HP's decision means webOS could end up more open than Android - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/hps-decision-means-webos-could-end-up-more-open-than-android.ars <comment><USER2> Or it could end up dead. No products = no development. No development = dead.

WebOS will have exactly the same fate as so many great OS that had zero commercial backing, let alone products. Let alone that it'll fall massively behind the current market leaders and never be able to catch up again..

<comment><USER3> I bet Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc. all want to reduce their reliance on Android now that Google will soon own Motorola.

<comment><USER4> I'd rather see them a more open alternative like WebOS than WP7, which hasn't been successful for them so far anyway. I love Android, but a strong WebOS alternative would be great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Emphasis on _could_. What we have now is necessary but not sufficient for that to happen.

It's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out. Even assuming it does get adoption, the most likely path is device makers and carriers taking the open source version and customizing the crap out of it and releasing their own "closed" versions of it, just like Android. And if HP does anything to prevent that then what we inevitably have is something _less_ open than Android.

I _do_ very much like the fact that Google now has another player that will keep them honest about how "open" they are.

<comment><USER6> A copyleft license [1] could probably eliminate most invasive proprietary "value-add". Though that might hinder adoption, being just a dump pipe or a box mover isn't very profitable. Hopefully companies are getting desperate enough to give up on Apple-like profits.

1\. A license that requires derivative works to be distributed under the same terms

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> WebOS UI could easily run atop an Android kernel. Programming in some nice web-based toolkit instead of java-like stuff would be a godsend (PS: I always hated java to the bones).

<comment><USER8> No, it couldn't.

If by "Android kernel" you mean the full richness of the existing APIs, the UI framework, UI conventions etc., then no, you can't just mash up two full- featured OS who both need exclusive access to hardware, have their own UI conventions, APIs, different ways of doing the same things (like showing notifications, switching between applications) etc.

If by "Android kernel" you mean "slightly modified Linux kernel that Android uses" then technically yes but it's a meaningless statement. WebOS already uses (possibly slightly modified) Linux kernel, the kernel changes constitute about 0.1% of their code and they are not what defines Android or WebOS.

<comment><USER9> The inverse is more useful.

webOS running with an interface to the Android market and ability to run Android apps. It should not be that hard to get that working if people pitch in to help.

\- Dalvik needs to work under webOS which should be a recompile and some changes. There's also Alien.

\- Android apps need to have a generic wrapper to put them into webOS cards.

\- Some other interface issues to clean up.

So, who wants to help do this?

PS: FWIW, webOS essentially uses an Android kernel already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Exciting. In some ways webOS seems more modern and advanced than iOS and Android because it's using web / cloud paradigms at it's absolute core.

Even though I run iOS, the fact that you can build entire apps in Javascript is cool. Hopefully I can get my hands on a touchpad to try it out

<comment><USER11> Interestingly enough isn't that how iOS started out? At least to some extend. It would be interesting to know how mobile/web would look today if Apple didn't introduce native apps and instead fully committed to web apps.

<comment><USER12> I remember reading that Steve Jobs originally wanted the iPhone only to run web apps. That's why the "Add site to homescreen"-option has always been in the browser.

Then jailbreakers came along, and demanded to be able to run native code, and boom, Apple agrees and we have the App Store.

It's interesting how opinions can change, and choices strike back.

<comment><USER13> The big difference is that all the apps on the original iPhone were native apps, so the iPhone javascript interfaces were missing a lot of features. All the apps on the original WebOS phones were actually web apps, so their javascript interfaces didn't suck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At this stage the kind of openess I strive for is that developers have an option to distribute software to customers without asking a third party for permission. The kind of openess we know from OS X and Windows XP.</comment>


Embeddable software rocks - <AUTHOR> http://feedusblog.com/detail.asp?c=933201&t=embeddable-software-rocks

<comment><USER2> Totally off-topic, I know, but I was expecting some kind of description of a virtual quarry or code pebbles or something.

More on topic, this seems to suffer from the same lack of control that most "cloud" software does. When they pull your link because your website is too popular (or not popular enough), what happens then?

Not really a complaint, I guess, more of a question -- is this something that comes up as an issue practically, or in most cases is it not an issue as a site grows?

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point.

Youtube was down this morning and the embedded videos were gone, too. That's javascript widgets for you.

We built our service (Feed.Us) so if our servers & code burn in a fiery ball of destruction, it won't effect your site.</comment></comment>


HN/YC BBQ -- Saturday April 18th - <AUTHOR> http://anyvite.com/events/home/lld60cypag

<comment><USER2> I'm generally not envious of people living in the bay area, but these sorts of events do sound very cool.

Anyone want to have a HN BBQ here in Padova, Italy?:-) I'll supply the wine - my mother in law works at a high school where they sell it by the liter. Yeah, you read that right:

[http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/23/winemaking- scho...](http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/23/winemaking-school)

Anyway, they sell really good fresh meat too, so, seriously, anyone stops by this area of Italy, I'd be happy to get out the grill.

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking about setting up an HN events site to help HN readers organize something like this. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=568903>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, alas, I'll be on the road.

Been thinking of planning a hacker dinner in Mountain View in a few weeks though.

<comment><AUTHOR> would love to hear details once that's finalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish there were more official YC events open to the public. I'd attend YConf :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Gonna try my best to be there. Someone's gotta represent investors :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Am i the only idiot who can't figure out how to find an event (particularly this event) on anyvite? I just happen to be in the area today from Canada, thought it might be interesting to stop by.

<comment><USER8> Here is the link to the invitation:

<http://anyvite.com/lld60cypag>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Will be there!

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a cool idea and offer - might be able to make it along!

</comment><comment><USER11> sweet! bunch of entrep's and beer always great.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like fun -- I'll come crash the party.

</comment><comment><USER13> does anyvite not allow you to view the entire guestlist? i even registered, to no avail.

<comment><USER8> Uhm, that is the entire guest list. It's an open invitation so anyone can sign themselves up for the event.

<comment><USER13> for example, it says there's 20 guests, but i could only view 9 (it's now 30/21). caching issue?

<comment><USER8> All of those (+numbers) next to guest names means that they are bringing additional people, which is added into the tally of total guests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Be there soon, just landed in SF.

</comment><comment><USER15> We'll be there. (DailyBooth.com)</comment>


Did anyone actually get any good deals from Amazon Prime Day? - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 After weeks of hyping today as "bigger than black Friday", Amazon seems to have dropped the ball in a major way. Where are the deals on items you actually want to purchase? Did anyone find anything good? <comment><AUTHOR> What do people think about the 35% off of Crucial SSDs? [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFAGCUM](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFAGCUM)

I haven't really shopped for SSDs before but I need to upgrade my 4 year old MBP. It looks to be about $20 cheaper than what's on Newegg:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148946)

<comment> Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 I saw that deal, but I'm wary of buying crucial ssds as every single one I've bought has failed on me within 18 months. As far as SSDs go, I thought the advice was to stick with Intel: is this still true?

<comment><USER2> I stopped using crucial SSD's after I had several with the 5200 hour firmware bug. Perhaps you were experiencing the same issue? I was able to upgrade the firmware but now go with Intel SSDs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The "lightning deals" seem to be either uninteresting, or already 100% claimed. (Though the day's not over, and they do seem to be adding new items periodically.) Has anyone built an app to watch upcoming lightning deals and snap them up at superhuman speed?

BTW, there's also a section of 30%-off items—mostly clothes and luggage—that doesn't seem to have the "lightning" quantity limits. [http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=pin15_us_gw_d_p3_ld_softlines?_e...](http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=pin15_us_gw_d_p3_ld_softlines?_encoding=UTF8&node=9538491011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop- pinata-3&pf_rd_r=17Y4PZGG6Q5D5EJ5DR69&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2135568282&pf_rd_i=desktop)

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazon hasn't dropped the ball at all. In fact, this has been a huge success for them. This was entirely a marketing ploy, and now everyone is talking about it.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. They lost a lot of credibility here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't found anything I wanted. I mean there are great deals, but nothing I am interested in. To be fair I am only really interested in buying cheap books.

<comment><USER7> Try abebooks.com. I've bought quite a lot of cheap books there, both text books (often of the "don't sell anywhere but India" variety), and used fiction that I can't find anywhere.

They're now an Amazon property, but they're still cheap and convenient.

<comment><USER6> Sweet thanks for the heads up. I love buying books. I also love reading, so they don't go to waste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got some protein powder. Wasn't any cheaper but they gave out a $25 gift card

<comment><USER9> Congrats on the gains!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't see anything that I don't see on woot or other deal sites on a daily basis. When I last looked one of the "front page" items on the lightning deals was a lanyard, which I think says a lot.

