Amazon Reports Surge in Profit - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-reports-surge-in-profit-1461874333 <comment><USER2> The most interesting tidbit for me is that Amazon would have reported losses without AWS.

The AWS business generated $2.6B in revenues in the fourth quarter, which is only 9% of Amazon's total revenues of $29.1B; but operating income for the AWS business was $607M, or 118% of company-wide net income of $513M.[1]

Without AWS, Amazon would have reported losses!

[1] [http://phx.corporate- ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N...](http://phx.corporate- ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NjMxNDUwfENoaWxkSUQ9MzM1OTQyfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1)

<comment><USER3> Which means that they're using profits from an unrelated market to undercut and push out / destroy any competition in their storefront market. Not a good situation for future competition.

<comment><USER4> How to you reach that conclusion from those numbers?

<comment><USER5> Because that's literally what they say?

Amazon's physical stores and Amazon's online retail business are not profitable. They are selling below price. This is per definition predatory pricing.

They are only able to offset this because AWS is making more profit.

This is evident if you just look at the numbers.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps it's correct but it's not evident from the numbers.

The numbers can be acceptably explained by expansion, which Amazon does all the time. For example Amazon is just investing in a new retail business in India.

<comment><USER7> Investments don't actually diminish profits. If Amazon buys a house for 10mill$, their profit doesn't change by a cent, because while they may have less cash, they also own a 10mill$ building.

The value of investments is spread out over whatever is reasonable for the category (i. e.: Building: 10 years or so, car: 3 or 4 years, javascript framework: 8 hours).

<comment><USER6> True for the building itself, but is buying office space and warehouses a large part of setting up a new business? I'd have thought that market surveys, planning and negotiations, hiring the initial staff etc would dominate.

<comment><USER7> It depends – you can generally expense anything you buy over it's useful lifetime, so if you aquire a patent for your new project, you'll spread that investment over the next few years. If you hire an architect, it's part of the building's cost.

The only exemption I've ever encountered is intellectual property that you create with employees – there'd be just too much uncertainty over it's value so you suffer those costs immediately (which can be a good thing, it lowers your taxes etc).

But yes, if you're investing a lot there will be some negative effect from the beginning because everything starts losing value immediately and revenue only starts later.

Note that all this is completely removed from cash flow. You'll have to pay for all the stuff you buy – usually pretty quickly. There have been companies with excellent balance sheets which still ran out of money because all the value was in illiquid investments. That's why companies often prefer to lease cars or machinery: it gets the different cycles in sync.

(all based on the laws of my small European country. Not endorsed by GAAP. Lack of acronyms caused by inexplicable loss of the relevant vocabulary once I got away from all the CXXs)

<comment><USER8> Well said. Though here in the US a significant (sometimes) portion of employee costs lies in stock based comp. And many times, co's present non-GAAP numbers that strip out this part from their income (which inflates their income, and sometimes that can be the difference between making a profit or a loss). The stock based comp gets reflected in increased share count over time, so it will show up in the stock price, just not in the presented non-GAAP income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Amazon's rationale for its lack of profits is well known... Why does this rationale not apply to its cloud business?

Is the cloud business so good that it generates profits regardless of the investment it makes... or is the retail business so bad that it can't generate profits regardless of the investment AMZN makes in it?

<comment><USER9> The switching cost for retail is really low; one Google and you know where you can get the same product for a potential lower price. This means that to win in the retail business you have to accept incredible low margins or even periodically a loss. Online retail is almost a 'perfect' market.

While with hosting, it isn't as easy to switch. When you have chosen AWS, of course you can switch to another vendor, but that is not without an investment in time and money. The higher the switching cost, the more you can raise the price above cost without customers (immediately) running away.

<comment><USER10> I would argue the exact opposite, but it's because it's not only just the product, but also the customer service and experience.

Switching from Amazon to a similar service is a huge risk to me. Will I get the same customer service when I order something and it comes shattered at my door? Can I rely on two day shipping being really 2 days? (I know some people here are whining about it being 3, the majority of us get it within 2, sometimes 1) Can I trust the reviews on the other sites? Will they know my preferences and suggest me other items or books as well as Amazon or are they coercing me? Do I get the same value added from the "premium" subscription such as Prime? Who knows.

Switching cloud providers? A snap, provided you have architected your systems according and not treated AWS offerings as black boxes and understand "OK I am using RDS, I can just switch to another MySQL provider easy enough" and prepared accordingly. "Ok I am using Elasticache, time for Redis." I imagine it's even easier if you stuck to containers. And unlike Amazon retail where there really isn't an online store that can match it in terms of customer service and experience, many would argue that a DigitalOcean or similar have better customer service, so there is competition there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to note that Amazon third-party seller unit share is at 48% of total units shipped, which is a record high. It has grown by 1% per quarter for the last 4 quarters in a row.

<comment><USER12> I don't really like how they sell things from third parties on there. If it's sold by someone else and fulfilled by Amazon that's ok, but otherwise the whole point of buying on Amazon is to not have to deal with weirdo possibly- shady little retailers.

<comment><USER13> Amazon is selling trust there; in my experience, if the seller has a 96% or better rating you'll seldom be disappointed when it arrives, and they'll work hard to give you satisfaction if you aren't.

Much better than eBay in my family's experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> May 15th is going to be a nice day for a lot of people ;-)

<comment><USER15> What is the significance of May 15th?

<comment><USER16> Employee stock vesting day. If you get stocks granted as a bonus (most of us do), they vest in may and November.

I know guys who've never sold any of their stocks. This will be literally $10k or more in their pockets, if they finally decide to sell.

<comment><USER17> Jeff just made $6.1B afterhours...

<comment><USER18> It's "papers" money. It's not cash until cashed out.

<comment><USER19> If he's giving any of his "paper money" away, I'm first in line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You know what this means, right?

Jeff Bezos will increase investment into AWS and Blue Origin, while not investing anything into improving engineer work-life balance.

Seriously, at _least_ cover MSP and transit! Even partially covering a transit pass would be nice!

Sincerely, an Amazon Vancouver SDE I

<comment><USER21> I don't think the work-life balance issues at Amazon revolve around whether they pay for your transit or negligible medical fee

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> honestly - stuffing video in with prime then raising the price. recently offering video stand alone but for $9 more a year than prime (with video)... Hard to tell who is actually shipping an item - sketchy pricing based on region / or account etc..

why trust them with aws? it seems their strategy is to price things stupid low - get you on board then raise it when they think they 'got you by the balls'

no thanks

<comment><USER23> Jump on board, but don't wear the shackles! Use something like Kubernetes and FOSS projects and you can shift to whomever has the cheapest VMs today.

Easier said than done, I know, but a fine goal to have, I'd say. :-)

<comment><USER24> I totally agree with you in the ideal case. Problem is in some ways, AWS is too awesome due to all the add-on services.

Systems are more than just compute, and the last 3 companies I've worked for have become increasingly coupled to AWS over time due to use of the add-on services.

You build your system and over time you need message queuing, ability to send emails, databases, load balancing...

You can run / build these yourself but do you want to use up your team's bandwidth setting up say, postgresql replication ... or just use RDS?

If you use third-party (e.g. out of AWS) services, you lose the ability to do security with say, instance roles and in larger orgs you lose time to the "new vendor due diligence" process and getting the business to sign off on new support contracts etc. Maybe you also need some new automation tooling.

Because all that business-ey stuff is already in place with AWS and administering say, event queues, is sure not core business, most project teams will SaaS that capability if they can. Whatever service is already in AWS ends up being the no-brainer answer.

So hard to avoid architectural coupling. Then you look at the devops scripts and realise all the usage accounting, security configuration, deployment scripts and so on would need to be rewritten, and you have to go through compliance again if, hypothetically, you were to move on from AWS...

<comment><USER25> Apprenda does all of that, without relying on a company far larger than you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> On one hand I miss my RSUs

on the other hand I do not miss working there.

well maybe a little. it was fun for a while.

<comment><USER27> Same...But good to know that it is executing well.

Go google cloud go! Bring AWS price down!! We need competition!!

<comment><USER28> Google indeed seems the strongest competitor now for AWS, but there are far more providers who compete - see a comparison: [https://www.cloudorado.com/](https://www.cloudorado.com/) . We just need to choose them to avoid monopoly or at least oligopoly.

<comment><USER29> I wouldn't touch any Google product that my business critically depended on with a 10 foot pole. Their non existent customer service, willingness to kill products if it does not meet their user or revenue expectations, among many other things. It's a good strategy for them, but bad for their consumers.

<comment><USER30> My experience with GCE customer service has been < 10 minute replies.

<comment><USER30> Strange to see 8 upvotes 16 hours after I posted this... are some googlers out there on an upvote spree? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Go cloud go!!

</comment><comment><USER32> update:

after hour currently at 675.01. Price increase +73.01 (12.13%)

<comment><USER33> With a market cap of half of Apple's they made ... 1/20 of the profit. For the first time ever.

