Alibaba hits nearly $18B in 'Singles Day' orders in 12 hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/alibaba-singles-day.html <comment><USER2> I've only bought a few things from Alibaba over the years, but most of them have turned out to be either faulty or a typical case of 'chinese manufacturer disappointment' which has led me to being reluctant to buy anything larger/more expensive. When I was in Marrakech a couple of years ago, the guy who owned the riad we stayed in referred to many things in the souks as being "China quality", and I guess that's the problem. I don't expect something for nothing, but it's so hard to tell if you're going to get something that's going to be as I would expect (i.e. functional, accurately manufaturered), or as I've experienced (borderline functional, poorly manufactured or badly designed). The best purchase was a secondhand (rare) motherboard for a client's laptop, sadly!

It's a real pity as I'm sure if there was a way of really knowing the quality of what you were getting (other than getting samples, which I've done and had issues with several of them) then it would be a great place to buy either for personal consumption or for a business opportunity. At times like today I spend a while browsing and see things I would be interested in if I wasn't concerned they would be 'China quality'.

Am I missing something here? Is there a better way of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Or is it just a case of a lot of hit and miss and hopefully building a relationship with a decent supplier at some point?

<comment><USER3> Nowadays everything is made in China. A lot of things we buy are just repackaged stuff that sells for 3x the original price. I've bought decent stuff like a manual coffe grinder, or glass bottles, usb cables, or cheap gopro accessories. You are just cutting the middle man.

<comment><USER4> Given the number of not-up-to-spec cables on Amazon (there's that Google guy who reviews them and found a lot of them to be faulty), I would be extremely wary of buying anything USB on Alibaba.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't it only USB C he was finding issues with?

<comment><USER6> Benson was focusing his efforts on usbc, presumably cus it's got a higher propensity for damage, what with the higher voltage and all. I wouldn't be surprised if he could find issues with non usbc stuff too though.

<comment><USER7> > what with the higher voltage and all

I'd think the higher voltage would have fewer problems since there's less current and voltage drop... covering up for less-than-spec wire gauges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every year around this time we get the singles day news that yet another record has been broken. I'm going to guess it's going to be the same next year and the year after that since the Chinese middle class is growing (and adopting Western debt-driven spending). Not really a surprise.

If anyone in the US wants to partake in the frenzy, I believe aliexpress is doing a Singles Day thing (using US timezone, so it hasn't started yet as of this writing), but be careful with the shipping timelines on the products. I've had situations where items didn't arrive until weeks later and I had already forgotten that I'd bought anything.

<comment><USER9> It's still a hugely significant number. $18B is $13.20USD for every man, woman and child in China. Considering China's GDP is $8000USD, that's basically 60% of a single day's earnings for every person in China being spent at just one company in 12 hours.

It would be the same as everyone in the US spending $100 on the same day or $32B in a single day (which is almost half of US online spending for a year).

<comment><USER10> US consumers spend over $32 billion every day of the year. The _average_ American adult spends $57,000 per year as of 2016. The consumer economy in the US is around $13 trillion.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/13-trillion-us-consumer- getti...](http://www.businessinsider.com/13-trillion-us-consumer-getting- bigger-2016-7)

China's GDP is $11.x trillion for 2017.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

<comment><USER9> That's a bit of a misleading stat since most consumer spending is on stuff like housing/transportation/food/utilities.

<comment><USER10> That's not misleading at all. That's how consumer spending is measured. How would you go about explaining that water, electricity and food are not consumption goods, but an iPad is?

<comment><USER11> It's misleading because nobody is buying water or electricity or paying rent on Alibaba today for 11.11.

Comparing apples to apples would mean comparing the amount spent online in the U.S. with a single company. Even comparing apples to pears would mean comparing all online sales in the U.S. to Alibaba 11.11 sales.

Comparing all "consumer spending" in the U.S. with Alibaba 11.11 sales is, well, it's misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Many people stayed up late last night to take advantage of limited-time deals (e.g. ones that were only available for the first minute after midnight) or deals that had only limited stock.

Some friends of ours chose today to go to Ikea, figuring they'd be free from the usual massive crowds, as people would be at home doing online shopping, or sleeping in after staying up late last night. It turned out they were right.

<comment><USER13> Back when I was living in China, I wished China had the Black Friday as in the US because of discounts and promotions. Now I am back in the US, I wish the US had the Single's Day as in China. What a Change!

<comment><USER14> I feel like the deals in the U.S. have really gone downhill or maybe they were never deals to begin with. The internet has made everything pretty transparent at least.

<comment><USER10> Deals in the US vary in direct proportion to the state of the economy (or a given retailer's plight). In 2009-2011 for example, the deals were frequently tremendous due to bad economic condition of consumers.

Now the US has a U6 unemployment rate near 20 year lows and has added $45 trillion to its household wealth number in the last seven years, while incomes have also been rising modestly well the last several years. The need for substantial deals to move most merchandise is vastly reduced accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "One offer, from the Chongqing-based online alcohol brand Jiang Xiao Bai, allowed 33 fast-moving customers to make a single payment of 11,111 yuan, or $1,673, for a lifetime supply of a grain liquor known as baijiu"

<comment><USER16> A gallon of baijiu is a life time supply of baijiu, dependent on intake rates.

<comment><USER17> Less than 4 liters of any alcoholic drink, including pure 100% alcohol, sounds like a month-long supply at the very best.

<comment><USER18> I think the parent wanted to say baijiu is an acquired taste.

<comment><USER19> Alternatively, if you consumed a gallon of baijiu in one sitting, it would likely be the end of your life.

<comment><USER16> You got what I was going for :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My dad just looked at the last three orders he had on AliExpress, all from more than a month ago. They appear now on the website as if they have 30%-50% discount, but the end price is exactly the same, for all of them. I'm not sure how much of a sale it really is...

<comment><USER21> Purchasing inside of China, it's different, I think? All the items I bought, I can clearly see what the original price is. I remember last year buying a clotheswasher. Two months after Singles Day, checked the price and confirmed that it did indeed have the higher original price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For someone having never ordered from alibaba or aliexpres - other than briefly fleeting with drone spare parts - what exactly of use and purpose would you buy from there? I can see large scale uses for industrial machinery / commodities but what about the day to day consumer. Pointless gadgets? I briefly looked at lightinthebox for female accessories and they seemed tacky, overly glittery and just plain cheap looking. It did make me wonder about the premium Western consumers pay to line corporate profits for chinese factory products. Ignoring secure, specialised electronics factories, most day to day fashion accessories in Sachs 5th Av, Macy's etc will be quality controlled chinese/indian products. Is it possible to get hold of these on aliexpress?

<comment><USER23> I have ordered Lepin from AliExpress, which is a Lego knockoff—the sets are the same, but the prices are 25%, and the quality is 90%.

<comment><USER24> The prices are 25% because the designs are stolen. Not just from official LEGO sets but also from unsuspecting hobbyists.

If you want to buy LEGO knockoffs that's fine, but there are plenty of brands that are almost as cheap as Lepin and produce original (non-stolen) designs.

<comment><USER23> > there are plenty of brands that are almost as cheap as Lepin and produce > original (non-stolen) designs

Lepin does as well, just under the XingBao name.

But the joke's on the both of them—I just buy them for the pieces, not for the set designs.

Honestly if Lego just sold big boxes of bulk technic pieces (like they do for their normal blocks), I'd probably just buy those instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Most of the comments here focus on the business aspects of US/China retailing. I'd like to remind techies here that Alibaba has become a tech powerhouse as they learned how to deal with ever increasing traffic. Their work on infrastructure has been phenomenal. It's not a joke to handle up to 45 million database transactions per second, or 256K payments per second. Few US companies could do it without breaking a sweat. Check out their work on JStorm, Flink, messaging queue, container, JVM, ML platform, and databases. Alas, tech innovations came from real and challenging business scenarios. It's like diamonds are forged by extreme heat and pressure. Now look at Silicon Valley, how many companies can claim tech achievement similar to that of Alibaba, except the same ol' Google, Facebook, and Amazon? I don't think it's due to lack of tech talent. Instead, it's due to lack of business scenarios at scale for most of the companies.