</comment><comment><USER11> I sent my mum some more of the pimms I bought for full price a few weeks ago for her birthday. I was quite disappointed by the sale..

I probably would have grabbed a paperwhite if they'd reduced it with the cheap kindle.

</comment><comment><USER12> I picked up a pair of Bose SoundTrue On Ear headphones. I'd been stalking them for a while but they've been priced at £129.95 for months. I ordered them yesterday for little over £70. Very happy!

</comment><comment><USER13> Haha, Amazon is trying its hand at what flipkart does often in India.

</comment><comment><USER14> I picked up a kindle fire hd 7" tablet for my daughter. I let her have a little time watching learning videos on youtube but using a macbook pro for it is overkill

</comment><comment><USER15> Tupperware?

<comment><USER16> LoL, that was my thought too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I picked up a Fire TV Stick at $24 USD. I considered it a good deal. But the good deals seem to be selling out in a matter of minutes.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had a look and it looked pretty rubbish on the UK site. Nothing I really wanted, even on the hot deals that quickly sold out.

</comment><comment><USER19> not a thing, i missed out on the one g watch urbane they had in and then found it cheaper elsewhere anyway other than that there werent that many great deals to be had

</comment><comment><USER20> Mid-tier gaming headset, 60% off.

Yeah, they really dropped the ball on this.</comment>


A Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> It was a moving and powerful eulogy. Probably the most beautiful thing I've seen written about Jobs since his passing. One important takeaway for me was the quote:

"Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later."

I've experienced this firsthand. I've been privileged to work with some great web designers. I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design and it has always served me very well. Sometimes your first reaction is going to be negative but in a day or so it reverses. I am not certain why this is true but for me it's been a winning strategy.

<comment><USER3> _I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design and it has always served me very well._

I've just completed designing a logo for the project I'm working on. Lacking experts around me whose judgement I could rely on, I came up with the following creative process:

1\. Come up with an idea and prepare a demo/prototype.

2\. Show the demo to a few people around you, preferably those who have some semblance of taste, but they don't have to be experts. If you own a smart parrot, the parrot will do. Since you want to avoid disclosing your idea to competitors, those people should preferably be either close friends or ones who work in a completely different field.

3\. Note their reaction. If it is silent or if they say something generic and don't go with an enthusiastic "WOW" in the first three seconds, they are unimpressed. Expect them to be unimpressed, but don't worry about it right away, because even if you showed them, for example, a Paul Rand-designed logo pretending to be your work, they would not recognize it either and would remain unimpressed (they are not experts, remember?).

4\. Wait 24 hours. Then ask yourself if you are bothered at all by the disinterest of the people you showed your work to. If you are indeed bothered, it means that your intuitive/emotional brain is telling you that your work is not good enough and that you should go back to step 1. If you are not bothered at all, it means your work is as good as your intuitive judgement is, and you can move on.

The goal is to convince _yourself_ that your work is good enough. Once you achieved that, the opinion of others doesn't really matter. I find this algorithm to be pretty efficient; it lets me hone in on a correct design within a week's time. Your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it doesn't apply so much for visual design, but I often find that a negative reaction to a new concept or piece of software is better than a "meh" reaction. One example: I made a browser game a few years back, one of the early players posted a huge rant about how frustrating the game was, I fixed the design issues they raised, they grew to love the game.

So I tend to think that a negative reaction is often a sign you have something good, but flawed. You don't want people saying "yeah, that's kinda cool", you want them saying "OMG THIS THING SUCKS I'M TRYING TO GET IT TO DO X BUT I CANT BECAUSE IT DOESNT HAVE FEATURE Y" - at least in the second case you know you have something they want, and you know how to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.

2) I finally realize what has always fascinated me about him. He was ALWAYS working, with every single breath he took. He seems to have found a way of taking the hazy concept of "work" as it is commonly understood, and elevating it to a more in-focus ideal form through which to understand and shape his life.

<comment><USER6> The 2nd point you made reminds of Beethoven and how he overcame deafness to write some of his most brilliant pieces. He was incredibly passionate about his work and it was reflected in his music. It's amazing to see read this story and to realize that maybe Jobs' most important inventions, the iPhone and iPad, came at a point of extreme illness where most others would've quit. Passion drove everything he did and defined who he was.

Sidenote: I hate broccoli too.

<comment><USER7> As a side note, in a way it's misleading to speak of Beethoven "overcoming" deafness. All of the master composers were so well-trained at their craft that they could hear the music in their head without "trying it out" on a piano or other instrument. By the time Beethoven was deaf being able to hear was superfluous as far as composing was concerned...

<comment><USER8> We know that _Beethoven himself_ was tremendously depressed by the onset of deafness and thought of it as a terrible misfortune to be heroically struggled with:

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

But we also know that he gave himself excellent pep talks and then kept going for another thirty years, writing great stuff long after his deafness was far worse than it was in 1802. So, yes, it seems that Beethoven eventually came to agree with you!

And, come to think of it, as I remember Beethoven's biggest complaints about deafness centered on loneliness, and on his fear that nobody would want to hire a deaf composer. I don't actually recall him complaining that his work might suffer. So that's another point in favor of your argument.

<comment><USER8> Oops, too late to edit, but I forgot that when Beethoven wrote his Testament his fame up to that point had been largely as a _pianist_ , with a healthy side order of composition. And I believe he might have expressed some worry that his piano playing might suffer... which in fact it did; history contains quite a few tragi-comic written descriptions of Beethoven's latter-day attempts to play and conduct.

But his composition just got better, so in fact his declining fame as a performer was balanced by his increasing fame as a composer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cried like a baby while reading the last part of this eulogy. It brought me straight back to a hot hotel room where I saw my uncle - a second father to me - die from brain cancer.

Makes me want to donate more to medical research (my favorite foundation is SENS.org, but there are many good ones). I think it's okay to be sad, but we also have to do something to make things better.

<comment><USER10> So sad, buddy, but why was it a hotel room?

<comment><USER9> That was a weird typo; I meant to write hospital room.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Absolutely beautiful. I couldn't get my eyes of the writing. What I REALLY like about the piece was portrayal of Jobs as a loving and affectionate human being which is what ultimately matters. Feels good to know that Jobs parted with such an expression of amazement...

Thanks for writing this, Mona.

</comment><comment><USER12> _He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite- special-enough hospital unit._

It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplished if he lived into his 70's.

<comment><USER13> I once read that Howard Hughes did something similar while he was recuperating from an accident.

<comment><USER14> Robert Heinlein, while hospitalized, once designed, in his head, a far more comfortable hospital bed. He later wrote about it in one of his books in such great detail that when the waterbed was eventually invented, it couldn't be patented because Heinlein's written descriptions gave so much detail to qualify as prior art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a really beautiful piece of writing; it's quite a gift that Mona Simpson would deign to share such a personal eulogy with the world. The Jobs family certainly didn't owe any of us insight into his final time on earth.

From all popular accounts, Jobs was an intensely private man about his personal and family life; something refreshing in an age when celebrity is conflated with talent and young people like Mark Zuckerberg opine that privacy is an anachronistic social norm. Love him or loath him -- and there is certainly enough evidence to support both reactions -- the conversation is almost always about the work and Steve Jobs as a professional. As one who still values the notion of personal privacy, I've always been grateful for that.

Yet what makes this piece so potent is that Simpson reflects primarily on Steve Jobs as a person: a brother, father, and husband, not a boss, or showman. In so many ways, her eulogy could be applied to any person who has lived fully and loved their family deeply.

There's quite a sublimity in that contrast, something I suspect was not lost on Jobs and his family in the creation and dissemination of this eulogy and the Isaacson biography to the public.

And perhaps on that point, it's wonderfully surprising that Steve Jobs, widely considered an arbiter of taste and design curation, wasn't yet familiar with Mark Rothko -- one of the premier painters of the 20th century -- until the final year of his life.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm glad the stream of "Steve Jobs was an asshole/genius" articles is done. This one shows his real human side.

<comment><USER17> I don't think any of the "asshole" or "genius" articles were diminishing of his humanity. We as humans are made up of all aspects of our beings. The good an the bad, public and private, personal and not.

What distinguishes Jobs is he existed in layers from exceedingly public, second hand, apocryphal to private.

What I love about this is it feels like a balancing of that gradient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that fact he was sketching x-ray machines, iPad holders etc. even in hospital is just fantastic. The man did what he loved.

</comment><comment><USER19> Extraordinary writing. Everybody should have such a talented sister at the lectern on the day they're remembered.