<comment><USER34> what are the growth prospects for Apple vs. Amazon? Market cap is influenced by speculators who want to buy low and sell high, and to them - the bigger the growth prospects, the better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is there any reason why Amazon would suddenly "waste" money on profit? Could this be an indication of a change in strategy or is this just a temporary thing?

<comment><USER15> There should eventually be some time when Amazon does finally cash out, presumably on some timeline as a function of Bezos's mortality. Its unrealistic to be around forever. How many companies last hundreds of years? How many tech companies last decades?

<comment><USER26> > How many tech companies last decades?

Amazon is at 2 decades and going strong. Any reason to think they won't last a long time?

<comment><USER36> My prediction is AWS will split after Jeff dies (or is otherwise not involved in the company). Then Amazon retail will split from Amazon logistics, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> AWS currently improves product and cuts prices. My feeling is that as they mature over time and get even more of a lock on the market (and their customers) with the obvious lock in they have that will reverse and prices will increase over time resulting in even more profit than they reported today. Impossible to think this won't happen, especially with the differentiation they have with their product as well as the FUD of changing to a marginally less expensive provider (who will probably follow suit).

<comment><USER14> One significant advantage of AWS is that they have a very large, built-in retail customer with relatively demanding requirements. I've always been under the impression that Microsoft doesn't really have a business that would lend itself to consuming its own services[0] and it's unclear to me whether or not Google uses their stuff internally.

0 - as an anecdote, I recall their salesmen coming to sell my employer their caching solution around 2008. I asked the rep I'd Microsoft was using their caching product on any of Microsofts web properties and he replied that they were not.

<comment><USER37> Xbox live runs on azure

<comment><USER38> Certain, newer pieces of some of these services, such as the Azure Active Directory service at the heart of Office 365 and some of the newer, complementary Xbox Live services are hosted on Azure. But the core Bing, Office 365 Commercial and Consumer offerings and Xbox Live services are not hosted on Azure. (same article as above)

<comment><USER39> It seems like amazon is using an "all in" strategy which seems to be working out pretty well. They first focused on porting the entire amazon retail website onto AWS which I believe they completed in 2011. They also went "all in" with the service oriented architecture for AWS. Both of these have paid off quite handsomely.

Granted, that hasn't always paid off (we all know how the fire phone turned out), but the wins have definitely made up for the losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> so i guess my super super slow free-shipping orders (non-prime) from amzn as a result of their curbing capex?

</comment><comment><USER41> Why do people link to basic stories like this behind a paywall? If WSJ has an original piece out, fine, but this could've come from any one of a thousand sources.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/amazon- sal...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/amazon-sales-top- estimates-as-fast-delivery-options-fuel-growth)

<comment><USER42> So....block ad blockers and HN screams.

"I will pay for content", they say. "I just don't like your 25MB flash ads."

Link to crap, and HN screams.

"Is journalism dead? This stuff is just click bait. I appreciate good writing and quality content."

Put up a paywall and HN screams.

"Why u make me pay?!?!?!?"

<comment><USER43> The problem is the business model.

All of these behaviors 1) are hostile to high-quality accessble content and 2) are fundamentally driven by advertising (or its failure).

 _Information is a public good._ This doesn't mean it costs nothing to produce (the contrary), but high-quality public information has a high positive externality to the common wealth (that is, the commonwealth), and is essential in a democratic society.

Some see the solution as micropayments. I disagree strongly, see Nick Szabo, Clay Shirky, and Hal Varian as to why not. _Superbundling_ might work, but the ultimate superbundle is a highly aggregated, means-based fee. Either a direct tax (income or wealth-indexed) or bundled into broadband services. The former strikes me as more equitable, the latter as more viable.

 _The costs are low._ A $100/year average fee per $30k in income, charged _only_ among OECD nations, would cover all online advertising revenues. A $500/30k rate would cover the _entire_ advertising industry. ($30k is chosen as roughly median OECD per capita income.)

(Note: corrected from earlier figures which applied to worldwide population: $20/person and $100/person would cover everything, if paid by everyone, though I see an argument for progressivity applying the tax to developed nations.)

The distortions, perverse incentives, inefficiencies, privacy invasions, security risks, and more, of the present model simply aren't worth it.

HN's policy is that paywall-based stories are acceptable. I disagree strongly with this view. The WSJ is trying to play both sides of the subscriber-only / viral content game. And are providing increasingly slanted, unreliable, Murdoch-tainted content to boot. I view it as barely above spam.

There are other sources, they should be allowed and encouraged. WSJ should be blacklisted.

And yes, I absolutely would like to see an alternative publication financing model pursued. I'm not holding my breath. But supporters of the model I've proposed include Richard M. Stallman of FSF and Phil Hunt of Pirate Party, UK, among others.

Previously, on global advertising spend, publishing models, and per-capita costs: [https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/post](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/post) /adKy4gM317c

Several posts on content syndication, and inherent problems of information goods and markets: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=content+syndic...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=content+syndication&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

Hal Varian (UC Berkeley economist, Google's chief economist) on information goods and markets: [http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/japan/index.h...](http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/japan/index.html)

<comment><USER44> Since the government doesn't currently pay for Media, how should journalists currently get paid?

<comment><USER43> I've addressed that in a few articles, posts, and comments, though nothing particularly comprehensive.

One option would be similar to how performance rights organisations ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_rights_organisatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_rights_organisation)) operate in music and broadcast based on mechanical copyrights.

Another option would be to identify _who_ the most valuable authors, reporters, composers, performers are, and provide a stable annualised income based on this and related elements.

In the UK, broadcast taxes are paid to the BBC, which funds creatives.

The _details_ of how specifically individuals are paid isn't so important _as the fact that they are_ , in a manner sufficient to provide the information and media necessary for a vibrant culture and society, as well as polity.

If you look at Adam Smith's discussion of compensation for labour, he comes up with a fivefold set of factors, on top of the basic fundamental imperative that wages be sufficient to live on and raise a family.

Somewhere in there lurks at least one successful formula, I'd suspect.

(I'll see if I can't find some relevant links.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Starbucks To Begin Sinister 'Phase Two' Of Operation

> SEATTLE–After a decade of aggressive expansion throughout North America and > abroad, Starbucks suddenly and unexpectedly closed its 2,870 worldwide > locations Monday to prepare for what company insiders are calling "Phase > Two" of the company's long-range plan....

> Though the coffee chain's specific plans are not known, existing Starbucks > franchises across the nation have been locked down with titanium shutters > across all windows. In each coffee shop's door hangs the familiar Starbucks > logo, slightly altered to present the familiar mermaid figure as a cyclopean > mermaid whose all-seeing eye forms the apex of a world-spanning pyramid.

[http://www.theonion.com/article/starbucks-to-begin- sinister-...](http://www.theonion.com/article/starbucks-to-begin-sinister- phase-two-of-operation-416)

<comment><USER46> Whoops, promoting your cynical humorous reference while this was trending might have caused a backlash, sorry.

For the record I still want to buy Amazon stock someday.</comment></comment>


Burnout and Twitter fatigue - <AUTHOR> https://nolanlawson.com/2017/08/23/burnout-and-twitter-fatigue/ <comment><USER2> don't use twitter, problem solved

</comment><comment><USER3> Mastodon has really done the unthinkable for me - made me hope twitter survives. Anyone still on there can stay there.</comment>


Show HN: iOS app for learning Python - <AUTHOR> http://mobileicecube.com/quiz-learn-python/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, especially for learning how to visually parse basic python quickly.

I'd also add a couple of other tools:

Pythonista is indispensable for learning/using Python on iOS. 'Python for iOS' is good too-- it isn't as clean as Pythonista, but it does include the python.org language docs with the app. The both utilize python 2.7 and a REPL, but I think there are other versions that use Python 3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Pythonista and 'Python for iOS' are good apps, with quite different goals than my app. They allow trying and exploring the language and learning to write programs, whereas I aim to teach basic reading skills of programs. Both are important skills.

There nowadays seems to be 'Python x.x for iOS' for almost all recent versions of Python :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> After playing around with this since you released it yesterday, the answer buttons need to be much bigger. You definitely have the real estate on the screen (iPhone 5). It'd be cool to separate them as well so they're not all touching.

I have pretty small hands/fingers and still end up mis-clicking after periods of use.

Awesome app though, love the skip feature!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Some of the questions have quite long code snippets, while some have only one line. But there should be room at least on iPhone5 to make the buttons larger. I'll work on it for the next update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> but how do you try out the python code - say in a REPL - in an iPhone app? wouldn't you need a computer anyway?

<comment><AUTHOR> In my app, you cannot try out the code. You can step through the execution to see how the program state changes, but that's based on a pre-generated trace of the program execution.

In Pythonista and 'Python for iOS' mentioned by ldayley you can execute the code you write. Don't know how they do it, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is the app free? Is it supported by ads or are you planning on capitalizing it in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> The app is free today and will change to paid ($0.99) tomorrow. I wanted to get downloads and hopefully climb in the rankings when launching.