</comment><comment><USER26> A friend of mine from China was showing me an article in Chinese about the Huawei website (huge site like Amazon + Apple + FedEx) . They have 300 sub stores/warehouses just in his city they are for stock piling popular items. A man ordered something from the Huawei website at midnight and he received the package 12 minutes later.

<comment><USER27> THIS. I feel people outside of China dont understand how efficient sales in China is. I lived in Beijing during its boom form 2008 - 2010ish and it was CRAZY. My friend literally went on Taobao, messaged a seller for the latest macbook speced out decked out, talked down the price and half an hour later a guy came during our lunch break (we were in international school) and waited at our school gate where he took out the ordered macbook pro and showed him that everything was brand new unbox therapied that shit to us and my buddy paid in cash with options to pay using card. I was like "woah shit" . The most impressive thing was he did not have to pay until he was satisfied with what he was being showed. I enjoyed living in China, and am still waiting here in Canada till the day something like this is possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> With Alibaba launching their own hosting services as well, where do they stand at scale compared to Amazon? I realize Alibaba is mostly targeted inward to China, unlike Amazon that has some international markets, but are they a contender when it comes to global sales (and possibly China facing hosting?)

<comment><USER29> Aliyun has been around for sometimes, and is now rebrand as Alibaba Cloud and expanding beyond China. It is competing with AWS, Google Cloud, Azure etc. And this August report says Alibaba Cloud has surpassed Digital Ocean to be number 2 in hosting. [https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars- ali...](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars-alibaba- becomes-2nd-largest-hosting-company.html)

Singles Day sales is a few times bigger than Black Friday or anything Amazon has. Kind of strange to ask if Alibaba Cloud can scale as AWS.

<comment><USER13> Actually, Aliyun built data centers all over the world, including the US, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America etc. It is the second largest IAAS, second to only AWS (yes it is bigger and growing faster than Google and Microsoft in IAAS).

<comment><USER30> That doesn't sound right, unless microsoft has been shrinking: [https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads- ia...](https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-iaas-market- alibaba-edges-past-google/)

<comment><USER13> The data in your link is for 2016. It's the end of 2017 now. Alibaba Cloud is growing definitely much faster than Microsoft (126% vs 61%) and Google and bigger than Google. It is very close to Microsoft in terms of revenue if not bigger right now.

<comment><USER31> Source?

<comment><USER32> their latest quarterly report I believe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Has anyone else noticed over the last 6 months or so that AliExpress isn't necessarily the cheapest anymore? Same thing happened with Amazon a few years ago.

<comment><USER34> I have not noticed, but I am interested. Where are you seeing better prices?

<comment><USER33> Banggood mainly - I've had better luck with them than Gearbest.

OzBargain.com.au also seems to like Lightinthebox, Rosegal and Zapals.

I do wonder if there's a way to go "one level up" \- who supplies all these Chinese stores?

<comment><USER34> I think you have to go there yourself. Watch some of the videos by Bunnie Huang to see how. For example [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXNv_rNGcc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXNv_rNGcc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The Alibaba Group's revenue for the entire 2017 was ~$23B (see [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/financials?p=BABA](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/financials?p=BABA)), so making $18B in a single day sounds unbelievable.

Is one of these numbers incorrect?

<comment><USER10> They're both correct. Alibaba makes almost all of its money from advertising.

They're frequently incorrectly portrayed as a traditional retailer, akin to Amazon (which itself is increasingly not a retailer).

They're a retailer in the sense that eBay is. They own no merchandise, they sell no merchandise. They're a platform that other people sell on/through. They don't primarily make money from listing fees though (as eBay does), in their case it's from ads and equivalent. Alibaba has a lot more in common with Google than Walmart (which is also why their profit margins are so high, versus eg JD.com).

Incredibly, when Alibaba was founded, China's GDP was ~1/11th what it is today. Which is another way of saying, they were dramatically poorer just 18 years ago. That factor combined with non-existent online micro charging capabilities circa 1999, no smartphones, etc. meant that Jack Ma couldn't easily charge traditional listing/selling fees to be on their platform. So they went with a mostly free platform that made money via ads. That is also a big reason eBay failed in China despite being there semi-early:

(story from 2010 about what happened to eBay in China) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay- faile...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-failed-in- china/)

<comment><USER35> I see, so it looks like what's being measured here is "gross merchandise volume", which is the total value of orders placed on their platform. Whereas the revenue in their financial statements is the money they make from advertising and their other businesses.

<comment><USER10> That's right. eBay's gross merchandise volume for example was $84 billion in fiscal 2016 (their revenue take was $9 billion).

Every year the media makes a big deal about Alibaba's merchandise volume. It's a cute soundbite, and it's certainly a large number, but it's not how they make money at all. Their own revenue can technically grow far faster or slower than the merchandise volume (I would expect them to outperform their merchandise volume growth rate in the coming years, as they increase ad rates as China's economy scales the value ladder & GDP per capita keeps climbing, while their manufacturing and exports grow very modestly if at all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Recent talk about their JVM server architecture: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg)

</comment><comment><USER37> Man, western ppl are missing out on not so cheap but high quality clothes in TaoBao. My wife wears these winter jackets so elegant ppl in usa compliment her on the quality and style. All made in china. Thing is you gotta know chinese to know what to look for in taobao.

</comment><comment><USER38> As a European that takes in a good bit of american business reporting (doesn't everyone?), I'm kind of amused and surprised at how China's rhymes. The common sense understanding of a consumer driven economy, the fantastical scale.

I sort of imagine that to a caricature of an old americana businessman, this sale is a significant event. The quantity of the chinese market (even per capita, by the satisfyingly physical measure of "biggest sale ever" and it's easily visualised as a mountain of packaged goods), is a quality of its own^. At least, that is what my caricatured character believes intrinsically.

^This is a made up quote attributed to Stalin. I love how american sounding it is, in retrospect.

<comment><USER39> > is a quality of its own^

> quote attributed to Stalin

Actually, that was comrade Hegel at the source of the idea, but the marxists did run a lot with it, mostly into the ground ...

[https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+o...](https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+of+Quantitative+Into+Qualitative+Changes)

 _" [...] a basic law of materialist dialectics, according to which a change in the quality of an object occurs when the accumulation of quantitative changes reaches a certain limit."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> According to Bloomberg they were processing over 1/4-million transactions per second. What are they doing that Bitcoin and Ethereum can't do?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba- singles-day-racks-up-1-billion-in-sales-in-2-minutes)

<comment><USER41> Not running transactions against a massively distributed blockchain using a proof of work system?

<comment><USER40> Hmm, So ultimately centralization is demonstrably better for transaction per section?

<comment><USER42> Being able to trust all the machines in the network allows you to perform better, yes. What is your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It looks like Harbor Freight's made in China, sold from USA products are now cheaper than those made and sold from China.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's now way past 22B USD.

[http://www.alizila.com/](http://www.alizila.com/)

</comment><comment><USER45> What are individuals buying on Alibaba? All I see is "Contact Supplier". Are individuals buying in bulk?

<comment><USER46> They are buying on Aliexpress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> There was a report in Taiwan that merchants on TMall would fake transactions worth up to 1.5bil RMB. [https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/201711...](https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/20171105/1235467)

</comment><comment><USER48> "Process payments with facial recognition" ??

Can anyone tell me more about that?

</comment><comment><USER49> the thing amazed me is that the way they deal with the high traffic,in real time, for money transactions, not many companies can do that level of technical stack.

</comment><comment><USER50> Url changed from [https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/alibaba-hits- nearly-18-bil...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/alibaba-hits- nearly-18-billion-in-singles-day-orders-in-12-hours-already- surpassing-2016-sales/).

