Ask HN: Should I open source a Rails Point of Sale that I have been working on? - <AUTHOR>

I have building a Rails POS that I think is pretty awesome. I am almost done with the core and I will soon start on business specific plugins. First, let me say that my goal for this project is to make money. With that in mind, should I leave it as a closed ecosystem and launch or should I open source it and make money off of extending it and supporting it. I am a huge fan of open source but not sure if it is appropriate for my given goals. Thanks for input on this, I have been sitting on it for a while. <comment><USER2> You're ecosystem could be bigger, people will create plugins faster...

Your site will always be referenced as the source.. You could even make money % on plugin sales :)

But you have to get popular first. That's main problem #1 :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Open source it and make money from support and further customization. Like Zend does. It's a strategy like any other.</comment>


Today, I had lunch with a friend who owns a small construction company… - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jamonholmgren/status/1048038126147387392 <comment><USER2> This resonates.

Along similar lines - my business partner and I often discuss a customer test for our consulting businesses: are we trying to build & sell technology to experts in technology or are we trying to build and sell technology to those who aren't versed in it but desperately need it for some aspect of their business.

fwiw, our conclusion is often that the later is the right answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an excellent series of tweets that show that while not everyone should code, everyone can use some code in their life to make things better.</comment>


Log-probabilities, semirings and floating point numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.smola.org/post/987977550/log-probabilities-semirings-and-floating-point-numbers

<comment><USER2> As the author says this is pretty common in machine learning circles. I used the same trick in POPFile for text classification because you end up dealing with tiny probabilities, but manageable negative log probabilities. And clearly division is just subtraction, just as multiplication becomes addition.

What amused me at the time was that this is how people used to do multiplication with a slide rule or log table. Funny how old ideas come back.

<comment><USER3> Heh, I'm just old enough to have learned the log table method in high school Algebra II; that was right after scientific calculators hit $90 in 2010 dollars (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-30> at $25 then) but of course the books hadn't caught up yet. And the trick is indeed very useful.</comment></comment>


FBI: $1.2B Lost to Business Email Scams - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/fbi-1-2b-lost-to-business-email-scams/#more-32154

<comment><USER2> So, why not simply sign ALL company email using PGP or other tool?

Your company, your rules. Just do it. Anything not signed by the right key is a spoofed email.</comment>


Flipboard Integrates Zite's Topics in 3.0 Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/technology/personaltech/the-latest-flipboard-serves-up-the-news-and-some-surprises.html

<comment><USER2> Are existing Zite users (with hundreds of manually selected topics) going to be migrated to Flipboard?</comment>


In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/firefox-browser-cookie-blocking-default <comment><USER2> Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share, please consider doing the following:

1\. Evangelize Firefox to people you know any chance you get and show them all the reasons why its better than Chrome (focus on privacy as an important point). Show them how great browsing can be with a few key extensions (like uBlock Origin, Containers, Privacy Possum, etc.). This does not imply that Mozilla is beyond criticism or that Firefox should not be held to a higher standard.

2\. If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. As long as this remains true, Google will only tolerate Firefox being a viable competitor while Firefox still remains as small to moderately sized competition (to avoid antitrust action). If/when Firefox gains a much larger piece of the market, Google will (as it has been doing all these years) even more forcefully use its money and marketing muscle on all its properties as well as add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition.

IMO, there needs to be a lot more individual funding of Mozilla while keeping it accountable to users and as per its own manifesto. The level of competition among browsers right now leaves us all vulnerable.

Edit: After seeing a reply to this comment, I did a quick search and found that donating money to Mozilla means donating to the Mozilla Foundation, and that the money may not go to funding Firefox development, which is part of Mozilla Corporation. See this discussion from December 2018 on reddit. [2] It may be desirable for at least part of the donation (as decided by Mozilla Corporation) to go to Firefox development. Does it already happen that way or is there a way to get this result, like in the case of Mozilla Thunderbird where donations go to that project (alone)?

[1]: [https://donate.mozilla.org](https://donate.mozilla.org)

[2]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/)

<comment><USER3> Is there some way to ensure the donation money will actually go to Firefox and not to some sort of "diversity" campaign?

<comment><USER4> Yikes why would you not want companies investing in diversity? Especially if they are the interface to our online world?

<comment><USER5> Possibly because affirmative diversity could be seen as incompatible with meritocracy.

<comment><USER6> But a lack of diversity is a sign of a lack of meritocracy: clearly not all talent gets an equal chance to flourish. Trying to get more talent on board is valuable.

<comment><USER7> A lack of diversity isn't in and of itself a sign of a lack of meritocracy, and nor is simply increasing diversity a sign of meritocracy.

It's misguided to think that by manually ensuring diversity (eg. By hiring someone for simply being a qualified minority rather than necessarily the best candidate) is pushing for meritocracy.

If diversity programs were interested in maintaining meritocracy while increasing diversity, they'd focus their energy on uplifting poor families through things like training or scholarship programs so their kids have a better shot at life.

<comment><USER8> That's the usual line, that assume _no qualified minority candidates exist_. Which is, at root, a biased assumption already.

E.g. Stanford (used to) vigorously recruited qualified minority candidates to help improve diversity on campus.

<comment><USER7> Isn't explicitly choosing based on their race also making the same assumptions? That there aren't enough minority candidates, and thus they need to explicitly force more of them in? After all, why would there be any bias if selections were completely merit based (that is, blind to race and sex) unless the pools being drawn from were themselves biased? The best way to get around biases in the hiring process obviously being to avoid informing hiring managers about the identities of candidates, instead of emphasizing it even more.

My assumption was that not enough qualified minority candidates exist, obviously there are qualified minority candidates, just not enough, thus why they aren't as equally represented in the field in question.

<comment><USER8> Its sophistry, to say "to combat race bias, you are using race bias! That's just as bad!"

Of course one is in service to bigotry, and the other to equality. That makes them pretty different.

If you're driving down the road, and your car pulls slightly to the right, you steer slightly to the left to compensate. Sure, we'd all like a car that steers straight. But it doesn't. So we steer slightly to one side.

<comment><USER9> I do not understand your analogy. Are you implying that we cannot be unbiased? I do agree with that, however, what is this diversity thing, fighting over biases or preferences (sides)? I do not understand how one side is bigotry, and the other is equality. It seems like it is just a matter of POV. When you are steering to the left, the right is in service of bigotry, and when you are steering to the right, the left is in service of bigotry. Additionally, according to your analogy, it seems like that everyone - including the people who say they prefer "equality" \- is actually not steering straight, just to a different side.

It would be great if the people who preach we should not discriminate based on ethnicity, religion, and so forth would actually stop doing that, and start paying more attention to skills, which is actually more relevant to the job. It seems like that they do not wish (or at the very least do not, regardless of intent) to stop discriminating, they just steer to a different side.

<comment><USER8> Because one side attempts to ease societal bias by including folks often overlooked. The other attempts to perpetuate this system, keeping an underclass.

The old tired argument that "It's just another sort of bias!" is bankrupt. Its a sort of bias that seeks to repair real problems, not keep them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The block might appeal to users, but is potentially worrying to publishers

Yes, let's have pity on these poor publishers who are relentless infiltrating and measuring our online lives so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of the data grab.

Trackers have gotten insidious. I have privacy badger and on one particular news site there were 36 distinct trackers. And somehow they're still getting around the blockers because I'm getting ads and suggestions correlating to some activity I did on a completely different device.

This business model is toxic and I really hope all the companies using it either pivot or go bankrupt.

<comment><USER11> Wired is a (particularly) tracking-reliant publisher, so I'm not particularly surprised that they adopted this tone.

I also hope that any sort of tracking-based business model goes extinct. Unfortunately, in the case of online publishing, consumers have repeatedly rejected micropayments (most recently Blendle[1]), which I believe is the only viable alternative.

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

<comment><USER12> Traditional media never needed individual tracking for advertisements nor "micropayments". Just because we have the technology to track advertisement spends to the exact person doesn't mean we have to. Just because we because we have the technology charge (fractions of) pennies per article read doesn't invalidate the traditional subscriber model.

(In fact both microtargeting and micropayments are arguably much worse, less stable business models from the perspective of a publisher. Y "demographic" or "universal" advertisers at a steady monthly ad buy with X subscribers at a steady monthly spend is an easy formula to forecast future revenue from. O(X).Y micro-targeted ad buys with X readers at O(X).Z articles per month, is almost entirely impossible to forecast with any accuracy.)

<comment><USER13> This so much. We had large media organizations and publishers of news/magazines/television/radio for decades and in some instances, centuries, before targeted advertising was even a thing. Traditional advertising is now nearly dead because it's worthless and as a result, media orgs have had to rely increasingly on these creepy as hell targeting advertising systems. Why?

