Ask HN: Are programmers a commodity? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't think any professional class could be described as a commodity. In any job where people have to use their intelligence, experience and wits to effect an outcome, you will get widely differing results based on the individual.

But inasmuch as any professional could be described as a commodity, I think "programmer" is particularly fraught along two axes. The first axis is discipline: the differences between web, GUI, OS, embedded, distributed, and other programming disciplines is enormous. In order to be anything approaching a commodity you would have to choose such a narrow slice of expertise that there would hardly be enough experts in that particular thing to call it a commodity. The second axis is domain: the primary job of a commercial programmer is to translate some business logic into executable code. A good programmer with decent communication skills ought to be able to do a passable job at a new domain (assuming a competent domain expert to help work out the requirements!), but the value of really understanding the domain will magnify the value not just the mythical 5x or 10x, but potentially 100x or 1000x by identifying underlying truths and patterns that a "commodity" programmer would not necessarily discover until years of experience made _them_ a domain expert.

<comment><USER3> > In order to be anything approaching a commodity you would have to choose > such a narrow slice of expertise that there would hardly be enough experts > in that particular thing to call it a commodity.

Like (backend|desktop)x(Java|.NET) programmers, iOS|Android programmers, Reac^H^H^H^Hweb frontend programmers, or testers? Those are commodity. You can have them dime a dozen (obviously, mediocre, not the best ones).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the eyes of non-technical management, programmers are just another fungible resource. Just like assembly line workers.

Those non-tech PHBs think that programming is just a variant on typing. If you aren't typing then you aren't producing. That's why designing, documenting, brainstorming, planning are discouraged.

So many programmers do feel like they are being treated as a commodity. Better to avoid working for such companies. Which might explain why programmers are attracted to working in startups, where they are treated as valuable contributors.

</comment><comment><USER5> All the larger projects I've worked with were designed initially so you add/remove "programming resources" as needed. "Simple" languages such as Java SE and JUnit were heavily used to enable that. Over time some people still found ways to make themselves indispensible. When such people left, it was much harder to replace a single component that they maintained, but in the end it was possible either by refactoring, virtualizing or even copy-pasta. For better or worse all successful software projects that I worked with did better where no one was irreplaceable. No one truly is, but when they put themselves in that 'hero' position, it means they can't take the weekend off when it's deployment time or they need to deal with support cases personally and they burn out. And then it hurts the project more compared to an average contributor burning out. To sum up - project managers will tend to organise software so it's more of a commodity, programmers will try to do the inverse. Software being more of a commodity is usually better for the project and worse for the programmer and vice versa, at least in the short and medium term.

<comment><USER6> There is two sides on this coin.

Nothing beats software craftsmanship combined with domain expertise. That is what makes the impossible possible. The developers that have these skills are not a commodity.

The scenario that you describe is not uncommon. It is a cultural problem, where there is no information sharing and developers "own" the code, even within a team.

On the other hand, sometimes, especially in larger organisations, there are too many C-level developers and that will burn out or drive away any A- and B-level developers.

The initial symptoms in the latter case is similar, with hero-developers and personal dependencies, but the difference is that the productivity slowly grinds to a halt as the code grows by copy-paste into a huge tangle of fragile code and bugs.

In these kind of organisations, programming is probably also treated as a commodity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Depends on what you mean by _commodity_ , but considering that a commodity "has no qualitative differentiation"[1] I would say no.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity#Types_of_commodity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity#Types_of_commodity)

<comment><USER8> Also depends what you mean by "programmer".

\- A programmer with one year of experience writing CRUD applications is fairly easy to replace.

\- A programmer with many years of experience designing and building large, scalable, maintainable, secure and reliable systems is much harder to replace.

\- A programmer who knows your legacy code inside out is very hard to replace.

<comment><USER7> That's the "qualitative differentiation" I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sort of.

From an individual perspective we're not interchangeable the way two ears of corn or two apples might be. Even two programmers with identical technical skills are going to have different personalities and values that make them good or poor fits for different workplaces.

From a whole-market perspective, programmers are commodities to a large degree. There's a market with supply and demand. In the long term a junior programmer can be hired and shaped into the mid-level programmer a company needs, and so forth. Even apples have different varieties and some that are objectively (fewer worms) or subjectively (more tart or sweeter) better than others or better suited for different purposes.

Large companies are more likely to (and can generally afford to) treat programmers as commodities than small companies. Small companies tend to be more concerned about fit and someone being productive right off the bat. Larger companies can afford to invest more in training and have departments large enough that everyone has to interact anyway with people who might not be their first choice of collaborator, so "fit" matters less.

<comment><USER10> Not really. The existence of a large market doesn't suffice to classify something as a commodity. The acid test is this:

Two companies that each go out to the market and try to buy a thousand tons of wheat or a thousand barrels of crude oil, can reliably get the same result.

Two companies that each go out to the market and try to hire a thousand programmers, even for the same job descriptions and salaries, will get substantially different results, because they will have different errors and irrational biases in their hiring processes.

<comment><USER3> A _thousand_ programmers? Yes, they will get around the same results. I've seen various software created by such companies, and it all was of similar quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know if they actually are, but recruiters are definitely trying their hardest to commoditize programmers. So are many tech companies.

This means for instance inventing the concept of a "$LANG developer", when many good developers can adapt to any language.

</comment><comment><USER12> In today's environment - yes absolutely ! I mean they're treated like a commodity. Managers like to view them as pieces of in industrial machinery pipeline that can be plugged in interchangeably on any project. Sadly, this is the state of things.

</comment><comment><USER13> Programmers? Yes. Software Engineers? No. People that can pass irrelevant whiteboard questions? No. People that can actually create usable scalable software? Yes.

While advances in technology have reduced the barrier for many people to advance up the programmer path, the need for people that actually understand the problems has not diminished. Too many fresh grads and bootcamp kiddies are in the marketplace right now, this floods us with lots of inexperienced folks. Senior people, especially those with experience in scaling problems, are still very hard to find.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not particularly more or less than other fields requiring similar creative adaptivity. If you ask a programmer to do commoditized tasks and punch the clock, then yes. If you ask them to engage themselves at their highest level of intensity and give them the environment and schedule to do so, then you get something very different per person, something potentially worthy and unique but hard to grade on the curve. And as we all know, organizations tend to need more of the former.

</comment><comment><USER15> Depends on the level of specialization.

A highly skilled engineer working on compression, cryptography, data stores, operating systems, compilers, etc... (the building blocks for other systems), cannot be treated as commodities today.

Highly productive engineers with regular skills, might not be easily replaceable either, it might just not make financial sense for your company.

Engineers with regular skills and regular productivity can be replaced. But abusing this might have effects on the culture.

</comment><comment><USER16> That depends on what you're doing with them.

If you're doing something mundane, easy, and well-defined, yes.

If you're doing something unique, difficult, or undetermined, no.

</comment><comment><USER17> What does it take for someone's skills not to be a commodity?

I imagine sports starts, rock stars, famous lawyers, and so on, but they come and go. There are also people so specialised and knowledgeable; physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, etc.

It's all a case of 'degree of commoditisation', I think, but one of the few non-commodity 'skills' is probably personal connections.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would be more interesting to know what kind of programmers are not a commodity yet. Is there a specialization that can get you a job with the very first application or at least with the first few?

</comment><comment><USER19> Nope. People that hire/need programmers are commodities.

<comment><USER7> How come?

<comment><USER20> Programmers aren't commodities as they aren't interchangeable, there are vast differences in outcome between different programmers.

To a good programmer most jobs offerings are commodities, they are interchangeable and their offerings/rewards/challenges are very similar.

Thus the developer you are interviewing is also interviewing you.

