Slashdot Founder Questions Crowds Wisdom  - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/slashdot-founder-questions-crowds-wisdom/index.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> Slashdot is happy to criticise Digg's approach, but for a long time /. was swamped by reposts and commenters still regularly criticise poor moderation decisions (grammatical mistakes, misrepresentation of articles, trollbait, blogspam) that /.'s moderation should be able to fix. Whatsmore, over time even /. has conceeded and accepted social contributions via Firehose.

I'm not sure either model is better than the other, frankly.

<comment><USER3> I have fond memories of Slashdot. I remember in the early days reading this really inspiring essay about Lisp by some guy.

That said, I'll glance at it once a day but will rarely dive in. I worry that Reddit will suffer the same fate.

There's definite room for improvement in this area, maybe even a new startup or two...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you look at reddit, 11 of the 25 top posts right now are on politics. That's definitely not a balanced view of the news. Digg has 2 right now, but used to have way more.

They've obviously built great sites, but as many have already noted, it's not at all a great way to discover articles on a wide-range of subjects -- with reddit white labeling their structure, maybe some of the children they spawn will be able to even surpass the main site in real news sharing.

Honestly though, I don't know anybody not really computer savvy that uses any "social news" sites. Many people over 30 wouldn't even know what Digg is.

Really just an example of how people online all the time imagine the impact of what they use (aka twitter) to be greater than what it actually is.

people who are always connected are going to be controlling what the news is on those sites, and it definitely shows.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ron Paul is a bad example. Like it or not, the fate of nations hangs on the presidential election, and so one Ron Paul link has a bit more importance than a million [PIC]s.</comment>


SaaS Best Practices: Password Rules to Boost Your Signup Rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.chargebee.com/blog/password-rules-to-boost-signups-saas/ <comment><USER2> Some notes:

\- Alphanumeric means letters and numbers, not at least a letter and a number. Your password form allows "& _^%$ &_(^%$^&3a" for example. Alphanumeric would mean it only accepted characters in abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789. \- Why does the form restrict me to 56 characters?</comment>


Light Beam Lets the Deaf (Gerbil) Hear - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/light-beam-lets-the-deaf-gerbil-hear/ <comment><USER2> This is very cool and technically challenging. I cannot imagine how hard it was to get viral transfection in the ear like that! Seriously, props.

In almost all applications, optical stimulation theoretically (and in rodent trials) outperforms electrical stimulation. Once we solve the immunological roadblocks of optogenetics, I can imagine a huge spike in peripheral nervous system applications. Perhaps not as much in the CNS, since deep brain stimulation is a huge problem.

That being said, the immunological problem in optogenetics is the elephant in the room. I think everyone in the field knows that long-term loss-of- expression is heavily influenced by immune responses, yet are afraid to admit it. Essentially, if transfecting adults with light-gated ion channels leads to horrific immunological feedback, we could see people getting _worse_ as their nerves are destroyed. I have seen this in my histological samples (PNS; hindlimb; rats and mice) and have quantified denervation atrophy by post- mortem weighing of muscle.

This is not a solved problem, even though a few promising solutions like drug treatments and chimeric protein engineering are being discussed. I suspect certain immunosuppressant drugs might be particularly effective. Despite the risks above, start-ups are trying to take this very promising technology to human trials. I personally find this reckless.

But I'm done with the negativity: the study in the OP is really awesome and I'm rooting for them. I dream of a day when opto is advanced enough that targeted, multi-color activation of sensory neurons is translated to people. Imagine feeling force and touch with a prosthetic because it talks directly to your nervous system... maybe one day :)

</comment><comment><USER3> hoping for some advances in this field personally, although not sure how to feel given the other crispr related headline today. I became totally deaf in one ear two weeks ago, presumably from a viral infection.

PSA: if you have sudden hearing loss, go to the ER immediately. I'm told the ideal window for treatment is only 48 hours.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems akin to [https://earlens.com/](https://earlens.com/)

<comment><USER5> Not even a little bit but that's a fascinating device.

The hearing aid you linked uses light to activate a transducer that's been placed against the tympanic membrane (eardrum). It could have used a wire, radio waves, whatever.

This technique is a combination of a viral infection that transfers light- sensitivity genes into the inner ear and a surgical implant that produces light in the inner ear modulated in response to sound.

One is an externally worn device and the other is a combination of surgery and viral gene-editing. They're "akin" in that they both use light as part of the system. Well, I guess they also both use devices made from baryonic matter.</comment></comment>


The latest thing in pair programming is Spooning by Bitbucket - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYBjVTMUQY0

<comment><USER2> The guy's look at the mention of pull request at 1:24 is priceless.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also <http://bitbucket.org/spooning> \- ha I totally want shirt 3</comment>


Zeus: Windows programmer's editor/IDE - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeusedit.com/ <comment><USER2> Just thought I'd provide some feedback - your product looks good, but your website is dated. You have to click on the "buy now" link (a CGI script) to see the price. This should be on the first page, especially as it seems a reasonable price. Also at first I thought this was an IDE for creating hybrid versions of the windows-only ZeuS trojan malware... ;-)

<comment><USER3> > Just thought I'd provide some feedback

I appreciate the feedback.

> but your website is dated.

I agree 100%. I know how to write a good programmer's editor but I don't know how to create a nice web site :(

> You have to click on the "buy now" link (a CGI script) to see the price.

All Zeus purchase is handled by a third party payment service. Hence the link to the third party payment site.

> This should be on the first page

I am not sure why? You can try Zeus for nothing.

Zeus runs for 45+ days as a fully functional editor/IDE and as a download size it weights in as next to nothing.

It also comes with a full un-installer so at any time it is very easy to remove the software from your computer.

To me the question is simple, are you looking for a good programmer's editor that you can try for free?

> I thought this was an IDE for creating hybrid versions of the windows-only > ZeuS trojan malware... ;-)

Zeus has been around for many years with the first release dating back 1994.

Unfortunately the ZeuS trojan has taken on the same name since then and it has caused a lot of confusion.

All I can say is, as the author of the Zeus IDE. believe it or not it is not a trojan ;)

Thanks again for your feedback.

Cheers Jussi Jumppanen</comment></comment>


Data Analysts Captivated by Power of R - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html <comment><USER2> I am baffled that a _programming language_ is getting coverage in the NYT. I'd like to figure out what, exactly, it is about this one that merits mainstream coverage, but I'm afraid I've been at the office too long and I think my perspective on the matter is permanently skewed.

As an aside, I used R briefly for a econometrics/philosophy course I took. I recognized immediately it was a powerful, functional language. What I wonder, though, is if the scientific programming libraries in Python might eventually be a better environment. Surely there must be some R users here who can comment.

<comment><USER3> There are a number of packages for relatively obscure statistical techniques (say, nonmetric multidimensional scaling) that are available for R, but not for python (that I have seen).

I also believe R is easier for statisticians who cannot and do not want to know how to program. There are many advanced techniques that are one-liners.

<comment><USER4> You've hit the nail on the head there. A programmer looks at R (or MATLAB) and says "this sucks as a programming language". An engineer or a scientist or a statistician says "so what, I'm not a programmer, nor do I want to be one, I've got actual work to do".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> having programmed R on the job for some heavy statistics, I will say this: good for quick analyses but burdened by legacy functionality from the S+ days. I switched to Python/NumPy and rewrote all the R code I had, could not be happier with the results. Of course, you have to create your own data structures if you want something like R's data frame, but at least you have a rich language to do that with.

however, if you need to do anything systematic, do NOT use R, bugs are elusive and extremely tedious to debug

<comment><USER6> I have used R for a number of minor projects. I really like its functional programming design, but its syntax can be obtuse. It's preferable to MatLab, IMHO. What do you consider to be the legacy aspects that weigh it down? What do you like better about NumPy? While I'm asking questions, have you tried Sage? If so, what do you think of it as a meta package of mathematical software?

Also, here are interesting links I've found comparing R and similar statistical programs. Sorry, don't know much about Numpy's capabilities.

R equivalent in speed to Matlab:

<http://www.sciviews.org/benchmark/index.html>

Someone's research for a good data analysis language:

<http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Software/which_language.html>

<comment><USER5> One of R's big benefits is the huge amount of statistical functionality, for example numerous different quantilization algorithms.

If you are working with a lot of heterogeneous data in R it becomes a real headache. Merging data frames seems like it should work like you think it should but if one of your sets of keys (strings) are 'factors' (what I am calling 'legacy S+ functionality', I'm sure they're useful for many algorithms), you'll end up with garbage. There's a hack you can put in your code ('options(stringsAsFactors=FALSE)') which alleviates some of this but in general aligning data I found to be a huge pain. If you're running regressions this is pretty important

haven't tried sage but have heard good things. NumPy is a good alternative because it's extremely well implemented and has consistent behavior across the board. Extensibility (with Fortran, Cython/Pyrex, C/C++) is clean and easy. Never thought I'd write Fortran 77 code being born quite a few years after '77 but it's an easy way to speed up simple procedural algorithms 50x or more.