<comment><USER20> She was a passionate writer as Steve Jobs was for Technology. He even read her books.

<comment><USER21> _We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories._

This line is so beautifully & hauntingly crafted. I wish I had thought to add her books to my reading list sooner.

<comment><USER22> The idea is great, but it's not "in media res" which means "INTO the midst of things" not "IN the midst of things".

She might not have had Latin, so may not have known it was a literary technique in Latin, and perhaps Greek, a way to start a story with no intro, just by jumping right into the action.

<comment><USER23> "INTO the midst of things" things could be very fitting as well, depending on your thoughts on the after life. Some choose to believe we join a party already in full swing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW._

One can only wonder what he was referring to. Such a well written piece.

<comment><USER25> Without wanting to burst anyone's bubble, I'm guessing that the words actually refer to a dose of serious palliative care grade painkillers.

I don't like the emphasis on "last words" anyway. When I'm dying (and probably not especially lucid), I don't want to have to cope with the pressure that any set of words could be my last and hence I'd better make 'em good. I think we should let everyone record their official last words ahead of time, just so there's one less thing to worry about when you're actually dying.

<comment><USER25> Aw c'mon, I got downmodded to -3 for being cynical yet realistic on HN? I really do think that "massive injections of painkillers is the most likely context in which someone a few hours of dying of cancer is likely to say "oh wow oh wow oh wow".

<comment><USER26> I didn't downvote your reply, even if I don't especially care for your explanation. I do believe in the power of painkillers, I just think that there's more to it than that.

The idea of pre-recording one's last words, though, is brilliant!

<comment> Anti-Ratfish A will?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's obvious that his sister shares his genius. I'm so grateful she shared this intensely private experience with the world.

I have a half brother, ten years older. We didn't grow up together. Mona's story gives me hope that there are relationships we seek out later in life that are just as fulfilling, if not more so, than those we are given as children and take for granted.

</comment><comment><USER28> After reading several articles about Steve before and after his death and after reading his official biography,I always felt that nothing could yet capture the essence of how Steve actually was. This eulogy comes really really close. Beautiful piece of writing. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER29> Alongside Einstein's final hours (see Einstein: A Life by Denis Brian), I found Steve Jobs final hours to be profoundly human and moving. Steve Jobs admired Einstein and in some ways he seems to have faced death as Einstein had: with calm dignity, love, and atop a mountain of great work on this pale blue dot of ours.

</comment><comment><USER30> Beautiful writing. Thank you. I always thought why people cried reading such stuff.....until now.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very well written, but I noticed that his parents are never mentioned, what happened to them? (Paul Jobs, Clara Jobs)

<comment><USER32> Paul Jobs died in 1993 at 70; Clara Jobs in 1986 at 62.

[http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-is-the-story-about- Paul...](http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-is-the-story-about-Paul-and- Clara-Jobs-Steve-Jobs-adoptive-parents)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This shows a good side of him, love. He put that in the products.

Great writing, his final words were striking.

</comment><comment><USER34> Insanely moving.

The ending takes my breath away.

</comment><comment><USER35> Having lost both of my older brilliant brothers to HIV AIDS this passing of SJ conjures up many many emotions. Life is fleeting, live it fully in all you do. For the reaper does come, always unexpectedly.

</comment><comment><USER36> What I really find remarkable about Mr. Jobs is that he lived without extravagance. I am impressed by his desire to teach his kids to be "normal" and I am astonished that he was there for his family first and foremost, valuing love and fun in front of them. His kids (and wife) know a man who did not value success and money, but love and family. It is an impressive man who can ignore the pull of riches and embrace the pull of love.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think this Eulogy helped give many people closure on Steve's passing. Such a well written piece. I'm really appreciate that she publicly shared this very personal moments with the rest of us, touching.

</comment><comment><USER38> "He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite- special-enough hospital unit. "

Instead of charity, if the billionaires or super smarts like gates, larry/sergey, bezos,pg etc can live in ordinary people situations for 2-3 days a year, their imagination will fuel creations that benefit all. Is this not tried already ?

<comment><USER14> A lot of billionaires live in "ordinary people situations" more than you think. There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of those. And mere millionaires largely can't afford anything more than living like ordinary people.

And there are a lot of ways that rich people can't actually get anything more special than anyone else, at least not easily. It's not feasible to build hospitals just for rich people, so a billionaire goes to the same hospitals as ordinary people. Consumer electronics don't generally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so a billionaire has the same kind of stuff ordinary people have.

<comment><USER39> > There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building > supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of > those.

Indeed. I've run into Steve three times. Twice we were both shopping for produce at a natural food store (Country Sun in Palo Alto, and the old Richard's Natural Foods in Los Gatos).

The last time was just a year ago. I sat down for dinner on the patio at La Strada, a nice Italian restaurant on University Avenue a few doors down from the Palo Alto Apple store, and there were Steve and his daughter at the next table. After dinner they took a stroll down University Avenue, just the two of them. I imagine they were probably going to get some frozen yogurt. I thought to myself, "Doesn't he have some security? A bodyguard? _Something_?"

There are a lot of Silicon Valley executives who I'd recognize if I saw them. But Steve is the only one who I've ever run into doing ordinary things like produce shopping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> i've cried reading this article. god bless sj

<comment><USER41> that was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about "young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to read some of her work now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Beautiful eulogy. However either it, or Jobs' biography, is erroneous about who called Mona to let her know she had a brother.

This eulogy claims a lawyer called Mona. But the biography, in chapter 20, claims it is Mona's mother, Joanne, who called:

""" [Joanne] had never told Mona that she had a brother, and that day she broke the news, or at least part of it, by telephone. "You have a brother, and he's wonderful, and he 's famoous, and I'm going to bring him to New York so you can meet him," she said. """

<comment><USER43> Either version is true enough.

<comment><USER44> I love this idea of true enough, as some things we won't know, but either version shall do for us. Thank you it was a nice feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Not a SJ fan, but man that hurts.

</comment><comment><USER21> _Intubated, when he couldn't talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit._

I hope someone takes his sketches and runs with that vision. He's been able to re-imagine other devices wonderfully. To think of what he could have done with hospital equipment is amazing (that at his core, at his most vulnerable, he resorts to creativity) and sad (that he won't be around to execute upon these visions).

</comment><comment><USER46> Now I realize why most of his products are so poetic.

</comment><comment><USER47> very beautiful, felt voyeuristic reading it though–private Jobs public eulogy.

</comment><comment><USER48> that was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about "young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to read some of her work now.

</comment><comment><USER49> Steve Jobs had a daughter named Eve (as in she who bit the fabled apple)? I did not know that. How perfect.

</comment><comment><USER50> What is more amazing is how quickly someone registered his last words.com

</comment><comment><USER51> "he didn't died he achieved it" simply beautiful...

</comment><comment><USER52> That was extremely moving. Beautifully written.

"Oh Wow".

One can only wonder...

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm glad to hear he made some time for family.

</comment><comment><USER54> Extraordinary.

</comment><comment><USER55> Ad at the bottom of the article: <http://i.imgur.com/sC0g8.png>

I know it's automated, but still :/

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow.

</comment><comment><USER57> Wow. Simply beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER58> Beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER59> so beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Beautifully written. I feel I have a lot to learn from Steve. He was so greatly misunderstood by so many. Steve was an incredibly smart man who knew exactly what he wanted, and wouldn't stop at anything to get that. I'm glad he spent his life doing what he loved. He will always be an inspiration to me.

</comment><comment><USER41> Very moving, and a different side to the personality that we've been hearing about.

</comment><comment><USER60> Fucking fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER61> I always thought of him as a sociopath. It's nice to read an insider's take that isn't suffused with narcissism and loathing, although I always did figure him for a jerk for parking that Merc in the handicapped space every. goddamned. day.

<comment><USER62> I really found this eulogy quite moving and beautiful and gave me an appreciation for a Steve Jobs that has not been captured by any of the other things I've read about him since his passing.

But the part about going through 67 nurses did give me a little chill. My heart goes out to those poor 64 people who tried and failed to care for him up to the level of his demanding standards.

<comment><USER63> On the other hand, maybe one of them was shaken into improving, leading the next person to get a better level of care. One never knows.

It is true that to demand better than good is a tough challenge but I suspect it is why people look to Jobs with some confusion: he expected the best from himself and from those around him. In a regular corporate setting, that may seem dictatorial; in a hospital or care room, that seems psychotic; but in either case, it is about trying to inspire people into giving their best and breaking through to new levels.</comment></comment></comment>


Copyright Law Is Being Rewritten Right Now, and You Can Help - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/copyright-dmca-exemptions/

<comment><USER2> There's no URL in an article who and were works on modifying the copyright law.