<comment><USER8> _" To a good programmer most jobs offerings are commodities, they are interchangeable and their offerings/rewards/challenges are very similar."_

Consider the following two jobs:

\- Job #1 expects me to work 80 hours a week in an open-plan office, building yet another web site for yet another startup, and pays a below-average salary.

\- Job #2 expects me to work 40 hours a week in a private office, writing software that solves interesting problems, and pays twice as much.

I don't think that these jobs are at all interchangeable. If I currently have Job #2, it would be almost impossible for someone offering Job #1 to convince me to go work for them.

<comment><USER4> We all would prefer job #2. But it seems that there are lot more of job #1s out there. That's where the commoditisation happens.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Make your customised bash boilerplate code - <AUTHOR> https://toolstud.io/data/bash.php <comment><AUTHOR> for people who often write bash scripts (Linux/MacOS): a quick boilerplate generator to get started swiftly, with option parsing and plenty of built-in helper functions</comment>


Peculiar Traits of Rich People - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/15/peculiar-traits-of-rich-people.aspx

<comment><USER2> > The price of being rich is really simple: You must live below your means.

The linked article is funny and entertaining in places, but the above is the real punch line -- it's true in a deep sense, for reasons given here:

[http://arachnoid.com/equities_myths/index.html#Compound_Inte...](http://arachnoid.com/equities_myths/index.html#Compound_Interest)</comment>


HP said to dump Microsoft ARM tablets over Surface - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/06/29/hp-said-to-dump-microsoft-over-surface/#.T-2s75neWtA.hackernews

<comment><USER3> Microsoft is absolutely making the right move here. For years they've stayed out of hardware, and let their OEMs mess it up. They wanted to "partner" to deliver a good end user experience, and that's never worked out.

Microsoft has done a similar in the hosted services space with Office365. Did that burn a lot of relationships? Oh most certainly - people are annoyed they can't resell Exchange or O365 and make any serious money. But so what? Microsoft is making their products available in a great way, and serving their customers better.

If Microsoft had taken this approach a decade ago, perhaps Apple would not have grown to twice MS's size simply by caring about the end-to-end user experience.

<comment><USER4> Just out of curiosity, how is Apple twice Microsoft's size? I mean, Microsoft products are still used all over business, right? How did it happen?

<comment><USER5> _How did it happen?_

Apparently there's a single-serving site for that: <http://barefigur.es/>

The short answer is the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Starting in 2004, Apple started releasing hardware products so popular they made its previous unit sales look like a rounding error, and then they kept doing that in new product categories while continuing to sell the old ones, every three years like clockwork. In each case they made huge bets to control the supply chain, keeping margins amazingly high and keeping competitors technologically behind for crucial months. Apple is now twice Microsoft's market cap because investors are betting they can keep pulling off this trick. (We're due for another one in 2013 -- the Apple TV?)

The really interesting question is, how did _that_ happen? Personally I'm inclined to buy into the Cult of Steve Jobs. Because the other company reliably churning out blockbusters in the same time period, using surprisingly similar organizational methods, was ... Pixar. But there were probably some other people who contributed too.

<comment><USER6> _The really interesting question is, how did that happen?_

A lot of Apple's enormous and well-deserved success could be attributed to iTunes, I think. The iPod was a huge success, pulling people to use and start to get locked into the iTunes universe. Around the time of the release of the iPhone, iTunes was the benchmark and it was the massive differentiator of what made the iPhone the device to have (it's all very curious now. I keep no music on my device, using online sources like Rdio). The iPhone begat the iPad, etc.

<comment><USER7> I don't think so. why?

When iTunes was not available in my country, I remember iPods were already popular.

<comment><USER6> iTunes the application wasn't available? It was essentially mandatory to have it to use an iPod.

I'm not talking about the music sales. I'm talking purely about iTunes as a way of managing music, including just the mp3s in your own collection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that "dump" here means "won't make Windows ARM tablets".

I know everyone was waiting breathlessly for one of those from HP.

<comment><USER9> The mobile device org from top to bottom must still be smarting from the touchpad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Microsoft management may have destroyed their partnerships, but they're certainly not imcompetent.

The Surface is the exact thing Microsoft needs to stay relevant for consumers. And if Microsoft can start selling their own hardware, in the end they'll be better and more profitable for it.

What does SemiArrucate thing Microsoft should do? Stay the same course that has seen them losing marketshare for a decade?

<comment><USER11> They've been losing market share for over a decade? I would love to see some real numbers on that.

<comment><USER12> It's probably more accurate to say they've lost mindshare. The amount of PC marketshare they've lost to Apple is still pretty small.

But the biggest problem for Microsoft is that the market is shifting. Between smartphones and tablets, people just don't need PCs as much. So Microsoft is desperately trying to be a factor in those markets. Shrinking the PC down to the size of the Surface isn't a bad idea, but it will make OEMs very uncomfortable. They are feeling the same market pressure to get small and mobile.

<comment><USER10> Mindshare is more what I meant than marketshare.

If you look at Wikipedia's statistics, Microsoft represents about 75% of visitors: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

I imagine that in 2002, their share would have been hovering around 95%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Other than the certification requirements for Windows on ARM, everything else is pretty much speculation (e.g. license prices and HP abandoning Windows) or casting of the status quo as a sudden shift of the landscape (e.g. tablets from anyone other than Apple run Android, today).

The fact that there is an existing commitment to Android tablets by all the consumer electronics companies is probably the reason Microsoft is considering making it's own hardware (not that HP was really seemed all that gung-ho on partnering with Microsoft over the long term once they bought Palm to acquire Web-OS).

Windows on ARM is not Windows Phone or the Windows OS in so far as economies of scale. The tablet market is always going to be really small compared to the size of the phone and PC markets due to the "third device" nature of tablets and their orientation toward media consumption rather than productivity. HP isn't selling a lot of tablets today - nobody is, other than Apple and only because they don't have to share their slice of the pie with anyone else (i.e. the Android slice of the market is shared among lots of competitors).

</comment><comment><USER14> HP Exec: "That's IT! We need to go it on our own with our tablet strategy. Dang, maybe we should acquire a really good mobile OS?"

<comment> excuse-me No need - they found a really good deal on tablets at BestBuy, they just have to go and buy them at $99 and resell them for $499

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was going to post that this seems like mere sensationalism, then I noticed the blog's URL.

<comment><USER16> I stopped reading when I got to the part about Windows RT become WART. This guy has an axe to grind and he just wasted thrity seconds of my life that I will never get back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If HP really abandons Windows, HP is doomed. Printers aren't enough for an organization that size.

<comment><USER18> The editorial is specifically about HP abandoning Windows RT - <USER2> headline.

<comment><USER14> Agree. Horrible headline.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Too bad they didn't keep webOS around...

<comment><USER20> It's not too late to bring it back.

<comment><USER21> Its gone. HP lost its credibility with app developers - they've moved on and they're not coming back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This shouldn't be much of a surprise at all (if confirmed): \- Microsoft's rumored pricing strategy leaves little room for profit for the HW manufacturers. \- Before the Surface announcement Microsoft was seeing very little traction with ARM device manufacturers. ARM devices have been noticeably quiet during all of the tradeshows.

I'm guessing is that Microsoft prepared the Surface as a backup plan if they weren't satisfied their HW partners. This turned into a reality and Microsoft released the Surface knowing full well that they'd lose partners.

I wouldn't be surprised if the high rumored cost of Windows 8 is because Microsoft calculated it's profit margin (and risk) if it went the Surface route, then set the price based on that. If it's a zero-sum market (tablet sale is either Surface or Brand X Windows RT machine) then this works out (and Microsoft hubris does believe this is a zero-sum game).

</comment><comment><USER23> In all fairness to MS, HP's waffling over whether they were selling their desktop/laptop/othertop business or not and Dell's acquisition of Perot Systems to become a more services oriented company are flags worth noting.

