Programming Models for Distributed Computation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/heathermiller/dist-prog-book <comment><USER2> > There are problems that exist in distributed system environments that do not > exist in single-machine environments. Partial failure, concurrency, and > latency are three problems that make distributed computing fundamentally > different from local computing.

IMO this can frame our thinking too much. Concurrency and latency are problems in single systems as well. It would be great to have single systems that handle partial failure, can be updated incrementally, etc. Thinking of 'distributed computing' as a different domain than single system computing is not a useful long term approach. In the end very few systems are 'single machine' systems, if at all - machines are all connected to each other and participate in other, larger, systems.

<comment><USER3> Some classes of problems are masked on a single system. For instance, failure of the networking card doesn't preclude the processes from talking to each other. A process that's running on a system that has hung can't make any forward progress so it doesn't care if another process it's talking to is in the same state.

Our desktop computers look more and more like clusters in their own right (how many SoCs are inside of your computer right now?). There's a lot of talk lately about having high performance and low power CPUs in the same machine working in tandem.

I figure at some point we will start formally treating desktops and laptops like small clusters, at which point these distinctions might start to disappear.

<comment><USER2> > Some classes of problems are masked on a single system.

Yes but you can also have IPC failure, syscall hang, single thread hang etc. Instead of treating these as special cases, these could be handled by generic patterns that apply to 'distributed computing', if the system was designed similarly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks like a reasonably complete survey. However, one important topic is missing. That is the strong consistency algorithms used by databases like Spanner and FaunaDB.

Those two globally consistent databases use different families of algorithms, so it's probably worth including both. Here is a comparison between them: [https://fauna.com/blog/distributed-consistency-at-scale- span...](https://fauna.com/blog/distributed-consistency-at-scale-spanner-vs- calvin)

<comment><USER5> I believe it's covered: Topic 6.

<comment><USER4> I don't see anything in there even about basic building blocks like RAFT. Maybe I'm missing it, or maybe there's room for someone to write another chapter.

<comment><USER6> Specific algorithms like RAFT or Paxos are more of an addendum than a core aspect of the topic, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I watched a talk on Dask

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA_2qdipVng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA_2qdipVng)

... looks awesome, and something that seems only possible with dynamic code... or at least code that can introspect it's own AST.

EDIT: the cool part about it, I think, is that you don't have to shoehorn your algorithm into any particular model like map reduce or something else. You just write idiomatic Python code and... magic

</comment><comment><USER8> I am a bit torn with this, because while I love people reading and then writing up things, there are so many changes I think they should make but I don't want to just barge in and make pull requests.

E.g., they largely miss DryadLINQ (disclosure: not an author, but worked with them), which I would rate as the second most important paper after MapReduce in the "batch compute" space. It shows up only as what you should use to write Dryad programs, because Dryad's programming model "is less elegant than MapReduce"; harsh.

The streaming section (disclosure: Naiad co-author) dances around and then suggests that Google Dataflow is somehow a unification of previous work, which is .. well, you can read the Google Dataflow paper

        http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p1792-Akidau.pdf

and do a search for "Naiad"; it's not even on their radar.

It feels a bit like the critiques are perhaps too-credulous readings of the related work sections of other papers.

I'm not sure a great way to get to a consensus understanding of the position of the works in the historical record, or whether it is even possible with sensitive authors (hi), but it would be cool to have. Any recommendations would be great.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well-researched and comprehensive. The survey of distributed languages includes not just Erlang and Akka, but also E and Cloud Haskell. The overview of CAP is deep and rigorous while not wasting words. This will be a great book once it's finished.

</comment><comment><USER10> This should mention Microsoft Research's Concurrent Revisions [1]. I think it's by far the easiest abstraction to grasp for ordinary programmers, particularly if you've ever used version control. In that case, you already know how they work! Revisions scale from incremental, parallel and concurrent programming all the way up to distributed computation. Very neat work.

[1] [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4699](http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/4699)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for bringing that up naasking, quite nice indeed

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Perhaps [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project) should be included in Chapter 4: [https://github.com/heathermiller/dist-prog- book/blob/master/...](https://github.com/heathermiller/dist-prog- book/blob/master/chapter/4/dist-langs.md)

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks great. I look forward to following this and reading the updates. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER13> No mention of session types?

[http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/abcd/](http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/abcd/)

[https://youtu.be/8GJ2AnCjCvU](https://youtu.be/8GJ2AnCjCvU)

</comment><comment><USER14> Pretty cool to see Bloom and Lasp covered. Definitely a sign that they're serious about covering many aspects of the problem space.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice coverage !! For some reason they don't offer a one click pdf and its bit difficult to navigate !</comment>


You're Hired (And Fired) - The Future Of Work - <AUTHOR> http://futureofwork.glider.com/the-finite-job-you-are-hired-and-fired/

<comment><USER2> Uh, how about having an open conversation between employer and employee on how to foster the employee's growth within the company?

I've only worked for a few companies, but when I was hired as a full time employee, there was no expectation I'd be doing the same job _forever_. If anything, there was an expectation that I'd grow in role and responsibility.

Now, being a contractor is different--in that case you typically are hired to perform specific duties, and if the duties change, the contract should be updated to reflect that.

Some of the other issues I can see from following Rick's approach): * short termism, especially as you get to the end of your working period * loss of good people as they move on after you fire them * workforce ridigity ("I wasn't hired for that")

In short, I appreciate the provocative nature of the post, but see some real fundamental problems in his solution.

<comment><USER3> It seems like many posts could be boiled down to that simple attitude: why not talk about it? If you're unhappy in your position with your employer, or vice versa, start a dialog to try to change things. Don't allow yourself to hate your work, or start slipping in quality, if you don't have to.

Having an open dialog with management could allow you to change positions, roles, or, if necessary, leave the company for another.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. And I'll try to write some stuff about facilitating that communication in future posts.

I didn't mean to come off like a cranky passive aggressive ass. I mean, I am. I just didn't mean to come off that way ;)

This was just a hack at providing some definitive timelines to an often nebulous arrangement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with this is that then there is no institutional memory. Many student groups in colleges (at least at my college) fight the same problems in a recurring cycle every 4 years, because no one remembers why it didn't work out last time - the groups that avoid this are the ones that maintain connections with alumni or have a stable mentor. And this is for small groups that know each other well. If you had a corporation with 100s of people, it couldn't hold itself together with 25-30% annual employee turnover.

This articles mentality only really works if you are being hired to do a specific project, as an independent contractor, in the context of a larger team. Its also better for young people whose skill set is changing rapidly and may become better suited to different positions more quickly, as opposed to someone who has years of domain expertise and needs stability.

<comment><USER4> My question about this is: Have we reached a point where "institutional memory" is more of a liability than a benefit? I often wonder about this. "That's the way we've always done it," "We tried that before," or "That's not how we do things here," are all institutional memories that hamstring innovation.</comment></comment>


Nevada puts stop to ridesharing Uber for now - <AUTHOR> http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/nevada-puts-stop-ridesharing-uber-now

<comment><USER3> If Uber can break the Vegas cab cartel[1] it would be very surprising to me. So far the cab companies have been able to survive everything, they've even prevented the monorail from going to the airport. Which if it did go to the airport would eliminate so many fares, because once you get to your hotel you normally just walk everywhere else.

Since this is Vegas, I'd say the proverbial smart money is still on the side of the cab companies being able to force enforcement of the law. Las Vegas has perfected the science of aligning widely varied financial interests to preserve the status quo of business as usual.

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_States#L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_States#Las_Vegas)

<comment><USER4> > Which if it did go to the airport would eliminate so many fares, because > once you get to your hotel you normally just walk everywhere else.

I disagree, there is tons of intra-strip cab travel taking place. Hotels are far apart on the strip. It'd probably take a couple hours to walk between Mandalay Bay and Encore.

Either way, Uber's implementation isn't supporting pickups at the airport or anywhere between the 15 and Paradise Rd along the strip, and even that is causing all this drama.

<comment><USER5> _> I disagree, there is tons of intra-strip cab travel taking place._

There's alot of it, but it's decreasing. Someone that just got ready for an elegant dinner or a night at a club will take a cab or limo up or down the strip to get where they're going. However, the monorail now runs all the way from the MGM on Tropicana Ave. down to the SLS (formerly the Sahara on Sahara Ave) and has a station at the convention center. There is also The Deuce, a very tourist-friendly bus that traverses both sides of the Strip every 5 minutes or so 24/7\. If there's a cab line at the hotel, The Deuce is actually faster than a cab.

I would suspect that walking, the monorail, and The Deuce handle the vast majority of inter-hotel travel. The cabs make most of their money on airport trips & trips to off-strip properties like The Palms.

Regardless, Uber should be allowed to do what they were doing. The way the Strip is setup, they couldn't really compete with cabs & limos, and that was never their plan. It would have been great for locals to get around the city.