<comment><USER51> I would have preferred the old one, since the NYT article hits you with a paywall.

<comment><USER50> Paywalls with workarounds are explicitly allowed on HN [1] and NYT submissions are as standard as you can get here.

Other things being equal, we'll prefer a non-paywalled URL as in [2] from earlier today, but in the present case there was a clear quality difference.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672936)</comment></comment></comment>


Career advice marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://guidelighter.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting idea, good luck.

Try placing the video higher up in the page, and also adding a voice over - it's more catchy than reading text.</comment>


Futures Is Stable on Rust 1.36 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/59739 <comment><USER2> How is the cost in terms of binary size nowadays? Last time I checked using Futures meant adding roughly 5MB to the binary. To me at least that is unacceptable, so I just rolled my own stuff on top of rayon's thread pools.

<comment><USER3> I just made a socket server for a small protocol, no (explicit) Tokio.

      [dependencies]
      futures-preview = { version = "0.3.0-alpha.14", features = ["io-compat"] }
      futures-util-preview = "0.3.0-alpha.14"
      byteorder = "1.2.7"
      clap = "2.32.0"
      log = "0.4.3"
      simple_logger = "0.5.0"
      lazy_static = "1.2.0"
      num-traits = "0.2"
      num-derive = "0.2"
      bytes = "0.4.12"

My source is on the order of ~1000 lines of (non-trivial) code and has 17 instances of 'async fn' and 23 instances of 'await!(...)'.

Nightly 2018, --release, the resulting .exe is 990 KiB.

<comment><USER4> And that is without stripping

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the current version of rust is 1.34.1, and futures is stabilized, why not 1.35?

Not asking for this to happen, I am just curious about the stabilization/release process.

<comment><USER6> If the current stable version of Rust is 1.34, the current beta version of Rust is 1.35, and the currently nightly version of Rust (which is where major changes, including stabilization of features, are made) is 1.36.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This should solve a major bottleneck for anyone doing network related applications. For now, you have to use an unstable API or a one that is deprecated.

<comment><USER8> 0.2 was deprecated.

0.1 was not, there's a lot of good and reliable software that's been built on 0.1, and there are some backward compatible shims for std::future to futures 0.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> July 4th

<comment><USER7> 1.36 is due by June 4th.

<comment><USER9> ah, right. thanks for your correction</comment></comment></comment>


In Defense of Floppy Disks: The Vocabulary of the Interface - <AUTHOR> http://boxesandarrows.com/icon-survey-results/

<comment><USER2> What I've always found fascinating was that how much easier I've always found words to find and use than images.

You'd think little pictograms would be quicker but whenever an interface focuses on using lots of little icons I find it a mental workout to find which one I'm looking for.

For example, many people dislike the new gmail layout, but the biggest ux stumble I have is clicking the attach pictogram instead of the the link one. I thought it was interesting that in the results in the article 21% of people reported the reverse, they associated attach with the link pictogram.

In RL companies use pictograms because you don't have to localize, but the internet is dynamic and the tooltips are already localized, why not just use words?

<comment><USER3> > why not just use words

You may run out of room in the interface if the word is substantially longer in some language.

This is a particular problem if the original work is in a language like Japanese, which has short words compared to, say, English. (Japanese Kanji [1] has thousands of characters available, compared to the measly twenty-six of the English alphabet, so it's not surprising that Japanese words are shorter on average.)

Many HN readers are probably familiar with the example of video games that are English localizations of Japanese originals. Sometimes the UI or art simply doesn't have room to accomodate the longer English equivalents. (Particularly in earlier decades when localization wasn't as high a priority as it is today.)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji)

<comment><USER4> Your mention of Kanji is particularly salient, as the blog post catches these skeuomorphic icons in the act of evolving from pictograms to ideograms...

<comment><USER3> Good point. In 100 years maybe physical floppy disks will be long-forgotten by everyone but museums and historians, but the icon will still be in everyday use.

And maybe the icon will change over time. As the public's consciousness of physical floppies dies away, maybe designers will feel freer to use a more stylized representation, like the Voicemail icon's representation of a...telephone handset? Cassette tape?

<comment><USER5> It's the tape inside a cassette. Like the old answering machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Icons are mnemonics, not signposts.

Icons alone are never sufficient when someone encounters an interface for the first time, you should always include a text label.

New users to an interface will read the text labels, and after time, the icons become a quick mnemonic for them to locate functions they've accessed before.

Even more important than visuals or text is location. Our spatial memory has a higher priority than either. In repeated user tests, I've observed that once people become used to a button resting in, say, the top left corner of a UI, they will click there again for the same function, even if the button itself has changed.

Don't worry too much about the exact semiotics of your icons. Just keep them reasonably meaningful, clearly distinct from one another, include text labels, and be consistent with where you put them.

<comment><USER7> This is really the most important point. When i use a new app i do not look at the icons and try to figure out what the images mean. What i DO is look for icons that are in similar places, or look like icons i'm used to in other applications. When i can't immediately find what i'm looking for, i use tooltips to search further and once found will easily remember which little picture does what i wanted, or at least roughly where the little picture was.

What the picture shows does not matter, only that i can remember it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm always a bit frustrated that Google Docs doesn't have a save icon. It simply says "All changes saved in drive". But you see this doesn't stop my habitual compulsion to press the save icon (or at least do :w in Vim).

<comment><USER9> After using the autosave plugin for notepad++, the need to manually press ctrl+s in excel or word annoys me. Why can't I tell these programs to autosave when they lose focus? Instead, I get weird "autorecover" options that usually take several minutes to restore my file.

After using an autosave plugin for minecraft server, I'm annoyed by the need to unfocus notepad++ to get it to save. I would almost rather have my changes written directly to disk automatically. I don't want to have to think about if my file is saved or not.

<comment><USER10> Do you not find use cases where you do -not- want the document saving?

I spend a lot of time editing code that is being served by a local development server, and much of the time I do not want my changes saved until they are a complete set simply because I don't need it to start feeding me a bunch of errors from half-finished code.

Similarly, there are a lot of times when I will open a document, modify or reformat part of its contents in preparation for copying them somewhere else with different requirements, and then close the document without saving it.

So aren't there any times in your workflows where you don't want the files saved unless you explicitly want to commit some changes?

<comment><USER11> Not really, though (and this relates to the first of your examples) I do what _persisting_ (avoid loss) changes made distinct from _committing_ (identifying as in a done/stable/ready-for-some-use-besides-continued-editing state) changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Heh, I wrote about this: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/)

The reflection of the real world in the virtual world has to do with abstractions, usually going back to among the earliest of concepts that had a similar function at the time but not necessarily for the current age. Which is why we still have pencils, clouds, houses, and arrows instead of ... try to think of something better.

</comment><comment><USER13> My personal favorite is the word "chipset" from PC hardware.

<comment><USER9> I always thought that referred to the "set of chips" that were integral to motherboard operation -- during my enthusiast years these were the bios and cmos, HDD controllers, then northbridge and southbridge controller, and eventually audio and network integrated circuits.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really a hardware person, but I always thought "chipset" meant the on- board non-CPU chips that don't drive external hardware, but are nonetheless an essential part of the PC architecture expected to be present by all OS's, like the 8253 timer [1], the PIC [2], or the DMA controller [3].

By contrast, I'd say hardware like the 16550 UART [4] isn't part of the chipset, rather it's part of the serial port which it drives.

> northbridge and southbridge controller

Yeah, memory and I/O control is part of the chipset too, since a CPU without I/O or memory is just an expensive paperweight (or, if powered, an expensive heater).

> HDD controllers, audio and network integrated circuits.

I'd consider these to be more like devices or device drivers.

> bios and cmos

This is kind of a special case. If you ask a CPU guy, it's not a part of the chipset, they're just memory modules with different properties from normal RAM. If you ask a motherboard guy, it is part of the chipset. It depends on who you ask.

