Ask HN: Why is everyone here so obsessed with Lisp? - <AUTHOR> I see like 2-3 posts a day about Lisp. What's so good about it? <comment><USER3> Many comments mention the merits of Lisp. That's all well and good, but I think they miss the largely historical reasons that Lisp is so popular here:

Paul Graham wrote _Ansi Common Lisp_ and _On Lisp_. Both are great books and were used in university courses in the 90s and 00s.

Paul Graham cofounded a startup called Viaweb, implemented in Lisp, that sold to Yahoo.

Paul Graham wrote a bunch of essays about tech startups at paulgraham.com. These essays frequently extolled the virtues of Lisp and other high level languages, citing it as a major factor in Viaweb's success.

Paul Graham, in his essays, strongly encouraged skilled, motivated programmers to build startups instead of working at large companies.

Paul Graham created Y Combinator, betting his time and money on the growth of startups that he predicted and promoted, popularizing startup incubators in the process.

Paul Graham created Startup News when Reddit started going mainstream, predating the existence of subreddits. Startup News provided a real-world application to inform the design and development of Arc, a Lisp language.

Paul Graham renamed Startup News to Hacker News. And here we are.

===

As someone who has been here for 12½ years, I view the Lisp sentiment as echoes of HN's past, inextricably linked to the Lisp enthusiasm of HN's founder: Paul Graham.

While I agree with many comments here that Lisp is a language worth learning, I think they miss the mark as to why Lisp continues to come up on Hacker News. The majority of the original Startup News members were Lisp enthusiasts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Part of the reason is Paul Graham's essay about his experience using Lisp at a startup: [http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

<comment><USER5> To add further clarification, Paul Graham was one of the founders of YC and built Hacker News in a LISP dialect named Arc (See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9270478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9270478) for more information).

<comment><USER6> ...and wrote a couple of classical common lisp books. He has obviously contributed a lot to HN's culture.

I personally found out about both reddit and HN by means of deeping further into lisp in the internet, beyond his "ANSI Common Lisp" book which I used in university.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's elegant. It's (relatively) easy to write a basic parser. LISP code is readily expressible in the same basic data structures provided in the language so you get meta programming almost for free and thus extending LISP is (relatively) easy too. Whereas C feels like an abstract machine language, LISP feels like an abstract 'mathematical computation' language. It's, like all languages, a different way of thinking about computation in the same way that human languages also seem to be (at least marginally) different ways of representing or expressing thought.

And once you've come to appreciate it, jokes like "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" will be funny to you.

In terms of 'getting shit done', it's not so 'good', not that one can't get shit done with LISP, but that it's not necessary nor, given all likely real world constraints, particularly that much of, if at all, an advantage relative to other (families of) languages.

It's also historically important so there's a benefit in knowing about it and being familiar with it too. And knowing the history helps understand why people still love it, even as a lot of what was once unique or special about it can be found much more widely.

<comment><USER8> I think the general consensus is that it's great for "getting _big_ shit done" – in other words, it's hard to beat for creating large, complex programs, but relatively crap for scripting or smaller tasks. I'm still kind of amazed how difficult it is to create a Lisp program that isn't hundreds of MB in size.

<comment><USER9> > I'm still kind of amazed how difficult it is to create a Lisp program that > isn't hundreds of MB in size.

That's not true IME. No doubt SBCL binaries are large, but they start around 70 Mb and grow from there. The growth depends partly on how many shared libraries are loaded when the image is created. Commercial Lisps are supposed to be better, but I haven't used them so I can't really say.

For smaller tasks SBCL (and possibly others) support scripting using a "shebang line" of "#!/usr/bin/sbcl --script".

<comment><USER8> Sure, I'm not saying these things can't be done, just that you get the distinct feeling that it isn't how Lisp was made to work. I might have been exaggerating about size, but 70 Mb is pretty damn big for a program that might not do all that much! I haven't ever used commercial Lisps, either.

<comment><USER10> A GUI-based 64bit 'hello world' application with LispWorks on the Mac is around 13MB in disk size.

A mocl application might start around 1 MB. But that's an unusual whole-lisp- program-to-c compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am not a programmer by profession, so I can chose my own poison. Scheme is just too much fun! I never liked python,ruby,c# etc. What scheme gave me was a smallish set of well-chosen primitives that compose well. Simple syntax together with macros so that I can abstract away any boilerplate that any eventual language designer forgot to foresee in a way superior to any other language. Lisp macros really are superior. I know enough haskell to know that "we don't need macros because we have typeclasses/an expressive typesystem/template haskell" is only a half true.

Guile scheme is my scheme of choice. Not the fastest scheme (that would be chez), but it is a bliss to write things in.

I have this idea that if you are a "programming language searcher" that can never really be satisfied with what they have you either end up in the ml camp or in the lisp camp. I myself would love a lisp/ml lovechild, which is why I am following hackett closely!

<comment><USER12> To save others a search:

Haskell-like Lisp in Racket [https://github.com/lexi- lambda/hackett](https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing not mentioned in the current set of responses is the REPL style and interactive coding style that you can have with a LISP that is different than what a traditional compiled language gives you in the edit-compile-run-edit loop or a dynamic language gives you in the edit-run-edit loop. When you are using a REPL you can poke and push at any part of the system like a debugger but the system is still alive. Without that interactive nature sometimes you end up doing print/debugger work to understand some quirk of a datastructure but in a LISP/REPL it's plainly visible and you don't have to think about it.

If it's integrated with an editor you can load functions or different versions of the function and see how each work with live data, you can slurp new data in, and all sorts of flexible dynamic things that let you find the program you want (which always helps when using third-party or unfamiliar code). This is more a feature of all kinds of REPL languages and not wholly specific to LISPs.

One of the basis of a LISP/Scheme language is that it is constructed of very few basic primitives that are assembled into a greater system and that greater system is part of your program instead of being things you don't touch (like libc), and you are (generally) welcome to touch them, alias them, or manipulate them to help your goal and program. This allows things like being able to temporarily hook a function call to add some debug information and then unhook a function call via a REPL and carry on. I find that pointing to people to r5rs [https://schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/](https://schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/) and focusing on sections 4, 5, and 6 help show off how little is required to describe the basics of the language.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Novelty. We get bored easily at our jobs, and Lisp is different (but not _Haskell_ different), so we're naturally pulled towards learning about it.

2\. Nostalgia. A lot of people here have enjoyed Lisps for years or even decades (myself included) and we have a natural bias towards preferring Lisp- based blogs or articles or projects, partly in the hopes that something is new in the land of Lisp (it never is).

3\. Chain effect. When one topic comes up that's very interesting, people often want to know more about that topic or similar topics. People who want more points are eager to submit related links.

4\. Propaganda. Some people have bought into a certain Lisp full-scale, and really want to help spread it in the industry. There's even a full-time job title for this called "evangelist".

</comment><comment><USER15> Ooh man this thread will be very interesting.

It would help to get a better idea of your current context with regards to programming. What's your experience so far? That will help frame the discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a software engineer that mostly works on the front end of things, but from school and various jobs I have experience in: C, C++, Python, C#, Java.

Mostly object oriented (distributed systems and game dev), and some embedded development.

<comment><USER7> JavaScript is, probably somewhat surprisingly, a pretty LISP-y language, tho without the parentheses.

<comment> debug-desperado Lispy in the "processing lists" is easy and natural sense, but not in the more powerful "homoiconicity=code is data and data is code" sense.

<comment><USER7> You're right about the 'homoiconicity' but there's more LISP-iness to JavaScript beyond just "processing lists" too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Because as a language it has some nice properties that make it conceptually easy to do otherwise complex.

The sad truth is that beside that, it's severely lacking in real-world-usable libraries, there are a number of implementations with none of them gaining a majority share if users and, last but not the least, a kind of distance from the operating system that make it non-obvious to reason about the usual stuff ("ports" instead fo file descriptors, vm memory dump to disk as a form of binary executable generation, etc etc).

So lisp has some cool things but will never likely become a mainstream language, hence the perpetual hype.

<comment><USER17> >there are a number of implementations with none of them gaining a majority share

SBCL has the majority share. But it doesn't matter, since ANSI Common Lisp is a standard and my code runs on many CL implementations with no changes.

>a kind of distance from the operating system

Citation needed. A bit puzzling to say that when some CL implementations have fantastically easy FFI features (CCL, ECL, CLISP).

>"ports" instead fo file descriptors

We don't have this. Streams are streams, like in any other typical language. File paths are represented by... Pathnames (data type).

>vm memory dump to disk as a form of binary executable generation

1\. The dump is part of the generated executable

2\. Now compare to most dynamically typed languages: they can't generate an executable nor compile to machine lang.

3\. "Memory dump to disk as a form of binary executable" is only true of the Common Lisp implementations that are able to save the image. ECL, for example, doesn't do that. It compiles to C and C gets compiled to Exe.

