Smartwatch sales are tanking - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/smartwatch-sales-are-tanking/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> The biggest issue for me with the "smartwatch" is that they don't have feature parody with dumb watches. I've had many watches in the past and the battery lasts for years. I can also turn my wrist and see the time instantly. Who would have thought?

What I get now is some piece of crap that needs to be charged every night. So I basically have no features while I'm sleeping. I can't just wake up in the middle of the night an instantly know what the time is.

As a battery saving measure, the time isn't displayed until I turn my wrist and wait some obscene amount of time (around a second?). It also goes from being dark to being lit... so much for being discrete.

I wish they would stop calling these things "watches" just because they go on your wrist. I expect anything called a watch to have the features of a watch and be on my wrist pretty much all of the time. Call it a fitness tracker if it's not meant to be worn 24/7.

Let me know when battery life is within a couple of orders of magnitude of real watches, then maybe I'll revisit.

<comment><USER3> The question is does this opinion comes from experience, or from assumption?

Having an Apple Watch now for about 6 months, I can say I love it, and none of those things (and I shared the same skepticism before buying one) have proven to be issues.

I don't tend to look at my watch when I sleep - so that one's easy, and when you charge the watch its in a mode that gives off a low-light time (nightstand mode, i think they call it). On top of that, it takes about an hour to charge, so often I end up charging it during my night time regiment, and by the time I go to bed, i COULD wear it (if i need to make sure I'm up early for something, i wear it so i get the vibration)

If you want a traditional watch, then get a traditional watch - comparing it to a traditional watch and holding to the same standards is not a position of common sense...

<comment><USER4> > If you want a traditional watch, then get a traditional watch - comparing it > to a traditional watch and holding to the same standards is not a position > of common sense...

I don't think this is accurate. Someone brought up a comparison of smartphone to a Nokia phone, but this is not the same kind of comparison. A smartphone greatly simplified user interface and made accessing the internet and sharing much easier, and also created new ways of interacting (swiping etc). Whereas, the watch seems to be very featureful sure, but the internet is already accessible using your phone. And the added worry of carrying yet another charger when traveling (and the horror of losing it...). Now, a traditional watch, you don't worry about it for YEARS, not a week. Its mostly another ornament, like a cap or a shirt.

It may be a difference in temperament. But personally, I like to reduce things in my life which require any form of attention: because I forget things very easily (or am just too lazy to do them).

Also, this may not apply to everyone, but there is simply too many beautifully crafted wristwatches out there for me to ever seriously consider a smartwatch.

<comment><USER3> "It may be a difference in temperament. But personally, I like to reduce things in my life which require any form of attention: because I forget things very easily (or am just too lazy to do them)."

That was exactly my primary concern. In practice though, you (well, I, and most people) charge my phone at night. I set it next to the bed and plug it in... now my watch charger is right next to my phone charger, so its a no- brainer (and the wristband is fast on/off - thats important to me). Turns out because of the phone, i had no new habit to get into :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Misleading title. You can't compare sales from the Apple Watch's initial release with the months leading up to a new model.

If you take Apple out of the picture sales stay pretty steady. Samsung grows a little, Garmin grows a lot. Far from "tanking".

Smartwatches will continue to sell steadily (to early adopters and developers) until the tech catches up.

The new Apple Watch is already a huge improvement over the last model, but mainly in software. WatchOS was terrible until 3.0 and it still isn't there. It tries to do too much because Apple doesn't quite seem sure what it's _supposed_ to do.

For telling the time, displaying notifications, fitness tracking, and a couple of other things it's great. Why then is the homescreen a complete mess of icons for half-features? Why (until WatchOS 3.0) could it take upwards of ten seconds to open an app?

I imagine Apple would never release the iPad today without first-party weather/stocks/calculator apps.

<comment><USER6> Yep - this is a mistake people when evalutating gadget sales in general.

The timeframe has to be set to the product lifecycle (i.e. t=0 is the launch) to make comparisons or determine trends. YoY is skewed heavily by the product launches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like they will stay a niche until they can replace phones entirely, and perhaps even past then. A lot of people just don't like having something strapped to their wrist and/or want a large screen.

As a watch guy (and most watch people are guys) the first smart watch I've been excited about is the upcoming gear S3:

[http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/gear-s3/](http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/gear-s3/)

Because it looks like a real watch and has the rotating bezel for input, but I recognize I'm a tiny market.

I hope it doesn't set my wrist on fire.

<comment><USER8> > until they can replace phones entirely

I.e. never? I mean, I can picture making phone calls or dictating SMS by voice with a smart watch, but people are not going to be browsing the web or taking pictures with a tiny wrist device when they already have a 5-6" inches display device on their pockets, and almost no one would ditch the latter for the former if they had to choose.

I think it's likely that smart watches will continue to be niche devices for the foreseeable future, at very least until someone figures out a killer feature that sets them apart from smartphones.

<comment><USER9> FWIW, I said the same thing about smartphones when they came out - who'd want to browse the web on a tiny 4" screen when you've got a 13" laptop? And indeed, I do very little web-browsing on my smartphone; it's generally just used to answer quick questions when I absolutely _need_ information (or, well, when I want to win an argument over dinner :-P).

What made smartphones useful was people discovered _new_ uses that you just couldn't use a computer for. You can't do turn-by-turn navigation with your laptop in the car. It's nearly useless if you're standing at a street corner in an unfamiliar city and want to know where the closest coffeeshop with wifi is. You can't use it to take a picture of the cute little ducks crossing the road and send it to your wife. It does you no good when you want to hail a car to take you home.

People haven't yet discovered similar uses for a smartwatch. It's highly likely that they exist, though. What the watch gives you is hands-free information: you can receive quick, 1-5 second notifications even if you're carrying something or immersed (sometimes literally) in physical activity. I've already found this useful for getting notifications that my founders' group has changed where we're meeting while I'm driving there, or that my wife has already gone to the grocery store, or for checking off items on my shopping list while carrying shopping bags. There are probably other bigger uses waiting to be discovered.

<comment><USER10> _> What the watch gives you is hands-free information_

But your phone can also give you that, through earphones or headsets. Smartwatches must find new uses _that a phone cannot also do as well_ , which is a much harder bar to clear.

For example:

 _> notifications [...] while I'm driving there_

Phones can do that already, and will do more and more as CarPlay etc become mainstream.

 _> checking off items on my shopping list while carrying shopping bags_

Siri can probably do that already (I use Trello for my shopping lists and it works fine as it is, tbh).

The one use where smartwatches will likely be unbeatable, forever and ever, is fitness/health: carrying around a phone in those circumstances is simply more annoying than carrying a watch. Once they get cheap enough, they might replace smartcards and badges for access control. If smartglasses become mainstream, they could augment each other (your glasses display and record, your watch stores and computes) and actually replace phones altogether; but alone, I don't see them going anywhere.

<comment><USER9> Bluetooth earbuds & headsets have all the downsides of smartwatches: they cost roughly the same (for headsets; earbuds are a lot cheaper), they make you look as dorky or more, they're IMHO less comfortable, and they're another accessory that can fall out and get lost. And they seem to have similar adoption numbers. The main difference is audio vs. visual: headsets are better for some uses (notably taking calls) but worse for others (interacting or reading quick notifications).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Man, I didn't expect Pebble to be down so much. My wife and I have 5 of them between us. The always-on screen and a week of battery life make them much more attractive than most other smartwatches.

<comment><USER12> If you buy 5 when you only have 4 arms, you might be biased about the pebble's success ;)

<comment><USER11> It's true! We got one each when they first came out on Kickstarter, then I bought a Steel because it looked nicer, then we both got Times when they came out, then I got her a Round because she liked the look. _counts_ Oh wait, that's 6. And the last one was in December... so actually, we're part of the reason for the YoY decline!

<comment><USER13> I'm with you, been wearing the Steel daily since it came out. Lovely product. Firmware upgrade was actually welcome; I'll keep it, I love that you can roll back easily by installing a different app version. Dismal market share! :( -- though, people have complimented it frequently, most don't know it's a smart watch which I consider a feature.

Looks like they should turn to some niche marketing strategies if they're not already because people who like Pebbles REALLY like Pebbles I find, though they are rare to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The "smartwatch" from Apple and Android is not a good idea. Fitbit and Pebble are closer to the right direction. Apple/Android keep trying to make watch- sized smartphones. But they will never compete with actual smartphones, they will just always be annoying inferior smartphones on your wrist.

The key factor is to consider which senses are optimal UI for each device. Smartphones dominate the visual and audio senses. Smartwatch simply can't compete there. So smartwatch should have a very simple very low power display like the Fitbit and Pebble and maybe a simple speaker/mic.

So what sense is the smartwatch good for? It's touch. There is a lot of potential of using vibrations/touch as a UI. For example, I think the Apple watch vibrates for turns when you do a Maps route. That's a good start. They need to focus more on things like this. There's a lot you can communicate with vibration, kind of like morse code (such as two quick vibrates, a long vibrate, etc.)

And now Apple has a very advanced touch sensor (the new one in iphone 7). Get rid of that silly big screen on Apple watch. Put the touch sensor there. Why not just allow thumbprint scan, wave my watch at a Apple Pay terminal, and buy things? Way less effort than taking out my phone.

These kind of pure touch and vibration UI is a huge open field. And I think Apple somewhat understands this. But they need to make the big step of dropping that screen. Because that's not where the smartwatch is strong. And it would also allow long battery life which is more important for smartwatch. People are used to daily charge for phones. But much less tolerant of that for watches.