MS isn't bleeding edge, but they seem to be reading the leaves pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope they pick Linux based distributions or develop their own. That would be the start of something great.

<comment><USER25> Apparently Ubuntu is catching on fast in India, and Dell is selling Ubuntu laptops at 850 retail stores in India now, so that might not be such a bad plan for HP either.

[http://news.efytimes.com/e1/86247/Ubuntu-Adoption-Grew-- Per-...](http://news.efytimes.com/e1/86247/Ubuntu-Adoption-Grew--Per-Cent-In- India-Last-Year)

With publishing houses like EA and Valve joining Ubuntu, and changing the perception that "Linux/Ubuntu is not for mainstream users", and the potential rejection of Windows 8 by the market, this could get interesting fast.

<comment><USER21> So 2012 could be The Year of Linux on the Desktop?

<comment><USER26> Google is registering 1,000,000 Linux machines a day. Small desktops, granted. But (IMHO) the Year of the Desktop was really about the year of Consumer Linux, which snuck up on everyone upwards, rather than flowing down in machine size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This might actually help Microsoft become more like Apple, if they can shed some of the OEMs. MS may own the market in several areas, but Apple has the buzz and the flexibility to do pretty much whatever they think they need to.

It's a pity that these OEMs aren't talking about Linux as a replacement - accelerating the adoption of Linux would help pretty much everyone (including, eventually, Microsoft by forcing them to be more innovative).

<comment><USER10> Android is a Linux. It's like Portland, the dream of the 90's.

<comment><USER28> It's the Linux kernel, but above that it's totally incompatible with the typical GNU/Linux stack. Linux in Android is just a convenient layer between the hardware and Dalvik.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I see someone changed the title?

The article is titled "HP said to dump Microsoft over Surface" which was the original title posted here.

Now the link title has been changed to "HP said to dump Microsoft ARM tablets over Surface."

So it was edited to try to make this look like a less inflammatory title? (As someone pointed out, who is breathlessly waiting for HP ARM tablets with Windows 8?)

Interesting.

<comment><USER6> The editors (? is that the right title?) of HN frequently change headlines to match the linked article, presumably to avoid the Reddit-like draw of linkbait titles.

<comment><AUTHOR> I (the OP) edited it because the article is not about HP dumping MS but about dumping MS ARM tablets. People were complaining about link-baity headline now people are complaining about different headline. Oh well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, I haven't been impressed by any HP product in a while and being a big fan of Compaq / HP and an owner of a mobile workstation, it's a bit frustrating.

I hope this will be a wake up call for them although it seems more like they want to turn Google in the new Microsoft. I am not terribly eager to see that happening...

<comment><USER31> Agreed. As a consumer I say good riddance to HP's products. What Vizio is doing with their PC lineup is far more interesting and I think they'll have a bright future partnering with Microsoft and their Signature series.

<comment><USER30> Thank you.. I didn't hear about Vizio before... indeed they look pretty nice :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> HP products only become popular anymore once they stop making them and sell that at clearance.

</comment><comment><USER33> How is Surface any different than Google`s Nexus line .....

<comment><USER34> Microsoft charges OEM's a significant amount of money to use Windows on their hardware, Google gives Android away for free.

So, the Surface is able to undercut the OEM's on price significantly.

<comment><USER33> I was under the impression that Google does have licensing agreements with OEMs, for the use of Google apps like GMail, Maps, Navigation, Play Store, etc.

I'm sure it's not $85 per device for the license but the point still remains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Microsoft is creating a baseline for vendors. HP will be on board. This is fud.

</comment><comment><USER36> well, that wasn't a biased article at all.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nobody in Redmond seems to think of a plan B in case the surface is a flop in the market.

<comment><USER38> What makes you say that? I mean, what kind of signals would you expect to hear from Redmond in case they did have a plan B? Obviously they do and just as obviously plan B's are almost never public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Like HP is really in a position here to call shots? Clearly they are reallllly successful with the tablet industry.</comment>


Ask HN: When startup time for CLI tools starts bothering you? - <AUTHOR> I am developing a CLI tools for internal usage to substitute the old tooling that we have, and one of the things that I am trying to optimize is startup time.
Why? Because with the old tools, every time that one command took more than a second I would unconsciously avoid this command, even if it was useful (of course, there are exceptions, i.e.: commands that are rarely used).
However, I only have arbitrary values for benchmark based on startup times that irritates me. This is basically what I am using as a base to measure against:
- ~0.1s: good, feels instantaneous
- ~0.2s: ok, however the latency starts to be perceptible
- ~0.5s: slow but bearable
- ~1s: I actively avoid to use this command unless necessary
A very simple test that you can do in your shell:

     foo() { sleep 0.1 && echo "Hello" }
 And afterwards, call `foo`. You can of course play with `sleep` values to simulate other startup times.
Remember that I am looking at startup time, so it is the time until the commands gives some feedback. The command itself can takes more time than +10s to run, for example, however if it gives feedback in ~0.1s it still feels good. <comment><USER2> It depends on what the command does, also how much faith I have in the reliability of it.

If there was to be a "computer user's bill of rights" in 2019 it would be that you have the right to get some feedback that it has really started the task that you think you did. If there is one thing I hate about Windows it is that I type [Win] + "cmd", then nothing happens, then I try it again, nothing happens, then after 20 seconds I have five console windows pop up.

I've had this pet peeve with every kind of GUI and Modern Web application, but never felt this way about command line applications.</comment>


Will QR Codes Gain Mass Adoption? - <AUTHOR> http://www.awdp.org/articles/242/Will-QR-Codes-Gain-Mass-Adoption?

<comment><USER2> They could be good, but I think the user experience isn't quite there. I know on Android you have to download a barcode scanner app, which is easy enough, but until this starts being a standard feature, perhaps part of the camera application, or at the very least a pre-installed application, your average joe just won't get it.

<comment><USER3> I agree. If I could just press a button and scan, I might find them useful, but at present it feels like more hassle to find, launch and scan with the appropriate app (RedLaser on my iPhone) than just to type in a shortened URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think they are a great tool, they will find their niche and be used sometimes, others not. Too often the media seems to think something new has to be either the next big, giant thing or they are a failure.

</comment><comment><USER5> QR Codes are already common place in Japan. Every Japanese mobile comes with a QR code reader, and it is common to see them on print advertisements, coupons, and so on.

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that they were waning in Japan, with many newer ads simply encouraging people to "Google XYZ" to learn more.

<comment><USER5> Keyword terms are most common on advertisements in trains, where it wouldn't be polite to use your phone to scan a QR code (and difficult to do to because of the position of the ads). QR Codes are used most often on things you are given personally, such as flyers or coupons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> QR codes deserve mass usage (they can be in different sizes, store different data, etc etc...), but all they get is hype and some public appearances on billboards from time to time.

<comment><USER8> What types of specific usage?

Gimme some examples, please!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like QR codes but taking pictures of anything is way to difficult on most phones. Power button, unlock, bar code app, loading, loading, loading, hold up to QR code, focus, focus, focus, detect, detect, detect, success! If there was a super quick way to scan them on phones, I'd be more optimistic about consumer adoption. IMO, the whole mobile phone camera workflow needs to be rethought.

</comment><comment><USER10> QR codes or something like it will eventually be the way Dwolla and Paypal do mobile-to-mobile transactions. I've thought of a mock up of just using ONLY QR-like codes to transfer money between two people in the same room, it would be fast and easy and assuming you used your Dwolla pin as you confirmed the amount you were spending/charging, it would work perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER11> It would help if android had a built-in app for that instead of having to go hunt for one you can trust.