We as consumers never agreed to this. We were never even asked. Make the entire industry illegal, and publishers will revert to traditional advertisement. Again and again it's been made clear that the ad tech industry cannot be trusted with our data, so why do we continue allowing it to collect it and use it to show us crap we don't want?

Throw it all in the garbage. The whole damn thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Started using Firefox half a year ago because of a single plugin: __TreeStyleTab __\- which lets you keep a tree of your tabs in a sidebar on the left (I tend to keep a hundred or so open all the time). I have no idea how I 've lived without it for so long...

Since then, Firefox has been gaining some momentum + performance and add tracking, surely not planning to switch back to Chrome/Safari anytime soon.

<comment><USER15> Yep, I've been using TreeStyleTabs for years and years and it is the single most useful addon I have ever used in my life and is also what will keep me using Firefox over every other browser indefinitely. Every other browser feels like a toy without TST. I'd highly recommend everyone check out TST and give it a whirl. It is especially useful when you are researching something on the web due to how well it supports hierarchical, collapsible tab groupings.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Switched to Firefox a few months back. Havn't missed Chrome at all

<comment><USER17> To offer a bit of an opposite view here on HN:

I give firefox a shot from time to time. I switch all devices to it, and then I use it exclusively all the time.

My most recent attempt failed few days ago, after a bit more than a month with it.

Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often.

And just overall experience on some platforms - especially macOS doesn't feel native at all. On top of that some websites don't support it that good (not Firefox's fault here - but I don't want to deal with that day to day).

Firefox also seemed snappier on the first few runs, but as the time went on I didn't find it faster or feeling less bloated than chrome as a lot of people like to portray it.

Chrome for me, as an average user, does not have any of these downsides. The closest to a downside for some people you could pin to chrome is that it's owned by google.

At the end of the day, chrome gets the job done, and does it without being in my way, on all the platforms I use, - and that's what I want from a browser, so for now I'm sticking with chrome.

<comment><USER18> "Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often"

I don't get those problems, but even if I did, it would be _well_ worth it as opposed to seeing ads all the time. If Google wanted me to uninstall Firefox forever and use Chrome they'd allow for plug-ins for Chrome (on Android). While they don't I'll simply never switch. I have no idea how people tolerate ads.

<comment><USER19> The only sites that give me problems now are ones like Accuweather that try to load media connected to third-party trackers. Firefox won't load them (and I decline to change the settings) and the site fails.

For those sites, and others that are intrusive, if you need them, you can use containers. I use containers for things like Twitter and Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Already lot of sites are not tested on Firefox and many explicitly so [1]. Now the web publishers that rely on ads will have less incentive to support Firefox. They might even actively promote other browsers. Similar to how IE was discouraged by websites explicitly.

"This site works best on Chrome" is only what is needed now to reduce the Firefox userbase further.

Note - This comment was typed on firefox.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721)

<comment><USER21> Meanwhile, in Germany, Firefox is at a stable 25-26% (according to statcounter)

If you are offering services to us, you probably can't afford to ignore FF. If you are a German company, that goes double.

<comment><USER22> Is that true? I'm not speaking morally here, but pragmatically: 25% of German GDP is a little under a trillion dollars, or about 1% of global GDP. I know there are plenty of problems to nitpick with this rough model, eg that developed countries are often targeted first, but even limiting to OECD countries only yields 1.5% of GDP.

Europe-wide figures would be more relevant, but it's tough for me to see any company that isn't Germany-specific (or at best, regional) caring much about a fraction of the userbase of a country whose GDP is itself a fraction of potential markets.

Now don't get me wrong, businesses that are Germany-only are still pretty massive objectively, but it doesn't seem like that would be enough to move the needle on the way the Web ecosystem develops. German (eg) bank support for FF seems like not much more than a regional technological quirk, like if you found out that Kazakhstan's banks only worked well on IE6

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Serious question. Say I have a site and I want to track users. Do I have to just do this via my own HTTP logs now if I want this working with Firefox? I mean this is how it was done in the bad old days.

I have no nefarious intent. I just need to figure out what features my users are using so I can fix them if they're broken.

It would be nice to possibly get some sort of explicit opt-in from Firefox.

I guess one workaround I could have is to call the analytics APIs on my server directly...

Talking to our users their main complaint isn't necessarily that I'm tracking them more that the data is going to Google so maybe the solution is to run mixpanel.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I'd say you have to implement your own tracking system instead of using an off-the-shelf one. Either from your logs, or from code that you write, server- or client-side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> After couple of days with Brave/Chromium testing on my Linux machines, I definitely should say: Firefox is really __SLOW __, it feels without any benchmarks.

So, Mozilla has two ways:

1\. Build a really fast browser. 2\. Die as Internet Explorer.

It's realistic way to handle things. People don't care about privacy in general, browser is too complex to build for privacy/security activists only. Time to focus on business instead promoting services like Pocket & including Google analytics in addons page.

Do or die.

<comment><USER26> It's not always Firefox's fault. Some websites literally serve different HTML to Firefox, Google services are a good example.

<comment><USER19> I use Chrome for Google properties (GSuite); FF for everything else, including youtube. I find FF works great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's going to be interesting to see where this ends up. Ads are inevitable, and in some ways beneficial to both content providers and consumers (i.e. revenue can be earned from users without any direct payment). But are invasive forms of tracking such as 3rd party cookies really that necessary? Could websites survive using only contextual advertising without the excessive tracking?

<comment><USER28> The ads that I find most useful are the ones which mimic olde newspaper/magazine ads by simply showing things relevant to their general readership.

The advertisers don't need to know a thing about me, they just need to know the general demographics and interests of the publication.

For example, the ads on this blog[1] are far more relevant and less invasive/annoying than anything that Google ever showed me before I started aggressively blocking ad networks. I assume that it is because the blog knows what I am interested in better than Google does, simply because I voluntarily go to their website and read their content.

[1]: [https://hackaday.com/](https://hackaday.com/)

<comment><USER29> Consider this though, would those marketing schmucks invest that much money into dystopian tracking on the web if they didn't have the data to back it up?

The problem is in the user. They do this because we let them. Spread the adblock around your non-technical peers whenever you can.

<comment><USER30> I think this phenomenon has also a lot to do with self marketing of ad agencies. To stand out against the numerous competitors, they want to provide as much information as possible to their clients about potential customers, target groups, etc.

I agree that we should block those even harder. The bad side is that whitelisting sites doesn't work well and well behaved actors are punished too. Especially those, since they do not employ measures against blocking in the first place. That does cost those sites that you actually do want to support.

So the current situation is that bad actors ruin it for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ironic- [https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png](https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png)

</comment><comment><USER32> Great news though I do think adblocking should be built into the browser, rather than left to extensions and 3rd party services. The internet should be taken back from AdTech agencies (Google, AdBuddy AKA Brave). Maybe add to the rumored premium version something like Nextdns?

<comment><USER33> If adblocking is left up to the browser than companies who own the browser have a financial incentive to let certian ads from paying companies through, as has been seen by adblock plus, and the proposed built in chrome ad blocking (which would obviously never block Google's own ads for any reason). Conflicts of interest should be separated into different independent organizations.

Chrome mobile not allowing extensions and therefore adblockers is a crime. There are different revenue sources other than ads (patreon or crypto micropayments for instance) which might evolve as the next means of payment for the internet and search engines. Google purposefully stopping the growth of new technology in order to grasp at an increasingly shrinking past is hurting the end user and is evil.

<comment><USER32> I don't see that with Firefox. Google "blocking" ads in Chrome is of course not serious and not something that's done to protect users. Mozilla is not an ad company like Google (or the wanna be new Google, Brave). But I do think it's a core service a browser should offer, both for privacy reasons, but also environmental and esthetics. We've seen the carbon footprint of processing spam mail, I'm sure ads (which nobody wants or even pays attention to) are even worse.

<comment><USER34> Mozilla gets a lot of money from its partnership with google. That's why google search is the default on Firefox. Google probably wouldn't want them to block all their ads.

<comment><USER32> I understand that but I do think it should be something Mozilla should offer, even if it's a premium service only. The web should not be held hostage by AdTech imho, and as a non for profit Mozilla should be able to generate revenue (and before the Mozilla Corp people jump in, for operations and r&d) from essential services centered around online privacy (cloud storage, vpn, dns etc) with like minded 3rd parties.

<comment><USER35> Why would anyone pay for Mozilla to do adblocking when they could install an ad blocker for free.

<comment><USER32> Part of a premium package. I would pay for something like NextDNS as part of a NextCloud based storage and apps, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just to be clear, what are we specifically talking about here? Does this mean that `privacy.firstparty.isolate` is now set to true by default?

