Mixed reality outfit Magic Leap nets $793.5M - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/view/news/264972/Mixed_reality_outfit_Magic_Leap_nets_7935_million.php <comment><USER2> I hope to be wrong, but secrecy like this usually doesn't bode well. Best case, I'm expecting something like Segway or Apple Watch -- overhyped from secrecy, but legitimate, but not all that amazing. Middle case is something like Theranos; not overt fraud from the beginning, but the result of a lot of pivots and coverup. But most often it is outright bad.

Short term practical or tactical secrecy, sure. And in some industries, probably not as bad a signal. But software-heavy hardware ecosystems aren't one of those.

Outside of wars, Ultra or Manhattan just aren't that good a way to work. Why cut yourself off from the global community?

<comment><USER3> I was, at one time very recently, very deep in the VR/AR space. It seems to me that there will be quite a bit of time before people accept projectors pointed at their eyeballs (or however you want to explain Magic Leap's "digital light field" technology).

$800M on $4.33B post- is a big chunk of a company, particularly one that does not have a working product demo yet. Maybe it'll all shake out positively, but I am of the opinion that this is not real.

Lastly, all of Magic Leap's demos are very clearly not using wearable hardware (and also not being demonstrated using any kind of light-accurate reproduction). For example, metallic effects usually require "black" as a shade and things like the Lumus Optical lenses cannot reproduce such an effect (despite being basically the cutting edge of lightfield reproduction).

In short, I am bearish on Magic Leap.

Also, I am super confused as to why Magic Leap is operating their own silicon fab... That seems crazy to me.

Edit: Fixed the $'s from VC-land.

<comment><USER4> There is some kind of irony in the fact that an augmented reality company seems so successful in presenting investors with an image that nobody else can see.

> Maybe it'll all shake out positively, but I am of the opinion that this is > not real.

But after all, isn't that the whole point of it? :) I wonder what kind of stuff they managed to project in the eyeballs of the VCs.

<comment><USER3> Cups of coffee...

<comment><USER3> I see a bunch of negative votes so I'll expand as I was not trying to be facetious or sarcastic.

The first magic leap demo I ever heard of (and, because I'm not under an NDA with them this is all hearsay) was a cup of coffee on a table. Put $WEARABLE on, now there are two cups. Which is real?

I can easily imagine that, were this convincing visually, VCs would surrender their wallets with aplomb.

<comment><USER5> It'd be fantastic if it turned out that the Magic Leap demos were all just magic tricks set up to make it seem like it was really advanced VR technology.

Ex: in this case, when you put the glasses on there's a moment of not being able to see anything, and they just put another real coffee cup on the table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This blows my mind. Not because of the amounts raised without a single released product: investors have shown a propensity to throw spectacular amounts of money at baffling ventures.

Instead, my shock is the implied burn rate of these raises. LinkedIn reports Magic Leap is between 201-500 employees. They are no indications of them mass- producing a product. No sales, and their marketing seems to be exclusively articles about the enormity of their rounds.

How, then, is a company raising 790M 1.5 years after raising 500M? What possible expenditures, without mass product development, sales and marketing, consumes finances at a rate that warrants these raises?

Or, alternatively, maybe the founders and employees simply despise maintaining ownership of their company.

<comment><USER7> I've asked myself the same thing. I think burn rate alone can't explain it, unless they are paying their employees way, _way_ over market rate.

Probably what they are planning to do with the money is a couple of acquisitions. I'd not be surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> TechCrunch had a piece on this today ([http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/02/ar- startup-magic-leap-raise...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/02/ar-startup- magic-leap-raises-793-5m-series-c-at-4-5b-valuation-led-by- alibaba/#.g65xml:lJY1))

I find it interesting that the top image (of the floating robot) has the text saying "no special effects" whereas the gif of the elephant in the hands (been available online for awhile) does not. This tells me that all the videos/gifs we've seen (the elephant, the whale splashing down thru the gym floor) are "aspirational" (AKA "bullshit").

Don't get me wrong, the floating robot is cool but this is doable on HoloLens (yet to ship but coming in Q1). Definitely seems like there's a real risk here of overhyping MagicLeap.

EDIT: Fixed the link to TechCrunch...If you saw the other link we're hiring :)

<comment><USER3> The floating robot is not doable on the hololens because metallic effects require black, which is not reproducible on the hololens display... Yes, I have seen the photos of hololens output that show black. I don't believe that's a reproducible effect on their wearable.

<comment><USER8> true about black so colors might look different.

<comment><USER9> You have no idea. You also have to consider the colors of real things behind your fake things.

<comment><USER8> one of your sentences is actually true.

<comment><USER3> If you don't have black you can't achieve metallic effects... If you disagree, please explain how it is possible to achieve said effect without black.

As far as I know, and I was pretty deep into this at one point, metallic requires black and without it you cannot achieve any sort of luster-like effects.

<comment><USER10> Could you provide a source for that? (not doubting you, just curious)

<comment><USER3> [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see- hard-...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar- anytime-soon/)

See the section labeled "See-through AR == additive blending only".

<comment><USER10> I meant your claim that "metallic requires black." I'm well aware that AR is only additive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the founder's own words:

[http://www.magicleap.com/#/blog/atoms-not- included](http://www.magicleap.com/#/blog/atoms-not-included)

</comment><comment><USER12> Someone else in this thread mentioned Theranos and while the two businesses are wildly different, I still think there's something to it: investors can be fooled by flashy presentations.

I'm going to continue to be suspicious of Magic Leap until I actually see something that delivers on the promises they are making. Luckily(!) for me, I don't have enough spare money to be an investor in these things anyway...

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still not seeing the usefulness of AR in the near term.(Disclosure: I think VR is here and ready with lots of useful possibilities).

I see AR being useful in verticals ie "pipe fitter" or "nurse".

As a general tool for everyone what is the problem solved?

"It's like an iWatch but in your vision all the time"

"you can enhance X with digital information"

"you can play games that somehow make sense in your ambient environment?"

I have not heard very many use cases that don't just sound like visual clutter for little benefit.

Balance that against what is likely to be more then putting on a pair of Raybans ie the battery pack and display bits.

What's the not-awkward input method that's even plausible? edit: Gestures have some serious downsides.

<comment><USER14>
        > I see AR being useful in verticals ie "pipe fitter" or "nurse".

I do think IT folks forget just how many nurses, doctors, pipe fitters, car mechanics, telephone engineers, etc etc etc are out there. Literally millions.

Hook these glasses up with google maps and other online databases will be neat.

<comment><USER15> I know someone who worked on a heads up display for paramedics. People have been trying to make these for a few years.

Just think how complicated it actually is for a nurse:

\- it's got to supply actually useful information that isn't fairly trivial to get by picking up a chart

\- it'll have to hook up with some sort of input device

\- are they carrying around the AR device and the input device at all times?

\- it's got to be wearable for 8 hours or it's completely pointless (you can't use it half the time if it's essential)

\- it's got to be light and durable

\- for almost every hospital it'll have to have specialized software written to integrate

\- an amazing UI to use it without touching anything as they can't keep cleaning their hands to use it

\- there's got to be total network coverage in every hospital room, it can't cut out in wi-fi deadspots (I have no idea how good this usually is)

And those are the easy problems I can think of without any particular domain experience. I imagine it will get a lot more complicated when you know what they actually do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me Magic Leap is an interesting test of the investment people at Google and Ali Baba. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but if Magic Leap is a spectacular failure, I think it will be a strong signal that Google and Ali Baba's investment groups are similar to the groups at other big tech companies. i.e. full of strong political players without much industry acumen.

I'm particularly biased though. I've always been a bit skeptical of the amount of money corporate development people make ... I feel like they don't bring that much value to the table as individuals, even when the corporate development function is essential.

When you meet a good engineer, lawyer, or salesperson, you can usually pretty quickly understand what they are bringing to the table. With investment people I feel like they just make decisions, and then they aren't often measured against what the results of those decisions are.

The people that should probably actually be corporate development people ... the ones that are unsure of themselves without sufficient data. The ones that listen quietly and form measured opinions. Those awkward types ... the ones with valuable insight ... I never see that type coming to visit our offices as part of the steady stream of investors.

All I see are well put-together people, with good personalities, strong handshakes, excellently tailored clothes, good presentation skills ... and a fair understanding of the industry ... plus maybe slightly above average intelligence. They are usually warm and personable though. Its clear they have that skill.

I have no idea why the CEOs select these people for the job though. Any one of our engineers if tasked to evaluate companies like ours, would ask better questions, would be more intelligent about figuring out what is our marketing fluff, and what is actually ready to go.

</comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone tried out this technology? What is it like? It's just so hard for me to imagine investing so many billions before any product is released

<comment><USER18> If they have, they won't be commenting here. MagicLeap locks everyone up with an NDA.

<comment><USER19> Is this another Theranos? I hope not but all we are hearing are promises, NDAs and big rounds/valuations for a product not yet on the market. One kinda grows suspicious after so many howls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am happy to see they pulled this magnitude of investment. Curious why? There are exactly two possibilities:

1\. The product is developed and released in a few years, its amazing, and everyone is happy.

2\. It sucks, investors lose their money.