BTW it amazes me that "copyright" is by default and that people has to get exception from DMCA instead of opposing. It's sound like the law doesn't serve any higher purpose than huge corporate copyright owners pockets.</comment>


EU Formally Accuses Google of Antitrust Violations - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/eu-google/ <comment><USER2> Now this is interesting

> At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search > engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services, > specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google > Shopping search results.

Google Shopping results suck but when I search for products almost always is an Amazon, Walmart, Target and others linked at the top of the results sometimes higher than the actual company that produces the product. As far as I can tell you can only get their shopping search results by clicking on "Shopping" (at least I can't seem to trigger it without that).

I don't understand the issue here. foundem is behind the initial lawsuit and kinda kicked off this whole thing but they're a search engine. If I owned a search company I certainly wouldn't want to be federating queries and indexing them doesn't make sense; why would I index an index when I can just index the source?

Am I missing something here?

> The European Commission also confirmed that it is opening an investigation > into Android as well. Although the operating system is open source, meaning > that any manufacturer can install it on the phones and tablets they sell, > many core applications, including the Google Play store, are proprietary. > Manufacturers must enter into special agreements with Google to include > these proprietary apps. The investigation will attempt to determine whether > Google is using its position to discourage the inclusion of rival > applications on Android-based phones.

I don't understand this one as well. These applications require the use of Google's infrastructure so if you want to use them why shouldn't you agree to handle them as they want? Besides I think Barnes and Noble's nook and Amazon's Fire platforms show this is a non issue.

<comment><USER3> The issue is that Google by being the default search engine could slowly subsume all the profitable markets that run on the internet.

Once they kill off potential competitors then there is no reason to be competitive on price or quality.

Think of it as sort of a net neutrality for the search engine. People here are totally okay with telling Comcast they can't leverage their ISP near-monopoly to win the video streaming market.

Why should we allow Google to leverage their search monopoly into capturing other internet markets.

<comment><USER2> Except they're not. The default search engine for Firefox is Yahoo, for IE it's Bing. It's just for Chrome and maybe Safari. They are in no way stopping or even hindering you from using other search engines. Your example of Comcast, however? They actually got several local governments to sign contracts saying no one else could run copper to your home. HUGE difference.

<comment><USER3> It's been illegal to get an exclusive cable franchise since the early 1990s.

Google probably has more marketshare than Comcast does (even if you only include areas where Comcast operates).

<comment><USER2> > It's been illegal to get an exclusive cable franchise since the early 1990s.

You're conflating issues here. A cable franchise is using the cable in the ground to deliver television and the fees are paid to the local government yearly. These are regulated differently than internet access AND installing new utilities into communities.

> Google probably has more marketshare than Comcast does (even if you only > include areas where Comcast operates).

Marketshare isn't comparable here. You're trying to compare an (arguable) utility versus an online service. The entire analogy if flawed; stop trying to force it.

<comment><USER3> The initial franchise agreement will cover the costs and fees associated with the initial installation of getting the wires in the ground. It's illegal for municipalities to grant any sort of exclusive telecommunication franchise.

I'm not sure what your point is, but nowhere[1] in America is Comcast legally protected from competition. You can build a new cable network, a new fiber network, or even wireless.

[1]maybe some super old franchise agreement that has been in tact since 1992 still exists but I doubt it. They are usually about 10 years.

>Marketshare isn't comparable here. You're trying to compare an (arguable) utility versus an online service. The entire analogy if flawed; stop trying to force it.

I don't see why categorizing the company as a utility really has anything to do with it. If you want to get technical, ISPs haven't been treated as utilities (and despite what journalists say that really isn't what Title II is about).

I don't see why providing internet access and internet search results are so wildly different that a comparison can't be made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is a Search Engine? Is this some kind of legally regulated category that says you a) must only return Web results and b) in the form of 10 blue links?

Should a search which a search engine knows the direct answer to (word definitions, the current weather or time, etc) send you to another site for the answer. Why are "search engines" prohibited from direct answers, but voice agents like Siri allowed? Is there something fundamentally different between a text box and a voice input?

Likewise, if a search engine has indexed data and can return deep links to other sites formatted differently, why is that different? For example, if you search for "Playstation 4" and Google simply returned the first 10 hits (Amazon.com, eBay, Walmart, etc) as a page of 10 blue links like it did in 2006, instead of formatting them in a nice box at the top of the screen with summary price extracted, would this still be illegal? Why is it legal to display organic search results as blue links, but if you display them in a box and call it "Product Search", it's suddenly illegal? This makes no sense to me. The only difference between the Google Product Search box at the top, and displaying the links is simply better visual presentation.

The world has moved on from ten blue links. Mobile devices have even more constrained real estate and network latency pushing the need for summarization and smart presentation even further. A new class of consumer expects these devices to almost act like intelligent agents when answering queries.

Is the European Commission saying it will be illegal to build JARVIS or the Star Trek computer, because a smarter search that doesn't delegate to other niche search engines, and instead returns direct answers, is unfair competition?

At the heart of this seems to be the idea that Google search should return links to other shopping comparison engines instead of direct links to Amazon, et al. That frankly seems like a good way to hurt customer experience. If you have a good product comparison engine these days, you're probably going to end up as a native app anyway.

By the time this EU case winds down (Microsoft's took a decade), the traditional web search engine might not even exist anymore.

<comment><USER5> There is the rather delicate issue of copyright here. If you google for something and the answer is on another page, lifting it from that page is (a) making a copy and (b) potentially depriving the linked page of revenue.

There is also the question of using the threat to ban people from your search results (which is calamitous for most businesses) to resolve your disputes with them.

<comment><USER4> But the linked page is there. Google is indexing Amazon, extracting the photo, description, and price of the product, displaying it in a box, and making it a link back to Amazon where it got the data from, what's the problem?

Product Search is just another form of summarization/snippeting that just presents the data in more digestable format.

Remember Google Fusion Tables? That was an attempt to extract facts from pages and put them into tables, so if you ask "What's the masses of the planets of the solar system", you could get a table of 8 planets and masses, with the results coming from 8 different sites. But the links could still be there to the original site, it's just formatted as a table instead of as 8 blue links with summary paragraphs, which is harder for humans to process.

Where do we draw the line? You've seen how Google has a new system that can automatically caption images with deep neural networks. ([http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/new-google-research- project...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/new-google-research-project-can- auto-caption-complex-images/))

Now what if this same system eventually allows the search engine to summarize your web page by 'reading it', and then auto-generating a paragraph that explains what it thought it was about?

There'd be no actual direct copying of text (like there is with search snippets), instead it would be more like a human going to a library, reading a book, and writing a review

Would this also violate copyright?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a user of Google search and Android, I want Google to bundle services. Android would, in my opinion, be impaired if it didn't include Google play, gmail, chrome, and Google Maps.

Similarly, Google search would be worse for me if it didn't present me with instantly relevant results like shopping, wikipedia responses, imdb style results, or quick answers to unit conversions and equations.

Yes Google leverages its dominance in search and mobile to bundle services, but is this something that the EU should fine Google for? As a consumer, I don't think so.

<comment><USER7> Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the _immediate_ term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products and limiting competition.

The problem happens when you look a little farther ahead. Anti-competitive measures prevent _other_ companies from offering something even better. Those products might not exist now, but without an open and competitive environment, they won't show up. And consumers are very much hurt if that is the case.

<comment><USER8> What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented users from uninstalling IE claiming technical reasons that were proven false. And the reason they did those things was, as proven from internal communications, to protect Windows' monopoly from the threat of portable Java applications delivered via Netscape Navigator, by asphyxiating Netscape to death.

<comment><USER9> For comparison, here's what Google did in Germany: After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results.

Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot.

That strikes me as a very similar situation.

<comment><USER10> > After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for > using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: > Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, > or they would be removed from search results

Source for that?

<comment><USER11> It's been widely discussed

[http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs- google/a-18030444](http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel- spr...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr- idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105)

In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google needed them.

Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit with fines at any moment.

And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes. Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in the market.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I know that the law was passed. What I asked for was about the claim about the ultimatum Google offered to publishers

<comment><USER11> This is the best link I've found with a quick search

[http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-c...](http://the- digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-cave-grant-google-free- permission-use-snippets-search-results/)

<comment><USER10> But is still the same, this link doesn't talk about Google given any ultimatum to publishers.

<comment><USER11> Germany passed a law intending to make Google pay for using news snippets.

Google simply stopped including snippets from german newspapers.