That said, I built the app mostly for fun and learning, so making money -- while a nice bonus -- isn't the main motivator.

<comment><USER6> Please note that when switching an app between free and paid, your position in the rankings resets. If you get 1 million free downloads, and change your app to paid the next day, none of those downloads count in the paid charts ranking algorithm. (At least, in the past it hasn't)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to know, thanks. Based on a previous launch, I was under the impression that they wouldn't reset. But it certainly does make sense that they do reset when going from free to paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will you build this out into other languages? Maybe a Dualingo for coders?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought of other languages, but decided to focus on improving this Python version for now. This is a side project, so development time is limited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> High score is currently 64843. Best use of time-spent-in-line ever!

</comment><comment><USER9> may need to extend various feature, all the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, my list of feature and improvement ideas seems endless ;)</comment></comment>


Randall Munroe's Math Puzzle - <AUTHOR>

He posted it on his G+ wall. (https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts)
I pick two real numbers through some process unknown to you. It might be random and it might not. Maybe I always pick "3" and "100". Maybe I roll two dice. Maybe I write C code by mashing a keyboard until it compiles and prints two numbers (or produces Windows ME). Maybe I always use 0 for the first number, and for the second I call my aunt and ask her for a negative real number, which I multiply by the estimated number of protons in the universe. (At this point, my aunt is used to that kind of call from me.)
I put these two numbers on slips of paper and put them in two envelopes. I thoroughly shuffle the envelopes, and then you choose one via a fair coin toss. You open it and look at the number. You are now given the option (as in the infamous but very different Monty Hall problem) of switching to the other envelope.
Your goal is to pick the envelope with the higher number. Can you come up with a strategy that guarantees you a better-than-even chance of winning?
It has to do better than 50% no matter how I picked the numbers--if your strategy includes the rule "switch if the number is a 2", it's wrong, because I could always be picking 2 and negative 100, and in that scenario your strategy will fail at least 50% of the time. This means your strategy must work even if I have guessed what your strategy is and am cherry-picking numbers specifically to defeat it.
I cannot emphasize enough that you do not know anything about my process. Not only do you not know the numbers, you don't know which random distribution I am picking them from—or whether it's even a random distribution at all—and there is no deductive basis for estimating the odds that I'm using any particular method. (This gets at what is sometimes called the difference between risk and uncertainty.)
I'll post again tomorrow with the correct answer and a bit more about the puzzle. <comment><USER2> Firstly, you don't have to shuffle the envelopes, and you don't have to specify that I must use a fair coin to choose one. The problem as stated is unnecessarily over-specified.

Secondly, you say:

      > Can you come up with a strategy that guarantees
      > you a better-than-even chance of winning?

It should be pointed out that this should be a fixed strategy that will be used on every occasion we play this game. The challenge is to find a strategy which will, independently and on every occasion we play, have, on that occasion, a chance of winning that is strictly greater than 50%.

Finally, this is well-known (in some circles) and controversial. I remember getting into a protracted discussion (probably around 100 emails) with someone claiming that the stated strategy that achieves better than 50% was wrong, and that it was in fact still exactly 50%. It took a very, _very_ long time to convince them that they were calcualting the wrong thing.

So for your sake, I hope you get the explanation crystal clear, and avoid _all_ the pitfalls. Otherwise you will be hounded.

Very brave.

 _Added in edit: I've just gone and looked at the comment thread there, and now I'm depressed. I should know better than to look at people trying to talk about math and probability, even a sub-group such as comment on XKCD blag posts._

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets see the solution he puts up.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure there's only one solution (I have no proof of that) and I'm pretty sure he'll put up the solution I know. There will then be a deluge of replies from people who either don't understand the problem, think it's a different problem, or don't understand the solution.

Already in the comments we see the solution, followed by many _many_ posts from people who really just don't understand it.

The cynic in me says it's a great way to generate traffic, but it's a really poor way to create understanding. It's almost a math equivalent to FUD.

If you want to know my solution, email me. Address is in my profile. Although the lack of upvotes suggests that no one is that interested, I won't post it here and spoil the fun in case someone wants to think about it first.

In case you're interested, I've uploaded a statement of the problem (slightly altered to make it a little more general) along with a solution. The MD5 of the file is 0a600b1f7f26c44854b8a8118f5491a1 - so if you ask later and download the file you can check that I've most likely not changed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well obviously you just keep playing until you've won more than you've lost, and then you stop playing.

</comment><comment><USER4> For the record, the solution assumes the existence of an infinitesimal real number larger than zero, or a finite bound on the adversaries' range of choices. The larger his range, the smaller your chances of beating 50-50, with no limit on how small your chances may be.

</comment><comment><USER4> Randall Monroe posted the solution ages ago on his blog. Is he syndicating himself on G+?</comment>


3DChan V2, a 3D Imageboard - <AUTHOR> https://3dchan.net/v3/ <comment><AUTHOR> >What is 3DChan? For those who don't know what 3DChan is, it's an hybrid between the imageboard culture and Second Life.

>Concept of the V2 (more on my blog) This version won't be online, not exactly. You will be able to post file and build level in local before sharing it via bittorrent. It's pretty close to the concept of decentraland, but without the virtual estate agent thing.</comment>


The Artist Leaving the Googleplex - <AUTHOR> http://www.e-flux.com/journal/the-artist-leaving-the-googleplex/ <comment><USER2> What I find most interesting about this piece is the awesome lifestyle of flitting from grant to grant as a semi-celebrity in the international jet-set art world. Also lets you feel good about "leaking" your employer's information to "organizers." Take that, employer! And best of all, you get to use the word "show" as a nontransitive verb, as in "I showed at Venice."

Apparently this lifestyle is only available if you're a (to use the author's term) "Marxist." But then again, I suppose anyone can read Negri and Hardt if they're patient enough.

No word on what, if any, ideological filters Google is supposed to apply to its contractor pool so this doesn't happen again. Perhaps they could ask trap questions about postcolonial theory, rejecting anyone who answered correctly...

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of odd insinuations and expectations in this piece. I found particularly strange the part where he talks about his joy in talking communist politics in Berkeley and then immediately muses about how to make these skills 'marketable' and about his resentment that he might not be rewarded with a comfortable bourgeois middle-class existence. Feels like there are a lot of unstated assumptions and arguments behind his opinions and actions which he never makes explicit or considers.

<comment><USER4> Or abusing the system to score income on the sale of his house. I nearly snorted at that point.

<comment><USER5> I think you're misinterpreting this. I think he moved into a unit of a luxury building (that was required to be rented to a low income person) and lived there until the unit was sold.

<comment><USER6> True, seems like that at second reading.

(Seems like a pretty silly requirement to me. Can't they just use the tax and welfare system to combat inequality in a sane way?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the problem with Google is that it advertised (still does?) itself, in a rather believable way, as being be diverse, fun, everyone working together -- developers, janitors and artists all holding hands creating a brigher tomorrow and perhaps fighting against evil.

Well it worked for me back then, I really did believe Google was "Don't Be Evil" kind of company and so on, vis-a-vis say Microsoft, or say Walmart. Which were not evil, just you know, regular companies makign money. At least I remember buying into the PR.

So you see, Google took advantage of that image, and it worked out great for them. The problem is as soon as they went that way it became a high risk game, because from then on they will be judged according to that standard.

So I don't see a problem at all with criticizing it. It really set itself up to a higher standard, so there is nothing wrong with pointing fingers at it and saying "look at the hypocrisy".

The other more telling thing, is the story around it the video. How quickly this supposedly tollerant, open, diverse company moved to fire this person. You can only be tollerant and open as long as you are tollerant and open about approved things. You have the freedom to choose between the chocolate cake and the strawberry cake, but you don't get to ask how the cake is made, basically.

<comment><USER8> I'm getting tired of hypocrisy being held up as the ultimate sin. The world is more complex than that. Humans cannot fully logically integrate EVERYTHING they believe at the same time, it's just biologically impossible. Expecting people to be 100% consistent 100% of the time is ultimately silly.

And for companies, well they are ultimately just groups of people. So the same issue.

Also, open and tolerant doesn't mean unlimited anything goes. This applies even to the parent-child relationship. If you disagree, think about the parents who had to deal with children who steal, use violence and destroy stuff. You ultimately have to draw a line at self preservation! Same thing for a company and culture. You have to preserve the culture, and if that means ejecting people who mean to do it harm, then how is that a horrible thing? The author himself would eject counter-revolutionaries from his revolutionary party, so in principle he agrees with this sentiment.

As for the 'Don't Be Evil' \- lots of people at Google still believe in this. The problem is once you go global, life gets very very hard and you are forced to make difficult decisions. And sometimes you get them wrong. And you try again. But to harp on bad decisions is like a husband who won't EVER let his wife forget THAT ONE TIME. That's hardly constructive.

<comment><USER7> > I'm getting tired of hypocrisy being held up as the ultimate sin.