#1 is a win for me, #2 is a who cares.

<comment><USER21> > #2 is a who cares.

It's a very shortsighted reasoning. If this turns out to be a completely lost investment, investors will become wary of investing in VR startups, which will have for consequences less R&D jobs in virtual reality (which itself will decrease negotiating leverage of all R&D engineers), and less VR products, sold at a more expensive price.

I don't know anybody who works at Magic Leap, but I'd rather prefer they don't waste all that money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This can't possibly just be a hardware play. This investment would buy 1.3 million Oculus Rifts at retail price. At component prices and figuring economies of scale lets say it could fund the construction of perhaps 5 million units. Are there really 5 million people waiting to buy an AR device? Google Glass sold perhaps 50,000 units--has the market somehow grown by a factor of 100x in the past couple of years? I just don't see enough people wanting to own this tech. Not now, not even in 10 years.

The more likely possibility in my mind is media (this becomes the thing that replaces 3D movies or 3D TV) where they collect a royalty on everyones content, or perhaps theme parks (they are in Florida after all). A Hogwarts where you could actually see the spells you cast, or an Imagineered experience where you could walk through Mary Poppins' animated countryside might be capable of generating enough revenue to justify this.

<comment><USER23> I agree with much of what you're saying. However I'm not sure your comparison with Google Glass is fitting. The market for a functional Google Glass might also have been a lot bigger than 50 000. Not a lot of people outside the tech- environment knew a whole lot about it, and there weren't really an eco-system around it since it was never a consumer-grade product.

So I think the market is bigger than previous numbers indicate, however I'm not sure how close to perfection it would need to be to show it's true colors. Hopefully the launch of Oculus and Vive might give us an indicator this year.

(As an anecdote,) personally I would want something like this if it actually had enough content to let me reuse the product without indefinitelly replaying tech-demos. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting comment thread from r/oculus about this announcement:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/43tehp/magic_leap_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/43tehp/magic_leap_raises_794_million_and_announces_mixed/)

</comment><comment><USER25> This truly must be the second coming of Jesus Christ. Billions of dollars in investment and nothing to publicly show for it yet.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe they are building something like those in eye projectors that were featured in a couple of episodes of Black Mirror.

<comment><USER10> Their form factor is a headset/glasses of some sort

<comment><USER27> No, last time they did a real (aka not a fake PR YT clip) demo their form factor was a giant table with a Phoropter like strap on producing low res single color image.

<comment><USER10> I meant as a consumer product, not as a current prototype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For those wondering what the tech does here's their demo video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0-JRa9n94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0-JRa9n94)

(the demo with the robot and solar system)

quite cool but I'm not sure how that converts in to a product people buy

</comment><comment><USER29> It's going to work but it's not going to work amazingly so, probably just suffering from a low FOV. With that said, there's too much money and too many people being hired for this to fail incredibly hard; it just wouldn't make sense.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there anything stopping these guys from covering the whole view field ?

I've tried a number of VR headsets and they all feel like a stopgap solution, there has to be something better than wearing 2 x 4" screens mounted in a cone on your head....

<comment><USER31> This is AR, not VR, right? The two are quite different. VR does not aspire to be AR. It seeks to completely replace the world around you, not just add onto it.

From what I understand, upcoming VR headsets like the Rift and Vive have pretty solid FOVs, but Microsoft's HoloLens AR headset has a significantly more limited FOV.

<comment><USER9> _Microsoft_ does. ;) AFAIK that's because they're trying to keep the price- point low, since they're aiming for consumers.

Edit: AFAIK, the tech they're using can support a wider FOV, but then the price jumps pretty quickly. I definitely do NOT know for sure, however; that's just what we figured when they were first announcing.

<comment><USER10> Microsoft could slightly enlarge the Hololens FOV for a significant increase in cost, but it still wouldn't be good. They would have to change the display technology they use to have something immersive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any more info or examples (demo, video, etc) of Magic Leap available anywhere?

Every article has the same "mini elephant in hands" picture. I've never seen anything else.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't think "nets" means what you think it means.

<comment><USER34> It's actually ironic, most people seem to think:

"getting investment" === "success"

Even my JavaScript runtime knows better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> AR plus [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field)

</comment><comment><USER36> So far we've only seen MS's AR offering via Hololens.

Has anyone tried the ex-Valve AR system? I think it's called castAR.

<comment><USER9> Both Daqri and ODG have had floor demos.

CastAR is pretty neat and damn simple, although you have to prepare the space. If I had to bet on a _consumer_ AR technology, I'd probably bet on CastAR, although I haven't checked up on them in awhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> sounds like money laundering</comment>


DoD Wants Help with "Predictive Health" (Scroll Down) - <AUTHOR> https://diu.mil/work-with-us/companies/cso-solution-brief <comment><USER2> I've worked on a project with DIU. I was really impressed with the process and how they short circuited the often long and bureaucratic process of getting new technology into the gov.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight! Any details of the project or process you can share?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> if you scroll down you'll find a funded opportunity to work on a healthcare ML project, incidentally backed by the DoD, which as you know has a pretty awkward relationship with SV (including non-unique URLs). But in this case, they're trying to pay people to hunt cancer, other healthcare challenges.

This bit is fairly unique to the OTA contract vehicle that Defense Innovation Unit uses, and I suspect of significant interest to start-ups:

"Companies are advised that any Prototype Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) awarded in response to this Area of Interest may result in the award of a follow-on production contract or transaction without the use of further competitive procedures."

If you have a look here (1), you'll see the follow-on production contracts can be quite substantial.

(1) [https://aaf.dau.edu/contracting- cone/ot/prototype/](https://aaf.dau.edu/contracting-cone/ot/prototype/)

<comment><USER3> I mean, it's incidentally backed by the DoD, but it makes sense. Between Tricare and the VA, the U.S. Military is one of the largest single payer healthcare systems in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The interesting project that seems only fitting to google or amazon is the collation of ALL data in the world regarding threat analysis. Seems like the bellingcat scenario writ large.

<comment><USER5> Google tried this with the original variant of Chronicle and failed.

Threat analysis does _not_ play well with common types of AI/ML applications because the problem space changes so frequently with the design of avoiding predictability. You can gain "awareness" of events using AI/ML (e.g., this road suddenly has tanks moving across it), but it's tough to call that a "threat" (maybe other intel told the analyst those tanks were supposed to be there). Compound that problem to "the world" or even "an entire country" and you run out of compute real quick.

Most solutions err on the side of just popping up alerts but don't identify "threats" until an analyst looks at them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know of this project (scroll down to #7) and I've met (online / video conference) the person coordinating it. He is damn impressive.

</comment><comment> blaser-waffle What is the DIU? Is that DARPA by another name?

<comment><AUTHOR> DARPA explores the art of the possible.

DIU is more like YC with deeper pockets. Replace Paul Graham with Ash Carter _. They have government customers with requirements and their job is to find companies who are capable of building them. They are more interested in the people than the product. They don 't care about the prototype MMPRG that pits cats vs dogs on your cell phone, they care about the distributed systems engineers who built it. So DIU is staffed by scientists, engineers and military operators who have proven their ability to execute at an exquisitely high level.

_Ash Carter was Obama's last SECDEF. He got a Rhodes scholarship and instead of going to Oxford to get a master's, he went to Oxford and got a PhD in theoretical physics (in 3 years). He was instrumental in the MX missile basing decision, the Nunn-Luger denuclearization deal, correcting the mistakes that bogged down the F35 deal, and much of the weapons developments, nuclear and conventional, in the DoD for the last 40 years. On his way out the door he created the Defense Innovation Board, which led to the development of the JAIC and continues to guide both DIU and the JAIC.</comment></comment>


Nikola Tesla Wasn't God And Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/ <comment><USER2> Little story:

So I walk into a bar in Belgrade, Serbia. Turns out to be a private party, lot's of drinking and merry-ment but my girl and I felt a bit out of place. Just before we turned for the door a man pulled me by the shoulder to the bar and started asking what we were doing there, real intimidating-like.

He said we could have drinks on him but I felt a little like we didn't want to be indebted to this guy. On the other hand I felt I had no choice.

He had asked me what I'd studied and I mentioned physics. He got the bar- tenders attention, got me a drink, and asked me "so... you say you know something about physics... tell me: 'what nationality was Nikola Tesla?'"

I responded "Croatian" of course. Suddenly the faces of the man, the bartender, and (so it seemed) the rest of the bar too went very gloomy, eyes piercing into me like shots of raiki (the liquor they drink).

I learned that night that the Serbs claim Tesla was a Serbian who lived in Croatia. The Croatians and Serbs (who hate each other very much) both claim him as their national heros.

Lessons:

\- if you're in Serbia, Tesla was a Serbian (and a god)

\- if you're in Croatia, Tesla was a Croatian (and a god)

\- if you're anywhere else, well I guess now I know he wasn't god

<comment><USER3> Well, Tesla really was a Serbian - his father was in fact, a Serbian Orthodox priest, so the documentation on this is clear.

Of course, since he was born into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and studied in Graz, we might as well let the Austrians take credit, as the Austrians really need it (what's Austria's greatest accomplishment? convincing the world that Mozart is Austrian, and Hitler is German!)