</comment><comment><USER37> As I understand it, they do _not_ block the tracking scripts. What they do is that they do not accept their cookies.

This does not change anything for me:

1) I do not keep cookies around anyhow

2) I use umatrix to not run known evil scripts in the first place

I am not sure if it changes anything for the average user either. I would assume ad companies already use fingerprinting?

</comment><comment><USER38> I must be the only person in the world who likes being tracked and getting tailored ads. I've found lots of things I've bought due to ads that were obviously targeted at me specifically.

<comment><USER39> yes, this is an old story, but it has been already solved: strong tailored ads are tailored not on your will, but on the seller's will, who tailor ads to be able to sell to you: so at the end of the story it is not your free will and somebody helping you to pursue it.

More deeply you risk to miss what could really be the best for you, for what is the best for somebody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why I hate are when sites tether their interactions to their tracking/analytics system... a failure for the analytics script should not prevent pressing 'Login' from working properly. This one is as much on developers as the ad/tracking scripts. When I've worked for public entities, I always went extra to make sure things worked well for users with ads disabled. Even so far as to make sure ad slots didn't even display the placeholders.

</comment><comment><USER41> Does it block all newish variants of the google analytics snippet?

<comment><USER42> It does not block Google Analytics per se. It only blocks the cookie being attached to the used tracking pixel.

Source: verified on own site in v69. Page views show up fine in GA but the browser displays the new warning shield.

<comment><USER41> Thank you! I guess that means Google's client ID is lost, so attribution will be muddled. I wonder if each page view is treated as its own single-page session?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not sure how profitable it would be, but if Mozilla created a privacy-focused email client, I would consider leaving the Google ecosystem.

<comment><USER44> Like Mozilla Thunderbird? Like most email clients it blocks loading external resources by default. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER43> I meant to say a browser based client but I will look into Thunderbird a bit more.

I misunderstood the purpose of Thunderbird - it's marketed as a messaging app, which it is, but I didn't realize it did email as well.

<comment><USER35> I have been using thunderbird for years and didn't even know it did IM. It does a decent job at email and calender stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Chromium monoculture is bad, therefore use Firefox. That's pretty much all there really is to it. Everything else is a distraction.

</comment><comment><USER46> Just installed version 69 on my Thinkpad T540p with Debian 9.9.

I'm going back to Chrome. Firefox still lags on my machine after all these years. Even with a single tab and on their own initial launch page, scrolling performed a "caterpillar" effect where only the top half scrolled, and the bottom half jumped to catch up a split second later

</comment><comment><USER47> Won't publishers just outright block Firefox from displaying their websites and suggests chrome or others for "enhanced and better experience" ?

Firefox has a market share small enough that publishers and the ad industry could try to just reduce ff usage with a coordinated campaign.

</comment><comment><USER48> Call me cynic and selfish, but I kinda like when people who don't care about their privacy essentially subsidise my browsing on websites that track their users. Now they will have even bigger incentive to invent new tracking mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER49> I would love to if FF could handle Amazon.com without boiling my MBP2013. Is it a bug in FF or just Amazon did not care to optimize their shit?

Is there a way to figure out the performance's origin in FF somehow?

<comment><USER50> It's probably [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538), so you could try Firefox Nightly and see if there's any improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> i really wanted to use Firefox, so I switched recently. It lasted about 3 hours. Every time I tried to Google something I got a warning that Google was a dangerous site because of their self-signed certificate (seriously? Google should be on the list of trusted certificate signers, no matter what you think of their business model).

Then it asked if I wanted to trust them. I answered yes, repeatedly, yet the error message reappeared over and over again. (really bad). I gave up.

A little more competence and I'm on board.

</comment><comment><USER52> Relevant HN thread from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084)

</comment><comment><USER53> Is the ad tracking also blockad in Firefox mobile?

<comment><USER54> From what I understand, Firefox Mobile isn't one thing. On iOS it's safari under the surface. On Android it's a distinct code-base.

There might not be the level of control that you speak of in the iOS variant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> In a swipe at its users, Chrome doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER56> these tracking scripts are essentially malware, maybe browser vendors could store hashes of these scripts in the same way an antivirus stores hashes of viruses.

Then block the scripts, do a daily update of the latest hashes as they appear. Include an option for expert users to report new scripts.

<comment><USER35> Last I saw the Firefox blocker had a domain block list for removing the ad scripts. It's not as effective as other tracker blockers which heuristics but it's less likely to break the page for users.

<comment><USER56> if domain blocking because widespread, I wouldn't be surprised if tracking vendors ask their users to self host their scripts

<comment><USER57> Self-hosted scripts are less useful for tracking, since a cookie generated on a visit to site A won't be visible when the user visits site B. So if vendors switch to that, it's good news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> A big reason why I stick with Chrome is because Firefox's menu pisses me off how it's this popup box with huge icon rather than Chrome's more traditional list of text. Sounds stupid, but that's a big enough reason for me.

<comment><USER59> I guess it just shows your privacy is not that important to you, which seems always to be the point with many posters here who, while complaining loudly about google, present rather minor reasons why they can't use firefox ever.

That being said, while I vaguely remember there being huge icons at some point for a few versions, there aren't any now in my Firefox. Just a normal looking menu with small icons on the left and text on the right. I can't promise this is true for every platform, but maybe you want to take another look.

<comment><USER58> This is like saying that somebody doesn't care about privacy if they don't PGP encrypt all their emails and messages. Convenience is always a factor.

<comment><USER59> I don't think it is. If we talk using the browser of one of the worlds foremost data collecting companies vs. mostly no tracking, if privacy is important it should outrank most small to medium convenience factors. Especially the ones that can easily be overcome by customization or familiarity.

While I think everyone should value their privacy, I did not mean that as an attack on you, but if a menu you never need to access once you learn some shortcuts is just as important a factor as being tracked on everything you do, you should reevaluate how important privacy really is to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I don't believe any of it will help.

[https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816](https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816)

<comment><USER61> Wow, this is terrifying on a whole new level. This kind of invasion isn't anything new but I shudder every time I see it detailed. However, I don't see anything about Firefox there? Should we really automatically presume that Mozilla won't be able to deal with these issues just because other companies couldn't? (Or, let's be honest, didn't bother to/had incentive not to?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> So...when is FF going to get proper site isolation?

</comment><comment><USER63> Let's see whether Google pays less now to be the default search engine in Firefox.

<comment><USER64> The default search spot is a directed search with intent, so pretty valuable.

I think it will be a pragmatic business decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> love it!

</comment><comment><USER66> Or we can all go to Brave or even better to Tor.

<comment><USER67> Tor browsing speed is a catch 22. Not enough users for ample bandwidth - > users think it's too slow and don't use it - > not enough users

I've set up a relay myself, so I guess I did my part... But I wish more people would see tor as a private browser, not a gateway to "drugs, CP, and extremism'"</comment></comment>


Electric Nissan Leaf has become the most popular car in Norway - <AUTHOR> http://mobil.dn.no/c.jsp?rssid=25548281&cid=25545171&item=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.no%2Ffeed%2Fmobiletech%2Farticle%3Faid%3D2710523 <comment><USER2> Norwegians: Why would you buy an old fashioned petrol/diesel car when the electric version is nice and quiet, easier to drive, gets sold tax free, is able to whizz down the bus lanes, gets a free pass on toll roads, can be 'refuelled' for less and comes with free parking?

Obviously there is range but you can hire a car for that or just get the old car out of the garage.

You guys are going to be laughing at us and our 'Top Gear' broom-broom motoring culture in a few years time! Please do so loudly and shame us into changing our ways too.

<comment><USER3> Because a Nissan Leaf still costs ~$30-35000 in Norway. I can buy a used, reliable, petrol car for under half of that.

And the incentives the Norwegian Government introduced to encourage people to buy electric cars, will not last forever. It will definitely last through 2017, but after that - no one knows. The Norwegian Government will probably lose too much money, if people stopped buying petrol cars today.

<comment><USER4> Not really - Norway exports a huge amount of oil. They have one of the world's biggest sovereign wealth funds from the proceeds. It's currently worth ~$700billion. Considering there are only 5 million people in the country, they are not short of cash. So - any oil usage saved is somewhat made up by export revenues which go back to the state.

Furthermore, the costs of electric cars will surely go down as economies of scale hit in, lessening the need for subsidies as time goes on.

<comment><USER3> Yes, we do have one of the biggest wealth funds. The problem is that we will probably have to spend more than we are spending today, if the income from taxes is reduced (our national budget will probably not become "cheaper" in the future). And if the demand for oil starts to decrease, maybe we'll spend more money than we are earning from oil export. I know this won't happen in the near future, but I still think that the electric cars will be taxed more one day. Other perks for electric car owners will probably be history in a few years too (electric cars clogging up the bus lanes).

