Issues and requirements for SNI encryption in TLS - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-sni-encryption <comment><USER2> Small bit of background:

TLS typically works via per-hostname certificates. If you have only a single host on an end-point then no problem. But what if you want to host two or more domains with different certificates on a single end-point? It's a problem.

So Server Name Indication (SNI) was invented. In effect you send, in plain text, the hostname name you wish to contact to the end-point, who is then able to use that information to route the request. The correctly routed request can then utilize the right certificate.

At the time this didn't have large security implications because unencrypted DNS was already leaking requests like crazy. But with DNS slowly getting more secure and TLS gaining a huge market share (<3 Let's Encrypt), SNI is starting to stand out as an "easy" way to spy on what someone is requesting.

While IP Addresses themselves can be used for spying, encrypted DNS, protected SNI, and TLS all increase the cost and complexity of that spying, and make the results harder to trust (particularly on shared hosts or sites using a shared load balancing system). If encrypted SNI becomes a reality, it is a huge win against ISPs spying on us and selling our browsing histories.

<comment><USER3> Worded differently:

With non-SNI TLS (traditional) the server name is only sent ONCE the connection is encrypted, you can have several severs by using Subject Alternate Names (SAN), with a de facto maximum of about a 100. All the names have to be in a single cert though, because at time of establishing the encrypted connection, there is no way to know which cert to use.

With SNI, the hostname is sent before the encryption starts, so you can have more than one cert on the same server. This makes life easier for the admins as they no longer have to coordinate a bunch of hostname within a single cert, but it means that the target hostname travels through your ISP etc... in clear.

<comment><USER4> tl;dr the only reason to care about SNI in TLS 1.3 is if you are a privacy freak. It's not a security concern.

(Incidentally, your ISP can still learn what hosts you visit with traffic analysis)

<comment><USER5> > tl;dr the only reason to care about SNI in TLS 1.3 is if you are a privacy > freak. It's not a security concern.

You also need to care about SNI if you're trying to evade a firewall in a repressive country that blocks encrypted messaging services and VPNs that are used to bypass censorship and surveillance. Some of those firewalls were looking at the SNI to figure out if the traffic was something they wanted to block or not.

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/04/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/04/google-disables-domain-fronting-capability-used-to-evade- censors/)

<comment><USER6> They can still check the SNI string, since initial encryption is negotiated with the proxy.

They can't subsequently masquerade as the actual SNI host since they don't have a valid cert for it, but by that point they've probably learned enough to terminate the connection and log the attempt. Well unless they have their root cert in your browser...

SNI encryption is useful against ISPs and casual snooping, not state actors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the good things in TLS 1.3 was that cryptographers were brought in early, the TLS 1.3 core design is a product of cryptographers plus engineers, and then the work to file off sharp corners and make it work in the real world are the engineering problem, whereas previous versions the engineers built something that seems to work, then (sometimes years later) the cryptographers were shown the results and usually they are not entirely comfortable but it's too late.

Maybe SNI needs (if it hasn't had already) a few rounds of smart crypto postgrads and postdocs trying to figure out what is possible here. If the answer is that nothing we can possibly do fulfils all the criteria, well, that's sad but we must find a compromise knowing this limitation, if there's a way to satisfy all requirements in this document, maybe they can find it. As it is today, it feels a bit hopeless, or at least I'm worried that it does.

</comment><comment><USER8> We are dedicating significant resources toward solving this problem. I consider it one of the core bugs of the Internet. Stay tuned.

</comment><comment><USER9> SRV records... we could actually use all of those unused ports.

<comment><USER10> That ship sailed _years_ ago.

Today, if you want a client-facing service to be reliably available, it has to run on port 80 or 443.

<comment><USER11> Exactly.

Effectively, there is only a single usable Internet protocol, called TCP. There is only two usable ports, 80 and 443. There is only a single usable transport-layer protocol, called SSL/TLS. And nothing more.

Luckily, Tor relay operators have recognized this problem from the beginning - Tor uses standard TLS for the transport-layer encryption, most of the relays are running at port 443. It enables everyone to bootstrap them to the complete version of Internet. And recently definitely IETF is well-aware of this, hence DNS-over-HTTPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like slowly the web is becoming secure like TOR.

<comment><USER13> Looking at this from an information exposure viewpoint, TOR is actually the only type of technology that I think can provide actual anonymity (by making it computationally expensive to track an end user with diligent opsec; which is actually an extremely high bar).

If one node is speaking to another node (packets are routed) then it is known that the user may be speaking to any publicly listed, previously expected to exist there (pub/priv), or plausibly secret services at that location.

If the attacker is able to impersonate the identity (crypto) of the target node or otherwise transparently observe the node's contents then the same can also be said for any data routed through the node.

Given the above I do not see a compelling reason to reserve information about a desired target of contact from that node.

Thus it seems logical to have any name resolution / identity certification system allow delegates for 'middle men' (other crypto IDs) that are authorized to provide termination routing.

With that included in the name resolution / certificate, connecting to a specified node and then asking for the 'named service' over that secured connection should not expose any information that could not already be observed via other systemic weaknesses. If desirable a tunneled session to the end service seems the most likely to be secure, but some method of switching to a still encrypted direct channel to that other service (without any further encryption between the source and middle node) might be useful in the case of load balancing systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally! Well done, IETF!

</comment><comment><USER14> Title: Default, unchangeable1 browser settings and modern, unencrypted SNI

1 Ignoring the possibility of editing and recompiling the source code, if the browser is open source.

Background

SNI is only required for websites using TLS that are also using shared IP address space (e.g., CDNs) where a single IP address may be used by multiple websites, perhaps having no common owner or no relationship to each other.

However websites that have rented or purchased a dedicated IP address do not need to use SNI in order to take advantage of TLS. Traditionally, all websites using SSL/TLS fell into this category.

It is possible many websites using TLS still use dedicated IP addresses and hence do not need SNI.

For the curious, some data on websites posted to HN is provided below.

 _By default_ popular browsers send unencrypted SNI _regardless of whether the website is using a shared IP address and regardless of whether the website actually requires SNI_.

This default, unchangeable setting makes sense if one assumes that, by and large, most websites using TLS are also sharing an IP address with other websites.

The question is whether that assumption is true.

Hence we ask:

What percentage of the websites does the HN reader visit that are both (a) using TLS and (b) using a shared IP address. In other words, what percentage of these websites accessed by HN readers actually require SNI to be sent by the browser?

Sample data: A survey of websites currently appearing on HN

Number of unique urls: 462

Number of http urls: 72 (unique domains: 67)

Number of https urls: 390 (unique domains: 229)

Number of https urls requiring SNI: 36

Number of https urls requiring correct SNI: 22

What is meant by "correct SNI"?

It is possible with some CDNs to send incorrect SNI and still retrieve the correct page.

This is because these CDNs do not use the SNI in order to retrieve the correct page. Like all other sites since the dawn of the web (up until the appearance of SNI) they only need a correct Host header.

(This begs the question of what, if anything, the SNI might be used for within these CDNs. Users concerned about privacy, tracking, ads, etc. might wonder if the SNI is being used for something.)

Sending an incorrect (fake) SNI has been nicknamed "domain fronting". The user simply picks any domain using the CDN and sends it as the "fake" SNI.

14 of the 36 are using a CDN that does not require a correct SNI in order to retrieve the correct page.

I have automated this "SNI test" and can run it daily, weekly or, for a larger sample, I can run it on historical HN data, e.g., all domains appearing on HN in the year XXXX.

Is anyone aware of formal studies on the percentage of sites that actually require (correct) SNI?

<comment><USER10> _This begs the question of what, if anything, the SNI might be used for within these CDNs._

They are using it to choose the certificate that is provided to the client.

<comment><USER14> Is there any technical (cf. practical) reason the client must obtain the certificate from the server it names, and contemporaneous with the client's HTTP command?

Is there any technical reason the client cannot obtain the certificate from other sources and/or not contemporaneously with the HTTP command?

For example, CurveCP explains how the public key can be inserted into (DNSCurve-encrypted) DNS RRs. Clients can obtain the public keys from DNS servers instead of from www servers. They might even obtain public keys in bulk in zone files rather than by piecemeal requests. Further, CurveCP provides for a "server extension", an identifier that allows multiple sites to use the same IP address and port, obviating the problem which SNI aims to solve.

For example, third party sources such as crt.sh provide repositories of certificates that users can download at a time they choose, not necessarily contemporaneous with when they send HTTP commands to the servers named in the certificates. There are a variety of sources of bulk certificates in addition to crt.sh. (Incidentally, crt.sh does not require SNI.)

The practice of third parties providing certificates versus letting clients obtain them from the named servers/issuing parties is seen among the few companies/organizations that write popular clients when they distribute collections of "trusted" certificates with the client software.

Another example is when a www server sends "intermediate certificates" along with the certificate that names the www server. This too demonstrates third party distribution of public keys to clients instead of letting clients get the keys from the entity to which they were issued.