<comment><USER6> The monorail is about the worst way to travel in Vegas. It is expensive and too far from most hotels and casinos. Unless you want to travel between two connecting casinos it is faster to walk. And if you have more than two in your party, cheaper to take a cab.

<comment><USER5> As with most things, it depends on your use case. The MGM station is the easiest one to get to, as some of the other stations (Harrah's in particular) are buried behind the hotels. There is a dedicated station at the convention center, which is great for thousands of people if they stay at one of the hotels with a station. For example, a person attending a convention at the convention center and staying at MGM - normally a $30+ cab ride each way - <USER2> get essentially door-to-door transportation both ways for 3 days for the price of a single one-way cab ride.

If you're staying at Wynn/Encore or Venetian/Palazzo, then it's not going to work. But since you're paying $400+/night there during busy times at any of those places, you might as well rent yourself a limo. The monorail is OK for some use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think this will last for long - there are a lot of services for which you can make a solid argument for, and against (AirBnB has two very different sides to the coin) - but, as long as Uber is able to ensure that all of it's drivers are insured, my experience (over 100 rides in the bay area, and many, many thousands of rides with taxis), is that Uber is an overwhelmingly good service.

The Vehicles are cleaner, the drivers better mannered, the service _unquestionably_ better (I'd _almost_ be prepared to say that my worst uberX ride ever was better than my best taxi ride, not quite - but pretty close. With the Uber Black Car service, they aren't even in the same league, so no comparison can be made there.) And, most importantly of all, the rides are a lot safer; on the peninsula, a _lot_ of the taxis are very old, somewhat decrepit, and it's not unheard of to get in one in which the Taxi Driver has to open your door -you can't open it from the inside - I dread what would happen in an accident.

If this were purely a question of public good, there is no question what decision the Nevada authorities will make. We'll see how much power the Taxi Cartel has...

<comment><USER6> If this were purely a question of public good, the Nevada authorities will shut down uber.

<comment><USER7> Okay, I'm interested in you defending that position. Given that I cited convenience, safety, customer service, cleanliness, and efficiency as reasons for Uber, what "public good" rationale is there for not allowing them to operate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do states love to promote rent seeking behavior? They ban Tesla and promote cabs, ISPs, etc. This is especially silly in a State that is trying to have a significant tech community in Vegas. Promoting rent seeking behavior and banning a service you constituents are embracing is anti-competitive, ant- business, and illogical.

<comment><USER9> > Why do states love to promote rent seeking behavior?

Because a "state" is really just a group of individuals with significantly more power than the average individual, and the easiest way for them to benefit themselves is to use that power to promote rent seeking behavior. I would be surprised if they _didn 't_ promote rent seeking behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > When asked by the operator if he needed anything else, he told her, "I want > my car to be taken out of impound as soon as possible because I have to go > to work tomorrow morning, but I know that won't happen. And I don't want to > have to pay any fines so put some of that $18 billion you all have behind > me, will yah?"

Well seems like Uber picked a great driver that got stung. Would be interesting to see how this plays out vs. a driver with less of a sense of humor.

</comment><comment> SG- Meanwhile in Ottawa it was simply city bylaw officers who booked calls undercover and gave two $650 fines which Uber covered on behalf of the drivers.

The service launched three weeks ago and the city simply wanted to show it's muscle, the drivers have been operating since without issue since.

</comment><comment><USER11>
        Two undercover officers wore black ski masks.

Since when do undercover officers wear ski masks. Furthermore, what are taxi authority officers undercover?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It sure is getting interesting. Uber is battling the Nevada Attorney General and once again operating in Las Vegas as of today. [http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/uber- challenges-...](http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/uber-challenges- court-order-drivers-still-working)

</comment><comment><USER12> I find it funny that Nevada is willing to bend over backwards for one tech company(Tesla) yet wants to prevent another from gaining a fair shot at the market.

<comment><USER13> Your comment makes no sense, unless we assume that tech companies are interchangeable, and so governments should approach them all the same regardless of what the company actually does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love Uber and Lyft and have been using them the past two years or so, and I think the taxi scene in Las Vegas is great. The best experience I've had with cabs is in Las Vegas. I forgot my luggage in a cab and it was there within two minutes to return it. The lines outside clubs are always long but I can _always_ count on a line of Taxis waiting to pick people up. I would imagine drunk people stumbling onto the rode to get in an Uber / Lyft would make the traffic that much worse down the strip and probably more dangerous.</comment>


Meet is Murder - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/meet-is-murder.html <comment><USER2> In my experience, shops with too many meetings don't get much done and generally drive high-performing people away; shops with fewer meetings are busy.. working, selling and helping customers.. having smaller, shorter, informal meetings to unblock work.

Lots of standing meetings are one big sign of wasted time. A typical guideline to cut these down is to only allow standing meetings for:

\- team meetings or project sprints about what was done, what is needed, what is coming up or customer issues

\- 1:1's

\- all-hands / retreats (rare)

Otherwise, no meetings without an agenda... which reduces calendar load and makes people plan their thoughts to make the best of everyone's time.

And as Mark Cuban does, fire all the useless pyramid builders (VPs, managers and coordinators) until only useful people remain.

Problem (mostly) solved, until the next meeting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always liked the One Minute Manager's take on this.

The idea is that everyone should be able to state their current goals and progress within a minute. And that's how long your meeting with your manager should be. If you can't do that, it's too complicated.

Other meetings, like brain storms with mutually trusting participants, can of course be longer.

</comment><comment><USER4> At the risk of easy snark, I can't help but wonder how quickly the author's disdain for the privilege of "Maker hours" would disappear after a week of hour-on/hour-off meetings. Doubly so if this article's deadline were looming.

</comment><comment><USER5> Meetings I've been are often a form of rite where the managers/customers want to reassured by the team. It's not really rational.

May be we could pray instead or have a yoga session :-)</comment>


Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/google-shuts-down-the-apps-section-of-the-chrome-web-store/ <comment><USER2> Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and more progressive web applications.

PWAs have replaced a few native apps on my phone and I couldn't be happier about it. I can use Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and even read HN (via the Premii webapp [1]) through a fullscreen interface that behaves like a native application (no address bar, tinted notifications bar, push notifications for Twitter and Telegram), but that nonetheless is still a browser.

Support for PWAs on Firefox for Android is around the corner. I'm a Firefox Nightly user and the support is there: websites that have a webapp manifest display an icon on the address bar to let you quickly "install" the application as an icon to the homescreen. It is supposed to reach stable channel on Firefox 58 [2].

[1]: [http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/) [2]: [http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will- let-...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-let-add- progressive-web-apps-home-screen/)

<comment><USER3> The problem with PWAs is they do not provide the same access as a Chrome App (file system, sockets...) so it is not a replacement for those Apps using that functionality.

Just another case of Chrome running in like a bull and doing one thing then breaking it later. :(

Anyone who needs the low level functionality will end up with a native app that use native messaging to talk to Chrome. Or just stands alone.

<comment><USER4> Actually you are so right... And I do not understand why google doesn't seem to solve that problem...

I mean I really like PWAs. But while they are around since a while now (about 2 years?), the pain points have not been addressed so far.

\- Privacy: There are multiple issues related to privacy here (transparent updates, Serviceworker running in the background without the user knowing about it), and when I see it how many serviceworkers my browser runs already I am happy that they don't have an even deeper access to my system.

\- Ownership: Installing a PWA works like visiting a website twice. After that you have no idea what you have (version? offline capabilities? storage?). And if you decide to use an App for a while you are living in the constant danger of the web service quitting.

\- Storage: While many people do not care where their data is stored (proprietary service XYZ, AWS, Google Drive, DropBox). I would like to be able select my storage location myself. Furthermore, I think the storage topic is also one of the main reasons why people build electron apps, as the browser has no robust and user friendly way of accessing the filesystem.

So here are a few suggestions which I think would help to make PWAs more accessible.

\- Archive Format: make it possible to easily download, save and install an PWA at any time. That way I should also be able to see a version and the required permissions.

\- Storage interface: In my opinion the browsers should offer some storage solution. For my last PWA I wrote a lib which could use different storage locations like a REST API or a WebDAV. It works really well, but it is a pain to enter your credentials every time you want to use a new app. Therefore, your browser should offer something similar to a webdav service to save data locally and let you configure a WebDAV service location if you want to store you data somewhere else (e.g. Nextcloud, DropBox, etc.).

\- Improve native integration. Yes that is no easy part. I mean we already have a bunch of native integrations, like e.g. the Notifcation API, but to be honest I think they could be better. One thing many Apps probably would like to have, are systemtray icons. Actually, I never used electron so far (only cordova), but I expect them to have a bunch of plugins which could be a great ressource for the browser devs to find out what we need here.

As permissions are already built into the browsers I haven't mentioned them here, but with the rise of the Serviceworkers they are more important than ever. Users should be aware of the permissions they grant a software from some brief encounter in the web.

<comment><USER5> You can make a virtual file system in the browser using localStorage. You can then sync it across devices and browsers via a server.