That being said, I hope I'm wrong. I wouldn't mind owning an electric car, the day I need to own a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IIRC Norway has a 200% tax on petroleum-powered vehicles (despite being a huge producer), so this is not terribly surprising.

This makes a Tesla more in the price range of a small- or mid-sized BMW, and I suppose the Leaf would be extremely affordable, making it an obvious choice for anyone who is OK with the logistics of electric cars.

<comment><USER6> _despite being a huge producer_

This is actually very sensible: conserve oil for export, add it to the long- term social fund. The exact opposite of the Saudi approach (burn it cheaply in nonsustainable vanity projects and things like desalinated water for golf courses in a desert)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Direct link to the article: [http://www.dn.no/dnBil/article2710523.ece](http://www.dn.no/dnBil/article2710523.ece)

English translation: [http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=http:/...](http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=http://www.dn.no/dnBil/article2710523.ece)

</comment><comment><USER8> Norway has a lot of benefits for electric cars, so that Leaf and the Tesla are bestsellers isn't surprising.

In Norway, you pay less taxes on electric vehicles (petroleum-car tax), you get to park for free several places in the city, free charging station, and you can drive in the community lanes (usually reserved for taxis and busses).

</comment><comment><USER9> Odd that Tesla isn't mentioned in the sales table given that it was supposedly the best-selling car for the previous month:

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=norway...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=norway&sortby=create_ts+desc)

<comment> j-g-faustus Not really. Last month was a special case: Several months of hype and preorders hit the statistics all at once when Tesla started delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article says that Nissan Leaf became the most sold car in October. However, it is the fourth most sold car in 2013 so far.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are now no less than three 1st tier, mid-sized "native" fully electric vehicles on sale here. The Leaf, the BMW i3 and the e-UP in addition to the converted Ford Focus Electric. The Leaf is finally getting some competition.

Surprising not to see Toyota participating yet. I expected them to have a head start since they have been producing hybrids ~forever.

<comment><USER12> The e-UP is hardly "mid-sized". And you forgot the MiEV and it's cousins.

Toyta had the iQ proposed for an EV-conversion, but that went to hell in a glovecompartment...

If Toyota took advantage of their partnership with Tesla and pushed out an Auris with a Leaf-like range, and an Avensis with a Model S-like range. Competitors shit would really hit the fan-belt...

(Ok, I'm done with the bad car puns now :/ )

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From what I can tell, it's also the most popular car in bay area commuter lanes! (Really, you can't find an open charger these days, it's getting ridiculous.)

<comment><USER14> The Model S is outselling the Leaf in the bay area, but yeah, I see a lot of Leafs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Leaf, the peoples car of the 21st century?

Very close if not ideal daily range, cheap to operate, and of a useful size. The Beetle of the electric age.</comment>


Concept of Community Computing - <AUTHOR> http://readtext.org/computers/community-computing/ <comment><USER2> Appears to be circa 1990.</comment>


China Turned 350M Millennials into Day Traders - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-china-turned-350-million-millennials-into-day-traders/2019/04/11/c007d8ba-5cad-11e9-98d4-844088d135f2_story.html <comment><USER2> Isn't this just gambling with extra steps?</comment>


Making stamps obsolete through SMS - <AUTHOR> http://namesake.com/conversation/a57fea2e-48ec-11e0-a08a-12313f014066

<comment><USER2> Awesome! They could easily offer tracking of letters or just notifying sender when letter was delivered or innovate even more on top of that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a little more info: <http://www.thelocal.se/32436/20110307/>

<comment><USER4> According to The Local's article, a system like this is already in place in Germany, and will launch in Denmark in April. It might be available in Sweden some time this year [see [http://www.gp.se/nyheter/sverige/1.566988-sms-kan- ersatta-fr...](http://www.gp.se/nyheter/sverige/1.566988-sms-kan-ersatta- frimarke)].

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just what we need: more services to depend on the already-obsolete SMS. From the standpoint of a gov't agency, that decision makes a lot of sense, but just further illustrates to me how badly we need to transition to messaging protocols like XMPP that are designed for use in the modern world.

<comment><USER6> Still more efficient, and environmentally friendlier, than traditional stamps.

<comment><USER5> Oh, definitely. It's also a bit of a wasted opportunity in some ways, as it becomes harder to retire SMS with each service built on top of it.

<comment><USER7> Well there is no reason the service has to rely on SMS. In this case it does, but in the future there does not be a lock in right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is important to understand why this innovation did not happen in the U.S.

In Europe, the old national postal systems have to compete for customers, thanks to EU deregulation.

In the U.S., where the postal service regular mail is a monopoly, it is not in the postal service's interest to innovate and offer new services-- they make money from people buying, storing, and never using physical stamps.</comment>


Don't Blame Tech Bros for the Housing Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/opinion/sunday/housing-crisis-silicon-valley.html <comment><USER2> I really don't understand any of these articles about the housing crisis in California. They always have points that seem intuitively completely wrong. For example:

> That property is zoned as industrial, so if it shifts to residential use, > which generates limited property taxes, San Jose stands to lose tax revenue.

Even with Prop 13, give the soaring sale prices of new homes, all municipalities in the Bay Area have been experiencing explosive growth in tax revenue over the last 40 years. This makes it sound like they're struggling to maintain revenue which is crazy.

The town I live in, Redwood City, has had its taxable base increase from $13B to $23B in the last 10 years without having to provide ANYTHING new. There has been no major civil engineering projects, no increase in public transportation, absolutely nothing reasonable to pour that money into.

Bay Area taxes are a scam and these towns are flush in so much fucking cash they should be drowning. I don't get it.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how this violates intuition.

The decisions to not build more residential housing and instead have more commercial development weren't made today. They were made decades ago back when home prices and tax revenues were not so high. You cannot just will high taxes into existence. People need an income source that allows these high taxes in the first place. The bay area heavily favored commercial development at the expense of residential development. The end result is that the Bay Area has a lot of high income jobs and those high income jobs need a home and the people holding these jobs are willing to pay more than anyone else.

Because of policy decisions a lot of medium income people are grandfathered into low property taxes and have an incentive to keep their house and sell it to someone with a high income. If the city now suddenly started building more housing as a response to the housing crisis then property owners would have to compete with new construction and see their home value shrink.

By the way. If opposing construction was really about preserving the character of the neighborhood then property owners would have been equally opposed to new commercial construction because the new influx of money is guaranteed to change the character of the neighborhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's refreshing to see some knowledge of supply and demand being shown regarding the housing market in a mainstream forum: "The spiraling housing costs in West Coast tech hubs are the result of 40 years of tax and land use policy."

</comment><comment><USER5> I look at it as producers vs rentiers. Major cities are controlled by price fixing supply restricting frontier cartels. Producers of art, culture, etc. have already been priced out of cities like SF. The tech people are the only ones left who can afford the rent, but they will be driven out too.

</comment><comment><USER6> My first thought was "it took them that long to realize this?!". Really with housing there is a history of absolute selfishness even to their own detriment across all economic and social strata.

Then again "tech bro" itself is a shibboleth of tribalism and ignorance in itself. As a community like all it has many things to criticize of varying legitimacy objectively and subjectively. Instead it is like the Greco-Roman "Barbarian" \- an outgroup term broad to the point or uselessness.

</comment><comment><USER7> If there is demand for housing, we would expect people to be finding land and building housing unless there are policies that prevent this (and/or long commutes that people don't want to suffer) or higher-value opportunities.

If the city wanted residential areas (over commercial tax revenue giants), the city should have zoned residential.

The people elect city leaders. The people all want affordable housing.

With $4.5b from corporations and nowhere to build but out or up, high rise residential is the most likely outcome. (Which is typical for dense urban areas that have prioritized and attracted corporate tax revenue over affordable housing)

... Effing scooter bros with their scooters and their gold rush money and their tiny houses.

[Edit: more than] One company says "I will pay you $10,000 to leave the Bay Area / Silicon Valley" Because there's a lot of tech talent (because universities and opportunities) but ridiculously high expenses.

What an effectual headline from NY.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you spend time during compilation? - <AUTHOR> I feel it's a significant problem when compilation lasts for more than 10s>. To not get bored,  I am jumping into random articles during that time, loosing my precious focus.<p>Is there anything productive you are doing in such short timespan? <comment><USER2> I typically either (1) do light work on another project, or (2) clean up code or revise documentation in the project being compiled.