I didn't say it is the ultimate sin. So should it not be criticized and pointed out? It is like saying "well murder is worse than theft, so don't talk about theft". That's not how it works. I think every culture and society has a strong bias against hypocrisy and it is a popular topic in folk stories and culture (say making fun or criticizing hypocrites).

Just like many pointed out at a core character flaw in the author -- he was stealing food and not abiding by the NDA, implying they probably would not want to be friends them or work wit, because there is an integrity issue (which I agree with), hypocrisy is the same way -- it points to a flaw deeper issue at the core. If it is of a company, it points to a structural or culture issue.

> Expecting people to be 100% consistent 100% of the time is ultimately silly.

Just like people in power are watched, criticized and held to a higher standard, so are companies. With people say, you might care if US president is doing cocaine or likes stealing from department stores, but you might not care as much if someone you never heard across town does it. Why? Because those in power, when they corrupt, they can cause a lot of damage. I was a bit extreme in the sample, but think about this one as well -- someone who holds nuclear launch codes should not believe that the world was created 4000 years ago. This can happen in US and is worrisome right?

And it is the same with companies. A company like Google which control, manages, stores and handle a large amount of world's internet and data traffic, having "minor" integrity issues is a huge deal. Some 2 person company who is spamming everyone with Viagra emails, is doing a lot worse, but nobody cares about that, because they don't have any power or influence.

> This applies even to the parent-child relationship

Agree on principle, in general here. But that is a bit odd case, mostly because it turn the "company is a family and is like careful watchful father, looking after its children". There is something very jarring about that to me.

> Same thing for a company and culture. You have to preserve the culture, and > if that means ejecting people who mean to do it harm

I think the debate is about culture and the artist pointed towards what the culture might be. I think they are trying to say there is a problem with it.

> As for the 'Don't Be Evil' \- lots of people at Google still believe in > this.

Of course. The best PR is the one that is bought internally. Assigning high ethical standards and morality to companies is the problem here isn't it. The fact that many seemingly bright, analytically minded people bought into it is a bit worrying.

<comment><USER8> See, the problem here is you're just too cynical. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Regarding hypocrisy, the problem isn't that people are distrustful of thieves, the problem is its a capital sin that is used to find the slightest of problems with your opponents then based on literally doing nothing wrong, attempt to destroy them. It's about giving people space to change their mind. Unless you think the whole 'flip flopper' development was positive and we should prize people who hold on to opinions regardless of how incorrect they become.

As for personality, this article popped up today and I think it's relevant: [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/06/24/48185966...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/06/24/481859662/invisibilia-is-your-personality-fixed-or-can-you- change-who-you-are)

Finally, as for Google's data I can say without a doubt that we have one of the best internal IT and security policies I have seen anywhere. Not only are the polices solid, the implementation is vastly superior to any other security system in the civilian area, and possibly some military ones. The google privacy and security teams (yup, multiple) are passionate about this and are extremely proactive. There is a lot of people working on this area. I fully trust Google with my data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.)

> sometimes mining information to leak to organizer friends

> After 9–12 hours on campus I would fill my Google-issued bag with Naked > juices and to-go containers of food for my roommates

So... deliberate violation of the corporate NDA (which is massively disrespectful to the other people who work here) and stealing food from the cafes. I'm happy to work at a company that fires people who take something offered in good faith and abuse it. It is a part of our company culture to give people broad freedom to do what they think they should, on the understanding that they will act responsibly and not abuse the privilege.

(I can't comment much on the rest of the article, except to say that I feel a person who has openly admitted their tendency to dishonesty is perhaps not best afforded a high level of trust in the claims that they make)

<comment><USER10> The NDA is inexcusable. The food though...seems like everybody does it.

<comment><USER11> I've often taken a drink or a snack from the office for later in the evening or the next day. Never considered that this might be frowned upon. On the other hand, taking large quantities of items frequently seems like an abuse of a perk.

<comment><USER12> That's how I understand it. "fill my bag with juices" is not the same as taking a snack for later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow - what a self-indulgent pseudo intellectual prick. Nobody forced him to work there.

</comment><comment><USER14> OK, so this guy's problem with Google is that it doesn't give all of its perks to all employees? Why the hell would the company treat employees from significantly different labour markets the same way in the first place? Is there some crazy assumption that any employee should be equally valuable to the company?

<comment><USER15> Uh, working 4am to 2:15pm has nothing to do with meal perks.

<comment><USER6> I wonder why they don't just hire people in a better timezone.

(Though eg bakers in Germany got up even earlier to make fresh bread every day.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author is an unreliable narrator. He mentions many incongruous aspects of his experience that just can't be true. For example, he says he waited in line next to people in SurveyMonkey t-shirts, but he worked at Google from 08-09. SurveyMonkey was only in Portland at that time.

</comment><comment><USER17> Direct link to video: [https://player.vimeo.com/video/15852288](https://player.vimeo.com/video/15852288)

</comment><comment><USER18> "Being a person means being paranoid that you might be a puppet, and being an artist means making things that you want to see exist, to defy that paranoia, by communicating past anything you could rationally explain away."

</comment><comment><USER19> As much as I dislike Google's practices, I don't think a self-described Marxist can claim moral superiority over anyone.

</comment><comment><USER20> can't post anything negative about Google on HN. Will get automatically down voted by their thousands of drones, I mean employees.

<comment><USER21> Is it actually possible to downvote postings on HN?

(Why am I being downvoted for asking an honest question?)

<comment><USER20> yes but I believe you need a certain amount of karma

<comment><USER22> You can't downvote articles, just comments (at least with my karma). IIRC articles move down if they fail to receive up votes and collect comments.

<comment><USER23> You can't ever downvote articles, although they will drop faster in ranking if they're flagged by (many) users. Also, there's a "flamewar detector" which has something to do with vote to comment ratio.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Presenting Tenzo. A Minimal and Essential Jekyll theme. - <AUTHOR> http://jnardiello.eu/presenting-tenzo-for-jekyll.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my very first open source project. It's a simple start, yet i hope you will enjoy the theme. I'd very much appreciate any feedback or advice.</comment>


Apple Built A SIM Card That Lets You Switch Between AT&T, Sprint, And T-Mobile - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/16/apple-sim/ <comment><USER2> Probably the most interesting thing from Apple today, in my opinion. The ability to buy short term plans from different providers effortlessly can turn my tablet into a much more versatile device, and increase competition and reduce long-term carrier lock-in.

It's pretty sweet and if it can set a standard for phones then we'll see carriers become true utilities between which customers can switch easily if they get poor service. In short, pretty awesome.

Today's carrier system kind of feels like this dinosaur, like a landline... archaic and unnecessary. With so many people travelling, changing places, changing technology etc, it makes a lot of sense to move from subscriptions to short-time payments, and eventually, pay-per second of use on the fly, directly, without an account or monthly statement, with a push payment instead of a pull payment. (digital currencies being a key element here). Anyway, getting a bit too off-topic here, but cool first move by Apple for sure!

<comment><USER3> > it makes a lot of sense to move from subscriptions to short-time payments

It makes sense for the consumer, but I don't think that's in the financial interest of the companies who have worked hard to make long-term service agreements for you phone something that is colloquially accepted in North America. I'm with you, I'd like to see the market change. Just.. don't hold your breath.

I understnad Pay-As-You-Go is much bigger in the UK, I wonder if that's because the companies there never tried to push long-term agreements of if they've actually found PAYG more profitable.

<comment><USER4> I think the real issue is that US customers (at least) have been conditioned to think of a smart phone as something that costs between $0 and $300 due to the common use of contracts and subsidies. Even if a carrier offers a non- contract plan, they are often not that much better as far as price (with some exceptions like TMobile and some MVNOs), so they balk at paying $650-850 for a handset.

That was one of the things I liked most about the Nexus 5 when it came out. Even unlocked you were getting a current gen phone, unlocked, worked with three major carriers and many MVNOs, and only cost $350. At that point, it's not as tough to make the jump and ditch the contract. Without the contract, you can just leave if a competitor offers a better deal or if your carrier screws you over.

Even with this new SIM, I imagine you're still either gonna pay full price or you're gonna get it subsidized with a contract and then have the option of flipping over to some secondary plan when needed. Might be good for smaller carriers with good rates but less coverage. Phone works great at home but drops off when you go to another town? Just flip to a prepaid SIM from a cheap prepaid carrier with service in the area.

<comment><USER5> Yep, no one is going to want to pay $600+ for a phone(in the US). TBH, over $200 for a phone on contract is really high as well.

<comment><USER6> _shrug_ Just paid $750 for an iPhone 6, unlocked. The alternative was renting it from my carrier for a similar amount, divided into 24 months, and being handcuffed to them for unlocks and the like. By using BYOD pricing on my ATT plan, I pay less every month than I would on a subsidy.

Yeah, I'm not _everyone_ , but arguing that "most people" won't do what I did is kind of missing the point-- they already DO pay that much, just not all at once. It's kind of crazier when you realize what people are paying without knowing it.