You can upload files to the PWA using drag-n-drop or file input. You can also send files from the PWA to the device file system.

I think it's important that Web browsers can't automatically control the device hard drives, imagine if all web sites you visited would be able to do rm / -rf or scan all files on your hard drive.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, sure complete access to all files is rediculous. I think more of something like: By default every app has its own directory and the user can (easily) grant an app access to additional directories.

That way it can't do much damage and when you trust it, you can give it more access.

I use the localStorage as a cache for some of the offline capabilites but as a persistent storage it sucks as you can't easily open the stored "files" with other programms or PWAs.

<comment><USER6> The private directories is the way Android does it. It is a good idea, provided you can easily allow access to other directories (as you suggested). Unfortunately they missed that second point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like I'm the only one who is happy about this. What's the point of restricting apps built using open web standards to one proprietary browser and app store? Agreed that there was a gap in offline support which Chrome filled at the time, but now it's time to move on and use newer and more widely supported APIs.

<comment><USER8> It is nonetheless interesting that Google have killed this off some time before a complete replacement is ready. It reminds me (to a slightly reduced extent) of how Google Gears was killed off completely before an alternative for its offline support existed—it was four years before service workers fixed that. Still, removing such things early has helped people adopt the standardised form rather than continuing with a Google-specific thing, so as a Firefox proponent I'm glad they did it this way each time, however little sense it seems to make from Google's and the user's perspective (seriously, they actively _removed_ offline support from Gmail—and they still haven't reintroduced it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a chrome app dev (Videostream is our app) the transition has been really annoying. They've given us ample time to prepare for the shutdown and we've developed a new app, from scratch, to work outside of the Chrome app world but they (as engineers tend to do) did nothing to mitigate the disaster of a transition. Through blogs, tweets, etc. directly pointing to the webstore, we have years of SEO built up all pointing directly to what will now be a dead link.

We've been pestering Google for a way to have a redirect or link on that page that says "get the app for windows and mac in its new home over here" but they haven't been very responsive. It's such a shitty way to treat developers who chose your ecosystem and who you did a certain amount of convincing. They have done this to us once before, with their wallet for digital goods, where they shut that down and developers lost any recurring subscriptions they had on the platform.

Basically, google is brutal if you develop on a platform for them that they decide to axe, they really don't think of the people and companies and how they will be affected and we now think twice before choosing to use anything they maintain.

<comment><USER10> I use your app (thank you!). Did you consider setting up your own redirect URL for SEO/be more resilient to 3rd party changes like this?

That seems like a permanent fix in case you decided to change platforms as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hopefully this convinced the last person still gullible enough to believe on Google's interest to maintain long term (let's say, more than a decade) any service that's not Search, Ads, YouTube, Gmail or Android.

I wouldn't build much on GAE either...

<comment><USER12> > YouTube

Even Youtube is not safe, have a look at the Adpocalypse a few months ago or all the wrong/incorrect demonetization of innocent videos.

<comment><USER13> You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap they were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with?

What a surprise. It was deserved and a long time coming.

People need to learn that whatever horrible thing you put online doesn't automatically get you paid. Advertisers don't want to sponsor "anything" because it reflects poorly on them.

<comment><USER11> > _You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap > they were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with?_

No, it means they've started promoting crap for monetizing and penalizing things that people actually want to see.

> _Advertisers don't want to sponsor "anything" because it reflects poorly on > them._

Given the human scum that are advertisers, I doubt anything could reflect poorly on them.

At best it would reflect badly on their clients -- who themselves would be totally fine to advertise on KKK websites and snuff films if it didn't cause a backslash.

<comment><USER13> > No, it means they've started promoting crap for monetizing and penalizing > things that people actually want to see.

Could you explain this part? I thought the whole issue was YT was being more selective about the videos they monetized with ads.

> Given the human scum that are advertisers, I doubt anything could reflect > poorly on them.

If that was true boycotting brands wouldn't be effective. But it is VERY effective. Ask Sean Hamburg or Dr. Laura (among many others).

<comment><USER11> Here's a perspective on the former issue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZakJFqdpRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZakJFqdpRY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really going to hurt Windows users who do not want to use .exe or Windows 10 apps, which are both very heavy and less secure when it comes to https or remote content loading compared to Chrome Apps (Windows UWP in this case).

Disclaimer: It's interesting to see that our app (Polarr) is in the screenshot (link: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo- edito...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo- editor/djonnbgfieijldcieafgjcnhmpcfpmgg?hl=en))

Although ChromeOS is the smallest platform we currently support, we spent a lot of energy on it and it is so far, still the highest rated photo chrome app.

To put things in perspective. Between September to December, our Chrome App user breakdown are

Windows: 48.05% ChromeOS: 43.38% macOS: 7.11% Amount of users who used the app during this time frame: 326,459 (28.92% new).

Between Jun and September, our user breakdown are

Windows: 56.34% ChromeOS: 34.84% macOS: 7.25% Amount of users who used the app during this time frame: 280,013 (28.52% new).

<comment><USER15> That's the first time I've seen someone use "Disclaimer" for an ad. Usually the ad is everything except for the disclaimer.

<comment><USER16> To be honest, if ads were more like that comment in the "These are our performance statistics relevant to the topic" vein, then I would be happy to see more ads.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it is much better than the sociopathic emotional manipulation and brand recognition techniques used on everything else nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This PWA Chrome apps is something I see as ultimate goal for all Electron apps: Have a one point JVM like instance, share resources across all Electron apps. So now many major Chrome Apps go Electron and I have 4-5 big Electron Chrome instances running... what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac!

Personal side note: I will miss Postmann Interceptor because I can catch cookies from a web login with the pwa app without any copy&pasting data and continue using our REST api with this cookes. <\- not possible with Electron Postman.

<comment><USER15> > what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac!

And what a step backward on a 2GB RAM notebook that would otherwise be fine for office and browsing tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an order-of-magnitude estimate, let's assume that 1 billion users use Chrome. TFA states: "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps."

That's 10 million active users who can't install apps that they use on their next machine?

</comment><comment><USER20> NW.js will continue to support running Chrome Apps: [https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-support/](https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps- support/)

<comment><USER21> Thanks Roger, I love nwjs (still prefer it over electron), thank you for your work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good riddance. Hopefully they'll kill off the strange permission variations between extensions and apps too, that's been nothing but confusing and a plague on building anything useful.

</comment><comment><USER23> If "Google says Progressive Web Apps are the future of app-like webpages."

Then why do the chrome website auditing tools promote progressive web apps as the first analytic for the performance of a page. Surely only a small subset of webpages are going to be 'app-like'.

</comment><comment><USER24> PWAs are pretty cool. However when 60% of your users are on iOS, its not worth the investment until Apple supports them. That won't happen because it would compete agaisnt native apps. Apple purposely blocks web apps from existing on iOS. Installed Web apps use an old WebView with less HTML5 features than Safari. Your web app is fast on Safari, but slow once installed.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm not keen on this decision.

Chrome Apps could do more than progressive web apps could do but less than Electron apps. For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app.

Electron is much heavier, requires more trust because its a native app, makes cross platform support harder and you're missing out on the update, payment and discoverability features of the Chrome Web Store.

I'd prefer progressive web apps over Electron and Chrome Apps but they're not powerful enough to replace all use cases yet. I agree Chrome Apps weren't being widely used but I like the idea behind web apps replacing native apps (including Electron) where suitable.

<comment><USER26> > For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app.

No, there are plenty of options when doing native development.

<comment><USER25> > No, there are plenty of options when doing native development.

I was mostly meaning if you have an existing Chrome App or wanted to rely on existing JavaScript libraries.

Electron gets a huge amount of hate on HN but I personally see the native route as very unappealing. With less developer resources (and perhaps a slightly worse UI; I think people really over exaggerate here), you get fairly simple cross platform support, an update system, access to a huge JavaScript ecosystem and your code can be shared between desktop, mobile, web and server- side.

As a developer, I don't see the appeal of e.g. QT, Java or OS specific implementations at all compared to the above. In my opinion, you're trading a small increase in UX and improved system resource usage (which most users won't notice) for a massive increase in developer resources. This is an order of magnitude worse if you're going to do a separate implementation for each platform as well as now you're going to need platform specific libraries, testing frameworks, development workflows etc. for each OS.

Unless you have lots of money, it's not practical to support multiple platforms with a 100% native experience using the minimal amount of CPU and memory possible. If you have an existing web app, moving to Electron isn't a big leap but that isn't the case if you want to have multiple native apps.

<comment><USER27> Technically, you can have all those advantages with Qt/QML, since it uses JavaScript and runs on desktop, mobile and even web. That said, I never used it.

Another alternative would be React-Native, now that react-native-web exists...

<comment><USER28> > Technically, you can have all those advantages with Qt/QML

GTK+, too. There was a big uproar several years ago when GNOME tried to anoint JS as the "official" language for GNOME app development. They eventually backpedaled, and overall their story for JS today seems to be technically decent but thoroughly undocumented.