<comment><USER7> factors are nothing but enums and are used to shrink data and speed processing. Plus that matches what you typically want to happen in regressions: strings turn into (n-1) indicator variables. Otherwise, what is the meaning of using a string as an explanatory variable in a regression?

If you want to merge data frames that were created w/ different factors, perhaps the easiest thing to do is turn your factors into strings?

If d is your data frame, then:

d$factorVar <\- as.character( d$factorVar )

merge your two data frames, then

merged$factorVar <\- as.factor( merged$factorVar )

should set you right... <USER7>
</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware when I get on a jet." - Ugh, SAS isn't about science, it's about administration.

<comment><USER9> My day job manages $USD 68B in funds.

Our largest fund and most profitable fund (around $US 25B), which includes some our of brightest people, which uses the Linux server infrastructure I design, also uses R and Python.

Trades are made based on the models created in these languages by our research teams. Our traders simply execute what our researchers models tell them to, when the model tells them to.

So both R and Python are fundamental parts of our business without which our best products could not function.

We don't use freeware either, as neither R, Python, or Linux are freeware. They are licensed software, with OSD compatible licenses.

<comment><USER10> _> Our traders simply execute what our researchers models tell them to_

Can the traders be eliminated? Why pay them if all they do is carry out orders? (I am asking sincerely)

<comment><USER9> It's a fair question. Everyone is aware the traders, which are normally a big deal, are slaves to the research gents and their algorithms.

My guess is largely, they can be. The actual trades could be automated (this would become increasingly necessary with rapid-fire [millisecond] trading, which we don't do now but could in future). The meatware oversight could be consolidated to a smaller group of individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile the creator of R wants to return to a Lisp-based statistics environment:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=8Cf16JkKz30C&pg=PA21...](http://books.google.com/books?id=8Cf16JkKz30C&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21)

<comment><USER12> Another interesting paper hidden behind the academic firewall.

<comment><USER13> At least in the physics world people just post everything to arXiv and their personal websites. This way you only need to pay attention to a couple of places to keep up to date.

<comment><USER2> As I said in another thread, most computer science papers are on authors' webpages. Then this one comes along - but it looks like the authors are stat people. I don't know what their culture is - and what kind of copyright agreements they sign.

I can access the paper because my school subscribes. If anyone wants to read it, figure out how to email me and I'll send a copy.

While searching, I did find a brief email from Ihaka talking about the jump to Lisp: <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2008-May/049501.html>

<comment><USER4> Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the life science space, R dominates research informatics. A large chunk of molecular profiling methods and techniques use R, or quite often the Bioconductor package, <http://www.bioconductor.org/> (from Gentleman's group). Most commercial bioinformatics apps also implement a number of methods using R and provide ability to implement R-based classifiers, etc.

In the clinical space, it's all SAS. Pretty much the de facto standard.

<comment><USER15> My girlfriend was using Stata. She's an epidemiologist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't believe nobody here has mentioned PDL, the Perl Data Language: <http://pdl.perl.org>

Admittedly, i think R and PDL do different things... (I have never played with R).

<comment><USER17> Looks like PDL == NumPy (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363159>)

There are CPAN modules to directly use R from Perl (for eg... R::* & Statistics::R).

I have a stats friend who's been singing the praises of R & PDL for donkey years.

/I3az/

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me, or was this article not very well written? I felt it was all over the place. It brings up S, then mentions that S isn't open source. It mentions open source and brings up things like apache, the web, and Microsoft, I don't see how it relates much to R. Though, I'm probably spoiled due to the usual quality of news I get here.

</comment><comment><USER19> "The co-creators of R express satisfaction that such companies profit from the fruits of their labor and that of hundreds of volunteers."

That's an interesting reaction from the first designers of the program.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. My girlfriend is a statistician for the WHO and they definitely still use SAS, at least in her area (calculating global burden of disease). I'm going to ask her if anyone there uses R.

<comment><USER20> she says apparently there's a big debate going on at the WHO about whether everything should be done in R. currently they use R, Stata, and SAS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My 2 cents: Numpy+Scipy+Matplotlib and other packages, which u can download together in a convenient package at Enthought. That enthought distribution also comes with Ipython, which, is, REALLY nice. I checked out R, Sage and am still sometimes forced into Matlab, but u just can't beat a programming language (Python) which can be used OUTSIDE of whtever problem space you happen to be working on.

</comment><comment><USER22> At least it's a functional language, and you can do things like manipulating code symbolically, showing its lisp heritage.

The tooling, library integration, and debuggers aren't as good as, say, Python, though.

</comment><comment><USER21> My 2 cents: Numpy+Scipy+Matplotlib and other packages, which u can download together in a convenient package at Enthought. That enthought distribution also comes with Ipython, which, is, REALLY nice. I checked out R, Sage and am still sometimes forced into Matlab, but u just can't beat a programming language (Python) which can be used OUTSIDE of whtever problem space you happen to be working on.

</comment><comment><USER23> "But R has also quickly found a following because statisticians, engineers and scientists without computer programming skills find it easy to use."

whaaaa?

</comment><comment><USER24> Could someone explain how this differs from Matlab, which is the most popular language for statistics and machine learning at my university?

<comment><USER25> As earl said, it's free! But that's not the most important aspect (although nice for a student).

It's an actual programming language. Like Python, you can use both non-OOP and OOP styles. You can define your own packages and namespaces (unlike MATLAB where there's just one big namespace). There are hundreds of contributed packages, you don't need to buy separate toolboxes. Not to forget, it's GPL, you can look at the source and learn a few things from people who know what they're doing (to name a few: Brian Ripley, Terry Therneau, Douglas Bates, Bill Venables).

On the other hand, it can be a bit of a steep learning curve at the beginning, but I feel it's definitely worth it. It's not perfect, I stub my toe on obscure language features from time to time, but to paraphrase Winston Churchill, R is the worst form of statistical languages except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...

I think that Andrew Robinson's introduction is pretty decent ([http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Robinson- icebreaker.pd...](http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Robinson- icebreaker.pdf)), but there are many others at <http://cran.r-project.org/other-docs.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The power of R (speaking as a very heavy user who has deployed it in multiple production environments and been using it for 5 years) is that it makes it very fast, easy, and natural to do statistics. It also has the nicest data structure I've ever seen for manipulating table data, called a data frame -- I'll elaborate, if anybody cares. In addition, it encourages people to create packages to extend the functionality. There are extant packages to do almost every analysis you can think of -- time series, kmeans, other clustering techniques, cox-box style analyses, regular maximum likelihood style GLM, hierarchical regression, HB, etc. Further, the amount of knowledge and the open source nature of the language, base, and packages encourage additional development and widespread adoption. See: <http://cran.r-project.org/> and <http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/> ^ is task views. Explore it -- it's well worth your time.

The downsides are, well, it's slow for large data sets and debugging can be difficult. But as a desktop / rapid development platform for statistics it is without peer, IMO.

ps -- unlike Matlab, which often costs thousands of dollars, and the Statistics Toolbox, more thousands, R is free. This is pretty important on its own -- instead of $5k per server and workstation and home pc, install it on any linux, Mac, or windows box you have and get to work for $0.00.</comment>


William English, Who Helped Build the Computer Mouse, Dies at 91 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/william-english-who-helped-build-the-computer-mouse-dies-at-91.html <comment><USER2> It was a good idea at the time but the mouse has been replaced by the touchscreen or touchpad almost everywhere just like the phone on his desk has been replaced by the mobile phone.</comment>


Y Combinator's First Batch: Where Are They Now? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/05/y-combinators-first-batch-where-are-they-now/?utm_campaign=social%20media&awesm=tnw.to_l2M5&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Spreadus

<comment><USER2> This is a fantastic article with a lot of in-depth interviews and analysis. This is an example of what tech journalism should be.

Another note: the beauty of YC isn't that Paul & co. pick home runs every time -- they don't -- it's that they pick teams that eventually hit home runs. Justin.tv is doing okay, but YC's investment in Justin in 2005 has netted it Socialcam (acquired for $60M) and Exec. YC's investment in Reddit also netted them Hipmunk.

And I'm only scratching the surface here -- YC founders always recruit great people into the YC program.

<comment><USER3> I've been curious about this, is it definitive that YC investments pass through like this, i.e. from Justin.tv to Socialcam and Exec?

<comment><USER4> Exec and Socialcam ARE YC companies, the investments didn't pass through. Those teams actually did YC, which they maybe wouldn't have (who knows) without Justin Kans first startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing that struck me reading this is that many of us from the first batch are still in the YC orbit. Exec (JKan) and Hipmunk (Steve, Alexis, and Chris) went through YC, and Justin, Emmett, and I are part-time YC partners.

<comment><USER4> Sam why is your posterous password protected now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the missing people that this article does not mention is Simon Carstensen, a danish dude that was a co-founder of Infogami. I met Simon in an university class and I knew him for some time before I knew he was part of Y Combinator's first batch :-) Simon traveled back to Denmark after his round finished.

<comment><USER7> Yes this is called survivorship bias. Only the successful people end up being in these news articles, thus leading people to believe that everyone going through YC ends up successful.