I can't really cite these distinctions anywhere, it's more along the lines of the intuitions I've picked up from spending decades around computers.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8253](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8253)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Interrupt_Controll...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Interrupt_Controller)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550)

<comment><USER9> I stand thoroughly corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Scott Hanselman wrote a similar article last year [1]

[1]: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14Oth...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14OtherOldPeopleIconsThatDontMakeSenseAnymore.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER15> Phones haven't hung in decades? Does the author truly believe offices don't have phones anymore?

<comment><USER16> No, they used to hang so you could "hang up".

<comment><USER17> Plenty of phones are still wall mounted. The most common place to see them is wherever there are red emergency phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> who cares because "Save" has become obsolete.</comment>


Sexual Suicide - <AUTHOR> http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0701.htm

<comment><USER2> I just spent 30 minutes reading the whole article, who else did that? haha

<comment><USER3> I read quite a bit, but the long lines make it almost impossible to read on the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Upvoted for having a crossword puzzle.

<comment><USER5> And I'd never have bet on doing a sexual crossword in my life...</comment></comment>


What was the link to the amazing algorithm slides on HN a while back? - <AUTHOR>

I remember looking through these algorithm slides (they were blue) about mazes, and graphs. Does anyone have the link? I tried searching my history and google, but I couldn't find it. <comment><USER2> This?

[http://www.jamisbuck.org/presentations/rubyconf2011/index.ht...](http://www.jamisbuck.org/presentations/rubyconf2011/index.html)

First result searching for "algorithm slides" in the search box at the bottom of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are there so few startups tackling or acknowledging climate change? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are plenty of startups in spaces like electric vehicles, renewable energy, energy saving, food production, etc.

This is tackling climate change.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know there are some, but not sure about "plenty".

Check out the latest YC cohort: I counted less than 10 startups interested in sustainable business out of 170+

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/here-are- the-85-startups-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/here-are- the-85-startups-that-launched-today-at-y-combinators-w19-demo-day-1/)

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/here-are- the-88-companies-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/here-are- the-88-companies-that-launched-at-ycs-w19-demo-day-2/)

The rest not even aknowledge the fact that we are in a climate crisis.

I was surprised to see YC support startups involved in animal farming, guns, and even fossil fuel!!

We spend so much time in front of our screens that we have no idea of what's happening outside our little boxes :/

[https://bigthink.com/videos/tech-billionaires-could-end- clim...](https://bigthink.com/videos/tech-billionaires-could-end-climate- change-so-why-arent-they)

<comment><USER2> What is "plenty" for you? Because 10 out of 170 just in one YC cohort suggests "plenty" of them out there...</comment></comment></comment>


The interstellar space rock that mystified astronomers is actually a comet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/27/17509888/oumuamua-interstellar-comet-asteroid-solar-system-trajectory <comment><USER2> It'd be awesome to have generic, ready to fly, probes that could be launched on relatively short notice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess I admire the author's restraint but I sure would have spun this as "strange object from outside our solar system has mysterious source of acceleration"</comment>


Show HN: JSONDb - Schemaless Database Abstraction Library for Mysql and PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/johnwilson/jsondb <comment><USER2> This is very interesting! How is the overall performance? Is it being used in production?

<comment><AUTHOR> It needs a lot more testing before it can be considered production ready but it's stable/functional enough to be used in your proof of concept stage projects. Don't hesitate to give feedback or submit pull requests.</comment></comment>


I Worked Full Time in Crypto for Two Years and Didn't Like What I Saw - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/i-worked-full-time-in-crypto-for-two-years-and-didnt-really-like-what-i-saw-39382fa103a7 <comment><USER2> That's crypto-currency and crypto-tokens, not cryptography or cryptology.</comment>


How Ketogenic Diets Curb Inflammation in the Brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/09/408366/how-ketogenic-diets-curb-inflammation-brain <comment><USER2> The problem with basically all of the keto science (this study included) is that it doesn't adequately differentiate between the effects of a ketogenic diet and simple caloric restriction:

> In rodents, ketogenic diets – and caloric restriction, in general – are > known to reduce inflammation,

While there is some science showing differences in calorically balanced diets that vary in macronutrient composition, the truth is it is not strong, not well reproduced and there reasonable logical models that strongly bring the keto claims into question.

That doesn't mean keto is stupid or not worth studying. It's just that the interesting things about keto aren't really the metabolic changes (which are controversial, and small even if existent), but the behavioral controls. Obviously it's an oversimplification to draw a strict line between metabolism and compliance, but the point is the important difference with keto is that for some people it helps them _comply_ to a calorically balanced diet, not that the macronutrient composition is making a difference.

<comment><USER3> Another problem is keto seems difficult to sustain over the long term. People drop off and regain all of their weight.

<comment><USER4> Modified keto where a higher amount of protein is permitted is much easier to stick to (i.e. 30% protein).. to stay within 0.5-1.5 mmol/L BHB

<comment><USER5> I thought the only real limit for keto was on non fiber carbs? Is there typically a max ratio on protein too?

<comment><USER3> Gluconeogenesis can work off excess protein, too. Also, excess protein raises insulin, which is tied directly to weight gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet)

"The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. [...] Almost half of children, and young people, with epilepsy who have tried some form of this diet saw the number of seizures drop by at least half, and the effect persists even after discontinuing the diet."

doesn't sound like just a fad.

<comment><USER7> Definitely not a fad per se. They way it is packaged (Keto) and delivered to the masses makes it seem fad-ish as all quickly ramped-up-to-make-money deals tend to be. I've used keto myself several times though only as short-term diet change. I myself never fully seemed to recover from the Keto-flu even after months of eating strict keto. Adding back natural complex carbs helped me immensely in that regard.

<comment><USER8> As trevyn says, you need to make sure you get enough sodium. Ketogenic diet accelerates excretion of sodium ("natriuresis of fasting"). Look up Steve Phinney's videos or books if you want more info -- he recommends drinking a few full-sodium stock cubes every day. Another common issue during adaption seems to be not eating enough fat.

<comment><USER9> Won't adding salt to meals and perhaps a pinch to water in the morning be sufficient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> kinda related: Richard Veech (not in OP article) is probably the doctor/researcher (to my knowledge) has done the best research into ketosis, imo.

[https://irp.nih.gov/pi/richard-veech](https://irp.nih.gov/pi/richard-veech)

[http://drveech.com/](http://drveech.com/)

He's found some very interesting results about the improvement of cellular energy efficiency (thermodynamic improvement)/cellular homeostasis due to keto throughout his career:

\- neurons were less thermodynamically wasteful in terms of excess heat generated (because more efficient delta-G/easier ionic potentials); and therefore, due to neuronal metabolic dysfunctions induced by concussions, ketosis was good for treating concussion. DARPA has apparently sunk quite a lot of money into his research of the treatment of concussions/TBI (because of IEDs, etc) - e.g., this paper sponsored by DARPA [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5102124/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5102124/)

\- cardiac cells too performed more efficiently with ketone bodies

(- if I recall correctly (which I'm not sure that I do..) some breeds of mice were able to hold their breath underwater for something ridiculous like 150% (or more?) of the normal length of time than control group mice could. I can't seem to find the source for this.. [although, anecdotally, there have been 4 or 5 times when (in ketosis) I could hold my breath for >2 minutes (timed) with ease, whereas out of ketosis I'd be barely capable of doing so after, say, 45 seconds..])

</comment><comment><USER11> Work in this area is interesting but to me seems like pharma money as the focus is on messing with things that suck money for a long time and then end in cancer. Or put another way what happens to the carbs that are blocked from getting processed. Knowing which cell types are the most resistant to this intervention may have lots of value, but a new block buster drug would be a crime. So suck it up and learn to truly get into a ketogenic state then see where in the world you are. There is little research on multiyear ketogenic cohorts. Fasting which has many comparators to ketosis has been in most cultures for years. A general theme here is insulin sensitivity or better put lack there of. I do not see how this pathway disrupting mechanism helps to return insulin sensitivity for a person eating the diets recommended by pretty much all governments globally.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain me what does "extreme low-carbohydrate" mean exactly? Is it 10% 20% of the daily intake?

