Azure Container Instances - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-container-instances/ <comment><USER2> Companies like Hyper [1] should be put on notice.

This is a surprisingly unique product. AWS ECS and GKE both require some form of management of the underlying VM. A lot of that management is abstracted away, but not in the same way this is.

That being said, pricing [2] seems odd. At $0.0000125/GB_Second and $0.001/Core_Second, lets say you want to replicate an Azure A3 instance (4core/7gb/$130). That would cost... over $10,000/mo. Is my math right on this? It can't be.

For one-off jobs, maybe this makes sense, but as the backbone of a Kubernetes pool or something I'm not so sure.

[1] [https://hyper.sh/](https://hyper.sh/)

[2] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/pricing/details/container-...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/pricing/details/container-instances/)

<comment><USER3> The core second price at the top is incorrect. The per-second prices for cores and GBs are the same: $0.0000125. We are getting that fixed now.

<comment><USER4> So what you are saying is the calculation for 1 core, 1GB of memory for 1 month would be:

      0.0025 create + (0.0000125 1 core/second + 0.0000125 1GB memory/second) * 86400 seconds/day * 30 days/mo = $64.8025/mo

Is that correct? $64.8025 per month is pretty steep for 1 core and 1GB of memory, I guess this is targeted at short-lived jobs.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the billing is specifically targeted around per-second execution. The containers can start within a few seconds, they allow for customization of CPU cores and memory, and they allow you to focus entirely on your container without having to worry about any VM management. Traditional VM-based infrastructure is still the way to go for long-running applications. This just opens a new avenue into using containers in the cloud.

<comment><USER6> What would be some example use cases for this?

<comment><USER5> Off the top of my head, this could be used for backups, database migrations, auditing software, report generations, email blasts, CPU/memory intensive operations... The possibilities are endless because the execution layer is just a container, so you're not limited on what exactly is being run inside it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tldr:

> An Azure Container Instance is a single container that starts in seconds and > is billed by the second. ACI offer highly versatile sizing, allowing you to > select the exact amount of memory separate from the exact count of vCPUs...

        az container create -g aci_grp --name nginx --image library/nginx --ip-address public –cpu 2 --memory 10

There's also a k8s connector, promising faster spinup times:

[https://github.com/azure/aci-connector-k8s](https://github.com/azure/aci- connector-k8s)

</comment><comment><USER8> So, are we just now using "serverless" to just mean "dynamically scalable" the same way that "cloud" used to?

Because, previously, "serverless" seemed to mean _not_ needing to deal with anything lower-level infrastructure than function calls (that is, a higher level of abstraction than even a classical PaaS like GAE managed runtimes), while container hosting, dynamically scalable or not, is somewhere between classic IaaS and classic application-language PaaS.

<comment><USER9> And both seems wrong to me. Serverless would be without server, not with an "intermittent" server. Serverless should design architectures without server processing per request (like jekyll compared to wordpress).

<comment><USER10> Agree, please don't mix this with serverless, ACI is definitely your server. Hyper Func or AWS Lambda is much closer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a co-founder of a stealth-stage company that helps data analysts/data engineers build data pipelines. Every "task" that can be done in our framework is essentially just an image that can be reused over and over with different settings.

We deploy these tasks across Kubernetes clusters on AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Since these tasks are schedule irregularly and are short lived, we had to do a lot of work to dynamically scale the nodes up a head of their demand and down after, and we typically have to pay for at least 10 minutes of usage no matter how quickly the job finishes.

This "pay-by-the-second" will be a huge win for us. Most of our tasks deal with S3/Redshift or GCS/BigQuery, do we can't immediately use this. But as we onboard more clients working with Azure Storage/Data Lake/Data Warehouse I see some big operational gains for us.

Here's hoping we see similar developments across the other major cloud providers. Very impressed with Azure's development in the last 3 years!

<comment><USER12> Check out Hyper.sh too. It abstracts away the whole datacenter -- you can use `hyper` instead of `docker`, basically. You don't need to think about VMs ever as a concept, containers run directly on the hypervisor. And they have Hyper Func, an AWS Lambda-like alternative that uses images. And per second billing.

On the downsides, they're small and they have one data center, and they're not Microsoft. But their tech is open source.

<comment><USER13> We don't want to compete with the big providers, instead we open source the tech to enable more container-native clouds, where the world will become a seamless (portable) network for containers (different clouds are different ports with the same image spec and API).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's really got me excited lately is the combination of Ansible (for dirty work) and container orchestration systems like Kubernetes/Rancher/etc (also, tools that go from one orchestrated host to many like dokku and flynn).

While I appreciate the competition from GCE and Azure, what I really want is a tool that will run in any one of their clouds, but offers the same ease-of- management, and lets me go from one cloud to another or to a private cloud without breaking a sweat. I want the competition to be 70% on price and 20% on added-management-value and 10% on bundled services.

Terraform is basically this tool, but I want an even easier interface, terraform still feels somewhat too specific to me -- I don't want to even have to write config or specify some "aws" adapter that will make my config work on some provider. I want instant, multi-cloud (possibly) heroku, using only the network, hard-drive-space, ram, and lxc "primitives".

Someone (maybe me if I ever find time) just needs to get to work making F/OSS versions of all the bundled tech (ex. blob storage, cloud function runners, dynamically configurable DNS resolvers, simple alerting, etc) that runs in a container, and then the question just becomes "where can I get the cheapest most performant VPS that will host my containers".

<comment><USER15> the clear end goal here is that you have to deal with things like 'provisioning virtual disks' and 'doing ubuntu updates'. this whole virtualization thing received you of the burden of buying pci ethernet nics and rack mount brackets and provisioning cooling.

but really this whole business of writing chef recipes and provisioning harnesses is really the same kind stuff. it seems important because you can't run without it, and thats what your whole day is...but really its pretty secondary to what you're actually trying to accomplish (run a service)

its interesting to think about what that world might look like...someone is going to make something like that stick at some point. so...why are people provisioning their own containers/vms instead of using the higher level services right now?

<comment><USER14> For me at the very least it's cost -- I can purchase a cheap VPS and run a bunch of stuff on it, with full control for much cheaper than what an AWS EC2 instance costs monthly (with better specs).

Compare this: [http://www.ec2instances.info/?cost_duration=monthly](http://www.ec2instances.info/?cost_duration=monthly)

To VPS hosting from providers like: [https://www.packet.net/bare- metal/](https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/) [https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicatedcore- vps/](https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicatedcore-vps/)

The value provided by the services being managed is large, but honestly, for a lot of well-built infrastructure pieces, there is a lot of trust already for the services to not go down. Most startups/lifestyle companies/small businesses/whatever couldn't bring down a Postgres instance on a reasonably- provisioned machine if they tried (and the app is written with at least a smidgen of thought towards performance)

<comment><USER16> This. Also the cost advantage of your typical t2.micro instance disappears when you run out of CPU credits instantly running updates in...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If this works as advertised, it's awesome. It's like AWS lambda, without language restrictions, CPU or RAM throttling, etc. Truly serverless

<comment><USER18> The main limitation with lambda is really still code size. 50mb is tiny for all but trivial apps thanks to libraries.

<comment><USER19> FYI that Azure Functions doesn't have this limitation. Code is stored on your own storage account and you can go as high as you want.

(Disclosure: I'm a product manager on Azure Functions.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's nice about this is the directness of it.

As far as I understand, with services like AWS ECS you need to provision the infrastructure first and pay for its uptime, whereas this allows more ephemeral containers to be run with minimal setup, and you only pay for the compute time used

Would only be useful for short lived jobs, but a really nice idea none the less.

<comment><USER21> I don't want to spread FUD, but my understanding is that the container security model is not 100% and that's why people like AWS force your containers to run on EC2 instances.

The container security model will almost certainly improve in the future, but for now I'm only ok with other people in my same company sharing the kernel, not incentivised attackers.

[edit]

I'm going to unfud my comment. Some further reading makes me think maybe they spin up something like kvm containers and use a minimal distribution such that they can get to "seconds". If it were me, I'd have pre-running instances of the base image that were ready for a customer to attach and own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Azure Container Instances developer here...

Each container has hypervisor level isolation. We are not relying on kernel level isolation for security isolation between different user's containers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Each container deployed is securely isolated from other customers using proven virtualization technology. "

Does anybody know if they mentioned anywhere what they use? LXC or Jails? Or some homegrown stuff?