Keep in mind, this was all before GitHub announced Atom and (what was not-yet- then called) Electron. Imagine if the GNOME folks had used that head start to commit themselves to the original decision, instead of reversing. They might have managed to capture the mindshare that eventually poured in Electron, there'd be a straightforward migration path for DOM-based UIs to go "native", and GTK+ and GNOME apps might've been successful outside the increasingly niche space it occupies on the Linux desktop.

<comment><USER26> JavaScript is one of the official GNOME languages.

[https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Gjs](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Gjs)

[https://2017.guadec.org/talks-and- events/index.html#abstract...](https://2017.guadec.org/talks-and- events/index.html#abstract-26-modern_javascript_in_gnome)

Electron apps across GNU/Linux users are the final nail of the desktop Linux aspirations.

When the world is a Web VM, the kernel and everything UNIX related is irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> After the frustration I faced when google killed iGoogle, I decided that I would never again become invested in anything from Google other than search and email.

<comment><USER30> Is the expectation that Google maintain products even when they're not profitable or beneficial for them? I can understand if they don't provide a reasonable sunset date but investing yourself in any company's product is a risk. At least with Google you'll get notice instead of a static html page one day announcing the shuttering of the service.

<comment><USER31> It's also a problem with a web-centric application developers. With a traditional software application, if the developer stops putting out updates you still have working software. With Google's services, you no longer have working software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm using only Vysor and Postman Chrome Apps. So I can probably switch to their Electron variants. But have mixed feeling about Chrome Apps discontinued. On one hand it's good as Chrome Apps were tied just to Chrome/ChromeOS, while web apps should be platform agnostic. On other hand, Chrome apps were much smaller than Electron apps, as Election runtime has not to be included with every app (Chrome was the shared runtime). There is about 2 orders of magnitude size difference (megabytes vs. hundreds of MBs).

Wish we have system level support for Electron apps, so not every single one has to bundle Electron libraries separately.

Edit: There is already project that is targeting that. [https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a- diet-w...](https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-with- electrino-c7ffdf1d6297)

<comment><USER33> Postman is great and they've had a standalone app for a while. It should work well for you unless you make use of a 'hosts' file. That's right, the standalone Postman app will just ignore it. Oh, they know about the bug. There's been a Github issue about it for over year with plenty of "Me too!" responses. They've done a ton of releases since then too, fixing bugs, adding features... all of which is meaningless if you need it to respect your hosts file settings like any normal app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Then...does it means they will shut down Chromebook as well? I can't understand. Chrome apps supported the environment of not only Chrome browser but Chrome OS as well so far. Do they have other plan for Chromebook? Weird decision...weird.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm really confused about what this means for Chrome Apps on ChromeOS. We use Electron for Windows/Mac/Linux but as far as I know Chrome Apps are still the only game in town for ChromeOS. Is there another way to release apps for Chrome OS?

<comment><USER27> "All types of Chrome apps will remain supported and maintained on Chrome OS for the foreseeable future. Additional enhancements to the Chrome apps platform will apply only to Chrome OS devices, including kiosks. Developers can continue to build Chrome apps (or Android apps) for Chrome OS."

[https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to- web.ht...](https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html)

<comment><USER36> So basically Google says they'll maintain and further develop this technology, so it can't be _bad_ per se.

They will however now reduce the amount of platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was... But for what reason? (Since it's clearly an OK technology in the eyes of ChromeOS)

This only shows yet again to never _rely_ on a Google-based platform for your application or service.

<comment><USER37> _...platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was..._

The plan, of course, is that _everyone_ will be on ChromeOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Google said that "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux > actively use Chrome packaged apps."

Well, if you delegate discovery of said apps to a small icon no one can see on screen, then no surprise.

</comment><comment><USER39> Great.

Anyone have any suggestions for a replacement for Authy?

It's a 2FA Chrome App that syncs your 2FA tokens across devices.

They have a 'desktop app' now available for Mac and Windows, but of course nothing for Linux (surprise surprise).

So any equivalent that will work cross platform and sync too?

<comment><USER40> If your tokens synchronize across multiple devices don't they stop being a legitimate "factor"?

<comment><USER41> I completely agree with this, but I would prefer if there was a mechanism to keep offline backups. Currently if I lose my phone I am frozen out of my accounts. 1-time codes do exist but they have issues - either they're very easily accessible in the form of a printed paper or they're very difficult to access like an encrypted backup in the cloud.

I don't have a good solution to this problem - I am mugged while traveling and I lose my phone and wallet. If anyone could share how they tackle this problem I'd be grateful.

<comment><USER39> What is 2FA? It's 'something you have'. It's not 'one single thing on one device only'. It's just 'something you have'.

'Something you have' relies on physical security, so if you have the same physical security for both your laptop and phone, there's no reduction by having a 2FA token on each device.

<comment><USER42> That's only true if there's a physical barrier to propagating your tokens to new devices.

The concern is that Authy changes the second factor from physical security back to something cloud-based and hackable.

I don't know if that's legit because I don't know how Authy works.

<comment><USER43> From reading the Authy docs, it sounds like all your Authy data is encrypted before leaving the device, so if the encryption works, it should be pretty secure. You can also turn off the multi-device support and backup, if you don't want those features. But tome, the risk of losing my single device and being locked out of my accounts is too high without it. I just wish Authy was open source so it could get more security review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What's the future for Chrome Remote Desktop?

<comment><USER45> They are deprecating the app and going to a web application.

There is also a companion extension, but I am unsure what purpose it serves.

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvle...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvlergXOE;context- place=topicsearchin/chrome/apps)

[https://remotedesktop.google.com/](https://remotedesktop.google.com/)

<comment><USER46> Extensions can use some APIs that are not available to web apps (but not all of the ones that Chrome Apps could use), and Web App + Extension is one of the Google recommended migration paths for Chrome Apps that use functionality beyond that available to pure web apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Will you still be able to manually add webpages as apps to run them in separate windows? It's so nice to run youtube in a window without url-bar or tabs-

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm use the Chrome App version of Pocket to download and read my Pocket articles offline on Windows 10. Any suggestions for a replacement?

I'm currently trying Poki [1] but I find it's offline reading features too limited for my tastes.

Pocket hints they may produce a Windows 10 app but that's a vague promise at the moment.

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

</comment><comment><USER49> I hate that Google axes features because only 1% of users are using them.

1% of Chrome's users are millions of users.

</comment><comment><USER50> I only ever used one-the SSH client. It was far nicer than PUTTY for those occasions where I needed to SSH from windows. Maybe I'll just do it from Termux on my phone from now on.

<comment><USER51> You could also install the WSL and a nice terminal emulator of your choice. Though if you need to SSH from a Windows box only on rare occasions, the phone might be enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't forget about application mode in Chrome: Menu > Tools > Add to desktop. It will then run the web site "chrome-less" without address bar etc.

</comment><comment><USER52> Pity. The underlying Nacl/PNacl technology is eons ahead of wasm, with better, if not equivalent security. It even had simd support!

</comment><comment><USER53> What's going to happen to the SSH app? It was awesome for when I didn't have access to a full-fat client.

<comment><USER54> It's going away for non-ChromeOS systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> So... anyone knows a good VideoStream replacement?

<comment><USER9> Videostream is a good Videostream replacement. New version is not a Chrome App, beta at [https://getvideostream.com/](https://getvideostream.com/) ;)

<comment><USER55> Thanks! I'll wait for the linux version</comment></comment></comment>


Before naming your startup, read this. - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/04/22/before-naming-your-startup-read-this/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=Before%20naming%20your%20startup%2C%20read%20this.&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia <comment><USER2> I was surprised at how much I liked this post, particularly the argument against "getfoo.com" as an alternative to "foo.com". Although I'd nit that security consultancies don't acquire customers from web pages at all; securit.ee would work fine, especially if you reverse hardware.</comment>


How and why the feds killed a talk on Tor-hacking at Black Hat - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/06/how-why-feds-killed-a-talk-on-tor-hacking-at-black-hat-exclusive/

<comment><USER2> "The feds put the hammer down — _most likely_ the National Security Agency. [...] "So with this, the researchers suddenly can't talk about it because of a National Secrecy Order. [...] The source didn't have first-hand knowledge of this incident but based their assessment on knowledge of the NSA's operation and its background with Tor." (emphasis mine)

So, the author of the article doesn't actually _know_ "how"...

"The NSA _likely_ put the screws to CMU to back off, the former intelligence official said, and there are two _probable_ reasons: either to protect its own use of Tor or to ensure that knowledge of how to crack Tor remains within a more limited circle. Tor and its variants are used by U.S. intelligence case officers operating in the field to communicate securely wherever they may be"

...or _why_ , to any great degree of certainty at all.