<comment><USER8> It probably has more to do with the fact that Infogami's other founder has said since the beginning that he was a sole founder, and never once mentioned a co-founder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I like best about this news is the long term orientation of it. The more thinking about long value, virtuous cycles, and underlying principles and values, the better for the SF bay tech community.

</comment><comment><USER10> Excellent idea for an article. I'm surprised I haven't seen such a thing before now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Would it hurt TNW to link to the mentioned projects?</comment>


Proving God - <AUTHOR> http://ink.bluegape.com/proving-god/

<comment><USER2> My first thought was that the author was being overly sarcastic in an effort to make fun of willful ignorance. Now I think he is more like the religious version of the "NASA faked the moon landing" people. What few facts he offers are completely wrong or greatly misunderstood. The entire article can be summed up in one sentence: Science is to hard for him to understand so God must exist.

<comment><USER3> first law: poe's law... Then I concluded, "nope, religious nut"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Right. So someone called it "the goddamn particle", media bowdlerized it to "the God particle", and suddenly its probable existence _proves_ God? Hmmm...I have a very nice bridge for sale, while we're in this territory.</comment>


Facebook tests $1 fee for inbox access - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57560256-93/facebook-tests-$1-fee-for-inbox-access/ <comment><USER2> The official blog post: [http://newsroom.fb.com/News/558/Update-to-Messaging- and-a-Te...](http://newsroom.fb.com/News/558/Update-to-Messaging-and-a-Test)

This is particularly interesting:

 _If you select Strict Filtering, you'll see mostly messages from friends in your Inbox. People who had the previous setting set to "friends" will have "Strict Filtering" on._

Basically now you cannot opt out of getting messages from someone who pays facebook to message you. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just wish Facebook would deliver messages I've sent to strangers to their actual inbox. Example - I found somebody's wallet. Found that person on Facebook, and sent them a message. Never heard back, but I can only assume my message is sitting in their 'Other' inbox.

Stuff like that makes it easy to not depend on the site for anything.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't you do a friend request with a message in the friend request explaining who you are? I know linked in does this but I can't remember if Facebook does.

<comment><USER3> I actually tried that wondering the same thing - but they don't let you send any message with your request. Since they didn't, I rescinded the friend request since I was not interested in exposing my personal information to a complete stranger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is access to your inbox for advertisers.

For those who don't use Facebook, if you receive a message from someone who is not your "friend", it goes into a different folder called "Other". Many people don't know about this and there's no notification in the UI for received messages. Visually, it's treated in a similar way to your spam folder but with less visibility.

I always assumed that the only reason for separating your Other folder so visually was to charge people to get out of it. I guess Facebook was waiting for more people to use their messaging platform as a replacement for email before pulling the trigger.

<comment><USER6> At a $1 per email, this may be for sales, but it won;t be for generic spam.

<comment><USER7> Which may be a good thing. What if Facebook harvests enough data that the "spam" we get is low in quantity and with very high probability it's something we actually _want_ , as that price requires? If ultra-targeted advertising becomes viable as a model for Facebook, it'd be much less of a nuisance than just shoving ads in users' faces all the time. Value-added, even- it's reliably connecting users with markets they'd voluntarily participate in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is horrible, and interesting! The biggest group to stand to make money off the back of Facebook is probably spammers, by charging a dollar they're either going to get _really_ good spam or it'll still keep them away. Of course, if the spammers can Nigerian prince a few fattened gooses they'll take the $1 price as the entry fee and deducted it from the profits.

Puzzled why anyone at Facebook thinks this is a remotely good idea, but you know, business model.

<comment><USER9> $1.00 per message is extremely expensive for individuals who make their money spamming inboxes.

<comment><USER10> Is it? You can send quite a few spam e-mails with a dollar, but with this, you're guaranteed your message will show up in someones inbox, that it won't be placed in the spam folder _and_ it's legal to boot.

<comment><USER11> I realize there's value added to that it's specifically targeted spamming, but, yes, $1 per message is several orders of magnitude more expensive than normal spamming.

<comment><USER12> Not when you exclude spam that never makes it to a users inbox.

<comment><USER13> The marginal cost of sending bulk spam is the opportunity cost of the botnet.

$1 a message is a one followed by the zeros you get from your cat playing with the zero key times more expensive than bulk spam.

<comment><USER12> That's far from accurage.

Let's use some vary pessimistic estimates.

183 billion spam messages a day * 1% make it to inbox / 10,000 people world wide making spam / 5$ per person per day = 36,600 messages dollar. Which need to be vary garbled to make it though the inbox so they tend to be instantly ignored by most people.

PS: I have seen more detailed estimates that suggest each read spam message costs .1c to 10c depending on how targeted the campaign is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just great - so someone who wants to spend $20 can have my phone beeping away? Does this get past banning a contact? Can you even ban a contact?

What happens next, pay Facebook $10/month so others can't pay them $1 per message to spam you?

<comment><USER15> They could get you to bid against the spammers, perhaps. If somebody will pay $1 to send you a message, maybe you'll pay $1.10 not to receive it :)

But if they feel their message is THAT important, perhaps they'd then pay $1.20 to ensure you get it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this mean I can contact Zuckerberg for just a dollar? Sweet, been wanting to ask him some things.

</comment><comment><USER17> >Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages

Sure, if you measure your performance on true positives. But what about false positives? What if I and the recipient will gain utility from me sending him a message, but I refuse to pay a dollar to ensure he will see it?

I think google proved algorithmic spam protection works well. It may not work perfectly (and IMO has gotten slightly worse over time), but it gets you pretty darn close without adding a tax. Automatic protection feels far more 'efficient' than the proposed one. I hope facebook's trial proves this.

<comment><USER18> I think the reasoning is that if you aren't already connected and it isn't worth spending $1 to make sure the other person sees the message, then how much utility does it really have?

I suppose there could be a case where the utility to you is low, but the utility to the user is very high, but in this case they are probably seeking you out and you should invest in cost-per-click/conversion advertising instead of cost-per-impression.

Facebook's proposed model has a very high cost-per-impression, which is what weeds out much of the spam. You have to get a very high conversion rate before it becomes economical, which implies that the message was indeed relevant. In fact, being an inbox message probably increases the conversion rate over other communication methods (such as ads and spam)

<comment><USER17> The messages I get from non-friends are usually from old friends asking if I'm the correct rm999 (well, my real name). I think these messages do have a lot of utility, but I would never pay to send them. They also provide value to facebook by increasing the size of their social network. Uptown also brought up the semi-contrived (but still excellent) example of a found wallet, which is another case where the value to the sender is low but the global utility is high.

Anyway, I get virtually zero e-mail spam and my e-mail address has been public for eight years. I don't see why facebook wants to shake things up. I consider spam a mostly solved problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Gee, I wonder how this will go over with privacy regulators.

"We have given people meaningful privacy controls to prevent unwanted messages, but we let other people completely override them for small amounts of money"

<comment><USER20> Curious why _spam_ is a concern for privacy regulators. Would you know why?

<comment><USER19> Because at least in Europe, they consider the right to be left alone part of privacy. If my privacy controls say you can't message me, you shouldn't be able to message me. Otherwise, they aren't privacy controls.

It's not like you get to pull a name out of thin air and message it for a dollar, it tells you things about people you can't normally reach (IE normally have you blocked from sending messages), and lets you decide if you want to reach them anyway, despite the fact that you are normally blocked/put into other.

The wonderful spin they put on this is: "For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them."

That important message could be "i'm stalking you, bitch", being sent from a throwaway facebook account. As the article points out it also allows you to send messages to people you aren't friends with, so you don't even have to have gotten them to friend you. Normally it would have gone into other and you'd likely never have looked.

<comment><USER20> _The wonderful spin they put on this is: "For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them."_

But you are dismissing a _perfectly_ legitimate use. I had no idea there even existed an "Other" folder and when I did find out, there were a half dozen legitimate mails from longlost friends of various types.

I can see the privacy concern here but to call the above "spin" is being ignorant to a very legitimate use case. The $1/msg seems like an interesting compromise - if someone legitimate _really_ wanted to reach me, they probably wouldn't mind spending a dollar.

<comment><USER19> I'm not dismissing it, i'm saying it's not legitimate as they had set up filtering (and probably why they changed the filtering settings along with this, as the blog post shows).

If i have a setting that says "i only want to hear from friends", then i only want to hear from friends. That's the choice I am making about who i want to hear from. You can argue i'm not thinking this choice through, or am ignorant of the consequences, but that's not the same argument.

If they want a setting for "I also want to hear from people who are willing to spend money to reach me" (or some better pr worded version of this), great, i'm not opposed to that.

<comment><USER11> This does seem dismissive to me.

The entire point of this exercise is to address zaidf's use case, which is trying to attach importance to messages that are outside the realm of Facebook's "important" data points. If they aren't your friend, and they aren't a friend of your friends', but they still have an important message -- how can we identify this?

The obvious hope here is that they can identify important messages by attaching a small (but real) cost to them, while limiting abuse by way of rates and maybe tweaking the cost.