<comment><USER23> Just as a guess Hyper-V containers? [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/virtualization/windowsconta...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/virtualization/windowscontainers/manage-containers/hyperv-container)

<comment><USER13> github.com/hyperhq/runv

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would like it if the major cloud providers implemented microsecond boot and teardown times for instances along with suitable pricing.

Unikernels and a whole zoo of other types of tiny operating systems would be enabled by this.

I'm not a fan of containers - I feel they are reimplementing much of the operating system infrastructure within the OS at the price of high and unnecessary complexity.

It's frustrating that cloud computing has so many benefits, but at another level we must wait and hope that Amazon Google and Microsoft are willing to implement new architectures such as microsecond level boot and teardown.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know what service discovery, network security policy and ability to add multiple redundant copies of the same service this offers?

I'm guessing it's powered heavily by kubernetes, so maybe that answers the question, but I'd be interested to know more about the details.

<comment><USER26> If you need service discovery, replicas, rolling deploys, etc. ACI probably isn't for you. Check some of the experimental work we released today connecting ACI with Kubernetes: [https://github.com/Azure/aci- connector-k8s](https://github.com/Azure/aci-connector-k8s)

<comment><USER27> Was looking to see if one of you guys turned up in this thread. "And how was the Deis team involved in this?" Didn't see any mention of you all in the article.

Thanks for showing up and weighing in on this! k8s connector looks really cool, is this a totally unique thing or are there anything comparable for ECS? I've never heard of a Kubernetes cluster with virtual nodes! Sounds like you could use this connector and potentially save yourself from ever needing to configure autoscaling in the Kube cluster.

I'm really curious how things are going at Microsoft for this incredibly productive team of people, from Deis, who have put out so much great software that has kept my attention. Hope that everything is great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This doesn't seem cheap >> £0.001 Core per second That works out at over £2500 for a _single_ core running for a month. And thats without memory costs etc...

<comment><USER29> That is very likely a display issue and they round up way way too much in that table. In the Pricing Example they use $0.0000125 per Core, which would make it ~33$ for a month for a single core, and double that if you include 1 GB of memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I prefer my Docker containers inside Digital Ocean servers, a lot cheaper than Azure, and with automatic backups.

</comment><comment><USER31> While it sounds cool i'm a bit dismayed by the naming choice as ACI in my head is short for the Application Container Image format as used by CoreOS and appc.

</comment><comment><USER32> I find it funny to see containers landing in Windows. While I fully approve the containers on Linux, to me it looks like Windows does not really need them: it already has a stable notion of executable files with full binary compatibility. An old but gold EXE format is your container. Please excuse my probable naivety, but am I missing something?

<comment><USER33> Containers are not just about providing stable executable files, but consistent and reproducible _environments_. Besides, having a unified way of deploying both linux, windows or any other OS seems like a win-win since your backend (docker, or whatever container runtime you use) would remain the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Pretty awesome this can be done in one command. At Kyso we deploy a lot of data-science images to GCP, it can be tricky.

Is the API support for this coming?

<comment><AUTHOR> API support is already there. The docs/SDKs need to be updated, but there are some examples here:

[https://github.com/Azure/aci- connector-k8s/blob/master/synch...](https://github.com/Azure/aci- connector-k8s/blob/master/synchronizer.ts#L27)

[https://github.com/Azure/aci- connector-k8s/blob/master/aci.t...](https://github.com/Azure/aci- connector-k8s/blob/master/aci.ts)

Docs/SDK updates should roll out in the next 1-2 weeks.

<comment><USER3> The swagger spec for the preview API is here:

[https://github.com/Azure/azure-rest-api- specs/tree/current/s...](https://github.com/Azure/azure-rest-api- specs/tree/current/specification/compute/resource- manager/Microsoft.ContainerInstance/2017-08-01-preview)

Please send us feedback.

<comment><USER35> Sean - I'd like to see this, but the link you provided seems unavailable to me. I see only a 404 page. Maybe it's incorrect or access is restricted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This looks like Heroku with more granular control of the container specs?

</comment><comment><USER37> Containers is Linux, even on Azure ;-)

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't see why you need a container for your cloud instances. Puppet/Chef/Ansible are all much better solutions.

<comment><USER5> The value-add here is not to be running cloud instances in containers. Rather it allows you to run containers and be billed by the second, which opens the doors to short-lived jobs running in containers on the cloud. It's closer to serverless platforms rather than VMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Lots of pains using Microsoft azure at my workplace. We always AWS when we're allowed, which isn't often enough.

Lots of weird issues.

<comment><USER40> It might be worth mentioning what some of those issues are, otherwise it just sounds like FUD.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: AWS vs. AZURE vs. G-CLOUD for an A.I/ML Type Application - <AUTHOR> Wanted to get HNs opinion - Who's platform and stack do you like the best for AI applications? <comment><USER2> This knowledge is dated about a year, which is an eternity in this space, so take it with a grain of salt.

I do not know anything about GCP, but between AWS and Azure, go with Azure if you are at all new to this space (or if you're just looking to get something up and running quickly to prove a concept).

AWS takes the approach of giving you the building blocks which you then must assemble yourself. Azure gives you a silky-smooth GUI (ML Studio) with which you can have a model up and running in literally minutes. Of course you can also go lower-level in Azure if you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx redhale! Helpful insight!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For training I find wherever I can get the cheapest gpus for my training set, usually aws is the winner. But we operate in 3 clouds. For inference it's complicated. A lot of that is cheaper to do on the right low priority/spot/preemptive machine. Tpus seem to be exceptional at operations like soft max. I wonder how well fpgas might be good at some ml applications you might be thinking of. It all depends honestly.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of my biggest concerns - The cost of gpu's with repeated training, etc. That's an interesting approach to use multiple clouds; I had not thought of that. So thank you for that insight. Cheers sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aws is most straightforward with dL ami vm. Gcloud gives credits (300$) harder to set up tensorflow cuda env

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the same way re: GCloud...AWS/Azure seem the be the best route. Thanks abledon!</comment></comment>


Enabling Matlab in Jupyter Notebooks on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://walczak.org/2017/11/enabling-matlab-in-jupyter-notebooks-on-linux/ <comment><USER2> Cool - I like the idea of Jupyter, but feel like it needs more creative kernels to really fill out its promise.

I can use it reasonably well as a sort of lab notebook, but it's hard to use as a general notebook. Or a combination notebook/spreadsheet. Or a place to write creative fiction. Or any other of countless scenarios that it _seems_ like it would be an excellent platform for.

Unfortunately, 3rd-party kernels seem to mostly be copies of the Python one with a different core language. Not that I can really complain; they _do_ provide documentation for writing your own kernel. At least Eryk here is working to contribute to the ecosystem :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, I'm wondering what the advantages of Jupyter is over matlabs IDE? Especially considering that matlab now has it's own notebook interface.

I'm actually just curious here! I'm very familiar with matlab but am new to using jupyter (I've been using it for python notebooks)

<comment><USER4> Think of jupyter notebooks as turbo charged Live Scripts. The document part supports proper Markdown, proper latex math, arbitrary HTML, and interactive widgets. Export options are much more comprehensive as well, including export to blogs, presentations, or code modules.

Code blocks can contain arbitrary source code of course (including function definitions and class definitions), but they can also contain "magics", which are special commands that act on a cell or line, for example for debugging, profiling, reading/writing files, and much, much more.

This is the true magic of jupyter notebooks. There are magics for interacting with the shell, for visualizing data, for running code in other programming languages... The possibilities are endless.

And of course jupyter notebooks are just text documents (JSON), so you can put them under source control, manipulate them programmatically, or view them online without having python installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> check out [https://gryd.us](https://gryd.us) \- they have a matlab kernel (octave) enabled by default as well

</comment><comment><USER6> I just love watching everyday what python is doing to Mathwork$, and what GNU and linux are doing to Micro$oft.

<comment><USER7> I need an extension to replace all those unnecessary '$' with the better suited 's'. But seriously, why would one use Jupyter Notebooks with matlabe when you can use python :D

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of specialised scientific toolboxes are written in Matlab. That's the case in neuroscience but I bet there are also other disciplines where it's hard to escape Matlab. Mathworks tried to emulate Jupyter by creating Live Editor but I still prefer Jupyter.</comment></comment></comment>


Google and NASA snap up D-Wave quantum computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/google-and-nasa-snap-up-quantum-computer-1.12999

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to see this Canadian company succeeding in this way. Hopefully this continues to snowball. There has been so much doom and gloom around this company in part because so many people (including myself) don't have the ability to assess whether its technology could actually work.</comment>


10 Reason to Ignore CS Degrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.cio.com/article/3293010/hiring-and-staffing/10-reasons-to-ignore-computer-science-degrees.amp.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have been seeing this kind of anti CS theory attitude in a lot of my peers. In fact, a guy I used to know lamented the fact that he was taught arcane concepts like "normalization" in college. His believed that anything that does not have an immediate tangible benefit in writing code should not be taught as part of CS degree. Needless to say he could not design DB schema even if you put a gun to his head.</comment>


The Cat That Predicted 50 Deaths - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7129952/Cat-predicts-50-deaths-in-RI-nursing-home.html

<comment><USER2> Alternative title: The Cat That Caused 50 Deaths.