That's the answer I'd like to give. Really, I just open up Hacker News. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> HackerNews, reddit, Github...</comment>


GamesBeat managing editor Jason Wilson's favorite games of 2018 - sahin-boydas https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/27/gamesbeat-managing-editor-jason-wilsons-favorite-games-of-2018/ <comment><AUTHOR> Oh hey MTG:A finally made someone's list! This was the first card game I have played in a while, having dabbled in Hearthstone before and disliked Blizzard's aesthetic choices. There's something about MTGA that I can't put a finger on in terms of design that's so "attractive" and makes me come back to it every 2 days.

I honestly can't wait to see what WOTC will do to make it shine as an Esport. Hopefully something unique.</comment>


Tail calls in F# - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2011/07/08/tail-calls-in-fsharp.aspx

<comment><USER2> > For instance, use bindings implicitly generate a try-finally around the code > that follows them to ensure that the Dispose method is called on the bound > value. This means that no calls following a use binding will be tail calls.

Reading that just kind of made me break out into a cold sweat. I imagine I will be looking at some IL tonight because of this.

I still don't quite get the reason for why try-catch or try-finally blocks cannot have a tail call in them?

<comment><USER3> The point of the tail call is to not push an item on the stack frame. That is why tail call is an optimization you can perform when there are no other operations after the tail call. You can jump to the next instruction and be done with it.

But if the tail call is in a try-finally block the "tail call" is not actually the tail. There is more code that needs to be run after the execution of the tail call. The code has to return back from the tail call and execute the finally code.

What you thought was a tail call is actually no longer a tail call at all.

<comment><USER2> I was under the impression that the article stated that a CALL to a recursive function inside of the try-* block would prevent it from being done with a tail call, and not that the recursive function contained a wrapping try-* block in its body. I think I may have understood wrong what the article was saying.

<comment><USER3> _I was under the impression that the article stated that a CALL to a recursive function inside of the try-_ block would prevent it from being done with a tail call*

Yes, that statement is correct and what we're talking about.

Having a try-finally in the body of the tail-call function shouldn't make a difference.

To be clear:

       try {
          ...
          tailcall(...);
       }
       finally { ... }

That could block tail call optimization.

<comment><USER4> According to the .NET CLR spec, you're not allowed to have a tailcall within a protected ("try") block or it's handler.

On the other hand, tail-calls can be optimized into a while loop, and the F# compiler does this in some cases (check out the IL it produces), so then you could have a recursive tail-call within a try/finally there, it just wouldn't be using the 'tail.call' / 'tail.callvirt' / 'tail.calli' OpCode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the MSIL emitted by the compiler is not a reliable way to tell that a tail call will be used at runtime. It's ultimately at the discretion of the JIT whether to compile the 'tail.callvirt' into an actual tail call in x86.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like it's a confirmed feature in 2.12 Mono too:

<http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_Project_Roadmap>

<comment><USER7> And you can crank up the stack size (tho this SO has a link to Duffy talking about increasing stack on the CLR)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7538584/f-vs-ocaml- stack-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7538584/f-vs-ocaml-stack- overflow)</comment></comment>


The Tbilisi phage therapy clinic pioneering a superbug treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/perfect-predator-inside-tbilisi-clinic-pioneering-radical-superbug/ <comment><USER2> [http://eliava-institute.org/scientific-laboratories/rd- depar...](http://eliava-institute.org/scientific-laboratories/rd-department/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Agriculture in the US has started embracing phage therapy for some diseases. Both the EPA and California's EPA has recently approved a phage that attacks Xylella fastidiosa, Pierce's disease, in grapevines. This disease kills a vine within a few years. I'm hoping to get to try this in Texas in 2020 but it may be another year before everything is approved here.</comment>


OSX Lion in CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.alessioatzeni.com/mac-osx-lion-css3/

<comment><USER2> Color me jaded, but the "excitement" about HTML5 is hardly ever about doing new things, it's about doing the same old things, but with different tools.

Almost every HTML5 demo I've seen just reproduces something we could already to with technologies that ran on the desktop years ago. We're supposed to be excited that we can now implement - barely, and extremely laboriously, and with a clunky, buggy, incompatibility-ridden toolkit - the same kinds of things desktop apps programmers have been doing for a long time.

As a web developer pushing 40, I dread seeing our profession head towards making desktop-style apps in the browser, and along way spending the next 10 years repeating the mistakes and relearning the lessons of current desktop app developers. I'm not sure I've got enough time left to stomach that.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty much all we do in the computer industry, re-invent the same things over and over again.

See also: Co-operative/Pre-emptive multitasking , thin-client/thick-client , single user / multiuser and native / virtualised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It bugs me that this is labeled "in CSS3". The only CSS3 here is some gradients and transitions. It uses plenty of images and Javascript.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Stick with HTML5, people. It's almost always never just "HTML5" so we know what to expect. Labeling this as CSS3 is much more misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I'm sorry to inform you that your browser sucks!"

If the message had been, uhm, polite, i would maybe have considered opening another browser to look at it in.

I mean. Is it too much to expect just a little more class than that?

EDIT: Now i tried it in Chrome since it was open. No error message, but logon doesn't work. Honestly, i'm not impressed.

<comment><USER7> You have to click the mouse - hitting 'enter' doesn't work.

It's impressive, if laggy, in ffx12.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I missing something here? All I see are five boxes you can drag around with javascript which have some buttons and menus that don't do anything.

<comment><USER9> The only thing you're missing is the time you spent trying to see if it did more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Chrome after the "login" I get a bunch of open windows that I can't close and no dock. Is that how it's supposed to be?

<comment><USER11> I think this is all that it's it, but this is a very good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's quite nice and responsive. Not as fast as the native UI obviously, but that was expectable (btw. my MacBook Air boots faster ;)).

Small improvement: Log me in on hitting Return.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool.

But one question from a JS/CSS noob: there seems to be a rash of people doing a lot of things in pure CSS. Is this more for fun and as an experiment, or is there an actual technological reason to do it strictly through CSS? Is pure CSS the way things are heading, or is using javascript the real way to do things?

<comment><USER14> A few people who are (overly, in my opinion) concerned about their privacy and security don't have Javascript enabled in their browser, so stuff that requires it wont work.

Thats the only real reason I can see for trying to do as much in CSS3 as possible other than just for the challenge.

<comment><USER15> Turning Javascript off (or at least manually whitelisting via NoScript) also can give a quite big performance boost, by simply turning off many useless effects.

Making CPU-hungry CSS3 kind of defeats that purpose, of course.

<comment><USER16> Some CSS3 effects are implemented using the GPU, so animating using CSS can be much faster than animating using Javascript.

See the Netflix talk which has a lot of info about using GPU accelerated animations for e.g. scrolling: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuMWhto62Eo>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few very slick transitions - it's a little irritating that the font sizes, window borders, drop shadows, hover states on close/minimize buttons, etc are all _slightly_ wrong though.

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems to eat the cursor for me on a development chrome (18.0.1010.0 dev / Mac)

<comment><USER19> Same problem here. It showed up again after Command + Tabbing out of Chrome and switching back in. It's humorous that the custom cursor fails in the one case where it's identical to my default cursor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't see why it didn't work in Chrome. I'm using Chromium 18 (Developer Build) and it worked just fine.

Pressing [ENTER] on password textbox didn't go so well, but you can use the mouse and hit the arrow.

And then it works great.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone explain to me why I see a yellow or red checkered pattern when my computer or browser is struggling to render a page? I tried to take a screenshot, but this usually happens super fast and I can't react in time.

I'm on a MacBook Pro and running Chrome (although I get the checkered yellow pattern in other applications like iTunes as well).

<comment><USER22> Sounds like rendering artifacts from an overheating graphics card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well this is pretty neat. Reminds me of the old PSP portals that people used to make for homebrew back in the day. They'd emulate Windows and Ubuntu and everything in between.

I would just open this up full-screen on someone's laptop and watch the magic unfurl. A little more JS and you could have an awesome copy of Lion in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER24> Impressive, especially the menu bar after login.

Is there any JS code involved in dragging windows? From the code, I could see JQuery UI is being used. So, its like OSX Lion in CSS3+JavaScript.

Nevertheless, a commendable effort.

<comment><USER25> From the blogg entry he says: "I use javascript only for the clock and the jQuery UI Draggable library to have a draggable windows."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Details from his blog: <http://www.alessioatzeni.com/blog/mac-os-x-lion-with- css3/>

</comment><comment><USER27> Very cool demo.

Add this to full screen mode and you've got the makings of a crazy OSX fake- out scam.

</comment><comment><USER28> Doesn't do anything on an iPad.

<comment><USER29> Looks fine on iPhone. Windows don't drag (obviously). <http://twitter.com/mike_critz/statuses/161238575835394048 >

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pretty good start. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER31> doesnt work for me, type password 'admin' but desktop doesn't load

<comment><USER32> You need to click on the arrow icon or the logo. It's buggy as hell. Click Help then all the windowing system is gone south. I found major bugs after playing with it for 2 minutes. Why hasnn't the author spent at least that amount of time to test it before putting it in the wild? It's mostly javascript btw. So the title of the article is wrong.