But really, he did his best work as an American, so USA! USA! USA! :)

<comment><USER4> Seriously? Economics (von Mises? Morgenstern?), engineering (Ferdinand Porsche? Valier?) philosophy (Popper?), physics (Boltzman? Doppler? Mach? Pauli?), mathematics (heard of this guy Gödel?), genetics (Mendel?), etc.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Austrians>

<comment><USER3> von Mises: Galician Jew from Lvov (now a part of the Ukraine)

Oskar Morgenstern: German

Ferdinand Porsche: German

Valier: never heard of this guy until I looked him up just now; a true Austrian - albeit born in Italy and worked in Germany. Damned shame he died so young.

Karl Popper: Jew

Ludwig Boltzmann: the second real Austrian on this list.

Christian Doppler: another real Austrian...

Ernst Mach: Volksdeutsche from what is now Czech Republic.

Wolfgang Pauli: Czech-Jew, and related to Mach.

Kurt Gödel: German AMERICAN, F YEAH!! :)

Gregor Mendel: Volksdeutsche, from Silesia (now part of Czech Republic)

So I see only 3 Austrian on this list!

P.S. the Brits/Finns/Ukrainians/Russians always make a good joke at Germans' expense, but Austria always gets a free pass... I'm trying to right that wrong! :)

<comment><USER5> > Karl Popper: Jew

If you are going to assert that Jews cannot be Austrian, you may as well go all the way and give Hitler credit for being Austrian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I liked the play-by-play refutation of the comic, he really researched the whole thing (so I didn't have to). I learned some new things!

I enjoyed the tone of the comic, however, even if it was inaccurate or disputable or at times just plain wrong. For me, Edison is one of those figures, like Christopher Columbus, or George Washington, that you learn about every single year growing up, since kindergarten, and whose myth is so grand and ubiquitous that every teacher I had from elementary school up until junior year physics said the exact same thing about him. Tesla was just another of a dozen names in the textbook.

So in a way I understand the sentiment. You grow up being told that this is guy, Edison, is the most awesome inventor in the history of America. And because of that I always felt a certain distrust about his accomplishments (even if I'm wrong), because so much of what my teachers taught me growing up turned out to be wrong.

<comment><USER7> _You grow up being told that this is guy, Edison, is the most awesome inventor in the history of America._

Well, consider this. Let's suppose Tesla was actually the most awesome inventor, and Edison was second. Which do you want to show children? The one who was a genius, or the one who made no bones about the fact that hard work was the main ingredient to his success?

In other words, do we teach children that being smart is important, or do we teach them that hard work is important?

<comment><USER5> Tesla worked tirelessly as well. Edison's clear superiority over Tesla was in business financing. I guess that's the lesson children need to learn?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a great biography of Edison which was very eye opening to me - I did not realize how many patents he held or how many other inventions and innovations on other work he had made beyond the longer burning commercial lightbulb. <http://refer.ly/a09m>

Just in case you don't read the book, there is a story where they first got the lightbulb to burn for a long time... I think it was 30-something hours. And they just stayed awake sitting there in amazement watching it burn until it burned out. I feel like that awe is so in the spirit of today's modern startups when we first launch or discover something. When they "launched" the new lightbulb they strung them up all over the yard of Edison's house, and people came driving up at night for the event and it was like magic. I would give anything to have seen that.

I think its really cool that he improved on other people's inventions, helping make things like the telegraph and typewriter into practical, affordable, useful tools that lots of people could buy. That might not be as grand as making brand new things, but it has a huge impact on human life. He also created the phonograph, the first idea of "records" (wax scrolls) and did a ton of work on early motion pictures. The list just goes on and on, learn about him, you'll be surprised to find that what they taught you in school was just surface-level and there is really so much more there.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Is it possible – just possible – that Edison honestly believed that AC was > dangerous and honestly did not think it should be use?

This strikes me as pretty naive. Edison had the patents that effectively controlled the market for DC electricity. He would have been a Carnegie or a Rockefeller had DC been adopted. He had such an extreme conflict of interest that it's unreasonable to assume good faith.

<comment><USER10> DC power distribution.

In the beginning DC dominated because of technical reasons. Efficient AC motors and generators were just getting invented eand transformers weren't that good.

And for various reasons some applications still use DC motors - for example only in robotics, servomotors; but consider that in the last 20 years do things like air-conditioners and elevators start to use AC motors (because of the efficiency made possible with solid-state inverters).

<comment><USER11> It sounds like AC disrupted the DC market. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me that Edison didn't want to be disrupted and took legal action, not unlike how it happens today in many industries.

<comment><USER12> Another example of how patents actually hinder and harm innovation. Which is not surprising when you start to think of them as government granted monopolies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >>What's more, Edison was haunted by Dally's death to the end of his days. It agonized him. While Dally was alive and suffering, Edison kept him on the payroll and took care of all of his expenses until the day he died. In the early 20th Century, let me assure you that keeping employees on the payroll who couldn't work was not a common practice. <<

I read in one of his biographies that in the latter years he kept a lot of employees, against his son's wishes, who were basically doing nothing for sentimental reasons because they had been with him in the early days.

<comment><USER14> It's called equity now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oatmeal's tactic to go viral was simple: create a good looking comic and express an extreme view, one that moves you psychologically and you think, "wow is that true? I didn't know that and I bet none of my friends do". Well played Oatmeal.

<comment><USER16> Oatmeal reminds me of Coding Horror: usually unoriginal, but adept at packaging content in a way that generates widespread appeal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't understand why the writer is reacting so much to the comic. Sure, it uses blunt language, but is the writer related to Edison distantly or his childhood hero or something?

Unlimited wireless electricity, among other Tesla's inventions are still mind boggling 100 years later. He drove a car with an electric engine, powered wirelessly, over 100 years ago.*

What have we done since?

From a more day to day perspective:

\- Marconi's patents for inventing radio were overturned in Tesla's prior invention of radio.

\- Inventor of Lasers

\- Remote Control

I think we've gotten over the light bulb. Still, the disposable lightbulb sells and sells, a testament to Edison's business mind.

Based on the number, and staggering impact of each of Tesla's inventions, I don't believe Edison could spell Tesla on his best day; especially where it camee to innovation and creating things that hadn't existed before, let alone imagined.

The main question about Edison vs Tesla is, why no one knows who Tesla is even though he was at least an equal to Edison, if not arguably more.

* There's some argument about this occurring but there are also media reports that exist.

<comment><USER18> Tesla did not invent Unlimted wireless electricity. He got low efficiency wireless power transfer working, but never worked out that inducing a current acts as a drain on the source aka you can use a high tension power line to light a few light bulbs just fine but the power company can measure the drain on the line. IMO, his problem was he was getting such low efficiency transfers that the drain was not obvious.

PS: If you still think his idea of charging the ionosphere could work, watch this video. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhZvyGtMrk> But, you can see people walking around the field prevents the bulbs from lighting up. Just, ignore the audio on this as they don't know what their talking about.

<comment><USER19> Tesla may have talked about ionizing the atmosphere in his earlier patents which required raising the termination of the antenna miles into the atmosphere, but it's clear from his later writings, especially "tesla on his work with alternating currents", that later iterations called for preventing the energy from leaking into the atmosphere as much as possible. You can see from the design of the toroid on top of the final proposed magnifying transmitter, which is covered with half spheres to increase the surface area, thus reducing the electrical tension at each point on the surface, reducing the possibility of breakdown. (ionization)

Lighting flourescent bulbs with high frequency rf energy is nothing special, and really has nothing to do with serious discussion of tesla. In tesla on his work with ac this is what he refers to as "parlor tricks" along with the opposite spectrum of rf energy, the single extremely large capacitive discharge, which he could vaporize wires and sheets of tinfoil with.

Tesla on his work with ac was not available until the mid 90s, and the resurgence of interest in tesla in the 80s was not able to benefit from the information, thus much of the experimentation today hasn't taken into account what tesla actually said. These "parlor tricks" are what the wireless energy charger people are pushing today, and it's laughable. It's not at all what tesla was talking about.

<comment><USER18> Look, he was a pioneer the only thing he could consult with to double check his ideas was reality. So, he made some bad assumptions and said some things that where less than accurate. That in no way takes away from what he accomplished, but just because his comtemeratires had no idea what was going on does not mean he has a trove of secret knowledge that we still don't understand.

Study electrical engineering then go back and study the man. It's a more interesting story, and just because he made some mistakes does not mean you need to make the same ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Edison always reminds me of Steve Jobs.

EDIT: 1)Mocking existing/others' technologies/inventions just to claim theirs is better, even while its not. 2)Marketing skills 3)Focused on sales.

Sorry for upsetting you, fanboys ;)

<comment><USER21> No, he's more like Bill Gates.

Tesla/Jobs are driven by a desire to change the world. Edison/Gates by the desire to own the world. You can see the difference in all the decisions Apple made in its history, often making choices of design purity over market dominance. It ultimately dominated by sticking to its design principles, showing that sometimes the long-view wins.

I think Tesla would have thrived if he could have gone to Jobs instead of Edison for support.