<comment><USER10> No matter how the client obtains the server certificate, it still has to somehow tell the server _which_ server certificate it has used for the public key which it has encrypted the premaster secret with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Context: [https://huitema.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/cracking-the-sni- en...](https://huitema.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/cracking-the-sni-encryption- nut/)</comment>


Neandertals' extinction not caused by deficient diets, tooth analysis shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101230113723.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29 <comment><USER2> The title is misleading, because diet could very well be tied to the Neanderthal extinction. It is just not as simple as, "The Neanderthals didn't eat grains."

See [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-did-neanderthals- di...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-did-neanderthals-die-out.html) for my explanation over a year ago of why the Neanderthals may have died out. According to that explanation I would expect that the Neanderthals were willing and able to eat anything that our ancestors were willing to eat. However in the presence of competition from our ancestors, they couldn't.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, how did they cook the grains? I don't think Neanderthals had pottery, so they weren't boiling up oatmeal or any soup.</comment>


Shared City - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/db9746750a3a?af=1977852&c=122515

<comment><AUTHOR> What struck me in this post (apart from being extremely cute and hipsterish) is that Airbnb is behind it - and while it's true that Airbnb increases occupancy, it's also caters to short-term stays where people are less likely to get involved with their neighborhood.

I often rent a room on Airbnb for a week or two, and typically don't get involved with the neighborhood at all.

\- My neighbors are only my neighbors for a week, so I don't bother getting acquainted.

\- In a dense urban area, discovering all the nice bars, coffee shops, restaurants in walking distance takes months, which I don't have. I end up going to the top-rated one on Yelp - which is also the one who needs new patrons the least.

\- Since I'm traveling with just a suitcase, I'm very unlikely to require the services of a local bike mechanic, car mechanic, etc.

My hosts could be much more involved in this neighborhood than me, but they're often out of town traveling because Airbnb is paying them while they're away so why hesitate?

So it's not clear to me what Airbnb brings to the table here. Maybe it's because I'm mainly traveling for business and spend my days at work? Someone traveling for leisure could have more time to discover the neighborhood. But a close-knit city isn't built with tourists either.</comment>


Does Google's TPU Investment Make Sense Going Forward? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/04/12/googles-tpu-investment-make-sense-going-forward/ <comment><USER2> > running at 700 GHz

Nice typo. That would be an effective heater.

> If it can't do more than Moore's Law...

Or rather, the GPU equivalent performance trend. Moore's law is long dead.</comment>


Beer distribution game - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game <comment><USER2> I played this game during orientation when I started my MBA at MIT Sloan (the game was originated at Sloan). In my second year, I facilitated the game.

The most eye-opening thing for me was that a good quarter of students were frustrated and surprised by the bullwhip effect. I'd guess the general population would be even less understanding of a bullwhip effect. I think that help explains why it seems so many people don't understand why it's difficult, even for the U.S. federal government, to create more supply of hand sanitizer, respirators, etc.

P.S. To be clear: I'm not suggesting the federal government isn't to blame for a lack of supply - we should have had a larger strategic reserve of pandemic mitigating supplies prior to the crisis, if only due to the risk of biological weapons (those preparations would have been just about as useful in a non- human-caused pandemic like COVID-19). Nor am I saying the government can't do more right now. The Beer Distribution Game merely helps partially demonstrate why manufacturers, suppliers, and the government (especially if they themselves understand the bullwhip effect!) don't instantly will pandemic supplies into existence.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't actually demonstrate that it's difficult, just that it's _expensive_. If the government is willing to eat any sunk cost from oversupply, everything becomes predictable. In the case of COVID, it's hard to imagine any quantity of hand sanitizer and respirators doing more damage than the harm they prevent.

<comment><USER4> >expensive

you deal those with scenario planning, which might be the sole responsibility of pandemic unit. We use casual loop diagrams to understand effects when math cant be drawn out on abstract problems.

Its insanely expensive to satisfy 99% populations requirement versus 95% of populations requirement but when that happens and if the consequence are severe we manage those supply chains with redundancy and the costs are absorbed with other players. Sure, it would profitable to operate without this but my understanding is when this sh*t hits everything falls.

$15 billion savings in 2018 resulted in $12 trillion being wiped out in two weeks.

>[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china- trump...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united- states-public-health-emergency-response/v)

>[https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock- market...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market- outlook-2016-trump-win-gains-erased-coronavirus-risks-2020-3-1028991585)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of a cooperative board game named Space Alert:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38453/space- alert](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38453/space-alert)

Players are crew members of a 6-room ship, equipped with weapons and generators supplying power (ammo) - all operated manually.

Each round consists of a planning and execution phase. During the former players listen to a pre-recorded track of incoming threats and declare their actions.

In the latter phase the threats start to arrive and the previously planned actions are executed.

The difficulty here is that the planning phase is timed, so the team has to communicate efficiently.

A single bad decision of a single player may doom the whole team, especially that players can and will get in the way of each other.

I remember doing just that - instead of going to the generator, spending a unit of fuel to charge it and distributing power to the turrets I picked the wrong decision card which moved me back from where I started, so my pawn was pressing the right buttons, but in the wrong room.

To make matters worse on my way back I got in the way of my teammate(and informal captain) and prevented him from recharging the generator later, which was important, because our turretwoman was supposed to be firing all the time.

The aliens destroyed that part of the ship killing her and leaving us defenseless.

</comment><comment><USER6> LLamasoft/Opex have one, you can play it!

[https://beergame.opexanalytics.com/#/](https://beergame.opexanalytics.com/#/) [https://opexanalytics.com/beergame/](https://opexanalytics.com/beergame/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I first learned about this from reading Peter Senge's _The Fifth Discipline_. If you're interested in this sort of thing, TFD is a worthy read.

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

[https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning- Or...](https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning- Organization/dp/0385517254)

<comment><USER8> I strongly disagree. Senge's book is hand-wavy, includes acres of unactionable fluff and -- this irks me the most -- introduces causal loop diagrams but fails to introduce stock-and-flow diagrams.

Causal loop diagrams are basically toys, useful only during initial hypothesis formation. You need a stock-and-flow model to actually test and elaborate your hypothesis.

The best all-round introductory book I have read in this area is still Sterman's _Business Dynamics_. 1st edition hardbacks are out of print, but there are second-hand copies and also cheap international editions around. A 2nd edition is expected next year.

<comment><USER7> Your response reads as though you're disagree with an assertion I didn't make. I almost feel like you read my post as saying that _The Fifth Discipline_ is the -best- book on the topic. That I'm not saying, if for no other reason than because I haven't read every book on the topic.

However, I stand by the assertion that it is a _worthy_ read. I gained a lot from reading it, and if it falls short of being totally comprehensive and standing entirely on its own... well, that's a criticism that would apply to many books.

All of that said, thanks for mentioning the Sterman book. I wasn't familiar with it, and I'm about to order a copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found this web based version: [https://beergameapp.com/](https://beergameapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> My most interesting takeaway, from the causes of the bullwhip effect:

> Free return policies: Customers may overstate demands due to shortages, if > customers cannot returns items, retailers will continue to exaggerate their > needs, cancelling orders and causing in excess product or materials.

I was annoyed when I saw that stores were refusing to accept returns, thinking that they didn't want to suffer the cost of regretful hoarders trying to make right. Most people I talked to were pleased that hoarders were getting their comeuppance. But its effect on supply went completely over my head, and while I don't know if anyone else was aware, certainly nobody mentioned it.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if the policy was about "hoarders getting their comeuppance" so much as disincentivizing hoarding in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've never understood how you win the beer distribution game, people only ever talk about the effects on the supply chain it seems. But how do you mitigate?

<comment><USER13> Communication, as soon as people are allowed to exchange information, results get a lot better. Teams can start planning, based on real customer demand,backlogs and so on. This changes everything.

<comment><USER14> Played this game in undergrad and this was my exact experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I was working at UNC I tried to get us to make the beer game in VR for the business school. You would actually see the empty shelves and then the overstocked warehouse in VR to understand the physical constraints of the supply chain and the issues with the bullwhip effect.

Could easily be updated to the N95 mask game. Especially given what I was reading about melt blown production lines capacity and initial install costs.

<comment><USER13> I adopted it once for aircraft maintenance. Still pen and paper, but the session was hilarious! Especially as I played it with people directly and indirectly involved with aircraft maintenance for the army. The second round was the real eye opener, so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Due to lack of information, suppliers, manufacturers, sales people and customers often have an incomplete understanding of what the real demand of an order is"

Of course this makes the game interesting and also explains why in real life the only sustainable model for economy is planning. The planning starts from actually measuring/calculating the real demand. Then you model your whole supply chain. Of course this means the state has to have control over and complete understanding. This is hard science [http://www.strategplan.com/en/](http://www.strategplan.com/en/)

Also, this allows planning measures for emergency cases like epidemics, war and other disasters.

It's impossible to achieve that with monetary approach.

