for improving strategies like this that can help avoid scheduling conflicts?</comment>


India's richest man offers free 4G to one billion people - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/india-reliance-jio-4g-internet/ <comment><USER2> The big thing that techies on hacker news need to realize here is what this company is trying to do by collecting all the data with so called "deep packet inspection". they provide data at the cost of stealing all your activities on phone irrespective of app to do big data analytics. same thing that Facebook wanted to do via internet.org. It becomes easy this way. for them data is the new oil[1]!

[1] [http://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio- idINKCN1...](http://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio- idINKCN11611V)

<comment><USER3> I'm not clear as to what insights will DPI provide once data is encrypted. What am I missing ?

<comment><USER4> Not much for encrypted data, but they can still get metadata out of it (which site you visited, how much traffic was exchanged relative to other sites you visited, what times of the day you visited, which days of the week you visited, usage patterns, etc.). For example, if you have a pattern of visiting say, an Amazon store, that information could be useful to have rivals of Amazon to target you with ads or special offers, even if they cannot find what exactly you did on Amazon.

The voice calls are also on LTE (VoLTE), and a similar DPI scheme could be used to get a lot out of that by recording and inspecting content and metadata. Legality aside, if they're intent on mining data, there are millions of people who wouldn't even know what http vs. https means or to use end-to- end encrypted apps for calls, etc. (or probably not care as much). I'm not implying that nobody will care, because there may be another prominent movement (savetheinternet) like the one that helped block Facebook's Free Basics initiative through campaigns and well crafted letters to the authorities.

<comment><USER5> > Not much for encrypted data, but they can still get metadata out of it > (which site you visited, how much traffic was exchanged relative to other > sites you visited, what times of the day you visited, which days of the week > you visited, usage patterns, etc.). For

Just use a VPN?

<comment><USER6> Well, yes, but unfortunately, of the billion+ people here in India, I doubt if a significant percentage has even heard of a VPN, leave alone the matter of knowing what it does or knowing how to go about getting and setting one up.

<comment><USER7> Or about paying for one

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, blatant PR!

India's billions have had access to Internet for several years now. While traveling last year in rural areas, I was able to get voice and Internet (3G), with data plans costing $4 per Gb. And I had the option to choose from 4 different providers.

Jio has definitely taken the lead in country-wide LTE, compared to HSPA+ from other providers.

This is more like evolution than revolution. Yet Fareed Zakaria goes on and on about richest man, most expensive home, cash generating business, etc.

<comment><USER9> Seems to be the equivalent of any "free - for a limited time" type offer that most subscription-based services use as bait.

<comment><USER10> Except the price after the free period is still 0.2x current rates from competitors.

<comment><USER6> True, but for how long?

Many commercially-smart people here colloquially describe this company as following (loose translation):

You can get some/any ultimate benefit out of them only if you're capable of extracting holy water out of a crow's back side!! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> _" [...] Indians will be able to use Jio for free until the end of 2016, and pay as little as 149 rupees ($2.25) a month for data after that."_

For additional context, Jio data rates on a $/GB basis are around one-fifth the price of competing data rates in India, and voice will evidently remain free nationwide, without roaming charges, even after the promotion period ends.[1]

This seems like a game changer, provided Jio can take enough market share and start to turn a profit on their 4G network with the subsidized smartphones and free voice calling.

Free voice calling scares Reliance's competitors because voice still constitutes over 60% of average revenue per user (example: in early 2016 voice was over 70%+ of Bharti Airtel's ARPU[2]). If Jio is successful, voice ARPU should drop like a rock for everybody else. The same will happen with Reliance too, but at least they're dictating the pace and degree of change on their own terms.

[1] [http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news- techno...](http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news- technology/reliance-jio-launch-free-voice-calls-cheaper-data-tariffs- announced-3007631/)

[2] [http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/bharti- ai...](http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/bharti-airtel- s-q3-net-profit-falls-22-116012800797_1.html)

<comment><USER12> If you look at their "packs" 199Rs: 0.5 something data 599: 20+ GB data

the minimum pack is of 599 if you need data, the fact that the $/GB cost is low is a marketing gimmick.

Also, yes, voice calling is a revenue generator for every other network, it'd be interesting to see how they take this challenge, considering Jio has a fiber optic cable network throughout India!

<comment><USER13> er... isn't 599r somewhere on the order of $9 USD? I'd kill to get 20+ GB a month for 9 dollars.

<comment><USER14> Would you if you made 2 dollars a day, as the average Indian citizen does?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So this seems like it entirely defeats Facebook's efforts in India with Internet.org... which brings up the question of why Facebook didn't just do this?

<comment><USER16> This is the same company that Facebook was going to use with Internet.org. It looks like after Facebook's attempt was blocked, he realized he didn't have to be a middleman, and could just offer cheap service on his infrastructure anyway. Still, this comes across as even more damage to Facebook's attempt to be seen as altruistic, even if I expect the profit-seeking is just slightly less obvious in this case.

EDIT: Oh no, the plot thickens! Facebook was working through Reliance Communications, a subsidiary of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. Reliance Jio is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited. These are two halves of a split business empire; Mukesh Ambani didn't take Facebook's idea, he took the idea Facebook had for his brother!

<comment><USER17> Mukesh Ambani had been planning this for a long time now. They got the license couple of years back and then started building out the infrastructure. However Facebook's freebasics and the failed venture with his brother's company might have had some effect on the pricing that Jio is offering now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Straight up right out of The Kingsmen

<comment><USER19> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunate journalism.

Suddenly makes everything appear like an act of philanthropy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Something that an old person once told me was that everything is being sold and sometimes you're the product. This is the case of "free" in this usage.

This would be "free" in the same exact way that Microsoft's "free" windows 10 upgrade was "free."

</comment><comment><USER22> With the title structured like that (it's the company, albeit owned by India's richest man -- is it public?), this news-piece already screams "PR". But it seems like a good thing at least in the short-term -- it will start a price- war which can only hopefully benefit the customer (again in the short-term -- long-term it might kill other players in the market).