You may not _want_ these messages, but the fact remains that there are important messages that go missed because they can't smartly be deemed "important" in the Facebook ecosystem. Maybe there are sinister intentions beneath the surface, but this is still a legitimate attempt to solve a legitimate problem.

<comment><USER19> It's only dismissive if you assume the weird thought that facebook is the only way to reach me. The entire point of the exercise is to make money, let's be clear about that, it's not about making sure people can reach me with "important" messages.

You seem to assume that facebook can or should be the way to reach people who have explicitly said "friends only" for their facebook messages.

Again, if i've said "i only want to see messages from friends", and something "important" goes missed as a result, that is the tradeoff _I_ chose. The rest of this argument seems to be "you chose the wrong tradeoff or we think you don't really understand what you are doing so we are doing our best to surface stuff that you explicitly said you didn't care about"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's an elegance to it. As usual, the user is the product.

It will be difficult for FB to really win in advertising spaces; there are a lot of other players. FB is making a play that states that there's an unserved market in sending personal messages to people who don't want them. They're probably right, it's only unclear how big that market might be.

The best part? Once users tire of sponsored messages ending up in their "email", FB can offer a paid option to exclude them. If that works, then FB gets paid.

As Mr. McBean said, "you can't teach a Sneetch", at least not quickly.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> This is what Facebook eating LinkedIn's lunch looks like

EDIT: Let me explain...LinkedIn is about to make just shy of 1 billon in revenue in 2012. Their dominant revenue stream is recruiting products where orgs/recruiters pay ~10K a year per seat to search linkedin and send X number of InMails a month. As developers this product is the source of much of the job spam you get each week.. Facebook has all the same connections/work exp/education that LinkedIn has...just for more people.

</comment><comment><USER23> This made me laugh. Mr Zuckerberg wants users to pay to send emails to each other? If so it must be a sign of how desperate Facebook is becoming to please shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER24> They should just switch to a subscription model ($10-$100/yr tiered pricing) and then offer those users super features like "killer privacy", "payments", "events", "shopping", etc. Free users can continue to get photos and advertising, like now. What's the risk? They could be more bold about making money in other ways besides advertising.

<comment><USER25> Then a competitor could just provide the same "super" features for free. Facebook's best strategy is to profit off the network/user base itself, since that's something they have that no one else does.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Interesting. I think I've read about Bill Gates suggesting this as the solution to email spam before. Charge everyone $1 per email and it will make most spam unsustainable. It seems like this would give people (who have a good reason) a way to contact you without your Facebook inbox getting filled with (more) spam.

<comment><USER26> Interesting but my Google Mail filter is becoming really good at parsing out spam. Even "technically I opted in but still spam".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I once posted an Ask Hn similar to this. I have always wondered about this <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4322758>

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't use Facebook much, so I wouldn't really care if this happened. Maybe people will join me in this empty GTalk ecosystem, at least until Google decides to monetize that :)

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems really scary until you realize $1 is prohibitively expensive for most advertisers unless they are very confident there will be a return on their investment.</comment>


HPN – Anonymous Rate Limiting Using Zero Knowledge Proofs - <AUTHOR> https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn.html <comment><AUTHOR> This post is part of an "advent series of posts" about search, privacy and security. First ones posts were:

\- "The world needs more search engines" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21676252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21676252)

\- "Privacy or Data, a Convenient False Dichotomy" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684708)

\- "Human Web – Data Collection Without Privacy Side-Effects" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21694980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21694980)</comment>


Apple Signs Deal with Volkswagen for Driverless Car - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/technology/apple-bmw-mercedes-volkswagen-driverless-cars.html <comment><USER2> Favorite tidbits:

\- This is only for experimental self-driving vans shuttling employees. It will have drivers to take control on demand.

\- Initially Apple planned self-driving vehicle where 4 seats face each other, sunroof material that gives less hit, electrically tinted windows and holographic windshields.

\- Project was abandoned because they realized "designing and building fundamental parts of a new car was not simple".

\- Apple tried to partner with someone who can do manufacturing while they do design. BMW, Mercedes, Nissan - all rejected that offer.

\- Ive was charged with design. Tim Cook drives BMW so he wanted to partner with them.

\- VW accepted the offer because they have been beaten a lot. They will supply basic components while Apple will add others.

It surprises to me no end that a company with $100B in funds, vast experience in supply chain and ability to suck up virtually all talent is struggling so badly at a technology that is over 100 years old while Tesla with its shoestring budgets leap frogged all established players. Goes on to show that leader at the top makes all the difference in the world.

Kudos to NYT for doing investigative journalism.

<comment><USER3> > It surprises to me no end that a company with $100B in funds, vast > experience in supply chain and ability to suck up virtually all talent is > struggling so badly at a technology that is over 100 years old

Their supply chain experience is for completely different parts. The suppliers for computer and phone parts are not the same suppliers as those for engine parts, wheel parts, etc.

Apple wouldn't just need to hire the right people - they'd need to build out the factories and supplier relationships and dealer networks and everything else from scratch. Recall that Tesla was founded in 2003, and what you look at now is the product of fifteen years of corporate development - and they're still not on the level of Detroit's Big Three.

Really, Apple would need to acquire a car manufacturer, but when you look at the market caps of various car companies - GM's is $53B, Ford's is $44B, Chrysler's is $34B, BMW's is $56B, and so on - buying a controlling stake in any one of them is doable, but constitutes using quite a lot of Apple's cash reserves. It goes to reason that there'll be opposition within Apple to using that much of the cash reserves on any one bet.

<comment><USER4> I remember seeing an article where Aston Martin would be a perfect deal. They are doing great cars, you can see they care about quality and design beyond just the luxury segment, and they are cheap. It's valued at $7 billions [1].

I don't like the idea of Tim Cook going to BMW just because he drives and likes BMW however... I think it's a bad way to make decisions.

[1] [https://www.motor1.com/news/238922/aston-martin-stock- market...](https://www.motor1.com/news/238922/aston-martin-stock-market- listing/)

<comment><USER5> > I don't like the idea of Tim Cook going to BMW just because he drives and > likes BMW however... I think it's a bad way to make decisions.

No, I think that's OP and you reading too much in that tidbit. The original quote was this:

       BMW was long Apple's top choice, given its focus on
       high-end but mainstream products, former employees said.
       Many Apple executives, including the company's chief executive,
       Timothy D. Cook, also drive BMWs.

So BMW was a top choice not because many execs are driving them but because it's a luxury premium auto brand and sells quite well - which is very similar to Apple brand consumer electronics.

Also, Jony Ive is a car guy, he loves Aston Martins, Bentleys, Saabs and Land Rovers and have a huge collections of them. By your logic, it'd be a "bad choice" to consider Aston Martin simply because Jony Ive loves them :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> EPA emissions tech: Please report the current engine NOx level. Passat: Ok, I found this on the web for "Engine knocks level"... EPA emissions tech: Please report engine PM 2.5 particulate level. Passat: Here's what I found on the web for 'Engine p.m. 2.5 particulate level"...

It's a match made in heaven.

<comment><USER7> I would never defend VW for the emissions scandal (although they were just the ones who were caught, far from the sole offender), but they certainly deserve praise for their ability to market good affordable vehicles to the masses. My bad feeling about this is coming from another perspective: this reminds me pretty closely of the Motorola-Apple Rockr fiasco. Cars are very different from phones, though. I'm surprised that Apple couldn't sign a deal with the Japanese or the Koreans though.

<comment><USER8> >although they were just the ones who were caught, far from the sole offender

Who else made software that runs the engine in cheat-mode when under emission test, which is what VW was caught doing?

<comment><USER7> What about FCA?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/business/fiat-chrysler- di...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/business/fiat-chrysler-diesel- emissions-lawsuit.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish Apple the best, but the truth is that AI powered software made by Apple just isn't good. But I still prefer Apples stance to data privacy a lot more than what Google does, even if it means it's a bit behind.

But at this point, I think the only ways to catch up is to gobble up a few AI powered startups with their cash.

<comment><USER10> I don't know, that feels a bit like saying a decade ago that Google built a search engine, what in the world do they know about building a mobile operating system?

If this fails, I don't think 'Apple has little experience with building AI- driven software' will be a prominent reason. It would in a simulated world where Apple was not allowed hire any expertise, acquire any companies or technology and spend none of its cash, but could only divert the engineers who worked on Siri to this project. Sure. But that just isn't the case.

<comment><USER11> _> what in the world do they know about building a mobile operating system?_

They don't. Android was an acquisition and so was Waymo.

<comment><USER12> Android is not a good operating system, either. They still haven't figured out updates FFS.

<comment><USER13> Well, android is open source so manufacturers can add their stuff and manufacturers decide when to update their devices (if at all). Google is being more strict on updates, as well as adding Project Treble which makes updating a device a breeze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much this was about Apple being "spurned by BMW and Mercedes", and how much it was about "no other car manufacturer was as desperate for sales and PR as post-dieselgate Volkswagen - or were prepared to sign up to Apple's offer of outrageously onerous terms and privacy/IP ownership clauses"?