Just as much evidence for one as for the other.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't buy it. It's all anecdotal. Is there a statistical correlation between the cat remaining with a person for more than X minutes and the person dying within Y days? My bet is that staff predictions have a better track record.</comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts/feedbacks on CryFS - <AUTHOR> CryFS website: https://www.cryfs.org
I'm considering using CryFS to encrypt and store projects (source code + any files related to project...) I work on to Dropbox. As a security newbie I'd like to have feedback from more experienced peers on this tool.
My main concerns are: 1) is it safe ? (like in "industrial spying safe", not "NSA safe") 2) will it fit my workkflow ? I want to work on a folder containing all my projects/clients data and I want those to be encrypted then synchronized to Dropbox on edit. 3) will it last long enough so I don't have to search for an alternative in 1 year ?
Feel free to add any thought that you think is relevant ;) <comment><USER2> The page contains the call to action:

      Let us notify you when CryFS is stable!

And labels the software "Beta". On the other hand if the specific problems it is intended to address relative to file size are relevant then the tradeoffs might be worth it.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: ZipBoard – Visual collaboration on live URLs - <AUTHOR> http://www.zipboard.co <comment><USER2> Hi guys, I am the co-founder for zipBoard. We created zipBoard to bridge the gap between various stakeholders involved in the product development process. You can actually add a URL, browse, take a screenshot and start collaborating on the screenshot. It is that simple! Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. We have also launched on producthunt today [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/zipboard](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/zipboard)

Look forward to your feedback. -Bhavya @zingbhavya

<comment><USER3> Is there a story behind the project?

<comment><USER2> @brudgers thanks for asking. We really started as a review tool for e-learning courses which are primarily html courses. We realized with remote teams and a lot of visual content, it is very hard to share feedback on emails, so zipBoard was born. As we started working on it, we realized that the same is applicable for any web based product that is created. For every iteration, there is a need to gather constant feedback from the stakeholders. It is not always possible to huddle in the same room or to add bug for each feedback. Do share what are your thoughts about the product.</comment></comment></comment>


ASK HN: How do you plan out your app? - <AUTHOR>

Do you use a pen and paper, wire framing tools, Basecamp...what? <comment><USER2> I usually start with a pretty rough mental image of what I want, maybe draw a few rough sketches / diagrams / whatever on paper or on the whiteboard, then just start building and let it evolve. Once I have enough built to feel comfortable showing it to people, I start showing it around and soliciting feedback.

As things evolve, I may start writing down use cases or capability cases on paper (well not literally paper, but an OO.org document or a text file, whatever.) And since all of the stuff I'm working on now (outside of $DAYJOB) is open source, this stuff usually winds up on a blog somewhere for the world to see. Here's an example of my first stab at using Capability Cases to describe something:

[http://www.jroller.com/openqabal/entry/so_what_s_a_capabilit...](http://www.jroller.com/openqabal/entry/so_what_s_a_capability)

Note: I don't claim this "system" is the best - or even particularly good - it's just how I happen to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Basically, list some user stories. Then draw some diagrams based on those. Regularly head out for some coffee with pen and paper and write up some notes.

I've been developing a personal technique(mainly aimed at games, but general enough to apply to apps) I've been calling "cycle modelling" - which depicts user stories in a visual way, using feedback loops and (implied) narrative arcs - they are used as building blocks to achieve the core goal of the game or app(e.g. "edit photos" or "rule a kingdom"). The complete product is described as a composite of many intersecting arcs and cycles; even a rough model seems to help a lot in clarifying the design and features.

</comment><comment><USER4> I draft my ideas on paper with pen... very rough sketches. Then, I call a meeting with my team and we discuss it for a couple hours. I re-draft ideas, and then call another meeting. Discuss, redraft. The process repeats itself until the idea gets more and more exciting and we start coding, or until the idea loses excitement and then we shelf it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've struggled to find an efficient way to do this for years so I built an app for this... I still don't know how useful it is for people out there, and I haven't decided if it's worth turning into a product.

You can sign up and try it for free, takes a sec: <http://chalkboardhq.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I start off with a list of features, then pen and paper. Then I start building out the app in pure html without any style.

Really, planning out apps never really works. Once you start actually building and using the app you'll realize how different it is from the initial vision.

TL;DR: I plan out my app by building it out.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am old school: I use an SRS (software requirements spec) doc and start with the product's description, then features, then I create a development doc place in Confluence and JIRA for development trail--just like I do at work. There is no one way--everyone works differently.

</comment><comment><USER8> sketchpad for mockups & google docs (for change history) -> mockups in photoshop -> framework install & data structure setup -> code code code code</comment>


Snap Committed to Spend $1B on Web Services with Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/snap-committed-to-spend-1-billion-on-web-services-with-amazon <comment><USER2> $3B over the next five years. Rackspace was worth around $4.6B in August with assets of around $1.6B. Assuming that Snap would require as big an infrastructure as Rackspace, then purchasing Rackspace for $4.6B was surely a better deal, because that's the amount their GC + AWS + Raw Hardware bill would cost, if they decide to build their own infra. Given how much AWS was earning a year back while still being massively profitable, these services cost a few hundred million a year to run at worst.

I have a strong feeling that this has a lot to do with available human capital to build and sustain these services. It even took Rackspace years to have a "Cloud" offering and it was essentially Slicehost with blings.

Come to think of it, it is around $4 per user, per year. With the way the landscape is with everything shifting to (live) videos, it probably is not that much an expenditure. Especially given that Snap will have several times the users in next 5 years, so the cost will look even less. That, and inflation.

<comment><USER3> Except that's entirely unrealistic as an actual business move. Coming up with $600m per year for operations, is very different for Snap versus coming up with $4.3 billion all at once to buy another business. This is especially true given Snap's (currently) anticipated revenue growth rate.

First, the people funding Snap - the people providing the capital to buy Rackspace - would not look well upon them trying to buy Rackspace. They'd think it was a huge distraction. Snap has some capital now, but they require that for operations, so they'd have to go out and raise a new $4.3 billion for the deal (and they'd suffer a painful dilution because investors would balk).

Second, you can replicate the useful (to Snap) infrastructure of Rackspace, at a fraction of the cost of buying the business as it was valued based on a relatively high multiple.

A year from now Snap should be able to hit at least $2 per user on a quarterly basis, with 200 million or more daily active users (both conservative numbers). At $400m quarterly in sales and growing, versus the ~$150m Google / Amazon costs (which might be lower in the early years of the deal?), it's a bad business move to take a 15% to 20% dilution hit to purchase the overvalued Rackspace business. That bad value ratio gets more and more lopsided if Snap keeps growing in the coming years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> $1B at AWS, $2B to Google Cloud, ... eventually this adds up to real money.

<comment><USER5> It only cost SpaceX $1.2 billion to develop a reusable launch vehicle.

<comment><USER6> and at the end we'll have either one of the coolest pieces of engineering and technology ever, or...throwaway pics.

NB: I really hope Snap ends up doing some really cool stuff with VR/AR and makes my comment seems stupid in hindsight. Maybe if they could live-stream in full 360 VR the launch and landing of a space X rocket...

<comment><USER7> For context: The US Broom, Brush, and Mop Manufacturing Industry was $2.8B in 2013 [1]. Not everything is as sexy as launching rockets to outer space, but as long as people derive utility from throwaway pics there will be demand for billions of dollars of web services.

[1] [http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130301005429/en/Rese...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130301005429/en/Research- Markets-2013-Report-2.8-Billion-Broom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would they go multi-cloud? ( I'm asking because even very large infrastructure don't use 2 providers )

From a management / ops perspective it's a nightmare to manage and imo adds more problems than it solves.

<comment><USER9> I think redundancy would be the main reason. They also can use that to leverage for better pricing as well.

<comment><USER10> I think it's more likely the second reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Last week everybody was shocked that they're going to spend $400mm/yr with Google... Now the total cloud bill is up to $600mm/yr! I can't wrap my head around these numbers.