Heck, almost anyone with some passing knowledge of the Snowden revelations could have _guessed_ all of that. Yup, the talk was likely suppressed by the NSA, with some kind of court order meaning the researchers can't talk about it, either to protect a crack they're already using, or to stop others cracking their own use of it.

Or, have I missed something, and is there an actual story there?</comment>


New WordPress Page Builder Feature: Customize Your Color Picker - <AUTHOR> https://elementor.com/v010-more-colorful/ <comment><USER2> Misleading title. This isn't a change to core WP.</comment>


MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI) is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar/

<comment><USER2> Then don't link to it.

Any why the ticker name?</comment>


Prepaid Cellphones Are Cheaper. Why Aren't They Popular? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/prepaid-phone-plans/ <comment><USER2> Prepaid is an interesting beast. In most of the rest of the world, telcos regard prepaid as a plague and only really offer it as a goteway to "postpay". Postpaid customers are predictable future revenue.

In Australia, I was with Telstra, which has by far the best coverage. I was on cotnract. The reason? For $50 a month I basically got (for me) unlimited voice, text and Internet (2-3GB/month). but the 32GB iPhone 4 only cost me $300 with $100 rebate. The handset outright cost $950 IIRC so for $1400 I got the handset and 2 years of service. I don't think I could've gotten two years of service for $450.

In the US I originally went with AT&T as they were the only GSM network that supported the iPhone (T-Mobile could support it on Edge; Verizon and other models came later). Coverage kinda sucks in NYC, really sucks in the Bay Area but in most of the rest of the country is fine.

This was originally month-to-month but ultimately I figured I may as well get the 4S on contract (the discounted price plus the ETF worked out to be no more than the outright price anyway if I cancelled early).

But prepaid? That tends to relegate you to "inferior" networks in the US. T-Mobile and Sprint can give good deals but have really patchy coverage. MetroPCS, as far as I can tell, exists solely for drug dealers and pimps.

One difference is that in most of the rest of the world you don't pay to receive calls. This makes having a phone and not using it much (to make calls) much more viable. Also texting rates in the US are essentially extortionate.

Other countries (Australia and IIRC the UK at least) seem to more heavily discount handsets. It seems like people most often buy the phone that is $0 upfront on whatever plan they want (or they bump their plan up to where it is $0 upfront). The iPhone changed this dynamic somewhat whereas most people seemed to view phones as interchangeable previously.

This article is right about one thing: people do seem to put too much importance on the upfront cost. I see things like the latest gen iPhone is $99 upfront and the previous generation is $49. For $50 you get older hardware that will be obsolete a year earlier... for something that'll probably cost you up to $2000 (or more) over 2 years anyway.

<comment><USER3> I use an iPhone with a prepaid SIM with AT&T. I pay 10¢ a minute for calls and texts in addition to a $25/1gb data plan. I make my calls over VOIP with Talkatone and use the Google Voice app for texting. I pay $25 a month.

It was really hard to get this set up. I had to literally fight with AT&T, cut my own SIM, manually enter APN settings. When I have to purchase a new AT&T SIM after traveling they tell me it's not possible, that I can't do it. I explain that it is and I can, tell them how to set it up on their end. Ridiculous.

They tell me the iPhone can't do prepaid (it can), that it isn't unlocked (it is), that it won't work if it's jailbroken (it's not) and that all of my data will magically disappear (it will if you don't configure up the APN settings). They will say anything to steer you from prepaid.

Overseas in Southeast Asia you just walk in to a corner store, pay $2 for a SIM, give him a few dollars to load it up and send a text to buy a data plan. Vietnam was the cheapest, a couple bucks for gigs and gigs of mobile broadband.

I will never buy a phone on contract. AT&T is a nightmare and the fact that we're no longer married helps me rest easy.

<comment><USER4> Curious about the part where you put foreign non-AT&T sim cards in and it works, without jail breaking?

<comment><USER5> All 4S phones are unlocked if bought off contract (well the GSM ones anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently switched from contract to prepaid. Last year I took the plunge with an Android smart phone. I was curious to know what internet in my pocket really meant. My plan was a 5GB 4G plan with t-mobile.

I downloaded and compiled 1 year of usage into a spreadsheet. One year later and the results are in.

* My monthly usage never went over 300MB. Most of the traffic was offloaded to local wi-fi between my office and home. * Average of 125 text messages per month * Average of 900 minutes (TOTAL) used per month

I was a little shocked to see the hard data. As it turns out, and I only speak for myself, internet in my pocket did not mean very much. I could save a lot more money by switching away from a smart phone and back into a trusty Nokia 3310.

Even after breaking the contract ($200 fee) I will be saving $70 per month which offsets the penalty in 3 months.

I now have my Nokia 3310 with 1500 minutes and text for $35/month. Other benefits include:

* charging the phone once a week * better reception * [sarcasm]texting and driving is way safer now (love t9)[/sarcasm]

edit: added sarcasm tags

<comment><USER7> Texting while driving is never safe. Please stop doing it.

<comment><USER8> T9 is better than using those micro sized keyboards though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Arstechnica had a recent article on this: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/prepaid-mobile- phone...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/prepaid-mobile-phone-users- in-america-hit-record-high/)

I switched to Straight Talk on an iPhone 4 (AT&T GSM) right after my contract expired, with basically no problems. I'm a light data user (web/twitter/email/maps, no streaming music/video), so $45/month is a decent bargain for "unlimited" everything.

Now, if there was only a decent prepaid data-only plan for tethering. What I want is to buy a few gigs of transfer that doesn't expire (for at least a few months) and is tied to a USB stick. Nobody appears to sell this.

<comment><USER10> I'm in the US and just did the same. Got an unlocked Galaxy Nexus and a pre- paid SIM from StraightTalk. $45 per month for all you can eat everything on ATT's network... I'm really sorry that I didn't know about this before since I've spent ~$100/month for the past 7 years with Verizon or ATT. I haven't found any issues with the coverage either. Mobile phone consumers in the US (at least, those I know) are really locked into the mentality of signing up for contracts. I'm glad to have broken free of that mindset.

Also, I _do_ tether it for my daily train commute, but please don't tell them that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't realize how good prepaid could be until I started traveling frequently to London (and eventually moving here). I had bought a Nexus One and more recently a Galaxy Nexus direct from Google so I wouldn't have to deal with unlocking hassles.

The first place I walked into in Paddington station 2 years ago was Vodafone. For a £10 top-up I get 500MB of data that's good for 30 days, and the credit is generally enough to last me for that period as well (it's less than 100 mins I think, but I tend to use Skype for long conversations). My wife pays slightly more for unlimited data and 300 mins/3000 texts since she talks more. It's a very minor hassle to top up every month, but it's crazy to think how much more we were paying in the states. Saving well over a $1000 a year.

I didn't realize prepaid plans were available in the states. I thought it was basically just the prepaid feature phones they sell in gas stations. I'll definitely be looking for a better deal when I get back.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't speak for the population at large, but I can say why I will be switching from MetroPCS even though I've been happy with them: coverage. My phone does not work as a phone - at all - within a 10 mile radius of where I now live. I'll be looking into other prepaid options, but nothing looks nearly as promising and I quickly start encroaching on "not actually cheaper" territory. Virgin mobile would be one of the better options, but I refuse to give them any business ever since they screwed up my billing causing me to overdraft, and then refused to cover any of the fees that caused me to incur.

<comment><USER13> Bingo. My only options if I want reliable service are AT&T and Verizon. I don't want to drive to the top of a mountain just to get cell service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Market segmentation. Prepaid plans offer lower-quality handsets, are less flexible, and tend to gouge you if you have high usage.

Ultimately they're deliberately not designed for people who get a lot of use out of their phones, because the point is not to sell them to those people.

<comment><USER15> Didn't you read the part about the prepaid iPhone 4 & 4S on Virgin mobile with unlimited data?

<comment><USER16> They just started not having crappy phones in June, so it will take some time for perceptions to change. Heck I have a virgin mobile phone and this is the first I have heard of it(iPhone any way, in June they announced getting the EVO 3d with android 4 on it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a pre-paid Telstra device here in Australia. I hardly use my phone so it makes sense, right? I cannot buy credit less than $20, which I'm OK with however, this credit "expires" if I don't use it within a certain time frame. As if pre-paid credit goes stale... If I've run out of credit and I haven't topped up my account within a certain amount time, I will receive and SMS that they're going to cancel my account.

<comment><USER18> This makes me practically foam at the mouth. "Pre-paid" that expires a month or two after you purchase it, _isn't_. It is merely paying month-to-month. Pre-paid should not expire for a reasonable time-frame (at least a year, if ever), regardless of how much you've purchased -- just like international calling cards.

<comment><USER19> It depends on how the expiration works. I think tracfone's policy is fair. As long as you don't run out of service days your minutes will never expire, and you can get three months of them for $20.

<comment><USER18> I was going to mention TracFone as a good example, actually -- but I looked at their website and saw that they had the "service days" limitation that you mention. IIRC they used to have an even better policy than that, more in line with what I described.