<comment><USER15> Maybe VW was just the best match.

VW have significant experience of producing cars for other manufacturers, and put a lot of effort into developing reusable "platforms". They are super popular in Europe- hitting the exact sweet spot between practicality and desirability (Top Gear described the Golf as "the car that everybody buys with their own money"). The forthcoming ID range is perhaps the strongest lineup of EVs in any manufacturer's pipeline. They need more traction in the US, and it therefore makes sense to partner with the arguably coolest US corporation.

<comment><USER16> Golf driver spotted.

But jokes aside I wouldn't be so sure about this. DHL has famously chosen StreetScooter instead of VW to built their last-mile fleet and the top brass in VW were also famously upset about this.

Also sales of the first gen Golf EV weren't even of the same order as sales of e.g. the LEAF - perhaps because VW insisted on keeping diesels alive longer than it made any sense.

<comment><USER17> >perhaps because VW insisted on keeping diesels alive longer than it made any sense.

They're still making way more money than the leaf on Diesels. Giving up on your cash cows is the most misguided business advice I've ever seen.

You should use the money from your cash cows to innovate. And wishing for more innovation on the EV side would be nice for advertisement mostly. EVs just aren't mass market yet.

It's good to have the EV knowledge ready when you need it. So far I would agree with you. But how many EVs you sell has little to do with how much you know about the technology.

<comment><USER16> > They're still making way more money than the leaf on Diesels. Giving up on > your cash cows is the most misguided business advice I've ever seen.

Was that cash cow worth a global scandal, billions lost in unsaleable inventory(hundred thousands) and fines($25bln) though? I mean - they lost roughly two years of net income here and had several executives land in prison.

Nissan on the other hand invested roughly 20% of that($4bln) to develop the LEAF.

Perhaps giving up on diesels before it was too late constituted sound advice after all?

<comment><USER17> You're forgetting that Diesels are still making up a huge amount of VW group profit. Of course the scandal wasn't worth it, but it also wasn't necessary. Rather the decision to save on AdBlue was not worth it, not the Diesel technology itself.

I mean it's kind of like asking GM if it was worth it to not update their ignitions after they found out they were faulty and killed a few people (and got off easy because US company ;)). It's not a problem with ignition switch technology itself, but just this case of bad management decisions.

You can invest 4bn in EV technology, that would be smart, but those 4bn have to be made somewhere. In this case you can make this with Diesels and reinvest in EV. This is not some SV startup that will just waste its investors cash reserves until it goes broke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Apple once had grand aspirations to build its own electric self-driving car and lead the next generation of transportation. Over time, the tech giant's ambitions ran into reality." Reality is Apple can buy VW AG for cash twice.

<comment><USER19> Reality as well is that independently from the amount of shares they buy, can only have 20% of the votes and the German state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) will always have 20.2% by law. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Act)

Also: Independent from current market value and imagining the law wouldn't exist they'd still have to pay quite a surplus on the market value and then have major trouble in handling a company of that size.

(Edit: oh I missed that the law has been changed since the Porsche takeover story ...)

<comment><USER18> Ok once :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish Apple would stop chasing trends like self-driving cars and augmented reality. They used to have a strong vision for the future -- now it just looks like they're out of ideas.

<comment><USER21> I get your sentiment but i would also like to say that people scoffed at jobs holding what looked like an oversized iphone on the stage and that's been a boom for them fwict. the iphone was a product that people dismissed out of hand. the ipod was a product that people dismissed out of hand and it saved apple. hell the apple ii was pretty revolutionary back in the day.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying -- instead of focusing on more "serious" things that "everyone knows are the future", I wish Apple had the courage to focus on the kind of products that people tend to dismiss as boring or derivative at first.

<comment><USER22> I think that it had less to do with apple and more to do with steve jobs. I can't think of any product from Apple after Steve Jobs died, that had any mass market effect. Either with new product or evolution of the existing product. They are still riding the Steve Jobs high.

<comment><USER17> The company has a long history and for much of that history Steve Jobs didn't hit the note either. They're still riding the brand definitely.

I think what Steve Jobs said about focus is important though. The company needs to focus on it's core strengths and innovate in these markets. [http://www.casestudyinc.com/apples-four-quadrant-product- gri...](http://www.casestudyinc.com/apples-four-quadrant-product-grid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm continually shocked at how easy tech companies think it will be to build a car.

<comment><USER24> On the flipside, I think it's funny how easy some of the big car companies thought it would be to build a self-driving car. The general attitude I've seen from German car manufacturers the last years was one of "we just need to pour a bunch of software engineers on the problem". Maybe this deal is a start of a mentality-shift there.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps publicly, but people tell me that management is acutely aware how hard the problem is; this stems in part from the experience developing the various assistance systems, which was neither cheap nor easy.

<comment><USER24> Maybe some parts of management, but my impression is that it's also mostly communicated like that internally. I based my comment on conversations I had with people working at the car companies (Audi, BMW, VW and Mercedes), and all expressed that view in slight variations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems like there's been a lot more of their Lexus cars on the road in my part of Sunnyvale the past few weeks. They look like this: [https://goo.gl/images/Kt9t3M](https://goo.gl/images/Kt9t3M)

</comment><comment><USER26> >In late 2015, Apple bought two Lexus S.U.V.s and hired a Virginia firm called Torc Robotics to retrofit the vehicles

More about Torc Robotics, founded by Virginia Tech autonomous vehicle competition team:

[https://torc.ai/our-story/](https://torc.ai/our-story/)

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

</comment><comment><USER27> Unless I misread this deal seems to only cover shuttling for their employees. I think Apple has realized how far behind they are in this area and I'm not sure what they can do at this point to keep up with Waymo and others.

<comment><USER28> Do they need a self driving car? Facebook isn't building one. Amazon isn't building one.

I can see why a self driving car appeals to Apple since Apple's expertise is integrating software and hardware in a high quality way but I don't see this as something the need to do to not be left behind.

<comment><USER29> Neither of those companies has the cash reserves Apple has at its disposal. Nor the expertise in hardware software integration. There's lots of things Apple can do with their cash, gaining a foothold in a data rich industry of the future is one of the more obvious ones.

<comment><USER30> An even more obvious one would be bringing their hardware up to the same spec as their competitors and fixing macOS...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _The project has suffered from repeated changes in direction that have hurt morale and led to hundreds of departures from its peak of more than 1,000 members two years ago, five former Apple employees said._ ...

 _Instead, Apple has signed a deal with Volkswagen to turn some of the carmaker's new T6 Transporter vans into Apple's self-driving shuttles for employees — a project that is behind schedule and consuming nearly all of the Apple car team's attention, said three people familiar with the project._

This is more like "we give up, but will do a symbolic project so we don't look too stupid."

This is harder to do than the web/mobile crowd thought. This is hard real time high-reliability, like avionics. Google/Waymo gets this. Most of the others don't. So far, Tesla, Uber, Volvo, and Apple have failed. Not sure about Cruise yet, but I saw one of their vehicles get stuck behind a double-parked car in SF and the human had to take over.

<comment><USER32> Your Google bias is showing. How have the other companies "failed"? Apple hasn't even started and it has "failed"?

<comment><USER31> "Hasn't even started"? They had a thousand people working on self-driving cars at one point.

<comment><USER32> Can a product be considered a failure if it was never made available for sale to the public? This is exactly why Apple is secretive about its projects. Sure, there have been true failures like the iPod Hi-Fi, the eMate, the 20th Anniversary Mac etc. But to consider the car project to be a failure is presumptuous and premature.

<comment><USER33> >Can a product be considered a failure if it was never made available for sale to the public?

Yes.

<comment><USER32> So Grab, Didi Chuxing, Go-Jek etc do not have self-driving cars projects. Have they failed? Are they failing?

<comment><USER34> If they never started those products, then those products have not failed since they never existed.

There's a difference between a product and a company by the way.

<comment><USER32> We do not know if they have these projects because there is no definitive information about them. Even the people who do know may choose to sandbag and outright lie about it. And that's my point; it's ridiculous to judge whether something is a failure when the market has not had a chance to decide if it was a failure or not. At the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anecdata: It used to be an almost perfect predictor in my social circles that people who owned a VW also owned lots of Apple gear. Two different people I knew where both VW enthusiasts AND Apple iPod collectors (these two things used to also be strong predictors of several other consumer habits coincidentally).

It's a good match in terms of synergy, but I don't see it doing much to grow the customer base of either company even if it might grow the revenue per customer. A term I've used for it in the past is "choir mining" where you keep squeezing your existing customers.

</comment><comment><USER36> Can they please make Maps and Siri usable first?

<comment><USER37> What's not "usable" about Maps? Other than the data being somewhat being Google's data, which isn't a usability issue?

<comment><USER36> They are OK.

Not sure about US, but here in New Zealand they don't work so well.

I try Apple Maps ~once in 6 months, They are definitely getting better and better, but still no comparison to Google Maps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The world is in need of a good computer company that actually cares about computers and wont get distracted by devices, TV shows and definitely not cars.