German newspapers reluctantly gave an exemption to Google so that it would publish snippets from their websites again.

What more evidence do you need? Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here?

<comment><USER10> > What more evidence do you need?

What evidence? An evidence that it is not a law that forbids putting snippets,.

The ones doping ultimatum were the German government and the publishers

> Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or > else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's > negotiation tactics here?

Perhaps not the bend of reality that you're doing

I suppose that you also think that in the Spanish case the one doing an ultimatum is also google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While I am in general a fan of Google (like AppEngine, Android, etc. contracted at Google in 2013), it is important to prevent harming markets due to effective monopolies. One problem is that anti-competitive practices may cause long term harm to markets while making consumers happy short term. Really a tough issue to deal with fairly.

I did notice something odd today in Google search results: I searched for "surface 3" and the link I wanted was a top paid for ad link. In the past, I could look down the page and see similar unpaid links, but not today.

</comment><comment><USER13> Let the EU shakedown for money begin!

This has nothing to do with anti-trust and everything to do with extracting a kilo of flesh from a successful non-EU company.

<comment><USER14> Check page 3 on this list: [http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic...](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistics.pdf). Of the ten highest cartel fines, only one was levelled against a non-European company (LG Electronics).

<comment><USER15> This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly" status, much to the commissions chagrin.

<comment><USER10> > This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly" > status, much to the commissions chagrin.

I think you misunderstood what the OP said

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What would be a viable way for Google to fix this that doesn't hurt users?

Sure, have Google Chrome installs start with "What do you want as your default search provider?" But can you do that with Android? How much will it affect Google Now to have it be connecting to a different search provider, and what does that mean? If I enter "1+1", or "weather", or "call Bob" or "navigate home", should it go to my search provider, or to Google Now? (I know the first two currently go to GWS anyway, but why should they?)

And if integration of services like shopping on GWS are a problem, does that mean they should be removing the "Shopping" tab and make it just another result? That would suck. (For me, as a user.) I dunno, maybe long-term it allows for more competition and innovation, but short term I don't see solutions that aren't "make your product worse". Even allowing me to choose plug-in search tabs from other services seems iffy.

<comment><USER17> Android is very simple: Google needs to be banned from mandating OEMs install the whole Google Apps package. Leave it on OEMs to decide what browser, search, etc. apps to package on their devices. The market, and consumers, will decide what works.

The Open Handset Alliance is a blatant example of an illegal trust. A large group of supposed competitors agreeing not to compete.

<comment><USER4> Android gets raked over the coals for years for bad customer experience.

Google attempts to reign in fragmentation and divergent and inconsistent UI experience, and move more of firmware to Play store so it can issue security updates to customers without carriers and OEMs blocking.

Google raked over the coals for anti-competition.

Meanwhile, Apple ships iTunes and App Store, which can only be used with their own cloud stores. They ship iMessage which only works with their Cloud. Apple Maps. A fitness app. A wallet. A payment system. etc All in a proprietary, single vendor system, closed source.

If every Android phone's out of box experience was a random collection of OEM apps that had no common standard, the consumer experience would be terrible. Switch from a Samsung to an LG device and you might be hit by the fact that the device has none of the apps you were using on your previous phone, you have to delete all of the current apps, and reinstall all of your previous ones, enter all the settings again, all of the login credentials, etc. The switching cost would be huge and it would cause OEM lock in.

The setup process is a factor in consumer choice. If you are faced with an onerous gauntlet of selection dialogs for 10+ apps when you start (it's not just app store, browser, maps, but email, music, video, camera, photos, etc), consumers are going to be very annoyed. I don't want to spend 30 minutes to an hour unboxing my phone and "installing", that's what used to happen on PCs.

And what happens when things go wrong. If the user installs a third party app store, and gets malware, do you think they're going to be blamed, or Google's Android brand will be blamed? Most consumers aren't aware enough to narrow down who to blame.

So in the end, you'd be asking Google to assume all the brand risk, all of the complaints over fragmentation and failure to patch older phones, and making consumer experience worse.

Apple has none of these problems. Say what you will about their locked down platform, the one thing you don't have to worry about is inconsistent getting starting experience or malware from the App Store.

The 'choice' being presented here is the kind of choice hackers and engineers love, but it's not the kind of choice one's parents and relatives may love. It's just hobbling attempts to improve the Android experience.

<comment><USER17> "User experience" should never be chosen at the expense of "user freedom".

<comment><USER18> Spoken like Richard Stallman, which is why GNU/Linux desktop took over the world right?

If you're so interested in freedom, why aren't you picketing Apple Campus too?

The practical effect of your viewpoint is hundreds of millions of unpatchable Android ROMs, exposing vast quantities of devices to viruses, and HARMING actual people.

<comment><USER19> >If you're so interested in freedom, why aren't you picketing Apple Campus too?

FSF activists do literally picket Apple events: [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/01-27-2010/apple-ipad- protest.jpg](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/01-27-2010/apple-ipad-protest.jpg)

As far as I know they haven't done this at any Google events, but maybe I just missed it. Either way, the idea that Google is being specially singled out for criticism by the FSF is pretty laughable and you probably need to leave your filter bubble if you genuinely believe it to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In which we see a difference between EU and US law. US antitrust law exists to protect the consumer. EU antitrust law, evidently, exists to protect other competitors.

<comment><USER21> Thankfully we have leaked documents from the US case.

Excerpt from Ben Edelman, whose done a damn good job over the years not only watching Google but also companies involved in abusive adware and spyware practices:

'At the same time, Google systematically applied lesser standards to its own services. Examining Google's launch report for a 2008 algorithm change, FTC staff said that Google elected to show its product search OneBox "regardless of the quality" of that result (footnote 119, citing GOOGLR-00330279-80) and despite "pretty terribly embarrassing failures" in returning low-quality results (footnote 170, citing GOOGWRIG-000041022). Indeed, Google's product search service apparently failed Google's standard criteria for being indexed by Google search (p.80 and footnote 461), yet Google nonetheless put the service in top positions (p.30 and footnote 170, citing GOOG- Texas-0199877-906).'

[http://www.benedelman.org/news/040115-1.html](http://www.benedelman.org/news/040115-1.html)

Were consumers hurt if Google de-ranked content which by even Google's own standards were better than its own? May be not, but it certainly peels away any idea of the integrity of algorithmic search.

Google's business is under attack from all fronts today. As business owners and those employed by internet businesses we are so fortunate as to not have to rely on Google anymore for our audiences. We have have search from two major app stores, and more if you are international. Social can deliver new users at a greater rate than search. There was a day where Google penalized your company, and the next day you fired everyone.

In the next year or so we may start seeing ultra-cheap Chinese smartphones flood the market with Google free Android. Interesting thing commenters here seem to not know, device manufacturers are not allowed to sell any non-Google Android devices if they sell Google Android.

Idealy some lines are drawn so Facebook doesn't engage in similar abusive behavior against its users and customers. I don't have high hopes. If anything, the ability to avoid US penalties and the EU's late reaction time probably emboldens behavior by market leaders everywhere.

<comment><USER20> I don't understand what you're getting at. The "product search onebox" does not drive traffic to Google, it drives traffic away from it. For instance if I search for "bicycle helmet" the thing at the top of the page is the product search onebox, it contains five prominent links to sites where I can buy a bicycle helmet.

So I don't see what you are getting at. If anything, the product search onebox is the opposite of what the EU seems to be complaining about.

<comment><USER22> The question would be, how did those links in the OneBox get there? Is there harm in being the #1 search result, but not the first "result" on the page, because there's a OneBox above you with links from a different source?

<comment><USER20> I don't know. Apparently the merchants provide the information to Google directly in spreadsheets.

[https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160637?hl=en](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160637?hl=en)

As for your other question about being the #1 result but being ranked below paying advertisers, I'm not sure. Nobody deserves the #1 spot, it's not a natural right granted by your creator. In fact "the #1 search result" varies from query to query and from one user to the next based on their own Google account, if they have one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search > engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services, > specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google > Shopping search results.

Anyone else find shopping with Google Search is almost useless and I always follow up with a search on amazon.com and get a better result?

<comment><USER24> No, but then I don't use either Google Search or Amazon for much online shopping -- mostly, I go directly to an appropriate (more focused than Amazon) retailer, though sometimes I use Google Search to _find_ a retailer if I'm searching for something where I don't already know a set of retailers to check.

<comment><USER23> I still find better prices from Amazon than NewEgg or other sites. Makes me feel guilty though.

<comment><USER25> +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I never understood the antitrust angle towards Google search. Is there some kind of browser or app out there that is forcing people to use Google as their search engine on all their devices?