<comment><USER15> > Get rid of that silly big screen on Apple watch. Put the touch sensor there. > Why not just allow thumbprint scan, wave my watch at a Apple Pay terminal, > and buy things? Way less effort than taking out my phone.

Just in case you missed it, this is already supported, and it's somewhat better than you're suggesting. Once the watch is unlocked, it does not need additional authentication to pay until it leaves your wrist (at which point it relocks). Double click the side button to put it into pay mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Festive gadget:

[https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=apple%20watch,pebb...](https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=apple%20watch,pebble%20watch,android%20watch,samsung%20watch,fitbit)

Seems interest in smart watches happens at Christmas time. There is a problem with that because you don't buy people the same present every year and there cannot be that many people wanting a new smart watch at Christmas, particularly if it is marginally better than their existing smart watch.

I think the same people that bought 3D televisions and tablets bought smart watches, they will be wanting something else next. Maybe they will return to buying smart watches when there is some new battery-defying functionality to them, i.e. they are as good as smart phones in miniature with lots of previously unimagined 'Pokemon Go' grade apps that make the upgrade worth it.

I also do not believe that any of the smart watches cut the mustard as far as true watch aficionados are concerned. To some people the fanciest ceramic iWatch is on an equal par with a resin calculator watch, lacking intangible heritage things and therefore not a cool item in their minds (they probably fear not being able to use a smart watch). These same people were equally snobbish about digital photography, therefore it could take a generation before smart watches are accepted 'artistically' by people who are like that.

I am hoping that a category killing smart watch gets made by Google in the same price range as a Chromecast. For £30 a lot of people would give a smart watch a go.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't get it. Decades of science fiction depicting Heads-up-Display glasses and wrist-strapped laptops, with people wishing and wishing we lived in such a world.

Now here we are and society isn't going in for it. Bluetooth head sets, smartwatches, Google Glass, none of it is sticking. Even though smart phones are becoming cumbersome due to size and inability to use hands-free or even one-handed well.

Are we ever going to see a cyberpunk future?

<comment><USER18> Could it be that smartwatches and google glass don't have suitable input methods yet? They're adequate for displaying information but not great for extensive input or manipulation of data. Most people also don't want yet another device to recharge each night either.

I have a Nexus 6 (one of the larger phones) and don't find it cumbersome at all. It's certainly more practical compared to trying to do anything meaningful on a smartwatch.

<comment><USER19> I think there is more to your comment than initially meets the eye. I've been watching "Black Mirror" the past few days, and the one thing that all episodes share in common when it comes to their futuristic UX is the tremendous expressiveness that they derive from unbelievably simple and quick input methods, where you can clearly see that the user communicated far more intent than even the number of DOF that their supposed input device even allowed. The only thing I can think of as helping to bridge that gap is AI

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone make a super-low energy, classic looking watch with GPS? For people with Alzheimer's / Dementia. Could make a kids version too.

They have GPS watches, but the battery seems to last maybe a day or two. My dad isn't going to remember to do that, so I would need to do so on a less frequent basis.

Maybe with some self-charging based on user movement (they used to make self- winding watches)? Keep GPS off until receive (authenticated) SMS message asking it to turn on, then report back position? Or maybe just triangulate position based on cell towers every 15 min...

<comment><USER21> [http://www.back2you.com/alzheimer-dementia-gps- tracker.html](http://www.back2you.com/alzheimer-dementia-gps-tracker.html) does a week but sadly lacks the "classic looking watch" form factor (unless you get creative with a Dremel, I suppose)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm really shocked by how much I appreciate my Apple watch. I bought it figuring I'd try it for 13 days and return it. Instead, I forgot to put it on in the morning of the fifth day and turned around on the way to work to get it -- it made that much difference. My GF, likewise, finds hers indispensable.

But it does pretty much everything I need right now so I don't see a point in upgrading. The analysts are hoping for an upgrade market.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a wearer of a 1950s Bulova selfwinder, rather than the _face_ , I'd like to see smatwatch vendors focus on the _band_. In other words, a third-party creates a 16mm or 18mm Nato style strap which embeds the battery, heartrate sensors, motion sensors, etc. and communicates to a smartphone or PC via bluetooth for data collection. The same 1950s Bulova (or whatever) face is attached to the band.

<comment><USER24> i agree. Stuffing everything into one tin makes it too big with too short battery life. The problem with putting sensors & power in the strap is that it's not longer a watch insofar as you can change straps. personally, i think the "band" format is superior, mainly for these reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> had one and returned it. They don't provide much value beyond real-time notifications & a fancy pedometer.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, this is why I went with the Pebble over the others - it gets the realtime notifications and the fancy sleep tracker and pedometer - and due to eink, can keep its screen on without the need to be charged every night.

That's all I wanted it for, that's all it does. And most importantly - it's priced like that's all it does.

<comment><USER26> Pebbles haven't used e-ink since the first version.

But they seem to get equal or better battery life out of the Transflective LCDs currently used, which operate on a similar principle as e-ink, in the sense of how the light reaches your eyes:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid- crystal_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid- crystal_display)

<comment><USER25> Interesting, I seem to remember them calling it color epaper in some marketing material so I just assumed it was a similar product to eink. Cool though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As the comments in that article pointed out - the hassle far outweighs the value. After not wearing a watch for over 20 years, I've had an Apple Watch for about 3 months now (it was a free gift), and honestly, as much as the device is useful, it is a pain - especially when it comes to battery life.

The charge seems to last _just_ enough to fall flat at the most inconvenient times, i.e. when I am just about to leave the house all day, or right when I am about to go to bed (I use the watch primarily for sleep tracking).

Most of the apps on the watch kind of require you to wear it _consistently_ all of the time to give you meaningful data, however current battery life means you end up with large gaps in your human telemetry that your data is always missing vital chunks.

<comment><USER28> Someone gave me a golf cart last year. Actually they gave me a Ferrari 458 Spider. But I wanted a golf cart, so I'm using it as golf cart. Its hassle far outweighs its value. It destroys the fairway with its huge torque. And its rear wheel drive makes it really hard to control on grass. And it uses a lot of gas, so it runs out at the most inconvenient times. My friend doesn't understand, saying he drives his around town, on tarmac, and passes gas stations all the time, but he fails to realize that there aren't any gas stations on the golf course.

Your friend gave you a $300+ Apple Watch, not a $50 sleep tracker. Charge it at night and if you really do want a sleep tracker then buy a sleep tracker.

<comment><USER27> Not sure about you, but I would have the skills to actually use a Ferrari 458 Spider as a golf cart without tearing up the fairways or using too much fuel. It would be cool.

Strange analogies aside - the point of my post is that the Apple Watch uses too much of my time and energy to 'baby' it and make sure it is operationally ready. Yes, I love unlocking my Mac with it, getting the time and reading notifications on it, so big bonus there. I did used to have Fitbit device for a long while there and enjoyed the fact that I only had to plan and think about charging it every 2 or 3 weeks, rather than every 1.3 days.

Even if it was an even 24 hours recharge cycle for the Watch, it would be a darn sight more convenient, as I could get into routine of charging it at a set time every day, but the fact that it (a) runs out of charge at different times of the day and (b) takes a long time to fully charge up means that it just takes up too much of my conscious thought to manage it, and I would far rather spend that time and energy elsewhere on things I consider more important. Heck, I have enough trouble keeping my cats fed and happy - I don't need something else constantly bullying me as well.

Similar with your Ferrari analogy above. Rules permitting, it would make an awesome golf cart and I would do so without hesitation. My main problem would be 'babying' it again and worrying about other golfers denting it with errant shots or thrown clubs (you'd have to play golf with me one day to see how prevalent that is among the guys I play with!) :)

First world problems, I know, but I think it is a big factor as to why most of the first world seems to shun the smart watches.

<comment><USER28> You might just have a broken one then? I charge mine a set time every night, put it on in the morning, and 18 hours later when I'm hitting the hay, it still has 40% charge.

Also, you are a way better driver than me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've always been skeptical of smart watches. As others say, if it can't outright replace my phone, i just don't see much value in them.

I wear "nice" watches occasionally, usually any time i have to wear a suit. As a toy, an epaper watch with actual physical hands would be pretty cool. The two extra hands on something like a diving watch could be used for other gauges, maybe unread email count or something goofy like that.

A watch seems like the right target for that semi connected on call state. Sort of like a modern pager. I'm not reading email, or available on hangouts. But i'll get the alert that we need to communicate. Low key, non intrusive, acceptable at a funeral. Just a few bits of information.

<comment><USER30> > Sort of like a modern pager.

One of the original smart watches was Swatch's The Beep - a watch / pager mashup.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/wear-your-heart- on-y...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/wear-your-heart-on-your- wrist-1619632.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I bought one of the first generation Android Wear devices for $50 a few months after they debut. There was some convenience to the simple verbal commands for timers and the instant answers made for a neat party trick, but the speech-to- text wasn't good enough for moderately complex messaging (I once said I would be there in "a bit over 15 minutes" and got the fraction bit/15 minutes) and it was heavy and uncomfortable. I've also become less and less comfortable with being so intimate with Google.