<comment><USER39> yes, including computer software (if it's only hardware then Lenovo and a few others seem to be fine). but with all the PC pioneers gone it seems difficult to achieve. I wish Alan Kay had more entrepreneurial spirit, I think his group has (always had) all the right ideas on how to actually harness the power of PCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really wonder why they chose a T6 as the platform, if MOIA as a 100% daughter of Volkswagen already has developed a vehicle very close to what is described as goal for the T6: [https://www.moia.io/vehicle/](https://www.moia.io/vehicle/)

<comment><USER41> If the car will be self driving, I wonder if it would be less scary if you sit backwards.

<comment><USER40> The vehicle has only forward-facing seats...

<comment><USER42> If they're using the T6 platform they will kit it out however they like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder if this is the Motorola ROKR all over again

<comment><USER44> If that's true we should see an Apple Car ~2 years after the Volksapfel is released!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Autonomous vehicles are a safety issue and should be open source, not a race to innovate.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure how this logic holds up. Airplanes are a safety issue, should their software be open sourced?

<comment><USER45> Yes

It should be open for peer review to make sure that it is the best possible system for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dogfooding your driverless car software by driving your fellow employees around in a van powered by it?

There could be some awkward moments in the cafeteria chatting with your workmate, who's in a neckbrace after a software glitch.

<comment><USER48> _Co-worker shows up in a neck brace_

"Hey"

oh hey.

...

" YOU FORGOT THE BLODDY SEMI-COLON BRAD!!!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I guess all bets are off on them fixing their lineup of computer hardware then.

</comment><comment><USER50> I suspect they will end up in the same situation as they did with Motorola more than a decade ago, until someone reminds them that the people who are serious about software should make their own hardware.

<comment><USER51> It will teach them a lot of lessons just like that phone stint with Motorola. There is also a rumor that partnership was just to learn phone building for Apple

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Somewhat surprising since it seems that Audi (owned by VWAG) is so entrenched in the Google (Android Auto and Android Automotive) ecosystem. Although not entirely indicating that the Android presence will have anything to do with driverless, it would only make sense that this would be how Google gets their foot in the door with all of these auto manufactures. I guess it makes sense for car manufacturers to spread out the risk instead of completely committing to one ecosystem over another.

<comment><USER53> Isn't it more appropriate to look at Google's actual self-driving initiative partiers, rather than who's using their dashboards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think Jony really wanted to design a car but Apple came to terms with the fact that they just aren't that company.

</comment><comment><USER55> The entire move is a stepping stone in learning the technology, which makes sense to me. The question on my mind is if this gives them access to VW AG, which would include Audi, Porsche, and what I place my bet/hope on: Bentley. Because I doubt that shipping employees around campus in vans is their long- term goal here.

</comment><comment><USER56> Anyone know why Apple hasn't acquired one of the existing self driving car startups.

If a company known to be old and slow like GM could overpay and snap up Cruise, what's stopping Apple from opening their warchest to acquire one of the many other self driving car startups that have made decent progress?

</comment><comment><USER57> This made me want to watch the series "Dirty Money" again...

shame on you Apple, you don't need this.

</comment><comment><USER58> After visiting the bay area ... it makes me wonder if Tesla done f'd up by not working with them on an OS for their cars. It seems like such a natural fit for the two.

<comment><USER59> I think Apple wants to sell more than a few thousand cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Considering how hard it has been for Tesla in the automotive industry, I'm not surprised in the slightest with this failure despite Apples 1000+ employee investment.

</comment><comment><USER61> *Needs an actual driver outside of test conditions.

</comment><comment><USER62> How about first improve Apple maps or at least let us use Google maps with Car Play?

[https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps- moat/](https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/) Google Maps's Moat - Justin O'Beirne

Only then fix Siri and then try your hand at an automated car. Maps and Siri will not kill someone. But honestly if Apple can not figure out maps or Siri how on Earth would they do a car?

<comment><USER63> In what way have they not "figured out" maps? It isn't a defective product, Google just has more user features (partly because they monetize location data, partly because they monetize priority display of businesses, and partly because they were around 8 years longer)

<comment><USER62> Apple is a big company and forces you to use Apple Maps with Carplay. There is just no excuse for Apple Maps to continue to be so far behind. Been an Apple fan before it was cool to be an Apple fan but I can be realistic.

Here is a great link that breaks it down compared to Google Maps. When did Apple decide the goal no longer is to be the best?

Do not even get me started on Siri. I find this defense of Apple baffling? Why is it acceptable to do a poor job at a product?

[https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps- moat/](https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/)

<comment><USER64> The problem is that there is essentially no limit to how detailed a map can be. As long as Google continues to add detail to their maps as fast as Apple does, Apple will not be able to catch up.

Most other products have a plateau where adding more features ceases to make the product better.

Apple Maps definitely has improved a lot since when it was introduced in 2012.

<comment><USER65> That's fine and understandable, but Apple should not be forcing their maps product down the throats of iOS users by crippling competitors' products for no good reason (same goes for Apple crippling Spotify to promote Apple Music, etc.)

<comment><USER66> That's a bold statement. I use Google maps on my iPhone. What's the problem?

I'd say Apple Maps did its job well... It got Google to release Google Maps FOR iOS.

<comment><USER65> What Apple is doing now is similar to what Microsoft did in the 90s regarding Internet Explorer. Yes, you can use other apps, but much of the common ways to integrate into the OS are purposely disabled for non-Apple apps for obvious anti-competitive purposes; for Google maps, you can't set it as your default maps app (which means Apple Maps is constantly opening in contexts where you obviously want Google Maps), there is no CarPlay integration, can't use it properly with Siri, etc.

I guess they can get away with it because iOS isn't a monopoly, but I think it's a dumb move on their part.

<comment><USER66> Fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I sincerely hope the software isn't designed with the same buggyness as the latest OSX renditions..

</comment><comment><USER68> People are so quick at forgetting that there would be no 3D in Google Maps if Apple didn't release it with iOS 6. When using transit, Apple maps tells me the exact exit # to go to my destination. In a city with transit, I found Apple map to be far superior than Google which is remarkable.

Edit : my point is that it is a bit childish to state that one is better than the other. We need both in order to all have a better map experience. Som in some cases, it is better to use one and in some cases better to use the other.</comment>


The Economist: Did the Internet kill rhetoric? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/01/american_political_discourse?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fbl%2Finternetrhetoric

<comment><USER2> Odd, I thought TV and radio were supposed to have killed off rhetoric long before I was born.

</comment><comment><USER3> The way the youtube videos load up on the page is really hot. Is that Apture?</comment>


The average customer and the art of building products for them - <AUTHOR> https://medium.customerlabs.co/the-average-customer-and-the-art-of-building-products-for-them-24a2406b4f27 <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear your thoughts and comments.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the consensus on Paywalls? - <AUTHOR> Now that New York Times limits free reads to 10 a month, I find myself avoiding their articles. What is your view on paywalls? Good practice? Will it last? <comment><USER2> I don't have anything particular against them, really. I understand the need for companies to make money, and I respect that they are trying to do so in a way that doesn't involve advertisements.

That said, even the ones with paywalls still seem to have many ads and even more trackers. When I come against a paywall, I try to see the article on outline.com or the wayback machine or whatever. If I cant, I skip it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cmd-W</comment>


Civilizational Collapse, Part 4 - <AUTHOR> https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/civilizational-collapse-part-4/ <comment><USER3> This feels reminiscent of the current issue of long-term data storage.

Flash drives are volatile and can lose your data any minute. Solid State drives are slightly less volatile, and a hard disk has magnetic fields that will last decades, but nothing will keep our gigabytes of data alive and intact for future archaeologists. If the Library of Alexandria can burn, then so can any form of digital storage.

On a side note, I enjoy reading John Baez's answers to common physics questions: [http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/](http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/)

<comment><USER4> > If the Library of Alexandria can burn, then so can any form of digital > storage.

There is no form of storage that cannot be destroyed. Even stone scriptures eventually erode and fade away. The best thing we can do is duplicate everything as much as we can and hope to reduce the loss over time.

<comment><USER5> Being able to make copies easily and store them in different location are probably the best protection for any document. And now days copies are virtually free and moving them is extremely easy.

I'm wondering if someone as done studies on the last technical revolution of this kind, aka the printing press. To which extent the printing press helped prevent the definitive loss of documents? There are probably a tons of factors to take into account, like history, age, kind of documents, etc, but it could be quite interesting.

Lastly, as a though experiment, I'm wondering how an archeologist would react in front of a disk drive in a thousand years. Let say the disk drive is in a good condition, but the archeologist has to discover everything:

1) First he has to understand that the disk contains binary data spread in a certain way, if he has equivalent technology or better than today, this should work. (if he realizes that he should be extremely cautious when opening the disk drive, at least for spinning rust).

2) Then he could have to understand the logical layout of data on the medium (aka the FS), this step is kind of optional has you can recover fragment easily, but it would help a lot. And if data was stored in a DB, it's a second layer equivalent to the FS.