Almost all devices in Japan come with i-nigma preloaded apparently, but not USA.

Also, WTF does every QR reader insist permission for access to your personal info, storage write and internet access. Why?

</comment><comment><USER12> With Google resigning their QR code initiative and the break through developments in near field communication (NFC), mass adoption seems unlikely.

The QR graphics aren't aesthetically pleasing - proximity based devices are more likely to succeed.

<comment><USER13> You can't print NFC chips on documents at zero extra cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've already seen QR codes at best buy near the price tag of many different things (mostly computer related hardware..like hard drives).

</comment><comment><USER15> What's considered mass adoption? By consumers? If not, they've been massively adopted by manufacturers from my understanding.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that it has been adopted by manufacturers but I also believe that they also need to educate the users on how they can interact with QR codes. Like another comment stats, until Barcode scanning becomes a standard for all mobiles or other portable devices it will not create a mass following.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is matrix code not getting as much consideration ?

<comment><AUTHOR> My response would be that the bigger corporations are dictating what we use. Blackberry use QR and I see alot more content with QR on it. I like the fact data-matrix can offer much more in terms of less erroring, more security. But i must admit i have not seen anyone using matrix code.

<comment><USER17> I think UPS uses 2D barcode that is currently known as MaxiCode. I've also seen Datamatrix codes on some electronics.

There are probably many more examples of use in logistics and manufacturing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'Will Barcodes Gain Mass Adoption?'</comment>


'friend ships' between teachers, students banned by new Missouri law - <AUTHOR>

If you are a teacher, and want to be friendly with your students, that's fine. Just don't be their friends, especially not on a social networking service. That type of "friending" is now banned by a new Missouri law that goes into effect on August 28.<p>Read more: http://www.newtechie.com/2011/07/social-networking-friendships-between.html <comment><USER2> Ridiculous idea. Hope it won't spread. And how do they want to check it? Most of the people have the privacy settings on and forcing teachers to open fb page for a background check is just stupid.

<comment><USER3> On Facebook, your list of friends is publicly accessible.

<comment><USER2> Can be hidden when changing the privacy settings

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link: [http://www.newtechie.com/2011/07/social-networking- friendshi...](http://www.newtechie.com/2011/07/social-networking-friendships- between.html#axzz1TecoqqtQ)</comment>


Ask HN: Please review our UI (Round 2) - Feedback is greatly appreciated! - <AUTHOR>

I'm back for Round 2! Here's Round 1 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1748421) - I asked the HN Community for some feedback to help my startup fix our UI and boy did they do a great job!
To give you a bit of background, my startup is called Vuru. Our web app applies value investing formulas & benchmarks to tell you how much a stock is worth, its strengths & weaknesses & to help you discover undervalued stocks. Vuru provides the equivalent of two hours worth of analysis in the time it takes to load your page.
We've also built a tool that provides an overview of your portfolio, from a value investing perspective.
HERE'S THE PROBLEM: We want to make our site even better so HN Community please help us out once again!!
Page users see when they first sign up:
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9710/vuruanalysispagesignupf.png
Sample Analysis:
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/3658/vuruanalysispagev3.png
Portfolio Page: http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/4853/vuruhomepagev3.png
So, what do you think? Where can they be improved?
I'll provide clickable links below and if you're interested, sign up to be notified when we launch into private beta (www.vuru.co). <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

Page users see when they first sign up: [http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9710/vuruanalysispagesign...](http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9710/vuruanalysispagesignupf.png)

Sample Analysis: <http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/3658/vuruanalysispagev3.png>

Portfolio Page: <http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/4853/vuruhomepagev3.png>

Our actual website: <http://www.vuru.co>

</comment><comment><USER2> I am definitely no GUI Guru, but it seems like it could use color or lines or something to differentiate between different sections especially on the portfolio page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi Yoseph,

I really like what you are doing. The site design is very clean. Can I ask where you are getting your data?</comment>


Ask HN: What are the top HN posts of all time? - <AUTHOR>

The Google Beatbox has 436 points, & is still at #1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1952356<p>That's a lot of points. Which makes me wonder: what is the most points a post has gotten? <comment><USER2> Following re google's new china policy got >1k

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1048800></comment>


REDDIT files trademark for AMA, again - <AUTHOR> The term AMA is over 20 years old but Reddit wants to own it anyways. If they do, many businesses who currently run AMA on their sites may be targeted. <comment><AUTHOR> [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4807:t58mlr...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4807:t58mlr.4.5) \- USPTO link.

AMA history: knowyourmeme.com/memes/ask-me-anything

<comment><USER2> " This search session has expired. Please start a search session again by clicking on the TRADEMARK icon, if you wish to continue. "</comment></comment>


911 calls from chronically ill drop after Milwaukee community initiative - <AUTHOR> https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2018/04/13/911-calls-chronically-ill-drop-after-milwaukee-launches-community-paramedic-initiative/511123002/?from=new-cookie <comment><USER2> It is more honest to keep the comparison either between absolute numbers or percentages:

7% of emergency calls made by 0.16% of people

4,288 of 62,763 emergency calls made by 100 people

<comment><USER3> I think you might have a decimal off. 100/62763 = .0016 = 0.16%

<comment><USER2> You're correct, of course. Updated and fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "[In 2015,] 7% of the 62,763 emergency calls [in Milwaukee] came from the same 100 people"

<comment><USER5> Thank you for this. The title oversells its scope/importance by a fair margin. I hope it is unintentional and not a purposeful tactic...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A coworker was volunteering with the local rescue squad. They knew the frequent callers personally. One was a particularly sad story of lonely old woman who would call because she just wanted a ride to the hospital and it seemed to be her only source of human interaction. They could never say "we are not coming, it's so and so" because well that one time she could have really needed help. Some insurance companies have incentives against this by charging a steep price for the ambulance ride and only waving if person is admitted. But at a deeper level this is a failure of social services and increased isolation and loneliness experienced by the elderly. We usually hear about how it happens in Japan, but it's happening here in US as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Their success metric may just be reversion to the mean; since they started by selecting the people who had made the most calls, you would expect the number of calls to come from those specific people to fall in the coming years. Since there was also likely some underlying health condition, you would expect the between-year variance to be large. It might well be that their program has no effect whatsoever.

<comment><USER8> If no other group is calling at a similar level, then it's not reversion to the mean. The mean has actually been shifted downwards.

> Since there was also likely some underlying health condition, you would > expect the between-year variance to be large. It might well be that their > program has no effect whatsoever.

The rate dropped significantly each year from 2015 through 2017 -- 3 years in row. It's possible this is pure chance, but it seems rather unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The system by which people have to spend 8 years in school to become doctors and the limited amount of spots in medical schools is one of the main impediments to lower health care costs since doctor salaries are astronomical compared to other countries. This program is a good first step for making health care more affordable in that it is empowering paramedics.

</comment><comment><USER10> A friend of mine, who's a former EMT, once told me: "When you're an EMT, you get to know all of the diabetics in your area."

</comment><comment><USER11> It's almost like having people be responsible for their own healthcare doesn't actually work in the real world.

<comment><USER12> Well, it's having people with infinite access to shared, finite resources.

I worked as an EMT and would regularly get bizarre calls from people abusing the system to take their kid to the hospital because he hurt his arm, the parents following in tow by car. Or a domestic dispute where they think it's reasonable to call an ambulance like it's a less-serious police dispatch to handle more minor issues. Or really just a free taxi service in general. -- You don't have to pay if you just walk out of the hospital or ignore the collections. If you don't have insurance, it's pretty much the only option.

I'm not sure if there are any alternative medical models that solve the nature of some people to abuse shared resources.

<comment><USER13> I don't know which country you live in but I've talked to paramedics about this issue, and it's extremely rare (at least in my country). Once in a blue moon, an old woman living in isolation in a village or something will call an ambulance just to get in town. In that case, she could only do this once because the issue got talked about.