I do see value added in the notification mirroring, however. There are many situations where it's useful to see updates without taking out and unlocking your phone: at a meeting, with your hands full, walking around in a crowd. I hadn't worn my watch for the better chunk of a year until two weeks ago when I needed instant Twitter notifications during business hours should a convention I attend start selling its badges. Now that I have those badges, it's back into the drawer until needed again. My calculator watch is more comfortable and I have metal watches that look nicer. Unless I have a defined need for notifications on my wrist, I currently am better off with a conventional watch.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why do I need a smartwatch, when I have a perfectly acceptable smartphone that does about 10x10 things more than the smartwatch will ever be able to do?

If I just needed to know the time, I'd buy a watch. If I need to know the time and make a call, I'd buy a smartphone.

Which I did.

Welcome to the future. We don't really solve problems - we just invent new ones and call the old problems solved.

Hell, I don't even remember what problem smartwatches were supposed to solve!

I'm going to go get off my own damn lawn.

<comment><USER33> Dunno if it's just because of Chicago winters, but not having to unglove and unbundle my phone is pretty nice for:

\- Screening calls

\- Switching/pausing music

\- Reading and (briefly) responding to texts

\- checking the time (no, seriously : p)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Of course sales are tanking, these things are bloody useless.

I have the first generation of motorola 360, I wear it every day and charge it every night. The hardware is fine (for a first gen) and I like its style. But, I unpaired it from my phone a long time ago, because I ran into too many issues. First the connection was sucking my phone's battery to a point it wasn't funny anymore, then updating an app on my phone would crash the watch's OS, and again randomly causing the thing to become uncomfortably hot. Finally the overhaul quality of the ecosystem went down with each updates (notifications delayed, vibrations missed, glitches...)

The features I don't miss:

\- Fitness & heart rate (that thing was a joke)

\- Music (I have a phone for that, thank you)

\- Note taking (just no. I'm not ever again talking to my watch in public)

\- Text responding (what is wrong with you?)

The features I do miss a little bit:

\- GPS guidance with vibrations when biking (two for left, three for right, - that was genius)

\- getting my phone's notifications (when it was working)

</comment><comment><USER35> Pebble is rather good, I would say it is easily the best price:quality smartwatch available out there.

</comment><comment><USER36> I like my 2nd gen Moto 360 as a watch, for its aesthetics, and as a simple notifier, but almost everything else on it is beyond broken. Just trying to check the weather takes 20+ seconds and fails half the time, even on wifi. Pull out the phone and the weather is already there, updated. What the hell. Ok Google could be useful, except for the situations you'd want to use it (hands full, crowded environment) are exactly the situations where it fails.

USAA has a great watch app, though, which somehow has many fewer reliability/latency problems than every other app. I can do most of my banking just walking down the hall while my phone is locked up at my desk.

</comment><comment><USER37> I predict Apple is very happy with the smartwatch market being down, much like Microsoft loved it (back in '99) when internet stocks were down. They are an iPhone company, and probably prefer (as a company) to defer threats to that incumbency.

I own an Apple Watch, and a Pebble before it, but honestly until more devices are addressable by such devices, it's usability is limited.

I think it may also have something to do with the relative popularity of Alexa and pervasive voice input in general - though I shy away from those due to privacy concerns. I mean, why wear a watch and tap for Siri when you can just call out for Alexa (and now Google) to ask about weather?

(edited for clarity)

</comment><comment><USER24> Haven't they figured out yet that telling the time is the thing that smart watches do the worst.

instead, i want a band. I'm still waiting for an Android Wear band. i want something a bit like the Microsoft band 2 [1], but slimmer and a smaller screen. something as a notification device and to take voice notes. but i don't need it to replace my watch because it's not "on" when i look at it.

For telling the time, I'll either wear a "proper" watch (as well) or none at all.

[1] I'm on my 3rd ms band. they randomly die (stop charging). ms are good about it and replace it quickly... but soon my warranty will be up and it's all over.

<comment><USER26> Pebble doesn't have that problem.

<comment><USER24> can i do voice recognition on a pebble?

<comment><USER38> Yes, and not just on Android. Pebble has a microphone and voice-recognition. One of the more popular apps is effectively wrist-based Siri.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Smart watches don't have any particular niche to capture that other devices don't have. Maybe if they expanded into large screen computers, that would be cool. It'd be nice to have a rolled up monitor on my arm - it'd be great for maps cause I could unroll it with the other hand to get a peek at the map and then let it auto-re-roll itself. Sorry - I don't have a diagram to show you the idea, but maybe you can catch my drift. I'm aware there are some flexible screens already (some organic stuff), but I don't know much about the progress in that area.

</comment><comment><USER40> I suspect people /want/ a smart watch so they can feel like Dick Tracy and Roger Smith (Anime, Big O).

The reality is that the smart watch is little more than a smaller screen attached by wireless personal area network to the real computer; which has a better (bigger, brighter, larger buttons) and more responsive screen.

I stopped wearing a normal watch once I had a decent pocket chronometer (a comparatively primitive simple pocket flip phone).

I think that's the marketing problem here; it isn't clear to the average consumer what the use case, if any, actually is.

<comment><USER41> Mainly because you feel like an utter prat walking down the street talking to your wrist. Had an original G Watch and truly felt like the biggest c __k saying "Ok Google, remind me to do XYZ".

It had 3 uses: 1) seeing who's ringing and dismissing calls in meetings where you left the ringtone on 2) being able to read full message threads through the notifications without having to "read" them in the apps (sneaky for Messenger and Hangouts) 3) pretending you're not a tourist by getting navigation directions on the wrist rather than being obvious and looking at your phone.

Suffice to say, I now wear a nice normal watch that I love dearly.

<comment><USER24> yeah what possessed them to make people say "ok Google". I might as well say, "I'm an idiot". Was it not possible to make it start listening for commands when you activate it/turn wrist etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I liked my Android Wear watch, but it never completely worked. Things like dismissing a reminder on the watch would get a sad cloud rather than also dismiss it on my phone. I thought maybe it was because I was running cyanogenmod, so I went back to stock Verizon firmware, but it had all the same bugs. A few weeks later, the Android Wear app started crashing in the background 2-3 times per minute and giving me a popup each time. I disabled it and haven't really used the watch since.

</comment><comment><USER43> Someone mentioned it in the comments on TC. The decline may have been due to the Apple Watch v2's imminent announcement. I think people are willing to try it but not if there is "most definitely" a newer and improved version coming out soon for the same price.

2017 may well be the year for watches. This topic is pointless now given it's end of Oct and BF and Christmas is coming up soon. Let's revisit this topic mid 2017.

*edit, spelling.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is slightly misleading -- and the table is missing its footnotes from the original article -- since the "data only includes smartwatches capable of running third party applications". As a result, it ignores a lot of great wearables that for some reason IDC doesn't consider "smartwatches" which don't _need_ third party apps.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I must be a curmudgeon but what's the purpose of a smart watch? It always seemed like a solution in search of a problem.

</comment><comment><USER45> Of course they are, they are just a gimmick to try to sell gadgets to those that already own a PC, tablet and phones and overcome the flat downwards curve in sales, now that all those devices are good enough for most people.

As a former owner of the old Casio and Timex first waves of smartwatches, I fail to get any interest on 21st version of them.

</comment><comment><USER46> When I was in Shenzhen recently I noted that smart watch shops were everywhere, with literally hundreds of different models to choose from... but very few people were actually wearing one! I believe this will be (er, has) become the CB radio fad of this generation.

</comment><comment><USER47> If I ever do get a smartwatch, it would be because it's a sensor. I think the health/medical/biohacking potential there is huge. The only thing is - must it really be on my wrist, and do I really need to look at it or touch/push buttons on it?

<comment><USER24> im thinking biosensors evenually have to go subcutaneous with the watch/band being the reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm wondering why no one discusses that Q3 was the Quarter right _before_ new Apple Watch introduction, and Apple owns a majority share in the market? Of course people were waiting to buy a new device. Q4/Q1 will be more relevant.

</comment><comment><USER49> If you can't use them....shoot them [https://youtu.be/JumhJWgAS4U?t=16s](https://youtu.be/JumhJWgAS4U?t=16s)

</comment><comment><USER50> Probably because there hasn't been an updated android wear watch in ages besides the fossil, which I bought after my moto 360 died. Google is dragging their feet.

<comment><USER24> isn't there supposed to be a major update Jan?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> When I'm not wearing my _mechanical_ Seiko, I wear a Garmin GPS for running. Always-on is big for me. Are there any that have that feature these days?

<comment><USER11> Always-on... screen? Pebbles have that. They don't have GPS built-in though so you'll have to bring your phone with you. You can control the running apps through the watch interface at least.

<comment><USER52> Note that there are 3rd party solutions for the Pebble (straps that use their extension/accessory pins to add GPS and a bit more juice) and that Pebble plans to release the Pebble Core in January - a tiny wearable Android device with GPS included.

So you should be able to go out with your Pebble + SomethingElse and leave the phone at home, if we're talking GPS or tracking.

Disclaimer: I own a Pebble Time, I backed the Pebble Time 2 and the Pebble Core.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think their conclusion is a little misguided - if you remove the Apple Watch from the list, overall sales are roughly flat, at 1.6-1.7m units.

</comment><comment><USER54> It will continue to tank until they become the phone and the phone becomes just another screen (eg. ipod touch, mini tablets).