The subsidies are going away -- ATT and Verizon in the US are forcing people into their monthly payment plans -- which is kind of nice, because people actually see what they're paying instead of just seeing it "bundled".

<comment><USER7> I've converted at least a dozen friends and family members to this route just by showing them with simple math how much I save.

I think it's very slowly catching on how bad a deal it is to rent your phone on contract.

<comment><USER8> Step 2 is converting to phones that don't cost $750! There are some great phones for less than $300 _unsubsidized_ nowadays.

<comment><USER9> One thing I learned is that there are things in life you shouldn't be cheap about, and one of them is most definitely a smartphone. You're buying a device you'll be using every day, likely pulling it up for few seconds every little while. You definitely _don 't_ want to have a smartphone that looks like crap, hangs up all the time and in the end won't let you do half of the things it was supposed to do. This would be introducing an incredibly big source of frustrations into your daily routine. I wouldn't be surprised if additional psychiatrist bill would be bigger than money saved on the phone.

I was stuck for three years with a crapphone (LG P150) that was too weak to lift its own operating system (Android). After those three years of torture (and using it only for calls and text messages, as turning on Internet would max out the processing power and memory and would require taking out the battery) I can say _such phones should not be allowed on the market_. Especially not pushed by telecoms on contracts. It's especially sad to look at people who get burned by this when buying their first smartphones. It's basically a story of shattered dreams. It's just evil.

So folks, either buy a dumbphone (if all you need is text and calls), or shell out for some decent tech. Buy that Nexus or S4. It's worth the money.

<comment><USER10> I've got a Moto-G from Republic Wireless. $149 to buy the phone and $10/month. It's perfectly fine.

<comment><USER11> My SO switched to the same thing about 4 or 5 months ago. She was paying $40/mo with AT&T and had a crappy alcatel lucent phone. She has absolutely loved the Moto G. It is very, very similar to the Galaxy Nexus with a few updates. Definitely a good deal!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple filed a patent on this Virtual SIM card in 2011. More info here: [http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/11/apple- in...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/11/apple-introduces- us-to-the-virtual-sim-card.html)

The linked article suggests it's a method to save space in the hardware design so the SIM is not user serviceable. However, it also forces you to only buy data service from Apple approved carriers. Notice in the screen shot from the OP's article that Cricket or any of the more affordable MVNO's are not available as options.

This change is just as much about control over where you spend your carrier dollars (and, possibly, Apple getting a kickback) as it is about saving space.

<comment><USER13> People are missing the point that there isn't an actual sim card now, that you don't get the "apple" convenience AND the ability to pop in some random carrier's. It's convenience at the cost of flexibility.

<comment><USER14> That's actually pretty terrible. I was thinking it was a SIM card with some Apple-designed logic in it. Not a baked-in SIM card. I wasn't really considering the device but now it's out of the question. Hopefully they don't do the same thing to their phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really don't like the sound of this. The SIM card is the one thing that keeps mobile service relatively divorced from the hardware. I can keep the same phone but change SIM whenever it suits. I can also take change hardware and just move the SIM.

I don't need to ask my provider or hardware OEM for permission. I have control. In the Apple scenario I'm giving this up. I vaguely remember some wrangling with GSMA over this.

Ultimately, as with many Apple products, we'll be trading control for convenience.

<comment><USER16> nobody says you have to use the Apple SIM. it's just a card. remove it and replace it if you do not like it.

<comment><USER17> But that's his point: What incentive does Apple (or any other mobile device manufacturer) have to make devices with user-replaceable SIMs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I admit, as an European, I see no point to this.

If you want a new SIM card, and you don't have a contract, just buy a new SIM card and put it in your phone / tablet.

If you have a long-term contract, this won't help you anyway.

Where is the catch? (Sorry if I am sounding stupid)

<comment><USER19> Think about the user experience.

If switching, a user no longer has to wait on delivery of a small physical item from the new carrier. The user doesn't have to fiddle with a paperclip to pop out the SIM. (Average user could be scared to do so, or could scratch/bend the rather fragile SIM tray). It could all theoretically be done from a settings menu.

<comment><USER20> Walk in any providers store and they will do it for you, free of charge. Takes 2 minutes.

People who understand what a SIM like this does, will definitely understand how to replace SIM's. In my opinion anyways.

<comment><USER21> Most people don't even understand what a SIM _is_ , let alone how to replace one. They probably can find their Settings app though.

<comment><USER22> In Europe, everyone I know who has a cellphone knows what a SIM is (even grannies), and they know this is the item connecting their phone to their service subscription.

I guess to people from the US this may seem "foreign", but it's really simple and it really works.

<comment><USER21> Exactly, I was speaking from a US perspective. The historical reason for this is in Europe, interoperability as you travel between countries was a priority, so a single European protocol (GSM) with a removable, interchangeable SIM developed.

In America, competition/free market was the priority so the result was many non-compatible digital protocols (CDMA/TDMA/Nextel/GSM). In the US, if you're switching carriers, you are probably throwing away your phone and getting a new (subsidized) one from your new carrier. Even if you are moving from a GSM to another GSM carrier, because of the subsidies the old SIM is probably locked to your old carrier and it might be cheaper to get a new, subsidized one anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm slightly amazed at the awed coverage this is getting.

As others have pointed out, multi-IMSI SIM cards are nothing new, though points to Apple for getting the network carriers on board and sharing keys.

Getting a replacement SIM card is not a problem (certainly not in the UK). Most of the networks will happily post you out one for free and you can buy them for virtually no money in all phone shops, most supermarkets, market stalls... everywhere -even in this tiny backwater technophobic village where I work.

My worry is that this is the start of a path down to devices having embedded SIM cards that are not user replaceable, or even have no SIM at all and just use the secure storage module built into the chipset. This seems like a bad hole to be heading down as it would directly take choice and power away from the end user.

<comment><USER24> I'm on the other side completely, I'm a little awed at the lack of coverage, and consumer demand for this.

I don't think this is a technological thing, it's an industry structure thing. Why do we even need SIMs? Obviously we need some way of deciding which phone should ring wen a call goes through the either, but why does it need to be a piece of plastic.

A simple software replacement for a SIM would open a lot ip. You could buy a $10 plan when you're in a different country for a week. If one of those company offering cheap international call sims could just sell you a software sim that doesn't require you to switch over everything.

The ability to shop selectively using different providers for different calls would be a profound change to the ecosystem. It'd have a lot of knock on effects.

Apple are good at bulling through changes like this. This could be the start. iPad only is a little weak though. I hope their reliance on carrier subsidies to sell phones doesn't impact Apple's willingness to push on this.

<comment><USER25> The physical SIM card is secure, it stores your private keys for identifying you, and you can't extract those keys without damaging the SIM card. At least if the SIM cards are produced to spec. Can you make it equally secure in software, or can I borrow your phone and "easily" clone you ?

<comment><USER26> > Can you make it equally secure in software, or can I borrow your phone and > "easily" clone you ?

I think we need a TPM-like[1] device for that to work. And I think an iPhone has one of those[2].

Perhaps that is the point: Apple convinced credit card companies to give them "card present"-prices for Touch ID purchases because a Touch ID-enabled device uses special hardware for key storage. Perhaps Apple has convinced mobile carriers to allow them to store private keys for cellular networks in the same place, because of its alleged security.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_ID#Security_and_privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_ID#Security_and_privacy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In Brazil people have been using things like these for about a decade. [http://www.dx.com/p/triple-sim-cards-adapter-for- iphone-4-4s...](http://www.dx.com/p/triple-sim-cards-adapter-for- iphone-4-4s-yellow-194250#.VEA3p611ZRg)

<comment><USER28> The concept has been around since the first full-featured cell phones became available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> that probably overrides/ignores the SIM card and use hardcoded GSM ids from the device. as if it has a sim slot plus 3 hardcoded sim, that you can select which one to use on software.

so i doubt you will be able to activate those hardcoded sims with any plan that easily. i doubt you will even be able to activate it without apple help.

but of course, im just guessing. have no idea if that is the case.

<comment><USER30> what about sprint? I thought they were cdma.

<comment><USER31> LTE uses SIM cards regardless of the network's voice system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Actually this feature is not Apple exlusive.

I created a little project that allows remote usage of multiple SIM cards as a Software-SIM on MTK based Android phones. Forward the commands via TCP from a modified Baseband-firmware. This means you could e.g. have multiple SIM cards for your business trip without changing the card in your phone. Also malicious people could steal your SIM authentication if you use a vulnerable Android phone and use it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6_mZyQdEuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6_mZyQdEuU)

[https://github.com/shadowsim/shadowsim](https://github.com/shadowsim/shadowsim)

</comment><comment><USER33> I pay $176/month for 3 lines with AT&T and all 3 lines still have the unlimited data @$30/month on them. I can buy 3 subsidized iphone 6s for $600+tax total ($200 each) or I can buy them each at $650. The price per month works out to about $27/month per phone. Will AT&T knock $27 off per month per phone if I buy them outright? The answer is no. I've talked to supervisor after supervisor about it and there is no discount if I upgrade and buy the phone outright up front. So I ask, where's the incentive?