<comment><USER8> "Click Help then all the windowing system is gone south."

That's a fairly faithful emulation, actually...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Really cool, though it makes WebKit very slow and unresponsive, despite the fact it's built with CSS3 & Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER34> No surprises: it works in Safari, the irony being that its Safari on a hackintosh zooming along just fine on a scuzzy little netbook -- which is even cooler. Or not, depending on how you view these things.

</comment><comment><USER35> Very cool, mate.

I have done something similar but based on Vista : vidshome.com</comment>


Bugs Everywhere: a distributed bug-tracker - <AUTHOR> http://bugseverywhere.org

<comment><AUTHOR> Wondering if bug tracking could be distributed and integrated with VCS, I just ran into this (bugs-everywhere), a LWN article, a few blog posts, but no discussion on a social news site. Hence my first posting on HN...

It seems an ideal solution: bugs lie with the source, and the "social part" is left to the VCS workflow and the (web) interface.

Do people have practical experience and feed back with this kind of tools ?

PS. After a few moments looking at bugs-everywhere with mercurial, I found it would gain much from a plugin integrating it in the 'hg serve' interface.</comment>


GPS and Relativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html# <comment><USER2> I seem to remember that the original satellites (which were the first highly accurate clocks in orbit) had a hedge--if the effects of general relativity turned out to not be correct the system could drop that part of the correction. But I'm on janky hotel internet right now so I can't find a reference.

Edit: The comment from jcr is correct--this was not in GPS, but in an earlier system. [http://www.leapsecond.com/history/Ashby- Relativity.htm](http://www.leapsecond.com/history/Ashby-Relativity.htm)

> At the time of launch of the first NTS-2 satellite (June 1977), which > contained the first Cesium clock to be placed in orbit, there were some who > doubted that relativistic effects were real. A frequency synthesizer was > built into the satellite clock system so that after launch, if in fact the > rate of the clock in its final orbit was that predicted by GR, then the > synthesizer could be turned on bringing the clock to the coordinate rate > necessary for operation. The atomic clock was first operated for about 20 > days to measure its clock rate before turning on the synthesizer. The > frequency measured during that interval was +442.5 parts in 1012 faster than > clocks on the ground; if left uncorrected this would have resulted in timing > errors of about 38,000 nanoseconds per day. The difference between predicted > and measured values of the frequency shift was only 3.97 parts in 1012, well > within the accuracy capabilities of the orbiting clock. This then gave about > a 1% validation of the combined motional and gravitational shifts for a > clock at 4.2 earth radii.

<comment><AUTHOR> From wikipedia, it seems the keeping of accurate time (i.e. known relativistic effects) was already solved before the first NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS I) satellites were constructed. What you're possibly remembering is one of the GPS predecessor systems like Transit or more likely, Timation.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Prede...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Predecessors)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> GPS receivers also have to correct for things like light traveling slower through plasma in the ionosphere. Receivers on the ground actually solve for their positions in 4 dimensions (they need to solve for time!). GPS is so cool.

<comment><USER4> That's part of what the 4th connected satellite does. Also this is one of the better descriptions of trilateration I've seen. [http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/12866/why-does-gps- po...](http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/12866/why-does-gps-positioning- require-four-satellites)

<comment><USER5> Andrew Holme explains a some of these things succinctly on his home made GPS receiver project page[0]. Search for "Solving for user position", where he even mentions ionospheric propagation. He also has an appendix showing his math[1]

[0] [http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm](http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm) [1] [http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/user_position_solution.pdf](http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/user_position_solution.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $30 for a GPS that will log 15 hours of telemetry[1] I just cant get over how much cool math, science, engineering and technology can get crammed into a single concept. in some ways GPS is as revolutionary as the CPU.

[1] [http://www.adafruit.com/products/790](http://www.adafruit.com/products/790)

</comment><comment><USER7> By the way, Pogge also has recordings of some of his lectures available as mp3. Astro162 was especially interesting, and also goes into more detail on the effects and implications of relativity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. I totally missed it.

Lecture Recordings: [http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Audio/](http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Audio/)

Lecture Notes: [http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/index.html...](http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/index.html#lectures)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does the system rely on knowing the position of the satellites to equivalent accuracy? i.e. "millimetres" accuracy for differential GPS.

If so, how is this accuracy achieved? (Obviously the satellites themselves cannot use gps to determine their position...). Measurement from the ground plus manouvering?

Are there any events (micro debris strike, solar wind?) which cause drift in our estimate of their position?

<comment><USER9> The orbits of the satellites are known to a certain accuracy allowing prediction of where the satellite is at any given point. The accuracy of this almanac & ephemeris data is only valid for a short time in the future (hours to days) but is continuously updated from measurements of the satellites actual position. The ephemeris & almanac data is what is transmitted to the GPS receivers on the ground along with the timing information allowing the receiver to calculate their position. An assisted GPS (A-GPS) system can transmit predicted ephemeris for up to a week ahead to a device and store it allowing very quick start ups (Time-To-First-Fix) presuming that the data is preloaded (avoids having to wait for an almanac &ephemeris download which can take up to 13 minutes). In answer to your question, the orbits are affected by everything from the atmospheric weather which causes deflections in the signals to phases of the moon and the shape of the earth that it is passing over causing small deflections in the satellites orbit. Many factors combine to make orbital predictions _very_ difficult, akin to predicting the weather.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for that, this is really interesting.

So - there are ground-based observatories continuously determining the absolute position of the satellites?

This seems really hard. The satellites are ~20,000Km up. I think that means a 1 millimetre difference would be a 5 x 10^-11 radians difference (theta ~ tan theta), or 0.0001 arc seconds - surely this is beyond any telescope technology?

And even if they could resolve at that level, we're trying for an _absolute_ fix, so we're also trying to measure the alignment of a (moving?) telescope with 0.0001 arc second precision (hoping no mice cough nearby?)

That can't be right, so what am I missing?

Wikipedia says that there are lots (~13?) stations: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Contr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Control_segment)

Are there potential issues with them being covered by weather etc?

[Ah - found the link to '[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter'](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter') \- this is probably the magic?]

<comment><USER10> Two ways to do it

1) You have a defined position of your antenna... make the ephemeris "work" such that your antenna gets the right signal from the satellite. In a philosophical sense, where is the satellite? Well... does it really matter? This ephemeris says your antenna is in the right place, so...

I'm not implying this is how it work or its a good idea, but it certainly is a good unit test if your "real" method when run thru a test bench implies you're on the moon instead of at the (note singular) base station...

2) Those numbers are no big deal with doppler / frequency ranging. If you transmit at 1500 MHz its a little higher as it approaches and lower as it leaves. Ask a ham radio operator to demonstrate with their 144/440-ish MHz satellites, the doppler in low earth orbit is maybe 15 KHz or so. Anyway sub- Hz accuracy measurement (no big deal) of a 1.5e9 Hz signal for a couple seconds gives you the -11th class of accuracy you're looking for. The absolute freq would be nice to know, but you can figure out the instant the satellite passed zenith (or any other elevation relative to your position) as long as the freq is "short term more or less constant". Of course giant and heavy earth bound clocks can give you that precise freq you're looking for, which is also cool.

The doppler of a satellite pass is pleasingly non-linear and they're high up enough so make for long passes and proper data analysis means you can downsample maybe 10000 samples to find the theoretical best RMS zenith instant for all 10000 samples, so oversampling and averaging gives you another couple orders of magnitude.

Maybe another way to say it, is if you have basically perfect accuracy clocks, and you sample and literally count every incoming cycle of a 1.5e9 RF signal for only 100 seconds even if you ignore phase data (why would you? But for the sake of the argument...) then thats 1.5e11 cycles in a given time, a bit of division and you have a freq accurate to one cycle or part in 10 to the 11th.

Its more complicated in reality because the GPS signal is not a simple RF carrier but is a spread spectrum signal so you need a reasonably low noise and stable PLL to lock onto the SS signal and then you actually measure the SS signal.

<comment><USER11> > the GPS signal is not a simple RF carrier

There is still a simple carrier; the modulation only affects the sidebands (which contain the broadcast data).

Also, don't forget that GPS is a dual-frequency system (civilian receivers don't tend to use the L2 band because they can't decode the data it broadcasts). Finally, the control segment is not limited to passively listening for signals from the satellite - it has the entire resources of the USAF available to it.