<comment><USER12> You'd probably also have a hard time wrapping your head around their traffic and usage.

<comment><USER13> and their lack of profit.

<comment><USER12> At least that can be forgiven if you have accelerating revenue, which can't be said about many startups with big valuations.

<comment><USER13> User growth is flat though. That would concern me in regards to how much more they can accelerate their revenue in comparison to costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's grant them a period of huge growth and say they go from current 160 million users to even, 320 million after 1 year.

As others point out, they are spending $600 million per year between Google and Amazon. Do they make more than $2 per user per year?

<comment><USER3> Yes. Snap is at $1.05 per user (daily actives) in the most recent quarter, up from $0.31 the year prior. That's just for the quarter. They can probably hit at least $5 or $6 per user for all of fiscal 2017.

Facebook is at $7.16 per user in the most recent quarter (based on daily actives; it's $4.62 based on monthly actives), and Twitter is at around $2.23 per user based on monthly actives in the most recent quarter (I can't locate recent daily active numbers).

<comment><USER15> The math here is awkward to visualise because the numbers are multiplying, but does your $5-6 for 2017 overall require them to be above Facebook's current $7.16 in at least Q4 '17? That seems really ambitious, but I might be reading this wrong. For reference, could you give a ballpark of where you see Facebook's $/user for 2017?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm really curious what their bill looks like. 1.000x m3.large, petabytes of S3 storage, loads of traffic.

I can't imagine what the numbers are. Is there any big player which has public numbers about their infrastructure? (I mean in detail - which services, how many instances, traffic, ...)

</comment><comment><USER17> I am very curious why they didn't azure as their cloud partner ? What was wrong about it ? (I am geninunely asking, I am really curious about technical capability of azure vs aws vs gcp vs oracle)

<comment><USER18> In my experience, Azure is a complete pain in the ass. It's just always something with them.

Yesterday for instance we finally got to the bottom of a slow page problem. The issue? Azure CDN was stalling up to 2 seconds at times. Creating a new CDN profile fixed it.

They're expensive, way more than GCP. It's slow - everything is just slow.

I know several companies that chose to pay GCP vs use free Azure credits because it's just "problematic".

And I say this as a fairly big supporter of MS overall, and I really really wanted to like Azure.

GCP just blows everything out of the water. Though it would be nice if they had a Aurora or Postgres RDS equivalent. Automatic DNS integration with GCE would be handy, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If the Spectacles and other similar things really catch up, they might need some storage space and computing power.

[https://www.spectacles.com](https://www.spectacles.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious, at that scale why don't they build their own infrastructure? Surely it would cost less?

<comment><USER12> It's not like they don't have the option to build it themselves in the future. This provides a lot of flexibility with very little liabilty to get their platform massive.

Besides they aren't like Facebook where they will grow their hardware slowly as they ramp up, Snapchat is already incredibly popular. It would be a massive undertaking to move everything to the data center. The experts who are good at that kind of thing are all already gainfully employed.

<comment><USER5> > This provides a lot of flexibility with very little liabilty to get their > platform massive.

This is completely untrue. They are _committed_ to spending that money with at least Google (whatever they don't use in infra, _they have to make up with a true up payment_ ). I don't know the AWS terms, but they would have to be successful at a level that is completely unrealistic for this to be financially sound (considering their growth numbers show users have tapered off).

[https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/827274299929026560](https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/827274299929026560)

"Snap's daily active user grown went from single digit to flat last year"

If user growth is flat, and you're not yet profitable, the only nob you can turn is more ads or making ads more expensive for ad buyers. Neither option will endear Snap with either party.

<comment><USER12> It's much easier to go belly up with chapter 7 and not have to sell millions and millions (billions?) in physical assets then to simply say "sorry, we're out of business" to the contracts for future obligations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> can anyone give a comparable to how much Facebook/Google/Twitter spend on cloud infrastructure per user per year? these numbers are harder to find as they build their own datacenters/staff them/etc.</comment>


The dilemma that Twitter has given new startups - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/18/the-dilemma-that-twitter-has-given-new-startups/

<comment><USER2> _If done consciously, with one's own capital or openly disclosed to investors, this is a risky strategy, but appeals to some: one will want to exit the trade before the rare event happens. This occurs for instance in a speculative bubble, where one purchases an asset in the expectation that it will likely go up, but may plummet, and hopes to sell the asset before the bubble bursts. This has also been referred to as "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller"._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb_distribution#Risky_strate...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb_distribution#Risky_strategy)

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with you, building around someone else idea is risky as you may end up competing with the api owner. However there is so much advantage to it. Building a service around twitter make you confident in having an established user base that mzy adopt your product. it is all about weigth the risk/advantages.

To talk about twitter in particular, i think twitter is the worst developer friendly API provider i've found so far.

Our product is all about building a service around twitter, and the product can't be built without access to their Beta site API. We've quested an access to the API so much time since at least 2 months and we haven't get even an email explainning why we can't have access to it and providing us with some insigth about the tie we'll be able to access it. Can one work for months on a product without being sure he will be able to release it? As a result we are thinking about leaving twitter as a host platform even thught it is the best one for our products.</comment>


The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf <comment><USER2> The trouble is physicists who work in foundational QM who still utters phrases like "But the vista of all these parallel histories is deeply unsettling, and like many other physicists I would prefer a single history." and then they get dragged down into complicated alternative frameworks instead of the simple one they don't like. Einstein wasn't and will not be the only one to go down that path.

Over and over again it has been shown you need to calculate all the possible histories to arrive at the probability of a specific history to be realized. And if you need to calculate those histories to match the universe, chances are high the universe as well has to calculate them.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, certain people like to say that quantum computing is not about simply computing every possible result of something in parallel universes, that you can't do _that_ much better than with classical computing. If that's so, doesn't it imply in some vague way that any parallel dimension is something less than completely real?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it's consistent with computation being done in many "parallel universes," but with heavily restricted communication - in this model it's almost trivial to parallelize work (flip a quantum coin, do A if heads else B), what's tough is making sure that you don't get parallelized along with the work (i.e. that you don't become entangled with the computation) and making sure there's a way to accumulate the parallel computation into something that's singly-readable and useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Source: The NY Review of Books

Posted on the website for UNM Physics 466, Fall 2017.

Course Text: "Physical Mathematics, 2nd Ed." by Kevin Cahill

Kevin Cahill was born in New York, New York. He attended public and Catholic elementary schools, Regis High School, the University of Notre Dame, and Harvard University, receiving his PhD in physics in 1967 under the supervision of Roy Glauber (prix Nobel 2005). Cahill has done research at NBS, LBL, Ecole Polytechnique, Saclay, Orsay, and Harvard and has taught at Nice, Wesleyan, LSU, Indiana, Harvard, Fudan, and the University of New Mexico where he is a professor of physics and astronomy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just gonna leave this here :)

[http://www.daltonlp.com/de/](http://www.daltonlp.com/de/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Am reading this article. But the act of reading is changing the rotation of the words. Probable cause: imperfection in my reading glasses.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm reminded of the Zen koan where the students cannot tell whether the flag is moving in the wind or the wind is moving around the flag. The master tells them that the mind, neither the flag nor the wind, is what is moving.

Both sides of the interpretative coin are needed. We must simultaneously understand that QM is epistemic and also that QM is contextual. The author asks,

> How do probabilities get into QM?

Because knowledge of physical systems is always limited and QM is epistemic, all quantities we manipulate in QM are probabilistic. Further, the Kochen- Specker Theorem requires that some measurements be not fully determined by past history, as a matter of living in at least three dimensions of space. Finally, basic linear logic allows us to replicate most of QM's effects with macrostates.

While Schrödinger hated this and used his famous cat thought-experiment to try to refute it, children learn about linear logic and probabilities in macrostates when they are given random toys or packs of trading cards, and today we recognize that it really is possible to condition relatively large differences in macrostate observations on single entangled or otherwise- prepared microstates.

> In the [Everett] realist approach the history of the world is endlessly > splitting;

Eh, kind of? But it's also endlessly joining. We wouldn't just be in a "cosmic history" which is "sufficiently benign" for us, but also we're likely to be in a likely history. In fact, we're _exactly_ as likely to be on our current path as our current path is to be randomly picked from amongst the possible paths. So it turns out that Everett's many-worlds analysis is a little tautological.

> But how can something so nonlocal represent reality?