<comment><USER17> The fact that most people use the default, and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome and the search be Google for all Chrome web browsers (largest desktop market share) and Android devices (largest mobile market share). And that they then prioritize their own products and services in Search as well.

The issue isn't "everyone is forced to use Google Search" as much as "Google creates a monopoly through connected use of it's various products and services".

<comment><USER27> > and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome and the search be Google for > all Chrome web browsers (largest desktop market share) and Android devices > (largest mobile market share)

No, they don't. You're free to use any browser on your desktop. You're free to use any browser on your Android device. And you're free to go into Chrome settings and use any search engine in Chrome on any of these devices.

<comment><USER28> And much the same could be argued about Microsoft and IE. Yet everyone but Google Chrome failed to overtake IE.

Defaults are powerful things, as so very few take the time to change them.

<comment><USER29> Chrome overtook IE because it is (or at least at the time, was) a superior product.

<comment><USER28> And the same could be said about Firefox, yet it never happened.

Damn it, since Firefox canceled their deal with Google the latter has taken to pitching Chrome whenever a Firefox user visits Google.com.

<comment><USER17> Are you even remotely surprised, digi_owl?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >The investigation will attempt to determine whether Google is using its position to discourage the inclusion of rival applications on Android-based phones.

Shouldn't this also apply to iOS?

<comment><USER24> > Shouldn't this also apply to iOS?

Perhaps, but the set of entities behind the complaints that triggered the investigations directed at Google are _specifically_ targeting Google.

If a similar group targets Apple, then maybe we'll see a similar investigation.

<comment><USER4> By entities, you mean the Microsoft funded astroturf organization FairSearch and the hydra connected to it.

<comment><USER17> It's not really "astroturf"ing when FairSearch prominently displays that it's an organization owned by Microsoft on their about page: [http://www.fairsearch.org/about/](http://www.fairsearch.org/about/)

(Meanwhile, Google goes out of their way to hide their ownership of the Open Handset Alliance, burying the first mention of their name on like the third page of members.)

<comment><USER18> Jake, is that you? (Jake Weisz made an almost identical assertion on G+) Do you not understand the concept of alphabetic ordering?

Do you really believe Google is trying to hide their relationship to the OHA? The OHA was announced and formed on Day 1 of the Android release ([http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html](http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html))

No one out there is under any illusion that Google didn't put together and lead this consortium. What else would they do? You make an OS, one that is free of charge and open, and you need hardware and software partners onboard, the only way to do that is to adopt some venue for collaboration.

<comment><USER17> Also, I would hardly consider the OHA's MADA a "venue for collaboration". A venue for control, sure. Collaboration, no.

<comment><USER18> Have you attended any OHA meetings? You're making quite a lot of unbacked up assertions.

Microsoft for years ran many working groups for hardware partners, for example, the Microsoft groups for DirectX which allowed NVidia, AMD, et al, to influence and collborate on common specs. Microsoft "led" the discussion, but NVidia and AMD were clearly able to influence the specs because the API had to be rationalized around real, existing, and upcoming hardware designs in the pipeline.

You have a habit to attributing negative and conspiratorial agendas to everything.

<comment><USER17> I'd love to attend an OHA meeting! I'm sure Google's going to open that up. Oh, wait, the OHA is somewhere around as secretive as the NSA. Although at least the NSA can claim it's trying to protect people. Google's just trying to cover their dirty laundry.

That's actually one of the things I'm really hoping for out of these cases. A judge that won't care about your non-disclosure crud and will post that stuff in open court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As an EU citizen and consumer, here's my message to European Commission: SCREW YOU!

I would like to know why is it so hard (and expensive) to buy a car on a foreign EU country and legalize it on other, I don't know why am I still paying robbery-like roaming "costs", I don't how is it possible to be considered fiscal resident simultaneous on 2 different countries and why citizens has still to resort to individual country-to-country specific deals to avoid double taxation _within_ EU.

And I could just keep going on... BUT they are worried with a freaking search engine! Piss off.

<comment><USER32> > I don't know why am I still paying robbery-like roaming "costs"

The EU has brought down roaming every year, and it'll be soon abolished.

> why citizens has still to resort to individual country-to-country specific > deals to avoid double taxation within EU

because we don't have a federal Europe

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .."

What ?

Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean.

I don't understand what EU's problem is. If they don't like google and android please ask your tech graduates to create their own.

The EU is an funny organization. they are not democratically elected. Their policies is the reason half of EU is bankrupt. The EU should be fined for bankrupting entire generations of young people in Greece and promoting the largest transfer of wealth from poor European nations to rich European nations.

Even assuming Google did participate in behaviour that is anti-competitive that market that google dominates was created by google !

I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create powerful competitor to google. The emphasis should be promotion of wealth creation and not redistribution. Why doesn't Europe have its own homegrown search giant ? An EU company would clearly have massive advantage due to the language barrier. The EU should be paying people to create companies to compete with google. Or atleast make it a priority to do so. What happens when google refuses to pay the fine and starts backtracing or treating the EU market as "not worth it", has the EU though about how it will effect consumers ?

<comment><USER34> > _" Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the > Atlantic Ocean."_

BP was not fined as much as they should have been, therefore the EU should go easy on all other companies from now on? How does that make any sense?

<comment><USER33> No,

Everyone should be fined based on how much damage they have caused on the environment,civilization, etc

Do you seriously think google has done damage worth 6.4 BILLION ?

BP,Shell,Nestle have caused real damage to real humans and the environment and there seems no outrage or investigation towards them.

Banks in germany have clearly destroyed lives of people financially and no one is asking any questions ?

Google allegedly tweaked its algorithm to make it slightly inconvenient for people to use alternative services and now we need to fine google 6.4 BILLION ?

<comment><USER17> Google has absolutely done more than $6.4 billion worth of damage to society. Google's arbitrary automatic penalty systems put people out of business on a daily basis.

<comment><USER35> Of course, what you do not include is that google has enabled businesses to make trillions of dollars. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This might help

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/15/what_did_google_do_w...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/15/what_did_google_do_wrong/)

<comment><USER17> Writing in their PhD paper in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin described paid advertising as "insidious", because it "often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results".

Absolutely hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In addition to this, Google currently deprioritizes other video search engines over YouTube because of the recent DMCA algorithm change, as Google forwards DMCA's to YouTube and doesn't impact the search ranking for YouTube per notice. It's completely unfair.

</comment><comment><USER38> Google's competitors should spend more time improving their products and less time complaining to the EU.

As an example, google flight search is just hands down better than the alternatives. It is ultra fast (a killer feature) and has a simple but intuitive UI.

<comment><USER33> I agree.

I am someone who constantly tries out alternative google services. consumers are always looking for better deals. If there were better search engines, email clients, etc than google people will be switching in droves.

The reality is there isn't and the solution is not to fine these companies but to promote the creation of competitors. Given that there is 60% youth unemployment in may europeans countries I do not see why this is so hard.

This lawsuit just seems like a nice way for lawyers to pocket some money from the wealth that was created by google at the expense of google and the consumers.

<comment><USER17> Honestly, if you constantly tried out alternative services, you'd probably have left Google already. I did, and I found many competitors' services faster, smoother, higher performance, and more configurable. Unfortunately, they have terrible market share because of Google's anticompetitive business practices.

<comment><USER38> Can you give me some examples for flight search?

<comment><USER17> I actually can't. My response to the above comment was pretty generic. I don't fly often, and when I do, it's generally airline specific because of mileage programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very excited to see this happen. The US surely wasn't going to do it, but it's well past due.

<comment><USER23> Can you elaborate on your reasons why? I like to hear both sides of an argument.

I see Google not as a monopoly but as a majority holder where people have control of what services they use. Are they abusing this position to the detriment of users and market?

<comment><USER17> The problem is that people don't have control of what services they use. The vertical integration model, used quite successfully by both Google and Apple, is specifically designed to make it unfavorable or impossible to use competitors.

At least under the US definition, the practice of "tying" is illegal when you use your monopoly position in one market to try to monopolize another market. By using Search to prioritize promoting their other services, they are trying to capture other markets through their dominance in Search. This is what the law was written to prevent. Most of my issues stem with how they do this in Android though, which is a separate investigation the EU is conducting.

Google's Search behavior hurts consumers in a lot of ways. Since Google is the front door to the Internet, effectively, particularly in Europe where their market share is nearly uncontested, being an unfavorable result in Google prevents you from adequately competing. Being "penalized" by Google Search for any reason can put you out of business.