<comment><USER10> Hmm thats interesting. I've never seen that on a spectrum analyzer. L1 C/A looks spikey if you zoom out but its really a meg or so wide and only 20 dB or so above the rest of the spectrum anyway. From what I understand of the modulator its not possible to output a carrier other than bleed thru probably 60 dB down or equipment failure. BPSK modulation just doesn't work that way.

Maybe you're talking about the L3 signal? I find that part of GPS to be spooky. Or that experimental L5 stuff that I don't know anything about. Everything I do know about GPS is just BPSK and the "old" stuff like L1, L2, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How come everyone here believes without question the statement in the original article that "the engineers who designed the GPS system included these relativistic effects when they designed and deployed the system." The author gives no evidence for this claim. In fact the research was classified and he cannot offer evidence even if he tried. See references in this comment [http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/if-newton-were- to-c...](http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/if-newton-were-to-come-back- to-earth/#comment-1381) which says that "Nevertheless, in practice, neglect of relativity does not now contribute measurably to the GPS error budget, as the OCS software is currently configured. (p.194)" cited in this source GPS AND RELATIVITY: AN ENGINEERING OVERVIEW Henry F. Fliegel and Raymond S. DiEsposti [http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1996/Vol%2028_16.pdf](http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1996/Vol%2028_16.pdf)

I am always amazed how normally skeptical people suspend their skepticism and believe anything a physicist or a learned doctor writes. I would be grateful if you can supply a real evidence that without GR GPS will not work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Talk about deployment hell - puts things into perspective:

"to counteract the General Relativistic effect once on orbit, they slowed down the ticking frequency of the atomic clocks before they were launched"

The mind boggles.

It makes me uneasy that we only have this single system though (the effects of a GPS failure would be quite severe I guess). Do the people behind GPS collaborate with the Galileo folks?

Thanks a lot for the submit, now I need to find a good book on the history behind the GPS!

<comment><USER14> There are multiple GNSS platforms - not just GPS & Galileo, but also GLONASS, Compass, IRNSS, and others. Some receivers are multi-system capable, such as: [http://www.u-blox.com/en/gps-chips/stand-alone-gps- chips/ubx...](http://www.u-blox.com/en/gps-chips/stand-alone-gps- chips/ubx-g7020-ctktka.html)

<comment><USER15> And the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and others, at least assisted GPS + GLONASS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#Receivers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#Receivers)

<comment><USER16> Given that 4 satellites are necessary for a fix, are such receivers able to mix-and-match satellites, say, three GPS satellites and one GLONASS satellite?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why does the article say that clocks "appear" to be running differently? Are they running differently? Or they only appear to do so?

If so, what happens when the two participants get closer? Do clocks start "getting in sync"?

If we had an atomic clock with a mechanism to self-destruct when not running at the original "right" time, does the atomic clock self-destruct? Can it "tell" it is running slower?

In more biological settings (say, a human being) what are the effects of "aging faster"? Is it possible that the body would "not work correctly" under certain gravitational forces because of the effects of time? (i.e. maybe the blood flows faster, just a terrible example, I hope you get the idea).

<comment><USER18> > Why does the article say that clocks "appear" to be running differently? Are > they running differently? Or they only appear to do so?

Short answer: they are running differently. Complicated answer: I don't think this question really makes sense in relativity.

> If so, what happens when the two participants get closer? Do clocks start > "getting in sync"?

No.

> If we had an atomic clock with a mechanism to self-destruct when not running > at the original "right" time, does the atomic clock self-destruct? Can it > "tell" it is running slower?

There is no "right" time in relativity, only frames of reference.

> In more biological settings (say, a human being) what are the effects of > "aging faster"? Is it possible that the body would "not work correctly" > under certain gravitational forces because of the effects of time? (i.e. > maybe the blood flows faster, just a terrible example, I hope you get the > idea).

Relativistic time dilation will have no effect on chemical and biological reactions. But I'm sure there are aspects to our biology that go beyond chemical reactions and actually rely on quantum effects - time dilation might have some effect here? I don't have the answer for this.

<comment><USER19> _> Relativistic time dilation will have no effect on chemical and biological reactions._

This is not correct. Relativistic time dilation affects all processes. If you flew a chemical reaction and a living organism on a GPS satellite, and then brought them back and compared them with a similar reaction and organism that stayed behind on Earth, the reaction on the satellite would have proceeded further and the organism on the satellite would have aged more. (In practice, the differences would be too small to detect with our current technology, but if we had accurate enough ways of measuring we could detect them.)

<comment><USER18> Right. That's the actually movement of time changing. The processes themselves are unchanged and nothing could "go wrong" in your body.

<comment><USER19> _> That's the actually movement of time changing. The processes themselves are unchanged_

You can interpret things this way, I suppose, but that doesn't change the fact that it applies to all processes; from the viewpoint of someone who sees the processes as moving, _all_ processes are time dilated--the "movement of time changing" applies to all of them. There's no special exception for certain quantum effects, or anything else. They're all the same: they all are unchanged to someone moving with them, and they all are time dilated to someone not moving with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can one build a GPS reciever chip that uses the signals from GPS, GLONASS, EU and the Chinese navigation satellites?

In theory, there should then, assuming the EU/Chinese navigation systems have an equal amount of satellites as GPS/GLONASS, be always 24 or more satellites in view of the user - which should be enough to provide millimetre-precision positioning in real time.

<comment><USER21> You can already get a centimetre-precision for rather low money:

[http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/centimeter-level-precision- gp...](http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/centimeter-level-precision-gps-for-500/)

I have a friend who build an automatic lawnmower as his pet project at uni,and he used two GPS receivers to get <10cm accurancy which allowed the lawnmower to make automatic turns around the garden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does this mean that the people living on the space station age faster than people on earth, or does this only affect the atomic clocks?

<comment><USER23> In there own frame of references, i.e. living near a large gravity well, and living on a space station, 1 sec = 1 second. Meaning if I experience a second on earth, then go to a space station, my own person clock will always read 1 second no matter where I am.

The rub is, time is _relative_ , so even though your personal clock always reads 1 second in your own frame of reference, the clocks of two individual people in two different frame of references _can disagree_. So, it only really _looks_ like the person in the space station "ages faster", but if both the people in both frames lived 100 years, they would be experience 100 years in their personal reference, but the space station guy might die when the earth guy is like 99.9999(or something, I didn't do the math here) years old.

This is due to gravitation time dilation, and it's not the only type. For instance if I went off on a super space ship at a very high fraction of the speed of light, traveled around the galaxy and returned 10 years later, situation would be reversed from the space station/earth gravitation scenario, and while 10 years may have passed ship time, many hundreds of years(once again, I didn't do the math, it's just more the higher fraction of the speed of light you are going) may have passed on earth. In this case, it is the accelerated frame of reference in which time "slows down" relative to the non- accelerated frame.

<comment><USER19> _> This is due to gravitation time dilation_

If you're talking about an object in orbit compared to an object at rest on the Earth's surface, both gravitational time dilation and the other type you describe come into play, because the objects are in motion relative to each other as well as being at different altitudes in the Earth's gravitational field. Many other comments in this thread have addressed this.

 _> In this case, it is the accelerated frame of reference in which time "slows down" relative to the non-accelerated frame._

Not really. The key difference is not acceleration; it's the fact that the super space ship is in motion relative to the center of mass of the galaxy, while the Earth is not. (Strictly speaking, the Earth is too, but its motion with respect to the galaxy's center of mass is so slow that it can be ignored in this scenario.) Similarly, if I sit at rest on the Earth's equator and you move westward around the equator at the same speed as the Earth is rotating (about 450 meters per second), then when we meet up again, _my_ clock will have less elapsed time than yours, because you will have been at rest with respect to the Earth's center of mass, not me (because I am rotating with the Earth, but you are not).

<comment><USER23> In the first example, yes, it is the combination both of gravitation and acceleration based time dilation.

In the spaceship and the earth example, I can't see what your reference of the galactic center of mass has to do with anything. If you take the space and earth out of the galaxy into empty space, the result would be very much the same. You could say there would be some slight differences because of the extremely minor differences caused by the gravitation effects of the galaxy and the acceleration due to galactic orbit, but being that relativistic speeds are require to see the big differences(we were talking about a spaceship capable of high fractions of C here), I can't see what you were getting at. It is the accelerated frame in which time is "slower" relative to the rest frame, it has nothing to do with gravity.

<comment><USER19> _> I can't see what your reference of the galactic center of mass has to do with anything_

The galactic center of mass defines a reference frame that is special with respect to this problem, because that frame is the one that makes manifest the time translation symmetry of the spacetime. However, I do see that I left out an important piece of that: see below.