<comment><USER17> >Of course this makes the game interesting and also explains why in real life the only sustainable model for economy is planning.

"real life" planned economies have done terribly so far, while price-based capitalist economies seem to have done a lot better.

>The planning starts from actually measuring/calculating the real demand.

Herein lies the problem. How do you measure "real demand" for an entire economy, without prices? Prices convey information about what is _really_ in demand at a given time and without them it's remarkably difficult to get answers that don't involve guesswork or individuals demanding more than they really need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's an old Flash game that you can play to see how it works:

[https://forio.com/simulate/mbean/near-beer- game/run/](https://forio.com/simulate/mbean/near-beer-game/run/)

<comment><USER19> What do you use to run embedded Flash these days? I haven't used Flash since all of the major browsers started blocking it.

<comment><USER18> You are re-enable it in Chrome, that's what I've done in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The bullwhip effect reminds me of ETL memory management issues like backpressure and parallel streaming of pipelines to maximize throughput

</comment><comment><USER21> Why is it called bullwhip effect?

<comment><USER22> A small movement at the handle of a bullwhip produces an enormous (and oscillating) movement further down the the whip, it's an analogy for movements in customer demand having large effects further down the supply chain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Even when no communication is allowed during the game, some kind of PID control could make the supply chain stable.

<comment><USER24> It's funny you should mention that, because most PID configurations are not very stable. Once you introduce the Integral and the Derivative, if you're not careful that PID will oscillate into the stratosphere.

In fact, I'd say that PID's that are functioning most efficiently are very nearly tuned to the point of oscillating. Even worse is the kinds of adjustments you have to make to PID's when there is significant lag between their inputs and outputs.

<comment><USER25> Indeed. Control loops are generally limited by the bandwidth of the system they are controlling, and lag in the system limits the bandwidth you can achieve. Trying to get a PID loop to move a system faster than that system's bandwidth will just create oscillations, and the more tightly the PID is tuned the worse its behaviour when exposed to shocks (especially when the system becomes significantly non-linear in the process).

You can extract more performance out of a system by having a very good predictive model of it and measuring its inputs: This can really improve how you drive the system but it's much more difficult to achieve, and you're still limited by how quickly information moves through the system in terms of how you can react.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I think that's a much more promising approach. Have a good model, use it to build an observer, now you can control based on the state of your simulated system.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft sends Mozilla traditional treat to celebrate shipping Firefox 5 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/06/21/microsoft-sends-mozilla-traditional-treat-to-celebrate-shipping-firefox-5/ <comment><USER2> Don't be fooled. It's the evil Microsoft trying to retrain our Markov-chain- predictive parsers to interpret "Microsoft sends threat" as "Microsoft sends treat" from now on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Changes in firefox 5: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/firefox_5_for_developers>

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr:

Going to the Chrome like fast development cycles resulted in getting cupcakes instead of cakes.

<comment><USER5> I was going to say this. IE probably looked at the development cycle of major releases for the next year and thought it would cost them a fortune in cakes!

Wouldn't surprise me if Firefox changed their release tactics to get more cakes...

<comment><USER6> yep, but the clever IE team caught wind of it and operation get more cakes failed. Firefox 6 rescheduled to 2013.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The cake is a lie.

<comment><USER8> For those who didn't get the reference, this is from the video game Portal:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdrs3gr_GAs>

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's a question of not getting the reference -- I dare say most of us likely _did_ get it.

I think the real question is "what does this reference add to the discussion?" And as far as I can tell, it adds absolutely zero value.</comment></comment></comment>


Laid off, offered job back Vs. 11 week paid Android research project - <AUTHOR>

A couple of months ago I was laid off because the company ran out of money, I never liked the job or the company but it paid the bills. I got offered another job with terrible hours so I turned it down when my old job was back on the table. Today I heard from my school that they want me to develop a Android app, its estimated to take 10-11 weeks. I've built an android app and a couple iPhone apps. The school is aware of my experience and skill level. Should I take the risk inherent in a 11 week contract or go back to a job that I hated and could result in me being laid off again when the money gets tight. <comment><USER2> It is not uncommon for US universities to keep people employed on sequential short term contracts. Depending on the sort of funding your former employer now has access to, a university project may open the door to a more consistent payday, on the other hand, A series funding probably makes the former employer less risky over the next year.

All that said, there's not much to be said favorably about a job one hates.

<comment><AUTHOR> They have gotten angel investments, but there haven't been any VC's yet, the industry doesn't have a lot of hype and the company has yet to prove they have a sustainable business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My gut reaction is: Go with the option that gives you eleven weeks' breathing room to look for a permanent job that you don't hate.

That said, on re-reading your original question, it doesn't sound like you really hated the old job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hate is a pretty strong word, but I was never happy doing it and didn't agree with a majority of things happing at the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Never go back to a boyfriend/girlfriend that let you go. The relationship won't be any different.

Same is true for a company.

Never go back to a company that let you go.

There is one caveat (and it's the same caveat for working for family, never work for family), if the company is willing to pay you 3 times your market value take it, then dump them as soon as anything better comes along.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my old co-workers gave us a article about average wages/pay for my city and industry, we were all being paid below average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In life; Take as much risk as you can manage, Do what you love as often as you can

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, so that is what I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> John Maeda once told me: "No advice really. Just take risks with your career."

</comment><comment><USER7> Do the projects for your school. It'll be good for your portfolio and gives you a break from the usual grinds of a full time job... Also, going from my own experience, staying at a job with a company, neither of which you sound all that thrilled with is never a good idea. Besides, having that 11 week project will give you time to reflect and look for something you actually like...

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're willing to work long hours, you can do both and decide toward the end of the 11 week contract.

Contracting is a very different experience from being an employee. You may find that you enjoy it, or you may hate the experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm lazy, but I still don't think 16 hour days is very sustainable.</comment></comment>


Byte-code for the web is coming: Pepper 24 can build PNaCl executables - iso-8859-1 https://developers.google.com/native-client/sdk/release-notes#pepper_24

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought Java was supposed to be "bytecode for the Web." How is this different? What pain points does it solve that Java Applets don't? (Besides this being new and shiny, while having an applet on your website makes people think you're from the 1990's.)

<comment> iso-8859-1 * It is native code, unlike Java. Which means you don't need a VM. Only the API's. Java defines both.

* It is not a "black box" in the web page like Java Applets. People would not hate Java Applets if they integrated seamlessly and were built into the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I know that IE or Firefox will probably never adopt this tech, but IE will never adopt WebGL, and that's somewhat considered part of the HTML5 stack.

I'm just not a fan of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for writing apps. Part of the reason is my ignorance, but the other reason is because that stack seems to be a worse is better solution.

Oh well, back to monkeying around with TypeScript.</comment>


A Decentralized Ponzi Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://ethponzi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Have we hit peak crypto? I wonder if this would be more effective if it increased 10% each time instead of 2x. Interesting how nobody can run off with the money though... a fully traceable Ponzi scheme.</comment>


ReactiveCocoa for a better world - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1107-reactivecocoa-for-a-better-world <comment><USER2> For those not familiar, it looks like this is the take on ideas from Reactive Extensions (Rx): <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg577609>. I'm not sure if Rx itself has a direct predecessor or not, but it's great to see the idea taking hold in other communities. I've long suspected that there is a lot of great stuff in the .Net world that most open-source-oriented programmers never see, simply because they don't have exposure to Microsoft technology.

<comment><USER3> Here's what Rx is: The idea of a list are some items in an order (a Sequence in FP-speak). On top of a Sequence you can implement all kinds of interesting operations like map/filter/reduce.

If you look at an Event like KeyUp, you'd end up with some items, in a particular order. Thus, you realize, that events and lists really are the same thing. In fact, they're not only ostensibly the same, they are mathematically provable to be the same.

Rx therefore, gives you all the operations you can do to a list, and applies it to an event (or a callback, which is just an event that only happens once).

<comment><USER4> I enjoyed your book! Are there any plans for an updated or expanded version?

If anyone wants a simple introduction to Rx, Paul Betts (and Jesse Liberty) wrote one last year.

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Reactive-Extensions- Jesse-...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Reactive-Extensions-Jesse- Liberty/dp/1430237473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336164661&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! No plans for a 2nd edition yet, but I definitely have a lot I'd like to add.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds neat, but I want to ask others here as I am not (yet) a Cocoa developer - is all Cocoa code this ugly? In these short examples I honestly can't fathom what is happening due to the syntactic 'oddities'. Maybe my C-variant-fu is not as strong as it should be.

<comment><USER6> _This sounds neat, but I want to ask others here as I am not (yet) a Cocoa developer - is all Cocoa code this ugly?_

I am a Cocoa developer, and I have to say that the presentation of this idea on the blog leaves something to be desired. It seems to be oriented towards people already familiar with Reactive Programming and FP, but it doesn't set up that expectation at all. At the same time, it's very confusing and a little unintentionally off-putting for devs who aren't familiar with those notions, even for those who already know Objective-C and KVO.