3) Then you have to understand the file format, if it's directly a simple TXT file, it should be doable, and it's probable someone can deduce the encoding used, ASCII is easy, UTF-8 is a bit more complex but doable. But, and it's a big but, if the data is compressed in anyway, and a lot of formats are these days, I skeptical that the archeologist (and his technical assistance) would be able to deduce it's a compressed format and not some random garbage, and then re-discover the algorithm used. And if it's a more complex document, like images (even if BMP should be doable), sound and video, it starts to get really tricky.

4) And then, you need to decipher the language and/or alphabet used.

Basically it feels a lot like Champollion needing to decipher 4 layers of hieroglyphs before getting the content. Deciphering one can already be hard enough.

That being said, as source code is often recorded as simple ASCII files which should be decipherable, he could get lucky and get the code parsing the layers, or at least get a specification of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When reading about what Physcon, I reminded me of an interview[0] I recently listened to with Drs. James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian. They bring up some of these very ideas and how they are encountering them today in our society: i.e. people who see science and reason as "master's tools" of "oppression".

It seems that everything old is new again.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/YDFL3xwEEG8](https://youtu.be/YDFL3xwEEG8)

<comment><USER7> As a Brazilian, I see a MUCH larger threat from the current right-wing government than from lefties inside academia. While the relationship between natural/hard/exact sciences and social/soft sciences can indeed be very strained, there's very little interference in the actual content of research.

Meanwhile, the State Assembly of São Paulo formed an Investigative Comittee that just requested the content of all research produced by the three state universities in the last 8 years to look for bias under the guise of fiscal responsibility[1]. The commitee is led by a conservative state congressman who never attended college.

1: [https://www.adusp.org.br/index.php/defesauniv/3408-deputada-...](https://www.adusp.org.br/index.php/defesauniv/3408-deputada- tucana-pede-que-usp-unesp-e-unicamp-apresentem-a-cpi-lista-com-todas-as- pesquisas-realizadas-nos-ultimos-oito-anos), link in Portuguese

<comment><USER6> I don't think either "side" can claim any sort of moral high ground on this issue. In the case of the video I'm referencing above, the issue is decidedly from the left which has been trumpeting a post-truth, highly individualized, no-harm-freedom, and consent-based understanding of personal conduct.

But on the other hand, I think you are right in that there are people who can and will say _X is unquestionably always true_ by calling out to something like truth even though it has little to no basis in reality.

<comment><USER7> I'm going to be honest with you, I won't sit through an hour and a half video that makes your point for you. I'll just say that the current president fired the director of the National Institute for Space Research (an MIT PhD) for saying satellite data indicated deforestation was on the rise, contradicting the minister of the environment. An Air Force official was temporarily put in his place. While the official is a PhD, he was found hastily after the also hasty firing

I think you'll agree that actually dismissing the director of an important research institution is very much more important than whatever new prank Boghossian has played on the "identitarian left"

<comment><USER6> > I think you'll agree that actually dismissing the director of an important > research institution is very much more important than whatever new prank > Boghossian has played on the "identitarian left"

I don't agree. Dismissing this discussion as a "prank" played on the "identitarian left" is not accurate or does it adequately convey the weight of the discussion.

So while I do agree what you are saying is troubling, both the "left" and the "right" are swing their axes at the bottom of the tree of civilization.

<comment><USER7> My point is that one of them is using a chainsaw, but some people insist on crying "both sides"

<comment><USER6> And I suppose we shall have to agree to disagree on which is which. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe a silly question but how well connected was the world during Greek and Persian civilisations? Shouldn't their ideas and works survive on neighbours empires that we have a good track record?

I wonder if it's possible that some of the inventions attributed to China and India today could be tracked to works lost on one of these civilisations collapses.

<comment><USER9> Alexander of Macedonia conquered a vast empire right up to the Indus River.

Then there's the Silk Road who connected the Eurasian continent economic, cultural and political influence for centuries.

So, the spread of ideas across cultures is pretty much established.

The problem is that the survival of specific historic records across centuries or millennia is tenuous at best. First hand accounts are extremely rare and most of what we know about those times was handed down by copying what was deemed relevant throughout time.

Lesson number one each historian learns is to ask critical questions about the source material. Who wrote this? What do we know about the contemporary context? Does other material corroborate with what we are reading now? How about our own hindsight bias when reading records today? What about other biases that played out at the time?

Oftentimes, it's not possible to ascertain a theory or a hypothesis, how things actually went down, simply because we lack the source material. And just as often we may get caught unaware by our own assumptions that were handed down to us by teachers, authors, movies, art,...

As such, most historians will tell you that while it's plausible that the origins of some technologies root back further in time, there's little point in looking for evidence as there is simply no historic or archaeological record available. That's where you'll find that a falsifiable theory turns into mere speculation.

A historical researcher therefore only builds on top of verified sources. Much like a criminal investigator trying to establish the raw facts that support a given narrative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater."

This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, phytic acid, and lectins.

Humans would have never evolved the ability to eat meat if it didn't confer a natural advantage over foragers.

<comment><USER11> Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own but this is only possible because I am privileged in my income.

<comment><USER12> What does being vegetarian have to do with telling other people what they should or shouldn't eat?

<comment><USER13> The old joke: "How can you tell if someone is a Vegetarian? They'll tell you."

<comment><USER14> How can you tell if someone is a meat eater?

They'll complain that you're a vegitarian.

<comment><USER13> Hm. Its pretty different. I don't come to a table and say "Hey! I'm a meat eater! Better supply me with meat in this meal, or I'm going to walk away!"

Clearly, on one side, we have omnivores. On the other, extra rules about food type and preparation. Its almost always more complicated to feed one, than the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If our current civilization completely collapsed, I would think most of our technology would be gone forever. It is hard to imagine another civilization figuring out how to read a hard drive.

<comment><USER16> For that to happen our current civilization would have to be defined as every civilization on Earth.

<comment><USER17> there currently is one single civilization earth. All the cultural diffences between countries are far less than it would take to define different civilizations

<comment><USER4> > there currently is one single civilization earth. All the cultural diffences > between countries are far less than it would take to define different > civilizations

What is your definition of a civilization then? As far as i know there is no "global" culture, you can live in many different places and have a totally different everyday life experience.

<comment><USER18> Science and technology (and maybe trade?) are our global culture.

<comment><USER4> I just said there is no such thing as a global culture. It's not because you have Starbucks in every big city that the experience of living in different places is the same.

<comment><USER18> There are local peculiarities, but we share a common core built around science an technology. You can learn to drive a car anywhere on earth. You'll learn the same maths, physics, chemistry and biology. You can use phones everywhere. That is culture, globally shared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If our current civilization collapses, I think it's unlikely that another similar one would arise- or if it did it would happen much more slowly. There are no more easily accessible seams of rich ores of any kind in the world; the deposits remaining require a lot of energy and technology to use since they are low grade ores and it would be very difficult to get to a high enough technology level to use them without already having the refined minerals. A chicken and egg problem.

[https://images.app.goo.gl/5aNH7AWvb3V745ZH6](https://images.app.goo.gl/5aNH7AWvb3V745ZH6)

</comment><comment><USER20> "When the Romans took over, they dumbed things down"

Without reading the cited book, the case doesn't seem to have been made for this.

"then we have the first four books by Apollonius on conic sections—the more elementary ones—but the other three have been lost"

Maybe the 4th volume was just wrong, or an index, or so highly valued it was separated from the other 3. Or maybe the rich hand side of the bookshelf got rot.

Is there any more to this?

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't spacetime an all time storage system? You can't burn it, chafe it, erode it. Its is going to be there forever. Even if there's something that you think has been lost(like the library of Alexandria or the Roman empire) is waiting to be seen again. It is never lost. These `movies` of spacetime is being saved on a forever store.

<comment><USER14> Storage requires retrieval, as well as well as an encoding and preserving mechanism.

Much as users don't want backups, they want restores, authors don't want books, they want readers.

There's an interesting parallel between _transmissions_ and _recordings_ I'd noticed some time ago, that doesn't seem to be much commented on in discussions of information theory, though I'm not sure if it's because it's obscure or obvious:

A _transmission_ utilises variations in _time_ in a low-noise _channel_ to deliver _information_ over _space_ to a _receiver_ which _does not_ have to move or sweep relative to the signal.

A _recording_ utilises variations in _space_ in a low-variance _medium_ to deliver _information_ through _time_ , to a _reader_ which _must_ move or sweep relative to the encoding.

Each further relies on encoding, decoding, is subject to noise or deterioration, and may be subject to context or inference. Probably other factors as well.

Recordings can, of course, be moved through space (though a single recording can be in only a given location at a given time). Transmissions _also_ travel through time at some rate, not exceeding the speed of light.

There are systems which combine transmission and recording (notably computers). Transmission and recording each play a role in virtually all message chains. And there may be some forms of encoding (possibly holographic?) which either combine both methods or utilise others (though I'm inclined to see holograms as forms of recordings).