4\. Being able to save and restore images is one of the best features of CL (and Smalltalk as well)

>So lisp has some cool things but will never likely become a mainstream language

You need to review your history, since Lisp was a mainstream language in the past. To put an example, it was #3 in the TIOBE index for 1989, #5 for 1994.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lisp is the red pill to programming. A mind-blowing out-of-the-box experience. An alien technology. -- Lisp has a so called "no turning back point", true lispers cannot bear other dialects after experiencing it. From scientists in underground military bases to rich tech VCs: everyone obeys Lisp here..

<comment><USER18> [https://youtu.be/HM1Zb3xmvMc](https://youtu.be/HM1Zb3xmvMc) is a song about Lisp

<comment><USER19> A song that's a bit gentler on the ears: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-OjTPj7K54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-OjTPj7K54)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not a Lisp programmer, and I probably never will be, but I respect the language and here's why:

As Alan Kay said, Lisp is the "Maxwell's equations of software" [https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523)

> These were "Maxwell's Equations of Software!" This is the whole world of > programming in a few lines that I can put my hand over.

It's _elegant_.

<comment><USER21> Didn't he say that of the code for a particular Lisp interpreter/REPL?

<comment><USER20> I think it was page 13: [http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I personally am not a big lisper, but know others who are. It's not as cool among young people, but there's a certain segment of those, mostly over 50, who will swear by lisp and build some pretty cool things in it.

1\. It's got a minimal core and is easy to implement. This means it runs in many places.

2\. Very, very easy to extend due to its treating code as data. You can assemble your own language on top of the base you're given with macros. This is why it's often recommended for building your first compiler. By the time you've written a lisp program, you're basically writing in a different dialect.

I think some people also use it for a challenge, or to make themselves think. It's very different from your normal C programming, or OO, or even other functional languages (even though it influenced many of them). There's a certain family of languages such as lisp, scheme, ocaml, ml, etc. which seem to appeal to those with a more academic bent and so some interesting stuff can be written in them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lisp is the light saber of languages : an elegant weapon for a more (mumble) age. Blasters and death stars are more effective.

Nobody builds anything important with it, but it feels more pure to build toys with it than more practical languages. Some people make big toys.

Nobody is expected to understand anybody else's code, so you can indulge any kind of whim, and it is easy to make any whim work well enough. Meanwhile, the mathematical bedrock of computation outcrops more frequently, so that programs can resemble theorems if you like that.

<comment><USER24> "Nobody builds anything important with it, but it feels more pure to build toys with it than more practical languages."

      The company I just joined has 99% of their software written in Clojure. Backend is Clojure, front end is ClojureScript. Their software is kind of important to running day to day operations.

<comment><USER23> "Some people make big toys."

<comment><USER24> I would be interested to hear a piece of software that you wouldn't consider a "big toy" or even a "toy" at all. But let's say that software at my company is just a "big toy", it still runs the company's business, that makes it important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's some previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839742)

</comment><comment><USER26> Try writing some larger programs in a modern Lisp.

Lisp causes you to think in different ways. It allows for metaprogramming in ways other languages don't allow. It is endlessly reconfigurable.

<comment><USER27> > modern Lisp.

I've never heard this before. Modern C++ sure, but I thought most of the "modernization" in lisp was done in descendant languages (i.e. racket).

<comment><USER17> > I thought most of the "modernization" in lisp was done in descendant > languages

One core feature of any Lisp dialect is that you can extend the language using Lisp.

Thus, you don't need to "change" the language spec or write a new compiler to extend (and thus modernize) the language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very simple answer: Nobody is obsessed with Lisp, but Lisp is just better. And almost every "new" idea or feature was prototyped in Lisp already several years ago. Most languages haven't caught up to the most basic Lisp features yet. e.g dump the running state to disc (with all loaded shared libs, open files,...), and restart from there later.

What's so good about it? See the relevant Lisp FAQ's. E.g. [https://lisp- lang.org/](https://lisp-lang.org/) It is compiled and memory safe. Dynamic but fast. Trivial to parse, code as data. Readable macros. Huge stdlib. The first ANSI standardized language.

<comment><USER29> > _The first ANSI standardized language._

Not quite; the "ANSI first" in relation to Lisp is supposedly that CLOS is the first ANSI standard object system, which makes Common Lisp the first ANSI standard OOP language.

Of course there were plenty of ANSI languages before 1994!

<comment><USER28> You are right. Cobol 1974, Pascal 1983, C 1990, Fortran 1992, ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lisp is a very simple thing that allows you to make very complicated stuff. You can write your own interpreter and then write a program to solve your problem with reasonable effort.

If that bothers you, it could be worse: we could be addicted to FORTH! :D

</comment><comment><USER31> > Lisp is a programmable programming language. — John Foderaro, CACM, > September 1991

Often times programming languages are designed with a particular use case in mind. (E.g. JS: web, Perl: scripting, Erlang: telephony, etc.) LISP was made to think about computation, and it acts well as a programming language work with programming.

One of the goals of Racket (a dialect of LISP) is to make it easy to create your own languages.

> Racket is the second best programming language in the world—the first best > one is the one you build in Racket.

</comment><comment><USER32> Because we are computer scientists, and Lisp allows for the specification of abstract concepts directly and efficiently without syntax getting in the way.

See also: Forth.

</comment><comment><USER33> _someone_ has to have some sense of taste, rather than be fashionistas.

e.g. I see more than 2-3 posts a day about non-lisps. What's so good about those?

</comment><comment><USER34> Lisp is a really marvelous way to code. It's the hacker's language - <USER2> language you can hack around with by using macros to define your own DSLs, structures and ideas. It takes some getting your head around but the basic core of it is quite simple (compare to Haskell that has so many ideas you need to learn).

</comment><comment><USER9> For context, I'm a C++ and Python developer in my day job. I've been writing code for about 20 years and create a lot of small projects based on my interests (simple games, 2d/3d graphics, automation, web services, algorithm exploration, etc.). In the past I would use C++, Python, Ada, Haskell, and Ruby for those projects, as well as briefly looking at OCaml, Prolog, Mercury, Dylan, Nim, and some others.

For the past few years I've been using Common Lisp (almost) exclusively for these projects, and even some scripting at work. I have a couple projects in QuickLisp (a latitude/longitude <-> UTM converter and an STL file reader), I help maintain st-json (though I've only merged one changeset ;-), and I've written bindings to Blend2D and ZBar (both on GitHub but not in QuickLisp yet).

For me, Lisp hits a sweet spot between high level features, performance, and interactive development that I haven't found in any other language.

Here are some things I like about it:

* Interactive development

The Common Lisp mode for Emacs is fantastic. There's a REPL in the editor and it's super easy to send code back and forth. It's very convenient to play with a function as you're writing it - it's like an interactive unit test. When the function's working, the test code can be copy/pasted from the REPL into the unit tests.

Code navigation is also great. Alt-. will jump to the source code for the function under the cursor, and since SBCL and all of the libraries I use are open source, it works for _everything_ , even things that would be language keywords in other languages.

Other languges have REPLs, but Lisp emphasizes it much more than the others. Haskell and Python have REPLs (ghci and Idle) but it's rare for software written in them to include a REPL, shipping Lisp software will often have a REPL available - I can connect to the StumpWM REPL, for example.

* The syntax

Some people get hung up on the parenthesis, but I like them. The syntax is consistent, it's easy to indent, it's easy to navigate in the editor, and there aren't punctuation marks all over the place.

* High level with good cross-platform performance

I'm too lazy to post evidence right now, but IME unoptimized Common Lisp is 15-20x faster than Python using the same algorithm, and maybe 1/2 - 1/10 the speed of C or C++.

With simple optimizations (adding type/function type declarations, etc.) the Lisp code can be 30-50x faster than Python, and near the speed of C++. Usually the optimized Lisp is almost exactly the same as the slower code, but has a few type declarations and (declare (optimize (speed 3))) added in.

* Libraries and Community

The CL community is pretty small, and most libraries are created by people scratching their own itch. They're not always perfect, but they'll usually get the job done. If not, most maintainers are happy to get pull requests. I personally like that, but it may not work for people who want "off the shelf", supported libraries that work in every situation.

I've found the community generally helpful and easy to work with. Getting libraries added to QuickLisp is quick and easy.

Interfacing with C code is really easy. For small libraries or a function or two using CFFI is dead simple. For larger projects cl-autowrap can wrap whole libraries easily - it uses llvm and clang to autogenerate the entire binding.

* Lots of books and references available

Lots of smart people (Guy Steele, Paul Graham, Peter Norvig, etc.) have used and written about Lisp, and there are some really unique and interesting books about it. "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" and "Let Over Lambda" are two examples that really ighlight what makes Lisp unique.

</comment><comment><USER35> Because LISP (in general, in fact every dialect has its own flaws and candies and there still is space for improvement) is an almost-perfect language. It has just one flaw - it's unreadable without rainbow parentheses.

</comment><comment><USER36> \- you can make your own domain specific language in Lisp (e.g. imagine that you want to create a custom 'for' statement, or some kind of a new pattern matching operator)

\- you can easily write programs that edit themselves

<comment><USER37> I see both of those things a lot. The problem is if you aren't already familiar with those idea, the statements mean literally nothing. They basically don't make sense.