<comment><USER55> I honestly thought that was one possible outcome of Project Ara if Google decided that the phone's component inventory didn't literally need to be connected to the base station. It would have made sense to extend Ara communication to BLE, Zigbee or some other low power wireless rather than wired interface. But that dream died with the Ara project itself. Oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What killed the smart watch for me is the watch form factor. I don't want stuff strapped to my body. I had to stop wearing a watch many years ago for a few months and I couldn't do it again since I lost the habit. It just feels unnatural. I understand that it can be laughed at, because I wear glasses. An extremely lightweight notification device inside my glasses would be the right form factor for me.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've been wanting one but given their prices and longevity I rather just get a nicer phone.

</comment><comment><USER58> I love my Pebble, I'm now late to 50% less of my scheduled appointments :-)</comment>


The idiot's guide to special variables and lexical closures (2003) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.flownet.com/ron/specials.pdf <comment><USER2> I've heard that dynamic scoping was considered faster than lexical for a time. Anyone know of any papers that would justify such a stance?

<comment><USER3> I've heard this too. One possible root of this claim is Stallman in regards to Emacs Lisp. I _think_ he made a post where he said that dynamic scoping was faster than lexical scoping for elisp (though this was later shown to be mistaken: [https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/why-is-let- fa...](https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/why-is-let-faster-with- lexical-scope)).

Sorry that I don't have any sources to support this. I can't find the post, and it may have been secondhand info anyway.

<comment><USER4> I thought he meant lexical scope was unfit if not incompatible with an extensible program. Meaning you had to loosen up the binding to allow for user code to hook in. Lexical scope made this "impossible" or maybe possible but required radically different way to program, probably using faux-monadic style lisp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the practical differences between special vars in Lisp and dynamic vars in Clojure? The obvious ones are that `def ^:dynamic` can't be local to a function, and that Clojure uses a separate form, `binding`, rather than `let`, to set their values.

<comment><USER6> For me the largest difference is that Clojure carries over all your dynamic bindings when creating new threads (via 'future') and in lazy seqs, whereas Common Lisp (typically) does not. I now understand why they choose to do it this way, but I wish the documentation was much clearer in this regards.

<comment><AUTHOR> The CL standard doesn't deal with threads at all, so different implementations do things differently. But typically the user can control what the initial bindings of a thread are through keyword arguments to whatever function spawns threads.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Manufacturing & selling EspUSB WiFi Keyboard - <AUTHOR> Back in 2016, [cnlohr] designed the EspUSB, a little gadget that fits inside a USB port and works as a wireless keyboard [1]. I plan to use it to help me type Chinese on the virtual keyboard on my phone directly into my laptop that doesn't have key engravings, and also for typing on a Raspberry Pi.
I waited for 2 years for someone to start manufacturing it and selling it online, until I finally gave up and asked PCBWay to build it for me. It's too small to solder by myself. The boards actually work and I'm really excited! I'll write a blog post about it soon. I bought 3 units for personal use.
Now I've had 7 people ask me to put them on eBay/Tindie/CrowdSupply and start selling them. It would be really easy for me to just order 50-100 units from PCBWay, solder programming wires onto test points, install the firmware myself, and ship them on to people. I'm willing to do that for zero profit, but I'd have to take revenue to pay for postage.
The problem is that the Esp8285 is a WiFi chip, and that's an "intentional radiator" that needs $10,000 FCC certification [2]. There is an FCC exception for "home-built devices" in quantities of 5 or fewer. [3] To sell in Europe, they need a CE certification, with different rules and more expense.
The people who want to buy these just want a simple "buy" button, not a complicated manufacturing process.
My questions are:
a. How do I not get sued? If I start a limited liability company, does that protect me?
b. If I sell a "firmware-programming service" so that I'm not actually selling the devices, per se, is that any less illegal?
c. What about tax? Everything gets so complicated when money is involved.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBzOaLbWhM
[2] https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/398
[3] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2010-title47-vol1/pdf/CFR-2010-title47-vol1-sec15-23.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> A few other points to note:

The Esp8285 shares a website, which can be reprogrammed without soldering onto test points. However, the first-time firmware installation must be done over serial, which needs a soldering iron and 3.3V USB-serial adaptor.

I think there's a world market for maybe 1000 of these devices, selling to geeks like us; not enough to justify starting a company selling these to consumers.

Please also email me if you're interested in buying the EspUSB Tiny - I will be placing another order by the end of the year, whatever method I use to sell them, and I need to know roughly how many to ask them to build. Also if you're a salesman who wants to make a quick buck marketing and reselling these, I'd be very happy to let you handle the business side while I do your manufacturing.

Why am I doing it for free? Basically because I think it will look good on my résumé, and I want to start a career in hardware (I studied electronic engineering, but now I have a job writing software for a small startup). If it goes really well though, I'd like to do the same for other gadgets of my own design (e.g. a very small adaptor from miniHDMI on the RPi Zero to HDMI female - a 1.6mm PCB fits perfectly inside an HDMI plug). If it goes badly and I get scared off by regulators and sued, then I'll probably give up and stay in software.</comment>


New Skin Printer Could Print Some New Skin For You - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/11/04/wake-forest-could-print-you-some-new-skin/

<comment><USER2> Amazing advances in medicine continue with the help of animal testing. In this case, rats were deliberately wounded to observe the healing process. A moral minefield.

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on how you look at it I suppose.

If one thinks that unique human beings are more important than lab rats that are farmed to be experimented on then it is perfectly moral.

Put another way, if someone in your family had 3rd degree burns to their face and whole upper body and needed new skin. Would you sacrifice a few lab rats to save your family member's life and let them lead a normal life again?

Or would you say, sorry we could have helped you but we couldn't bear to hurt the poor rats to find the solution to your problem?

(and we can replace skin with hearts, liver, kidney, lungs, eyes and any other organ that might be able to be replaced in the future)

<comment><USER2> Exactly, it depends on the value you put on animal welfare.

I don't put a particularly high value on it, but I can see that deciding where to put the line is a "moral minefield". In this case, I am more than happy to sacrifice lab rats.

But what about when the product needs to be tested on pigs/monkeys? What if the product then fails its human trials. Is it still worth it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this will be an increasing topic of debate in the press as genomics, medicine, nanotech, designer drugs and robotics fields' progress in the coming years.

Funny thing is that your's and my opinions of where the line should be drawn are irrelevant along with the opinion of sovereign governments' (opinions and related laws). The scientists to do this work will do it anyway and anywhere based on available funding and their personal moral compass.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oracle's Cloudy Future - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2016/oracles-cloudy-future/ <comment><USER2> I am happy Oracle is losing this battle (edit: or at least feeling the heat), one sort of personal reason is that they have killed/crippled many open source projects.

Other reason, they are gaining money mainly because there are enough fools around running big corps, who can conveniently _pass the buck_ if something goes wrong. Similar is true for MS too.

But if you really want to see your money well spent, Oracle is not at all the way. The recent decision by Yandex to shift from Oracle to Postgres should be seen here. [1]

[1] [https://www.pgcon.org/2016/schedule/attachments/426_2016.05....](https://www.pgcon.org/2016/schedule/attachments/426_2016.05.19%20Yandex.Mail%20success%20story.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > Other reason, they are gaining money mainly because there are enough fools > around running big corps, who can conveniently pass the buck if something > goes wrong. Similar is true for MS too.

This is also the _sole_ reason IBM still exists, at least in services.

"Oh our system is an overengineered pile of garbage that takes two weeks to deploy an update to a static asset? It's (cue dramatic music) _their fault_!"

 _CTO proceeds to get bonus_

 _IBM Consultants are brought in_

<comment><USER4> For many people in IT, generally not the Hacker News crowd, but the guys in the trenches of [insert corporation name here] with ops in many countries, The Money is NOT really the important thing. Risk mitigation by having a passthrough to the big IT vendors is what they are paying for specifically. I work in the IT consulting / business research space. In our surveys, "vendor viability" is a frequent concern, and the more critical the workload, the more weight is given to wondering whether the vendor will be around, unchanged, in the next 3 years.

The risk mitigation factor from large vendors comes not from performance but from reliability. You can trust that old mainframe code will continue to be supported for many years. You can trust that your COBOL workload will be continue to run, and that the 20 years of updates, patches, and tweaks have made it reliable and predictable in a way that precludes rip and replace in all but the most extenuating circumstances.

IT budgets tend to be governed by an 80/20 rule - maintenance vs innovation. Sometimes, its more of a 95/5 in practicality due to shrinking budgets. My experience says that the innovation side is drastically shifting away from these big vendors, but that the maintenance side has a lot more riding on it still.

<comment><USER5> Well, thing is, Open Source is changing that proposition. As long as you're prepared to be conservative in your choices, something like Debian + Apache + OSS programming language will likely be around 20-40 years from now.

When is the last time an OSS programming language that took off actually died? For example, even though it's not as popular Perl 5 is still used professionally in many environments and as far as I know the ecosystem actually went through a sort of renaissance a few years back.

And these days I think it's even easier for OSS ecosystems to achieve critical mass and sustain themselves for decades since communication is easier (a lot more broadband internet in the world) and there's a lot more programmers around. Python, Ruby, PHP & co will probably be around long after I'm dead.

<comment><USER6> I agree. However one additional thing to keep in mind in the COTS vs FOSS is if there is some bug that affects the company and requires attention. The company doesn't generally have the engineers on staff to actually change that software, and there's no guarantee that the associated FOSS community will prioritize the bug. With a COTS solution, you can pick up the phone and call the support team. Generally my company chooses COTS over FOSS because they want guaranteed support even if it costs more.

Note, some FOSS products also provide a strong support team to handle this exact thing, and in those cases they were usually the winner.