Nobody has infinite access because the access is limited by human intervention. It's limited based on need, not available cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is the fire department launching paramedic initiatives?

<comment><USER15> If you want a reasonable response time from the fire department, then you end up with way more firefighters on duty at any given time than there are fires to respond to.

Instead of paying them to twiddle their thumbs, most communities train them as paramedics and either have the fire department run an ambulance service or just use them as first responders who can get to a medical scene before an ambulance can.

<comment><USER16> Most communities? The only place I've heard of it is the US.

<comment><USER17> Its common in the US for basic life support to be delivered by private or hospital ambulances, or municipal EMS services by cheap EMTs. Sometimes they are just drivers. Usually advanced life support is done by paramedics or others who work for municipal EMS or fire departments.

Bigger paid departments have a split between engine companies and rescue companies. Rescue companies have fancy tools for all sorts of situations and usually have more trained medical capability. That's why you'll see ladder trucks dispatched to medical emergencies in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sort of distribution plays out everywhere. The rich. Three point shooting. Now, 911 calls.

<comment><USER19> What shall we call it?

<comment><USER20> Colloquially known as the 80/20 rule, although those percentages aren't fixed, but it's the same idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Quebec passes law to regulate Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-law-could-pass-today-1.3628992 <comment><USER2> The problem with regulation isn't Uber. It's the extraordinary costs required to operate a taxi - mostly the $200k plate. If I can get a background check and a card certifying me to be allowed to work with children for about $50, why does it cost nearly $200k to get a taxi license. Require licenses, reduce the costs to improve competition, and let the various companies compete on service.

<comment><USER3> Isn't $200k the free market cost? The government isn't pocketing that money. That's the price you would expect from an asset that generates income with a limited supply.

Edit: why am I down voted to max? The government limits supply but the medallions are still sold on the market.

<comment><USER4> No, the supply is artificially limited by the government; there's no free market involved. That $200k is paid to the government.

(The claimed rationale for limiting the number of taxis is to reduce traffic. I would suspect the _actual_ rationale is to favor the existing taxi businesses that already have licenses and don't want competition.)

<comment><USER5> Are you talking specifically about Quebec here? This kind of thing varies a lot by jurisdiction, but in many jurisdictions the high costs for a plate are not paid to the government, but paid on a grey market to a prior owner, with the fee for registration being nominal except for the fact that no one gets to register any more. In many cities (including mine), people own plates as a retirement investment and are fighting deregulation because their investment will crater.

Not that this is any better, but people talk as if there's One Way taxi regulations work all over and there's quite a wide range on these things.

Also, the nominal reason for limiting plates is usually (as far as I've ever seen) to ensure a living wage for taxi drivers. I don't think it really works out that way, instead creating a class system where some people extract rent from other people.

<comment><USER6> The payment to the government is irrelevant. The point is that the government artificially restricts the number of occupational licenses.

<comment><USER7> That is not true. If they were non transferable, a limited supply would still stay at the governmental set price.

<comment><USER8> Competition for the limited supply of licenses would manifest itself in other ways, resulting in $200,000 worth of economic resources being used, on average, to acquire a license.

More importantly, the high market price of a transferrable license indicates there is a shortage of taxis relative to demand for taxi service, which has a cost for the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This prompted my interest in what's the history and regulation behind taxi laws, particularly for Quebec.

So I searched, and found this document extremely enlightening. Note that it's from 1995, long before Uber, and gives many pros and cons and reasoning behind different types of legislation:

[http://www.taxi-library.org/qebc0295.htm](http://www.taxi- library.org/qebc0295.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know if this reflects poorly on Uber or current taxi legislation.

Living in Québec I've never had a bad experience with taxi drivers the way people seem to have in NYC, etc. Uber was still far better, if anything just for how proud some drivers were of being part of it. The lower barrier of entry seemed like a positive thing overall.

A nice woman drove me once, offered me starburst candy and a bottle of water, both of which were in a basket in the back seat. Made my day extra nice.

<comment><USER11> As far as I can tell, the drive to pamper riders comes from the fear of being cut off from driving for receiving too many sub-five star ratings. I would feel differently about it if Uber were handing out a "water bottle" stipend.

<comment><USER12> Oh, you mean like any regular job? Where you need to exceed everyone's expectations?

This is what a free market looks like. Don't like that? Take a look at Venezuela, and tell me you'd prefer to be dumpster diving for your next meal. Capitalism and Democracy are aweful aweful systems, but everything else is worse.

<comment><USER13> The difference is probably the level of expectations. In "any regular job" you don't get fired for having your ratings fall below 4.3 / 5 because a customer of yours had a bad day or fat-fingered 1 in a hurry.

The jobs with high turnover rates are usually known as "shitty jobs".

<comment><USER14> Do you really think that a highly competent organization that's hired hundreds of data scientists can't estimate/discount the base rate of fat fingered/random bad ratings?

(Fun fact: I don't know about Uber, but I know Ola does exactly this. They use "how would you handle this exact problem" as a warmup question on their interviews.)

<comment><USER13> They could, but do they have incentive to?

It's good for them to keep drivers who committed (e.g. those who took Uber's help in getting a new car) on edge. It's not that they have shortage of candidates, or that they actually care about them.

<comment><USER14> Lets think about their incentives.

Uber, Ola and others are desperately in need of more good drivers. They are growing rapidly, and literally will _pay their competitors_ in order to attempt to recruit their drivers.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/05/30/how-uber- an...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/05/30/how-uber-and-lyft-are- trying-to-kill-each-other/#246b27cd3ba8)

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers- play...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for- sabotaging-lyft)

"Uber has been aggressively poaching Lyft drivers for months, offering them huge bonuses just to do a few rides on Uber. This week, Lyft started fighting back with similar bonuses..."

There are two ways to have an extra driver next week. One is expensive recruiting methods. The other is _not kicking them off the service_. Remember, growth = new acquisitions - churn.

Lets think now about the costs. Handling the base rate of bad ratings would cost a data scientist a month or two of time - approx $20-60k. Assuming those huge bonuses are $500/driver, you'd need to retain 120 drivers for that python script to be worthwhile.

So if Uber has no incentive to solve this problem, it's only because it's a tiny problem (affecting < 0.1% of their workforce).

Are you really claiming that Uber hires hundreds of data scientists, but doesn't actually have them answer questions like "which drivers should be fired"? What do you think they do with them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes developed countries miss out on some good ideas. When I lived in Lima, Peru and La Paz, Bolivia in the 60's, they had a system called "colectivos". You stood on a main road, and in a few minutes a random car would stop, you'd pile in with four other people, and for 10¢ you'd get a ride downtown.

No permits, no insurance, any driver can participate. Faster and more frequent service than anything I've experienced back home in North America.

Similar systems exist throughout the Third World. God forbid we ever allow something like that in our "developed" countries.

<comment><USER16> This was one of the most pleasant things about living in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In addition to those "colectivos", they had busses, micros, and trufis that covered the entire city. Though regulated (by syndicates as much as anything), individual drivers and vehicle owners made money based on how many people they picked up. It was a for profit system that worked quite well and was cheap even by local standards, if not always fast, though I can't say it was much slower than the public transport in many Western cities.

In Cochabamba you could also flag a taxi and either trust them to charge you the normal rate, or negotiate a fare. Stressful to do at first, but once you got the hang of it no big deal.