<comment><USER38> They're also rarely useful things to do in regular software development.

<comment><USER39> I wonder if we struggle needlessly though in "regular software development" \- and entire jobs or teams exist because we didn't find the right way to express things in a language. OTOH you could create lisp code that is so unique and weird in it's semantics that it's hard for a new team member to get onboard. But I've seen that done in C# too which allows you to have code that writes code at runtime (not as elegantly though!).

<comment><USER38> Yeah, writing your own language and self-modifying code can give you a lot of leverage, but usually they also make the code so much harder for other people to pick up that it's not worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Have you tried it, just a beginner tutorial or something? But if you do, please use an editor that puts paired parens in for you automatically, otherwise there's a risk of thinking that it is painful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried it years ago, but I think I had too little experience to understand the use case back then. I hadn't ever done any functional programming at that point so it kind of went over my head.

I still hate Haskell. But maybe I would like Lisp? A lot of people here seem to love it so that's why I made this thread :)

<comment><USER40> OK I'll have a go, but others will be able to do a better job than me!

Yes, you might like lisp and I definitely think it's worth trying. You often hear people saying "lisp has no syntax" and that's one of the main things about lisp. I think a good first step is to understand what people mean by that. You know the way a compiler or interpreter, after tokenizing and parsing, transforms code into an intermediate data structure representation called an "abstract syntax tree"? What they mean is that lisp is like jumping straight in at the AST stage. You're literally programming with data structures, instead of programming with syntax that gets turned into data structures. People find that a very rewarding intellectual/mental experience. It really teaches you that the words "statement" and "expression" mean different things. And it shows you a way of programming without a lot of "state" \-- just expressions feeding into other expressions, without as much use of "local variables". More deeply, this is directly connected with formal ideas in mid-20th century theoretical computer science (in particular the "lambda calculus") about the minimal programming constructs needed to create a Turing complete language. In lisp it leads also to very powerful and somewhat mind-bending "macros" \-- since code is data structure, you can very naturally write code to transform code, so the "final" code that is executed is partially the product of an initial execution phase where code is just working on code creating other code.

Having no syntax (or minimal, languages like clojure introduce a bit with square and smooth parens etc) means you basically just write expressions grouped by smooth parens. It's very beautiful and minimal experience to write. Just, seriously, do it with an editor/IDE that inserts paired parens for you, it promises to be a great experience with that, but without it a lot of people just give up saying why do they have to keep writing so many parens, which is missing the point entirely -- The parens are the fabric of the program!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Check out [https://xkcd.com/224/](https://xkcd.com/224/) . Many of us Lispers go through this phase where the universe appears to crystallize around Lisp concepts. Like Forth or APL and other languages built around a unifying theory there is a conceptual elegance which is mind-opening. Eventually most of us come back down to Earth but it is a fun ride.

There is also a mystique around the powers of Lisp. I do believe it is a massively expressive and powerful language in the hands of a master. But part of it is historical. During the heyday of Lisp it was the language of choice for the best hackers in the land and certainly was vastly more powerful for individuals/small groups than the existing alternatives. Today that talent base is just spread across so many other choices.

</comment><comment><USER42> [https://xkcd.com/297/](https://xkcd.com/297/)

<comment><USER43> [https://xkcd.com/224/](https://xkcd.com/224/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Obsessed in bashing it? ;)

Really though, the majority of comments I have seen in every Lisp thread is about Lisp not giving you any advantages over the mainstream languages for "real world business apps", a common example mentioned is reddit switching to Python from Lisp. Also that stuff like the language ecosystem is more important.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well we software developers have the right of a culture of our own, just like plane pilots like to talk endlessly about old war birds, and fly gliders.

For me, Lisp is akin to a Concorde or a P-51, it is not the aircraft of choice today but helped to shape everything that came next.

</comment><comment><USER46> HN should start supporting TeX so people can argue in math instead.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wait, no one's mentioned the automatic garbage collecting?

</comment><comment> chupa-chups (L)ets (I)nsert (S)ome (P)arantheses :-)

I like LISP since it was an eye-opener for me long ago, showing the essence of computer sciences (i.e. tail recursion, functional programming, immutable data structures, terseness vs. understandability).

<comment><USER29> Most of the data structures in ANSI Lisp are mutable, as are variable bindings and global function bindings. Support for tail recursion is a quality-of- implementation issue. There is excellent support for procedural programming: the language constructs are strictly evaluated and many key language constructs evaluate a body of zero or more forms (called an "implicit progn"), all but the last of which have to have side-effects for that to make sense. There are constructs for iteration over a single instance of the loop variables, and control transfer features: a form of goto within a labeled block called a tagbody, as well as dynamic non-local control transfers that support the condition handling system. Functional programming is possible by confining to a very small language subset (sometimes called "Pure Lisp").

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't know if anybody is obsessed with Lisp though.

<comment><USER18> I am

<comment><USER48> Obsessed? Or you just like it. I think obsession is a bit too strong in this context. I also pretty much like Lisp even though I cannot use it day to day because everybody else works in Java, Python, Go and most developers do not consider any of the Lisp languages production ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's a great excuse to claim a label of 'programming genius' without having to explain why you haven't written anything useful or groundbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER50> Just be glad there's not three dozen HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY? posts everyday.</comment>


How the Best Apps Onboard - <AUTHOR> http://uxarchive.com/tasks/onboard

<comment><USER2> Your title no verb.</comment>


Tiny, spherical LCD that can be embedded within contact lenses - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/5/3730988/scientists-develop-lcd-contact-lens <comment><USER2> So the days of Green Lantern-style emblems displaying emotions may not be too far off?</comment>


How to Use Google Webmaster Tools to Measure Indexation - <AUTHOR> http://www.ginzametrics.com/blog/how-to-use-google-webmaster-tools-to-measure-indexation/

<comment><USER2> didn't know this was new, it's actually a quite old SEO "tool of the trade" (yeah, not all SEOs brainwank about pagerank) the cool thing is you can use it for after the fact analysis and even tests.

as there is no negative impact if you communicate one page in one or 20 sitemaps - so you can sort, slice and dice your content into different segments and see what (kinda) correlates with indexing.

i.e.: here is a nice test i did for a customer, we sorted his landingpage index (a few hundred thousand pages) after an descending internal content metric (think weighted chars- and wordcount) [https://img.skitch.com/20120123-bm3jpjdtt4xrr2t2mxqnikmu54.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120123-bm3jpjdtt4xrr2t2mxqnikmu54.png) and ascending after URL length [https://img.skitch.com/20120123-kqnnb15bj2puy2k276jiupxg12.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120123-kqnnb15bj2puy2k276jiupxg12.png)</comment>


Show HN: First attempt at a CLI midwest card game in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aryzach/Euchre <comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to learn Haskell, but don't know anything about app development. Ultimately, I want to iterate and use this project to learn how to write idiomatic, production quality Haskell, and learn app development.

This is a draft of the game engine. Rules in README. Feedback is appreciated.</comment>


High-tax states are losing people, money and seats in Congress - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/blue-state-redistribution-11578443075 <comment><USER2> 1\. No state in the US has politically powerful unions, public or private. They're mostly in the employers' pockets and keep making concession after concession. Not to mention being in the pocket of the democratic party, for years already; and failing to participate in solidarity struggles by one union for another; and essentially shutting down their own strikes despite the members' sentiments, etc. etc.

2\. Very few data points, no trends over time, no examination of other causes of population flows etc.

My conclusion: This is a pro-corporate propaganda piece: They want low/no taxes and an even more maleable and precarious workforce.

Sounds like standard pro-corporate propaganda.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, if there's such an exodus, why isn't real estate in California cheap?

<comment><USER4> The population can grow from kids bring born and growing up in CA.

If the housing supply doesn't match the internal population growth you can have an exodus and an increase in housing prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This opinion piece overstates its case. NC has a flat 5.25% income tax. Alaska has no income tax. Yet NC is growing and Alaska shrinking. There's a lot more going on with where people choose to live than just tax rates.

The Economist did a special report last year comparing Texas and California, looking at a lot more than just tax rates. They are the two largest states facing many similar problems with very different approaches.

[https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/06/20/texafornia- drea...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/06/20/texafornia-dreaming)

[https://www.economist.com/special- report/2019/06/20/californ...](https://www.economist.com/special- report/2019/06/20/california-and-texas-have-different-visions-for-americas- future)

<comment><USER6> What does NC have to do with it? In any case, income tax is just one part of the total state tax burden, often overshadowed by property tax.

> _Over the last decade New York has lost more of its population to other > states (7.2%) than any other save Alaska (8%), followed by Illinois (6.8%), > Connecticut (5.6%) and New Jersey (5.5%)._

<comment><USER5> The piece makes the argument that state income taxes are causing people to leave. It used NC as an example of a state that's growing. Yet NC has a state income tax higher than some of the states that are shrinking.