Finally, a good deep question. There are two parts to the answer, and each are deep enough to warrant a series of lectures. First, the Kochen-Specker Theorem, combined with general relativity, leads to the Free Will Theorem: When we measure particles, we are sending them a query, and they choose how to respond to the query from among the possible replies. Second, reality isn't one single fabric, but interlocking systems of geometry and topology. With apologies to Wheeler, geometry tells reality how to interact, and topology tells reality how to propagate information. This insight leads to the co- hygiene principle [0].

The author sketches some possible directions for experimental work; it would be interesting to read about turning them into proper experiments and seeing the results.

[0] [https://fexpr.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-co-hygiene- principle....](https://fexpr.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-co-hygiene- principle.html)

<comment><USER9> As an non expert, aren't there ontological interpretations too? You say QM is epistemic, but is that referencing the Copenhagen Interpretation as commonly taught?

I know probability and unpredictablity don't go away, but MWI is closer to an ontologic theory no? I mean as far as science can claim to be ontological.

And similarly for nonlocality. Is it _only_ ontological? I feel like many worlds would say one thing vs copenhagen. And how do non traversible string theoretic wormholes reprsenting entanglement a la Susskind fit in if the theory can only be about epistemic knowledge.

<comment><USER8> As a fellow non-expert, I use tables like [0] to help keep everything straight.

Yes, the Copenhagen interpretation says that the wavefunctions we manipulate are epistemic; they exist in our mind and on the blackboard but not necessarily IRL. The epistemic toy theory [1] makes this concept very concrete, although note that that theory has hidden local variables and thus doesn't correctly implement Bell/KS/Free Will.

Yes, MWI is quite ontic; it's probably the most ontic that a QM interpretation can be, since it insists that all possibilities exist. Just like modal realism, MWI is the most extreme of the phrasings in that direction.

Non-locality sadly isn't negotiable anymore. Bell's inequalities have been violated in laboratories well enough to my satisfaction [2], so theories that can't handle it need to be fully rejected. I'm not sure what's left; maybe the transactional interpretation?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Comparisons)

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0401052](https://arxiv.org/abs/quant- ph/0401052)

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

<comment><USER9> You say nonlocality isn't negotiable but I _think_ one of Bell's assumptions isn't met in MW, namely single outcome of experiment. I think this is shown in that table as the local dynamics column.

But then without nonlocality nor hidden variables, I truly am at a loss how quantum computers even work according to MWI. But I know this area gets so complex so fast.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Postal Crisis Ripples Across Nation as Election Looms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/15/us/post-office-vote-by-mail.html <comment><USER2> Can't wait to see the "everything working as normal, nothing to see here" comments. The hoax virus is a hoax until more and more people know someone that died from it. Nothing wrong with the postal service until your grandma dies or is hospitalized (and billed; either she pays all or you pay it-she is probably on medicare) because her medicine didn't come for several weeks, or the check sent in to pay your bill and you get late fees, and on and on the excuses will come for this corruption.

<comment><USER3> > Can't wait to see the "everything working as normal, nothing to see here" > comments.

This doesn't really contribute to the conversation other than to clarify how defensive your position is before you even begin stating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see more reporting on the removal of sorting machines. I'm willing to believe that there _could be_ an actual reason for doing this, such as making room of package handling, since that is supposedly an increasing share of mail.

But I certainly haven't heard or seen any such defenses made.

This is such madness!

<comment><USER5> Why do you allow yourself to believe an excuse when Trump has openly admitted that he wants to steal an election?

<comment><USER6> What? Citation very much needed.

<comment><USER7> In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill. Without the additional money, he said, the Postal Service won't have the resources to handle a flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.

"If we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money," Trump told host Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. "That means they can't have universal mail- in voting; they just can't have it."

[https://www.tampabay.com/florida- politics/buzz/2020/08/14/tr...](https://www.tampabay.com/florida- politics/buzz/2020/08/14/trump-admits-hes-blocking-postal-funding-to-stop- mail-in-votes/)

<comment><USER8> Agree or not, Trump's claim is that mail voting undermines integrity. And whether he's theoretically correct or not, honest or not, the first evidence from Paterson NJ showed that mail-in voting spoiled _every_ vote for council. The number of ruined ballots was greater than the margin of victory. People are calling it a "win" because some of the fraudsters (or misguided people accidentally violating electionaw) were arrested, but that doesn't unspoil the vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm honestly baffled why people are against mail in voting. I moved to a new city in 2014. Since then, I receive a ballot in the mail for every election that pertains to me. They always also send a little booklet that has information on each candidate and sort of their self published platform. Because of that, I'm certainly now participating in even the local elections that otherwise would fly under the radar... I mean I wouldn't take time off work for them probably.

It feels like voter suppression to me, especially since we know that a lot of liberal leaning folks have "opinions" but don't necessarily vote.

To be clear — I describe myself as moderate. I'm more fiscally conservative but liberal on social issues.

<comment><USER10> > I'm honestly baffled why people are against mail in voting.

It's a system that is easily abused.

Traditionally, where I grew up, the problem with postal voting was voter intimidation. Recipients would be told by 'community leaders' to bring their ballot papers to a central location where they were completed en masse with the 'correct' choices made and sent back.

Those who declined were physically assaulted.

Even on a less organised scale it is open to the 'head of household' telling the others how to vote.

<comment><USER8> These are valid concerns. Group voting today is easy to combat with phone cameras and social media, though. But on the third hard, all parts of the political compass are showing that when crime becomes a national pastime, it's impossible to stop most of it.

Head of household voting is a problem, especially with candidates with large differences in support by gender in cohabitating couples.

But accessibility of polling centers is also a problem (for which the only possible excuse is corruption. Trillions of dollars for war machine but almost none for securing the democracy the war machine is supposed to be defending.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I get how the USPS is pretty essential to the entire practice of mail-in voting.

But, ignoring that one thing, I've always considered the value, to me, of the USPS to be significantly less than zero.

I'm a little bit surprised that noone else ever seems to voice the same opinion.

<comment><USER12> Well, except the value isn't zero to you, even if you don't use it. It allows a lot of basic government and corporate things to happen (taxes, payroll, sending of legal documents). And it sets a baseline price for mail and package sending services. Imagine being priced out of being able to mail something. I agree junk-mail is a huge pain.

This argument is a lot like not owning a car or bike and claiming that roads have zero value to you. Unless you're off the grid, then maybe this is tenable, but if you're getting mail, you're probably not off the grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's not a crisis if it was explicitly intended. The progenitors aren't even denying it.

This is a conspiracy.

</comment><comment><USER14> There could be two sides to this. What if the postal service is doing this on its own, without the President's interference? Slowing down service to show how maybe they are not ready, need more investment, or to counter the President?

<comment><USER15> It seems like we've seen quotes directly from the president that go against your hypothesis. The new director of the post office is a Trump appointee.

<comment><USER8> Not just a Trump appointee, but a significant fundraiser in Trump's campaign.

Also, to parent post the new Postmaster has refused to accept funding Congress already gave it.</comment></comment></comment>


MySpace: the story of its creation. by Brad Greenspan - <AUTHOR> http://www.freemyspace.com/content1.htm Story uploaded October 2006 (http://qurl.co.uk/n0tc). MySpace acquired July 2005 by News Corp. <comment><AUTHOR> History uploaded around October 2006 ([http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.freemyspace.com/cont...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.freemyspace.com/content1.htm)).

MySpace acquired July 2005 by News Corp (<http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_251.html>).

</comment><comment><USER2> MySpace _really_ hurts my eyes and brain. Whoever admits to creating it should be hung.

<comment><USER3> Not sure how the first sentence leads to the second. Also, there are millions of people who like (love?) myspace, so obviously you're not their target audience. Although I don't like myspace either, I do appreciate that not everything on the web is varying shades of gray boxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> as the old saying goes, success has a thousand fathers</comment>


So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123498006564714189.html <comment><USER2> All very good points, but I can't help feeling that anyone sensible who uses this list as a guide to whether to start up will never ever start a start-up.

It's a scary world out here, and you need a little bit of ignorance (or a lot of arrogance) to get started. I chose the latter option, but not everyone is as arrogant as me ;-)

<comment><USER3> Which one of the items in this list seem overblown to you? They all seem pretty solid to me. If this list scares you away from entrepreneurship, maybe it's doing you a favor.

<comment><USER2> They're all real, but it's easy to over-estimate them if you're an intelligent, reasonable, risk-averse individual (like most successful entrepreneurs).

Most of those are not "killer" issues, either, like the article presents them. They're just problems you'll encounter and deal with along the way. Being aware of them is worthwhile, but with the caveat that you don't need to resolve all that stuff immediately.