Quick story: We never needed a car while living there, but rented one once to take a road trip. Just outside the city a cholita (Quechua speaking indigenous woman) with a huge bag flagged us down along the main road, got into the back seat without a word, then asked to "bajar" a dozen km later. On the way out she handed us a peso (~15 cents), again without a word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I talk about Uber all the time when I'm in a taxi in Montreal, to be honest it's really not fair for them. Why should they have to pay a expensive regulation licenses, maintenance check-ups on the books, past several tests including knowing your driving area streets/history/etc, have ATM machine in the car with paper print out's, regulated machine for travel to cost ratio, yet an Uber driver can circumvent all this?

The real fear for cab drivers seem to be self driving cars even more than Uber.

</comment><comment><USER18> Was talking to a few folks in both Alberta and Quebec and they mentioned that they felt that the Taxi drivers were really run by organized crime. Since they (including a few drivers) felt that there was lots of favoritizism and back room dealings with contracts over who could and couldn't service airports etc. Does anybody know if there is any basis for this view?

<comment><USER19> Maybe some companies, but there are a lot of different taxi companies in Montreal, many of which are worked-owned coops or an umbrella of freelancers.

There are also companies going after Uber's model but with strong ethics, such as Teo, which seems to be widely praised (good app, fully electric cars, good conditions for drivers, wifi inside the cabs).

My main annoyance against the taxi industry is its lobby, which is always against any sort of change in the transportation industry, such as new train lines (airport train or bus line), bike/bixi ride-share, etc. Taxis and Uber- type systems offer more transport solutions that reduce the requirement of having a car. I would love to get rid of my car, but it's not viable in Montreal (I bike to work, use the car mostly on weekends and Communauto requires me to do too much planning).

<comment><USER20> I've been living in Montreal for ~7 years without a car. It's not difficult. Yes, it's anecdotal, but I would find a car burdensome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ok, let me tell you my experience: Fyi I am left wing guy, like european left wing guy :), currently living in Bucharest, Romania. Here the taxis are regulated so the supply is limited but you can't really buy a licence, there is some kind of queue in place. Anyway we have a few dozen of taxi companies, however the experience is abysmal comparing with uber. What I can't understand is why there is no competition between the taxis to provide a better service, even in this restricted market: If some company would try to provide better service for a slightly higher price I would be the first to give up uber and use them ... But they don't care I think they are colluding to keep the costs down and that's it. Very sad.

</comment><comment><USER22> Will be interesting to see if they pull out like they've done in Austin. It's definitely been less convenient to go to a bar since they left.

<comment><USER23> They plan to stay

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec- deal-1.36...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec- deal-1.3620558)

In my opinion, the government and the ride hailing companies should have bought back a share of the taxi permit pool value, then cancelled them. It would have been costly, but by taxing the ride themselves (at a fixed rate) then letting competition drive the ride price down while increasing the ride volume. The government could have had their money back, eventually. Uber technically owe "theoretical tax money" since they operated without permit in a regulated industry. They had said at some point they didn't care about paying that back, so it would have been a better solution. After that, the regulations could have been lifted/relaxed.

The current deal isn't very good, but at least there is one. Technically, with self driving and automation (including apps), a lot of people will lose their job, so obviously they will resist changes, any changes. We can complain all we want as developers, but from the taxi driver point of view, change suck. Then again, in my opinion, so does regulation. One positive point, at least, is that this saga allowed time for discussions and consideration. A abrupt disruption would maybe have destabilized the industry too fast, while the time it took for this law to be passed allowed for the creation of a "middle market" where new taxis companies managed to enter the industry with hybrid solutions (including one Tesla/Leaf + app company) and the "dinosaurs" had time to [try to] adapt [and fail]. In the end, this did create _more_ competition instead of players being pushed out and replaced by less players. There will be a market consolidation eventually anyway, but until that, the users will be the real winners.

Time will tell. I am still not convinced this law was the right call, but appreciated the debate.

<comment><USER24> Automation will work if and only if car operator can make themselves non liable for any accident resulting from bugs.

Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. A bug is something that can be avoided.

As far as I am concerned, 99% of the software industry is not able to write critical software that is able to handle with a correct costs the case of failures and/or "abnormal" behaviors.

Software will fail. It will eventually fail dramatically. And with software it can fail in a reproducible way. Nowadays all experiments are made far from worst case (congestion, interferences, extreme conditions....)

Who is gonna pay for the predictable accidents? And will self driving cars will be better at avoiding accidents than humman given a same operating cost on the long term?

My guess, is : hell no.

<comment><USER14> _Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted._

Car insurance companies do this on a daily basis and make consistent and reliable profits betting on the outcomes.

<comment><USER24> Well, they have been involved in quite a few regulation tricks to not pay their due or cheat on customers (especially on forgetting to give life insurance prime). I would not take insurance company as an example of mathematical honest success in predicting the future.

And, also, I would point out that their prediction are based on opacity and it is hard to audit their reasoning. I talked with some of them, and their mathematical reasoning are flawed towards using linear equations to predict non linear phenomenon. And when I ask them how it can work, they had no explanations, just "recipies everyone use". So well, I do not trust them.

What you cannot explain simply you do not understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Living in Montreal, I'd like to know what the company's response will be. I'll be sad if the service is discontinued, and am still rooting for Uber Eats to come to town.</comment>


Show HN: Reddit for Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/15/with-monocle-you-can-browse-your-custom-reddit-front-page-with-google-glass/

<comment><USER2> Saw this earlier this morning, really cool to see.</comment>


Ask HN: How could I further improve my open source sideproject - <AUTHOR> For about a year now, I've been running www.logodust.com on the side, open sourcing unused logo designs to hackers, student and those that are testing their ideas. Looking for ways to improve it, add more value and build a better product. What do you think is missing? <comment><AUTHOR> For simplicity sake: [http://logodust.com](http://logodust.com)

<comment><USER2> One simple improvement would be to arrange the logos in a grid rather than a continuous list. It would make visual search faster.

Stating the license at the top of the page would clarify the value proposition. Stating the cost of an exclusive license would also make the value proposition clearer.

While it is great that the project has appeared on Product Hunt, it adds very little to the value proposition. Putting it at the top is likely to be noise when a user is searching for a logo.

Good luck.</comment></comment>


Day 21: Docker – The Missing Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://www.openshift.com/blogs/day-21-docker-the-missing-tutorial

<comment><USER2> Out of the 10 or 20 posts about Docker that made it to front-page on HN in the last year, this is the first one that has been able to show me what Docker is.

Though I'm still confused on -

Real world examples of tried and proven setups like an environment of Apache, PHP, and MySQL being run inside a Docker container (for example: for setting up shared hosting on a box). Would that even make sense?

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that keeping your database in a separate container from your application(s) is a more preferred topology. In theory, you could easily spin up/spin down application containers as needed, and they can use Docker's service discovery features to automatically become aware of which port the database is listening on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do provisioning systems compare to Docker? Right now I have a development environment that consists of salt stack provisioning Vagrant. Spinning up a production server just means running salt on the host (Rackspace, DO, whatever.)

Is there any use for Docker in this case?

<comment><USER5> I think there's someone already working on this use case, check out: [https://github.com/makinacorpus/salt/blob/develop/salt/state...](https://github.com/makinacorpus/salt/blob/develop/salt/states/dockerio.py)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure this is really the missing tutorial...it seems pretty much the same as the other tutorials I've read/watched.

Then again I've been working with docker a lot lately so maybe I was looking harder.

</comment><comment><USER7> > You can test the express application by curl as shown below.

I haven't seen one tutorial or piece of documentation that tells me how to access that app from my host machine.

<comment><USER5> wouldn't you just ssh into the container?

<comment><USER7> I meant from a browser.