"Spacetime" as an all-time storage system, by itself, either doesn't make sense or is so vague as to be meaningless. Perhaps you could clarify.

Also: there's no inherent conservation law of information. Quite the opposite.

<comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No- hiding_theorem#Conservation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No- hiding_theorem#Conservation_of_quantum_information)

<comment><USER14> Practical upshot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We would have known about machines like the Antikythera mechanism because the Romans wrote about them : specifically Cicero documented the existence of these kinds of machines (that could predict the motion of the planets).

<comment><USER24> The only reason anyone pays any attention to that throwaway line in Cicero is _because_ the Antikythera mechanism exists. Can you find a single modern reference to that Cicero passage - pre-Antikythera mechanism - <USER2> interprets it, in full generality, as proving the Greco-Romans had analogue computing developed to such a high extent?

<comment><USER23> No! You are right, but isn't that super interesting? Especially given various other descriptions of automata, and also some of the descriptions of medieval automata.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If something happens in the world able to cause a collapse of our civilization - the preservation of knowledge will be the least of our problems.

I see little point in trying to solve this issue.

But while we are here - we can make copies of useful knowledge and try to have them as in tact as possible...

<comment><USER26> In the land of collapsed technology, an accessible copy of Wikipedia may be a priceless gem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I couldn't help but reading `Civilizational Collapse – Part IV` .

</comment><comment><USER28> On this topic - Oswald Spenglers observations on the topic of civilizational collapse are an interesting read.

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

> Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism > with a limited and predictable lifespan.

<comment><USER29> Now the superorganism is global. Who will be left to carry the torch?

<comment><USER30> Civilizations don't die, they fragment and reform. The analogy of an organism is being stretched too far.</comment></comment></comment>


Scrap Your Cake Pattern Boilerplate: Dependency Injection Using the Reader Monad - <AUTHOR> http://blog.originate.com/blog/2013/10/21/reader-monad-for-dependency-injection/

<comment><USER2> Clearest blog post I've read on the Reader monad in Scala. This is something I can see coming to our code base very soon.

The next step for us is monad transformers in Scalaz. We are going to end up with something like Future[Reader[Writer[Problem \/ Result]]] (a few type parameters are missing there; hopefully you get the idea). Monad transformers give a way to flatten this stack of monads into a single monad, which saves a lot of unnecessary wrapping and unwrapping in code. I haven't yet worked out the all the details of using them, though. Should probably do a blog post when I do :-)

<comment><USER3> I look forward to that blog post. In order to use Scalaz's monad transformers with scala.concurrent.Future, would I have to write my own monad instance for it, or is there a way to re-use the one from scalaz.concurrent?

<comment><USER2> The scalaz-contrib library has a Monad instance for scala.concurrent.Future: [https://github.com/typelevel/scalaz- contrib/blob/master/scal...](https://github.com/typelevel/scalaz- contrib/blob/master/scala210/main/scala/Future.scala)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great use of the same example under three different dependency injection mechanisms.

One issue I see with the Reader pattern, however, is that anyone using one of these injected methods has to deal with the monad stuff of using for comprehensions to extract the values, et cetera, whereas with the other two patterns they get to use normal functions.

Put another way: having to distinguish between the "normal" functions in a class versus the injected Reader functions, and not be able to use them in the same way, feels like it would get old fast. I wonder if the author has found this annoying or not.

I do really like how purely functional the Reader approach is though, no state!

<comment><USER3> I actually like using comprehensions in Scala so I don't find it annoying at all. Also I think having a clear distinction between the "normal" and "injected" functions is a good thing.

I do find having to add implicit parameters to every function slightly annoying, especially because when I forget, it's not always clear from the compiler error what I did wrong.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I agree the injected functions being "marked" by their types is nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It feels like this isn't actually solving the dependency injection problem - we've moved all our dependencies into this global (ish) Config object, but that object is effectively acting as a service registry. Constructing the Config is still going to require a DI strategy (as the end of the post acknowledges), so what do we actually gain from this reader pattern? I don't think it makes testing any easier (if anything it makes it harder, since we have to build up a whole dummy Config, rather than building a small test cake that only includes the dependencies a specific test needs).

<comment><USER3> It does actually solve the problem that DI solves in general, because you create readers that expect the dependency to be injected into them. You still have to decide how to do the injection and that's true for all of the non- framework approaches AFAICT. With the cake pattern you still have to create an object somewhere that mixes in all of the concrete implementations. What you gain from the reader pattern is being able to limit the biolerplate to edge where the injection actually occurs.

As far as having to create a whole dummy Config for testing, that's a fair point, although the reader approach makes it easy to inject it since every reader is a function of the Config. I usually only have a small number of dependencies so it hasn't really been an issue for me. If you're mocking the dependencies each one is only one line of code, and for dependencies you don't need in the you can just use ???.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure I understand the concern regarding the approach using implicits. Sure, you need to add an extra implicit method parameter to each method that requires the dependency, but in the reader approach, every same method needs to be written in the reader monad. In fact, they're really the same concern, since the reader monad instance is just doing the work of threading what would have been implicit in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, now I see it - it enables better type inference. Please ignore :)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, it is still a similar amount of overhead in typing

<comment><USER3> Actually it's not. Only the primitive readers have similar "overhead" as with the implicits approach. Most of the readers are defined by mapping or flatMapping over the primitives (either explicitly or with comprehensions). With the implicits approach all of the "injected" methods need to declare the dependency via the implicit parameter. With the reader approach, only the primitives have to declare it. Compare the implicits version of UserInfo to the reader version. UserRepository doesn't appear anywhere in the signatures of the reader version.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Curated list security tools that do what they say (The good list) - <AUTHOR> https://ciso.tools <comment><USER2> I found this _too_ amusing.

Make sure to read the About page since it does provide a bit more useful of an explanation: [https://ciso.tools/about/](https://ciso.tools/about/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Curated list security tools that do what they say(The good list)"

then:

"Oh no, there aren't any vendors on this list yet!"

Performance art as a website... Cool.</comment>


Lessons from the Rise and Quick Decline of First 'Killer App' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/40-years-later-lessons-from-the-rise-and-quick-decline-of-the-first-killer-app-11562990402?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> "VisiCalc, meanwhile, was mired in a lawsuit between its creators and its publishers—software in its early days was distributed under an author- publisher model, like books."

It really is incredible how much the software industry has changed over the years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sometimes wonder whether something that looks like a spreadsheet was pretty much an inevitable invention and major category of office software.

A word processor certainly seems inevitable. And, probably, something that lets you create content to be projected.

But the spreadsheet? Certainly tabular data was very common in a business setting but I sometimes wonder if that had to lead to Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Excel.

<comment><USER4> The literal spreadsheet -- a printed sheet of paper with rows and columns, with the rows and columns summed at their ends -- was common in business and taught in business school. Bricklin got his idea in a classroom for a reason. For my first company, in 1989, our "checkbook" was a literal spreadsheet: when you (hand) wrote a check, a carbon strip transferred the payeee, amount etc onto a spreadsheet underneath it.

But like so many things the spreadsheet itself evolved over centuries.

Likewise I used early word processors as a kid in the 1970s and there was enough variation in how they worked and thought of the buffer that it was clearly not "obvious". Even emacs and vi, which evolved from command-based editors (TECO and ed respectively) took opposite approaches (modeless vs modal) to their fundamental interaction model. And Bravo on the Alto (what you call Word today), while choosing modeless, took of course a different point on the interaction plane.

Nothing obvious about it.

<comment><USER5> Your phrasing implies Word has a shared code base like BSD and Unix do. The connection of Bravo with Word is that Charles Simonyi was involved with both. You see that with a lot of Xerox PARC projects - the researches frustrated with Xerox's failure to commercialize their research went elsewhere to implement their vision.

<comment><USER4> I don't think I implied that. Gnu emacs shares not s single line of code with EMACS but they are both emacs.

<comment><USER5> That's just how I read it. I didn't mean to imply incorrect intent on your part - I just wanted to be precise for those that may not know the history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to follow acquisition prices more closely. I was fascinated that an acquisition that complimented a company's efforts closed for orders of magnitude than an acquisition of a competitor.

<comment><USER7> > an acquisition that complimented a company's efforts closed for orders of > magnitude than an acquisition of a competitor

You're missing a key word here. Orders of magnitude more or less?

<comment><USER6> Less >_<

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Remember VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet? Today's tech giants do, > and that is why they buy up and invest in potential competitive threats</comment>


Cannabidiol May Help Reduce Seizures for Those with Treatment Resistant Epilepsy - <AUTHOR> http://neurosciencenews.com/cannabidiol-epilepsy-8374/ <comment><USER2> On page 57 and 33 of National Geographic June 2015, in an article titled "High Science", it talks about CBD oil helping two different epileptic children quite a bit. Just some interesting anecdata I remembered reading.</comment>


CO2 Emissions on the Web - <AUTHOR> https://dannyvankooten.com/website-carbon-emissions/ <comment><USER2> Woah, I really think this deserves more discussion. It's sad that we spend hours discussing which tech is better and we don't care which one is more sustainable. :-(</comment>