Yes there are other taxes, but the piece focuses entirely on income tax. My point is that there are many factors in where people choose to live, of which cost of living is only a single factor, but this piece lazily focuses solely on a single component of cost of living. It's thus easy to invalidate its argument that income taxes are what's causing people to leave.

<comment><USER6> TFA does not focus purely on _income_ taxes, but rather the overall tax burden.

NC is ranked 26th in terms of overall tax burden. [1]

Rich people aren't paying regular income tax rates as their primary tax burden. They pay property, capital gains, and corporate tax rates.

I think NC is considered very good for corporate rates, and middle of the road for personal, property, and capital gains rates. [2]

[1] - [https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax- bur...](https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax- burden/20494/)

[2] - [https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-business-tax- cl...](https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-business-tax-climate- index/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just moved from CA to CO. 7.25 to 4.6 ... Not a massive change mind you but I'll take it.

The main problem with CA are the "hidden" taxes WRT quality of life. Real estate prices being insane. Serious homeless problems in SF. Smoke from all the fires. PG&E being evil, etc.

<comment><USER8> Ironically the high California real estate prices are partly due to low (property) taxes from Prop 13. Much like low mortgage rates, they make real estate more attractive as an investment and help inflate prices.

Texas has much higher property taxes but much more affordable housing. Which runs counter to most people's ideas of red states always having lower taxes than blue states.

<comment><USER9> Austin median home price is around 400k and without prop 13

<comment><USER8> Is that supposed to be high? It's like a quarter of the Bay Area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People who do these stats should see where the investment is for people who left.

1\. Are they moving to Florida to take advantage of a tax shelter alone or have they also sold off any NY/California real estate. That is, people move for strategic reasons even if they believe in California/NY

2\. Young people vs Retirement - retiring to Florida is not a new thing.

3\. Wouldn't you want old people to move away from high cost cities so young can move in?

<comment><USER11> A lot of middle class families with kids move out. Bad public schools despite huge taxes is not great for those raising their kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the most direct examples of this for the HN demographic is the migration of tech workers from San Francisco to Seattle, which has similar wages but no income taxes and no capital gains taxes. That saves tens of thousands of dollars per year on income tax alone. It isn't a secret that of the two big factors incentivizing people to move to Seattle from San Francisco, one of them is the substantially reduced tax incidence (the other factor being quality of life).

There is definitely a threshold where people start arbitraging tax differences between States, though it doesn't happen often because demographic and lifestyle preference dimensions also factor heavily. The partial de- correlation between tax policy and predominant demographics/lifestyle in recent years, combined with relentless tax increases in some jurisdictions, has created an environment ripe for tax arbitrage.

<comment><USER13> As a non-vampire, I have to laugh at "quality of life." You can't use those tax savings, or any amount of money for that matter, to buy a clear day in January. Not to mention the wildly different personalities cultivated by each climate.

<comment><USER14> Please excuse what would otherwise be a glib comment, only writing this because I peeked out my window (seattle) and got a good chuckle out of your making this statement on the one day I can make this joke:

It's fine; we don't need money to buy a clear day in January, just for someone on the internet to assert we don't have any for nature to go "Oh no they didn't."

(full disclosure it is a little cloudy but the sun is definitely out, and it's gorgeous.)

<comment><USER13> I'll try to assert that you don't have any sun more often then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you have a very small percent of your population pay an ever increasing share of the tax burden, it's quite easy for them to avoid it (move to Florida). This problem has hit NY and Connecticut especially hard. Here is a story from 2016 of how a single resident moving from New Jersey put the entire state's budget at risk [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top- taxpayer...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer- moved-and-new-jersey-shuddered.html)

The truth is that if you want to dramatically increase taxes collected, you need a broad-based tax that hits the middle class. But the middle class hates taxes as much as everyone else! And therein lies the problem for politicians. They can continue to bash the rich, but when push comes to shove soaking them won't solve the problem. Seizing all of Bill Gates money will only fund the federal deficit (over $1 trillion this year alone) for a few months. And then what to do?

One enormous, immoral handout to the middle class is the mortgage interest tax deduction and the fixed-rate 30 year mortgage which are simply subsidized handouts to people well-off enough to purchase property. People have come to think this is a right, when in reality all taxpayers are handing over money to those rich enough to purchase property. Only the USA has the fixed-rate mortgage because it's bad business for banks. Eliminating this would be a much more economically logical way to increase the tax take than soaking the rich, but I guarantee there is 0% chance of this happening because, again, no one likes paying taxes!

<comment><USER16> Taxes don't make sense in a fiat system where the government could just print as much money as it needs anyway. Income tax hurts income earners, not asset holders.

The system should not incentivize people to own more assets, it should incentivize them to produce more value.

With the right regulatory framework and good separation of institutions, it would be much more efficient for the government to just print the money it needs directly.

I don't buy the argument that this would cause capital flight. The government has many tools at their disposal to prevent that. It doesn't matter in the long term if rich people dump all their stocks all at once and move overseas; that would create significant opportunities for smaller local investors to replace them because most of the value-producing companies are on the ground; the infrastructure and the workers cannot be moved easily and that's where the real value is.

<comment><USER17> > Taxes don't make sense in a fiat system where the government could just > print as much money as it needs anyway

There was an interesting discussion of this is a book my income tax professor in law school recommended to those who were interesting in the theoretical and philosophical issues of tax systems.

The usual argument against the government printing money is that it causes inflation.

Suppose, for example, you have a $1 000 000 000 000 in circulation. Each dollar is worth 1/1 000 000 000 000 of the value of the total economy.

If the government prints, say, $52 631 578 947 dollars, there is then $1 052 631 578 947 in circulation, each dollar now worth 1/1 052 631 578 947 of the total economy, and the government having 52 631 578 947 of those dollars, giving the government 52 631 578 947/1 052 631 578 947 of the economy, or 5% of economy.

In many ways this is very similar to a 5% flat tax, except there is no need for taxpayers to file returns, no need for complex regulations about what is or is not taxable income, and you can't evade it by keeping your transactions off the record.

From an individual point of view, losing 5% of my purchasing power to inflation isn't really worse than losing 5% of my purchasing power to taxation.

Inflation has another problem, though. As the value of a dollar, as a percent of the total economy, keeps going down, people need more and more of them to get the same things. We'd have to be frequently changing prices, changing pay, and changing everything else that is denoted in dollars.

That was probably a bigger problem in the past, and will be a smaller problem in the future. As more and more transactions go entirely electronic, we could probably internally do everything in some sort of pseudo-dollar that's pegged to a fixed fraction of the total economy or something like that that the electronic systems convert automatically to current dollars on the fly. So you go to the store to buy bread, which the store internally priced using pseudo- dollars, and the electronic price display tag under bread on the shelf converts that 2020 dollars and displays that.

<comment><USER9> > Inflation has another problem, though. As the value of a dollar, as a > percent of the total economy, keeps going down, people need more and more of > them to get the same things. We'd have to be frequently changing prices, > changing pay, and changing everything else that is denoted in dollars.

don't we already have inflation and deal with these problems anyway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a little flimsy to ascribe causality in the headline

<comment><USER19> Anecdotally, there is a link. SALT caps were the last straw for many high- income former New Yorkers.

If you travel a lot for work and pleasure, it isn't difficult to fall below the residency thresholds. You're still paying tax for the time spent in _e.g._ New York or California. But the other income can be shifted to a lower-tax jurisdiction.

I'm staying in New York. But there is a limit at which the tradeoff is worth it.

<comment><USER20> > If you travel a lot for work and pleasure, it isn't difficult to fall below > the residency thresholds. You're still paying tax for the time spent in e.g. > New York or California. But the other income can be shifted to a lower-tax > jurisdiction.

It's freeloading. Their lifestyles are possible because of high paying jobs in cities that invest to create conditions where such jobs can exist at all. (Same for the vaunted high paid remote workers.) They benefit from those investments but do not wish to contribute. This kind of defect cycle eventually leads to killing the goose that's laying the golden eggs.

<comment><USER19> > _It 's freeloading_

Most of their productive lives are spent outside these cities. Once, they gained from those cities. But no longer.

Today, the cities are bases for access to friends and leisure. The locals create zero incentive for value producers, from before or today, to stay.

I say this as a proud New Yorker and Bay Area native.

<comment><USER20> Maybe all your friends are in agriculture. Obviously I don't know. But most of the productive and dynamic sectors of the US economy (including tech and finance) could not exist without the network effects provided by our big, and big spending, cities. The people that make a living directly or indirectly in those sectors are benefiting from the investments made by New York and California. If they choose to live in rural Montana or the Cayman Islands while benefiting from the network effects provided by NYC and the Bay Area, that's freeloading. If all the world were the rural Montana or the Cayman Islands it would be a very poor world indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In case of paywall:

* [https://archive.is/Mra7Q](https://archive.is/Mra7Q)

<comment><USER22> Why am I getting served a cloudflare cert, and getting a 403 from cloudflare[1]?