<comment><USER8> A container can expose ports that the application is running on to the host. For instance, one of my web server containers might expose 9000 to the host. You could access 9000 directly from the host or you can setup nginx to forward 80 to 9000 if that's what you want. Something like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flaw in iPhone, iPads may have allowed hackers to steal data for years - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-apple-cyber/flaw-in-iphone-ipads-may-have-allowed-hackers-to-steal-data-for-years-idUSKCN2242IK <comment><USER2> Technical details at [https://blog.zecops.com/vulnerabilities/unassisted-ios- attac...](https://blog.zecops.com/vulnerabilities/unassisted-ios-attacks-via- mobilemail-maild-in-the-wild/)

<comment><USER3> To dang, and the rest of the HN crew, I think this should be the link (perhaps merge with the other submission).

<comment><USER4> Working on it. Edit: ok, comments merged thither. Thanks all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know there's more to this but I really hate the way that journalists report on things like this. Based on the article, it makes it sound like someone just needs to send you a blank email and then they have full access to any iPhone since 2012. The reality is that the attacker would have to send an attachment or email with a specific payload and then somehow run that payload which would have to include another exploit specifically for the kernel.

In any case, I'm glad to see that this has been patched and will be out soon. I wonder how many cases have actually been compromised and exploited out in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER6> > To execute the hack, Avraham said victims would be sent an apparently blank > email message through the Mail app forcing a crash and reset. The crash > opened the door for hackers to steal other data on the device, such as > photos and contact details.

Oh wow.

<comment><USER7> Note that would need another exploit to pull off. This only allows execution within the context of the mail parser.</comment></comment>


ITER fusion energy pushed back beyond 2050 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40558758 <comment><USER2> Some countries have formally committed to eliminating power from nuclear fission. Most have not. Most countries have at least some regions that would be happy to accept the good, stable employment and tax base offered by a nuclear power plant in exchange for the very slight risk of accidents. So why aren't more fission power plants getting built in countries where they are _not_ formally excluded? I believe the single greatest factor is that they take too long to build and require too large a lump of money, because a single modern reactor is too big.

Modern Generation III/III+ reactor designs have actually made this "chunkiness" worse; there's no modern reactor design under 500 MWe that's certified in the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, or the EU. Designs in that lower power range were built decades ago, and a few still run, but now it's big-or-nothing. AP1000 and EPR are 1117 and 1600 MWe, respectively, and all projects using them are behind schedule/over budget. And since these large projects are leading to such poor outcomes for involved companies, it will be difficult to get follow-on orders that will benefit from the hard earned lessons of their initial builds.

Even if all the technical problems are solved and fusion proves capable of producing net electricity, fusion power risks hitting this same too-big-to- build problem afflicting fission if it can't scale down. If the only approaches that work are enormous tokamaks with an entry level price of $10-billion-or-more, then they'll be engineering marvels that hardly anyone builds. Maybe they'll someday supply 10% of China's electricity.

<comment><USER3> Fission was killed by Fukushima. While in theory we can build safe reactors, practice shows otherwise.

<comment><USER4> We've certainly shown that reactors designed in the 60s and built in the 70s are problematic in very rare cases.

<comment><USER5> Like the sibling commenter, I can't parse your sentence and intention except as "we've certainly shown they're not _commonly_ problematic" which is quite a weak statement.

Is your sentence a positive sentence (do you mean we've certainly shown they're problematic essentially never) or is your sentence negative (we've certainly shown they're problematic definitely sometimes - which is unacceptable)?

I tried to read your attitude but failed.

<comment><USER4> I was mostly rebuffing the structure of the argument "While in theory we can build safe reactors, practice shows otherwise" which has two different reference classes for reactors (modern safer ones, and less safe fukushima ones).

<comment><USER5> Oh, okay! It was confusing because it sounds like "they're rarely problematic" which is not your meaning. Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions one big issue: plasma containment. It doesn't even mention what I think of as being the biggest hurdle to commercial fusion power generation: neutron containment.

Fusion hydrogen requires heavy isotopes, namely tritium, to generate sufficient reactions. This generates s lot of free neutrons however, enough that they will tend to destroy what container they're in. This is a significant, possibly commercially insurmountable, engineering problem.

Helium-3 is one alternative but is super rare on Earth ( even the heavier Helium-4 escapes the Earth's gravity once it reaches the atmosphere (so party balloons are consuming an irreplaceable resource thanks to an effective subsidy from Congress who narrowmindedly decided to offload the Strategic Helium Reserve at submarket rates).

People like to bandy about phrases like "free energy" when it comes to fusion. Well, free fuel and free energy aren't the same thing. A plant has a capex and running costs, a finite lifetime and a power output. Put those numbers together and you have a base energy cost even with free and essentially limitless fuel.

The article talks about producing tritium from lithium. Great. The demand for batteries is already going to stretch the worlds lithium supply so that's another advance we need.

<comment><USER7> Is it possible to recycle old lithium batteries and extract tritium from that?

<comment><USER8> In fact, it's possible to recycle old lithium batteries into... new lithium batteries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> correction.. ITER & derivative based fusion is delayed NOT fusion itself.

Honestly I feel ITER is such a big boondoggle that its cannibalizing pretty much all other fragments of research in fusion. for reference even based on tokamak design MIT ARC is uses much higher T REBCO superconductor based magnets that ITER cannot even adopt. which do you think has a better chance of success? besides that there are multiple other efforts like German stellarator, FRC based design by trialpha and even the opensource focus fusion. IMO its much better to spread the resources into these efforts rather than dumping a bunch of money into monstrosity like ITER and going back into the lap of fossils for next 2 decades.

thinking about [lack of] fusion funding really pisses me off.

/end-rant

<comment><USER10> The other efforts you mention are much further from having Q>1 (energy producing) fusion. FRCs and focus have not even reached Q=0.000001 and have little theoretical basis for being power producing. Stellerators have their own problems as well. Tokamaks have achieved Q=0.69, and so ITER has very little risk of missing its goal of Q>1 if it does get constructed and run DT.

I agree that fusion is severely underfunded, and that it is dangerous for us to put all our eggs in the Tokamak basket. And this article is pretty strange for its fixation on DEMO which at this point might as well be made of unicorn horns. But ITER was proposed and is supported by a huge number of scientists for a good reason: it's the best way for us to hit a goal that fusion science has been dreaming of for 50 years, that is key to understanding and designing real fusion reactors.

<comment><USER11> The ARC reactor is a tokamak design though, just (I appreciate the work this word is doing in this sentence) smaller and with much more powerful magnets. They quite explicitly want to not have a different type of reactor.

<comment><USER12> Problem w/ the ARC reactor is that it is just a design. The real life engineering challenges are still daunting. E.g. for the supra conductors at the Wendelstein 7-X, which provide a much less powerful magnetic field, just assembling and connecting the supra conductor cables for each module was a mind blowingly complex and fickle process that was described at length in this (unfortunately German) super awesome podcast [0].

[0]: [http://alternativlos.org/36/](http://alternativlos.org/36/)

<comment><USER13> Yes but stellarators are much more complicated to build than tokamaks. They accept the construction difficulty in exchange for simpler plasma physics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the people pushing fusion say it won't even start producing commercial electricity until after 2050? But by then we will be all on renewables plus cheap storage, or at least pretty close. What would the incentive be for ripping that all out and replacing it with immensely costly fusion plants?

<comment><USER15> Footprint, probably. By then there will be a lot of people fairly crabby about how much space the renewable infrastructure takes up. once people realize that "an acre of solar panels" is an acre of land that we are taking all the energy that Mother Nature uses to, you know, be Mother Nature.

You can see the first few faint traces of it today with complaints about killing birds and such.

<comment><USER16> Build solar where sun is abundant and space is unconstrained: in Sahara.

Quite a few technical challenges due to the sand, though.

<comment><USER17> And then you end up spending far more on powerlines than it would cost to get working fusion.