<comment><USER13> A ketogenic diet usually means < 20g of carbohydrates per day.</comment></comment>


Brainfock Open Source project/issue management app code is released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Brainfock/Brainfock <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first HN post as well as first "big" project to release in node js / react js.

I have been building Brainfock with PHP/Yii for about 3 years during my free time. About a year ago I decided that it's fun to make it with Nodejs/ReactJS and so I did it. Still quite a few features I had in PHP version are missing from NodeJS/ReactJS version now (like activity streams and file management), but much more has been added then lost. I'd be happy to answer any questions, just please keep in mind that I spent a lot of time on this, so don't make me cry. :)</comment>


Are entrepreneurs exploiting a tax loophole? - <AUTHOR> http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/29/are-entrepreneurs-exploiting-a-tax-loophole-part-ii/

<comment><USER2> Today no one pays tax on stock until they sell it. What this guy seems to be proposing is that no one except founders pays tax on stock until they sell it. He calls that "distributive justice" but I have a hard time seeing the justice in taxing the same asset differently depending on what hat you happen to be wearing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been waiting for this stupidity to get suggested... more reason to not move your startup and your entrepreneurial self to the U.S, imho.</comment>


Fast and light-weight memcached client for C++/Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/douban/libmc

<comment><USER2> what's wrong with pylibmc? [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pylibmc](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pylibmc) this is actively maintained, mature, feature-rich, highly performant, and has been in widespread production use for years.</comment>


Trump gives nod to Oracle buyout of TikTok in US - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53830533 <comment><USER2> ... When I think "youth market monetization", no one knows "the kids" like Oracle does....Its fresh.

<comment><USER3> Your comment made me chuckle as I pictured Larry Ellison with his MAGA hat turned backwards, a "Music Band" shirt, and a skateboard slung over his shoulder saying "How do you do, fellow kids?" on a TikTok video.

<comment><USER4> You've made the common mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison, there's no need for that here, this is a safe space :)

<comment><USER5> Oh, of course Larry is a human. And a young one at that. Just look at how tight his face is. That's how you know how young a human person is... the tightness of their face skin. Just like the tight faces of other youthful humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apart from all the political discussions, I have no idea how the buyer is supposed to buy out just some regional markets.

Would development still be done by the original company, and the new owner just operates regional data centers? But without inter-connectivity? Without being able to influence development, or offer access to the developers for debugging and ops? Seems exceedingly unlikely.

Otherwise, do they get a code dump of a huge, complex code base, and are supposed to continue development on their own? With the original TikTok still operating in other parts of the world, and slowly diverging? I can't see that happening either.

Would they buy the brand name too, and the rest of the world would start using a different name?

That all seems pointless. The only thing that makes sense to me is taking over globally.

<comment><USER7> They're literally different apps with different names, user bases that don't interact with each other.

<comment> kube-system Yes, in China, it's a different app, called Douyin. (This is probably why the icon looks like a letter 'd'.) ByteDance says they're operationally separate from TikTok as of 2019.

[https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/%E6%8A%96%E9%9F%B3%E7%9F%AD%E8...](https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/%E6%8A%96%E9%9F%B3%E7%9F%AD%E8%A7%86%E9%A2%91/id1142110895?l=zh&ls=1)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/27/tiktok-moves-to-separate- app...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/27/tiktok-moves-to-separate-app-from- chinese-operations-amid-us-probe.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The huge hypocrisies here is that the sell must be done to a US company, not a European or an Indian one for instance but specifically a US one. I think that's a good lesson for the rest of the world, and a big warning.

Btw I think that following this and the Huawei little war, Apple is about to suffer from it. It's very probable that the Apple store will be forbidden in China. This will destroy Apple in China (impacting 18% Apple revenue), and it will at the same time preserve the image of China as the factory of the world. This is just the beginning of a long war.

<comment><USER9> Exactly this. The ban itself was fine. But to force sale of assets to a US company (which reduces bidding prices significantly) is just corrupt thuggish politics. At this point, a third country should be wary of doing any business in the US.

<comment><USER10> What? its not worse than a ban, its so not worse that ByteDance could simply not sell its US operations and stop being present in the US, making it just like a ban. A ban would leave no option.

This is pretty much what China does, but for every service.

<comment><USER9> > This is pretty much what China does, but for every service.

Since when did we aspire to become more like China?

> its not worse than a ban, its so not worse that ByteDance could simply not > sell its US operations and stop being present in the US, making it just like > a ban

The difference is, why should a US entity own this asset for it to have operations in the US? Why can't it be a EU entity or Australian entity or Canadian entity or Ugandan entity?

Does this mean that US government is going to erratically force foreign businesses to sell US assets when they want?

The equivalent of this would be EU asking Apple to sell all EU operations to Nokia or whatever to be able to operate in that market. Does this sound business friendly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> First it was getting Kodak to manufacture pharmaceutical chemicals. Now it's getting Oracle to buy tiktok. Is there a reason behind these baffling choices by the current administration? Why are they giving sweetheart deals to dinosaur companies? Is there some insider trading angle? Did those companies have better lobbyists?

<comment><USER12> It's certainly fair to consider nefarious reasons, but it's also important to consider less interesting reasons, like Kodak already (historically) dealing heavily with chemical production and Oracle making a bid to pivot and stay relevant. Who else might want to pay the most for TikTok US? From FAANG, only Facebook seems like a fit but Facebook won't pay "market" rate for TikTok because they already have Reels, Microsoft and AANG don't seem like fits. Outside of those, it's some private equity group but they would need to spin up an operation around actually running and developing TikTok, that's complicated.

Or it could all just be sweetheart deals.

<comment><USER13> How is Oracle a better fit than Microsoft? At least Microsoft deals with customers and not only businesses.

<comment><USER14> MSFT has business interests in China and ORCL doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Many here don't get the big picture. This acquisition makes total sense for Oracle. They'll be able to milk those influencers by charging TikTokers by how many cores they have on their phones and video audience size. </s>

<comment><USER16> And here I was thinking that they'd immediately shelve it, and then spend their time litigating against influencers and copycat platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Among all the feasible buyers, Oracle feels like the worst possible one. They are basically the real life version of Mr. Robot's Evil Corp, and they have a very bad record when it comes to acquisitions.

<comment><USER18> Yes. I hope they acquire TikTok.

<comment><USER19> I don't understand the hate for TikTok I frequently see on HN. Is it just ordinary ageism/curmudgeonliness?

I'm not in its core audience myself, but it seems to me to be a very smartly put together app, both in its core features (practically the only video remixing/editing app for mobile that retains tolerable levels of both accessibility and expressiveness) and in its platform (particularly the recommendation engine which seems to drive pretty solid engagement).

<comment><USER20> It's cognitive dissonance. America is supposed to be the good guys, but on American social media everyone is toxic and hates each other and it's all full of political and corporate AstroTurfing; China is supposed to be the bad guys, but on TikTok everyone's happy and enjoying themselves and the content is organic and largely apolitical.

The easiest way to get rid of the cognitive dissonance is not to fix US social media, but to get rid of TikTok.

<comment><USER21> That's because TikTok does pretty heavy 'auditing' \- the content is NOT organic at all. Only the good-looking people and the happy videos go to the top. The others go to the bottom or are 'disappeared'

<comment><USER22> Congrats you just described society.

<comment><USER21> This has little to do with "society". Its policy.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed- how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing)

[https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators- us...](https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users- discrimination/)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/internal-guidelines-show- tik...](https://www.businessinsider.com/internal-guidelines-show-tiktok- censors-videos-that-would-anger-china-2019-9)

<comment><USER22> And the policy was written by........?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "According to those reports, Oracle was seriously considering buying TikTok's businesses in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with investment firms, including General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital."

That's only 4 out of the "5 eyes".