And Google is now trying to exact their will on the entire Internet through penalizing sites in Search as a means of activism. For example, choosing to penalize sites for not using HTTPS, or penalizing sites for not using "mobile responsive" design, which has at best, subjective appeal.

<comment><USER39> I'm failing to see an issue with penalizing sites for not using HTTPS.

Google has incentive to maintain the quality of their search results by being able to make some guarantees that the sites they send visitors to are what they say they are. It's reasonable to extend that to prioritizing sites that can be verified over sites that are easily MITM'd.

<comment><USER17> The quality of a local business cannot be determined by whether or not they cough up $70 a year for HTTPS. The quality of content cannot be determined by whether or not they cough up $70 a year for HTTPS.

Penalizing sites for not using it raises the cost of having an opinion or trying to run a business on a nearly arbitrary restriction defined by a monopoly with conflicting business interests who sells web hosting services.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News censorship? San Francisco crime story nuked from front page - <AUTHOR> Whether by human action, or by the effect of some algorithm, it doesn't seem like there was a good reason to bury this story.
The story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561966
Screenshot: http://imgur.com/irJgUPD <comment><USER2> Most likely it triggered the flame war detector. (a good heuristic is # comments > # points)

<comment><AUTHOR> "Flame war detector". Sounds like such a mechanism, number of comments > number of points, would have the same effect as a groupthink protector.

<comment><USER2> "Flame war" detector does not imply "general disagreement" detector.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read through the comments on that story and I see a healthy and vibrant discussion, not a flame war that needs to be buried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not email the moderator, dang, using the contact link at the bottom of the page?</comment>


Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster <comment><USER2> There are tie-ins with Taleb's concept of anti-fragility: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile#Introduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile#Introduction)</comment>


Google Voice lost my business number. How I got it back, and what I learned. - <AUTHOR> http://www.sultansolutions.com/google-voice-lost-number/

<comment><USER2> This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about something from your bank, such as, say, a fee that suddenly appears on your statement, you can pick up the phone and find someone at the company who will at least give you slow service to answer your question.

But with Google and Microsoft, there is no support department. You need to know how a specific service is charged? Good luck. You need to know why a needed parameter is missing on their API documentation? Forget it.

Basically companies like Google and Microsoft want to toss their products out into the wild and then go back behind closed doors to noodle on something else. It baffles me as to why enterprise businesses are able to do this.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft has always provided _amazing_ support for our Office 365 account (hosted Exchange, like Google Apps). Its a paid service though ($6/user/month), so perhaps that's the difference in our experiences.

Most recently, I filed a support ticket online and my phone rang a few minutes later. On the other end was an MS support rep who stayed on the phone with me for 40 minutes, including a screen share, until my issue was resolved. At the end of the call he left me with his direct # and email, and said that I could contact him directly with any future inquiries.

Really can't ask for much more than that.

<comment><USER4> I just want to echo this to make sure that everyone understands Google and Microsoft are worlds apart on support.

We've all heard about the horror stories that it doesn't matter what you do with Google you cannot get human support unless you get to the top of HN or Reddit.

MS are totally different, they offer support for every service, you just have to pay for it. I think they also offer different levels of support, some of our programmers at a previous (small) company could talk to the Silverlight team over problems they were having after it just came out.

Funnily enough, when I google "google paid support" the top result is this little (frightening) gem:

[http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...](http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1752770)

Compare that to this, "microsoft paid support":

<http://support.microsoft.com/gp/services/en-id>

I'm in no way affiliated with MS, actually use Google Apps myself.

<comment><USER5> This "Google has no support" is a myth that I see consistently repeated on Hacker News that I can't understand it's repeated. Google's support situation is actually the same as Microsoft's: if you pay (i.e. have a Google Apps for Business) account, you get 24/7 phone support. I'm pretty sure that it's for any service linked to your Google Apps for Business account (including Voice), but not completely sure since I've never had to use it.

You can find it here: <http://support.google.com/a/bin/request.py>

<comment><USER4> No it's not, you can't get consumer support for Google, you can for MS. You can't pick just one of their many services and go, "look at this one!".

I just went their with my free apps account and it's not exactly forthcoming about how either.

<comment><USER5> What are you talking about? I posted a link with their support options and your response is "No, you can't get support". Clearly, you can - I linked to it. If I go there with my free apps account it's crystal clear, in big letters: "Email and phone support: Not available for the free edition of Google Apps. Find out about upgrading to Google Apps for Business."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I own a Samsung Galaxy 3, a Nexus 7, run over 10 paid Google Biz Apps accounts, and will continue to use and recommend Google services to my clients and friends."

Why? Vote with your dollars. Oh, wait - you're already _paying_ them and realized you have no reliable support.

Look, I use gmail too, and google search, and adwords. The gmail going away might be somewhat problematic, but I also run my own mail servers for other addresses, and shifting to those as my primary for everything wouldn't be too hard - a small PITA, but not devastating.

I expect a better level of service for something I'm paying cash for. To continue to support them just means its harder for other companies that might be providing good service to get traction.

I've recommended twilio and tropo to various people, and the first reaction is "oh it's like google voice?" the second reaction is "WTF? I have to PAY?! Google Voice is free!" This seems suspiciously like MS 15 years ago using profits their dominance (monopoly) in one market to get in to another market.

<comment><USER7> When I look at the web pages for Twilio and Tropo, it isn't clear that they are actually replacements for Google Voice.

<comment><USER8> I think this is an appropriate time for me to mention the service calltrackingmetrics.com. We offer a service, that allows you to manage the call flow as well as track many other features of a call - but in this case I believe the major selling point is we have people who answer the phone and work really hard to make sure your phone numbers port over to our system without issue. The Twilio team also helps make sure this process is exceptional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was shut out of Google Apps (yes, the paying one) for "abuse"

Just like that, leaving them locked out of their (company) emails.

There is a support line but it's helpless, it said "Your account may be unlocked in 72h"

Yes, _may_ be unlocked. This is not a proper answer to a paying customer Google.

So I lost my confidence in Google Apps, if I need a similar service better contract from somebody else.

(It's been a while but I still haven't heard the rest of the story)

<comment><USER10> What good alternatives are there to Google apps? I may hate them for not having support, but because it's such a good product i may be forced to use it.

<comment><USER11> You get support if you pay for Google Apps for Business.

<comment><USER10> This person claims he was locked out of his paid google apps for business account. I think one solution is to purchase through a google apps provider. You pay the same costs but they get some cut of the money for providing service. I think this is the model Google wants to implement, have another company handle simple support and they can handle real issues when contacted by the company, not the end users. I think this actually happened for us, but it is invisible. We had an issue with Mac mail and google apps when we started. It wasn't behaving properly. We contacted our provider who I think contacted google and an engineer actually looked at the logs and explained it as a bug in Mac mail which after a timeout was initiating more connections and flooding the server.

Anyway I think google apps providers probably can provide sufficient support, maybe google voice just needs to get there.

<comment><USER12> "This person claims he was locked out of his paid google apps for business account."

Yes he did. And he didn't include what his service representative told him. You see on my paid account under the tools "Manage this account" there is a support tab, and that tab lets you send email to a real person with your account id and generally they respond reasonably quickly. So what what did they say? Now the poster says "locked out of his account" what did that mean? Can't login? Or can't send email? Can't use Drive? Can't use Calendar? Was it just him or everyone who uses the account? When you're paying for a service, if your service provider denies you that service you can sue them more easily.

Now I have been emailed when my logging application tried to send a bunch of emails, I was notified that it had been 'spamming' and disabled until the spam stopped. I sent back a nice explanation of what our systems were doing, and a whitelist of addresses that could send that sort of email, and they set it up. No more issue.

The bottom line is that there are missing bits in this anecdote that would help give context to the 'abuse' comment. But they are missing.

<comment><USER11> So I am actually a Google Apps Reseller. Our customers can go directly to Google for support, or through us. Most choose to come through us at no additional cost, some pay us for a higher level of support. Generally, we solve the easy stuff that doesn't actually require Google's intervention much faster than Google would for our customers, and are able typically able to get resolution to Google Support tickets for a couple reasons: (1) we are very experienced interfacing with Google Support (2) Because we are in the top tier of Google Apps Resellers (Enterprise Premier), our customers actually get a higher level of support by default.

The guy below who had another reseller claim they have all the Google Engineers on chat...that is probably true but they don't handle support issues. They will tell you to open a ticket, even if they are your friend.