<comment><USER18> Not really - ITER alone is expected to be in excess of $20 billion, that would buy you about 20 modern HVDC Transmission lines, each with a length of 1000 km and able to transmit 40 GW of power in total. That's a lot of power. :-)

[http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/analysing-the- costs...](http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/analysing-the-costs-of- high-voltage-direct-current-hvdc-transmission)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Considering the advances of renewables, both solar and in/off-shore wind, do we really need fusion?

Most of the issues with current fission are political ("spent" fuel _can_ be reprocessed) and economic (these beasts are insanely expensive to build and operate safely) and we haven't even touched MSR's and Thorium. I get fusion would be beautiful, but it has its problems too (heavy neutron bombardment will eventually turn the reactor into a pile of hot nuclear waste - or, at best, MSR fuel) and we may need to face the simple fact our technology isn't up to _that_ challenge just yet.

Although stellarators may offer some shortcuts.

Maybe we'll need fusion for multi-generation starships supposed to operate for many centuries on a closed loop system, but that need seems a bit too far into the future for us to concern ourselves too much with it. Solar should be fine up to Mars and compact fission should be enough up to the Oort cloud.

<comment><USER17> Renewables can't provide power where it's needed, and largely can't provide reliable baseline power (hydroelectric being the exception, but it causes huge environmental damage in terms of both direct flooding and disruption to downstream ecosystems).

Fission could power us for 100-200 years at current consumption rates - substantially less if consumption continues to grow. It's not time to panic yet, but we can't afford not to be doing fusion research.

<comment><USER19> > can't provide power where it's needed

I grew up with energy generated by a mix of hydro from 800km away and nuclear from 200km. An off-shore wind farm could be built anywhere between 100 and 250km from my city. In-shore wind, if distributed and connected, can provide a lot of reliable with little need for constant hydro or nuclear.

Also, hydro can be rather helpful in other aspects - it can be a store of drinking water, fisheries and agriculture. The environmental impact is, of course, huge, buy far more benign than the current fashion of fossils. Plus, if you are really clever, you can use it to host carbon-fixating algae you can bury to remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere.

Mind you that fission's environmental impact is not restricted to those rare occasions when everything goes bad and the reactor melts down. Mining for fissiles is not exactly environment friendly.

And while local photovoltaic may have some nasty industrial processes involved, solar-thermal doesn't. It also provides a nice and smooth generation pattern that can cover for baseline generation.

<comment><USER17> > I grew up with energy generated by a mix of hydro from 800km away and > nuclear from 200km.

Impressive, but those grids aren't cheap, and their maintenance is only getting more expensive with modern safety standards and labour costs.

> Also, hydro can be rather helpful in other aspects - it can be a store of > drinking water, fisheries and agriculture. The environmental impact is, of > course, huge, buy far more benign than the current fashion of fossils.

Anything but coal is progress, sure. But hydro is still damaging enough that it's well worth replacing.

> Mind you that fission's environmental impact is not restricted to those rare > occasions when everything goes bad and the reactor melts down. Mining for > fissiles is not exactly environment friendly.

The fuel density of fissiles is so high that that's not really an issue though - the amount of fuel mining needed is tiny.

> And while local photovoltaic may have some nasty industrial processes > involved, solar-thermal doesn't. It also provides a nice and smooth > generation pattern that can cover for baseline generation.

Solar-thermal has potential, but it still has some time/storage issues (yes it doesn't go to zero immediately at dusk, but it's not entirely aligned with demand either, and e.g. seasons are a big issue further from the equator) and location issues.

Ultimately while conventional renewables will be part of the mix - maybe a big part - it's hard to imagine we won't have cases where we need reliable, consistent power in a specific arbitrary location, and nuclear is really the only viable clean power source that can offer that. Maybe storage tech will improve to the point where that's no longer the case, but we can't rely on that - at least, not the extent of closing off nuclear research. The cost of the likes of ITER is a drop in the bucket compared to the world's total energy expenditure.

<comment><USER20> Not to sound like a fossil shill, but I want to agree with "anything but coal is progress" and suggest that natural gas, done sufficiently cleanly and only for demand curve smoothing, could be part of a 'good enough' solution in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "DEMO fusion reactor pushed beyond 2050" would be a much more honest headline.

</comment><comment><USER22> Shees... I really wish they would cancel it already. All technical and scientific concerns aside, the patient is already dead of cost sickness, and is only kept alive by pumping money into its scabrous leaking veins.

If they took even 1/10th of the money and spread it around some of the more promising, smaller, non-tokamak, scrappier fusion projects like tri-alpha, polywell, or the Lockheed skunkworks one that actually have a plausible path to power generation I think that the money would make a better impact. Even next gen fission would be a better investment. India and China are doing very nice things with thorium these days... Too bad they'll never turn off the pork faucet until forced.

<comment><USER23> > that actually have a plausible path to power generation

Those other approaches are far less proven than the ITER design (through its precursors like JET). I'm not saying that some of them won't outpace ITER eventually, but as far as things go that are actually being built ITER is still ahead of the pack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 2 relevant podcast episodes from the great science and engineering podcast omega tau. Podcasts/interviews with people close to the work. [http://omegataupodcast.net/22-nuclear-fusion-at-mpi-fur- plas...](http://omegataupodcast.net/22-nuclear-fusion-at-mpi-fur- plasmaphysik/) [http://omegataupodcast.net/157-fusion-at- iter/](http://omegataupodcast.net/157-fusion-at-iter/)

</comment><comment><USER25> lets hope this international collaboration will survive through the decades, and that no war or political chaos will stop it.

<comment><USER26> Funny, but war sometimes accelerates specific technologies. The atomic age was brought about by WWII. I'm not saying war is good... the advances at one field can come at the expense of scientific research across a broad number of other fields

<comment><USER25> You have a point, but for controlled fusion the applications look only civil to me. Military application/uncontrolled fusion/H bomb already exists!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 2050? Maybe they can run their systems on GNU Hurd then.

(</sarcasm> I've been hearing how fusion reactors are "just around the corner" since I was a teenager, at least 40 years now.)

<comment><USER28> That's actually a standard joke in fusion research: "Always 20 years away."

Although it looks like they're updating their model to be more accurate, as now it appears to be "Always 30 years away."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It is an international project with seven partners: China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States."

Found the problem.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are already some more or less successful fusion reactors out there like Wendelstein [1] with a way smaller budget (~€1B) and that are already completed. Why does ITER need such a huge budget, long time to completion and the involvement of 7 countries/organizations to essentially proof the point of fusion energy? As far as I understood ITER is not meant to be commercially viable.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X)

EDIT: originally I wrote 195 countries, which is BS of course :)

<comment><USER30> Wendelstein-7X is not a fusion machine, it's only a test for the plasma vessel design.

<comment><USER13> High school kids build fusors in their garages, fuse deuterium, and get neutron counts. Wendelstein certainly will as well. It'd be very silly not to, and if you look at their technical specs, you'll see that the fuel will include deuterium, at over 100M degrees, enough for plenty of fusion reactions.

[http://www.ipp.mpg.de/16931/einfuehrung](http://www.ipp.mpg.de/16931/einfuehrung)

Their initial tests did not use deuterium, and that gave a lot of people the wrong impression.

(For net power at this temperature they would need tritium, which they aren't using. Tritium is expensive and hard to deal with, and most fusion projects don't bother with it.)

<comment><USER31> Question by a noob: I heard they have 4 grams tritium diluted in ~770000 tons of water in Japan. Can't we use/extract that if it is that valuable? Or isn't it that hard to produce?

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure but I think it'd be pretty hard to extract four grams of tritium from 770000 tons of water.

The main issue with tritium isn't the expense of getting it, but the problems you face in dealing with it. It's hydrogen with two extra neutrons; it's hard to keep it from leaking and it's radioactive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>