<comment><USER24> The US is 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue. Most of TikTok's most- followed users are American ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- followed_TikTok_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- followed_TikTok_accounts)). Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are probably another 5% of revenue. The UK may be not included because TikTok has stated that it wants to establish its global headquarters there.

There has been talk that Microsoft is interested in buying all of TikTok worldwide (TikTok isn't available in China; ByteDance has a separate, similar business there), which would be easier technically because TikTok's operations and algorithms would not need to be divided. India was TikTok's largest userbase until the recent ban; presumably a non Chinese-owned TikTok could quickly reopen there.

<comment><USER25> Does TikTok actually make any revenue itself yet? I know its top users are making millions from advertising stuff, but they don't seem to have any ads in the platform itself yet?

<comment><USER26> Yes they insert ads into your feed the same as IG or FB.

<comment><USER27> Really? I see them on FB/Instagram, but I've never seen one on TikTok.

<comment><USER28> Did you just starting to use TikTok? Many platforms show less ads to new users, in order to not scare them away and it's not until you've used it for a longer period of time that they ramp up how many ads you're seeing. Also different profiles gets different amount of ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sort of hard to imagine a more ham-fisted owner for something as cool as TikTok. If IBM or GE bought them it wouldn't make less sense.

<comment><USER30> Why is tiktok cool? Or more cool than vine or imgur.

<comment><USER31> Vine doesn't exist. Imgur has a mildly toxic community and a load of porn.

<comment><USER32> I think the implication of the question was why did TikTok become "cool" when vine didn't? They're essentially very similar.

<comment><USER31> Vine was cool, when it existed, and there are many vine videos which got uploaded to YouTube, and there are many Vine compilations on YT with millions of views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand how the US can force a Chinese company to sell itself, can someone explain?

<comment><USER34> The equation is a bit similar to the one played out in the movie "Goodfellas".

You have two mobsters, the good mobster and the bad mobster, and a business. The bad mobster actively harasses the business in multiple ways, prompting the business to seek protection from the good mobster in exchange for buying into the business.

Of course, both the good mobster and the bad mobster are in the same mob, and benefit from the revenue stream from the newly acquired stake in business.

<comment><USER35> Tell that to wechat and Whatsapp ... the ccp is the bad guy.

<comment><USER34> Its not meant to be a commentary on whos good and bad on some objective scale, just an anecdote on the effects in play

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This doesn't make any sense, there's no Ask.com toolbar for Oracle to bundle on phones.

<comment><USER37> I heard Oracle is deep into really shitty kinds of user tracking/spying.

So I think they hope to get two things out of it:

\- Good PR with the next generation (they lost most/all? good PR with my generation as far as I can tell).

\- A lot of data about young users.

<comment><USER38> >I heard Oracle is deep into really shitty kinds of user tracking/spying.

Absolutely not defending Oracle, but who __isn 't __into shitty user tracking and spying? It 's a central part of most business models, because they give the service away for free.

<comment><USER37> I mean like more bad then what you normally get.

Like using gray legal area devices to track you in the real world even if you never signed any agb. Like tracking Bluetooth IDs in and around shopping center, like tracking the anti theft/processing pipeline RFID ships which might still be left in your closes, like adding spyware to apps which listens to ultrasonic sound bakons in the background and then phones home. Like using face recognition on security cameras in shops but potentially also in the streets around them.

I.e. all the kinds a questionable tracking which many people aren't aware of at all (as far as I can tell).

And Oracle seems to be big into bringing all this tracking sources and data from Google/Facebook/etc. and data they can get from other sources (e.g. finance institutes) together and automatically analyze it to create profiles about everyone.

Through only as far as I remember, it's a while back that I read about that. I somewhat hope that I'm misremembering tbh. Would be a nicer world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This will be hilarious if it happens.

TikTok is terrible, Oracle is terrible.

At least it will increase the statistic on "3 Billion Devices Run Oracle Java"

</comment><comment><USER40> This looks like yet another Petrodollar merry-go-round look-alike.

US TikTok is the price to pay for that sweet long term government contracts.

</comment><comment><USER41> TikTok feels a completely bizarre purchase for Oracle. Especially when abandoning the UK market.

They have no synergy, no experience, no moderation infrastructure, nothing. Do they want to be Yahoo?

Literally the only justification I can think of is that they want to keep the current administration happy and see this as a quasi-bribe, in the hope of getting more work in future from them in things they actually do. But that seems crazy given the likelihood (on the basis of polling, not making any judgements on whys or wherefores) that the administration will be gone in three months.

</comment><comment><USER42> I can't be alone in being more creeped out by Oracle than bytedance. So we're giving a pathological collector of software control over a huge group of easily manipulated teenagers? Yikes!

<comment><USER43> Does anyone know if tiktok has any patents or potential patents that oracle can leverage? That's even more scary to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> As a Swede it feels so weird to read about eg. Trump meddling in such details in affairs like this.

In Sweden ministerial rule is outlawed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_governance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_governance)

Our prime minister would not be allowed to have an opinion on any specific case like this, he would rather have to have opinions on the overall legal framework or such instead and leave the interpretation and application of the legal framework to the appropriate agencies.

To me that feels like the right way to go about things like this.

<comment><USER45> I believe youre seeing an artifact of how governance is divided. It looks like sweden (and many other parliamentary systems) puts the administration & execution of law under the direction of a minister, who's primarily a legislator.

In the USA these areas are more clearly divided. The federal legislature is comprised of a bicameral house and senate. There is a discrete executive branch charged with enforcing the law set by the legislature. The president is the head of that executive branch who enforces those laws. Thats where the aspect of specific enforcement by the president comes in.

<comment><USER44> That separation exists in Sweden as well. The parliament makes the laws while the government is the executive branch.

But yeah, slightly different as its our prime minister who sets up the government, the parliament who picks the prime minister and the people who elects the parliament – through proportional representation.

The ban on ministerial rule is an additional separation on top of the one you mention – a separation within the executive branch, that even further avoids opportunities for eg. corruption. (And confuses foreign leaders who are unfamiliar with it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> One

Rich

Asshole

Called

Larry

Ellison

Among the many reasons I still turn down any Oracle offer is because of their CEO.

<comment><USER47> So you also refuse to own a Tesla?

<comment><USER48> Honestly, not that I'd be in the market for one anyway, but the extreme bonkers-ness of the CEO is one thing that would put me off if I was.

<comment><USER49> If I recollect correctly, Ellison is in the board of Tesla too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can someone explain this potential acquisition for me? I cant think of a company more unlikely to acquire TikTok than Oracle. What business need could they fill for Oracle? Is this an effort to get into social media/massive data collection in a big way? Have they tried to acquire other social apps in the past?

I just don't get it.

<comment><USER19> Up next: DuPont acquires Discord, ExxonMobil acquires Bumble, McKesson acquires Niantic/Pokemon Go...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is shrewd of Ellison to do this. He knows he is the edge as he is a trump supporter. However it's a terrible idea for tiktok to sell to oracle, a dinosaur that has no idea how to deal with consumer tech. I still don't know why these companies want tiktok in the first place. It will be a nightmare to disconnect them from China and even then all the Chinese employees who dreamed up the tech are not coming, what's the point?

Also I suspect this is just election pandering from trump. Initially he gave a 45 day "chance" for companies to find a buyer and then extended it by another 45 days. That takes it close to the election or past that date. At that point he doesn't care and can push it under the rug just like the other "harsh stances " against China.

<comment><USER52> This really isn't that shrewd. The outcomes are either 1) to drive up MSFT's TikTok acquisition price 2) to disrupt the sale process and harm or destroy TikTok 3) to ingratiate themselves with the current president or 4) the gambit is sincere and they successfully acquire them.

None of those address Oracle's core challenges which that they are getting hollowed out by competition in their core database market, are being outcompeted by Workday and SFDC in CRM and ERP verticals, and one just has to look at the comments here to see how they are perceived in the market. This may be temporarily gratifying, but is ultimate a distraction for them when they should not be distracting themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Oracle : "it seems you have installed TikTok. Pay up or we will sue".