<comment><USER20> First of all, I don't want to land up in a Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs argument. I strongly believe both have done remarkable things in different ways. Second, please stop claiming "Jobs has changed/has a desire to change the world". For America, it maybe true, but not for the rest of 'THE WORLD'.

Nokia/Samsung/etc still lead the sales in Asian countries, for instance.

Third, I 'personally' think its a good thing that Tesla didn't meet Steve J. Well, look at what XEROX is now. That is all I can say.

<comment><USER22> > For America, it maybe true, but not for the rest of 'THE WORLD'.

Apple's influence is very noticeable in other developed countries too. Tablets and app phones (except for Windows Phone) are all heavily inspired by iOS devices. On the desktop it's similar, but not as visually obvious. Unit sales are not the way to measure this.

Of course, that still only covers the _developed_ world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I long waited for something like that. Good summary in the forbes article and even better links to other authors.

The hive minds opinions (reddit _cough_ ) regarding Edison/Tesla always reminded me a bit on the absurd "Moon landing history theme ride" in Futurama or the UN-Dinosaur-War-against-Nazis in "Idiocracy".

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm glad the writer enjoyed taking the piss out of The Oatmeal, but serious articles responding to a mostly-tongue-in-cheek webcomic seem to have missed the point.

I wonder if he'll write an article next about how working from home doesn't actually destroy our abilities of communication and continence.

<comment><USER25> Really? I don't quite understand how you're using "tongue-in-cheek" here, but I didn't take the article to be sarcastic at all. I'm not an avid reader of the comic, but it reads to me like someone who's a passionate fan of Tesla, making a sincere argument for Tesla's importance relative to Edison (and further, making an argument against revering Edison at all), and then going so far as to thank him.

I don't know enough about it to have a position on who's more correct, but the fact that it's a webcomic, and therefor somehow "unserious," doesn't imply that the author doesn't believe what he's saying. If the point is being missed, if it's not that Tesla is an overlooked genius who deserved, and deserves, more admiration, what is the point, exactly?

<comment><USER24> If you take this particular comic in the context of the rest of The Oatmeal, it seems clear (to me, at least) that the author likes hyperbole for comic effect. Maybe I'm wrong: maybe this is the one instance where he's totally and completely sincere in his approach with no exaggeration, but that strikes me as unlikely.

<comment><USER25> This is a bit straw man; no one ever said he wasn't exaggerating. The author isn't objecting to some precisely calibrated sentiment. He's disputing the premise: that Tesla is singularly important, and that Edison is vastly overrated. The author is exaggerating or effect, but the effect sought is to make a case that isn't sarcastic, but rather quite sincere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting, if only because I've always been fascinated by the time period and events surrounding the adoption of electricity.

A really interesting book about Edison and Tesla is "Empires of Light" by Jill Jones.

</comment><comment><USER21> Tesla vs Edison is my favorite Drunk History: [http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history- vo...](http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history-vol-6-w-john- c-reilly-crispin-glover)

Duncan Trussell clearly disagrees with the OP. In other words, the OP is anti- oatmeal and anti-booze. What is wrong with him?

<comment><USER27> Edison may not have electrocuted the animals in the video, but he fried an elephant with AC: [http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayint...](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _"This was the fate of a lot of brilliant researchers in the early days of radiation. Like Marie and Pierre Curie, for example."_

That's funny. I didn't know Pierre had any long-term, serious problems with radiation. I thought he got run over before the symptoms started showing up.

</comment><comment><USER29> When I was a lazy, precocious child, I had my mother and experimental scientist father each repeat Thomas Edison's "My genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration", _over and over again_. If other geeks are like me, they probably grew up hating Edison's guts. It might not be true but I can understand the impulse to come to the conclusion that Edison was evil and the inspired Tesla was good.

Some math geeok have enjoyed calling Évariste Galois a "hero of the revolution", bringing mathematics to the people. It's a nice myth but like the myth of Tesla, probably not quite the full story.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89variste_Galois>

<comment><USER7> I always thought the vilification of Edison was pretty ridiculous, myself. For heaven's sake, if nothing else respect the man for the work he put into giving us the light bulb.

<comment><USER30> It's true he did a great number of things, but let's not forget this guy wasn't really a saint either:

 _Tesla claimed he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy. According to Tesla, Edison remarked "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you - if you can do it".[36] This has been noted as an odd statement from an Edison whose company was stingy with pay and did not have that sort of cash on hand.[37] After months of work when Tesla finished the task and inquired about payment Edison claimed he was only joking replying, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor".[38][39] Edison offered a $10 a week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary, but Tesla refused it and immediately resigned.[36]_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Working_for_Edison...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Working_for_Edison_in_France_and_the_U.S)

So, yeah he does sound like a CEO

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm glad a publication like Forbes is picking up on such internet phenomenon and setting things straight. We need this more than ever.

This is not much different than Steve Jobs vs. Dennis Ritchie.

<comment><USER32> This could not be further from Steve Jobs vs Dennis Ritchie.

In fact there is no Steve Jobs vs Dennis Ritchie.Tesla vs Edison however was very real.

<comment><USER31> There will be in about 25 years.

Beginnings of which have already been pointed out by that Facebook picture that went viral, the one that tries to contrast their contributions and their fame.

<comment><USER33> This is even more ridiculous than Tesla vs. Edison, because Ritchie and Jobs had almost nothing to do with each other. Their only real relation is that they died in the same month.

The viral facebook picture you cite is comparable to one saying that Ritchie was just stealing the innovations of Turing. Or that Ritchie was just a thief of the game changing ideas of John Backus.

At least Tesla and Edison were working in the same space at the same time frame on similar problems.

<comment><USER31> 1\. They both worked in tech.

2\. Think of the comparison as Engineer vs. Designer/Inventor(because this IS the legacy of Steve Jobs when looked at as a role model).

3\. If you're REALLY hard pressed for details then...iOS is a descendent of Unix. Everything Apple runs on C.

I can appreciate why it could be difficult to abstract the two men to the level at which I make the comparison. But you must ask yourself why did someone, Forbes in this case, have to make the effort to set straight the details of Tesla vs. Edison when they are general knowledge to begin with. Why did that misleading poster promoting Tesla go viral? Its because details rarely matter. What matters is what Tesla and Edison represent - Edison is seen as rich and powerful while Tesla is the viewed as lost soul whose sole vice was science.

Tesla died alone and still in-debt. This fuels our current perception of a true scientist/engineer/maker, unadulterated by desire except for truth that is science. He is an inspiration.

Edison's practicality and willingness to use business (as a tool) to promote his work is not viewed kindly by posterity. Edison was also a great inventor but falls short, at least in our eyes, when contrasted against Tesla. Where did his practicality to invent of people rather than science come from? His first patent, an electronic voting machine, did not sell (because, I THINK, they could not fudge the numbers with it). So he resolved to only work on things that people want.

And thats really all there is to it.

It really boils down to one question: why didn't Dennis Ritchie achieve greater fame and money than earned by Steve Jobs? "Thats the way the world works" or any variant thereof is not an acceptable answer.

<comment><USER5> Because Dennis Ritchie didn't have an interest in marketing or starting a business. That was easy.

<comment><USER31> And now you are doing for DR vs. SJ what Forbes did for the other two!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The Oatmeal wrote a response to the Forbes article here --> <http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response>

</comment><comment><USER35> Maybe this awesome illustration by Travis Pitts gives a good picture of how people see Tesla [http://www.flickr.com/photos/zom- bot/7227505456/sizes/o/in/p...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/zom- bot/7227505456/sizes/o/in/photostream/) :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Best Tesla reading I've found is Mark Seifer's book "Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla". The audio book is excellent as well. Gives great insight into Tesla's personality and many events in history and the people around him.

</comment><comment><USER37> if it was just a grudge match between tesla and edison i could respect edison a little more. it is possible to get so obsessed that he would have a blind spot and go out of his way to engage a competitor. think steve jobs promising to go nuclear on android. but edison went out of his way to profit from the work of Georges Méliès. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Distributio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Distribution)

</comment><comment><USER38> This seemed relevant: <http://unfunnythings.tumblr.com/post/1312737586/theoatmeal>

</comment><comment><USER39> If the common opinion is here:

        .

and you want it to be here:

                 .

sometimes you have to pull this hard:

                             .

</comment><comment><USER40> And Forbes isn't the Bible, even if they think they are.

</comment><comment><USER41> Tesla was far smarter than Edison was. Tesla's biggest mistake was allowing himself to work for JP Morgan. Morgan didn't want that wireless junk ("Where do you put the meter?") and was happy to let Tesla work himself into obscurity while the metered, wired system we know today was put into place.

Tesla became aware of the position he had placed himself in and his work became focused on leaving his research to us, the future. I hope we listen because he knew what he was doing.

<comment><USER42> > Morgan didn't want that wireless junk

Good for him: It's physically impossible.

<comment><USER30> An honest question: Why is wireless broadcast of electricity physically impossible?