</comment><comment><USER23> I was recently reading an article about James Watt, and his steam engine. It's a remarkable story.

I'm reasonably intelligent, but I'm pretty sure that even if I was given his tools and his blueprints, I would never be able to construct an actual working steam engine (input burning coal, output rotating shaft).

This got me thinking about how in India (I'm Indian), we don't have any of the older technology. We don't actually know how to construct a steam engine, or an internal combustion engine, or an electrical engine from scratch. All the key components are imported from Japan, or Germany or the U.S. As a child, my little toys with electrical or gas motors (RC airplanes) in them were all imported.

I think there's a lot of focus on software because it's actually easier to tinker with. All one needs is a PC and internet. I suspect there are lots of mechanically inclined Indians who would love to work on motors, engines, stuff that makes shafts rotate. But we simply don't have the basic tools and infrastructure to tinker with those.

I guess what I'm saying here is that while it's very good that there's more internet infrastructure being laid out in India. I wish someone like the Ambanis would lay out infrastructure that could allow for tinkering with older technology as well.

<comment><USER24> Most western countries are the same. I live in Scotland, and quite near where James Watt was born. That doesn't mean that I grew up around steam engines, or that I have been exposed to steam engines through my life. Like most places, the interconnectedness of global trade, plus the sheer complexity of modern devices, means that most people have no exposure to manufacturing.

At one time, the town where I live was a full of Victorian manufacturing, with factories clogging up every street. Few of those factories survive today. Both my grandfathers worked in a local factory, which manufactured ball bearings and other machined items. In their time, it employed a couple thousand people on a huge site. Today, the company still exists, and still manufactures products, but with far far fewer people (well less than 100 I think).

So the general population's exposure to manufacturing is far lower, as even where factories still exist far far less labour is required so that general cultural exposure is low.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I really think we're losing something by not having this kind of knowledge more evenly spread out in the population. There was a time when my near-ancestors could all stitch up a wound or re-set a bone. Such first-aid was a necessary skill. That too is missing in the population today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> FWIW, this very same company that was planning to introduce Facebook's Free Basics as part of this very launch before the TRAI shot it down. The posted article links to the news report of that fiasco without making this fact clear.

So no, this isn't some sort of altruistic move by Reliance. They would've exploited the resulting situation if they had the freedom to do so with Free Basic (and if reports are correct -- they will be doing it anyways, by monitoring traffic on their Jio platform).

It is such an irony that Zuckerberg's ^mission^ of digitizing India by offering a trojan is being realized without Free Basics/internet.org by the very same company that they were planning to peddle it through.

EDIT: yes, I was mistaken, Free Basics was being peddled by Reliance Communications and this is Reliance Industries. Seems like the brothers either did bury the hatchet and decided on this as Plan B after free basics failed or Mukesh just disciplined Anil in the art of PR.

<comment><USER26> There is no hatchet burying relevant to this: Mukesh and Anil's Reliances are separate. Reliance Communications direct competes with Reliance Jio.

<comment><USER25> Uh huh? Tell me more please because what I read here :

[http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/reliance- ji...](http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/reliance-jio-launch- may-be-deferred-to-december/51522283)

Reliance Jio has already inked a pact with Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications for airwaves sharing while the latter has acquired the Russsian telco Sistema that offers services under the MTS brand.

The deal allowed Reliance Communications to get access to MTS spectrum in the 850 Mhz band that can be used to offer 4G services.

Is complete falsehood! Sheesh, journalists huh?

Here's another : [http://telecomtalk.info/ril-infotel-and-rcom-to-tie-up- for-4...](http://telecomtalk.info/ril-infotel-and-rcom-to-tie-up- for-4g-wireless-broadband-services/81078/)

And some other things, which of course are unrelated and completely coincidental:

[http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/infrastruct...](http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/infrastructure/towers/anil- ambani-owned-rcom-may-walkout-of-tower-business-likely-to-sell-51-stake-in- reliance-infratel/47169813)

[http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-04-23/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-04-23/news/31387124_1_telecom- towers-largest-tower-tower-arm)

<comment><USER27> Competitors can still collaborate.

<comment><USER25> True. Although collaboration while holding on to hatchets is a bit inconvenient. That's all I meant to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Lol this reminds me of Samuel L. Jackson in Kingsman.

<comment><USER29> that was my first thought XD</comment></comment>


Script kiddies hack NBC Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/09/10/nbc-news-hacked/

<comment><AUTHOR> Saying that a plane crashed into Ground Zero isn't funny...</comment>


Show HN: EMU - beta - JS-based WYSIWYG markup-editor/wiki/calculator - <AUTHOR> http://apelab.com/emu-beta <comment><USER2> Looks good! Which browsers are supported?

<comment><AUTHOR> Safari, Chrome, Firefox, latest IE.

iOS Safari (on my iPhone 6) renders correctly but I cannot get the soft keyboard to behave so maybe I need to wrap it in an app.</comment></comment>


Announcement: Official Docker Image for Swift Now Available - <AUTHOR> https://hub.docker.com/_/swift/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello all,

I'm pleased to announce that with the assistance of many, many people (see below), we have released an "official" Docker image for Swift [https://hub.docker.com/_/swift/](https://hub.docker.com/_/swift/).

The image contains everything needed to compile and run a Swift application, reliably and reproducibly. It's based on Ubuntu 16.04 and has been used in production for many months now. A Docker library image such as this one occupies the top level namespace, so that you can simply write "FROM swift" to refer to the image. It has received extensive auditing for best practices and security by Docker experts, and will be maintained by a dedicated team of volunteers.

I would like to encourage everyone interested to ask questions and offer improvements over on the Github repo [https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker- swift](https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker-swift). Personally, I want to offer my thanks to Thomas Catterall and Oliver Letterer for their early and pioneering work on Dockerizing Swift, Tianon Gravi for his patient and informative feedback while refining the image; and all those who have contributed to its development [https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker- swift/graphs/contribut...](https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker- swift/graphs/contributors). Thomas was also instrumental in completing the last stretch to get this accepted by Docker as an official image :)

Happy coding – I hope you make something excellent with this.