[1] [http://prntscr.com/qt3tl0](http://prntscr.com/qt3tl0)

<comment><USER23> [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is- error-1001/182...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is- error-1001/18227)

<comment><USER22> I'm familiar with the disagreement, I used to get a DNS error not a 403. Looks like things have escalated a bit:

        $ dig archive.is

        ; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> archive.is

        [</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-->8</comment><comment>--]

        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        archive.is.  299 IN A 18.104.22.168

        ;; Query time: 224 msec
        ;; SERVER: 18.104.22.168#53(18.104.22.168)
        ;; WHEN: Mon Jan 27 01:21:23 PST 2020
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55

        $ dig archive.is @1.1

        ; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> archive.is @1.1

        [</comment><comment>-->8</comment><comment>--]

        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        archive.is.  228 IN A 188.8.131.52
        archive.is.  228 IN A 126.96.36.199

        ;; Query time: 7 msec
        ;; SERVER: 184.108.40.206#53(126.96.36.199)
        ;; WHEN: Mon Jan 27 01:23:35 PST 2020
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 71

</comment><comment><USER24> Relevant: [https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct- millenn...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-millennials- socialism-bernie-sanders-jobs-20160325-story.html)

> When tax rates are not explicit, millennials say they'd prefer larger > government offering more services (54 percent) to smaller government > offering fewer services (43 percent). However when larger government > offering more services is described as requiring high taxes, support flips > and 57 percent of millennials opt for smaller government with fewer services > and low taxes, while 41 percent prefer large government.

</comment><comment><USER25> As they should be. California has perhaps gone as far as it can go, and one wonders when the rubber band is going to snap back so that the place becomes friendlier to workers and business.</comment>


Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/apple-watch-sales-up-over-50-since-last-year/ <comment><USER4> I've been saying it all along: to understand the Apple Watch, look to the iPod. The first three years of iPod sales were minuscule compared to the following ten: [https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_qua...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg)

The two products occupy a very similar space of affordable luxury; they are not world-changing like the Mac or iPhone, but category-defining. Through gradual iteration and segmentation, Apple slowly turned its niche product into a cultural force.

Just wait until the iPod Classic 5G equivalent of the Watch comes out.

<comment><USER5> The jobs the watch will do aren't as clear cut as it was for the iPod.

The iPod let you listen to music and carried lots of (or all of) your music and had software that made it easy to convert and manage your digital music and buy more over the internet. Those were things basically everyone wanted and it did that better than competitors.

The watch? Well yeah it tells time, but it's worse at that then most watches and everyone already carries a device that tells time which the watch can't replace. Yeah, it gives you slightly faster access to notifications but not everyone needs that. Yeah, it has some good health/tracking benefits but that's not a huge deal to most people. Imho the best use of the watch is for (mobile OS)-Pay/mobile ID but adoption is still weak (unless you're in Tokyo) and it can be delivered with a much smaller wearable.

<comment><USER6> I have a few points for you in response:

1\. I'm what you'd call a "watch guy." In the time I have had the Apple Watch Series 2, I have barely used my mechanicals (including a Lange & Sohne and a Nomos Glashutte). The Apple Watch comes with me on all but the most formal/elegant occasions, and I now hate changing straps on my mechanical watches in comparison. The Apple Watch may not be as beautiful, but it is far more versatile and useful. When I want to dress it up a bit, I throw a Hermes leather strap on it, which works nicely in just about everything other than a suit (which is essentially the only time I'd jump back to the Lange).

2\. You're vastly underestimating the utility of quick replies on the Apple Watch, in particular. I have quick replies for every conceivable response I could give to someone that is fewer than five words or so. This makes a lot of communication much faster because I don't need to take out my phone - I can tap, "congratulations", "cool!", "no", "yes", "I'm in a meeting", "I'm in a movie", etc.

3\. Having notifications or synced functionality on the watch is a very frictionless way of enhancing iPhone interaction. As other commenters have said I can quickly glance at a multitude of things, not just the time. If I receive a message on Slack, I don't need to take my phone out if it's not something that requires my attention. When driving, I can have directions on my wrist directly, instead of on my dashboard. I can even have conversations on my wrist, hands free, while cooking. These are all ways it's directly enhanced my life in ways I wouldn't have really thought of without trying it.

4\. I run a fair amount - at least 30 miles each week. The Apple Watch is the single most empowering device I've ever had for quantified self tracking and fitness enhancement. Having a pair of Airpods and an Apple Watch is a fantastic combination - I can't even imagine bringing my phone with my on a run anymore. I can look at my wrist to see my pace and split information, and that's just on the native Workout app. I can track my heart rate constantly using something like Cardiogram. I can also track my sleep. There is a massive amount of data enablement that I can now see and monitor as much as I want in the Health app.

<comment><USER7> I think in a couple more iterations the Apple Watch will be the best fitness tracker out there. At the moment the poor battery life doesn't lend itself well to things like sleep tracking or longer activities.

<comment><USER8> Only if the current best fitness trackers don't also iterate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every nerd I know (including the ones who own Apple Watches) mirrors the comments in this thread — poor text entry, slow, half baked.

Every non-nerd I know who has one absolutely loves them. Last month, my parents came to visit and... \- boarded their flights with the Delta app \- paid for taxis with Apple Pay on their wrists \- laughed at how much higher their "steps" were here than back at home \- when my mother wound up in an accident, used Hey Siri to call us from her hospital bed when she couldn't reach her phone.

We've been watching this industry for decades, unsure why it's so hard for nerds to grasp that Apple doesn't make products for "us". But hey enjoy your Creative Labs Nomad...

<comment><USER6> That's such a generalization that I can't believe I'm bothering to refute it, but:

1\. I consider myself pretty nerdy and I love the Apple Watch. You now know me, at least through Hacker News. I made another comment in this thread extolling the Apple Watch, and there are others. It feels like you cherrypicked the negativity, because I actually see a lot of balanced feedback that is both positive and negative about the watch, many of which comes from fellow "nerds".

2\. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it _seems_ like you're using your in-group as a signaling heuristic rather than for an empirical analysis here. What constitutes a "nerd" if you haven't found any nerds who like it and if you didn't notice the comments from fellow nerds who really enjoy it?

3\. I haven't personally found any of the issues you're talking about, but I do believe you've had them if you say you have. I'd chalk that up to an "underspecified complaint", because I don't know what the context was that resulted in poor behavior from the device. In my daily usage I don't find those issues emerge. However, I'd also gently suggest your expectations might be miscalibrated here and that you could be nitpicking. The device is absolutely not perfect, but I'm surprised if you disagree that it's not empowering, even for your in-group. It may be that you don't want to take advantage of those features, but if that's the case it's really not fair to generalize to a blanket claim that Apple doesn't develop for nerds.

Again, speaking as a nerd, I feel Apple develops products that target me very well. I use Linux on a workstation as a daily driver, but I enjoy my MacBook Pro more than I enjoy any other machine. I had an Android phone for about a year and switched back to the latest iPhone because it's both more secure and has better integration. And being that I develop software, I can appreciate that Apple has developed _very solid_ software and hardware even if it can't meet _all_ expectations.

<comment><USER10> I often leave comments exactly like the one you replied to, so while I'm not the person you replied to, I might as well be.

HN loves to hate Apple and everything they do, and the Internet as a whole loves to hate Apple. Going back to the infamous "less space than a Nomad, no wifi, lame" comment. Now to be sure, there are tons of us who like Apple products, but there are a lot of loudmouths who need to shout from the rooftops that this Apple product isn't targeted at them and that's why it will fail. Is it the majority? No, far from it. That's why Apple products are almost always huge successes. Most of their customers actually like them.

But every thread about the iPhone you have people who feel the need to explain why they'd never buy one because they need a headphone jack. Every thread about the iPad you have people who need to tell you that an Android tablet is cheaper, but people don't need tablets and the fad is wearing off. Every thread about the Macbook someone has to say how the XPS is a better value for the money and actually has function keys.

So when you hear someone like me or the person you responded to saying "nerds love to hate Apple", it's hyperbole. Nerds love to love Apple just like everyone else in the world and that's why they make a shitload of money every quarter. Internet loudmouths love to hate Apple, and unfortunately Internet loudmouths are the ones who get upvotes. So it gives the impression that nerds hate Apple, which leads other people to think "hey maybe I should hate Apple too" and makes news sites run stories about how nerds hate Apple's latest products.

It's not true, but that's the impression you'd get if you read HN or /r/technology.

<comment><USER11> _HN loves to hate Apple and everything they do,_

...not all...

 _and the Internet as a whole loves to hate Apple._

...not all...

(Yes, I mean this whole comment as a reference! However, it's also a correction intentionally reflecting the structure of the parent and gp comments.)

<comment><USER10> Did you miss the part where I said "So when you hear someone like me or the person you responded to saying "nerds love to hate Apple", it's hyperbole."? I said that for a reason.