Edit: Looks like abakker posted the same idea simultaneously.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. It seems that the most sustainable business model for Open Source so far is a combination of FOSS product + paid support / consulting company. It has some potential conflict of interest (e.g. deliberately not improving some aspects of the product that brings in support calls), but being a successful open-source product often depends on outside contributions which themselves depend on reputation, and that may keep companies honest.

<comment><USER8> > It has some potential conflict of interest (e.g. deliberately not improving > some aspects of the product that brings in support calls)

You could say the same about proprietary software, no?

<comment><USER7> Yes. I was stating they exist, not comparing to propertiary software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Earlier this week, Oracle had their OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. Thousands of badge-wearing attendees swarmed the city and signs plastered all over declared Oracle "The fastest-growing cloud company."

But even the Oracle conference attendees weren't buying it. In a live audience poll held during the live keynote, they voted that Oracle would be unlikely to meet it's cloud goals, and challenged the company's "fastest-growing" claim, giving the title to Amazon instead.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/19/oracle_openworld1/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/19/oracle_openworld1/)

<comment><USER10> Oh, this con.. they blocked Howard st. and majorly have been disrupting traffic downtown the entire week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A genuine question: If you have worked with any fortune 500/1000 companies (Lets pick non software based companies) either directly or if they are your customers, how many of them use Oracle database or SQL Server?

Some of the reasons why this trend WILL continue:

1\. Critical software like databases needs support. To the point where there should be someone who can come on premise to fix things.

2\. We need to use X because X is used by other big corporations and you never get fired for choosing X.

3\. The products (Oracle,MS SQL) are not that bad. (Not sure if there is a better way to put this)

I could be wrong, but I can't think of any other important reason. Can anyone pitch in their experience?

<comment><USER12> We use Oracle. When starting a new project you are told to use Oracle because that is strategic plan of the company. There are teams of Oracle specialists in house that assist us. There are Sybase, SQL Server apps around but would ideally be migrated.

I think its probably time to move off to a free open source platform like PostGres, esp for non critical apps.

Don't underestimate the power of corporate support. I had a problem with IBM DB2 in a previous job - to diagnose IBM went out and bought an exact copy of our hardware, installed the exact copy of our build and ran automated queries to match our load and recreated the problem. You don't get that support from stackoverflow.

<comment><USER13> This! Enterprise DB vendors like Oracle will send a team of engineers to your site and work with you until the problem is solved. For IT managers, knowing they can rely on this level of commitment is something they will happily pay for.

<comment><USER14> So, IT managers like Oracle because they can pay someone else to do their job for them?

What are they getting paid for then? They take the TPS reports from the in- house engineers to the Oracle managers? They're people people?

<comment><USER15> Almost all companies need databases. Very few companies can or want to hire highly skilled database engineers with years of experience of debugging and performance profiling complex applications.

<comment><USER16> Right, when I go to major client sites, often their people don't know anything about databases really. It's in some random city, and they hire the people that are local.

You get very wildly different levels of skill, and many times very low levels of skill. Then they hire consultants, because we can make the thing go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _However, there were two big limitations with hierarchical databases: first, relationships were pre-determined; what was a parent and what was a child was a decision made before any data was actually entered_

Well, yes and no. IMS was developed for bill-of-materials processing, which is a kind of thing you do in engineering to keep track of all the parts in your thing you're building. It was first used for the Saturn V rocket. At or at least near the top level you would have things like "a booster" and at the bottom level you would have something like "a bolt", "a nut", "a washer". There was no conceivable case in which you'd want to make a bolt out of boosters so having these relationships pre-determined wasn't actually a "limitation" at all, in the sense that it would never, ever stop a user of the system doing what they needed to do with it.

 _Secondly, queries analyzing the children of different parents are impractical: you would need to traverse the hierarchy to retrieve information for every potential item_

The sort of query you'd do with this system would be, I want to make a rocket engine, what exactly do I need to order and how many of them, I want to give this piece of the work to this group, do they have all the parts they need in their inventory, and so on and so on. So that's not really an unreasonable sort of query if you are managing an inventory of parts and the processes that make them into ever bigger parts until finally you have your very top level parent "a moon mission".

<comment><USER18> What if you also wanted to know who supplied those bolts, when, and which other parts use that same bolt?

<comment><USER17> Apparently, you can put a man on the moon and return him to Earth without needing that query...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What a lot of these analysts overlook is _why_ Oracle is trying to take on Amazon, despite being years late to the party. I believe it's a defensive move: Oracle is seeing long-time customers deploy new applications in AWS, and that customer starts to realize, "hey, that went pretty well, why not move more of my stuff to AWS?" Their Oracle sales rep comes calling, and suddenly a once-reliable customer needs _fewer_ Oracle licenses than last year.

Oracle therefore needs an answer to those customers transitioning to the cloud; they want their own cloud to sell. Oracle can undercut Amazon on price --even run their own cloud offerings at a loss for a while--because losing some money on their cloud is better than losing customers from their high- margin products.

<comment><USER20> _> why Oracle is trying to take on Amazon, despite being years late to the party. I believe it's a defensive move_

Ellison is all about the money. When "the cloud" started, he quietly bankrolled a bunch of companies spearheading the space, so he didn't have to risk his cash-cow. Once the space was proven, he's steered the whole company - and he didn't do it yesterday, he's done it about 6 years ago. You're seeing results today because Oracle is large, it takes a while to release stuff that has almost been rewritten from scratch to fit the new paradigm, and it takes even more to sell it to Oracle's very conservative userbase.

If it succeeds, the subscription model will make Oracle even more money than before. However, they are effectively rewriting from scratch a large number of their products; this is why they are very limited. It will take another 5 years before they can reach feature-parity with on-premise solutions, assuming on-prem doesn't get anything new in the meantime. Performance is also pretty dismal for some cloud products at the moment.

<comment><USER19> Oracle selling higher-end products as a service makes total sense, and I agree, the subscription model has potential to make them a good deal of money. What I'm getting at, however, is why are they so aggressively taking on Amazon in the IaaS space? That's the part which doesn't make sense on the surface-- they show up late and then attempt to compete on price. Since when has Oracle competed on _price?_

The conclusion I come to is that Amazon must be eating away at their customer base. Once a customer starts to move some of their IT into AWS, and it goes well, that puts Oracle on the defensive--not a spot they like to be in.

I doubt Oracle really wants to be in the IaaS business just for the sake of IaaS. They want to focus on higher-margin services. The IaaS part must be a defensive move to keep customers away from AWS and within the Oracle ecosystem.

<comment><USER20> There's another thing that is specific to IaaS: auditability. Part and parcel of Oracle's business model is sending goons to count your servers running this or that appserver, and invariably telling you are not paying enough in licenses. A serious cloud-based architecture that can scale up and down at will (which is what you would deploy on AWS) is fundamentally non-auditable, because it can be scaled down to minimal levels when auditors land. But if you're running on Oracle's servers...

<comment><USER21> Not sure about auditability. If anything, IaaS is more auditable since everything is traceable.

Additionally, AWS will provide partner ISVs with detailed reports on how customers used their products over a given billing period.

That being said, this transparency might be an issue for Oracle as it limits their usual predatory sales/auditing practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> (long time ex-Oracle employee ... take with whatever size grain of salt you wish :-)

As the article mentions, Oracle aims primarily at its own installed-base, which limits how much "innovation" they can do .. can't piss-off the paying customers! Their world-view is incredibly narrow ... years ago they discovered that even though they have millions of paying customers, there is a core of only about 5000 customers that they _really_ need to listen to.

Oracle should look carefully at IBM's recent moves within the Cloud eco- system: instead of offering the AWS-style "everything-including-the-kitchen- sink", IBM's purchase of 'The Weather Network's big-data division has lead them to offer high-level cloud-APIs for dealing with weather data without the need to put it all together (S3+SQS+DynamoDB+EMR...)

<comment><USER23> Very timely:

[https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/09/global- historic...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/09/global-historical- daily-weather-data-now-available-in-BigQuery.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Quote Larry Ellison in 2008: What the hell is cloud computing? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0)

"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion driven than women's fashion."

<comment><USER25> He's not wrong. He brings up several good examples and how "cloud computing" is basically meaningless. He says they're gonna change the marketing to be "cloud computing" friendly since both gmail and salesforce are considered "cloud computing". In that world Oracle DBs are also cloud computing.

<comment><USER24> Oh I don't disagree. Just found it amusing the change of attitude.

<comment><USER25> He's not dumb. He's a very competent businessman. He's not gonna let a 2009 Q/A session get in the way of getting more money just so he can be consistent about ragging on "cloud computing".

<comment><USER26> ^^ The difference between management and engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good article, but misses the point on Oracle's risk against AWS. Understandable as Ben is more focused on consumer stuff.

Oracle's main money maker is their database product. Running on prem, collecting money through license and maintenance contracts. The more DB installs out there, the better.

Salesforce uses Oracle for their backend. But here's the rub - as a SFDC customer, I do not care which DB is running below it. And I don't need an DB in itself anymore. I have my customer data in my CRM, and runs in SFDC datacenters. SFDC is the largest known user of Oracle DB, but it is abstracting away the raw DB product from enterprise users. Like any other SaaS product does.

Which means the total number of ORA DBs will shrink, massively. Hence Oracle buying business apps left and right with all that DB money, to augment the sellable stack. Oracle is the elephant graveyeard of enterprise software, in CRM alone they acquired 5-6 different solutions and still sell a bunch of those (Siebel, Oracle CRM, Oracle OnDemand, Fusion, Peoplesoft, etc.).