Haris Amin

<comment><USER2> Fantastic! I'll move over my server side Swift WIP prototypes ASAP . [https://github.com/mschmulen/yachtsServer](https://github.com/mschmulen/yachtsServer)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Treev – Search Bar for Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Trello (Chrome) - <AUTHOR> http://treev.co

<comment><USER2> I'm so missing these old days [http://www.productsthathateyou.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/0...](http://www.productsthathateyou.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/06/ie-toolbar-bloat1.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't tell from the description if the indexing is local or in the cloud. If cloud, then it's perhaps pretty similar to what Greplin/Cue was. (and involves giving another company all your data for their cloud...though it also means it's possible to later use on mobile)

<comment><USER4> How large can the indexing data be? I really doubt it's larger than a couple of MB.

Zero Knowledge is a perfect fit for this scenario (due to the concerns you outlined), store the data encrypted on the server and decrypt it with some personal key (most likely the password - not great security but Better Than Nothing™). The trick is how to patch the data without decrypting it each time (or exposing the keys) - although for such small datasets even that wouldn't be _that_ painful. (Except you'd perhaps need to save the patch client side until the data is processed and the server acknowledges getting it, otherwise you risk losing data on sudden disconnects.)

I work on a Zero Knowledge PGP email service, I think about stuff like this a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks great, was super fast to setup. I probably don't have a personal use case... but for work I think this would be great.

Would love to see Asana/Hackpad support soon.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks good. Could you make sure all your requests go over TLS please? The javascript console has pages of mixed content warnings.

<comment><AUTHOR> will check that out! thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> looks great!

setup was slick, but I think it might be better if you had a full page view of connecting your various accounts and showing the status of your accounts. The small modal area felt too squished.

I'm also surprised at how fast the indexing went, great job on that. I'll report back with search quality...

<comment><AUTHOR> and aloo how was the search quality? We noticed delays for up to 0.5s today because of heavy traffic. When things get quieter that should improve dramatically. Cool input on the onboarding. We found it took quite a bit of work to make a really slick onboarding flow, but there's clearly still room for improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like StartHQ.com, only contextual

<comment><USER9> Thanks for mentioning StartHQ! Direct link to the extension to anyone who wants to try it out: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/starthq/ilcpdgfepi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/starthq/ilcpdgfepihaomggobhmfiimflngbcoh?hl=en)</comment></comment>


Show HN: I created a non-money-oriented crowdsourcing alternative for developers - <AUTHOR> https://crowdsourcer.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys. I've been working on this on and off for a few years with a couple of others. It's essentially a model that merges Crowdfunding and Open Source in that it allows people to invest their time & expertise (rather than money) into projects that interest them and collaborate with others on those projects and share the profits between themselves.

It's quite cool because it's not really been done before. So as the value of users' contribution grows, tracked by points like sprint/story points and whatnot the proportion of the share of the profits you get increases. We provide all the tools to distribute the money to everyone in a project + project management tools, a peer review system etc. etc.

The aim is to enable developers, programmers and engineers (etc.) to create equitable and autonomous projects, keeping money, investors and banks out of your projects so you can focus on collaborating and building without having to quit your job, hire a team, compromise on ambition, deal with investors/investment nor piss around with payment processing and regulations.

</comment><comment><USER2> Good idea I had the same, hope it will become sucessfull so I'll be able to find some people in the future :)

<comment><USER2> just joined. I can even write articles on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for applying. I appreciate that. Sent you a couple of messages on the platform :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> When trying to fill add positions, second field stays in red, don't understand why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, could you elaborate a little more? Where are you seeing this?</comment></comment>


Ask YC: best other hacker news sites? - <AUTHOR> I follow hacker news and new mogul... Craving more! Suggestions? What are the best other sites? <comment><USER2> There used to be a thread, but I can't find it, but here's the academic hacker news: <http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ad/news/></comment>


Ask HN: How did you have your Ah-Ha moment? - <AUTHOR>

how did you come up with the idea for your product or service? What sparked you to come up with the idea? <comment><USER2> Went through 3-4 different ones, even though I was aware of this for at least 2 years. It wasn't magical, and the only "aha" moment was in discovering the potential market for it.

Of my original 4 ideas; one was technically sexy, the other was viral but had no monetization possibilities, the third one I launched was easy money but very small user base. This 4th one is SaaS, viral, multiple monetization possibilities, huge market, B2B _and_ B2C .. but technically boring as fuck.</comment>


Sales of the Galaxy S III rose following the unveiling of the iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57541312-94/samsung-feels-the-power-as-galaxy-note-2-lifts-off/?ttag=fbwp

<comment><USER2> That makes sense. If you were thinking about getting a GS3 in late September, you might as well wait to see what Apple was coming out with. If it were known that Samsung would be introducing a new flagship phone 2 weeks after the iPhone, I think a lot of people would have waited to make their decision. Then once they saw both, they would pull the trigger to buy the one they wanted.

I bought an iPhone 5, but was definitely interested in the Lumia 920 announcement. If it was going to be announced a week after the iPhone, I certainly would have waited to see what it was. It makes sense that people would delay their purchase decision for a few weeks if they know a competitor is just about to announce something - if for no other reason than to confirm that the original device actually is the one they wanted.

<comment><USER3> "Then once they saw both, they would pull the trigger to buy the one they wanted."

What's far more common would be more or less uninformed people walked in to buy an iphone 5, and were told it was out of stock for weeks and the salesman (who gets a significantly better commission on Samsung phones) tries his best to sell them the GS3 and sometimes does. I know this is a common story because I've actually seen the exact scenario play out several times in the course of an hour I spent with my wife in the Sprint store activating her phone.

<comment><USER4> You and mdasen both have a valid theory. Unfortunately it's just that, a theory.

<comment><USER5> Parent assumes however that everyone walking into the store looking for a phone wants or deserves the iPhone but is sold an (implicitly) inferior one because iPhone is not in stock and / or the salesman gets more commission to sell the S3. The S3 is actually a great phone and I find it hard to believe people don't know the iPhone and accept something they don't like. At the least they consider both and go with the S3 because they like it and partially because they can't buy the iPhone anyways. Remember Microsoft / Nokia paying more commission to sales people hasn't taken WP anywhere.