I restated the hyperbolic argument, then said "of course it's not _all_ of the Internet, but that's how it seems sometimes" but the point still stands. Actually the _reason_ the point stands is because not everyone agrees, but the people who hate Apple are always loud enough to drown out the people who don't. Go find any Apple product announcement and see for yourself what the top comments are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Overall I still regret buying my Generation 1. The hardware was just not ready (Neither was the software, but the updates have improved it quite a bit over the 1.0 disaster). I knew I'd be an early adopter, so some rough edges are to be expected. Even so I experience(d) the following:

\- Severe lag when triggering Siri

\- Slow mail updates, to the point where I pull my phone out of my pocket anyway

\- "This message contains elements Apple Watch cannot display". Seen way too often and it is frustrating.

\- The wrist band mechanism failed to lock after ~4mo. Apple sent me a replacement Watch no questions asked which was great, but it took ~1mo to do so.

\- The digital crown no longer rotates smoothly and instead feels like there's stuff clogging it. Washing the watch helps for a short while.

\- Slow location updates, meaning a quick glance for at the local high/low weather is still often cities away after I arrive somewhere. Use case: Will I need my jacket with me later, or can I leave it in my car?

The heart rate monitor is great and my favorite feature, but not worth the $400 I paid for it.

<comment><USER13> As a counter point, I'm still using my first gen (not even Series 1!) Apple Watch after 2 years and it runs well enough for my uses. I would likely use Siri more if it was more responsive, but I use the notifications, Now Playing view, activity tracking and more all the time and it is really nice.

<comment><USER12> I too have a first gen, and have corrected that! I was under the impression that S1 was a renamed G1, but perhaps not?

Its good to see that others are finding it more useful than I did, but in retrospect I should have waited.

<comment><USER14> The Series 1 is the original Apple Watch but with the processor from the Series 2. It's a different device because of that, and lots of us call the original a Series 0. However, go on Gumtree and you'll see plenty of peppy claiming they're selling a Series 1 when it's actually an Original Apple Watch.

To make matters worse, the SoC in the original Apple Watch is called the S1, and the chip in the Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watches is called the S2, making the numbering more confusing and preventing us from shortening anything to S1/S2.

Thanks Apple!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From my own experience and reading that of others, it's the device that no one can justify until they get one. Then it becomes the device that the vast majority love and some can't live without.

<comment><USER16> So I've been a serial Pebble smartwatch rather than Apple Watch owner - <USER2> original motivation was I thought it's be neat to be able to glance at my wrist while riding the bike and see who was calling/texting so I would know if I wanted to pull over and answer right then, or wait till I'd got to my destination. Turns out the answer was _always_ "No." whoever it was, it could always wait. I was either going to be at home/work in 5-10 minutes and I could call back then, or I was on a trip and wasn't going to stop till the bike needed more fuel in an hour or two and it could wait till then. (Or I could ignore it completely...)

When Pebble sold out to Garmin* and refunded my pledge/order for the last version, I spent some of that money on a second hand mechanical watch - <USER3> really don't miss much from the "smart" features I'd gotten used to... (Probably the only thing I miss is the "silent vibration on my wrist when I've left my phone on my desk but am still nearby"...)

Edit: * It was FitBit not Garmin, as pointed out in replies by dugfin and spike021. Thanks.

<comment><USER17> I'm a fellow Pebble user. Currently wearing a Pebble Time. My favorite feature of the watch is the screen, because it's always on, and, like traditional digital watches, ambient light increases visibility of the screen (unlike the Apple Watch, which is hindered by bright ambient light). At the moment, I plan to wear this watch until it stops working or can't hold a charge. After this, I don't know where I'll go. I might try the Apple Watch, but prices seem a bit steep for me. I might just go back to a non-smart watch.

I wish Pebble had managed the business side of things better, because I like(d) the product.

<comment><USER16> I'm _vaguely_ considering Dremel-ing open my original Pebble to see if replacing the battery is possible. The Googleable teardowns and xrays seem to suggest there's not a lot of hope though...

<comment><USER18> You can just unscrew the back panel. I've looked for a replacement battery for my pebble but to no avail. It's actually a relatively serviceable device if you don't mind soldering. (Mines a gen1 pebble by the way)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have the Series 2 and it's been great for me.

1) Vibrating alarm. Perfect as I hate these big vibrating discs for the deaf. They break frequently.

2) Message/Email notification. It vibrates when I get a text message so I can look and see if it's worth my time to reply or wait till later. Same with email.

3) Fitness - great for running and can even leave the phone at home (Strava especially).

<comment><USER20> It's really sad to me how terrible many accessibility devices are. I get that it's a small market, but it's almost like no one even cares enough to make a really excellent product for people with disabilities. Because there is a smaller selection and because people rely on this gear in ways able-bodied persons don't need to, it's even more important to get it right and make it affordable but high-quality. It saddens me that these people are so underserved due to capitalistic forces.

<comment><USER21> The economy is weird right now in a lot of ways, especially due to excess consolidation. You see a lot of big companies who make tons of money almost too easily, which serves to drive them away from point in the effort to pursue other corners of the market. It's like the RadioShack problem writ large. Why bother selling electronics components when cell phone plans have such a huge markup?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't have a lot of use for the Apple watch myself, but it's been great for my wife. She, like a lot of women, regularly wears clothing without pockets that can hold her phone, and puts her phone in her purse.

Having your phone in your purse radically changes the value of the watch. She used to often miss notifications, and sometimes calls, that she couldn't hear or feel. And even if she did notice them, digging your phone out of your purse is considerably less convenient than taking it out of your pocket.

<comment><USER23> That comes back to my core opinion on smart watches: notifications are the core. Everything else is feature creep. Imagine shopping for Bluetooth headsets - do you want one with biometrics and a backup radio antenna and a microSD slot for playing music without its phone, and a one-day battery?

Or do you want a good quality mic and earphones with a solid Bluetooth connection, and a week-long battery for light use?

I want the latter. Apple's take on smart watches is the former.

I don't want a "smart" watch. I want a Bluetooth notification watch. Very specific purpose. That's what Pebble made. It's a shame it didn't work out.

<comment><USER8> Bluetooth notification watch sounds like Fitbit Blaze. Pebble's strengths IMHO were developer friendliness and always-on display.

<comment><USER23> Always-on display should be a given. It's a watch. Anything where I have to think about turning on the display fails to be a watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personal anecdote: I bought an Apple Watch early and didn't really know what to do with it. It wasn't until I fell off my bike and broke it did I realize how much more exercise I was getting with it. I bought another one soon after.

<comment><USER25> > It wasn't until I fell off my bike and broke it did I realize how much more > exercise I was getting with it.

How does that relate?

<comment><USER24> I was getting a ton of exercise with the Watch, broke it, and stopped exercising because I wasn't being reminded to.

<comment><USER26> Why is the Apple Watch the catalyst for this versus _any_ HR monitor or fitness tracker?

<comment><USER27> Just going to make a few assumptions. Apple has a gamification system similar to fitbit. You complete rings (goals) by walking, standing up and exercising. Except you are competing against yourself and they prompt you with daily reminders / notifications. Being that Apple Watch is more than a notification system, it's a bit more difficult to ignore. Let's say you're on a 80 day streak completing 100% of your goals of standing up, exercising and walking. You'll want to keep going. At 24 hour hackathon, there was someone trying to keep their streak up so they ended up leaving to jog around the block to complete their daily activity.

Of course, this isn't to say that it can't be possible without the Apple Watch. It's just that it's more difficult to ignore.

<comment><USER28> You can now do Activity Sharing so it can be more than competing with just yourself if you have friends who use a an Apple Watch. It can be a great motivational tool if you use it as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope this motivates Android Wear manufacturers to make a decent watch. Right now they are all pretty mediocre. You either get a fat sport watch with LTE or a less fat watch with very few compelling features.

I just want NFC (for Android Pay), heart rate monitor, no-LTE (in exchange for being thinner) in a classic, non-sport style.

<comment><USER30> Huawei has some nice offerings...

<comment><USER29> Huawei was expected to have some (the first edition watches were well loved but growing old). Then the Huawei Watch 2 ended up being a thick sportwatch with LTE. The Huawei Watch 2 Classic, which looks marginally less sporty, is inexplicably is just as thick as the Watch 2 despite ditching all the LTE circuitry. It's also roughly $100 more expensive (figure that one out).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not a watch wearer, so I don't plan to buy one. However, I thought if I DID (or if I got one as a gift), I would probably want an Apple Watch. So Apple has convinced me there. Do others feel similar?

<comment><USER32> I wear a fitness tracker. If I'm gonna wear something on my wrist, it ought to do something that my phone doesn't, otherwise it's hard to justify the cost.

<comment><USER33> I like to wear a watch, so I kind of wish I could get a fitness tracker (with heart rate monitor) that doesn't have a clock on it. I sometimes wear a watch and a fitbit and that just looks stupid.

<comment><USER34> If you don't mind wearing a big fitness tracker, the Fitbit Blaze has been great in my experience. It's a bit old now, and the new bigger fitbits are the Surge and the Charge 2, but I still love my Blaze.

<comment><USER35> > the new bigger fitbits are the Surge and the Charge 2, but I still love my > Blaze.