It still might be a good idea, though.

<comment><USER7> That was my fear while I was writing the post :\

The problem with Rx / RAC is there's a big learning curve, especially coming from procedural programming. It's much bigger than 1 blog post can cover. My hope at least is that it will drive at least some people to dive deeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome to see GitHub getting behind Rx ideas. If you're a JS developer RxJS is definitely worthy of study: [http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Introducing-RxJS- Reac...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Introducing-RxJS-Reactive- Extensions-for-JavaScript)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've just spent a few hours getting to know ReactiveCocoa better, and what a great framework! Props to GitHub for open sourcing it, and I'm already looking at how to integrate it into some of my apps. I blogged about my first impressions here: <http://cleveryou.net/post/22447309056/rac-first- impressions>

</comment><comment><USER4> Stuff like this makes me want to drop the WebForms work I'm doing for rent and work on my FRP library... le sigh.

<comment><USER10> Which FRP library would that be?

<comment><USER4> Unreleased =) The target language is JS (for now, at least), uses arrows and features dynamic switching. Yampa is a major influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those unfamiliar with ObjectiveC syntax, this[1] is a very nice example, in JavaScript, of how amazing this idea is.

[1] <https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/rxjs-html>

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks a lot like Functional Reactive Programming from the haskell world... Anyone who knows care to comment on how similar they are?

</comment><comment><USER12> This makes me happy happy.

It will detangle some big apps I'm on.</comment>


Node.js v14.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/doc/changelogs/CHANGELOG_V14.md#14.0.0 <comment><AUTHOR> The biggest change in v14.0.0 is the removal of the ES modules "experimental" warning:

> In Node.js 13 we removed the need to include the --experimental-modules > flag, but when running EcmaScript Modules in Node.js, this would still > result in a warning ExperimentalWarning: The ESM module loader is > experimental.

> As of Node.js 14 there is no longer this warning when using ESM in Node.js. > However, the ESM implementation in Node.js remains experimental. As per our > stability index: "The feature is not subject to Semantic Versioning rules. > Non-backward compatible changes or removal may occur in any future release." > Users should be cautious when using the feature in production environments.

> Please keep in mind that the implementation of ESM in Node.js differs from > the developer experience you might be familiar with. Most transpilation > workflows support features such as optional file extensions or JSON modules > that the Node.js ESM implementation does not support. It is highly likely > that modules from transpiled environments will require a certain degree of > refactoring to work in Node.js. It is worth mentioning that many of our > design decisions were made with two primary goals. Spec compliance and Web > Compatibility. It is our belief that the current implementation offers a > future proof model to authoring ESM modules that paves the path to Universal > JavaScript. Please read more in our documentation.

> The ESM implementation in Node.js is still experimental but we do believe > that we are getting very close to being able to call ESM in Node.js > "stable". Removing the warning is a huge step in that direction.</comment>


Slinky.js – scrolling navigation lists with stacking headers. - <AUTHOR> http://slinky.iclanzan.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice. One thing I'd add to improve the usability a little - make it so users can scroll to a 'segment' by clicking on the header.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought of it too. A simple solution would be to just add ids to sections and make the headers links that target them. While this scrolls the section into position, the top part becomes obstructed by the stacked headers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ha ha..that was so cool</comment>


Reader's Digest Is Bankrupt as Iconic Publisher Falters - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/reader-s-digest-files-bankruptcy-to-cut-465-mln-debt.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially ...

"RDA Holding Co., publisher of the 91-year-old Reader's Digest magazine, filed for bankruptcy to cut $465 million in debt and focus on North American operations as consumers shift from print to electronic media."

The dot-com boom foresaw this sort of event, as it was clear even in the 1990's that online media would eventually displace more expensive and non- interactive paper media.

What other dominant brands in our current world are due for eventual bankruptcy?</comment>


/r/SubSimulatorGPT2 – posts and comments are generated by GPT-2 - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/ <comment> cbm-vic-20 Wow. [https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/d2357i/tr...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/d2357i/trump_says_his_morning_twitter_tirade_is_much/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty amazing. I maybe should have linked to the pinned comment at the top about how this was constructed; it's really interesting:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/btfhks/wh...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/btfhks/what_is_rsubsimulatorgpt2/)</comment></comment>


The Bells Toll for Hillary - <AUTHOR> http://spectator.org/articles/65131/bells-toll-hillary <comment><USER2> Please stop posting purely political stories to Hacker News. They're not on- topic here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just click bait opinion and speculation.</comment>


I know how hard it would have been to escape the helicopter crash in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/19175/5-people-died-in-a-helicopter-crash-in-new-york-citys-east-river-on-march-11-i-was-there <comment><USER2> It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if they banned sightseeing helicopter flights entirely. They were already banned from overflying Manhattan decades ago after a particularly fatal crash, and serious crashes continue at an average rate of one per year, including one in 2009 that killed nine.

The most unappreciated aspect of the helicopters' impact, though, is the _noise_. They ruin the possibility for enjoyment of the waterfront for a several block radius around every pier that they use. When you run or bike past the piers along the waterfront you have to stop your conversation, they're that loud. And the combustion vapors they're giving off aren't pleasant either.

It really would contribute to the greater safety and enjoyment of all if they fully got rid of these flights. At least get their launch sites away from Manhattan, where they spoil the peaceful enjoyment of huge swaths of public waterfront.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, almost all flight traffic over the city of Paris is prohibited.

Exceptions exist fo military and medevac. Not sure if they even have police helicopters.

Has been since the world war.

It results in some interesting flight paths for jetliners.

<comment><USER4> It's a common misconception: not all flights are forbidden.

Yes, almost all flights are forbidden above Paris, unless you're above 2000m (6600 ft) and you're a regular airliner or military transport...

[https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000251477)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For many of the reasons mentioned in this article the FAA has now banned certain types of these "doors off photo flights."

This sort of thing is intended for professionals with extensive training on the harnesses—in some cases including actual dunk tank training where you're actually thrown in the water and need to escape (with safety divers present).

A lot of companies then started cutting corners and just pulling people off the street and showing them a "safety video" and sending them up. No way is that adequate training and the episode last weekend sadly demonstrates that fact.

Had it not been for the harness design and lack of adequate training it's extremely likely everyone would have walked a way a bit wet and cold but otherwise unharmed.

<comment><USER6> I did this training when I was a cadet in Air Training Corps. It petrified me, I did the standard dunk but bailed before the dunk and inversion attempt. I am not a strong swimmer, they had rescue divers there, no way.

Being strapped into a container slowly filling with water rushing in through various orifices is a horrible feeling. And having to wait for the water to stop rushing in before unstrapping.

And I was in an indoor pool. Those poor people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been on helicopters multiple times flying out to oil rigs. Never far enough to have to get the certificate via the dunk test, but every single time we wore a dry suit and watched the safety briefing.

Every time.

It's been a few decades, but to this day every time I'm in an aircraft, at take off and landing I have one hand on the buckle, one arm pointing at the escape route, feet tucked under, belt pulled _tight_ across my hips, head pressed back.

This article reads all-too-true, and brings back many memories. Fortunately none of my memories are of tragedies like this, but they do tell me that accidents are by their very nature unpredictable. We do what we can to be prepared.

Sometimes it's not enough.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting read. I have taken the full dunk tank helicopter egress training for working on offshore oil rigs. We didn't have the tethered harness bit, but did have to open a door/hatch and climb out while upside-down underwater. I think there may have been a quick-release seat belt, but I'm not completely sure.

That training didn't bother me much, I think mostly because I had grown up swimming daily, have been surfing, snorkeling, and SCUBA diving, and am pretty comfortable and confident in the water. It took a while for me to realize that many people are deeply terrified of being dunked in water, and may panic and do any number of strange things. It makes me wonder if any reasonable amount of training can really make you ready for that. Or if I would also be in way over my head [sic] in an actual crash - it was occasionally pointed out that in actual over-water helicopter crashes, usually everyone dies regardless of what sort of training is involved.

It does make it seem a bit crazy that they're flying random tourists around like this without even a practice run at how to detach their harness tether or knowing whether they can even swim at all. The release method being to pull out some sort of knife that's supposedly attached to the harness and use it to cut the tether seems a bit crazy too. The author has no idea exactly what kind of knife or exactly where it is, which says a lot about their pre-flight training. How many people will fumble the knife, cut themselves, stab random things, etc trying to cut a tether while in a rapidly sinking helicopter? They should have some sort of quick-release that's easy to grab and uses one simple motion, and that they practice releasing several times.

</comment><comment><USER9> Expecting random customers to use a knife to free themselves when either in unexpected freefall or underwater without having ever tried it in training seems indeed highly insane.

Why not use normal safety belt buckles, plus ideally an electronic autorelease system that the pilot can trigger?

<comment><USER10> The main purpose of the harnesses, which is tested and used on every single flight, is to prevent the passengers from becoming free of the harness and free of the helicopter. It was only through a highly unlikely combination of both a loss of power and a failure of the float system that they would ever need to release the harness.