Tangentially is Apple losing their acclaimed grip on the supply chain if they can't make enough iPhones but Samsung can make and sell double that after paying sales people more and still making 7.4B in profit?

<comment><USER2> So, my theory isn't that someone is accepting an inferior device. Rather, that if you think the GS3 is awesome and are thinking of buying it a week before Apple is set to introduce a new iPhone, it's prudent to wait to make sure Apple doesn't have something amazing up its sleeve.

Similarly, if Samsung had a press event a week after Apple introduced the iPhone, it would be prudent to wait and see if Samsung had something amazing that they were introducing.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, sorry I kind of misraead your post and mixed it up with the reply below. Your theory is credible though - as in it has a supporting data point in its favor - Amazon announced that Kindle Fire sales after iPad mini announcement went up 3 times normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think Samsung's advertising hurt either. Many of which directly targeted (made fun of?) Apple users.

Stuff like this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM>

They've been showing that non-stop in the states.

<comment><USER7> That's actually a pretty neat ad.

So far the only ad I've seen for the SIII in the UK is this one: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsP-S2nETCc>

With selling points such as "it understands you", "keeps track of loved ones", "recognises who you are", "follows your every move", "waits till you're asleep", it sounds like a commercial for a bloody serial killer.

<comment><USER8> _With selling points such as "it understands you", "keeps track of loved ones", "recognises who you are", "follows your every move", "waits till you're asleep", it sounds like a commercial for a bloody serial killer._

I watched the ad you posted. It's bland.

It's too bad that they didn't have something edgier, especially with those quotes you mentioned. Maybe even something a bit more like this, from a few years ago?

[http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2006/02/new_psp_ad...](http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2006/02/new_psp_adverts.html)

<comment><USER7> I assume the reason it's bland is because it was designed to be translated into a bunch of different languages, most likely to be used across the whole of Europe, if not the Middle East and Asia as well.

I would guess the copy wasn't written in English, and whatever message it was intended to convey was lost in translation.

It's not quite as bad as the bland multinational ads we get where they have the audacity to dub English over foreign vocals, but it's not far off...

Edit: A sample of the latter for the uninitiated: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IqMa7LOtgo>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also, The 199$ Kindle Fire had the biggest sales day(since the launch) after the iPad Mini unveiled: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/27/3563380/amazon- kindle-fir...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/27/3563380/amazon-kindle-fire- hd-sales-after-ipad-mini-event)

</comment><comment><USER10> For a second I thought this was an Onion article:

> 'I was shocked by the numbers,' Kevin Packingham, chief product officer of > Samsung's U.S. mobile arm, said. 'What the heck is going on here?'

> the company on Wednesday threw a splashy party for media, d-list > celebrities, and select Samsung fans...

> Winning 'Phablet' fans

Alright, nice that Samsung is doing well, but come on--this article makes it sound like Samsung is a joke!

<comment><USER11> I felt similarly. And that first statement by Kevin Packingham made me gag. Yea, he works for Samsung and made a statement saying he was shocked to see uptick in their sales after iPhone5 release. Plus the article is fileld with too many statements from the company or description of the party.Analysis, comparison, user survey...stuff like that would have been more relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Supply chain issues really hurt in a market as competitive as smartphones. I wonder how many sales Apple loses per day because they can't keep the product in stock?

Buying an iPhone 5 involves either lots of waiting, or hard work to track one down.

<comment><USER13> People will just buy a different smartphone if they're out of stock? Let alone if it's the iPhone they want? I don't believe it.

<comment><USER14> It's a large market, I'm not really sure how you can be surprised by significant market segments that don't actually care all that much wich web- enabled phone they get when their contract is up. Not everyone make purchase decisions like a geek.

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry, I just see "SIII sales rise as iPhone 5 release" -> "Well it's just because they can't buy an iPhone 5" to be asinine. They couldn't buy the iPhone 5 before the announcement either. Playing it off as "they don't care" doesn't make any sense because there's correlation with the iPhone announcement date.

Even if they were potential iPhone 5 buyers, they either said: "Meh, not that great" or "Not great enough to bother waiting... 2 weeks". I guess I see a 2 week wait for a 104 week contract to not be a big deal...

<comment><USER15> Sadly, many people don't think that much about phone purchases. Waiting an extra two weeks for a phone might seem like the rational thing to do (if you wanted the iPhone 5 in the first place), but buying things isn't always a rational process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The spike after the iPhone 5 launch suggests that consumers hung around to see what Apple had to show off, weren't impressed, and went with a Galaxy S III instead."

I don't know how they can make this conclusion. It could be that iPhone5 was sold out and since they were already at the store they bought another phone that could give them similar options. The difference is it has less to do by being impressed and more to do with iPhone actually brought customers to stores and helped sell the Galaxy.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got the impression that a lot of people decided to go with the s3 after iPhone 5 launch didn't give them anything truly compelling.

As others have said, the average smartphone buyer is quite fickle, so just as easily as Apple can win them they can loose them, even if in effect the person will use the iPhone and s3 the do essentially the same things.

<comment><USER18> Sure, but what's "truly compelling" about the S3?

<comment><USER19> Compared to the iPhone? Bigger screen. Android.

It'd take something exceptional for me to consider an iPhone for those two reasons alone.

But I'm sure there's enough users who usually fall down on either side that are reasonably undecided enough that they might wait to see whether the "other camp" has something exceptional to offer before making their purchase decision when there's a new big launch around the corner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I recently switched over to the SIII from the iPhone 4. Honestly, I'm not that impressed. Physically the device is great; I like the size of the screen and the finish is decent, but the screen sensitivity is sorely lacking compared to my 2 year old iPhone. I find myself having to use the back button all the time after clicking on the wrong links or wrong app icons. I don't remember ever having this problem on the iPhone. The battery life is also inferior, probably due to the screen-size and I don't want to have to lug around another battery every day.