The Blaze is newer than the Surge; it's basically a Surge with a color screen and the face detachable from the band (which is much better for charging, as well as making replacing the band practical) but without independent GPS (which means if you want to do run tracking without carrying a phone, the Surge still has an advantage.)

The Charge 2, IIRC, replaced the Charge about the same time as the Blaze was introduced, it's basically the next tier down from the Surge/Blaze.

(Current Blaze and former Surge and before that Flex user.)

<comment><USER34> I stand corrected!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've said it a few times when the topic comes up but one of the best features is the magnetic milanese loop. For a watch that typically needs to be taken off once a day for charging (arguably every two days) the ease of taking off and putting on a magnetic milanese loop makes the pain disappear. It's no more effort than yanking your phone out of your pocket to stick it on the charger.

Other things that makes the watch great - vibration alarm wakes me without fail while allowing my partner remain asleep, remotely turn off my phone alarm without getting out of bed (though that does lead to more snoozing...), remotely ping my phone when I've left it somewhere, remotely control my music without my phone including pushing the audio to Airplay, messaging via dictation which seems more accurate than my phone. One that I miss but can't use any more because I switched banks - Apple Pay. You look like a bell-end doing it but it felt like the future.

The sapphire screen seems legit because I've belted the watch face into stone and steel surfaces without a single mark showing up. The stainless steel casing also seems more durable than I expected - not a single permanent mark that I can see...perhaps some micro abrasions. The heart rate monitor casing seems to be the weak point - it has quite a few scratches.

<comment><USER37> > _I 've said it a few times when the topic comes up but one of the best > features is the magnetic milanese loop._

I can't stand it, because I keep mistaking the tiny rubs as the band shifts against itself for notification vibrations. I reverted to the silicon band because of this.

<comment><USER36> Interesting, I don't have that problem but it certainly does like to eat the hair on my arm. I've just gotten used to it and don't notice it as much.

I remember wearing heavy stainless Seiko watches with chain-link bands in the late 80's and early 90's and enduring similar pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've been using my Apple Watch for 2 years now. It has proven to be an extremely useful for me just for the Apple Pay and Notifications alone. It causes a strange social issue though. If you're in a middle of conversation, glancing at your watch every now and again is a rude gesture. I have had to explain my habit several times and forced my self not look at it for every odd notification.

<comment><USER39> Funny, that's why I stopped wearing regular watches. I don't think I'll ever be able to go for a smartwatch. But then again, it might become accepted behaviour just like glancing at your phone during a conversation appears to have become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I got the Series 2 in January. I love it, but can also see why it might be more of a niche product. $400 for a watch isn't exactly cheap and I know many people who opt for their smartphone over any kind of watch.

<comment><USER41> It's not out of the ordinary to spend $400 on something like a Seiko or Citizen watch - and those are just "dumb" watches

<comment><USER42> Them being dumb watches is the appeal though. A good "dumb" watch will last decades. An Apple Watch is obsolete after, what, two years?

I wear a battery-powered analog quartz dumb watch on my wrist and I love it. I change the battery every couple years and that's it. It tells perfectly accurate time (way more accurate than a mechanical watch costing orders of magnitude more) and will never be obsolete.

<comment><USER43> I think an obsolete apple watch will still be able to at least mirror the functionality of any 'dumb' watch.

<comment><USER44> Be properly waterproof, never need a charge, and take abuse for 30 years like a $150 automatic?

<comment><USER16> I've got a 70 year old mechanical watch on my wrist right now. I bought it second hand from eBay, but paid significantly under $150 for it...

<comment><USER42> Quartz watches tend to have better longevity than mechanical watches, owing to having fewer moving parts (zero in the case of a digital watch).

I don't know how much servicing that watch has had over the past 70 years, but it's probably significant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I had the first generation (Series 0) watch, got it when it first came out. Overall, I found it useless and frustrating. The big conveniences for me, though were:

(1) Tracking exercise.

(2) Telling me where and when my next meeting was: timeliness improved dramatically.

Big downsides for me:

(1) Charging it was annoying and frustrating, and traveling with it was worse. Turned into a giant spaghetti ball of lightning, inductive and laptop, to the point where I just stopped bringing it with me. It can't be better with Type-C can it? I generally use my laptop to charge the other things I have on my so another adapter?

(2) Leaving my job for a gap year meant no meetings.

(3) I had to take my phone anyways to listen to music, so I just used RunKeeper there, so another thing that didn't have to get sweaty. Apple's headphones just aren't very good. There's no seal, they fall out, the audio quality is mediocre. A $100 pair of Shure headphones is life changing and cannot be attached to a watch.

(4) Input is awful. Siri is the only way to input text and when you use it, if it gets a word wrong, god help you if you want to try and correct it. After a few failed substitution attempts I would just get my phone out due to sheer frustration.

(5) I had to take it off to type, the feel of it digging into my laptop and propping up my wrist drove my crazy.

(6) Staring at your wrist every time it taps on you tells the person you're with I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE. "Oh, sorry, no, my watch keeps tapping my wrist" gets old, fast. The social cues you send off just suck.

I just didn't see the value. Used it for 4 months, threw it into a drawer for 6, then sold if for 33% of its value. Didn't even hold value like an Apple product. This is no iPod, it's an iPad -- a category leader, maybe, but a small category. It doesn't do anything particularly well, just a bunch of stuff, kinda poorly.

</comment><comment><USER46> My big question is: what do people do with theirs? Other than notifications and fitness tracking, I'm struggling to think of a use case for owning one.

<comment><USER47> I don't have a smart watch myself but several of my coworkers do, the killer app for them seems to be two factor authentication codes; we've got like 10 different accounts at work that need 2fa and instead of pulling out their phones they just use the watch.

<comment><USER48> I use Authy instead of Google Auth; for some reason it never loads on my watch :-\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> After tiring of squinting at my Pebble, I bought the Series 2 a couple of months ago. My expectations were fairly modest given some of the early negative reviews of the series 1. But thus far I've been quite happy with it. I generally keep it muted and find the vibrating notifications to be an improvement over those on the iPhone.

The apps I find myself using more than any others are the timer/chronograph, which I use constantly when cooking/grilling. And the ability to take voice calls with it is occasionally quite helpful.

The Pebble's silicone wristband caused a rash on my wrist, but I've had no problems with the Nike Apple watch wristband (perhaps that's simply due to the holes that provide better ventilation.)

</comment><comment><USER50> It's been years and people still don't understand what Watch is. Meanwhile, it says what it is directly in the name. It's a watch first, and everything else distant second. By the standards of wristwatches $300 is not that much money.

<comment><USER51> Just because wristwatches are overpriced doesn't mean that anything that takes their name isn't.

<comment><USER50> "Overpriced" is a subjective term. 50% growth in sales suggests very competitive pricing. Think of it this way: Apple Watch isn't really competing with "wearable computers" everyone else is making. It plays a completely different ball game, and competes with wristwatches. I can't think of a better watch in $300 price range even though I don't wear one myself (my wife does). My main problem with it is the need to charge it daily. Once they get battery to 3-4 days, I'll buy one. Until then, my solar powered titanium Seiko diver will have to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I own a series 2 watch, the one with GPS and I really like it. I bought it not really knowing what I'd use it for but now I've got it setup for what I want I find myself really missing it when I'm not wearing it.

My main uses are telling the time, notifications from whatsapp & being able to see which meeting room my next meeting is in by glancing at my wrist.

I don't use any actual app on the watch itself. Its still to slow to really do anything, even if it was quicker I'm not sure reading twitter feeds / emails would be that great on it anyway.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've been wearing a Garmin or Polar watch for the past several years (run 30+ miles a week), and just recently got an Apple Watch.

For a serious runner, the Garmin watches are a lot better, but the truth is that I'm not really a "serious" runner, and Apple Watch is more pleasurable to use in a lot of ways.

I thought I would mind having to charge it every day coming from a device that needed to be charged about every 6 days (and that's including 24-hour HR tracking and 4-6 runs a week), but the truth is that I don't. I also thought I would mind not having all of the metrics or customizability that the Garmin offers, but the truth is that I'm not a competitive runner, and my V02Max isn't anything more than a curiosity. And, sure it's nice to be able to choose from a million different data fields to display while I'm working out, but the default ones on the Nike Running app are pretty close to what I chose in the first place.

In the end, a lot of the things I thought were non-negotiables ended up not really being a big deal. Apple has really nailed the Watch user experience in lots of little ways.

I intentionally held out when all of my friends bought the original Apple watch (and most subsequently sold it), but I'm noticing that an increasing number of people have adopted the watch a hardware revision and a few OS iterations later.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've been seeing them all over. I think they're going to be a sleeper hit with people

<comment><USER44> Same here. And haven't seen android on a wrist for many months.

<comment><USER55> Is there even a competing top-of-the-line android watch? I was shopping around last November and got a Samsung watch over a couple of Garmin ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Series 2 is decent - a great solution for notification polling but I think WatchOS 4 will be the first non-beta release. There's a lot of neat ideas but so many little "do they even have a QA department?" moments, starting with having to wipe & reset my new one when it disabled activity tracking with no explanation. Quick Siri access is great but it underscores just how limited Siri is – falling into the uncanny valley of conversational UI.