I mean, take the last few for example:

9\. Are you a self-starter?

8\. Do you have a concept you're passionate about?

7\. How persuasive and well-spoken are you?

6\. What's your track record of executing your ideas?

5\. Are you comfortable making decisions on the fly with no playbook?

Sure, all those things help with running a business... but do you need to put ticks in all those boxes to start a business? Do you need to be confident in making decisions by the seat of your pants, have a track record of executing ideas, be a persuasive, well-spoken, passionate, self-starter before you even get started? Absolutely not. All that stuff will come with time.

<comment><USER3> Ok, but let me be devil's advocate, based on my experience trying to get everyone at my company to be more entrepreneurial:

* Some people suck at selling, and freeze up on the phone. They'll put off critical business tasks because they're shy or don't like feeling like whores. And they'll fail because of it.

* Some people (cough cough) are great at starting things but have no follow-through ability --- or, in our industry, will tweak and tinker endlessly but never release code.

* Lacking an actual playbook for "how to run a company", some people will hew to whatever received wisdom they find, and thus waste weeks getting 110% unit test coverage or waste tens of thousands of dollars hiring a human resources person.

<comment><USER2> Totally. And those people will fail at their first 1, 2, 3 or more businesses. Perhaps they'll never succeed. But, much like tweaking and tinkering endlessly and never releasing, it's unproductive to worry endlessly and not try.

I still suck at making phone calls. I've found a way around that - I have other people with me who can do that better.

Ten years ago I had no follow-through. It took me a while, but I learned to overcome that. Tweaking and tinkering endlessly was a problem in my first start-up. It cost me a good kick in the face (figuratively) and I learned to release early and often.

Those are all likely mistakes, and some of them you can avoid by reading about them but most of them you'll have to face personally before you overcome them. And, who knows, maybe you'll never overcome them! But the worry should never stop you from trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Asking whether you'll jump or not, is always the wrong question. If you're asking yourself that question, you're probably not an entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs that are successful have multiple previous startups and have always made the jump early and frequently (Jobs and Wozniak with their illegal long distance calling hack, Zuckerberg with a collaborative fitering music sharing app in high school, Aaron (Mint.com) with his multiple startups back in college, etc). Doing every progressive experience gets you used to doing another startup and making you comfortable for the jump. Doing a startup isn't like rolling the dice and seeing if you can win the lottery, it's more of a compulsion.

There was a blog entry :

<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/04/ten-questions-a.html> "Is there an ideal age for an entrepreneur? No, although most start at a young age since they don't belong in big companies. But once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur. We've got one entrepreneur in our portfolio who is approaching 60 and working on his fourth company."

<comment><USER5> Woz wasn't an entrepreneur in this sense. He was a hacker who lived for computers and planned to work at HP his entire career.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but he was always an inveterate tinkerer. Much like the passage described below:

<http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bennis-genius.html>

Many of the people in our Great Groups are tinkerers--the kind of people who, as children, took the family television apart and tried to put it together again. They are people willing to spend thousands of hours finding out how things work, including things that don't yet exist. There's a joke about engineers that captures the spirit of many participants in creative collaborations. An engineer meets a frog who offers the engineer anything he wants if he will kiss the frog. "No," says the engineer. "Come on," says the frog. "Kiss me, and I'll turn into a beautiful woman." "Nah," says the engineer. "I don't have time for a girlfriend ...but a talking frog, that's really neat. " Members of Great Groups don't fear technology, they embrace it. And they all think that creating the future is really neat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Sort of". I love to build stuff, and want to be independent. Not sure what other options there are, really.

<comment><USER3> Freelancing.

<comment><USER6> Long term? Not really... it's treading water. With either a product company, or a stable, steady job, you still make money when you go on vacation. Not so with freelancing. Unless you are doing genuine 'consulting', where you come in, give some advice, and get paid a crapload for it, freelancing doesn't really seem to be a path to anywhere. Generally, you have to be well recognized to get the really plum jobs, though... which is why you don't see many actual 'freelancers' who are older.

To tell the truth, one of the things that most inspires me about "the PG story" is that, at least from afar, he doesn't come across as a guy who wants to build and _run_ a company for years, but who is good at building innovative stuff.

<comment><USER3> People who are good at freelancing structure their practice so they have plenty of "bench time" built into their rates. The freelancers I've known throughout my career tend to be _more_ carefree than the rank-and-file developers.

More importantly, a consulting practice is a _much_ better platform to build a product business on than a full time job. You can carve out plenty of time for your new business (it's just another one of your clients), you can staff up consulting to make time for the product, and if you fail, you don't have to beg for your job back; it's always there.

<comment><USER6> I do consulting myself, and prefer it to working a 9 to 5, just that I don't see it as a viable long term option.

<comment><USER3> There is probably a night-and-day difference between consulting by yourself, and staffing an actual consulting practice. Solo freelancing is still probably better for an entrepreneur than a full-time job, but running a multi-person consultancy _is_ running a business, and a big % of the headaches, overheads, and challenges of running a product company carry over.

<comment><USER6> Oh, certainly, but that's kind of back to square one:-) I like to be independent and work with cool people, I don't want to be a boss or bossed around, and I like to build cool stuff.

<comment><USER5> I sympathize with your last sentence entirely, and with your "sort of" reaction to the article as well. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about talking to users? That's one thing I don't feel ambivalent about. If someone is using what I've made, I really want to talk to that person and find out what would make them happy; if they're happy I want to find out what would delight them. I'm kind of hoping this will make up for the lack of some of what the WSJ considers "entrepreneurial" qualities.

The more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed by that article. The way it begins - "Make sure you're cut out for it first" - seems self-refuting to me. The inner drive that causes someone to do creative or bold things doesn't sit down to ponder 10-point lists crafted by pseudo-experts before deciding whether it's "cut out for it". Every time I listen to this kind of thing I later wish I had ignored it.

p.s. I've done consulting and freelancing too. You're never working on something that is your own. After a while, you realize your soul is starving. Meanwhile you've become a crack addict, where the crack is your hourly rate.

pp.s. That doesn't mean it isn't better than being an employee, which is a form of serfdom.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I definitely like customers and talking to people, and that kind of thing. I'm not an antisocial person. I actually prefer the customer relationship a lot more than I do that of employer/employee in that either one of is pretty much free to do as we please - they don't have to buy my stuff or my services, and if they're seriously annoying, I can decide I don't want them as a customer, or simply ignore them. Granted, you can't always do that, but still... it's just a happier situation than having to order people around, or having someone order you around.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you tell whether there's a path out of an idea?   - <AUTHOR>

"How do you tell whether there's a path out of an idea? How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company, or just a niche product? Often you can't.... sometimes I can see a path that's not immediately obvious; that's one of our specialties at YC."<p>=> Are there good alternatives to YC (a privilege not everyone can get), to get a 2nd-opinion validation of whether a startup idea is a path to a bigger one? <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)</comment>


Chinese Hacking Is Alarming. So Are Data Brokers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/opinion/equifax-breach-china-hacking.html#click=https://t.co/uX0c3jTp5L <comment><USER2> The article misses an important point. While sophisticated actors might hack a broker to get the information, a sufficiently connected and funded actor can just purchase it from them. See for example [https://www.tripwire.com/state- of-security/security-data-pro...](https://www.tripwire.com/state-of- security/security-data-protection/4-credit-bureau-data-breaches- predate-2017-equifax-hack/)</comment>


As Tech Evaporates Jobs, "The Tipping Point Will Be Driverless Trucks" - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/as-tech-evaporates-jobs-tipping-point-will-be-driverless-tru <comment><USER2> It's incremental, but the jobs go away. Here, for your entertainment, is an automated container port in Rotterdam under construction.[1] It was finished in 2014. Here it is in full operation.[2] There are no people on those container cranes. There are a few people in a control room. The little trucks moving the containers around are self-driving. They're also battery powered, and battery swap is automated. The cranes that move containers around the container stacks are totally automated. There are no people in the cargo- handling section of the terminal.

This is not the future. This is last year's technology, operating right now.

It's quite likely that the first trucking to be automated will be to and from container ports.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems.

Many people, including most professional drivers, will be happy not to have to do the chore anymore. They don't want or need jobs, they want and need fulfillment of their wants and needs.

Stood next to the monumental task of actually automating the matter around us to please us (which, if our purpose in doing so is good, is a mitzvah), the creation of a system which fulfills these wants and needs without regard to any connection to a "job" seems straightforward and doable.