I haven't tried the iPhone 5 yet as it hasn't been launched in Korea yet, but I seriously doubt that the iPhone 5 is an inferior product to the S III. There are some nice customizations you can do with Android phones, but if you want a phone that just "works", go with an iPhone.

<comment><USER21> I have never heard of an issue with screen sensitivity on Galaxy S3 from anyone before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe people simply prefer the GS3 to the iPhone 5? Could it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple.

</comment><comment><USER23> More than likely it is difficult to disentangle the fact that Samsung made an incredibly heavy marketing push for the GS3 right around the time that the iPhone 5 launched, so there are no statistics that will tell you whether it's because of the iPhone 5 launch that sales rose or because of the marketing timing.

</comment><comment><USER24> There was a similar post about Kindle.

It should be expected.

People wait to see what is available.

Of course there will be a flood of Amazon/Apple/Android sales.

This does not tell us which one got the most sales.

Regardless, Apple may of got the bigger profit.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is lame speculation over a small uptick. This does not deserve to be on the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the main reason is that the GS3 is mentioned in so many articles about the iPhone 5.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here in Australia Samsung has noticeably increased the advertising for the Galaxy S3 in response to the iPhone 5.

That seems like a much bigger reason for their increase in sales than anything else.

<comment><USER28> Here in Singapore, you don't see any iPhone 5 ads. But Samsung ads together with the three local telcos are everywhere. iPhone 5 sells itself as it is hot seller here. No doubt Samsung might sell more due to the ads and more models at lower costs.</comment></comment>


Google Health Goes Live - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/05/google-health-g.html <comment><USER2> why aren't they repeating "don't be evil" more often?

i can't see it anywhere on press releases, ghealth's privacy policy, developer policy, faq or help pages.

"evil site:<http://www.google.com/health/>" - did not match any documents.

i was about to sign up and fill up some forms, age, sex, etc. anyway i guess they might already be able to take a good guess at those, but giving this info to google made me think twice about it, a little "don't be evil" would've perhaps helped give me a little encouragement</comment>


The Bar Code, Which Changed Retailing, Turns 35  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/technology/26barcode.html <comment><USER2> UPC is 35. Other barcodes had been in use for years at that point.

</comment><comment><USER3> "the familiar format that uses 30 black and 29 white lines to convey 12 bits of data in binary code."

In Soviet Russia, there's only 4096 possible products. Luckily for us they're actually decimal digits: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Product_Code>

</comment><comment><USER4> I was wondering if there is a specific barcode for IPv6 so we can tag the world and scan it with our mobile phones, wherever we are.

Yes, there are many barcodes that can be used for that purpose, but I mean, can we hackers design a simple and specific barcode for IPv6? Circled, squared, linear? Bitcode, hexcode?

Emphasis: simple and specific.

Should we open an HN contest?

Reward: world recognition for a thousand years.

<comment><USER5> Great idea. The following is also of interest: [http://www.worldinternetcenter.com/Pubs/Pubs2004/feb05/IPv6v...](http://www.worldinternetcenter.com/Pubs/Pubs2004/feb05/IPv6vEPC.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> hi</comment>


A Good Read: Machine Learning and Web2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529321

<comment><USER2> I also bougth collective intelligence in action and algorithms of the intelligent web. Both are books from manning.com. I love those 2 books more than programming collective intelligence because I find them more complete and as easy to read.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good read for those who just want a broad overview and working code for some interesting machine learning problems. It's not too realistic, but will get the ball rolling. For those who want to delve further, I would suggest reading through the Netflix Prize forums and perhaps even try implementing some of the code thrown around there. You will learn a lot by tackling a problem of that scale.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting hands-on book. Does HN recommend any other project based books like this or PAIP? It would be a nice practice for us amateurs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would make a neat combination with newly-re-available Wikipedia data dumps: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1265138></comment>


C++ Parameter Declaration Tutorial: Purpose of Different References - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Cw3KFPh1A <comment><USER2> Nice video and cute examples. I have some disagreements though:

> "I find it to be a recommendable practice [when using an rvalue parameter] > to always clear the object before returning, unless you already explicitly > transferred the content ownership to another function or object before > returning. This enforces the principle that whenever you use std::move, you > can trust that the next time you access the object, it [is] in [a] blank > state, as if it was just default-constructed."

This sounds like a potential source of bugs. The only guarantee given by the standard library is that moved-from objects are in a _valid_ state, not a blank one. Making your private code uphold stronger invariants is only going to introduce confusion as to which functions do uphold it and which ones don't. Leave it to the code that std::moved to put the moved-from object into a specific state, if you need that.

> "You use rvalue references when you no longer need the contents of the > object, and you want to move, or pass forward, it to a function."

This is a bit backwards, because it suggests that it's the needs of the caller that decide the parameter passing style. Rvalue reference arguments should only be used if the function receiving the parameter _must_ move from the object. In practice, you should be writing this type of function very rarely, and clearly document the reason whenever writing one.

> "Pointers are like references, except more cumbersome and come with > limitations. Pointers are what you must use in C if you need to modify the > original value, but they are pretty much deprecated in C++, unless you have > a very very good reason to use them."

That pointers would be deprecated in C++ just isn't true. Passing a raw pointer is the preferred style when "no object" is a valid value. Raw pointers have historically been used for lots of things in C++, and it's true that _most_ of them are to be considered deprecated (e.g.: owning objects, pointing to C-style strings, passing arrays, etc.), but pointers as a whole are definitely not (and are unlikely to be in the future, even with std::optional).</comment>


A new Chrome stable release for Mac and Linux - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-chrome-stable-release-welcome-mac.html

<comment><USER2> As far as I can tell it's been more or less stable for a while now :)</comment>


All iPhone 6s reviews miss this crucial point about hidden tricks in 3D iMessage - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexcornell.com/apple-iphone-6s-review/ <comment><USER2> "It is not an attempt to garner page views using Apple keywords"

Yes, it is...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sarcasm my bro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ironic blog posts are not satire.</comment>


Why age in software is bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@davewiner/why-age-in-software-is-bullshit-2b28b2f4b101#.wbp7h3cts <comment><USER2> I think the author misses what is being said by the individuals making the 'age' comment.