 _> If you take the space and earth out of the galaxy into empty space, the result would be very much the same_

Yes, because empty space has a similar time translation symmetry, as long as the Earth is at rest in it. If the galaxy is included, the Earth has to be at rest relative to the galactic center of mass; I see now that I was implicitly assuming that it was, without saying so (I did hint at it when I commented about the Earth also rotating around the galactic center, but too slowly to make a difference). So you're right that the galaxy itself isn't really relevant; but the underlying time translation symmetry is.

The point is that what makes the Earth observer in these scenarios have the longest proper time is the fact that he is the one who is "at rest" with respect to the underlying time translation symmetry of the spacetime. Acceleration only comes into it because that is the particular mechanism you chose to make the space ship move relative to that time translation symmetry. In flat spacetime (which is essentially the idealization you're adopting here), accelerating is the _only_ way to move relative to the underlying time translation symmetry. But this does not generalize: there are plenty of examples in curved spacetime where unaccelerated observers can be the ones with shorter elapsed proper time, because they are moving with respect to an underlying time translation symmetry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> agarcia-deniz A less useful but,perhaps, more interesting example of relativity at work is the colour of Gold

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry#Color_of_gold_and_caesium)

I believe that this has been posted before

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand the problem yet. Presumably all the satellite clocks run slower at the same rate. The receiver doesn't have a clock on it (or at least not one of that accuracy) so it can't tell the difference, or can it? Is the problem with the database or satellite positions?

<comment><USER25> The positions of the satellites are tracked by ground stations that also have atomic clocks. This comment knows more about it than I do:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8041620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8041620)

Those stations have to know the satellite time, so the compensation has to happen somewhere.

<comment><USER19> The clocks on board the satellites have their rates corrected so that they run at the same rate as ground clocks--i.e., the satellite clocks' effective rate is not the "natural" rate of a clock at their altitude and moving at their orbital velocity. The ground stations then send corrections to the satellite clocks to compensate for the fact that the rate correction that's built in to the clocks on the satellites isn't exactly right, because the satellites are not in perfectly circular orbits at constant altitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If we can have a common time between two points in space, even if for point A the time is corrected with relativity, doesn't that mean that we can have a common time for the universe? i.e. in other words, simultaneity is real for any two points in space.

</comment><comment><USER27> GPS Satellites "live" in our future, meaning our present and our future are real. Whatever you do, you are still free to make your own decision but you should know that you already made that decision.

<comment><USER28> Or, as I prefer to think of it, the state of a distant object is undetermined with respect to your state (in a superposition of all reachable states since your last interaction) until you actually interact with it, at which point both get reconciled into a compatible state. Of course, it's slightly more complicated than that, because this applies to every particle you're made of individually. And then the particles are actually merely excitations of a field.

I'll leave the rest to actual physicists. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another way to put this is that we've already built time machines.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't believe nobody posted the obligatory XKCD reference: [http://xkcd.com/808/](http://xkcd.com/808/)

<comment><USER31> XKCD references don't add to the discussion. Especially since XKCD is itself mostly just references to things technical people often know, a lot of people have the courtesy to keep HN clean of its cheap humor-by-association. Note that the only real connection between this article and the XKCD is that they both contain the words "relativity" and "gps".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can you with a lot of karma on HN - <AUTHOR> Since there is a interesting thread on HN about how people get karma.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552122
It would interesting to see what is this karma used for? <comment><USER2> I have 80628 karma. That and £4 will get you a coffee in London.

 _Edit_

Less cynically, it reassures you that you are "in sync" with the HN culture. It is correlated with the idea that what you post and/or what you say is found interesting and/or useful to those who hang out here. There are things I post that I think are important, but which get little or no attention. There are other things I post that get lots of upvotes but which I think are less important. That's the way it goes - we have smart-phones to look at pictures of cats, and argue with strangers.

However, as the article you reference says, mostly it says that you've been here a long time, and posted many times. In short, it's cumulative.

And now I have 80629.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a minimal karma level required to get the flag button.

There's a somewhat higher (500? 750?) karma level to get the downvote button.

There's a karma level to get the ability to change the top bar colour.

I'm not sure if karma is used to place comments on a page - someone with high average karma may find their comments appearing higher on a page (and then rising or falling based on votes on that comment).

Other than that, nothing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We essentially have

1\. Upvotes & Downvotes on articles and comments (This is what HN wants - insights by crowdsourcing)

2\. Reputation (this is the fruit the users want)

3\. Gaming (HN gaming the users by rewarding/denying the fruit) \- Reward (unlocking site features)

</comment><comment><USER4> I was hoping it'd allow me to come back as a giraffe.

Have I come to the wrong site for that?

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing</comment>


Deep Learning, the Curse of Dimensionality, and Autoencoders - <AUTHOR> http://www.kdnuggets.com/2015/03/deep-learning-curse-dimensionality-autoencoders.html <comment><USER2> > Autoencoders are an extremely exciting new approach to unsupervised learning

They are not new.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but some of methods that make the technique successful are less than ten years old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original content is at [http://nikhilbuduma.com/2015/03/10/the-curse-of- dimensionali...](http://nikhilbuduma.com/2015/03/10/the-curse-of- dimensionality/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems to me that you would seriously reduce the size of the problem by first running a face-recognition algorithm, and then only analyzing the face...

<comment><USER6> You've created a nice little chicken and egg problem for yourself.

<comment><USER7> I think he means first detect that there is a face at all, and where in the image it is. When you know that, do further processing.

<comment><USER5> That's the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds a bit like the age old method of producing medical professionals: Make them read and reproduce large amounts of medical facts.</comment>


AMD Launches Mobile Kaveri APUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8119/amd-launches-mobile-kaveri-apus

<comment><USER2> All in all, I'm surprised with the very respectable performance AMD managed to reach. Price, power and thermals will probably play a big part in how successful these parts will become.

I've heard many people comparing the TDP of the Intel solution tested in the article (i7-4500U & Nvidia Geforce 750M) to the new APU tested.

The 15W reported by Intel is __not __directly comparable to the 35W claimed by AMD. The APU includes, among others, the more powerful GPU on the CPU die, which is handled on the Intel system in the benchmarks by the Nvidia card. The power budget of the Nvidia is not included in the 15W figure.

The methodology used to derive these TDP specs is also not known and likely differs between the manufacturers.

The only proper way to compare the power consumption would be to do a full system power measurement of two comparable devices.

<comment><USER3> Intel Haswell has integrated GPU. I have been using one for ~ 1 year. It supports VGA, DVI, HDMI output all at the same time. Works well. Power is better than the I7 I used before.

<comment><USER4> It is also disabled when external gpu is present. At least it should be.

<comment><USER5> There were plans not to disable the on-chip GPU and use it as a power saving feature. When the gpu work load can be handled by the on-chip GPU, disabling the external GPU saves you quite a lot of energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > First, you're sure to notice the use of the FX branding. Make no mistake: > this is the same APU as the other Kaveri parts and it has no relation to the > desktop FX processors; AMD marketing simply feels the FX brand has a good > reputation among enthusiasts and consumers and they wanted to carry that > over into the mobile world.

I don't think customers are going to appreciate the confusion.

<comment><USER7> There's already insane confusion about laptop CPUs. Every time someone asks me my opinion about some laptop - I have to lookup some CPUMark score, because you can't tell anything from name, generation or GHz anymore.

<comment><USER8> My "favorite" latest (intentional) confusion is from Intel who decided to name chips "Celeron" that are both Haswell-based and Atom-based. Why intentional you may ask? Because they can begin offering Haswell-based ones at first, get high praises for the performance of budget laptops, and then in new generations switch to the Atom-based Celerons, which can be anywhere from 2x as weaker to slightly less weaker, but costs Intel half the price to make them, and they could be offering them for the same price to OEMs, since it's "Celeron" after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm going to go ahead and say that even if these chips are good, they will be saddled with terrible displays, cheap hard drives, and horrible touch pads in oversized cases for $500 crappy laptops.

AMD needs to basically own the $500-800 space with a good APU, SSD, and outstanding form factor. Basically if they could make a 13" Macbook Air with one of these CPU's for around $500-750 they would have a winner on their hands.

I fully expect that to not happen.

<comment><USER10> It really is a ripe market.

The MBA is nice and all, but has an absolutely godawful screen compared to everything else in its price segment, especially if you bump up above base specs.

PC laptops with decent displays don't seem to exist below around the $900-1000 mark currently. I don't _need_ an i7 in a notebook, but shopping around, it's been the only way for me to get something with the SSD and 8GB of RAM that I do need.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, what's amazing is Chromebooks are WAY nicer machines at the $200-300 price range than the comparable Windows PC. It's just so bizarre the choices Windows PC makers make that are just junk.

It seems that to get a SSD in a Windows laptop, I need to either spend $1,000 or buy a decently spec'ed $500-700 laptop, and drop in my own SSD for $100.</comment></comment></comment>