<comment><USER4> Right, let's stop talking about jobs. Who's gonna give to today's truck drivers the money to pay the mortgage they have to keep paying for the next 20 years?

<comment> a-saleh Well, that is how we quickly go to the argument of "Lets replace the complicated social security system with basic livable wage being handed out to ever-one." comoonlz known as universal basic income.

If one looks at it from economic-theory or game-theory perspective it sounds like a solution to many problems, nobody knows yet if that would work in practice though, especially on large scale.

As far as I know, open questions that remain are:

\- Will we be able to afford it? Sort of back-of-the-napkin calculations can show, that if we introduced i.e UBI in Germany for everybody (80 mil) on a level of minimum wage (1473 E ?), it would eat their federal budget for Ministry of Health and Social Security and Ministry of Economics and Labour

\- What would be the unintended consequences? (i.e on small scale uneployment rose by single digits, but we can't really tell what will happen on country scale)

<comment><USER5> We could raise taxes much higher with less economic impact, by solely taxing land rents.

(Land prices go up, as other taxes go down, as you can see on the Swiss/German border. Taxing land rents has no economic deadweight loss, since the supply of land is fixed.)

<comment><USER6> Not entirely true; the disadvantage to land taxes is that they discourage prospecting and finding things like oil. You can ameliorate that in a number of ways, but land taxes aren't entirely without their problems.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting point. And yes, it's entirely fixable.

At the most crude, you could separate natural resources from the rest of the land rights, people already do that.

By the way if memory serves right Germany, which doesn't have general land taxes, already doesn't let you own mineral resources below your land by default. Would be interesting to see what effect that regulation already has on people prospecting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lack of social safety nets creates unhealthy bias toward preserving jobs that could be automated completely. UBI (universal basic income) actually gives everyone motivation to further automate - the key to freedom. I expect to see more titles about automation and UBI, as I think it is highly crucial.

<comment><USER3> I had a thought while driving the other day that an interesting experiment might be to have a government whose only program is UBI.

<comment><USER8> That would be a conservative's dream government. The reason UBI is supported on both sides of the aisle is because it touches on the priorities of the left and right. As far as I can tell, some conservatives advocate for UBI and removing all other social safety nets. I don't think this is exactly what everyone has in mind when they consider the program.

<comment><USER9> Yes, this seems to be a divide in UBI supporters. I think some services can be removed with UBI, but not all. In particular, unpredictable expensive things like healthcare bills will still be a problem even with UBI, since not everyone will know how to properly save.

<comment><USER10> And in some cases, you just can't properly save. If I'm living off UBI in order to do volunteer work in my local community, how am I going to save enough to cover a sudden 100,000 $ cancer treatment bill?

<comment><USER5> Isn't that what insurance is for? (And you can use your UBI to buy insurance.)

<comment><USER10> Iff the insurance is affordable on UBI.

<comment><USER5> Sure. But for that calculation, it doesn't matter too much whether the insurance is provided publicly (think Britain's NHS) or by private companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the panic over automation of cars and trucks is a little premature. At the moment you cannot buy a car or truck that will auto drive. I mean auto drive in the sense of not needing a driver at all. Until you can completely remove the driver then there is no danger to the taxi/trucking industry, it will be only a driver aid in the same way cruise control is a driver aid.

There is a huge gap between Google testing a driverless car, with a person in it for emergencies, and actually seeing hordes of driverless taxis of trucks on our streets.

I can imagine a new trend with bored teenagers. Jump in front of the driverless car or truck and watch it emergency stop. Then run away. Or wait for the news report where all the driverless cars in the city have gone to the same car park because a hacker thought it would be hilarious. Just one truck accident that wipes out a few children and the trucks will be taken off the road. After all, if one truck has the bug then they all do. When a person makes a mistake we don't stop all trucks because we blame the person, when a software version crashes then they all could crash.

<comment><USER12> >I can imagine a new trend with bored teenagers. Jump in front of the driverless car or truck and watch it emergency stop.

I'm not sure why it being automated would change how braking physics work. An emergency stop at 50km/h will still result in a minimum 25m braking distance no matter who is behind the seat.

<comment><USER13> Having a fairly guaranteed reaction (from software) rather than randomly effective human reflexes turns what was a dangerous game into a prank.

<comment><USER14> but since the truck can/will have external camera mounts, the interaction gets recorded and the kid gets _ARRESTED_? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A century ago there were people [1] whose job was to manually light street lamps. How did they transition into the advent of electricity?

There's been countless other jobs where previously-essential human participation was rendered unnecessary by technology, sometimes with entire social classes finding themselves unemployed; why should this time be any different? How can it be different?

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

Also interesting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link- boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy)

<comment><USER16> Because now through technology the compression rate will be enormous. How many new jobs do you think will be created when those 3.5m trucker jobs are automated? Probably some small fraction.

And now the main thing to keep in mind that this will happening across work domains and technologies. A truck driver can't go on and switch career to a factory worker because those jobs are gone too!

In the future more and more of these laboros grunt jobs will become automated. Just a while ago there was news how Foxconn cut 60k jobs at a _single_ factory through automation.

And this is the right way to go. Why should any human or sentient being be forced to work a boring mundane job in some factory when machines can do it? The only goal for the human race as a whole should be the liberation of people from back breaking labor. The only question is now, how will our societies react to this forthcoming change in the system. One way or another this change will come and if we're not prepared it will turn into dystopia everywhere with masses of the people sidelined out of jobs which means without means to support themselves or their families. Crime, poverty and massive slum cities are the only way this can turn out. Not to mention that since the consumer base is gone the whole world economy will simply collapse.

<comment><USER17> Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale. In that time, there would be a rapid rise in number of companies around this industry which would create a lot better work than those mundane jobs.

I think people are underestimating how many new jobs could be created. Driverless trucks would give rise companies selling fleet tracking software, integrated inventory management software, and automated vehicle servicing applications. Imagine hundreds of such companies, employing engineers, sales people, marketers, customer success guys and you have a world where you think - "Did we really have humans to do that?"

<comment><USER18> "Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale."

It will take as much time as factories can produce 100's of millions self- drive retro-fit kits, or alternatively, the average write-off time of a truck, say 5 years? Because 95% of companies that don't start transitioning to self- driving the day after it becomes available on the general market, will not be able to compete within the year or 2 after.

"I think people are underestimating how many new jobs could be created."

A company providing a fully automated solution for all of that is, what, 300-500 people? So let's say there would be 10 of those (which is too many, consolidation and all). Let's say that we round that up (double) to 10000, and _then_ say we're off by a factor of 10. That's 100k, vs 3.5 million jobs now (counting just truckers, and just in the US, so not even counting all 'associated' jobs).

This whole 'but there will be new jobs' thing doesn't stand up to even the tiniest bit of math, even with very generous assumptions. And that's not even considering the nature of those new jobs. Someone who is a truck driver now, isn't going to be a software engineer, or even a sales guy. There are going to be vast portions of the population who will not be qualified to do any of the jobs that the automated ones will generate.

I don't know the solution, and I don't think UBI is it, but what I do know is that the commercial availability of self-driving cars will hit the labor market like a Mack truck (pardon the pun).

<comment><USER17> I agree that you can't replace 3.5M truckers with highly technical jobs but this is an oversimplified analysis that doesn't consider how industries will grow. When Power Loom was introduced, it was often a centre of vandalism because it was destroying jobs. Within few decades, the textile industry was employing more people than it was ever before.

Replacing truckers with highly reliable and automated transport, would only increase the size of the industry and volume of goods transported would multiply . Analysing what are the exact jobs that would replace these truckers is flawed. There is so much interdependence in industries and technology is changing at so many points that you have to assume there would different kinds of work that would be created. I can guess that, with more goods transported, there would be more humans needed to transport it to their destination.

Of course, there could be flaw in my argument that there is an upper limit on products we can create that need transportation but I am assuming this won't be a case for a long time.

<comment><USER15> > When Power Loom was introduced, it was often a centre of vandalism because > it was destroying jobs.

You just gave a very good example right there of a potential for new jobs but you overlooked it:

Employing former truckers as guards for self-driving truckers to protect them and their cargo from vandals and protesters.

Until self-driving vehicles also become self-defending, humans will still have to sit in the automatic trucks. They'll still need places to grab food from along the way, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Otto ([http://ot.to](http://ot.to)) provides a solution for converting existing trucks into semi-self-driving trucks. I'd be very interested to hear a truck drivers take on using a device like this. In my (not a truck driver) opinion, it seems like in the short term it'll be hugely beneficial to the drivers, since the government will still be mandating that drivers be in the vehicles, but in the long term will completely kill the job.