I'm in my 20s and I've said this comment before plenty but it isn't in the context of someone being too old to ship code but instead the fact that as we age we usually take on additional commitments, responsibilities, etc.

All these extra factors often limit the amount of time that most people have to dedicate to coding.

<comment><USER3> So what you're saying is basically you have "no life", and you are willing to dedicate your waking hours to your job (or playing Pokemon Go). Been there done that, found out the hard way that it usually ends in a way that is not so advantageous to you. I am still writing code at 58 because it's what I like to do. I have founded, managed and CTO'ed. But when I code I feel better during the day, I feel like I have accomplished more, and I sleep a lot better then when I herded cats. Retirement is a slow death... I am going to be coding until I die, at least 30 more years!

<comment><USER4> mostly "ditto". 54.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its usually not the age. But its common for people effected to think that they are being discriminated because of their age.

There is a tendency for a lot of people to hang on to tools and ideas that worked for them in the past. e.g someone who comes from a relational world, finds it very hard to get used to nosql unless their boss gives them no choice.

<comment><USER6> The irony I find in this depiction is the "hot new" stuff in today's ecosystem is very often stuff that's already existed for 2-3 decades in some less trendy form, given a new brand identity (complete with cookie-cutter .io website), and grows a Twitter & conference clique around it as though it's being discovered for the first time.

"Reactive", "Streams", "Containers", "NoSQL", "Big Data", "Blockchain", the list goes on. I work, or have recently worked, in each of those problem domains to a non-trivial extent, so I'm absolutely no stranger to the leading edge of the marketplace, but I still find it amusing how gaga people get over the new branding, and I'm even more amused how indignant people get when you show them work from 15-20 years ago that was materially similar under the "hot new" brand name it had back then.

Sure the show might be new to a lot of people, but to a lot of other people it's just re-runs that have been in syndication for a long time with tired plot devices and predictable story arcs.

Reluctance to jump on the bandwagon may very well be rooted in the scar tissue built up the last time around, not purely reticence to try something new. They may just be withholding their enthusiasm until they try can something _actually new_.

<comment><USER7> What is your analogue to bitcoin from a decade ago ? Merkel trees are old (1979), Hashcash goes back to 1997 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash) But bitcoin is not just a rebranding of a combination of hashcash, merk trees, forth, pgp, BitTorrent.

Also what is the analogue to reactive in the past ? The main reason for reactive is different screen sizes and orientation of handheld devices. What similar problem would reactive have solved 2 decades ago ? There are a couple of references from 2001 and 2004 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design) , but really there wasn't a practical common use case before the iPhone in 2007 and ipad in 2010.

<comment><USER6> "Blockchain", not bitcoin, and "Blockchain" is quite literally a specific application of Merkle Trees and Merkle Proofs, and they've been used almost exactly like this in payments clearing & settlement + dispute systems for tranlog coherency checks and resolution for a long time.

"Reactive", as in [http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/](http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/), and it's manifestations in various Akka projects like [http://www.reactive- streams.org/](http://www.reactive-streams.org/). Reading the "manifesto" reads like somebody going to really, really extensive lengths to talk about Erlang without actually saying "Erlang" and that's been around publicly, along with its runtime semantics, since 1998.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd say the problem (which may be correlated with age) starts when we repeat "I know" too much and "I'm learning" too little.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think it's surprising that older people have the _ability_ to be so prolific. What's surprising is that they still have the _patience_ to put up with all of the BS that goes along with writing software. When you hit the ten thousandth broken library API or build-system idiosyncracy of your career, it's tempting to scream "Enough!" and retire to farm fish or something. Ditto for dealing with well-meaning users demanding features to support an impossible use case, or not-so-well-meaning haters trashing you on Twitter/HN/Reddit. If you can _only code_ , on what you want the way you want, without caring even one little bit if anybody uses or likes it, that might still be fun. Otherwise, all that other stuff gets pretty old, and that's more of a problem than _you_ getting old. As you see your friends starting to pull back or retire altogether, and you realize that you _could_ do the same, the idea gets pretty tempting even if you love to code.

BTW, since somebody's likely to ask, I'm 51.</comment>


Operation of a silicon quantum processor unit cell above one kelvin - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/hot-qubits-made-sydney-break-one-biggest-constraints-practical-quantum-computers <comment><USER2> As an Australian, I'm a little surprised, but also very glad, that Australia is able to do consistently world-leading quantum computing research. It is interesting to think about why this is. Looking into it further, there is a government funded program which has major universities working together ([https://www.cqc2t.org/](https://www.cqc2t.org/)). I think this is important in a relatively small country, otherwise you have research groups in a race to the bottom for limited funds.

Seeing this also speaks to the fact that Australian research has a lot of potential which isn't realised due to lack of funding, with levels well below other OECD countries [1]. The federal budget spends about the same amount on sicence research ($1.8 billion) as it does on the arts and sports. It's a very big missed opportunity.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2018/jul/10/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2018/jul/10/australias-spending-on-research-plummets-far-below-oecd- average)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> # Hot qubits made in Sydney break one of the biggest constraints to practical quantum computers

The unit cell developed by Dzurak's team comprises two qubits confined in a pair of quantum dots embedded in silicon. The result, scaled up, can be manufactured using existing silicon chip factories, and would operate without the need for multi-million-dollar cooling. It would also be easier to integrate with conventional silicon chips, which will be needed to control the quantum processor.</comment>


As Moore's law ends, brain-like computers begin - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/11251.html <comment><USER2> Moore's law will come to a end but as with other paradigms with computers when one ends another one starts and they continue to advance at a faster exponential rate.</comment>


No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/06/no-death-and-an-enhanced-life-is-the-future-transhuman <comment><USER2> No, the future is probably genetic engineering for better babies. Retrofitting old models will never work as well.

If you thought race was a problem, wait until we have multiple species of humans. Pfizer people may not interbreed with Novartis people.