You don't not wear your seatbelt in case it becomes jammed when you drive into a lake - that just doesn't happen very often. But people get in normal, on- road car accidents all the time: it would be silly to optimize either of these systems for easy release when the main purpose is for them not to release.

<comment><USER11> Seatbelts _are_ optimized for easy release. They have a big red button and using it is muscle memory for the vast majority of people who ride in cars. This is good because there are a lot of conceivable situations in which one might need to exit a car in a hurry. It's possible that a seatbelt or its release might cause problems in some situations, but they're designed to make this as unlikely as possible.

Strapping people into an aircraft such that they effectively cannot release themselves in _any_ emergency is completely insane, and in this case it's a decision that led to 5 deaths. If they can't design secure harnesses that can also be easily released, or can't trust customers with such a responsibility, then they shouldn't be running open-door flights at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is why the USAF has mandatory underwater egress training in which aspiring helo crewmembers are dunked, inverted, and taught how to untether and escape from inside a simulated fuselage.

</comment><comment><USER13> What kind of a shoddy company lets a passenger harness TURN OFF FUEL TO THE ENGINES?

Is that insane to anyone else?

<comment><USER14> This was discussed on a recent "No Agenda" Podcast. Adam Curry is licensed to fly helicopters and claims to have flown this model. He is insistent that this explanation is wrong, that the lever pictured controls ignition retard and is easily overridden by controls on the stick the pilot uses to control the aircraft.

It makes no sense to me that there would be a fuel shutoff in reach of a passenger that could cause the aircraft to crash. (Imagine telling passengers "whatever you do,, don't pull this lever or we'll all die.")

<comment><USER15> With the small size of a helicopter and passengers in the front seat, they are certainly in range of many controls which could have that effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why are these particular harnesses so user hostile? Boat harnesses are usually double action caribeners so there is no need for a knife.

<comment><USER17> People don't want to become unbuckled and fall out the aircraft. Falling out of a boat is far less scary (I've done it before and was able to easily swim to shore).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would seem as though electric power could create a much safer helicopter. An electric motor powering the rotor with the engine acting as a generator much like a diesel locomotive. A smallish battery would give enough power to descend safely in case of engine failure.

<comment><USER19> You can descend safely with engine failure; it's called autorotation. Sounds like they probably did so, but the floats were not properly inflated. Also a harness catching a fuel shutoff switch; bad. So many small things that can go wrong, compounding to fatalities.

<comment><USER20> You can even see, in captured footage, that it descends fine, and then starts to turn to its side due to the floats not being properly inflated.

[https://twitter.com/JJmagers/status/972974463175286784](https://twitter.com/JJmagers/status/972974463175286784) for the video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why can't the harness be designed to open without a knife?

<comment><USER22> I'm not an expert, but it seems like harnesses are designed to be quite difficult to remove, as accidentally doing so (or the strong downwash turbulence of an open flight doing so) in an open-door flight would be almost certainly fatal. The knife is kept as an emergency alternative to allow for faster release than going through multiple buckles, not the primary method.

If I recall correctly, parachutes use a similar thing - in normal circumstances, you simply unbuckle after landing, but in a foliage or water landing, you can cut yourself out of the straps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This was so horrifying to read. If only those three passengers hadn't upgraded their flights... they'd still be alive.</comment>


Microsoft looking to release Office for Linux in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/147813-microsoft-looking-to-release-office-for-linux-in-2014?utm_source=rss <comment><USER2> It's in the best interest of Office to be on every platform possible. It's in the best interest of Windows for Office to be an exclusive. That's the tension that's been there for years.

But Office, especially with its growing Web and sharing underpinnings, may be a more enduring product than Windows. If this is indeed the case, it makes sense for Office to be on every platform possible, making it the standard for document creation and sharing.

Microsoft is weak in the smartphone and tablet space. It makes a ton of sense for Office to go here; it's not like strong Office products on iOS would hurt Surface sales. And now with subscription plans and Windows becoming less ubiquitous, why not Linux?

It's not Office's job to protect Windows, especially if Windows can't protect Office. If Office doesn't go on more platforms, people will switch to other solutions because they are using non-Windows devices all the time. Windows alone will kill Office in the long term.

<comment><USER3> I don't see where this whole "Windows is becoming less ubiquitous" is coming from. Maybe market share has dropped a bit, but, Microsoft still rules the basically the whole desktop market.

Sometimes in the startup world with all the glowing Apple logos, we lose sense of the rest of the world (heck, even the rest of the United States).

<comment><USER4> Inflection points and mind share.

Microsoft no longer has the mind share of either the public or the development community. The "cool kids" tend not to develop on MS platforms these days by choice. Look at Jeff Atwood, he was a prominant asp.net mvc dev (stackoverflow) and he has chosen to use rails for his next project (discourse). This trend is all the more troublesome because C# is really a fanstastic language. But the downsides of being tied to the Windows/MSSQL/IIS platform is like have a boat anchor around your ankle. Similarly, how many people are excited about windows 8 vs. iOS or android?

Also, look at Microsoft's big pushes, bing and winphone 7+. Both have been at best partial successes, and they need more than that for a company their size.

The exact moment in time that is the biggest problem for a company facing potential decline like Microsoft is not when they have ceded the majority of marketshare to a competitor, nor is it when their revenues and marketshare being to contract. The key moment is the inflection point in their growth rate, when the 2nd derivative turns from positive to negative. That's the point where if nothing is done then eventually the peak will be reached and decline will set in. That's the point where there is still the opportunity to turn things around, it's the point where the resources are still available and the least work needs to be done to make a change.

<comment><USER5> I would have thought that the primary users of Office are the corporate world. Large companies use Windows, and will continue to use Windows for at least the next decade. Fashionable development may have mind share, but corporate practice isn't particularly fashionable. Corporate licenses must make up a huge proportion of office income.

Apple's made no real moves to become more corporate friendly in the desktop space (and things like their recent blocking of Java definitely won't help them) and Linux on the corporate desktop is miles away from adoption (some public bodies which did adopt it have moved back to Windows).

People talk about the new era of tablet computing, but tablets are pretty much useless for a lot of typing-heavy work. Perhaps eventually a descendant of the tablet (perhaps something like the chromebook) will start to dislodge windows for lighter-weight corporate usage, but I believe it'll be a long time coming. Most large companies have piles of weird internal web-based tools which can't deal with touch, perhaps run on Java or Flash or depend on IE6 technologies, and the slow and cumbersome process of replacing them will take an age.

<comment><USER4> Tablets are fine for typing-heavy work, just use a bluetooth keyboard with the tablet on a stand. This mode of operation isn't common yet, but that's because tablets are still relatively new.

Edit: to clarify, right now we're at a point where it's rare for a tablet (or smartphone) to be someone's primary or only computing device, but as they become more popular that will increasingly be the case, and then people will develop new habits and new modes of use to fit these devices into their work or their lives. Meaning that if people are using them at work then they'll tend to have some way to use a physical keyboard with them for the times when an onscreen keyboard won't cut it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand this.

Valve is already doing mile-length steps in terms of upending one of the Windows' biggest advantages over Linux: games. Arguably, Office is another, but this time it's supposedly Microsoft itself who is about to diminish yet another selling of point of _their own operating system_.

I'm really confused, if that's indeed true. You could say it follows naturally with all the screw-ups MS made recently with respect to Windows 8 & Metro UI. But really, seeing a company undermine their own business so blatantly... I don't know what to think about this.

<comment><USER4> It's a smart move. It's the "strategy tax" which is dumb. It is extraordinarily rare for it to be a smart business choice to not have all of your products be as promiscuous as possible.

Imagine where .net/visual studio/et al would be today if they'd been shipping official VMs (CLRs) targeting linux/unix ages ago.

At this point it's questionable whether or not office is really going to be the breaking point that keeps people from fleeing the MS ship. More so, there's a strong risk that it could work the other way, that people "building a life" (or a business) outside of the Windows walls could find that it's not so hard to live without office, which would hurt MS even more. Also, ensuring that office remains the de facto business standard for the foreseeable future means that MS will always have that opening to entice people back to the Windows platform, the same way mp3 players enticed people to switch to macs, iphones, and ipads.

<comment><USER7> How much money would .NET make them if it wasn't attached to Windows OS sales? If they detached .NET & Visual Studio, where will they make the money from it? For Sun, Java at least ran high end server product sales.

<comment><USER4> It's complicated. The runtime, the libraries, and the web server are all free. But Visual Studio makes money, and the team foundation system makes a lot of money. If you take all of that together then on its own it would be a company with ten figure annual revenue.