</comment><comment><USER54> Oracle or their data collection subsidiary BlueKai? Strongly surprised no one mentioning them. Sounds like a perfect fit!

</comment><comment><USER55> What happened to Microsoft? Surely if the US really wanted a fast sale then turning it into a bidding war is a stupid move?

</comment><comment><USER56> ByteDance and their investors are going to get a nice cash infusion on their way to world domination outside the US and Oracle will promptly kill it like they did Sun.

US Zoomers will move to the next big thing.

</comment><comment><USER57> When I was working in Oracle, there was a running gag that there were more full time attorneys employed by the company, than there were engineers.

Maybe that is what you need to run a business like that?

</comment><comment><USER58> The world has turned into a parody of itself.

</comment><comment><USER59> Of all the reasons not to use TikTok Oracles proposed ownership has to very high in the list.

All the kewl kids use Oracle.....

</comment><comment><USER60> So soon enough, we'll see the TikTok logo on the back of a Facebook sign? Sniff...

</comment><comment><USER61> All Tik-Tok ers will now receive pre-sales training for Oracle Cloud

</comment><comment><USER62> Public corporations are inherently immoral manipulators. We shouldn't trust any of them with massive access to the nations "youth." At least private companies have a chance of _maybe_ having a founder with a heart who will turn down a sketchy way to make money

</comment><comment><USER63> How would fit TikTok into Oracles portfolio?

<comment><USER64> As a use-case demonstration for Oracle Cloud?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Good. They deserve each other.

</comment><comment><USER66> Great news, can't wait for Oracle to buy TikTok!

</comment><comment><USER67> In my wildest dreams I could not create a stupider headline.

I guess the idea here is that Oracle destroys everything they buy, Trump hates Sarah Cooper, so he approves of this deal.

</comment><comment><USER68> Aren't the countries banning TikTok becoming more like China by doing this? Plus Trump comments about US gov needs to get money from this sale sounds like plain bribe.

I have not seen a convincing proof that TikTok is more of a national security threat versus FB or Twitter. What am I missing? I am also more suspicious because along with TikTok, Wechat was banned while other investments in US by Tencent where not touched supposedly because it would impact American companies. Wechat is definitely insignificant to be a security threat.

<comment> kube-system > I have not seen a convincing proof that TikTok is more of a national > security threat versus FB or Twitter.

Don't make the mistake of confusing national security and privacy. FB and Twitter's operations answer primarily to US law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> TikTok should just let the US government ban them. Teenagers can figure out how to VPN to Mexico and it's better PR for TikTok. "So good the government won't let you use it" is better optics than "TikTok, now owned by some Boomer company". As a hip youngster myself, just the name Oracle makes me think of beige and grey Windows Vista era software and shitty enterprise software.

<comment><USER70> The problem is that with a transaction ban, no US companies can buy ads on TikTok, removing any financial point in running the service for US customers

<comment><USER71> Proving that TikTok is just a money-making enterprise, not a CCP tentacle manipulating foreign elections. Otherwise they you just run it at a loss, like Voice of America or RT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Somehow it doesn't surprise me Larry is a Trump supporter.

<comment><USER47> Would it surprise you he's also a Tesla board member?

<comment><USER49> I guess he isn't the only Trump supporter in that hoard</comment></comment></comment>


The joy and pain of using a static site generator for private and client work - <AUTHOR> http://screamingatmyscreen.com/2013/8/the-joy-and-pain-of-using-a-static-site-generator-for-private-and-client-work/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this describes something quite close to something that I'm working on (and covers a number of problems that we've faced).

That said, all of the issues listed, while intractable, aren't impossible to deal with. CORS is just one way of handing things like forms submissions. Site regeneration can be done transparently from a centralised always-on server. There's no reason oldschool IE can't be made to work.

Indeed unfortunately the author's solution seems to miss a bunch of the benefits of having things static.

There's a lot of value in not doing work (or minimizing the amount of work done) when people come to read your page, and I'm honestly pretty surprised that there aren't more intelligent baked site generators out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here :) You are right that it is possible to deal with them. I never said it isn't possible that an old IE can work, it is just more work and sometimes a bit messy. As I mentioned I am aware that there is the approach regenerating the site on a server but I'm not sold on it.

I didn't want to discuss static site generators again, so I only went with the two major advantages. What did I miss? Easy setup / deployment is IMHO implicit as well as the fact that basically nothing on the server can break.

I think adoption and development in this direction isn't as attractive for most people. Initially you lose some comfort till you have a system around your site supporting it and than you still face the fact that only a handful people are willing to use your tool till you add a webinterface and other things which are expected to be included in mainstream solutions.

I think there are some quite popular and intelligent static site generators, they are just not called this way. Wordpress with Supercache or flask-frozen e.x.</comment></comment>


California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - happy-go-lucky https://in.reuters.com/article/cisco-lawsuit/california-accuses-cisco-of-job-discrimination-based-on-indian-employees-caste-idINKBN24241B <comment><AUTHOR> Previous thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083)</comment>


Time-to-Greatness at Early-Stage Companies - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/08/time-to-greatne.html

<comment><USER2> For those who don't enjoy scrolling iframes:

[http://online.tableausoftware.com/views/HowBigIsYourHockeyst...](http://online.tableausoftware.com/views/HowBigIsYourHockeystick/Dashboardat570)

Somebody change the link to an actual article: [http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/08/25/how-long- does...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/08/25/how-long-does-it-take- to-build-a-technology-empire/)

<comment><USER3> Good looks. Those iframes were miserable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Was G not there? I couldn't find it...

<comment><USER4> _sigh_ I could instantly tell you were a Microsoftie. Your profile confirms. How? You said "G". Google is not a curse word.

It seems like Ballmer started this weird "I won't say their name" theme and it has spread throughout the ranks. We need to send a message to our leaders that competitors are to be studied and celebrated for what we can learn from them. Prepetuating this informal policy is suicidal.

<comment><USER5> RE: "They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named"

Ballmer is just projecting his issues...he's Voldemort's chunkier brother, ya know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Facebook took 2 years. The company was founded in 2004 and by 2006 they were generating an estimated 1M per week.

Source: [http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/04/faceb...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/04/facebook_revenu.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice concept. Pretty graph. Worthless utility.

The first thing I wanted to know was, "Which line matches which company?" A mouseover pop-up tip would have been perfect. Maybe it just doesn't work in my browser. If anyone can figure this one out, you're smarter than me.

<comment><USER8> The mouseovers work for me in Firefox 3.5.2. But I'm still not smarter than you...

<comment><USER7> OK, thanks. ie at work. I'll make sure to check this out at home tonight.

(A lesson for all of us on what not to do.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. Look at Blackboard hanging on for it's life. iCollege sucks ass, so overpriced.

</comment><comment><USER9> Proves '10,000 hour rule' and 'fortune favors the bold.'</comment>


Unfair Internships - <AUTHOR> http://unfairinternships.wordpress.com/ <comment><USER3> Ok, I'll admit it, we've had unpaid interns.

When we first started out (i.e. when we were based out of my living room, and were funded by my line of credit+credit cards) we couldn't afford to buy the fancy kind of ramen noodles, let alone pay anyone salaries. So we posted a job for an unpaid internship and were able to get three students to work with us for 4 months.

The students were all freshmen and barely had enough knowledge beyond the "hello world" level. Over the course of the internship they were exposed to several languages (Python, Objective-C, C, C#) as well as frameworks and libraries (Django, OpenGL, Unity3D... bunch of others.) We pushed them hard, but not in a "work harder or we'll beat you" kind of way, rather in a "we're all working towards a common goal, and you'll get paid when we get revenue" kind of way. By the end of the term they all had several serious projects they were able to showcase (a couple of iPhone apps, web work, a browser plugin...) and experience with proper programming practices as taught to them by top notch engineers. And by the end we were actually able to scrounge together about $2k apiece to give them as a thank-you for their work.