<comment><USER3> Meanwhile, we are still coding throughout the very same interface as 40 years ago: a keyboard.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, the keyboards we had 30-40 years ago were far superior to almost all the ones we have today. They've been getting steadily worse and worse, and have reached a new low now with the ultra-thin-key, ultra-low- travel, flat-top "island" keyboards that laptops all have today.

<comment><USER5> How many of those laptops are actually targeted at coders?

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say they're "targeted at coders", but Macbooks seem to be very popular with them these days.

In fact, I don't exactly see coders being very discriminating on keyboard quality overall. The main people who seem to care a lot about keyboards (and who keep the high-end mechanical keyboard makers in business) are gamers, not coders.

<comment><USER5> _I wouldn 't say they're "targeted at coders", but Macbooks seem to be very popular with them these days._

Seemingly less and less so as time goes on.

 _In fact, I don 't exactly see coders being very discriminating on keyboard quality overall._

There's a reason why some coders are Thinkpad fans. You don't have to be very discriminating for coding, but a modicum of ergonomics does make a difference.

 _The main people who seem to care a lot about keyboards (and who keep the high-end mechanical keyboard makers in business) are gamers, not coders._

Interesting idea. I wonder what the percentages are of clicky keyboards versus switches like Cherry blacks?

<comment><USER4> >There's a reason why some coders are Thinkpad fans.

Some != majority. Sure, I've seen some who are Thinkpad fans (or, like me, Dell Latitude fans). But they're a minority. I'm sure I've seen more that were Apple fans, even the ones doing Linux coding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al > Kurzweil and his followers believe this turning point will be reached around > the year 2030, when biotechnology will enable a union between humans and > genuinely intelligent computers and AI systems.

"2030". They are deluded. We're not even close to that sort of understanding. We're not even vaguely close to "genuinely intelligent computers and AI systems" let alone the rest of it.

<comment><USER6> I'm not advocating for his 2030 date, but his reasoning for it directly addresses the concern you voice. His contention is that progress in a field happens at a superexponential rate, and that researchers and/or the public tend to estimate it at well less than exponential. He believes, and tries to make the case, that advances don't just advance, but feed into the infrastructure that drives faster advances.

Also, "around 2030" does run out to, say, 2035 if you push it. That feels less implausible to me than, say, 2030-01-01.

Again, I'm not saying he's right. I'm mainly saying that he expects your or my surprise when he opens his mouth, and has something like the explanation I sketched out at the ready.

<comment> Digit-Al That's all very well, but her is my objection (apologies in advance if I don't express my views in the clearest manner).

The objective of creating AI is to create a computer that is 'self aware'. The problem being that we have no way of defining self awareness. We humans have been struggling with the problems of self awareness for over 2000 years but still seem to be no nearer to coming up with any clear definition, explanation, or measure.

Even research using our latest, greatest, brain scanning and imaging technology instead of making things clearer seem to be muddying the waters even further by suggesting that our self awareness may, at least in part, be an illusion.

There is no test we can give right now that can prove beyond doubt that even another person is actually self aware. We all assume everyone else has the same sense of self awareness that we do, but we have no way of verifying that. And then look at something like the octopus. We have enough evidence from their behaviour to suggest that they may possibly have some form of self awareness, but they are so alien to us that we currently have no possible way of finding out.

So how are we supposed to replicate something that we don't understand, don't know how to recognise, can't measure, and don't even know if it exists?

Obviously, I could be wrong. In the last 50 years our world has been transformed beyond the most wild imaginings of our grandparents when they were children. But if you agree with my statements above (of course you may not agree) then you have to agree that 12 years seems insanely optimistic. Even 20 or 30 years seems rather optimistic to crack one of the most fundamental mysteries of our existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a standing bet that Kurzweil will die in my lifetime before he will be able to upload himself to a synthetic body with a friend of mine.

<comment><USER8> "I have a standing bet that Kurzweil will die in my lifetime before he will be able to upload himself to a synthetic body with a friend of mine."

My response to all things Kurzweil has always been barely interested dismissal.

However, a few years ago I read an in-depth piece, with interview, wherein he pinned almost all of his motivation on his early, traumatic experience of his own (beloved) fathers death.

Now my response is a very deep sadness for him. What he wants is so simple and easiy achievable - to have a child of his own.

Literal immortality (at the species layer, not the (cancerous) individual layer) was there for him all along - and it _included_ all of the love and care and devotion that he has spent his lifetime mourning.

<comment><USER9> Would you happen to remember where the interview was published ?

<comment><USER8> I think it may have been the New York Times sunday magazine ? Not that long ago - last two years, I think ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've not read the book quoted in the article, To Be a Machine, yet but another fascinating book on this subject is Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. I highly recommend it!

</comment><comment><USER5> The future never turns out how you think. "The street finds its own uses for things."

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

How about, "No Death, and No Life?" Sounds like a good title for a book or a TV show. Scenarios already come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, I believe the future is transhumanism. Then again, I also believe that and genetic engineering could fix a lot of social problems by making humanity adapt to our environment rather than the other way around.

For example, there are problems with obesity and poorer people having limited access to healthy food. Well, imagine if they didn't need to care what they ate?

If you could just eat whatever you wanted in any quantity and you'd never get things like diabetes or put on weight because of it? That'd be the kind of miracle human society could really benefit from. Same if exercise wasn't needed at all and people could just have a sedentary without any risk to their health. Ways to reduce or remove tiredness. The possibility of existing in a vacuum. The ability to survive far more trauma than originally possible, to the point you could be hit by a car at high speed and walk it off.

Make it so humanity goes beyond its limitations, not just perfects them. So genetic engineering and transhumanism are the default, not the outlier.

Is that crazy? Probably, but so is most science and technology when you think about it. Tell people a few hundred years ago about cars, planes, smartphones, the internet, virtual reality or anything else like that, and they'd think you were nuts too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not hugely into the whole transhumanism thing and I think that people who seriously consider living forever are deluding themselves, but I did get a magnet implanted into my finger once.