AT&T is by no means perfect but given all the traveling I've done and my experiences with Verizon and T-Mobile (never tried Sprint) I've found that AT&T and Verizon are interchangeable and T-Mobile is not quite on the same level.

I know my rate plan hasn't become more expensive when I upgrade so how can I expect that it will become cheaper if I bring my own device?

</comment><comment><USER34> The concept is called multi-IMSI. It's been possible to do this for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is really an interesting feature (let's say 'feature' at this moment). Actually, in person, I do really consider this is an tremendous improvement for any carrier-required mobile devices.

It makes mobile devices really "mobile". Customers do not have to physically enter a local carrier store to add a new line/data-plan or transfer to another carrier. It might save a great amount of time and efforts especially when traveling overseas.

Hope it came to iPhone in near future. Due to the easiness of switching carriers, hope it would help bringing down prices.

</comment><comment><USER36> So with this tech, how long until Apple starts offering MVNO services? And eventually completely destroys whatever profit margins the current operators have?

<comment><USER37> MVNOs still pay bulk data fees to real MNOs. And their traffic gets lower priority on the network. So the only current operators they could challenge is other MVNOs.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, I was imagining a situation where with "a little more software" Apple products could automatically detect which networks are available, their relative speeds, etc, and automatically use the right one all the time. And they could buy in sufficiently large bulk to get a good deal on the data rates.

<comment><USER38> A lot of devices in the M2M communications world already perform operations similar to this with available networks. Alongside use various weighting metrics regarding such as network strength and bandwidth cost to determine which one to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've known about this for a while, though I don't remember my source. I seem to recall that it was first envisioned under Jobs, and AT&T started swinging punches when they caught a whiff. Although the source appears solid in hindsight, I chalked it up to a subterfuge project. Can anyone who has since left confirm this was the same initiative?

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow this is a serious game changer, I was thinking about this the other day. I would be great to be able to turn off and on a sim card in your smartphone. So if you were using an iPhone and wanted to use your Android phone you just turned the iPhone sim off and used your android phone without having to call and de-activate it everytime.

<comment><USER41> Dual-SIM plans have been around since the 90's. You call a special number (* # whatever *) to toggle which one calls and SMS arrive to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Why would they NOT talk about this today?

It baffles me.

<comment><USER35> I agree. Such an improvement of user experiences of mobile devices (tablets so far).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How does this work?

I have an iPhone 5 with Sprint, and I thought I was more or less locked in because they used CDMA. I thought I would need a new phone if I wanted to switch to anything else.

Would love to know I've been wrong and can switch without buying out my contract and buying a phone...

<comment><USER44> I just depends on what the phone hardware supports. The Nexus 6 e.g. has two hardware variations. The US variation supports T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all with the same device.

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/10/15/the-nexus-6-will- com...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/10/15/the-nexus-6-will-come-in-two- versions-for-the-americas-and-rest-of-the-worldhere-are-all-the-supported- bands/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why not have a phone with three SIM card slots? Avoid the kickback from the carrier to Apple.

<comment><USER46> Why have SIM cards at all? What's the point in keeping credentials from the legitimate customer?

Store Ki directly on device. Modern phones have HSMs so key will be kept as secure as with a "real" SIM HSM, and bet phones could do the necessary crypto just fine.

Sure, a customer will be able to clone their own SIM card and share it with others, but I don't think that's a major issue. Logging onto the network with a cloned SIM is certainly preventable, and if you get kicked out every time other card clone logs in (and if that happens too frequently your account gets suspended altogether until you resolve the issue with a human support), sharing would be anything but desirable option.

<comment> X-Cubed The nice thing with SIMs is that if your battery is flat, or you put your phone through the washing machine, you can grab the card and throw it into a spare phone (or a friend's) and carry on.

If you have the Ki on the device, you're effectively going back to CDMA-style devices, whereby you need the carrier's assistance to move between handsets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When I was in Thailand, one carrier had the ability to co-opt my China unicom SIM and provide service there. I don't think my SIM was a soft one, I think they were actually co-opting the numbers!

</comment><comment><USER48> Interesting they don't mention Verizon. They do mention that participating carriers are subject to change though, so presumably they can add (or delete) carriers from the device.

</comment><comment><USER49> I remember some years back Nokia made software SIM but it disappeared from the radar probably due Telcos pressure. Glad we get something to that direction finally.

</comment><comment><USER50> Does it work with prepaid, or just contracts? If you could just temporarily swap over to T-Mobile's $30 prepaid unlimited data, that would be a big deal.

<comment><USER4> Not sure. I mean...I've swapped cards to switch carriers before but I never thought buying or swapping to another SIM was enough trouble that I'd need a programmable or multi-profile SIM.

I'm sure it's technically possible but the carriers could just as easily make it only work with certain plans. I remember needing a SIM activation kit to get on that $30 plan when I first got it. You couldn't just use any TMo SIM without some code from the kit and you couldn't get it in any TMo store. No idea if the adding of the code needed to activate the SIM would work with this new thing.

<comment><USER50> I'm mostly thinking it would be interesting for mobile data competition. Though so many people are tied up in complicated family plans that maybe it doesn't matter much.

If my AT&T 2-year commitment ran out and I could just press a button, put in a code from a card I bought at Wal-Mart, and take T-Mobile for a 1-month test, there'd be more pressure on AT&T to keep their prices sane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> With Multipath TCP across multiple LTE networks, this could enable substantial improvement in network performance.

Edit: I meant it as a future possibility

<comment><USER52> SIM = Subscriber Identity Module - it's just what identifies you to the network.

To be on multiple networks at the same time with current technology you need multiple modems and RF equipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This will be great for people who have different mobile phone #'s in different countries if it evolves that far...

</comment><comment><USER54> This is about trading carrier lockin for apple lockin, that's all.

</comment><comment><USER55> But makes it harder to switch devices... Nice one Apple.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is less about switching providers more easily and more about preventing users from modifying even the SIM card. Apple wants you to never open or modify the device in any way possible.</comment>


The Stradivarius Affair - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/11/stradivarius-violin-crime-milwaukee

<comment><USER2> > According to police, Salahadyn went to one of his concerts, noting, among > other details, that he was the only African-American there.

And he was there to steal an instrument...</comment>


Everyone stop implementing programming languages, right now It's been solved - <AUTHOR> http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2014/02/04/everyone-stop-implementing-programming-languages-right-now-its-been-solved/ <comment><USER2> It was solved back when Larry Wall introduced the world to Perl.

<comment><USER3> It was solved with ALGOL, but everyone wants to implement their own variation of it.</comment></comment>


Suspect Has Witness that Doesn't Lie: His Metrocard - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/nyregion/19metrocard.html?hp&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I am troubled that the US justice system seems devoid of a basic understanding of modern technology.

These cards don't in any reasonable sense identify a person's whereabouts. They are cloneable, easily used by anyone. They are in no way tied to a particular person.

<comment><USER3> I am troubled that the this guy's Metrocard is the only reason he's not in a jail right now.

<comment><USER4> but is it really his Metrocard :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kind off gives me an idea to make a special card that one can carry that is somehow linked to your identity and records all your whereabouts in a way that can't be faked.

Then if you ever have to prove that you were in a certain place you can give the card. Obviously it would make it pretty hard if you were lying so no one would want to carry it :)

(ignoring the various technology restrictions of this scheme)

<comment><USER6> Card? Why not an implant!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Credit card transactions would be the every man's evidence of whereabouts.

<comment><USER8> i do keep _ALL_ printed transactions, from grocery to ATM (where banks do photograph the user)

just in case

<comment><USER9> I do this too, but for different reasons. It just seems like interesting personal data I could analyze some day. Does anyone know a practical way to grab this data electronically for analysis? I have shoeboxes full of receipts... I could tell where, when, and what I bought for the past 10 years. Merge that with photographs and emails and I've got a heck of a personal journal... problem is, i can't figure out how to enter the data short of hiring someone.

<comment><USER10> Could you use Amazon's Mechanical Turk?

<comment><USER9> Good idea. i'd just have to have the neighbor kid scan everything in, first.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visual Studio '15 preview 4 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/08/22/visual-studio-15-preview-4/ <comment><USER2> A bit off topic, but I wish MSFT would come up with a better codename. The need for quotation marks around "15" in every single post I've seen about this new version of Visual Studio should be an indicator of why that is necessary ;)

As far as I can tell these are the current VS products with version numbers and codenames:

* Visual Studio Code

* Visual Studio Team Services (formerly know as Visual Studio Online)

* Visual Studio 2015 / version 14.0 / codename Dev14

* Visual Studio "15" Preview N / version 15.0 / codename Dev15/vNext?