SFDC has announced a big move onto AWS, getting away from running their own datacenters - they're moving upstream, going after the business end users. The underlying tech is a commodity, plumbing, invisible.

And what happens to price points of commodities? bye bye fat margin DB business...

<comment><USER28> Correct. Amazon understand this dynamic and how to play the game. They can take something like Oracle's DB, turn it into a service, and manage it end to end for the customer, and even provide tools to do the migration. This is a straight attack on Oracle. Once in the AWS ecosystem, it becomes easy to follow the logic described in the CIO using MS products in the article.

One real risk is lock in. Larry has been harping on this. The counterpoint, of course, is if you are running on the best platform, lock-in is not a problem because you don't want to switch.

<comment><USER29> You mean the best platform running 4 year old hardware? That one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Software Development Laboratories implemented it and called it Oracle, and > in 1979 sold it to the CIA...

I've long suspected that Oracle's success was due to becoming the de facto RDBMS for any and all government TLA's. I think this is part of Ellison's legendary arrogance. He knows he has the US government by the short hairs when it comes to IT.

I think it also ties well with Sun CEO Scott McNealy's famous, "You have no privacy; get over it," comment. McNealy understood that the CIA (and NSA, FBI, et. al.) were running big data mining operations -- with Oracle, as that was the only game in town, at that point -- on his hardware, but he couldn't just come out and say that.

<comment><USER17> That's not exactly how it happened - Oracle got the CIA as a customer specifically because doing so would let them skip the queue for a new mainframe, for which there was a waiting list. It was what kids these days would call a "growth hack".

The original "Oracle" was a scheme for storing data on mylar strips, getting into database game was what kids these days would call a "pivot".

(Source: Larry Ellison's bio).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I sat next to someone who worked for a well-known company on a plane on the way back from re:invent last year. They were ripping out Oracle and switching to AWS with extreme prejudice after one too many 'guilty-until-proven- innocent' license audits.

The days of being able to treat their customers like dirt with impunity are well and truly over.

</comment><comment><USER32> To summarize other comments:

If you are running a Fortune 1000 IT group, you'd be a fool not to use Oracle; if you are running a startup, you'd be a fool to use Oracle.

It's a pain to _create_ something using Oracle. But it's just there :-(

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a wonderful explanation of the original rationale for relational databases. Periodically poeple re-invent IMS' hierarchical design only to rediscover why relations are important. MongoDB's "document database" is a current example.

<comment><USER34> Actually, I just got a little training on IMS last week, and I have to say, IMS should be reinvented. But not for its weaknesses (hierarchy), but for its strengths (speed).

The idea that the application program gets a compiled representation of the exact data pointers that are in the database, and those data pointers optimized for the problem, is very sound, IMHO. IMS is very close to the metal, at the expense of flexibility, and that's how it should be reinvented.

<comment><USER35> That's essentially the idea behind Protobuf and friends, is it not? It's not _quite_ as optimized because there's a bounds check, but that's about it (and in many languages you can't get around a NULL or bounds check anyway, and just rely on the branch predictor).

<comment><USER34> Protobuf is not a database. What comes close is DataDraw, but that is an embedded database, not a server.

<comment><USER35> I don't understand your meaning, then... lots of database systems have hardcoded fixed pointer offsets for data structures, and some even compile queries into bytecode with those hardcoded pointer paths (for instance, HyPeR does this using LLVM, and I think some other column-stores do as well). Is your issue that those databases aren't hierarchical? On modern machines, pointer chasing is much slower than predictable sequential memory access, so that model doesn't seem like the performance win it was in the past... maybe I'm wrong.

<comment><USER34> I think what IMS does is they have those pointers, but these are pointers between records on disk (to minimize IO), not in memory. And the hierarchy is essentially a pre-calculated one-to-many join. So what you do when you design IMS DB is you look at what joins you need and you build your DB structure around that. And that's where, even though IMS is still row-oriented, it differs from the relational model, which is more flexible, but at the cost of higher IO per query.

DataDraw is kinda similar, but in memory. There is a reason why it doesn't have a generic SQL interface, although it would be probably possible to build a slow one on top of it.

P.S. I don't know HyPeR, and I can't google it. And yes, it's possible that somebody already reinvented IMS, I am just not aware of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If you want to know the history of Oracle, "Softwar" is an excellent book. It includes Ellison's notes too, wherever he felt he needed to add them.

</comment><comment><USER37> Oracle is going to be hobbled by Cloud providers in similar manner as TV networks by Netflix. If Oracle reduce access of its software to Cloud infrastructure providers then they lose potential revenue stream and Cloud providers can start promoting alternatives. On the other hand if cloud providers have access to Oracle products in their cloud then Oracle cloud looks unimpressive to customers and no reason to use Oracle cloud.

Like networks learned that must watch shows are decreasing on their networks in last few year Oracle will learn their software is must for decreasing number of customers.

</comment><comment><USER38> Are any new companies choosing Oracle products? Or are they really only relying on banks,insurance companies and other blue chips to take up their 'cloud' offerings?

<comment><USER39> This is actually a question I never had a good answer for.

If I'm a developer, and am going to create a complicated line of business application, are there non-political reasons that I'd want to target Oracle as opposed to, say, Postgres or Maria?

<comment><USER17> If it has a feature that's cheaper than creating and supporting it yourself. Oracle the database is literally state-of-the-art.

Being database-neutral means only using lowest-common-denominator features, which in turn means if you need it, you gotta write it and maintain it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What db does the new enterprise use - airbnb, tesla, uber... even google, apple, facebook, amazon?

If "software is eating the world", and the new enterprises _are_ software companies (even if they don't sell software), do they write their own custom solution, optimized for their usage patterns?

Or do they "grow up" into traditional companies, and rely on outside vendors for their software? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER41> Oracle has brought top talent from Amazon and MS, including Deepak Patil who launched Microsoft Azure: [http://agetimes.net/tech/enterprise/this-is-how- oracle-lured...](http://agetimes.net/tech/enterprise/this-is-how-oracle-lured- top-flight-programmers-away-from-amazon-and-microsoft-to-build-its-next-big- thing-orcl-amzn/)

<comment><USER42> What a terrible article, and written in such layman language:

"it comes as "bare metal," a attention tenure for servers with no program installed"

<comment><USER43> Something about it makes me think it was poorly translated into English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I guess this is an off topic question, but shouldn't the example of the Hierarchical Database show Customer as the Root and Order as the Parent and Books as the Child?

I guess it makes sense if the query is "Show me all the Orders in the system".

</comment><comment><USER45> Oracle has IaaS and PaaS solutions now....

<comment><USER46> and the point of the article is that they're light and provide no where near the optionality and features of AWS.

<comment><USER47> Amazon doesn't really have a PaaS though, right?

<comment><USER28> One could argue the entire suite of AWS products make up a PaaS. One could also argue that Elastic Beanstalk is their standalone PaaS offering.

[https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/)

<comment><USER47> Except that isn't really a PaaS when stacked up to the others like App Engine, Heroku, and Azure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-20/china-just-handed-the-world-a-111-million-ton-trash-problem <comment><USER2> We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists.

The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a poison sponge that bioaccumulates and has got absolutely everywhere.

<comment><USER3> Plastic is an amazing material. You can thermoform it, it's a great insulator, molds and fungi don't feed on it, it's incredibly strong (e.g. UHMWPE rope a.k.a dyneema) and so on.

The trouble seems to be we don't really respect the environment enough, so we use it in terrible ways, like single use products. We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due respect to the long term consequences. So we use things like plastic containers, forks, cups, bottles and spoons.

What are some alternatives? Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags?

<comment><USER4> > Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags?

If you put a price (read: tax) on plastic, I'm sure many folks would jump at the opportunity of replacing plastic-heavy stuff with no/minimal plastic options possibly using glass or paper (or metal where things are disposable that shouldn't be).

Thing is, plastic has a subsidized price right now due to petroleum supply chain being subsidized - plastic is a byproduct (we even fight wars to keep the price low).

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, this probably wouldn't work.

Most plastic waste does not come from rich countries with decent waste infrastructure. It comes from shipping and fishing and industrial vessels who dump their garbage into the ocean, and developing countries who dispose of all of their waste by throwing it into a river or the ocean to be washed away.

You can't tax them because they are not in your country. You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment.

<comment><USER6> I don't know why you're being down voted. China, India and Africa are responsible for 90% of the waste in the ocean. All of them are smaller consumers of it than the US. ([https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste- po...](https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste- pollution-90-per-cent-rivers-India-China-Africa))

I can't stand these various doomsday scenario stories. Yes, it's certainly wasteful to have single use plastic products. Consumers like them, though, and they're sometimes the only way to comply with various regulations about cleanliness. For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle.

<comment><USER7> > For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more > energy than just making a plastic bottle.

OK but washing and cleaning is the whole consumer life cycle of glass. How does it compare to both making and "recycling" the plastic bottle?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like this is one of the most important underreported stories today. It's a massive, sudden change that is having ripple affects on the entire global supply chain.

We've written quite a bit about it on Waste Dive: [https://www.wastedive.com/news/what-chinese-import- policies-...](https://www.wastedive.com/news/what-chinese-import-policies- mean-for-all-50-states/510751/) California is particularly hard hit and is likely to relax laws about how much recyclable material is allowed to be sent to landfills. There's nowhere else for it to go.