The following year when these guys had finished their 3rd semester and were looking for their next internship they all got between 22-25 interviews - <USER2> Google, Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, RIM etc. And all of them got highly prestigious internships that normally only go to senior students in their last semester.

We still use those guys as references for when we hire interns because they have nothing but great things to say about their experience with us.

Today we're funded and we have revenue, so we're able to pay our interns somewhat more reasonable rates ($18-25/hr.)

Anyway, my point is that not all unpaid internships are created equal and in many cases it ends up being in the interests of both the company and the student.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll bite. I believe people who say "why can't they work for free if they want to?" aren't seeing the big picture. What's been happening in some areas (not IT), like people working on culture (museums mainly), is that the company will avoid paying at any cost. This means they will keep you working for free as an intern until you decide to leave or they are required to give you a work contract. Then, when you leave, they just get another intern and this goes on and on.

So you'd ask "why are people falling for this?" and the answer is quite simple: there's too many people who'd like to work on culture but it's not a gold mine for companies so they can't pay even if they wanted to. So you keep accepting internships to get a better CV but it never stops. I can't count the number of friends I have in this situation for years and years. I'm not kidding: more than ten years trying internships and with amazing CVs living with parents because you can't afford living by yourself.

I can imagine this happening in IT too since there's so many people wanting to work on this area. People need to qualify and I'm not talking about a degree, you need to practice and learn by yourself so you can have a real advantage over everyone else and escape the never ending internships.

<comment><USER5> Still, why blame the companies? seems to me it is still the people who are volunteering who are bringing this upon themselves. There is no human right to "working on culture" - if they want to get paid for it, maybe they should try to think about what they could offer to make it worth paying them.

<comment><USER4> I don't think I blamed the companies for it. I believe it's immoral to do it but it's up to the people to understand the situation and fight it by not following such practices.

<comment><USER5> Isn't thinking it's immoral the same as blaming them. But you even said they often can't even afford to pay.

Anyway, this is an issue that is not going to be resolved by opinions, but by economics and markets.

<comment><USER4> Like I said, if nobody fell for it then it wouldn't work so, no, thinking it's immoral is not the same as blaming them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1 Natural Law Point (Freedom of Contract) + 1 Government Observation

\---NATURAL LAW POINT--- Thomas Jefferson used natural law theory to justify what has become arguably the most recognized sentence in American English contained within the United States Declaration of Independence regarding our inalienable rights "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Natural law was not only an influence in the Declaration, but also in the Constitution--starting with Freedom of Speech.

"Freedom Of contract along with the right to own property were core elements in the American vision of personal liberty . . . The American constitution scheme places contract liberty well above common law status; it is a guaranteed personal right. Liberty of contract is recognized not as power delegated by the sovereign, but as power originating in and guaranteed to the people." \--Brian A. Blum and Juliana B. Wellman, "Participation, Assent and Liberty in Contract Formation," Ariz. St. L.J. (1982), 901, 907-08.

While internships are coming under fire in the U.K. with this HN Link, the same case about breaking minimum wage or any other attack could and has just as easily happen(ed) here in the U.S. The reality is, like others have said, is that it is not the fault of the companies, rather those who choose to work for them.

I had a choice when in University to work as an intern (paid or unpaid) through the school's "co-op" program or find my own co-op experience that had to be relevant to my studies. While many took the route of going through the school, I chose to find my own which paid triple that of the average paid intern through the school program and obviously much better than unpaid--not to mention my experience seemed to have been better as most other interns complained about doing "grunt work".

\---GOVERNMENT OBSERVATION--- It is our choice to make and shouldn't have the government mettle in this type of affair. Take a look at what happened in New York circa 1902 when government went to far into labor laws and practices: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York>

Regarding the above, basically, New York State law was passed in 1897 stating "No employee shall be required or permitted to work in a biscuit, cake, or break bakery or confectionary establishment" for more than 10 hours per day. What? Lochner was a baker and he was fined for allowing employees to work more than 10 hours a day or "violating the state law limiting the number of hours his employees could work."

The government of New York tried to justify this ridiculous law by saying it was to protect the health, safety, morality and welfare of bakers in New York.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court sided with Lochner that the New York State law was unconstitutional, although their reasoning is a little poor. Unfortunately, the Lochner law was reversed in 1937 under the guise of upholding a Washington State law setting minimum wage.

Like anything, freedom and restrictions and governing can be abused, and anyone can argue either side of the situation easily, but it is the choice of the people to side with our natural rights as citizens, including our right "to be free in his person and in his power to contract in relation to his labor."

</comment><comment><USER7> Frankly it isn't surprising that we're even paying attention to something like this. How many businesses are handing out big bonuses, salary increases, and raises? I can't imagine many businesses are, as they're doing their best to keep the penny pinching going on during a down economy. Unpaid internships are just another business decision that you can more easily get away with today since the competition is so fierce that they're able to offer $0 / month just for the chance to get work experience.

One of my friends is currently struggling to get a job working in CAD. It's so bad in that sector of the economy, jobs he's been tentatively offered have been taken away by people who called in after their interview saying they'll work for less than the advertised wage. It cannot be that surprising to think that a college undergrad with ZERO work experience would work for free when he has to compete against so many with years experience that they're willing to underbid him on price, on top of having a shinier resume to boot.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _They have some surprising statistics such as 90% of students work for free > and 60% say the experience is not beneficial_

That is indeed surprising. Why would the 60% for whom the experience isn't beneficial offer to work for free? I'm afraid you can't outlaw people working against their own best interest (or statistics misrepresenting them).

And the same goes for outlawing internships. If somebody wants to do grunt- work for free "to get a foot in the door" or whatever, I think they're for the most part stupid, but who am I to stop them?

Also, where is the line between unpaid intern and volunteering? Why is it OK for me to work 3x8 hour shifts at a festival for a free ticket when it's not OK for a student to work afternoons at CoolCo Inc. which, when on the resume, will open doors?

<comment><USER9> "I'm afraid you can't outlaw people working against their own best interest..."

Yes, you can, sadly. Minimum wage laws do exactly this. If you enact a minimum wage of X, some of the people who make less than X have their wages increase to X, and some get laid off. Or, less dramatically, they find it harder to get a job because their labor isn't actually worth X.

Ostensibly, this is balanced out by the benefit to the people who do find work, but it's indisputable that the downside does exist. If it didn't, it begs the question of why we shouldn't raise minimum wage another dollar, then another, ad infinitum until we're all millionaires.

The reason interns are de facto excluded from the laws is that they're generally not the class of people the laws are meant to protect. They're young people with a reasonable expectation of future earnings significantly above the minimum wage, not unskilled adults that might be poor forever. In the US, some states even carve out exceptions to minimum wage laws for teenagers working summer jobs for this same reason.

<comment><USER8> The minimum wage is just outlawing just one instance of people working against their own best interest.

The specific case I was hinting at, was the 60% apparently doing work, receiving no benefit. Either the stat is misleading (likely) or those are people who could play video-games instead of doing this work with no downside.

Otherwise it seems like we agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How can it be unfair if people volunteer for it? I agree that work should be paid for, but how about taking on some responsibility in negotiating one's own price?

At least if claiming it is unfair, one should explain why people are forced to do unpaid internships. Pointing at individual companies doesn't cut it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ubuntu seem to be aware of these kinds of arguments:

[http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/23/ubuntu-community-team- op...](http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/23/ubuntu-community-team- opportunities-second-draft/)</comment>


Ask HN: Good vendor to analyze PCBs via cross section - <AUTHOR> Has anyone had tests done where they potted a PCB in clear epoxy and then did cross sections to check thicknesses and uniformity of gold layers?  Or for that matter, favorite labs who do this and other tests. <comment><USER2> Microtech labs in Plano Texas does a good job of this. I use them fairly often for both PCB and IC level cross sections.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>