<comment><USER3> Visual Studio Code has nothing to do with Visual Studio proper other than the name, the logo and the fact that both are Microsoft projects. It's a pretty good text editor, actually - it's my Go IDE, thanks to the vscode-go plugin.

I just wish they hadn't named it like that, as it's a pain to open it (and Visual Studio) on Microsoft's own OS: if I want to open either of them, I'll begin to type "visual" after pressing Start, press enter... and with a bit of luck, it will be the "Visual Studio" I wanted to open. Worse is when I'm on it, and the guess doesn't change until I begin to type "Code" after typing the first two words. Really frustrating. So Microsoft's problem with names goes beyond codenames...

<comment><USER4> Can't you just type "Code"? I'm not on a Windows 10 machine at the moment so I can't confirm it there, but it works on Windows 7 and I doubt Microsoft would go backwards in that regard.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, that works, thank you :) I had previously tried "vscode" and other variations, but it appears the executable name is the super-generic Code.exe. There's still the problem of VS Code opening when I wanted VS, but for this case I'll try to use "devenv" instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someday, I'd love to see an x64 Visual Studio. I've read the arguments (there's two canonical blog posts about it), but I'm just really sick of it hitting the memory limits on a 32-bit process all the time, when I have another 12 - 28 GB of RAM sitting unused.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious; what are you working on exactly? I have worked on some rather large code bases in C++ and C# and have never seen VS eat that much memory.

<comment><USER5> For some reason, it tends to choke and die if you have open C#, JS and html/cshtml files at the same time. Particularly if you have multiple monitors, and drag some editor windows onto the other desktops. Having the WinForms or WPF designers open also tends to bring things to a crawl. I do also run ReSharper, which does not help things.

Routinely, I'll have open about 10-15 code files, that total up less than 1 MB, and Visual Studio will be chugging up 1.5 GB of memory, locking up for ten seconds when I go to type.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. I don't do front end stuff or web development, so I've never hit that scenario. Lots of files open and whatnot, but never an issue. I also dumped Resharper a while back due to it generally slowing everything down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is Visual Studio '15' (2017), not Visual Studio '15 (2015, v14).

<comment><USER8> See, if they just wrote v15 it would be a little clearer. Calling it "15" (in quotes! why?) is hopelessly confusing.

<comment><USER9> The title of this HN discussion should probably be changed from [Visual Studio '15 preview 4] to [Visual Studio "15" Preview 4], which is the actual name of the article and fixes the quotes to avoid 2015 confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had had Preview 3 with the old installer, and things (rustc, gyp, &c.) tended to work with just advising them about 15.0 in a similar fashion to how they used 14.0.

Alas, the new installer changes the techniques used to find things (there was an InstallDir registry key somewhere or other which is no more), so now for running things like rustc and gyp I need to either run vcvarsall.bat manually (rustc) or make invasive changes (gyp) before they'll work.

In short: if you want to use this to actually _develop_ things that aren't purely Visual Studio projects, you'll find it more convenient to wait.

<comment><USER11> Did you file a bug on the rustc issue? I'd like to get that fixed and/or even help get it fixed, by fixing the Rust toolchain.

<comment><USER10> I started talking it over with Peter Atashian (retep998, WindowsBunny, &c.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The highlight of this release is that nearly all of VS is running on the new > setup engine, resulting in a smaller, faster and less impactful > installation. The smallest install is less than 500 MB on disk (compared to > 6GB in the previous release of Visual Studio).

I use some basic features VS occasionally on a Yoga ultrabook with a smallish SSD, this is great news!

The "Open Folder" à la Sublime/VSCode, TypeScript 2.0 beta are also cool.

Link to the full release note:

[https://www.visualstudio.com/news/releasenotes/vs15-relnotes](https://www.visualstudio.com/news/releasenotes/vs15-relnotes)</comment>


A Tool Physically Hacks Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=147713

<comment><USER2> From the article: When you think of Firewire, you really should just think of a cable coming directly out of your system's DRAM banks. That's basically all Firewire is.

Shouldn't DMA transfer only be initiated from _inside_ a host? That's really scary.</comment>


Suggest HN: For paywalled articles, enter the google search for the url - <AUTHOR>

I just submitted a WSJ paywalled article demonstrating this:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124281
When you submit a paywalled article, someone will almost always comment "I hit a paywall," and then someone will respond with the google search technique, and sometimes the actual search link.
How about let's just cut to the chase, and submit the search link as the link, and prepend the actual site name to the title, e.g.
NYT: Paywalls greatest thing since sliced white bread. <comment><USER2> Is this being put forward as a suggestion to:

a) Get access to paid content.

b) Highlight the fact that search engines are allowed to see free content.

If its "a)", I disagree with your suggestion.

If its "b)". I agree, I find it highly annoying when you click on a link to discover the part you want to read is hidden from you behind a pay wall. Search engines should show what we see the non paying public, furthermore I believe google doesnt like the addition of words to raise the rank of the page, sites which do this should be penalised for this behaviour. Which is what happens when you give google access to "fuller" data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sort of a). WSJ and NYT (and others) decide and control whether to allow entry to a walled article via google. This isn't a hack or a workaround, it's what WSJ and NYT want to happen (or they'd disallow it). You're not "cheating" when you enter via google, you're going in via a side door labeled "Welcome."

And sort of b). It's just a decision to use "the link that works for everyone" (with NYT/WSJ blessing), instead of the direct link that only works for subscribers.</comment></comment>


Ask: How to announce my 14 years old web development framework? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,
I'm searching a way to announce my 14 years old web development framework for people who are willing to contribute and use.
I created this framework in 2003 and since then I've developed more than 50 big and small sized web applications using this framework. In time surely I also developed and improved the framework. Currently, I released the v7.
If I need to give some info. about versions. I first made the v5 open-source that was the version came from 2004. It was the worst written code. I always had fears that I'll lose control of my codes if I make them open-source. Yea, I know, total ignorance. That's why I made the worst version open-source but in years, lots of things changed in my mind. I released the v6 version that came from 2008 which had better structure and more readable code. All codes where written in VB.NET. Why? no reason. But I know that developers are more willing to work on C# if it will be a .NET language.
That's why I rewrote v7 (VB.NET) version that came from 2010 in C# in last 5 months with the true support of .NET Standard to make the framework completely OS Independent and also I believed I'll find users and contributors easier if make it in C#. There is still some lack of features that are already on v7 (VB.NET) version but not in v7 (C#) version. But they will finish soon.
So, what I want is to announce this framework on somewhere to take attention of developers. It is a really good framework. I'm not telling that because I developed it. I'm telling that because I believe, it will bring something new to the programming world about development, deployment, and the like. I'm not doing this to have some profit.
Can you advise me some places that I can make entry? I think, one is here! :)
Project website is http://www.xeora.org Project Source is https://github.com/xeora/v7 (I'm still working on Readme files.)
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I read this as "My 14 year olds" web development framework...which is wrong if anyone else thought that.

<comment><USER3> same

<comment><USER4> I even read some of the forms of "I" in that first paragraph as "he" and "his".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are email credentials in your repository. Change immediately.

[https://github.com/xeora/v7/blob/master/Framework/src/Xeora....](https://github.com/xeora/v7/blob/master/Framework/src/Xeora.Web.Engine/xeora.settings.json)

<comment><AUTHOR> oh my god! thank you dude, it was just a wrong commit :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks interesting, but the [http://www.xeora.org](http://www.xeora.org) site isn't usable on my Android. The hamburger menu icon just opens a big white square with no text. And videos aren't scaled to fit, so they extend out of the viewport. Normally, I'd ignore minor stuff, but this being a web framework...the issues cause me to lose confidence in how well it works. A bit a copywriter attention on the front page text might help as well.

Not trying to be negative, just saying you might want to polish things up a bit before trying to promote it widely.

<comment><USER7> It's not a framework problem, it's a CSS problem.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but it erodes confidence anyway. You expect the demo pages for a framework to have been thoughtfully designed.

<comment><AUTHOR> don't worry dude, I've already fixed it.

<comment><USER8> I'll have to investigate your framework a bit, but I admire the work you've put into it. However, regarding the hamburger menu, it opens only an empty white area on my Android running Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea, I know. I didn't tune the website yet. I'm updating the documentation of v7. It'll be finished soon and then upload the new version of the website. after that moment, all those hamburger menus without submenu inside will be fixed. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you haven't check out the subreddits /r/dotnet and /r/csharp on Reddit. You can promote it there.

Question for you: Any particular reason you split out v6 and v7 into different repos on github? I would suggest using branches to do your dev work and keep master as is as the latest version. If need be, you could branch off and create v6 branches if you want to support old versions. The only reason I mention that is if people are using v7 and then you make a new repo for v8, many of the people who use v7 will never know about v8.

<comment><AUTHOR> the reason is I just want to isolate them from each other. because v6 is not the successor of v5 and v7 is not a successor of v6. I'm keeping them there just to be accessible for old projects. Actually, I need to use xeora account for v7 completely because v7 have framework, visual studio extensions, xeora cli, separate session service implementations and the like. with this way it is currently located under v7 repository. I'll take care of it more structured soon.