<comment><USER42> Because the power of electromagnetic radiation (energy per unit area perpendicular to the source) drops off proportional to the inverse square of the distance. So, at one unit away it's a reference for full power, at two units it's at one-quarter power, and three units it's at one-ninth power, and so on. This is the fatal flaw with Tesla's scheme: By simple geometry, you're pouring power into space and you need massive input to get any output at all at an appreciable distance.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law>

The WiTricity project you may hear of does things based on a completely different technical footing, which is more efficient but less broadly useful. For example, with the WiTricity technology, power receivers can't be any more than a quarter-wavelength from the transmitter, which means that they can't be any further away than a few meters. Definitely _not_ what Tesla had in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The author doesn't take the genius and import of the AC motor seriously, therefore I can't take him seriously. There are relatively few authentic geniuses in history; people who provide crucial fundamental insight that others just can't. Issac Newton was one. Euler was one. Tesla was one.

<comment><USER43> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Won't read. Disagree with title.

</comment><comment><USER45> It sounds like someone should re-read the history books that were not written by Edison. No Tesla wasn't a god, but the fact that most of Tesla's inventions still power your life in a lot of aspects should tell you how awesome the man is.

Judge a man by his work, not by his rhetoric</comment>


Apple Patents 3D Glasses - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1265366/iSpecs-Apple-design-3D-glasses-watch-films-move.html?ITO=1490

<comment><USER2> Great! Just what we need - more disoriented people on the streets. However useful the iPhone/iPods maybe, the sight of white headphones makes me jump. It's too bad that we can't go on for a little bit meditating with the sounds of the day.

The saddest thing I saw was an elderly couple walking side by side in a wooded path; both were listening loudly to their iPod Touches blithely ignoring the beauty around them. Have we become such callous beings that we need isolation from the world with the help of these white headphones?

Besides my rant, 3D is cool, but it'd be sad to see everyone walking around wearing 3D glasses all day ignoring even more of the world.</comment>


The Data Behind Purchasing Behavior at UserVoice – Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://500.co/2013/07/19/the-data-behind-purchasing-behavior-at-uservoice-pricing-for-conversion-part-ii/

<comment><USER2> Two points stuck out at me here:

> We formalized a process to enable our customer team (account reps & support) > to give anyone trial extensions if they had a real need... folks that > received a trial extension were 2.5X more likely to convert and 5X more > likely to upgrade at some future point.

I'm glad there's data (at least for one company) to support what was always my intuition. Many companies are hesitant to offer a trial extension, but the cost of doing so in most cases seems absolutely trivial. Now that at least some data is out there, perhaps more people will adopt this pattern.

> Another successful change was to change how we handled existing paid > accounts that had a billing issue and were to be downgraded. In the past we > would just downgrade those accounts to a Free plan, send an email and that > was it. From talking to some customers we realized that some people would > get downgraded and not notice that their functionality had changed.

I wonder, isn't there some way you could know ahead of time that the account might experience billing issues and send them a warning email _before_ their account is downgraded? Assuming you have their credit card information, at least one issue you could anticipate is their card's expiration. As a customer, I'd prefer the heads-up notice as opposed to something after-the- fact. My takeway instead of "make it obvious when people are auto-downgraded" would be, "prevent people from being auto-downgraded at all," if you can.

<comment><USER3> "Many companies are hesitant to offer a trial extension, but the cost of doing so in most cases seems absolutely trivial."

I totally agree with you that this is crazy. Not only is the cost trivial, but you've potentially spent a ton of money to get them using your app! Recovering this sale is unspeakably cheaper than acquiring a totally new customer.

The counterpoint could be that by asking for a trial extension, they've clearly signaled that they value the product. Perhaps with a nudge they will get out their credit cards.

But if the app is doing its job, they'll be more engaged at the end of 2 months, so it should be an easier sale and one month's revenue will come out in the wash. This seems to match UserVoice's experience, where conversions from this group were 2.5x higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like almost all SaaS pricing misses the golden rule of pricing: price what the market will bear.

What I believe this implies is roughly 3 tiers: \+ $0 (maybe up to $10 or $20/month) for bootstrappers & micro businesses \+ $10-500/month for companies with a little bit of funding or a marginally profitable small business \+ big bucks for well-funded or highly profitable companies

Then you design the packages based specifically on what those customer types need. Try to avoid stopping out a user based on usage. Keep general features available to all. The obvious features to vary in the tiers are those having to do with administration which are a natural for larger companies.</comment>


Npm-to-git – a tool to circumvent the NPM registry and use Git repos directly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zsck/npm-to-git <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the developer of this thing, by the way. Ten points to the first person to point out the ironic twist in the tool's implementation.</comment>


Preview of Google TV add-on for the Android SDK - <AUTHOR> http://googletv.blogspot.com/2011/08/preview-of-google-tv-add-on-for-android.html

<comment><USER2> Logitech Revues are only $99.

Logitech guaranteed that they'll be updating to the 3.x based GoogleTV when it releases.

Developers will soon be able to write apps (including games) for GoogleTV.

Wiimotes are already fully functional with 3.x based tablets for gaming.

... anyone else see where I'm going with this? If Google plays their cards right, and some very good hardware comes out for commodity prices, I think we're looking at the birth of the new breed of gaming consoles. With the so- called "casual" gaming market exploding at the pace it is, there's great potential here.

<comment><USER3> Google should try to make Google TV a console platform that many manufacturers can use in their set top boxes and TV's. It would _expand_ the console market, but in the same time, in aggregate, it could also reach higher market share than the individual consoles such as PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

The graphics are already getting close to PS3 and Xbox360, and are already better than Wii, with the new high-end ARM chips. If their partners manage to sell set top boxes for $99, they could turn Google TV into a very popular console platform. The new Google TV software already has support for gamepads, so hopefully they've been considering this for a while.

I just hope they don't do the same as they did with the Motorola Xoom launch, and not get enough game developers on board for the "re-launch" of Google TV this year. They really need to become much more aggressive in getting 3rd party developers on board with their new platforms, such as Honeycomb, Google TV, and Chrome OS.

It's really surprising how they seem to not care much about this with all those platform launches. Have they learned nothing from Apple, and even Microsoft? The iPhone had 500 apps from day one when the App Store launched. The iPad had over 1000 (or was it 2000?) on the launch day. WP7 also had 2000 apps on launch day. Honeycomb? 12...Come on! They need to treat 3rd party apps more seriously, regardless of how much it costs them to do that. The availability of apps can make or break their new platform.

Also, they need to get rid of the full keyboard idea for interacting with a Google TV. That will never work. Better focus on making apps for phones and tablets that maybe will show directly what's on Google TV, and you can access them just by touching the UI elements. They could also take advantage of voice commands and maybe Kinect-like moves. I just want to see the full QWERTY keyboard go.

<comment><USER4> _Google should try to make Google TV a console platform that many manufacturers can use in their set top boxes and TV's._

GoogleTV is a platform being used in TVs, right now Sony is the only manufacturer thats using it however. Most of the large manufacturers (LG/Samsung) however have their own platforms they're deploying. They might go the GoogleTV route on their high end devices but they generally don't like the GoogleTV product because it has a built in browser which completely breaks the walled gardens they're trying to create. Note most content programmers are blocking GoogleTV devices on their sites as well.

On the Set-Top-Box front (I'm assuming you mean cable and satellite boxes). This is sticky. Google actually just picked up a very large share of this market with their Mototola purchase. And undoubtedly they will try to get Android into many of those boxes. However they're going to be competing with an industry standard Java stack (Tru2way/OCAP) which was designed from the ground up as a Cable stack. And again a lot of the features offered in the google tv product (which is much more then just the Android OS) competes with the cable operators offerings. I think you may see a pared down version with some smaller operators but unlikely the full GoogleTV stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great news for TV in general. TiVo lost a great opportunity when they failed to let their SDK touch the programming guide or the TV programs. Let's see how Google handles it. If they offer tight integration with video and other important apps (e.g. a Netflix/IMDB/Wikipedia mashup movie browser would be terrific) they can go really far.

<comment><USER4> Currently Google TV doesn't allow for doing anything to the guide or TV programs either. The Program guide thing is terribly problematic since they rely on IR blasters, emulating remote control signals to do everything.

Stay tuned, if this project doesn't get killed it may end up closer to what you are envisioning.</comment></comment>


Cozy is a modern audiobook player for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/geigi/cozy <comment><USER2> Note: the readme was updated a few minutes ago stating that macOS support is discontinued.

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm the developer of Cozy and I just noticed that Cozy got posted here and people are trying it on macOS. The version linked in the README was a very old version of Cozy which I tested on macOS 10.14. It was quite a hassle to build and it was not stable. Sadly it's a lot of work to package a GTK app for macOS, therefore I discontinued building it but I didn't update the readme. Sorry for anyone who tried it and got disappointed!

<comment><USER4> If you ever have a chance, someone might be interested in a quick writeup of the challenges you faced packaging a GTK3 app for macOS. Off the top of my head, Inkscape ships an app with GTK3 and Python for macOS.

<comment><USER5> I believe inkscape no longer supports macOS.

I don't use mac though, so haven't confirmed what I've heard.

<comment><USER6> Inkscape recently (with 1.0) completed their switch from XQuartz to a native 64-bit signed/notarized Mac app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish audiobook apps had bookmarking. I often fall asleep to audiobooks and have to scrub around trying to find my place next time I want to listen. A visual bookmark unrelated related to playback position would be so handy. Seems like obvious functionality to me, does anyone know of an iOS player that does this?