In a hypothetical alternate Universe where .net 1.0 launched on linux/unix as well and they were able to gain a lot more traction in those communities then one would expect VS and perhaps TFS sales to increase concomitantly. Also, such an independent company would probably have a wider range of products for sale if they weren't tied to the Windows/Office ATM, though of course that's more speculative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am in (biological) research, and this would be a godsend in the unlikely event it's true. There are a lot of *nix users in research, but paradoxically, MS Word is a virtual requirement for submitting grants and manuscripts, and MS Excel is very commonly used to pass around datasets.

Libreoffice is unacceptably broken in a thousand small ways. The best compromise we have come up with is to edit internal documents with Google Docs until they are almost finished, then polish them in Word.

<comment><USER9> > _Libreoffice is unacceptably broken in a thousand small ways_

Of course, based on my painful experience, MS Word is _also_ broken in a thousand small ways. Whether this breakage qualifies as "unacceptable" I dunno; I guess people are used to it and so have learned to avoid much of it. Yay? ><

<comment><USER10> In this context, where MS-Word is a de facto standard for various administration, "broken" means "not behaving like MS-Word". Which is perhaps the only test which MS-Word passes with flying colors.

<comment><USER11> Alas, the post-"Vista-fication" version of MS Office doesn't even behave like MS Office.

Amusing anecdote: I have 2 teenage daughters. They used to complain about having to use Open/Libre Office at home. Then the school "upgraded" Office to the newer Vista/7 compatible version. "See, kids, it _does_ suck, just like Dad said" (I got the "upgrade" at work about the same time). After which, the version at school was so different, anyway, that they just kinda got over it and went "whatever".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At first, OpenOffice Calc and Writer were a nuisance that I had to learn to use. Then they became second nature, LibreOffice is now my most recommended piece of software to all my clients along with Thunderbird etc. Now, I find that LibreOffice handles all of my workload much better than Office did. Especially when dealing with international text encoding.

I realize that there is a huge, existing market that requires Office, but I wonder how many of those could go through a transition and arrive at a better place without it.

<comment><USER13> Except Excel. Microsoft Excel outpaces LibreOffice by many many many many lightyears. It's pretty much the only reason why I have Virtualbox on all my linux machines

<comment><USER14> I'm starting to appreciate Google Spreadsheets more. Hear me out: javascript in the spreadsheet. Today my boss needed me to make a get request from one of our spreadsheets when some column is edited. I just love that you can do that. Maybe Excel does something to this nature, I have no idea.

<comment><USER15> Google Refine (now Open Refine) [1] is something that is also useful for data analysis and munging.

[1]: <http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The money quote:

 _This rumor stems from a source in Brussels, Belgium, who spoke to Phoronix's Michael Larabel at FOSDEM, one of Europe's larger open source conferences. According to this source, who is presumably one of Microsoft's open source developers, Microsoft is taking a "meaningful look" at releasing a full Linux port of Office in 2014._

This is as thin as it gets for journalistic sources.

I call BS.

<comment><USER17> ExtremeTech reporting on a Phoronix rumor is basically the perfect storm of over-hyped under-sourced tech journalism.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't call most tech blogs these days "journalism". A journalist would at least put a little blurb in the story describing their attempt to contact Microsoft and corroborate the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a _rumour_ that MS is _taking a meaningful look_ at porting Office to Linux. All it takes is one OS exec to say "you're doing WHAT?!!!" and this meaningful look will be quietly stopped.

Even if they _do_ port, I'd expect it to be broken in many ways, each popping up a "This wouldn't happen if you were running on Windows" dialog. MS just won't be able to help itself.

</comment><comment><USER20> If true, I think this is good news both for Linux and for Office.

Just as an aside, I've installed Office 365 (the Office 2013 annual subscription program) and my tentative assessment is positive. I like the overall feel and functionality once you turn off animation. This evening, I found I really enjoyed the new alignment and drawing guides in Powerpoint 2013. They make Powerpoint a solid diagramming tool.

At $99/year for installation on five family PCs, the pricing is much more reasonable.

<comment><USER13> If you're using powerpoint as your diagraming tool, you might be doing something wrong. Try Dia, it's open source and free.

<comment><USER21> Why would Dia being open source and free make it a better diagramming tool? I am worried when those are the two main points you make as to why it would be better than Powerpoint (which I also use for diagramming, and find very smooth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As much as I'd love to see this happen, there's no way it's going to.

Linux has what, maybe a 1-2% desktop market share? Can you even begin to image the support costs Microsoft would have to endure to make this happen?

Assuming the article isn't just link-bait, I have a feeling the "meaningful look" is really one guy in a cube somewhere who drafted a position paper that he is desperately peddling up the chain as far as he can go.

<comment><USER23> Seconded.

Article is link bait.

I don't see any comments actually thinking through what such a move would mean for MS.

<comment><USER24> I just saw several insightful comments, you saw none?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Microsoft has become the "Office and Exchange" company. They should just stop trying to sell OS's altogether and try to get Office onto as many platforms as possible as fast as possible.

If I were MS, I'd be giving away an XP like OS for free just so I'd have a way to get Office out there easier.

<comment><USER26> _If I were MS, I'd be giving away an XP like OS for free just so I'd have a way to get Office out there easier._

One wonders if this is the strategy Apple has taken with OS.X. The value is in all the iTunes seats not so much the OS seats for them.

<comment><USER27> It's not that hard to make money giving away an OS when you're the one selling the hardware it runs on.

<comment> rkuykendall-com Apple has always sold the hardware and they never gave the OS away, until the new OS came bundled with an App Store which gives apple a 30% cut on each sale.

<comment><USER28> Actually, they cut the price to 29 prior to creating the mac app store. They sold snow leopard for $29 as well, citing its focus on performance/stability rather than new features, and the faster upgrade cycle. I believe the price change had more to do with switching to annual releases

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The way I see it Microsoft may become the next IBM. IBM was a mainframe and "business machines" company until it saw it's market share falling and share price stagnate. That all changed in 1993 when massive layoffs set the groundwork for the reinvention of IBM as a solutions company. Like IBM, they have a massive network and talent base on which to draw from. I predict that Microsoft's cash cow shrink-wrap licensing revenue will start to give way to other revenue streams which may prove more lucrative long term.

</comment><comment><USER30> It could be timed for the end of life for windows xp in April 2014. Its still a large chunk of the installed os base [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems) So maybe the point is that if you can't keep everyone of these on windows at least you can keep them using office.

</comment><comment><USER31> ExtremeTech re-reporting a rumour from phoronix? Sounds trustworthy.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think this would be great because it would really let people use what they want. Office is good at what it does. There are lots of people who run Linux who could benefit from it. If you're not one of those people and Google Docs or LibreOffice works for you, that's fine you can keep using that. And from Microsoft's point of view, allowing more users to have access to Office makes setting up a Microsoft ecosystem an easier sell for a company. There is plenty of expensive enterprise software to be sold to companies that ties into Office. If companies can buy it without worrying about forcing an OS change for employees who are already productive with their current setup, that makes for an easier sale for MS.

</comment><comment><USER33> OK, I'll believe this when I see it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Hey, why not? Let the Office division compete on its own. I actually liked the last Mac version.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why? Like the article pointed out, there can't be a very large market for it. LibreOffice is free, not to mention the increasing trend toward cloud-base office suites, including Office. Unless the crossover from an Android version really isn't that extensive I can't see the point. All it would potentially do is pull more people off Windows.

On the other hand, I've heard it said that MS actually loses money on Windows. Their real cash cow is Office and other software suites. So who knows, maybe they have a tentative long term strategy of downplaying OS competition and focusing on business applications.

<comment><USER36> Microsoft doesn't lose money on Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the first move by Microsoft that I can actually understand. They need to seriously rethink what their goals are. They can't have the computing monopoly they used to, so they really need to focus on what they're strong at: corporate software. And that is _not_ a bad thing.

How about marketing Surface as a solution to corporate IT departments trying to wrestle iPads into their Microsoft ecosystem? Windows Phone could be the same. They could be the Blackberry of the new mobile corporate strategies. Then just keep doing what they do best: build products that plug and play very, very nicely with the rest of Microsoft's portfolio, and offer better corporate support for those products.

Instead of trying to figure out how to make a slicker Metro, how about making Sharepoint suck less? Keep the direction of VS going forward. Microsoft's "next big things" should be focused on innovating the corporate workspace. Stop trying to get tangled up in the Apple/Google wars and start focusing on challenging things like Google Docs, Box, and Red Hat instead. Those are Microsoft's real competitors.

It seems like they're very conflicted and confused about who they are supposed to be. They're not the cool new unproven software maker. They're the people whose products you use when you want to reduce IT costs and modernize legacy application portfolios.

</comment><comment><USER38> Microsoft cannot afford the possibility another office suite (or another component) gains a foothold in the market. The moment that happens, the moment the market fragments around a different standard (even more if it's a cross- platform/cross-device standard), the mutual Windows-Office reinforcement collapses and each side has to fight on its own.