It was fun being able to pick up things like screws and small parts, and it was cool being able to feel when a laptop was about to slow down as the fans and sometimes hard drive spun up.

But I have to be honest, it was also stressful in a weird and latent way that I have trouble describing.

For one thing, my body can deal with a lot of problems, often without any sharp alerts that it is doing so. I accidentally cut myself? No problem, it'll be fine in a day or two. Whanged my elbow on a corner and bruised it? Not a problem. But if I slam the magnet in a drawer, that could easily require a trip to the ER and maybe even a lost or damaged finger. My body didn't care about its inert coating, but I doubt the immune system would appreciate a large disc made of neodymium, boron, and nickel.

Even if that weren't the case, I'm not sure if I could have stopped being aware of it. It was very solid, and its presence was almost insistent. Other attempts at taking advantage of haptics and neuroplasticity, like wearing garments with sensors and vibe motors all day and night, didn't give me the same sort of apprehension.

I never ran into any problems or pain with the implant, but when I eventually got it removed after a few years, I still felt enormous relief. The tech told me that the new ones are basically slivers which were much lower-profile, but it'd probably still lose its magnetism over time and they also said that they wouldn't have felt comfortable trying to remove one that they couldn't easily find.

That's just mildly interacting with what I guess you could call the "application layer" of my body. And people are seriously discussing things like cryogenics and brain uploading? I could be pessimistic, but it seems unlikely for this generation. Better to just keep striving for the benefit of those that follow, don't you think?

<comment><USER13> > I think that people who seriously consider living forever are deluding > themselves

Deluding themselves as far as the viability, or as far as whether it would be a good thing? I have serious doubts that it will happen in my lifetime, but I am definitely sad about that. I'd much prefer to have the option to live forever.

<comment><USER12> >Deluding themselves as far as the viability, or as far as whether it would be a good thing?

Both? I think that most people would like to avoid dying if you gave them the option, but even if it were possible, who's going to pay for that with all 7 billion of us and counting?

Nobody - there isn't enough money in the world. It'd just be yet another mechanism of multi-generational oppression and exploitation.

<comment><USER14> Your solution to oppression and exploitation is to kill everyone? To you, genocide is less immoral than oppression?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe I miss something, but why are transhumanists not talking about improvements in ways of thinking? Like getting rid of cognitive biases, unnecessary stereotypes etc? To me their goals sound like they work on replacing HW in order to "fix" broken SW. This might work short term, but living almost-forever with the same bad thinking habits... meh

<comment><USER16> It is very much a topic. Check for "moral enhancement" and "ethical enhancement".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the day it comes to you that living a longer, healthier life is something you'd like to do, that an extra year or ten of good health (or hell, why not more?) would be just peachy keen, think of the transhumanists - because you just became one. You saw a limit in the human condition, thought about what life would be like with that limit removed, and liked it.

Welcome to the party!

Transhumanism, make no mistake, is just a fancy name for common sense. Change for the better is good, right? Common sense. It's what we humans do in our scattered finer moments - we work to change things for the better. It's common sense to fetch in the harvest on wheels rather than on foot, and it's common sense to repair the biomolecular damage of Alzheimer's before the mind begins to rot. It's common sense to build perfect immune systems from nanomedical robots, and it's common sense to develop the technologies of regenerative medicine to their logical end.

It takes work, but what is work compared to a world of suffering? Choosing not to attain these goals makes about as much sense as standing out in the rain to spite yourself.

New technology cannot set slaves free, remove poverty brought of corruption, make the willfully blind see, or the unhappy bring themselves to good cheer of their own free will ... but it can remove the limits placed upon us by evolution, and it will one day give us all much, much more time in health and life to work on our other, very human issues. You can't rid the world of poverty when you're sick, decrepit and aged to death. The limits to our lives that we cannot negotiate away by talk and travel are the most confining, don't you agree?

Transhumanism, common sense with a slick name, is really simple humanism - which is also really no more than a name for common sense. It is only humanist to work to give people the choice to live without suffering, and without death. To live, for without life, there is nothing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kudos to The Guardian for violating Betteridge's law of headlines.

</comment><comment><USER19> Would you be familiar with the Roman god Saturn, who ate his children to keep them from usurping his power? Societies have long had problems with the most powerful members of their hierarchies hoarding power. And now they'll be the first to get to live forever?

<comment><USER14> So you're willing to euthanize everyone currently alive, as well as the countless billions that will be alive in the future, all based on the hypothetical risk of someone you don't like being in power? Good grief.

Tell me, what is it you believe that hypothetical future dictator will do that is _worse_ than killing billions?

<comment><USER20> Enslave billions. The dead don't feel; that's reserved for those who are alive.

<comment><USER4> Exactly how do you propose for an immortal dictator to "enslave billions"? Seriously, I want to hear your detailed answer here about how one person can do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Crackpots and philistines with money.

Here's a metaphysical puzzle for you. If we are just meat machines, as no doubt these transhumanists believe, and there is no teleology in nature, then how does one discern what is augmentation? Without teleology, such judgments are impossible in principle. The transhumanist might retort "Well, I think this and this is better". To that I respond: "Lo! Who speaks? Who be this I? Are you not but a machine? Are your preferences not as replaceable as anything else in that pile of parts only incidentally moving together? Replace those preferences to prefer no such transhumanist quackery."

There is zero intellectual sophistication in transhumanism, even less sophistication than there is in the bankrupt lick of a metaphysics it rests on.</comment>


The Black Hole Bomb and Black Hole Civilizations [Video, Kurzgesagt] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCdoCfw-bY <comment><AUTHOR> I really enjoy Kurzgesagt's videos. I believe this one is particularly well done, and look forward to learning more about the concept of "ringularities."</comment>


The Copenhagen Wheel - <AUTHOR> https://www.superpedestrian.com/ <comment><USER2> You will grin ear to ear the first time you ride one. Not your typical e-bike experience. Very natural flow as you ride. Gives you just the push you need. You can set how it behaves from the app. Worth the price of admission.

<comment><USER3> What about the extra weight?

For the price I can get quite a good light road bike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember this from Weeds</comment>