<comment><USER8> Some OS-wide integration with sleep trackers would be great. While I've read that apparently these trackers are not so accurate, my experience with the Sleep Cycle app has been that it's probably accurate enough to detect me falling asleep, especially since I have a tendency to actively shake my phone if I'm motionless but awake for a while.

As others have mentioned, some kind of 'stay awake' feature would probably solve the issue too. I'm thinking a non-intrusive beep or shake the indicate that the phone is about to go into 'sleep mode', which can be dealt with by some feedback. the interval could then be set in the app or OS settings.

The nice thing about doing this system-wide is that it could do all sorts of other stuff: turn off notifications (I sometimes forget and get rudely awakened at night), go into low-battery mode, turn off the screen (in case I forget to put it facing down), etc.

<comment><USER9> I use a combination of Sleep as Android, Tasker, and my Pebble smartwatch to detect roughly when I fall asleep and issue a system-wide media pause signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do people source audiobooks from somewhere that they can use clients like this? I use audible but don't know of a good alternative.

<comment><USER11> Stripping Audible DRM is surprisingly easy. Download via the desktop, and run a single docker command:

        docker run -v $(pwd):/data ryanfb/inaudible@sha256:b66738d235be1007797e3a0a0ead115fa227e81e2ab5b7befb97d43f7712fac5

The resulting m4b file has proper chapters, so works everywhere, but I tend to split it further[0],[1]

[0]: [https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-by- aud...](https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-by-audible)

[1]: [https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split- audio-...](https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-audio-by- chapters)

<comment><USER12> I've used [https://openaudible.org/](https://openaudible.org/) to download my Audible library before, if you want a fairly simple GUI.

<comment><USER13> If you don't want to pay $12 for a GUI nor use Docker:

1\. This tool can be used to extract your encryption keys: [https://github.com/inAudible-NG/audible- activator](https://github.com/inAudible-NG/audible-activator)

2\. ffmpeg -activation_bytes XXXXXXXX -i name.AAX name.mp3

<comment><USER14> If you're doing that you might prefer to output to opus instead. Speech compresses well so you get the benefit of smaller files and have more space for other media. Just replace name.mp3 with ..." -c:a libopus -b:a 24k name.ogg"

<comment><USER15> If you're going to use a less compatible format than mp3, it is far batter to just swap the container and not transcode it:

-i in.aax -c copy out.m4b

1\. does not transcode 2\. captures and retains all of the metadata

<comment><USER14> Yes, I'm usually strongly opposed to lossy transcodes, but for portable listening of speech heavy content on a space-limited device, that plays Opus easily, it can be a worthwhile trade-off for many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While the app looks great on Linux which is at least native to that system, it just doesn't run on macOS Catalina at all. Which means I don't have any idea on how it works or looks like on my system.

The size of the app is quite large for its functionality: 244.1 MB (Resources folder and MacOS folder take majority of application size.) which is puzzling. Given it uses GTK+, I don't think that it would look great on other systems if it is applying the GNOME theming / decorators to its windows. (Remember gedit on macOS / Windows?).

Given its still in beta and primarily uses GTK, I'd rather use this on Linux than on macOS. From what I have seen from other GTK+ apps, they just standout like a sore thumb on any other platform other than Linux. For cross-platform, I would use Qt5 instead.

<comment><USER4> Presumably the application bundle includes GTK, cairo, gstreamer, and Python. Dependencies add up, y'know?

Comparing to an Electron app, the bundle is likely smaller and resource usage lower, with little difference in theming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Syncing times, and book downloads for that matter, across multiple platforms is a critical feature for me. Which is why I'm sadly stuck using Audible's flakey apps.

Offtopic, but this reminds me of how Audible in general (website, purchasing UX, etc) always feels half broken. It mostly works but small bizarre things ruin it (most recently a purchased book disappearing while marked as purchased in the store requiring manual support intervention). I often wonder if it's half abandon ware since they now have a monopoly and it's using some ancient Java backend.

</comment><comment><USER18> Since audiobook enthusiasts might be in this thread ... does anyone know of a product (outside Kindle Whispersync) that can ingest an audiobook and the corresponding e-book and using speech-to-text keep them roughly in sync so you can quickly go between the two?

<comment><USER19> It's not a trivial task to implement. There are three stages:

\- Speech-to-text. It has to be good, or the text you get back is unusable. Google's and Amazon's services for that will quickly become expensive for large volumes. And you need to mark text with time/position if you want ebook- to-audiobok sync.

\- Diff algorithm between generated text and ebook text. Audiobooks are not produced from the same source material as ebooks, and they will have differences. On top of that you get errors and changes by narrators, and errors from speech-to-text. Not trivial if you want high fidelity.

\- Figuring out the position in ebook from the diff. Relatively simple.

For ebook-to-audiobook you need to find the position in the speech-to-text conversion, and rewind to the time/position marking in that.

Storytel (disclaimer: I work at Storytel) has quite a few ebooks and audiobooks connected, but doesn't allow you to ingest your own ebooks and audiobooks.

<comment><USER20> interesting - read a lot of good things about you at the New Publishing blog

that guy thinks you are going to be very big

all the best. We sure need more people doing ebooks and audiobooks. Amazon is @#$#$ authors with all their exclusivity requirements and insanely high cut that they take

<comment><USER19> Thanks! We're trying!

The whole audiobook landscape isn't clear cut yet. In music and video you have a few well-established (entrenched?) players: Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify (music). In audiobooks there are still a bunch of smaller players alongside Amazon (Apple doesn't do much about audiobooks, other big players are only just starting, see Spotify). There are at least three in every country, I think :)

And the whole thing is further fractured by whether or not publishers and rights holders want to provide their audiobook, and ebooks, or only one or the other. And there are way more publishers and rights holders than there are in music (in music they are also mostly consolidated into a few megamonsters [1]).

And the market is still growing, as more and more people discover and listen audiobooks (and related material like podcasts) during commute, in the car, during daily routines and so on.

So yeah, it's stressful, but interesting :)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label#3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label#3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just a quick thank you to the author.

I've been putting off looking for an audiobook reader for linux to improve my german. HN makes life easier ;)

</comment><comment><USER22> This looks great, nice job!

As an aside: does anyone know of an audiobook _organiser_? Essentially Calibra for audiobooks. Preferably with a web interface for running in my home server. I've tried booksonic, and found it very clunky and lacking proper organisational features.

<comment><USER23> I use Jellyfin as an open source alternative to Plex. I personally don't have any audio books on my home server, but it has support for them.

<comment><USER22> Oh really? I use Jellyfin also, but I never knew it supported audiobooks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Definitely, thanks for going with native toolkits.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just want to thank you for not writing this app in Electron. We need more such examples of using proper desktop app frameworks for writing desktop apps.

<comment><USER26> A bit ironic that you made this comment, and then the author mentioned in this thread that Mac OS support is discontinued because it was too much work to maintain.

Which probably wouldn't have been such an issue with electron.

<comment><USER27> It might be ironic, but overall I think it's fine that it wasn't written in Electron.

For a user-specific application like a player, I would rather use a desktop app developed exclusively for a specific OS or set of OSes that works well with those. There are millions of Mac apps that have no equivalent on Linux, so I'm glad to see a developer focusing exclusively on Linux.

Electron for cross-platform apps works well when you are going to be forced into using it as a web client anyway due to proprietary platform lock-in, e.g. Slack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know a spotify-audiobook-client? What I'm thinking of is a website or app that lets you listen to audiobooks that are on spotify and saves your position per book, lets you browse and search only books without the music. I was thinking of writing something like that myself, but maybe someone already did?

<comment><USER29> How do you find them on Spotify at the moment? Is it just by searching "audiobook" and then shifting through all the random stuff that brings up, some of which are audiobooks?

EDIT: I've just found [https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content- Questions/Audiobook...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content- Questions/Audiobooks-on-Spotify-let-s-build-a-list-of-what-s- available/td-p/385182) which says

> In Browse > GENRES& MOODS > WORD you can now find these options.

Which should be available through their API using [https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web- api/referenc...](https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web- api/reference/browse/) It's not immediately obvious how I get to the Browse section through the awful interface at [https://play.spotify.com](https://play.spotify.com) but you can jump straight to [https://open.spotify.com/genre/word- page](https://open.spotify.com/genre/word-page)

<comment><USER28> That doesn't show a lot for me (maybe because of my country?), just some "popular" playlists. There are a lot more audiobooks on spotify. I haven't solved this when I thought about it a while back but my idea was to use some external source (like amazon) and then search for the book/author and see if I find an album with a total length that would match an audiobook.

<comment><USER29> I agree that it's missing stuff. I only had a quick glance and I could not find the Sherlock Holmes books in those playlists but the audiobooks are definitely on Spotify. I think it's a tricky problem to solve without better Spotify support.

<comment><USER28> Yes it's tricky, but that also means that there is some value in there. If someone wrote something to solve that, there is of course also the risk that spotify finally discovers audiobooks as part of their service and solves that problem for all users, making the 3rd party site/app obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> On macOS, what distinctions does this have from playing audiobooks in the built-in Books app?