<comment><USER19> Really? All I know about TracFone policy changes is that _service days_ used to expire so you were forced to buy a card every 3 months instead of stocking up. But they changed that.

Either way it doesn't make sense to charge $0 for a phone to consume resources by having a constant connection to cell phone towers and reserving a number. $7 is pretty cheap so I hope it's a fair price compared to actual costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a very happy Tracfone customer. I've seen people get into so much trouble with contracts, whereas with Tracfone I've experienced the best customer service.

Once, for instance, I lost a phone with 3000 minutes on it, and I was able to buy a new phone at Target and transfer the minutes in about ten minutes. Contrast this to the hours that people spent on the phone talking to AT&T people that just screw up your account.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I use prepaid T-Mobile in the UK. I buy a £20 "6MONTHWEB" booster once every 6 months and it gives me 500MB of data transfer per month for the next 6 months, which is more than I use (I have wifi at home and work). I barely ever use it for calls or SMS, so my phone costs me somewhere between £3.33 and £4.00 per month (not including the initial cost of buying the phone of course). SMS would have been an issue, but I managed to convince all of my common SMS contacts to switch over to using Kik Messenger instead.

<comment><USER21> I travel a lot and use prepaid almost all the time - all my friends are on Android or iPhone and I can use either Google Talk or iMessage. The only person I ever send SMS to anymore is my dad who has a blackberry. I have a friend with more diverse friends and they're all on WhatsApp.

I can't imagine the panic operators are feeling over declining SMS revenue.

<comment><USER8> I thought (in the US anyway) that most carriers had unlimited talk/text now. Data is where the tiered pricing is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As somebody who is not a heavy phone user I only recently switched from using prepaid to contract. I think there's a few reasons that contracts are popular.

Cost, a new Iphone 4S is ~£400, with a contract you effectively get it for £40 up front. Sure, over the life of the 2 year contract it might work out cheaper to buy it up front but not everybody has £400 up front and they really have their heart set on the iphone. It's basically another form of "buy now , pay later".

Convenience , a monthly paid phone will always work as long as you remember to pay the bill. My days on prepaid phones were a hassle as I remember needing to make calls and having no credit, or being cut off in the middle of a call due to running out of credit. Having to wrestle with the automated payment line in order to make an important call is a real pain.

Culture, There is a perception (in the UK at least) that prepaid phones are for children and drug dealers while serious grown ups will have a monthly contract. I know a few women who would consider a guy who uses a prepaid phone as a "bad sign" if out on a date for example.

<comment><USER23> If you're using an expensive phone everybody will assume that you're on a monthly plan, so you can have the best of both worlds.

For topping up prepaid, I just set up automatic monthly payments for some amount larger than I'd regularly use. Sure, the balance would grow, so occasionally I would just hold a payment. The key is that I had to actively act to NOT pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Virgin Mobile (Sprint reseller) and T-Mobile prepaid, during my experimentation, did not roam. Outside of your carrier's direct coverage area, you got nothing. This is a huge deal if you ever leave a major metropolitan area and your carrier is not Verizon.

At least for me, that's why.

<comment><USER25> This is huge. I've got the Sprint iPhone in NYC and I'm on "Extended" quite often even in the city, if the Virgin phone was just going to go dark and not roam, that would make for pretty crappy coverage...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In T-Mobile US's case, pre-paid services like the pay-as-you-go or Monthly4G plans do not have access to the full set of towers that the contracted plans do. Per a sales rep I talked to yesterday, the non-contracted plans exclude domestic "partner carriers". This comes up if T-Mobile is poor in an area and they contract with AT&T for coverage.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, but it's not really _that_ much of a problem compared to dealing with goddamn Verizon. $50/month for unlimited everything is pretty decent.

Admittedly, the instant I move from Massachusetts to Haifa this September I'll be heading off to a mall to find a new phone plan. The entire bleeding country over there basically runs on no-contract SIM plans, so the competition has dragged prices _way_ down. Their equivalent of my current T-Mobile plan costs about $22/month (including VAT, as far as I know) and includes unlimited international calling (to either North America alone or North America+Europe et al depending on when you want your data throttled).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Right now, consumers don't do the math_

The same comment can be said for many other expensive monthly subscriptions and pseudo-subscriptions, including cable TV and car loan/lease payments. I'd include mortgages as well, but in my state the paperwork is actually very clear about monthly costs and total costs (principal + interest + fees) over the lifetime of the loan.

I've been using prepaid plans for as long as I have owned mobile phones (10+ years). First was AT&T GoPhone on cheapo handsets (paid about $100/year from 2001 until 2011), now it's a T-Mobile Monthly4G plan on a midrange Android device (Samsung Exhibit II which cost $200, the plan costs $30/month).

The savings add up. Back-of-the-envelope, I estimate I've saved more than $3000 since 2001, compared to if I had started on contracts.

<comment><USER29> "...in my state the paperwork is actually very clear about monthly costs and total costs (principal + interest + fees) over the lifetime of the loan."

That's because the loan industry is regulated to disclose these numbers. If some US government agency attempted to enforce this kind of upfront openness on wireless companies, there'd be a veritable shit storm of lobbying effort to stop it. Funny thing is, if the monthly payment fits within consumers' budgets, they don't particularly care about the overall cost. And if the _actual_ bill is within, oh say, 25% over the stated amount, they'll pay the extra without question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well the truth is most people are pretty stupid in that regard.

\- they don't want to pay $500-$600 upfront, so they rather go with a contract, even though in the end they pay more.

\- they can't be bothered to buy a phone separate and do the research to find the right plan for them.

\- they just want to go in a store and leave with a nice phone, without thinking and paying too much.

</comment><comment><USER31> It is interesting because in France some operators are fighting to get subsidized phones considered as a consumer credit (you just pay the phone over time instead of up front, like a credit).

Since consumer credit is much more heavily regulated, if they win, people will be more likely to consider prepaid plans and non-subsidized phones.

<comment><USER32> I was about to mention that. If anyone wants more detail, what's happening is that is Free Mobile (new player on the market) is suing SFR (one of the three major players) for unfair competition. Here is a source (in French): [http://www.capital.fr/a-la-une/actualites/exclusif-free- port...](http://www.capital.fr/a-la-une/actualites/exclusif-free-porte- plainte-contre-sfr-741894)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Prepaid is not cheaper if you are smart about your plan. With prepaid, you cannot

1) Get the "standard" 20% corporate/education discount that most phone companies offer

2) Get a family plan which can be much cheaper

3) Get data for cheap (t-mobile offers 200mb data for $10/month)

4) Get free nighttime and weekend minutes

5) Get free calling within the phone network

Most people on prepaid could get a better deal without prepaid if they shopped around a bit.

I would love it if people stopped the misconception that "prepaid is cheaper" and instead realized that different plans are better for different phone usage habits.

Update: formatting, changed one instance of the word "on contract" to "without prepaid"

<comment><USER34> I pay $45 a month for unlimited everything on the AT&T network (Straight Talk). Nobody else can even remotely come close to that.

The absolute cheapest postpaid plan any carrier offers is $40 a month plus bullshit fees and taxes - even if you knock 20% (which is an abnormally high discount - and its especially disingenuous to suggest a 20% discount in a _startup forum_ where people almost certainly aren't affiliated with a company of sufficient size to receive such a discount) off of that, that's $32 + 'fees' and taxes plus the cost of an SMS and/or data plan. Your 'free' features start looking a lot less competitive at that point.

<comment><USER33> I've seen 15-25% off for being a member of a variety of institutions, like credit unions, AAA, costco, universities, etc., many of which hacker news members are a part of. And you can save a lot with a family plan by adding $5 additional lines. Walmart has a $30/month plan, and T-mobile has $35/month plans.

Like I said, it depends how you shop around and your usage habits.

ps: I don't think "disingenuous" is the word you're looking for here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Virgin Media customer support is terrible. You often have to wait over 30 minutes to talk to somebody.

Virgin Media uses the Sprint network. Verizon and Sprint have roaming agreements, but only for contract phones. If you're outside Sprint coverage on a contract you can roam to Verizon, but with Virgin Media you don't roam.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's not apples to apples at this point, but I hope i will be soon. E.g if you're on Virgin mobile, yes you're "on sprint" but you can't roam onto Verizon's network for free like you can when you're officially on sprint with a contract. So if you live in NYC it could work, but if you need solid coverage, for instance, in the midwest, you either have to pony up for the 2 year contract or have terrible coverage with one of the lower tier networks.

Also, last time I checked, Verizon, which has waaay better coverage than everyone else, does not actually make it any cheaper to go off contract.

I'm being very lazy and not providing any citations for any of my claims, I hope I'm proven wrong by more recent news or newer options.