<comment><USER9> A useful post. Have you read the Adam Minter book _Junkyard Planet_? [https://jakeseliger.com/2018/04/10/junkyard-planet-adam- mint...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/04/10/junkyard-planet-adam-minter). It's a deep and excellent look into how the junk supply starts in the United States and goes (went, now, I guess) to China.

"Waste" made sense for China when the country was poor and desperately starved for raw materials. Now the country is less poor; we are going to have to somehow subsidize the recycling of waste (expensive) or landfill it (terrible for the environment).

<comment><USER10> Is landfilling truly terrible for the environment? It seems to me as though if a concentrated area were used for landfilling, that area is ruined, but overall the surface is small in the grand scheme of things, so it should have a relatively small impact. Can anybody expand _why_ landfills are bad? It certainly seems better than simply leaving junk everywhere.

<comment><USER11> Landfills are not sustainable, and are best used as a stop gap measure. It might seem like we have lots of easily accessible empty land right now, but eventually easily accessible land is going to become harder to find. It seems that it would be wise to come up with a sustainable solution, rather than assuming we can rely on a non-renewable resource forever.

That being said, why can't volcanoes be used as some sort of a landfill?

<comment><USER8> The same reasons we don't just burn all our trash in incinerators plus the inaccessibility and relatively small number of active volcanoes.

<comment><USER12> Sweden has such good waste to energy plants they now have to import waste to keep them at full production. It helps that they recycle a tremendous amount so they don't have all that much to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Plastic Recycling" always seemed like such a scam. Very little of it can be turned into the same thing it was, before. Most of it can only be downcycled to an inferior product (and then it's mostly the end of the line). To think we've simply shipped it off to another country to deal with the problem is criminal. Another part of my childhood where the details were far less idealistic than the big picture.

<comment><USER14> Exactly this. As China bans to buy European "recyclable waste", then it is imported into countries with legal loopholes e.g. to Poland [1], Serbia, Italy[2] and so on and somehow landfills start to burn accidentally. Even if the law changes [3], there will be other places where a penality for such criminal act is lower than cost of recycling or proper storage.

100% plastic recycling is a dream.

Don't want to even start story about toxic fluids recycling... accidentaly leaking into rivers.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger_for_europeans_health_garbage_from/)

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_death_(Italy)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_death_\(Italy\))

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-waste/poland- vows-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-waste/poland-vows-to- fight-illegal-waste-dumps-after-toxic-fires-idUSKCN1IU1QZ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> More like there was a huge trash problem and they don't want it anymore... how is them handing the world a problem when the root cause of the problem is unsustainable packaging and recyclables?

<comment><USER16> I think it should serve as a wake up call for the rest of the world. Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years, most notably touting the fact that they import other countries' trash to use in their recycling plants [1]. How can we recreate Sweden's model in the US and have our own solution to the trash problem instead of giving it to China?

[1] [https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s- recycling...](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling-is- so-revolutionary-the-country-has-run-out-of-rubbish-a7462976.html)

EDIT: Fixed wording and added source. Sweden is buying other countries' trash, not selling theirs.

<comment><USER17> > Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years

That line is more false than true. For the most part they are not recycling their trash, they are incinerating it.

Additionally Sweden is tiny. Trash there is brought to local recycling centers with 6 to 8 or more different bins, and people are expected to sort their trash.

How would you do that in the US? Trucks with 8 compartments? Where would you even keep that many different trash cans? The US is very large, you can't expect people to transport their recycling.

<comment><USER18> > you can't expect people to transport their recycling

Why on earth not? The majority used to haul their own garbage to the town dump a just few decades ago (and some still do in smaller towns). Ubiquity of curbside pickup is relatively new -- doubly so for recycling. And recyclables are a heck of a lot more pleasant to carry in the car than rotting kitchen scraps.

<comment><USER17> And if you don't have a car? Or are not strong enough to carry lots of trash?

Or the dump is far enough away to make transporting recycling counterproductive?

<comment><USER19> > And if you don't have a car?

My impression has been that you can't live in the US without a car anyway. So this won't be any new requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the unintended consequences of that is more waste import to Poland, which increased taxes on it to limit it which prompted owners of the dumps to set them on fire

[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger_for_europeans_health_garbage_from/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Good for them. Let the rest of the world fix the problems they're creating themselves.

<comment><USER22> China is the one _creating_ the plastic in the first place. Don't act like they have a moral high ground.

<comment><USER23> They create the plastics for those who buy them. Don't act like anyone has the moral high ground.

<comment><USER22> Ah yes, the "Just following orders" defense

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There was a better article about this earlier this year in the New York Times:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china- recyclables-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables- ban.html)

Corresponding HN thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719)

</comment><comment><USER25> What's wrong with putting it in landfills? The world has no shortage of wasteland. If we can afford to ship it to China, can't we spend the same money driving it on trucks into a nearby desert or valley?

<comment><USER26> There is a huge assymetry between shipping to and from China. Since China exports so much, those containers often come back empty. In finding something to fill these empty containers on the way back, some smart guy (proabably in China) came up with garbage.

They'll think of something else to fill the containers with, but it isn't that uneconomical to shop garbage to China given the circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is actually great news. Western people will have to get innovate about avoiding garbage, plastic in particular. Oceans will intake less waste

(Yes, I'm optimistic about this one)

<comment><USER5> Western nations aren't the problem, it's developing countries with poor waste infrastructure and industrial vessels.

[https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries- polluting...](https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting- the-oceans-the-most/)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, we're the problem. It's OUR plastic that China isn't allowing in anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seems like Northern Africa would be a pretty logical place for disposing waste. Lots of unused desert land very close to the sea for easy access by barge.

<comment><USER29> Isn't there a lot of desert land in the US as well? and easier access than going all the way to Northern Africa

<comment><USER13> Deserts aren't inhospitable. They're still ecosystems for animals that perhaps do not want their groundwater (perhaps) tainted by a landfill. Problems are already happening with pretty terrible materials that have been dumped,

[https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2015/oct/25/radioactive-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2015/oct/25/radioactive-waste-dump-fire-reveals-nevada-troubled-past)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Plastics aka petroleum are a huge problem, but yoga pants (microplastics) aka performance synthetic fabrics are a even larger problem.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am not an expert but I am a PhD chemical engineer and I have though about this issue for years and years.

My 0.02...

Short term

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

a) give houses smaller trash cans and charge a lot for bigger trash cans. Town I live in already does this... at first I was like "wtf with this tiny trash can... I can throw away like one, two bags of trash tops per week"... well, now my household of 4 averages one bag of half full bag of trash per week. we do more composting and more recycling.

b) double down on recycling programs and sorting.

Short- to Mid-term

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

c) we should be burning 100% of our actual trash in localized facilities. We trade the negative of immediate CO2 green gas emissions __but we get:

\-- some power in return

\-- reduced diesel fuel use (at like 4 miles a gallon)... assuming the trip to local burn facility is shorter than out of landfill

\-- huge reduction methane release from landfill,

\-- 100% elimination of continued landfill pollution and water table pollution by god knows what (drugs, plastics, leaking batteries, etc.

 __The CO2 effluent stream can be captured and processed in many interesting ways. The CO2 is so clean it can be used for beverage or biotech service and /or feed for a CO2 to polymer (plastic building block) plant.

Many modern burn facilities burn so hot [and completely] they could be certified to deal with bio-hazard and chemical weapon destruction. They have gas scrubbing systems advamced enough that only N2, O2, and CO2 are emitted from the plant (NOx, SOx, etc. level are parts per billion levels)... no complex chemical species, no metals, leave the plant through the gas effluent.

We were/are doing this... but all this NIMBY nonsense is leading to some collectively destructive group-think _... many folks don 't want to see burn facilities near their house and there is a lot of money to be made in our current trash mismanagement system. _Actually, most of our thinking is collectively destructive group-think so "what's new?"

Edit: [http://www.lacsd.org/solidwaste/swfacilities/rtefac/commerce...](http://www.lacsd.org/solidwaste/swfacilities/rtefac/commerce/default.asp) I visited that facility in the 90's... it was great. Now it is closing... not sure if it being replaced.

Long-term

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

d)We need packaging laws and taxes that address waste caused by excessive/unnecessary packaging... particularly for commercial/industrial use.

e)Society needs to refocus our value system to value simplicity and localized self-sufficiency: local fresh food over packaged/frozen goods, more reusable (and infinitely recycle-able) locally filled glass containers

f) localized recycle-to-manufacturing pipelines. Imagine a future where you could take polyethylene scrap down to a local facility get it 3D printed into something you or someone else can use (or get a spool of PE line to use in your own 3D printer at home).

<comment><USER14> > give houses smaller trash cans and charge a lot for bigger trash cans.

And then find garbage illegaly dumped in forests.

> d)We need packaging laws and taxes that address waste caused by > excessive/unnecessary packaging... particularly for commercial/industrial > use.

This. Taxes and import duties should penalise overuse of hardly recyclable products and packages.

<comment><USER31> It is actually amazing how something as simple as a smaller trash can can positively influence behavior.

But as a possible solution: No need for them to go to the forest... just to the local trash accumulation facility and dump it there for free or call for curb side pickup of extra trash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So what is the likelyhood that rich countries - not having the recycling capacity to deal properly with their own waste - find some other, much poorer countries (other than the ones mentioned) to use as their garbage dump?

Seems likely to me. Is this already happening?