<comment><USER31> The mac version is discontinued, per the README. Someone should edit the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> in the first line in the main.py there is this shebang:

#!@PYTHON@

this is different of what I know about shebangs in Python

<comment><USER33> That is because this file hasn't been "built" yet. When building, @PYTHON@ with the path to Python. This is because it's very hard/impossible to actually get something to put there that works on every OS

<comment><USER34> Isn't that why we use #!/usr/bin/env python3 and let the virtual environment sort it out?

(I know, gtk is a pain in virtualenvs)

<comment><USER33> I've seen machines where there is no python3, only python. But then on other machines there is a python3, and python is python2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Are there any audiobook players that can work across devices in sync? I've been trying to set this up with Kodi, but have had little success.

</comment><comment><USER36> Unrelated, but whats with these gstreamer dep names?

      gstreamer1.0-plugins-good
      gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad
      gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

<comment><USER37> This mirrors some other Debian/Ubuntu package names where:

\- "Good" plugins/codecs are ones that are freely distributable, FOSS and well maintained.

\- "Bad" are ones that are not up to par quality wise (messy code, no code reviews, no documentation, ugly hacks, etc.)

\- "Ugly" are the ones that might not be legally distributable in some world countries due to patents or licenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've been searching for something like this for a very long time! Nice to know it exists :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Anyone know of anything like this but for Windows?

<comment><USER40> If you don't mind lack of fancy book covers I recommend VLC.

Free, open source, cross platform including mobile and remembers where I stopped listening.</comment></comment>


CRLite: Finally a Fix for Broken Revocation? - <AUTHOR> https://scotthelme.co.uk/crlite-finally-a-fix-for-broken-revocation/ <comment><AUTHOR> For people interested in the deeper technical details of this, there's a great post from the Mozilla team about their implementation here: [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/09/crlite- part-2-e...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/09/crlite-part-2-end- to-end-design/)</comment>


Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen tries again with patent megasuit - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/3yNGXNL3rSo/microsoft-cofounder-paul-allen-tries-again-with-patent-megasuit.ars <comment><USER2> I really hope what he is doing is deliberately launching a ridiculous large scale patent suit designed to fail on a massive scale that will undermine all future software patent suits, and therefore the whole software patent system.

If he is he's a hero.

If not he's a dick.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar reaction. The good news is that, _regardless of his true intentions_ , enough high-profile ridiculous suits like this will be the most powerful catalyst for severe reform.

<comment><USER4> > enough high-profile ridiculous suits like this will be the most powerful > catalyst for severe reform.

The problem here is that as long as these suits are lost there is plenty of force behind those that say that 'the system works', so only if Paul Allen would actually win this suit would there be an incentive for such reform. There is no real penalty to bringing a suit like this (other than making a bunch of lawyers richer, but when you need 9 zeros before the comma to express your wealth that's no big deal).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whatever tech industry reputation Paul Allen may have previously enjoyed, he's really destroying it now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reputations take a lifetime to build and can be destroyed in a heartbeat. Paul Allen did a fantastic job of building his reputation, and barring a hidden agenda has done an equally impressive job of destroying it, not just with this 'retry' (abort or ignore?) but already with the first incarnation of it.

I'm hoping that there is a hidden side to this but I'm having a hard time dreaming up a scenario where this is not a 'win' for Paul Allen either way in retrospect ("I've done this to destroy the patent system" or "I just made a bunch of money"). Maybe he should state his goal? The worst case outcome for the rest of the world is that he wins this stupid suit, the best case outcome for the world is that he really is a greedy patent troll and triggers patent reform.

If he's doing it with that purpose then I'm all for it but since there is a chance that he will make a great deal of money from this I highly doubt it.

It's funny because over the years I lost patience with Microsoft, Gates and Ballmer with Paul Allen being the last hold-out in terms of being respectable. It's a pity to see that soiled in this way, apparently there is no such thing as 'enough' and abusing the system is just A-Ok.

</comment><comment><USER6> Patents are essentially a licence to write new laws. A list of millions of banned actions. The only difference is the people who write these new laws aren't elected, and the laws expire after 20 years. There is no way to tell if something is banned or not, except by getting sued.

I don't know how anyone thinks this is a good idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> These are some of the most absurdly vague patents I've ever heard. Very, very bad form.

<comment><USER7> Have you actually read them? Read the claims? They're software patents, so plenty of folk will hate them just based on that... but they really are not poorly drafted patents.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. As I am not a patent attorney and do not speak legalese, I had to concern myself with the abstract descriptions only. Have you? These appear to cover what is essentially the * symbol appearing over your "notifications" icon after a timeout on facebook, or the (1) appearing on twitter if you leave it idle for long enough and a new tweet appears in your stream.

Do you think that this is unique enough an idea that others should have to pay Paul Allen's company for the rights to use it? This was something that I was going to implement on thingist. Should I not do this because I would be infringing on a legitimate (legitimate in the _spirit_ of patent law) bit of intellectual property?

This is why patent trolling is so damaging to the community. I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea. The best I can do is read the abstract of a patent (if I can even find it) and try not to step on anybody's toes. For somebody like me, a lowly 23 year old kid making side projects in his spare time and day-dreaming about someday moving to San Francisco and getting to hang out at the cool kids table, this stuff is _terrifying_. Paul Allen, a multi-billionaire with a fleet of private jets and private yachts and private submarines and private multi-million-dollar-per-year-retainer lawyers might SUE ME.

SO I have a couple of choices. I can implement what seems like a completely obvious feature and risk being sued by the largest Goliath in the industry, or I can follow the written law and not.

What should I do? What would you do?

<comment><USER7> That's kind of my point. The title means nothing. The abstract means almost nothing. The figures mean almost nothing. Have a look here for a brief guide to reading a patent, written for nonlawyers. [http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a- patent-...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent- in-60-second/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think this sort of thing (that programmers would have to concern themselves with reading patents beyond their description) is acceptable?

<comment><USER7> Do I think it's acceptable that adults are required to have some understanding of how the world around them works? Yes, I do.

<comment><AUTHOR> That isn't what I asked. This has nothing to do with understanding the world around you, this has to do with understanding things that were written down on small slips of paper and filed away in boxes inside of a building in Virginia.

The slips of paper (which have now been scanned into a computer; images of them are now available on the internet) are there to mark the occasion of the first person writing that particular series of symbols down on that particular piece of paper. The idea is that if you write a certain series of symbols down on the paper, you are the only person that is to be allowed to do whatever it was that you described with the symbols. If somebody doesn't know about the occasion of you writing down the symbols and does whatever it was you described (well, in this case, predicted they might do), then you are entitled to a portion of that unlucky person's assets.

The entire thing is absurd, and if you can't see that, then I suggest you devote more time to "understanding how the world around you works".

<comment><USER8> > That isn't what I asked. This has nothing to do with understanding the world > around you, this has to do with understanding things that were written down > on small slips of paper and filed away in boxes inside of a building in > Virginia.

Unfortunately, the Vogon Destructor Fleet was not moved by this appeal to reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess he sees his fortune in MS stock declining over the next few years and needs a new revenue stream...

<comment><USER10> It's been flat for a decade, so why now?

The Seahawks are in trouble, so he's turning to other interests?

<comment><USER11> Hey, the Seahawks are hosting a playoff game if they can top the Rams next week. Of course, they're still 6-9.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The man is dying, and he's really well off, what is he doing _patent trolling_?

<comment><USER13> If you mean he is dying from cancer, actually no, he is now free from cancer.

<http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/297665>

<comment><USER14> He strikes it rich with Microsoft, survives cancer and to repay the world he... turns to patent trolling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >>Also, Mueller said, "[s]hould Google be served an injunction as a result of Interval's suit, owners of Android phones would experience a very significant degradation of the user experience."

Well that sucks. It would be terrible if I had my phone's services greatly impaired so this guy can go through his little patent suit.

<comment><USER16> I think the point would be to use the threat of an injunction to get Google to settle for lots of money out-of-court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _While Apple's iTunes Store, App Store, and Apple TV are targeted in the lawsuit, iOS was notably not named as infringing Interval's patents._

Notification is an area in which iOS is conspicuously lagging behind Android. I wonder if this "peripheral attention" patent has something to do with that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Some tech zillionaires create private space programs… others create giant patent troll portfolios. Maybe the former can nuke the latter from orbit.

<comment><USER19> At this stage, it's the only way to be sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> He should be using his money to launch a lobbying effort to eliminate software patents.

</comment><comment><USER21> I hope he has all the success he did with "Paul Allen's Charter Communication™".

</comment><comment><USER22> The patent system needs an enema. Most of these are so broad it's like patenting water. Apple recently patented the 'slide to unlock' UI concept. If I'm not mistaken, the aliens in the Preditor movies had already established that as prior art and should probably go pay Apple's attorney's a visit.

</comment><comment><USER23> Paul Allen is taking advantage of the law. There is nothing really wrong with that. If you think the law is wrong, then let's work to try to change it. I personally find these intellectual property monopolies to be more menace than good. Especially the 17-year-long patents for SOFTWARE!