Microsoft markets Office for Macs for two reasons: because it makes some money out of it and because it prevents a competitor from appearing and taking over the Mac side of the ecosystem and threatening crossing over to Windows. The same reasoning applies to Linux - if Linux ever becomes a significant corporate desktop OS and LibreOffice becomes a threat to Office, Microsoft's value proposition starts to be questioned. Offering a reasonable migration path for companies moving segments of their park away from Windows to stay reinforcing Office as a de-facto standard is vital.

That is an existential threat for Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER39> At my employer, we use Outlook for mail and calendaring. Currently I have to remote desktop into a server to use Outlook or run a Windows VM on my Linux workstation. If MS releases this, my company can simply license Office for Linux and we can access it "natively" (modulo it'll be a closed-source binary). There is a market for this, if small.

</comment><comment><USER40> Having looked at parts of the Office source I would be extremely surprised if this is anything but a statement to placate OSS devs. The sheer amount of effort required to port Office to Linux would be a few orders of magnitude greater than any sales that could possibly be achieved from Linux users.

<comment><USER41> They've been able to port various Windows-centric products to other platforms before (to Mac and Solaris at least). Exchange, Office, Internet Explorer etc.

I agree they won't make a huge profit from it directly but I bet it's a good counter-argument to "let's standardise on OpenOffice since otherwise we are subject to MS vendor lock-in". A couple of big government or corporate deals should cover the costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A much better idea would be to write a universal set of software for every platform, in the least amount of code possible, using the most powerful language, and increasing the amount of features in line with what users want.

Where would such a mythical piece of software exist? On Microsoft's servers. It would be cloud tech, accessible from any platform, and would be far superior to any port Microsoft will cook up for 2014.

The only foreseeable downside to this is lack of internet translating to lack of office productivity. But in almost every scenario I think that obstacle is overstated.

That's the future of the office suite, not wasting money and effort doing market research and porting code from Windows to Linux (I can recall a handful of times that has worked natively).

</comment><comment><USER43> I attended a Microsoft conference back in 2001 or 2002 and during a Q&A with the audience someone asked if Microsoft would ever release a version of Office for Linux. He basically said if the demand was there, they would do it, because they were a software company.

</comment><comment><USER44> Office is great and all, but I transitioned to Google Docs a long time ago. The one thing holding me back from Linux as my day-to-day operating system is lack of Adobe software. The day Photoshop and Fireworks comes to Linux (heck, the whole entire Creative Suite) I'll jump the Windows ship so fast. If true, this is a smart move for Microsoft because if the tide changes, Microsoft would already have a foothold because open source equivalents of MS Office just aren't as good as Microsoft's offering. When was the last time you ever saw a business using OpenOffice over Microsoft Office? Never.

<comment><USER3> I like Google Docs, but, I find that it is nowhere near the "quality" (well, maybe just features) of Microsoft Word. In fact, I don't think it is even meant to be.

I for one would do fine on Google Docs, but, there are many for whom that would not work.

<comment><USER45> I wonder how many is many. Of all the people out there using MS Office, what percentage of them could do their job just as well if not better with Google Docs, bearing in mind the advantages of an online suite such as collaboration and sharing.

I wonder if the _majority_ of MS Office users are just unaware of the alternatives or nervous about learning a new application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Office coming to Linux? What? Really?! _open article_... "This rumor stems from a source in Brussels, Belgium, who spoke to Phoronix's Michael Larabel at FOSDEM" , "oh , right then" _close tab_

I guess we can expect this by 2030

<comment><USER47> Well at least it wasn't "an undisclosed source familiar with the situation".

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> To do this they'd need to basically implement the Win32 APIs on Linux. And if they did that, that might enable other windows applications to run on desktop Linux. It would be similar to how WINE works, but by Microsoft.

<comment><USER49> I doubt that. I don't think they made Win32 for Mac OS. It probably isn't much different than their Mac OS port.

<comment><USER50> For Mac OS X. I remember they created WLM for classic Mac OS back in 1994 or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Eh, it's not like porting to Android has any bearing on porting to desktop Linux since the UI toolkits are completely different. I guess this would be cool, but I'd be surprised if many people used it over LibreOffice.

<comment><USER52> That's what I was thinking. On the other hand, Microsoft has already ported some of the functionality to JavaScript to make Office 365 -- maybe they could offer cross-platform support via an Office 365 client that could run offline? It would still be a far cry from Office on Linux/Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Because I'm CS student I already get Windows for free through dreamspark, but I don't think I get MS Office. I'm assuming MS is making a big chunk of their profit from all the college freshmen buying Office every year. In my public speech class I gave a presentation about why people should use FOSS. When I mentioned Libre Office in the presentation, and how it could open and write .docx people's mouths dropped. Multiple people including my professor asked about Libre Office after the presentation.

I think Microsoft may generally be worried about the future of Office, or they're hubristic about it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Desktop Linux biggest problem is bad software. LibreOffice is great, but it's still 10 years behind Office. GIMP is a joke. NetBeans and Aptana fantastic but come nowhere near the visual studio or xcode.

It's a shame because some Linux distros make Mac OS X and Windows look like a joke. Have you tried <http://elementaryos.org/>? it's like warm pillow on a cold night. A brilliant example of UI done right.

I'm excited to see Steam come to Linux. If Office were to come, it Desktop Linux has a bright future.

</comment><comment><USER55> _"Transforming from a software-maker to a devices and services company requires us to make big, bold bets and push our business in new directions."_ \-- Ballmer on Office 365 launch last week

</comment><comment><USER56> Look for Microsoft to try to squash those in open source who are already nicely serving up quality office products without charge. Could this be why Oracle stopped working to develop Open Office (who btw allowed you to not only open but also save in MS Office file formats)? Did they know something about this that we didn't know? What happened with Open Office did not pass the smell test. Perhaps this is why. Hopefully, Apache can revive the efforts and get things moving forward again with Open Office.

</comment><comment><USER57> For me, standard "offline" Office suites are really "things of the previous millenium". MS Office or Libre/OpenOffice alike.

I use Google Docs for everything. It's simpler to use, it's simpler to share documents, it's inherently more mobile. The updates are instant. And so on.

Now I would be glad if there was free (as-in-speech) alternative to Google Docs, so I could just host it myself on my server. There IS etherpad, but it doesn't do tables and works slightly differently.

What do others think? Are "offline" office suites still relevant?

<comment><USER58> I got bitten by this problem once: [http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/t7MZYkHnL...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/t7MZYkHnLV8) . Essentially, one fine day, google docs couldn't draw a scatter-plot that connected the plotted points with a line (the feature got removed for some reason). From the timeline of that thread, it took months to get the feature back. This is just unacceptable. Ever since, I have decided to stick with a native app for office software (excel on win + mac and some other stuff for Linux).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> In our company we don't use office at all. We only use LibreOffice - it's not as good,but it's completely fine for doing spreadsheets and basic text documents. Honestly, I don't see the need to spend money on the full Office suite.

However, we still use Windows - why? Not because of Office - but because the only proper accounting suite available in this country runs only on Windows,and it's server can only use MSSQL as the database. Therefore, we have to use Windows as a company, even without Office.

<comment><USER60> There's even a certificate called ICDL (and updated MOS) from Microsoft that is required for every student in our college to get in order to graduate. It sucks really. The most useless certificate for a student to bet money and time on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is great news for Linux users everywhere and basically to anyone who has tried to convince casual users to switch.

But to MSFT this is suicide: even if Office remains the leading suite with a Linux version every company out there can save millions a year switching to a distro and paying only for Office, but not for Windows.

This is basically Nintendo giving away Mario and Zelda to other consoles.

Do any of the newer divisions at MSFT make any money? Xbox probably but there is no way Winphone and web are bringing any cash.

</comment><comment><USER62> Microsoft should release their own Linux distribution along with it. Imagine how attractive that might be: a version of Linux, with support contracts, that is guaranteed to work with Microsoft Office.

The only drawback, of course, is that it would weaken the need for Windows itself. But, given the disasters that have been Vista and Windows 8, maybe they should look at long term survival rather than tying themselves to that particular anchor?

They could even call it Lindows ;-)

[yes, I know]

</comment><comment><USER63> Pure speculation, but I have to wonder if Sinofsky's firing had something to do with him not agreeing with this decision. Seeing as a key selling point for the Surface over the iPad is the inclusion of Office, and the Surface was Sinofsky's baby, I imagine he wouldn't like this decision at all. That, and one of the reasons Ballmer cited for Sinofsky leaving was his lack of cooperation with other senior leadership.

</comment><comment><USER64> Never thought I'd see the day that this would happen.

<comment><USER65> That day may still never come. Seems like a rumor at this point, and consider the source-- Phoronix is well known in the Linux press for hyping rumors.

<comment><USER66> Yeah, like Steam for Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> >because Microsoft is reportedly already working on Office for Android. Android, as you may already know, is a Linux-based operating system, meaning a lot of the porting work will have already been done

Well, I thought linux just bases the kernel of the operating system(Android), in which case porting Microsoft Office has nothing to do with porting to desktop linus, unless it's written in C :)

</comment><comment><USER68> And with that, I no longer have any use for Windows. This is awesome, even if I can't understand why they would want to do such a thing.