</comment><comment><USER33> This puts into context all of the laws that have been passed recently banning plastic

</comment><comment><USER34> All these recycling options included with various municipal waste management districts are going to have to change. Lots of hard decisions ahead.

</comment><comment><USER35> Before building industry and infrastructure to support it this is how my SimCities made money. Is this what we're seeing here?

</comment><comment><USER36> Have you ever seen the ship-breaking in Bangladesh? It'll all likely go there with absolutely catastrophic consequences.

</comment><comment><USER37> much duplicity all around on this obviously-important topic .. here is a blog (discontinued) specifically on Electronics topic [https://web.archive.org/web/*/ewasteinsights.info/*](https://web.archive.org/web/*/ewasteinsights.info/*)

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it me or there's been recently China articles with a negative bias recently on hacker news?

<comment><USER38> Pretty easy to be negative on China when all the news come out of there are: dictatorship, imprisonment millions in concentration camps and brainwashes them, builds artificial islands and claim ownership of seas not even close to their land, blatantly disregards WTO rules and closes off its market to others, hacks and steals other countries and their companies IP, threatens to attack a democratic Taiwan every day, censorship of their citizens, threatening censorship of other countries about China or its concentration camps, depletes fishing supplies in other countries, floods the ocean with plastics, props up dictatorships in other countries, etc etc etc.

<comment><USER39> Nuke China.

<comment><USER38> You literally said you're Chinese, in one of the comment a month ago.

<comment><USER39> Nuke us, dominate us with your big white cock.

<comment><USER40> I can't fathom how you could post this or the other comments you dropped in this thread. They're obviously bannable offenses, but since you've mostly posted fine comments to HN otherwise, I'm going to assume you went on tilt for some reason and not ban you. Please don't do it again though.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> May sound silly but could we send it into space instead of burying it? Surely it could be sent on a trajectory to burn up at the sun or another planet's atmosphere. I guess the obvious issue is cost, are there others?

<comment><USER42> It's counterintuitively hard to send something into the sun. You have to cancel out all of Earth's velocity.

[http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/07/heres-why-we-cant- just...](http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/07/heres-why-we-cant-just-rocket- garbage-into-the-sun)

</comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo Maybe start from stopping using plastic

</comment><comment><USER43> Long story short: China has been importing trash from many countries for the past two decades. Now they won't import it anymore, and these countries aren't prepared to dispose of the trash themselves. The 111m-ton figure is an estimate by 2030, the current amount is nowhere near that number.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why not just rocket it to space? Sounds like a good business to be in for SpaceX.

<comment><USER45> Seriously? I'm going to have to follow the rules and charitably assume that you're serious.

Rocket fuel is expensive, the process of launching and recovering the vehicle is expensive, and every kg lifted is incredibly expensive. You would also need to launch it somewhere, or you'd just be launching garbage into a decaying orbit. You might as well dispose of garbage by burning it on a pile of diamonds.

<comment><USER40> You've crossed into incivility repeatedly in your comments. Could you please stop doing this? Re-reading the site guidelines might help: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Another inhumane and illiberal policy from China. And these guys are supposed to be the future?

</comment><comment><USER47> We could (and maybe should) demand in trade deals that if you ship us plastic, you take it back.

Easy to enforce? I dunno - why not require country of origin for packaging?

But assuming that won't happen - sounds like an opportunity for US jobs.

Plastic might make decent bricks for building.

<comment><USER48> Shouldn't rather the entity importing the plastic take responsibility for disposing of it? As you say it might even create jobs, but I'd say it should befall the consumer to take care of the waste they produce in any case, instead of simply shipping it away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> That's hilariously ironic because China is the biggest exporter of plastics.

1.) China: $17.9B (24.7% of exported plastic items)

2.) Germany $9B (12.4%)

[http://www.worldstopexports.com/plastic-item-exports- country...](http://www.worldstopexports.com/plastic-item-exports-country/)

plastics are now drowning the ocean, choking fishes (which the Chinese fisherman has a habit of overfishing, even going out to other countries' sea to fish). not to mention coral diseases, as well as microfibers ingested by humans. And China just dump plastics into their rivers and out into the ocean. letting the other countries take care of them.

Also, interestingly, China's boom in the early 90s came from the fact that they lacked materials, and they had to take other countries waste in order to use the waste for materials for production. Now that China's boycotting waste, the other southeast asian countries are picking up the slack (and waste), and growing their own industrial capabilities. That's why now manufacturers usually have two or three different factories in different countries, lessening dependence on China, and ready to switch when they need to (like the impending $400 billion tariff on China)

<comment><USER49> I don't see the irony. World consumers asked for plastic. China provided it, and doesn't want to take it back.

<comment><USER50> Yep. We designed the products, and the packaging. Then ordered that exact combination to be manufactured in China.

You don't get to order a balsa wood table, of your own design, from a woodworker, and then complain that they won't take the balsa wood back when you want to throw the flimsy table away. Especially when you specifically asked them to make the table from balsa wood.

<comment><USER39> You must be Chinese spy! Get him!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Turned Down A $100,000 Job - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bidzuku.com/post/11100054997/why-i-turned-down-100-000

<comment><USER2> i had a website doing the exact same idea around 6 years ago when i was in school. due to lack of marketing and sales experiment we scrapped the project since all the local dealers only wanted to deal with Autotrader and nothing new. So we scrapped the project even thought to this day i think it was and is an amazing idea. so good luck to you and i believe if marketed right it has great potential. there is always going to be a $100,000 job for you even if this doesn't work out.

out of curiosity, how did you end up getting the dealers to sign up to bid on the use applications?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the reason it didn't work was a combination of things, including the timeliness of launch. Six years ago the automotive industry was still in the 90's as far as their tech knowledge went, and were stuck on platforms like AutoTrader. In addition, like you said it was a marketing and sales problem as well. My primary experience is Marketing and in the Automotive Industry dealing directly with dealers, I've incorporated this into Bidzuku. And finally, we've acquired several individuals who represent over 200 dealerships nationally who have committed to bringing out product in front of them and I am personally well connected with large groups such as Hendrick Automotive and Carl Gregory.

We've put a lot of time, effort and thought into building a platform dealers will want to use... and luckily our experience is in the related industry so we can do it with inside knowledge and experience.

As of right now, we haven't entered Beta, but are working towards it quickly. Thanks for the kind words!</comment></comment>


Mobile browser traffic is 2X bigger than app traffic, and growing faster - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/25/wait-what-mobile-browser-traffic-is-2x-bigger-than-app-traffic-and-growing-faster/ <comment><USER2> Could it be the lack of ad-blocking on mobile that amounts for the majority of that difference in traffic numbers? Can't help but wonder that and it makes me giggle because this is yet another forced and overhyped wanna-be-informative article. Many publishers want the mobile traffic to be more due to the mobile users having less control on their devices than your average well-informed PC/laptop using semi-power user.

I personally abhore the lack of control on my Note 4 and iPhone 5c and that's what's gonna drive many users away -- not now, but in 5-10 years you can count on it. The market always wins. Get control off of the users hands and you shouldn't be surprised by the results. (Sorry for off-topic in this paragraph).

Bad article with skewed stats is bad. No way around it.</comment>


Startup Incubator TechStars Invades New York City - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/techstars-new-york/

<comment><USER2> Why don't any nyc incubators rent a shared live work space for all founders? Hire a chef to cook and save founders time. All founders live under one roof.

This makes a lot of sense in new york when the rental market is so fierce.

<comment><USER3> Also, if the startups fail, you could have a pretty awesome reality TV show out of it. I'm only halfway joking.

You do raise a good point- the worst part of living in NYC and doing a startup is rent. If you could fix that part of the equation in some way, all sorts of fun stuff starts happening and you can really keep costs/salaries down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suppose YC's answer would be Alexis :-) [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis- oha...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanian-to- join-y-combinator/)

<comment><USER5> Guess this is the big announcement Harj and Jessica were twetting about: <http://twitter.com/Harjeet/status/22654064109>

<comment><USER4> That's exactly what I wondering a few minutes ago :-) - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653191>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the comments - _"Did I read that well, "6,000$ per founder"? What is that for, for buying toilet paper ? And they take 6% of your company? Excuse me but this is laughable."_ \- totally agree!

<comment><USER7> Snarkiness aside, it's a fair point. I'm a solo founder considering applying, and was wondering if any TechStars alumni can speak to this.

<comment><USER8> Watch this video: <http://vimeo.com/14286740>, you'll see Emily Olson, a TechStars Alumni, discuss whether such programs are worth it (together with alumnis from other incubator programs).

I completely understand how scary it is for a first-time entrepreneur to consider such programs. The value is not obvious for beginners, so they tend to focus on the perceived low valuation (6% of your company for $6K is not valuing you much!).

But everyone who has been through such a program will tell you that the valuation (or lack thereof) is completely irrelevant. By becoming a Techstars alumni, you earn a label and a network.

Your average angel for instance is inundated with pitches from entrepreneurs. They need to apply a filter. Do you have paying customers? Come talk to me. Are you a Techstars alumni? Come talk to me.

You can spend 10 years of your life build your own network of connections. Or you can be selected by one of those incubators and jump ahead of the line. How much is that worth? Ask the guys at Udemy, they just raised $1M from top angels. Two years ago, no one would give them the time of day.

<comment><USER3> At the point that most of these companies are getting funded, valuing their 'idea' (and it isn't much more than an idea at that point generally) at 100K is rather generous even, so it isn't a horrid idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>