<comment><USER20> I've seen their giant demo truck parked in San Francisco. I was wondering why a huge truck had what looked like parking cameras and radar domes on top. And who in the world was driving a full size semi into SoMa just to park it on the street. Thanks for solving a mystery!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From a technical standpoint, this was crystal clear for years now: the first point where automation will happen is long distance trucking on highways. A human drives a truck out of town where (s)he gets out -- and perhaps into a truck just arrived -- and the robot drives it to the destination city. Many hard technical and regulatory problems in automated driving do not even appear in this scenario. There are no pedestrians to hit, traffic lights to navigate etc. Just drive. And this will be quick to be accepted, everyone knows the dangers of truck drives dozing off. The robot never dozes off. And yes, a real large amount of jobs will disappear within the next 15 years if not the next ten due to this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Automation of human labor is the single biggest cause of prosperity. Its not a new process and robotics isn't doing anything radically different.

Nor will the supply of jobs dry up because of automation. There will continue to be a demand for what humans can do and a supply of humans that want to work. As long as prices are allowed to adjust so that supply and demand tend to equalize, there will be a labor market.

The real problem is interference in this marketplace, interference in people's ability to sell their labor.

</comment><comment><USER23> ... Until we get driverless RVs, and hordes of retirees roaming the country reinvigorating those rest stops.

<comment><USER24> They won't have to stop for the same reasons.

<comment><USER25> Even with a robot driving you're going to need gas / electricity and food every 4 hours.

<comment><USER26> Carry your own food and enough batteries to last to the destination. Or have a hot swap battery bot like a military jet re-fueler. No stopping at all!

In all seriousness, I'm not saying there won't be stop offs and rest stops (because really, who wants to be in a moving box for 3 days), but in terms of feasibility I can definitely theorize a situation where stopping is no longer necessary.

I just finished a road trip and man, would an auto-RV have been amazing. Instead of only catching ~50% of the view because I was the driver, I could take it all in and interact with my lady at the same time vs focused on driving. Growing up I thought RVs were crazy awful - but now I look forward to my auto-RV at age 75 driving my old ass around the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We do not even have driverless cargo trains. The only automated trains I know of are local metro trains. I'm quite sure we will need a person sitting in a truck for a very long time. Sure, that person might not be actually driving the truck, but the job will be still there.

<comment><USER28> >We do not even have driverless cargo trains.

These are definitely on the way, if they have not already arrived. Someone I know was a train driver for a mining company here in Australia. A lot of their trains are already essentially automated with a driver being present largely just in case. Bear in mind that this was several years ago and I doubt automation has halted since then as that specific kind of train driver are exceptionally expensive to have on the payroll.

Even a few years back the drivers were either simply supervising the computer system or the human was driving however the computer system would alarm at the driver any time the human driver did something that it disagreed with. In particular, going too fast and being unsafe or going too slow and extending the trip time.

The computer was supervising the human just as much as the human was supervising the computer. From memory, the system could even raise alarms with supervisors about what is happening with the train in some circumstances.

Going from human only > human supervising computer > computer supervising human > computer only seems like a sensible progression and trains are a long way through it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One thing I just wondered about: If you automate away a job, you have to pay this persons UBI, as such you need to tax more. (Lets assume 100% at the point where you automated.) Where is the profit for the company now ? It will now have to pay both the automation and the UBI. The only thing we gained (and that's a good thing) is a human with a lot of spare time. That should be enough motivation, but not for this €€€ obsessed world.

<comment><USER30> In this specific idealized scenario the driver has something else he would rather do (another production of value - care for children, writing a novel, playing video games) or else he would offer to drive the truck for less money than the automaton costs. So that driver's alternative production + the value from the automaton is the net positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> there's an ukrainian book, "Hunting wild trucks" by V.Vasiliev, about a parallel world, where human, elves and dwarves hunt and tame automated trucks moving cargo between automated factories. I for one, welcome such a future.

</comment><comment><USER32> Let's generize and say truckers won't do difficult (thinking) work.

What are there alternatives for employment? (i'm NOT saying that they can't/won't work, but that their alternative jobs could be replaced in the short-term future also...).

There is a huge storm coming in the next 15-20 years and it's coming fast... I just hope the world is ready

<comment><USER33> They will go on SSDI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Brings to mind this graphic:

[http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job- map-90/c...](http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job- map-90/child.html?initialWidth=800)

Truck driver is an extremely common occupation across much of the country.

<comment><USER35> How many of those are long-haul truck drivers and how many are UPS or other short-haul delivery? You'd still need people to bring packages from the truck to the business/home.

<comment><USER34> Those people may not need a commercial driver's license any longer, making it a lower skilled job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd love to recommend a book on this, but it never was translated to English: [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g- tt...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tter)

It was originally written to be a satire, but ended up showing a civilization way passed the everything is automated for basic needs. From there on you need to teach people to use their capabilities to create whatever they have in their mind, be that music, inventions, etc. If you take away the purpose of jobs, such as to do something with your life, you need to give alternatives, such as the option and the need for creation.

<comment><USER37> It's the logical conclusion; people who can work on / in space exploration, people who can't entertain themselves, preferably by creating but many also by enjoying the creations. Games, movies, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think we are pretty close to the point where trucks no longer require a human being holding the steering wheel to move between locations. That does not automatically mean, that there are no human beings on board. There are many reasons why there should still be humans involved, like

\- maintenance: Starting from refueling, to tyre change

\- security: Completely unguarded trucks would make quite a theft risk

\- any other interactions, being with the customer at the destination or anything on the road.

So, overall there are some aspects and consequently some jobs going away, but there might be additional responsibilities being added to the remaining job, consider the truck driving of the future rather an office job located on the truck.

<comment><USER10> > maintenance

This is the most interesting part.

> security

Not an expert, but it would be interesting to see if theft is a bigger problem with autonomous cars, or if it's hacker attacks.

> interaction on site of the customer

There you can still cut down the workforce, and have one person handle a whole fleet of incoming trucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> People speak about surplus workers like "everybody has food and place to sleep - we're out of things to do".

We still have to cure cancer, AIDS, deal with malaria, Alzheimer, Zika, etc. We have to solve space exploration and colonization. We have to fix aging. We have to understand the universe.

There's no law that says only brightest (most socialy adaptable) 1% of human population can work on all that. It can be 50% or more if we change how we do it (and have the resources).

That's why I think guaranteed income is stupid idea. We should have guaranteed science/engineering jobs instead. And work on all the long-shot problems. Why not?

So - that's the alternative costs of guaranteed income.

<comment><USER40> We already produce enough food and housing for everyone, we just don't let the people who don't have jobs to use the surplus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder how the tire replacement mechanism works on a driverless truck.

<comment><USER42> The machine stops on the side of the road and calls a human.

<comment><USER41> What if people start sabotaging the robots just to have more jobs? e.g: perforating tires

<comment><USER43> Sabotaging a target that has dozens of cameras pointed at you is a pretty dumb move.

(And the same thing could happen today, on less-well monitored cars; I haven't heard much of mass tyre vandalism.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> If driverless trucks were to be such a transformer of economies, we'd have seen that many more trains and railroads appear, decades ago.

This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity.

But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car thing.

<comment><USER13> > This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous > vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity.

Certainly cynical, but not necessarily a wrong interpretation.

> But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car > thing.

We will not have a choice on whether automation cost are much cheaper than human driving, indeed — but we have two choices:

\- should we tax automation? if yes, should it be so that humans remain cheaper (probably a terrible idea) or enough to have enough to help recently out-of-work workers to re-train?

\- what should do with recently out-of-work workers? In the case of drivers, that is less essential than it would seem, as many are ageing and retirement is a possible option. (Hence my intuition that Unions are not that worried, and this could be puff _for_ automation.) However, there are two generations who have been trained for a labor-intensive world that will need re-training. What and how we handle that is important, and it is our choice.

<comment><USER45> Re-train to do what? Be live-in servants for the owner of the robot-staffed business?

And while we're at it, when are we going to get around to retraining the millions of people in the Rust Belt, who were already put out of work?

<comment><USER13> Fixing robots, build or design custom furniture, something related to space- exploration?

I work for Deliveroo (an equivalent of DoorDash/Seemless/UberEats) and our riders need a fairly new set of skills — not unlike courier — that are not yet really doable by a drone. Training those riders; being a rider and figuring out which properties drones should have to take some of the workload… all those are skills that are not directly technical, but are empowered by automation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>