<comment><USER24> > Paul Allen is taking advantage of the law. There is nothing really wrong > with that.

Why? If a law is wrong, unfair or immoral, taking advantage of it is not right, it is actually wrong. That being said, it is legal, but being legal does not always imply rightness.

<comment><USER23> Who says a law is wrong, unfair or immoral? Certainly not the legislators. Even if it is, taking advantage of the law might still not be unfair or immoral. If anything, it will highlight that the law needs to be changed.

<comment><USER24> What does it have to do with legislators? They don't define what's right, fair or moral, they just make laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If anyone settles with him, that company becomes the enemy as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> and this is how software patent ended. Is the best result we could expect from this.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone _really_ believes this is not coordinated with Microsoft?

So the next phase will be when e.g. Wozniak put up a software patent company and sues Microsoft, Google and Nokia? And then some investors in Google will finance a patent troll company which...

Patent Armageddon, here we come. :-(

<comment><USER28> I did note that MS is not listed as one of the defendants.Odd as I'm sure a cursory look would find an infringement of _some sort_.

<comment><USER16> Allen has already got his money from Microsoft :-)

<comment><USER28> MS is sitting on a few tens of billions of dollars in cash. How cynical do you need to be to think this pile is off limits for patent trolls?

<comment><USER16> This isn't a random patent troll, this is _Paul Allen_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen> , _co-founder_ of Microsoft.

If you're still feeling cynical, you can think of it this way: MS has enough dirt on Allen from his years there to bring him down if he threatens them :-)

<comment><USER28> I know who's involved. Your point about dirt is very valid - I didn't think of it because a patent troll crosses a line after which he doesn't value friends.

<comment><USER29> Not to mention Allen still probably owns a large amount of Microsoft stock, which would probably not respond well to major patent litigation, especially if MS lost and had to not only pay out damages but re-implement in a non- infringing way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is exactly what you do when you're a greedy scumbag.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have zero in the bank: can't afford to be a patent troll.

Have a few million: can afford, might even make financial sense, assuming you are ok with it ethically.

Have a few billion: why be a patent troll? You have the world's biggest yacht -- do you need 1000 more?

Boggles my mind.</comment>


The free throw that defied physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/playbook/2010/12/video-free-throw-defied-physics/

<comment><USER2> It didn't defy physics because that would be impossible(unless it a new force which we don't know). With the millions upon millions of free throws shot annually at least a few have probably given some strange results. I was a game where after a poorly placed shot the ball rolled back and forth on the top of the backboard. It was surreal. But again..not impossible.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that a headline containing a tiny bit of hyperbole required a semantics lesson. We all know that the laws of physics are safe and in tact.

<comment><USER2> He was just quoting the wired article which did indeed question the laws of physics.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 7? We already hate it. - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/microsoft_windows_7_we_already_hate_it

<comment><USER2> Adding multi-touch to PC screens without reinventing the form factor is one of those visions of the future that our grandchildren will chuckle about. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw from 1900, depicting a classroom of the year 2000. Presciently, the students had access to any book ever printed—there was a huge machine with a tube that spit out the requested book.

Multi-touch will almost certainly work its way into larger-than-iPhone form factors. But just as certainly, they will have to be different than the ones we're used to.

<comment><USER3> I think a laptop would work with the bottom half (Where there is currently a keyboard + trackpad), as a second LCD which is touch sensitive.

The default arangement could be to simply have a keyboard displayed on the bottom half, with a trackpad area, but then with other apps you might want to manipulate graphics, or paint, or do other cool stuff on that bottom area.

It'd take a little while to get used to non moving keys, but typing on the iPhone is pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and I'm sure there are technologies that could give some sort of little feedback to the fingers.

(This sounds quite like an enlarged Nintendo DS really).

That way also, you get one clean LCD, and a separate one that gets a little dirty from fingers, and has to be cleaned. Seems a good plan to me.

<comment><USER4> Another possibility would be to have a smaller area, like a touch pad, that corresponded to the screen. Wouldn't be great for detail work, but would save space and cost and I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to get used to doing multitouch stuff on it.

<comment><USER5> I believe apple has something similar to this in the case that they have a multi-touch track pad which can recognize some multi-touch commands. I'm not sure to what extent you can use it for though. (of course, macs still have the keyboard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here we are TWO+ years out from Windows 7 and you already have bloggers and various websites bashing it.

MS will never win.

How about this, just by reading the headline "Windows 7? We already hate it." I chose not to read the article because I knew it would contain useless/troll- like/flame bait. How's that for jumping to conclusions?

<comment><USER7> Yea, wayyy to early to hate on windows 7. I think peoples existing hate for vista is to blame here.

<comment><USER8> And their pre-existing general loathing for Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think multitouch is a decent thing to put into an OS if only as a stepping stone to later form factors. Sure, it isn't so hot now, but you can at least give hardware manufacturers reason to look at making computers that can leverage the feature more effectively. Trains need track, and tracks are only good for trains, but ya gotta start someplace.

</comment><comment><USER10> It strikes me that this is the kind of feature that you can safely ignore if you don't want to use it. I suspect that touch surfaces will increase in popularity over the next few years, at least amongst certain user groups and having the OS accommodate these devices can only be a good thing. It's not as if you will be required to use it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't like the touch features? Don't use them. It's not like the OS won't work just fine with a keyboard and mouse. Not liking Windows 7 because of a feature you won't even use is like me not liking Office because I only use Word and Excel but not Access. Windows 7 won't force you to use that feature any more than using Word and Excel forces me to use Access.

And on a slightly separate note, I'm pretty curious to see how this actually works. I use a multi-monitor setup, as I'm sure a lot of developers do, and I'm curious to see what it would be like to, for example, use my left index finger to quickly flick windows out of the way while using the mouse for specific activity. Or even just doing some basic stuff with touching with both hands to reduce the repetitive use of the right hand on the mouse all the time. I'm more than willing to give this a chance.

It took me ages to use the scroll wheel in my mouse instead of pointing-and- clicking on scrollbars, but once I did, I couldn't believe I waited so long to get into the habit.

A lot of people probably thought the mouse was a dumb idea when they were just using DOS. I doubt many of them would give up the mouse now. The uses for touch may not be obvious now, but once it's available, you may see very novel uses for it that people aren't thinking about now because it's not a standard feature. Just give it a chance. No one is ever going to force you to use it (just like you can still use a graphical OS without using a mouse if you really want to).

</comment><comment><USER12> Dear Microsoft,

Please shut up about Windows 7. That's so far into the future that any discussion of its features and capabilities is entirely meaningless.

As for Windows 7, please go implement things that are interesting and elegant and useful and desirable, and -- when your set of features is mostly baked and mostly ready to ship -- then and only then tell me about it.

Finger-smudge-covered displays and tablets are useful, but far from cool or original.

Sure, do copy the cool stuff from other platforms. We know you want to. But you better have some fresh new tools and toys; the new features and tools that make me or any other customer want to drool over and buy and use your platform.

And for those few moments while you're not busy working on Windows 7 coolness and getting set to rock my world, how about fixing the mess that is the Vista ecosystem?

Using a Windows PC is somewhere between unpleasant and frustrating. This due to the mess that is modern PC design, adware, malware, bloatware, buggy software, proprietary formats and the rest of the stack. Make some room for your partners, too.

Oh, and this little Vista mishap will arrive fully fixed and solid and ready for production in Windows 7, too, right?

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pic here - [http://www.appscout.com/2008/05/windows_7_multitouch_feature...](http://www.appscout.com/2008/05/windows_7_multitouch_features.php)

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree that I wouldn't want be touching my laptop / desktop screen. But, assuming that the cost of of LCD glass continues to drop as a reasonable rate, I could see the custom-building crowd using it to make their own Surface-like tabletop computers. At least that's what I would do.

</comment><comment><USER15> Talking about Windows is so very tiring. I just want the most efficient computing experience possible, but they're not going to give that to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Probably not a standard monitor. Maybe they are targeting something like Microsoft Surface?

<comment><USER17> The Surface team contributed but it's meant for a wider range of devices. The demo was running on a Dell tablet.</comment></comment>


Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman dies at 96 - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/9b5d3d178b3140318e3801dca910a140/Nobel-Prize-winning-physicist-Leon-Lederman-dies-at-96 <comment><AUTHOR> "His Nobel Prize sold for $765,000 in an auction in 2015 to help pay for medical bills and care."</comment>


My New Web Designer Portfolio: Thoughts? Feedback?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nomoregoodnames.com

<comment><USER2> Portfolio and overall design is really nice. Clean, modern, easy to read.

The in-page hyperlinks are a bit disconcerting. I'm not exactly sure if I've gone to a new page or where I am. I don't like feeling lost. Since I can scroll maybe the hyperlinks aren't needed?

The numbered thumbnails don't provide much information.

The light box for the design samples doesn't work so well because: 1) I don't know which part of the design sample to focus on or exactly what work you've done there. 2) The light box size keeps changing from sample to sample which is unsettling.

Overall impression is really good, but the UI hassles get in my way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, this helps :)

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. Good luck and maybe post back with any updates.</comment></comment></comment>