<comment><USER37> You're right Virgin Mobile not having the free-roaming agreement that Sprint does. In practice this hasn't mattered for me in most of the Western states (Sprint has coverage along the major freeways and in rural Utah, at least). I still have older GSM feature phones though, so if I were ever in a position where I needed to be sure I would have coverage I guess I would just get a pre-paid SIM from AT&T or someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I switched from Verizon to Straight Talk, and I can't believe how much better my coverage is, how much better my plan is, and how much cheaper it is.

The one thing is that the phone is not subsidized, so I bought a $300 LG Android phone. But at $50/month for unlimited talk/text/3G versus $90/month on Verizon for limited on talk and text, that payback is well short of the 2 year contract I would have been locked into.

I tell everyone I know how happy I am that my wife and I switched, but most people just stare blankly at me, like there must be some catch and some valid reason to stick with paying twice as much to a major player in the wireless oligopoly with hostile customer service.

<comment><USER39> Why would switching to a prepaid plan give you better coverage?

<comment><USER40> He's switching networks from Verizon to AT&T, which is what Straight Talk uses to provide service.

Most people and surveys find that Verizon works better for them but that's not always the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It should be mentioned it's a slightly stretched definition of "unlimited data". From Virgin Mobile [1]:

Once 2.5GB (3.5 if paying for "mobile hotspot") of data is consumed during the monthly cycle, data speeds may be reduced to 256 kbps or below for the rest of that monthly plan cycle.

It was only 200MB last time I looked (although that may not have been with Virgin) which is why I went for a contract plan. Also, outside the iPhone, the selection is really poor.

1) [http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond- talk-...](http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk- plans/faqs/)

<comment><USER19> 200MB definitely wouldn't have been Virgin. A few months ago they had truly unlimited data with no throttling. And for a lower price...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Combined with Google Voice, I've been using a prepaid cell phone for a couple of years now. I only pay about $30 every three months and I've never once come close to hitting my prepaid limit.

</comment><comment><USER43> The bottom line - do your math and avoid lock-ins like CDMA. For example N900/N9 users in US always used prepaid plans, since those devices were never subsidized in States. And it does come out cheaper overall. The main reason why providers try to underplay non contract plan is the lock-in. They don't want users to switch easily, which is possible with GSM devices and non contract plans.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's easy to see why they aren't popular. There aren't a lot of Prepaid phone stores, I see Verizon and AT&T stores _everywhere_. And you can't get the Newest Phone^(TM) from them. If the iPhone 5 was released right this instant it wouldn't hit somewhere like Virgin Mobile for at least a year, probably longer. (They just recently got the iPhone 4...)

<comment><USER45> Maybe your state is different, but every gas station, Wal-Mart and grocery in my region sells prepaid phones!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> 97% of users in India are prepaid - that is almost 550m users. You can get a pre-paid connection without paying anything and recharge options start from Rs 10(20 cents). 1 minute call costs less than 2 cents. Free cell phone plans are not popular as customers can just buy a prepaid card and use it with any phone they like. (Phones start at $20)

</comment><comment><USER45> They missed a key point -- marketing. Prepaid phones are marketed to low-end consumers... Kids, cheapstakes, poor folk, undocumented workers, people eith bad credit, etc.

People with money aren't going to buy a cellphone from a Family Dollar or Exxon.

</comment><comment><USER47> In Brazil prepaid phones are more than 80% of active lines. Here in the U.S I'm completely scared how poor and expensive the service are. The Brazil service and awful and get a lot of complaints, but here is just worse.

</comment><comment><USER48> Er, they're not cheaper - at least here in Australia: <http://www.virginmobile.com.au/mobile-data-plans/>

Neither of the major players here, Telstra or Optus, seem to do prepaid data, although they're in the same ballpark for postpaid: [https://www.optusbusiness.com.au/shop/mobilephones/packs/mob...](https://www.optusbusiness.com.au/shop/mobilephones/packs/mobiledata)

<comment><USER49> Personally, prepaid data is what I would really love. I am often back in Australia for one month every one to two years, and an iPhone without data is such a useless device. A beautiful, shiny black mini computer in which all the useful functions aren't available. So frustrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've found that if you have a family plan, the savings aren't there to sign each person up with a contract free phone. Especially considering that the subsidies now for the latest phones are about $400. The article also doesn't take interest into account for that loan that the provider gives you. If you need to put that contract-free phone on a credit card, that could make it a bad deal as well.

</comment><comment><USER51> Prepaid used to cost a fortune if you used your phone more than about 10 minutes a month; it's only recently that it started to come down in price.

</comment><comment><USER52> I actually made a few hundred dollars sophomore year by selling prepaid phones on eBay. I'd buy it from the the site directly and ship it to the buyer directly. I think people looking for replacement phones for their post-paid plans would search by model number on eBay, and had no idea that prepaid phones were so cheap.

</comment><comment><USER53> I wonder if corporate discounts and family plans are part of the reason. I'm on a family plan with T-Mobile with my parents and siblings and it's about $45 a month for (I think--I've never hit the limit) 4GB of high-speed data and unlimited messaging, plus of course an upgrade every 2 years.

</comment><comment><USER54> In Indonesia, prepaid cards (and cellphones) are common. No one use annual/monthly bill except they use the cellphone intensively (so they don't want to get rid with empty balance).

The only reason is with prepaid cards, they can control the balance, losing fear of unexpected high bill.

<comment><USER55> Same in China. I pay about 90 RMB a month for 90 minutes + 300 MB of data. Its not strictly prepay at that point, but you just remember to buy your plan every month, there is no contract, and BYOP (bring your own phone). I could go prepay if I wanted, but with data buying a plan each month makes more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Meanwhile, in Japan, you get absolutely no monthly cost benefit for buying your phone up-front, the same monthly fees either way, and you get horrible per-minute pricing if you go prepaid (up to 2x the average post-paid per minute price).

</comment><comment><USER57> if you take the (low) depreciation rate of the phone into account its probably even more true. the resell rates on iPhones is quite high. used iPhone 4's are going for apprx $250. you could think of it as a lease.

</comment><comment><USER58> I use $100 of prepaid credit with Telus (I'm in Canada) and it lasts me a year. I mostly use my Android phone for the wi-fi. Most providers offer a free sms service online and I use Google Talk for free phone calls.</comment>


Tips for New (or Not So New) Managers - <AUTHOR> http://belchak.com/2016/02/28/tips-for-new-or-not-so-new-managers/ <comment><USER2> IMO, Tip Number One for Everyone: Don't make the lives of people around you worse. Sort of the General Form of the Hippocratic Oath</comment>


"The Supreme Court has just predicted the winners of the next November election" - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/rights/145322/supreme_court%27s_%27radical_and_destructive%27_decision_hands_over_democracy_to_the_corporations <comment><USER2> "In other words, as Stephen Colbert put it last year, 'Corporations are people too.'"

That's true.

So let's take this to it's logical conclusion as expressed here: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate- murder...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder- charges_b_432633.html)

"Shouldn't it follow that when a corporation is bankrupted -- killed -- that its management could be found guilty of the capital crime of murder?"

<comment><USER3> bankrupted != killed

You can always get some more money and start a bankrupted corporation up again.

<comment><USER2> Your shareholders might disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's another form of privatizing privilege and socializing cost. A corporation is granted privileges of personhood, but spared the liabilities. A corporation can't be imprisoned, and it's very difficult and expensive to criminally prosecute its executives (its brain?) and impossible to do the same to its shareholders (its body). (It's also difficult to seek civil remedies; if you are not of comparable size, they can often effectively spend you into the ground or, financially, keep you from even starting.)

There's a reason we lock people away, other than to prevent them repeating a crime: It's a form of punishment and control that -- for most -- exceeds financial penalties. Corporations are, as an entity, immune from this. And the bulk of the people who enable their activities are, as well.

In light of this, I see no problem with a reasoned limitation of their privileges. They do not exist as living beings (I initially used the word "corporeal", but I imagine that would confuse some or my intended meaning be deliberately mis-interpreted in counter-argument); they are not granted the same privileges.

(For those who don't make the connection: The "socialization" of cost means the costs incurred when corporations engage in criminal behavior. This might be be seen to include the prevalence of such behavior, as a result of a lack of effective controls against it.)</comment>


Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/01/portions-brain-fall-asleep-wake-back-time-stanford-researchers-find/ <comment><USER2> Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries.

I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing implementation details.

Some examples that I remember: after a particularly long all nighter (I was a freshman in college and wanted to try it while I could still do it by choice and not necessity) I was editing an article I was writing for the school magazine. I was starting to fade and realized that I couldn't read and comprehend well-formed, meaningful sentences that I had just written.

I've noticed that when sleep deprived I notice different things and have a more diverse set of emergent thoughts/recall events. For example, today I noticed the plug for an electric oven at a restaurant I have not only been to at least 100 times, but have worked at for months. I randomly remembered the lyrics to China's five-year-plan song walking home from class. I will suddenly remember and think fragments in Spanish, despite not touching it for years.