</comment><comment><USER57> By next year the watch will be the controller for AR Kit apps on A10x devices.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm somewhat surprised that one of the touted features of smart watches never materialized, and doesn't seem to matter... early prognosticators proposed lots of custom faces: ones that emulated famous watches, ones that allowed a wide variety of placement of "complications", and ones that intermingled various ways of displaying time.

While the big brands did release customized versions of their famous faces (Tag Heuer) and Apple got sued for making a clock that looked like a Swiss Railway Clock (licensed by Mondaine), the idea of downloadable faces or themes, made by users or junior devs, never really became a thing.

I miss it; I think the apple watch face options are really lacking (though Mickey makes me laugh even now). But I seem to be in the minority of wanting more...

</comment><comment><USER59> I unconsciously love my Watch. The battery life has improved MASSIVELY since Gen1, the fitness stuff is groovy, being able to control music is handy, alarms and notifications are brilliant.

Just being able to not take my phone with me when I go for a (admittedly half- arsed) run, is worth the price of admission.

</comment><comment><USER60> the Series 0 (first gen) watch was my first watch ever (never felt the need for a watch until then)

Been using it for over 2 years and I'm super happy with it.

Watch OS 3 made a huge difference in terms of usability for the watch. The background updates and swiping to change watch faces means I have my most used watch Complications in the 3 watchfaces I use. Weather, podcast, music and timer apps (from complications) are so useful! I feel if you don't make use of multiple complications with watch faces, you are not using your watch to the fullest :)

Haven't used it much for Siri nor have I tried testing its water resistance. And I'll probably for in for a series 3 or series 4 based on my needs.

Watch sales up 50%: I think the Apple Watch and the AirPods are peripherals for the iPhone that are so well priced (is Apple making any profit on these sales?) that I doubt if they have a huge margin. Having the highest margin phone and low margin peripherals like Watch, AirPods (probably glasses soon?) means once you go iPhone you don't look back. In the years when an iPhone owner chooses not to upgrade iPhone, he/she may choose to upgrade one of the peripherals. Which means higher LTV customer for Apple!

<comment><USER61> FWIW Siri on the Watch (even my Series 0) has gotten at least an order of magnitude better, both in what it understands and how quickly and reliably it executes commands and queries.

Still a lot of room for improvement, but not the dumpster fire it was with watchOS 1.0.

<comment><USER60> True. For my use case though, I don't use Siri much except when I'm driving, which works great with Hey Siri on the phone itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I swore not to by a smartwatch a couple of years back, but ended up getting the Series 2 as a gift last month. I simply love it! I need constant reminder to exercise, meditate, etc and it seems to be a perfect companion for that.

What surprised me was the battery life. I was expecting to put it on charge every night, but for my limited usage pattern, it lasts a good two days easily. For me, it adds more value than a similarly priced dump watch.

</comment><comment><USER63> For what it's worth, the Apple Watch is something I haven't bought yet but have intended to buy since it was announced. There might be a lot of people who have been waiting a couple generations, or who just didn't think the existing ones were compelling enough to buy them over some other thing.

</comment><comment><USER64> The two main use cases seem to be notifications and fitness. I'm not big on working out, and I actively try to receive as few notifications as possible, so I don't think I'm in the target market for these. But I could see it being compelling for anyone who is interested in either of those use cases.

</comment><comment><USER65> Love my iWatch, but it tanks my iPhone's battery to the point where i had to buy a battery case :/

</comment><comment><USER66> Apple Watch, or accessories in general, are something you can buy at any time that increases the utility of your device. Compare this to something like an OS update that gets released annually for free, but you can't really control when you get it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Bought mine initially as an exercise tool, but found the GPS to be pretty incorrect - goal was to be able to run without the phone. But despite this (now running with phone), I still love it - surprised how much I enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'll may get myself the next Apple Watch - assuming that it can be used without an iPhone. My decision will depend on how good are the health features they implement.

</comment><comment><USER69> I got one for my birthday. It's not a small computer, it's a great watch. If you want a watch, not a computer, you will like it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Ben Bajarin, whose tweet is quoted in the article, put out another tweet saying he now believes Apple has sold 30 million watches.

</comment><comment><USER71> Heavy discounts help a lot in achieving this worthy goal!

</comment><comment><USER72> Forget my Apple Watch at home = miss most meetings at work.

My new dependency.

</comment><comment><USER73> I've been waiting for the Series 3 ... you know what they say about 3s :)</comment>


FDA Inspectors Call Theranos Blood Vial 'Uncleared Medical Device' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-inspectors-call-theranos-blood-vial-uncleared-medical-device-1445967607 <comment><USER2> My partner just got an offer from there a couple weeks ago and fortunately turned it down. Theranos actually negotiated hard on that initial extra $10k, got turned down, then called back a bunch of times offering even more money.

Hopefully they can meet fda requirements in a reasonable time frame and aren't wholesale deceiving everyone. If not, a whole bunch of employees totally unrelated to any potential deception are going to get hurt.

Also, I think they're a perfect metaphor for why startups can't hire. They were clearly willing to pay more than the initial offer, so they negotiated hard which would have started the relationship off on an antagonistic footing for what? Then when they were turned down, they were willing to pay even more than requested. The whole thing is just stupid. (But engineering shortage!) They were also unwilling to even discuss comp for 3 rounds of interviews, and were pissy when my partner refused a 3rd round interview at 9am the next morning when emailed at 4:30pm the night before and asked to drop everything on zero notice to come in the next day.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FDA report here [pdf]: [http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/@fdagov- afda-org...](http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/@fdagov-afda- orgs/documents/document/ucm469395.pdf)

<comment><USER3> This refutes their statement about the halt of the Nanotainer having been a voluntary decision, as it was clearly mandated by the FDA.

"Theranos founder and Chief Executive Elizabeth Holmes confirmed the company had sharply curtailed its use of the vials, which it calls nanotainers, but presented it as a voluntary move."

So they lied /again/, something which appears to have been a recurring pattern, taking into account their statement about supposedly doing trials with GSK/Pfizer: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/26/9618390/Theranos- glaxosmi...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/26/9618390/Theranos- glaxosmithkline-denies-partnership-pfizer-blood-test)

I guess it will be hard for them to keep raising money at that $9B valuation at this point :/</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Simple Online Helpdesk Ticketing System? - <AUTHOR>

We recently decided with some of our clients we need to use a ticketing system, as the pure volume of emails they send us with support requests and feature requests, it is is too easy to lose an email.
So we're looking for the most simple system that satisfies the following requirements.
* Can parse emails+attachments and create ticket
* Allow web submitted tickets with different priorities
* Multiple users per ticket(ie two of the clients users can be on the ticket)
* Let user see their own tickets and tickets from their company(based on their email domain).
* Export tickets for a given company by one of their users.
We'd like internal notes on tickets, but that isn't a must.  We looked at osTicket which has a lot of these features, but it doesn't have the view all tickets for a given client(as a client user) or export ticket.
Kayako we looked at, but it may be a bit over kill.
Open source is great, free is even better.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> OTRS? <http://otrs.org>

I think it has all these features but I only ran a quick search on the site, you may want to ask them for specifics.

Open source, free, you can even get it in vm appliance form: <http://www.turnkeylinux.org/otrs></comment>


Community Broadband/Benefits? Economic Analysis Local Gov Broadband Initiatives [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://grad.mercatus.org/sites/default/files/MGPE_Deignan_0.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> by Brian Deignan

ABSTRACT "This paper examines the economic impact of local public initiatives to build and operate broadband internet infrastructure. I find that local efforts produce small economic benefits, but they cause a notable increase in the size of local government. Using difference-in-differences estimation on panel data consisting of 23 years of observations from core based statistical areas in the contiguous United States, I find that publicly supported broadband networks lead to over 3 percent more business establishments, while reducing worker income by 1.3 percent, all else being equal. The networks have no discernible effect on private sector employment, but they increase local government employment by around 6 percent.

In light of the financial difficulties some public networks experience and the limited economic benefits they offer, public involvement is more wisely directed toward fostering private sector innovation as opposed to maintaining a more active role. Local initiatives that maintain an active role for local government can lead to a misallocation of resources if they ignore market signals and cause taxpayers to bear the uncertainty of the broadband market as opposed to private shareholders."</comment>


Show HN: Corona Virus Trivia Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.coronavirustriviagame.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I wanted to get some feedback on this little trivia game I made to test knowledge of the Coronavirus.

The game is 10 questions followed by a results screen. I made it in React!

Any feedback that you have is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!</comment>


Google Keep - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.keep

<comment><USER2> "Google just launched an Evernote killer" is a particularly inflammatory title for Hacker News. Almost all "killers" end up being competitors and more often than not "killers" never beat the product they're trying to kill in terms of userbase and revenues.

"Evernote competitor" seems much more appropriate unless there is clear evidence that Evernote is going to die as a result of Google Keep's release.</comment>