And also thank you for your advice. I'll check what can I do on reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You just did

</comment><comment><USER11> For all I know, this is better than other frameworks like volt, camping, monkrb and the like. So much better simply because it has a loyal maintainer that does not abandon his work and actively maintains it for a very long time, he said that it has the worst code ever, but that doesn't stop him for it's continued support. I'm OK with adapting and building on top of a unpopular framework, as long as it is an active project and actively maintained.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you jjuliano, I can assure you it will be an active project as long as I live because I'm continuously developing new applications using my framework and also putting more features to the old ones that are already developed using this framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would not announce it until the most important section is done: [http://www.xeora.org/documentation/v7#using_framework](http://www.xeora.org/documentation/v7#using_framework)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes sure, I'm just asking the question while I'm preparing for announcing, so I'll have some plans in my mind. Otherwise, it is not ready to yet to be announced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Show HN:" after your README file is up and you have a few simple examples I would think.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shoot me an email @ pryelluw [at] gmail.com and I'll help you get the word out.

<comment><USER15> With respect, what can you do for the poster? Why would they need to email privately after posting in a public discussion with plenty of eyeballs?

<comment><USER14> Fair question. Reason I don't discuss these things publicly is that I get many emails for digital marketing help and I can't answer them all.

I used to own/run a digital media shop and am now focusing on using my skills and experiences to help open source projects grow.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I'll send you an email soon.

<comment><USER14> No worries. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Orgzly – Orgmode on Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly

<comment><USER2> Nice one. Similar to [http://rockiger.com/en/akiee/](http://rockiger.com/en/akiee/), which implements org-mode with Markdown.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't made friends with org-mode, but I've grown to like Taskwarrior for desktop, and recently started to use Mirakel for mobile. Mirakel has a decent UI and also syncs with your CalDAV data source.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes! Finally something usable (ui wise). I can't use it though until I can sync using Google sync...

Would love Google cal sync too, I use that heavily in the other mobile org android app.</comment>


World's first commercially available Jetpack goes on sale  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/world-s-first-commercially-available-jetpack-goes-on-sale-675944 <comment><USER2> The Darwin Awards just got a whole lot more competitive.

<comment><USER3> I don't see why this is inherently more dangerous than, say, flying a powered parachute. It's really more in the same class as a helicopter except that engine failure risk is mitigated by the emergency parachute system. Running into stuff while flying low is probably the main mode of death.

<comment><USER4> Mainly due to the fact that a 'powered parachute' (e.g. an ultralite) undergoes essentially no mass modal volume delta in airflow when transitioning between powered and unpowered flight.

The controls, and fundamental aeronautical responses to flight inputs, remain the same in both flight regimes and, for the most part, there's a gradual and manageable amount of pilot feedback during the transition.

In fact, this lack of "gradual feedback" was the main reason that power steering took so long to be safety-approved in automobiles. It's also why, in most countries, pure 'drive-by-wire' controls are only allowed in experimental and prototype road vehicles. Despite the obvious ergonomic and cockpit layout virtues of joysticks, steering wheels and worm gears can still work without active power-assists.

The same can be said for a gliding light airplane or helicopter under auto- rotation.

Alas, the same CAN NOT be said for the Martin jetpack when deploying its ballistic parachute. Btw, aside from cost and liability issues, this is one of the reasons emergency ballistic parachutes haven't caught on in small single- engine aircraft.

<comment><USER5> Besides the extra weight, what is the difference between a skydiver and someone wearing a jetpack when deploying a parachute?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand your question.

A skydiver is transitioning (abruptly) from unpowered free-fall into unpowered, albeit greatly slowed, descent. The jetpack user is transitioning from powered, controlled horizontal flight (with its characteristic 6 degrees of freedom) into unpowered descent.

A back-up chute for the skydiver has essentially, but not quite, the same flight characteristics and initial deployment conditions as a main.

Parachutes in a stable flight configuration are incredibly safe and reliable, but it's GETTING that 6-axis dynamic flight-body INTO that stable flight configuration that's the real challenge.

It's relatively easy to design a system for even extremely large, static, dead-weights (such as cargo or even battle tanks) to be safely launched, arrested, and landed via parachute.

It's an entirely different problem when your safe chute deployment must take into account the wide variance in airspeed, pitch, yaw, altitude, and environmental influences which powered free flight allows. Imagine a worse- case scenario where all power was lost just after a major inadvertent yaw maneuver (it appears to be designed to minimize yawing). That's a sticky- wicket to solve repeatedly and reliably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More a Fanpack. Still, very cool.

video <http://www.martinjetpack.com/video-gallery.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems like it'll get the same treatment as the Segway. Lots of places banned Segways from sidewalks... Jetpacks certainly need to be banned from pretty much anyplace where it would be worthwhile or incredibly fun?

<comment><USER8> If it gets certificated as something more than an experimental aircraft, you should expect to be able to fly it at least by the same rules you fly a helicopter.

<comment><USER9> What really matters is whether I'm allowed to fly it to work or not.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure there is nothing stopping you from flying an ultralight (or even regular) aircraft to work. Except for cost.

<comment><USER8> In my case, there are a couple buildings, to say nothing about one of the busiest airports in the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've seen this on a few New Zealand current affairs shows and have never seen any footage of an unassisted outdoor flight. Every time the creators have had media coverage they have insisted on doing it inside and not allowing it to go higher than a few meters off the ground.

I'd like to see them do a real test flight higher than a few meters off the ground before I'm convinced that this is the real deal.

</comment><comment><USER12> Only commercial orders for now.

From the company's site:

"Martin Jetpack is currently accepting enquiries from commercial customers. Please place your initial enquiry through this site and we will contact you directly.

It is expected that early orders for sales to private individuals will commence late 2010"

EDIT: removed [sic] for "enquiries", as MW dictionary doesn't contain it but others do.

<comment><USER13> Enquiry is a real word, too; no need for [sic]. My dictionary calls it a "chiefly Brit." variant of inquiry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In 10 years we are going to look back at these photos and laugh at how ridiculous the first jetpacks looked.

<comment><USER15> Why?

It looks very similar to jetpacks from 50 years ago.

The physics of rockets is not going to change.

<comment><USER16> Yeah! The author of the article seems to think the concept originated with "The Fall Guy" in the 1980s.

[http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/design/personal- flyer/b...](http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/design/personal- flyer/bond.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yet another reason for me to try to lose some weight :-P

</comment><comment><USER18> It is classed by the FAA as an ultralight aircraft. Google surely will provide full details, but in brief, that means that you cannot fly it over any inhabited area. No commuting.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a bit of a stretch to call it the first commercially available personal flying machine, there are plenty of single-seat aircraft and choppers that qualify for that title.

This guy has them beaten for style though:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Dbbp1_FJc&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Dbbp1_FJc&feature=related)

and this one is pretty neat too...:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDmnjwbJrVM&feature=fvsr](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDmnjwbJrVM&feature=fvsr)

<comment><USER20> Came across this today: <http://www.terrafugia.com>

<comment><USER19> Wow... that's one very neat little machine.

$194,000 is a bit steep though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thought their pricing was interesting, lower than I would have guessed: "Martin Aircraft has built several prototypes so we have a good idea how much they cost to manufacture. Depending on production volume, the initial cost will be about the same as a high-end motorcycle or car. As volume increases this will drop to be similar to a mid-range motorcycle or car."

</comment><comment><USER22> Are there any videos of a full flight? I only saw an indoor test flight. Wondering what happens when you get a strong wind - a good control system is going to be needed to keep the thing from total failure.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why are they using a 2-stroke ICE instead of a small turbine I wonder? The pack looked quite cool from the front but when the pilot spun around it looked like he had a VW beetle strapped to his back...

<comment><USER4> I can only guess fuel-consumption-to-thrust efficiencies (longer flight times) or pure cost since a pure gas turbine will always beat out a mechanically linked fan-stroke in specific power (i.e. kW/kg), but will almost always be more costly due to the extremely high manufacturing tolerances required for turbines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Original article with more information:

[http://www.gizmag.com/first-commercially-available- jetpack/1...](http://www.gizmag.com/first-commercially-available- jetpack/14423/)

</comment><comment><USER25> What fuel does it use?

<comment><USER26> "...powered by a 200hp two-liter V4 two-stroke petrol engine."

Same as your car.

<comment><USER27> "two-stroke" Same as your lawnmower.

<comment><USER28> You mean chain saw, most lawn mowers are four-stroke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Weren't we all told that this would be impossible?

</comment><comment><USER30> That settles it. I'm trading in my Segway.

</comment><comment><USER31> Glad I'm not paying that insurance bill.

<comment><USER10> Why? A 1000 foot fall is much cheaper to treat than cancer. (Step 1: scrape up organs. Step 2: incinerate them.)</comment></comment>