Truly, it appears the nature of effective cognition is _restricting_ all of the many responses to stimuli to those that are useful and relevant, and I think the parts of the brain that do that may have 'fallen asleep' in all those instances.

<comment><USER3> I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relatively high IQ who can't read.

<comment><USER4> I find migraines like that to be quite fun (at least from the second time, after I spoke to a doctor and learned that there was no permenant damage). In my case I totally lose my short-term memory :D

The weird thing is that after the migraine is over I can actually remember most of what happened during it, so somehow things are still finding their way into my long term memory - though it's mostly just conversations like "hey, I'm having a migraine, I'm going to lie down for a few minutes, because I'm having a migraine, it's affecting my memory, so I'm going to lie down, I think this migraine is affecting my memory" "ok dude, take a break" "woah, how did you know I need a break? I was just thinking that I should take a break, because I'm having a migraine, and it's probably affecting my memory. Did you know I get migraines that affect my memory? I should probably go lie down"...

<comment><USER5> This reminds me of an article I read a while back [1]. He had years of memories come back that he was never able to remember before the surgery.

[1] [http://qz.com/511920/a-tumor-stole-every-memory-i-had- this-i...](http://qz.com/511920/a-tumor-stole-every-memory-i-had-this-is-what- happened-when-it-all-came-back/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know how every generation conceives of the brain as a machine that's analogous to the latest technology of that generation? Like in the 19th century, the brain was a steam engine, and then in the 20th it was a computer? Well, apparently now the brain is a smartphone.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure how this relates to the article?

<comment><USER8> It's offering the smartphone as an analogy for the behavior described in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think we are getting closer to furthering the concept that dreaming isn't just a side-effect of thinking (or simply a defrag/clean-up routine upon the previous day's thoughts or the mind's expectations for tomorrow). It _is_ itself the key to the thinking process, and sits above and commands the other "agents". It helps us deal with uncertainty and lack of rationality inherent in the universe and our incomplete understanding of it.

<comment><USER2> I don't understand this obsession with the "purpose" of dreaming. As far as I have experienced its just noise on the wire that we sometimes are conscious enough to recognize.

Having spent enough time in extremely sleep-deprived states for projects recently, I've experienced firsthand a lot of funky stuff going on (e.g. falling asleep and waking up with a full page of class notes in front of me, or realizing that I've started 'dreaming' while editing a document, the dream being seeded by the words I was processing.)

<comment><USER10> > _As far as I have experienced its just noise on the wire that we sometimes > are conscious enough to recognize._

If it was actual noise it would have absolute minimal statistical chance of having any coherent structure.

<comment><USER11> It's noise in brainspace, which is already structured.

<comment><USER12> I have lucid dreams almost every night now. I'm talking about entire story arcs with plot twists.

Last nights had Donald Trump, my wife and Jennifer Love Hewitt. There were riots going on and people reading newspapers with moving video ink. There was an old book called "The Fall" that was filled with fascinating ink drawings of ritualistic acts (eg: a man sat cross legged on broken fragments of his own arms). Etc. That kind of stuff. Had a full story.

Noise on the line in Brain-space could still be the case, but if so we can learn something from that noise regarding the way brain structures work.

What I'm saying is if it is just noise, then the noise must be feeding into an entire projective area of creativity that amplifies that noise, not just locally but over time, and in ways that maintain consistency.

Really fascinates me

<comment><USER13> I'm seconding the story/plot elements.

I've had some dreams like short sci-fi stories. Some with time travel/causality loop tangles as plot. Some with twists. Complex character and places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the Mental Modules popping in and out of existence from the Coursera course "Buddhism and Modern Psychology", in week 4: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of- meditation#syllabu...](https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of- meditation#syllabus).

</comment><comment><USER15> I was recently reading my daughter a story after being woken up too early and 'half asleep'. I kept noticing that I had invented a line of text or two, and knew that I had done this because part of my brain wasn't awake enough to focus on or perhaps read the words on the page. So one part of my brain was watching another invent plot or dialogue, while aware that another was 'asleep'. Other times I became aware that the story-supplementing part was not functioning and was able to jolt myself back to a state where I could read and recite the current line.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's some amazing relevant research with so many consequences that I keep coming back to:

Partial sleep in the context of augmentation of brain function

Abstract:

 _Inability to solve complex problems or errors in decision making is often attributed to poor brain processing, and raises the issue of brain augmentation. Investigation of neuronal activity in the cerebral cortex in the sleep-wake cycle offers insights into the mechanisms underlying the reduction in mental abilities for complex problem solving. Some cortical areas may transit into a sleep state while an organism is still awake. Such local sleep would reduce behavioral ability in the tasks for which the sleeping areas are crucial. The studies of this phenomenon have indicated that local sleep develops in high order cortical areas. This is why complex problem solving is mostly affected by local sleep, and prevention of local sleep might be a potential way of augmentation of brain function. For this approach to brain augmentation not to entail negative consequences for the organism, it is necessary to understand the functional role of sleep. Our studies have given an unexpected answer to this question. It was shown that cortical areas that process signals from extero- and proprioreceptors during wakefulness, switch to the processing of interoceptive information during sleep. It became clear that during sleep all "computational power" of the brain is directed to the restoration of the vital functions of internal organs. These results explain the logic behind the initiation of total and local sleep. Indeed, a mismatch between the current parameters of any visceral system and the genetically determined normal range would provide the feeling of tiredness, or sleep pressure. If an environmental situation allows falling asleep, the organism would transit to a normal total sleep in all cortical areas. However, if it is impossible to go to sleep immediately, partial sleep may develop in some cortical areas in the still behaviorally awake organism. This local sleep may reduce both the "intellectual power" and the restorative function of sleep for visceral organs._

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013465/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013465/)

Fascinating stuff, imo. I've definitely felt the difference between partial sleep restedness and total sleep restedness, and the idea of sleep pressure seems to line up with my experience and with my idea of explorable, falsifiable models of phenomena. The idea that we dream while processing internal organ information is beautiful to me on multiple levels- maybe memory consolidation has a whole lot to do with pre-existing organ health! Maybe instead of the idea that we dream with only our heads, we dream with all of our organs- just imagine how differently Jung would interpret Pauli's dreams if he knew about this!

<comment><USER17> I wonder if this also explains some of the benefits of meditation. While focusing on one part of our higher functions, more areas of the brain cam slip into this low power state, without fully entering sleep. Which is why people feel refreshed and relaxed after a session.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like the article misses an interesting analog in _power gating_ :

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

</comment><comment><USER19> I seem to recall similar research in rats or mice that found that "sleep" states occurred randomly when awake, and slowly synchronized into moving waves of "sleep" when asleep. If I am indeed remembering correctly, then it would seem more likely that this localized sleep mechanism is shared by all mammals, including humans. I'm sure many of us have experienced cycles of awareness while supposedly fully awake as well.

I wonder if it extends to reptiles, fish, etc.

<comment><USER20> _Evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight_

[http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12468](http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12468)

<comment><USER21> Thank you for this interesting paper!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So our brains have Speedstep and are able to shut down cores to save power? :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems to me that the brain is conservative on energy consumption here. The same I apply to my hobby electronic circuitry design, i.e. turn off sensory areas when not in use and back on as needed.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would be interested to see how this relates to mental illnesses such as ADHD, schizophrnias catatonic states, and dissociative identity disorder. But maybe that will be another decade out.

</comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of dropout regularization - the key idea there is to randomly turn off units during training.

<comment><USER26> You're on to something!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If our brains would work fully all the time, our head would boil and explode. I don't see how this is so new.

I am glad that functioning of the brain is understood much better. Also, this could be utilized if we could find ways to increase focus, maybe even artificially, well artificially until brain gets trained for full flow state for example.

<comment><USER10> > _If our brains would work fully all the time, our head would boil and > explode. I don 't see how this is so new._

Citation needed.

<comment><USER27> I was referring the energy usage of the brain. It is never all used at the same time, just a small portion, but that doesn't mean other parts are not used, just they are all turned on and off.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard- cal...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> See Carlos Casteneda and "assembling the self."

</comment><comment><USER29> Dolphins put half their brains to sleep at a time.

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks like my brain does full shutdown whenever there's an interview

<comment><USER31> Ha! Came here to say something similar.

For me it's in meetings or when someone's telling me a vital piece of information I _must_ remember.

<comment><USER30> Feel you!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SnickSnaps.com (Take 2) - best way to browse Craigslist - <AUTHOR> http://snicksnaps.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> SnickSnaps makes browsing craigslist less awful and almost fun. We show you only the listings with pictures allowing for a beautiful and quick way to browse your local listings.

Updates from version 1: \- Added more cities \- Added more categories \- New look

Please feel free to leave comments, questions, suggestions, anything! Thanks!

This was our old thread for version 1 <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4248299>

<comment><USER2> How about adding Houston? Also, there is a spelling error in the Motorcycles quick link on the left side. (Motorycycles)</comment></comment>