Not sure why my comment above got down-voted. You DO get support from Google by paying for your Google Apps account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When Google Voice was new, I signed up and got a number, but my account never got properly activated to send or receive calls. After more than a week of trying to get support, I payed the fee to get a different number. Unsurprisingly, that number didn't work either, but the financial transaction _did_ at least get me a line of communication through which I could dispute the charge on my credit card and force Google to react. Two or three days later, my account was fixed and the number switch and fee were reverted.

Bringing a financial transaction into the mix is always the most reliable way to get in touch. Google may play hard-to-get with their users, but they can't do that to a bank.

<comment><USER14> This person paid to port their number into google, from my understanding. So there was a financial transaction- google's complete lack of anything resembling customer support is the issue here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats right, I did pay to port the number in. And then I paid to buy the number back (google must have seen this, so they sent me a refund today).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had my own Google frustrations lately:

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/10/16/the-dreaded-google- loc...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/10/16/the-dreaded-google-lockdown)

Nothing as serious as a phone number that was already in use, but frustrating nonetheless.

What's even more frustratingly difficult is that they do provide a tremendous amount of value with a series of fairly integrated products.... leaving would be very difficult and costly.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is true that Google has no support for free (or mostly free) services but they do generally for paid services. When I have issues with my google hosted (and paid for) domain a real person answers the email and follows up. At some point I expect them to just flip the bit and bring up a customer support service for 'real'. I suppose they could buy zendesk or something like that but here is an interesting question, how much would you _pay_ for your Google stuff? A gmail account, a hosted domain, docs, etc? $10/month? $100/month?

At NetApp I got a chance to sit in on some meetings where support costs were being evaluated and there is a pretty clear calculus that can be done. (I recommend all engineers at an enterprise products company experience it since the 'cost' of s bug (and thus the value of testing) is pretty clear) So I wonder if Google decided to add revenue from all of their products in this way (clearly they do that right now for Google Apps) would folks sign up? I know a number of Youtube 'publishers' who would if only to have someone to call up when they get a robo-takedown.

</comment><comment><USER16> Something has to be done about these kind of goof-ups when dealing with Google customer service. It's ridiculous that their primary contact point for servicing paid customers is a online forum manned by volunteers.

<comment><USER6> quit using them. perhaps people dropping service with them MIGHT send a message? Companies that have has waiting lists for people to use their free service don't usually seem to give a hoot about customer service.

<comment><USER16> IMHO, it should be stronger than that. When they charge people money for products, they are responsible for supporting them whether they accept it or not. Aren't there any legal protections for customers in scenarios like this ?

<comment><USER17> > Aren't there any legal protections for customers in scenarios like this ?

Sure, but to avail yourself of these legal protections, you need to go through the legal system -- filing a suit in court. The law might guarantee you'll get what you paid for, but it can't force Google to offer phone support.

<comment><USER18> What about Small Claims court?

<comment><USER19> A _lot_ of people in small claims court would at best irritate them. Best is to just leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to look for the best product on the market when I was considering a new service.

I no longer do that. I now look for the product whose support will be there for me when disaster strikes.

No matter what product you choose, at some point, something bad will happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> Besides the support issues, it's worth noting that Google Voice is also impossible to use when you are (temporarily) outside of the US due to their braindead geographical IP limitation that blocks you from even accessing the site.

For my voicemail-to-email (and occasional forwarding, etc.) I am currently using Sonetel (<http://www.sonetel.com>). $1/month for a US number and you can contact real humans when things go wrong. (no affiliation, I'm just a happy customer)

<comment><USER22> This is just not true.

I'm from the US, living abroad. I registered for my google Apps account and GV number while in the US (before I moved). I can log into GV just fine while abroad (no VPN). My wife also has a google account (non-apps), with a GV number that works just fine while abroad.

Since I don't have a 'real' US phone number, my GV account is a software phone only, ringing in Gmail (computer) or Talkatone (iphone).

I have also rigged up a Twilio # which forwards to my non-US cell phone so that I can use GV when my 3G connection is not so great. This is the only stupid part of using GV when you are abroad, I'd happily give my money directly to google but instead I have to give it to Twilio for a hacked solution.

<comment><USER21> Thank you for the fact check, I am happy to be wrong on this.

It looks like things have changed since I last gave Google Voice a try. It used to be that they would just ignore you while physically outside the US, now it looks like they behave reasonably. Great news!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has google ever commented on the "no support" policy?

It's incredible to me that this is their stance.

It also seems to directly violate "Do no evil" pretty frequently--effectively shutting down someone's livelihood, in this case.

<comment><USER24> Google's policy isn't "do no evil". It's "Don't be evil". Subtle, but important.

<comment><USER25> Your insightful comment made my day (and freaked me out a bit too). So true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the amount of money google needs to pay dedicated support staff to field customer complaints will not be covered by their Google voice revenue. Or they simply don't care and a few numbers falling through the cracks won't hurt their revenue.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, based on the title I assumed the issue was resolved easily.

Almost two weeks with no number, then being forced to _buy the number back_?

</comment><comment><USER27> Great article that highlights the main issues with fast-growing billion-dollar behemoths like Google: "[...] I was so dreamy eyed about Google that I didn't take the proper precautions [...]". It's insane that they get away with providing 1st level support for critical infrastructure to paying customers using a forum manned by volunteers!

<comment><USER28> Did the OP ever say that he was a paying customer?

I don't see anything concrete in the article. He says he transferred his _business_ number over, but I don't see any mention that he had a "Google Apps for Your Business" (i.e. paid) account.

I'm fairly sure that Google Apps For Business does, in fact, provide telephone support.

<disclaimer> I'm an engineer and not an expert on support options</disclaimer>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> TL;DR "Google didn't help at all. I got lucky and was able to re-register with my number before someone else did."

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there a comparable solution to Google Voice?

I'd like voicemail, web and phone apps, text message support, and the ability to port a number in.

Bonus points for fax support, which GV doesn't have.

I'm sure that others are looking for a similar solution in light of this.

<comment><USER31> For free? No. For pay, yes. There are tooons of people in this space. This is one of the first-movers I am aware of: <http://www.phone.com/features/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What about just calling the general google phone number and asking them to connect you to someone who can help with google voice?

<http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/>

<comment><USER2> I am not trying to be snide, but you must not have ever tried that. Finding someone to answer a question at Google will require some serious legwork.

<comment><USER33> Have you ever tried that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Offtopic: I'm sorry, but the font you're using is horrendously unreadable; the "i"s (for example) are mostly missing:

<http://i.imgur.com/cwn1Q.png>

<comment><USER34> Looks perfectly fine to me, guess it must be some kind of problem specific to your setup.

<comment><USER35> Most of the page is in Verdana, and looks fine. _Some parts_ of the page are in Vegur Light Regular, and while it works when used in headings, it's too light for body copy, even if pseudo-bolded (it's not a full pixel wide on most screens). There are only a handful of lines set in Vegur at body size in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Google does provide customer support but the end user is not the customer. The customer is the consumer of the data that is gathered on the usage data that is collected from the end user.

I lost an gmail email account, and I had no recourse. In all fairness I was not actively using it. I had registered and received the account so I could have my name. When I decided to start using it, the password no longer worked.

I also had an issue with Skype and I was paid customer. No tech support. I discontinued that account

I have a Google voice account and I use it as my primary phone number. It would hurt to lose or have issues with this account.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised the article didn't end with explaining how he got his phone number out of Google Voice.

</comment><comment><USER25> Google, I don't get you. You treat free service users like kings and paying customers like serfs. What's up with that?</comment>


Solving a fun little geometry problem in C# and F# - <AUTHOR> http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/through_the_interface/2010/11/solving-a-fun-little-geometry-problem-in-c-and-f.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fwalmsleyk%2Fthrough_the_interface+%28Through+the+Interface%29 <comment><USER2> Notice how C# requires 16 type annotations, whereas F# only needed 1.

The verbosity of the F# example is not necesary. For instance, the code does its own map:

      let rec fromAtoBs acc pt1 pts =
        match pts with
        | [] -> acc
        | pt2::t ->
          let ln = new Line(pt1,pt2)
          fromAtoBs (ln :: acc) pt1 t

      let linesFromPoint start endpts = fromAtoBs [] start endpts

Instead of just:

      let linesFromPoint start endpts =
          endpts |> List.map(fun x -> Line(start, x))
                 |> List.rev

<comment><USER3> It's like he read the first few chapters of an F# book which showed explicit recursion for didactic purposes and then stopped before the examples explained higher-order functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Took me a moment to realise the code is so weird because he's doing this in AutoCAD. My brain blocked out most of the site and went straight to the middle of the code.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've read like 10 entries on that blog, that guy knows how to do some stuff.</comment>