<comment><USER69> Preemptive crippling strike against Open Office and company?

To my knowledge, Office is one of their main profit centers, to the point of Windows being a deliver platform for Office. So, I could see cannibalizing some Windows sales to boost Office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Now that they're on ARM, their office efforts probably shift to make it ubiquitous on every platform - even exploring the iOS/RIM options. Thus, the entire office team may have a different perspective now... creating a very different approach to development, etc.

</comment><comment><USER71> The odds of governments or major corporations, M$'s biggest customers, switching from windows to linux are virtually nil. Institutions are heavily invested with Microsoft, linux Office won't be the tipping point for a switch to a whole new technology stack.

The Microsoft of today has nothing to lose from this. 20 years ago the situation was different. A must-have app like Office was all that was keeping people from switching to a wide variety of competing OSes. But it's 2013 and the battle has been won. For all the hate that people heap upon Microsoft, they dominate the most profitable sector of the personal computing market. Their strategic position doesn't depend on any one piece of software.

If anything, I think this move demonstrates how confident they are. In the past Office for linux would have been confounding, for both business and ideological reasons. This is the tech company version of dismantling the ICBMS. The OS cold war is over, and everyone can go back to business.

</comment><comment><USER72> I hope they bundle outlook too. Outlook is the main reason i am still using my macbook and windows. Even i do most of my work on Linux, i need to communicate with others through outlook.Actually having outlook on Linux is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER73> Microsoft Office is the last obstacle preventing my wife (and my mother coincidently) from moving to Linux. They both tried Ubuntu, liked it, but Windows VM just for office was PITA. And they switched back because of the office suite.

</comment><comment><USER74> Slowly am seeing some devs supporting Microsoft here...I donno why i should make an app for Windows now a days...

Microsoft should concentrate more on Web product 'Office360' rather trying to rewrite Office for Linux.

</comment><comment><USER75> Horrible late move. What an incredible waste of resources. How many Linux users will buy Office?

Instead, their resources would be better spent creating a Google docs killer freemium service. But what do I know...

</comment><comment><USER76> It is not strengthening Linux based operating systems that they have to worry about. It is the obsolesence of office in the hands of better cross platform suites that can be a bigger problem.

</comment><comment><USER77> I read something like this and think... really MS should follow in Apple's footsteps and build their new OS on the linux kernel, as Apple built their's on the FreeBSD kernel... It could work

<comment><USER78> Unless Microsoft is prepared to invest a lot of money and time in preserving backwards compatibility with existing Windows applications, I can't see it being met with anything but resistance.

<comment><USER79> Throw Windows 8 in a VM and establish a transitional API. Apple wrote this book over a decade ago.

It's still pointless though. I don't think the kernel is Windows' biggest problem, or even necessarily a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Even if they want to be on other platforms, how is Linux a good place to start? Wouldn't iOS or android be more logical? Unless they already have that going...

</comment><comment><USER81> Is it me, or are more and more things coming to Linux nowadays? Might Android's success and Linux' good and early ARM support have something to do with it?

</comment><comment><USER82> Can't Linux users already use Office360? I was under the impression that Office360 was the future. That Microsoft was slowing moving their office software into the cloud?

Supporting Linux seems pointless. Linux has a really small market share. I am fairly sure a lot of Linux users who are tech savvy would want to support the open source Libre Office instead of forking out for MS Office.

Better places to expand would be Android / iOS app stores. Tablet devices are still exploding in growth. I could see a lot of use being got out of office software on tablets.

</comment><comment><USER83> I'm not going to increase memory allocated to Linux from 2GB to 4GB+ to run MS Office, even if it's free.

</comment><comment><USER84> ahahahahahAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I can't fully understand why I find this so funny but I am just falling out of my seat laughing.

While I find this extremely comical, I am excited to see the consequences of this for desktop linux. The way I see it, the more people who use linux the better it will become :).

</comment><comment><USER85> My arse. Sorry but this is link bait.

<comment><USER86> Since this is HN you shouldmprobably provide some counternargument, since I agree with you, here's two: 2% is a massive overestimation of desktop Linux market share, Microsoft doesn't want to fragment the existing diminishing desktop computing base, and would probably spend more effort working ona touch/voice version of Office because it would see better returns.

<comment><USER85> Thanks - that's pretty much what is in my head as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> That's not going to happen. There is just not market for it, nothing to do with Windows vs. Linux.

</comment><comment><USER88> If I were making decisions at MS, I would plan for a future O/S built upon Linux. It makes so much sense.

RS

</comment><comment><USER89> On my PC, I do not want to see any Microsoft software outside of a virtualbox jail.

</comment><comment><USER90> Yes. They should also have iOS and Android versions of MS OFFICE.

</comment><comment><USER91> The big question is... GTK or QT? I'm guessing QT.

</comment><comment><USER92> We're doing just fine without them. LibreOffice!

</comment><comment><USER93> So, hell froze over ?!? Goodness ....

</comment><comment><USER94> Awesome news.

Next step: .NET

</comment><comment><USER95> I don't think so.</comment>


Genetic Consequences of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Americas - <AUTHOR> https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(20)30200-7 <comment><AUTHOR> See also:

[https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-paper- on-t...](https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-paper-on- transatlantic-slave-trade-published/)</comment>


Superbug involved in Tijuana surgery infections shows concerning mutation - <AUTHOR> https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/sd-no-pseudomonas-update-20190111-story.html <comment><USER2> It can get even worse, going beyond breaking antibiotics, and actually consuming them as a nutrition source.

[https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/nom-nom- these...](https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/nom-nom-these- bacteria-eat-antibiotics-lunch)</comment>


MathJax CDN shutting down on April 30, 2017 - juliane-sander https://www.mathjax.org/cdn-shutting-down/ <comment><AUTHOR> MathJax is such a great thing. Paired with simple markdown it really helps me structuring all my study work, sharing is so much easier with HTML files than TEX files. So sad to see the CDN go. Also: Hey Google, wanna do something really great? Sponsor them! _wink_

<comment><USER2> _Hey Google, wanna do something really great? Sponsor them! wink_

Better yet, add native MathML support to Chrome, and help eliminate the need for MathJax altogether. In the meantime, sponsoring MathJax would be a Good Thing though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: InstaConnect – find and connect with professionals over a call - <AUTHOR> http://instaconnect.club/users/login <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I have been experimenting with this idea of InstaConnect for last few weeks.

Every day we hustle to build new relationships to grow our business or ourselves and a lot of times we find hard to connect with the right person quickly.

Sometimes you need an information but you have to figure out a way to get that information and a lot of times its the inside information that a specific person can tell you.

This is what InstaConnect is trying to solve.

You can search for other professionals and they can search you too, once you join, and you can call them via a masked cloud telephony number instantly.

For each call you make you redeem Karma and they earn Karma for picking up your call. Incentivising for their time. This karma they earned can be redeemed to call someone else.

What do you guys think?

In private beta, for now, look for beta users, especially in India, as it's currently live in India but feedback welcomed from around the world.</comment>


64% of new energy from Solar Power in Q1 is not enough - <AUTHOR> http://electrek.co/2016/06/12/64-of-new-electricity-in-q1-came-from-solar-power-is-it-enough/ <comment><USER2> A few interesting tidbits from the table in the article:

1) Coal is seeing a dramatic decline! The decrease in electricity generated by coal in 2015 was four times the increase in renewable (wind+solar) electricity generated. In fact, it was more than all other electricity increases combined. This is great for the environment, and not just from a carbon perspective, also from an ash and air pollution perspective. (But unfortunately bad for the areas where coal mining is the sole economic driver)

2) The total amount of electricity generated actually declined significantly (~5%) in 2015. Since we're not seeing a dramatic economic crash, does this point to efficiency gains, weather, or something else? Hopefully, we'll begin realizing more 'negawatts' \- the most efficient watt-hour of electricity is the one that is never produced.

3) From a PV perspective, I live in an area attractive to solar power both physically and economically, yet only a handful of my neighbors have installed solar panels. There's still a LOT of room to grow!

<comment><USER3> 2) we ARE SEEING A DRAMATIC ECONOMIC CRASH IN THE WEST.

electricity rates in europe have skyrocketed and this is part of the artificial scarcity of electricity , and the suckout of savings that is draining the european economy by rising costs (electricity costs as input to industrial goods) and declining supply ( of money that could have been spent or saved and reinvested in other things other than ridiculous high cash payments for electricity)

<comment><USER2> This was a table of electricity generated in the United States; unemployment is at its lowest since 2008, with GDP growth at 2.2% - not shrinking.

It's more likely that the drop in electricity generation was weather related, but I don't have the data on hand to prove that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> the smartest energy investors from the green energy bubble which burst 3 YEARS AGO NOW, have all basically concluded that we are not YET at the tipping point, accelerating up the curve, of scaling the construction of industrial solar .

perhaps the cheerleaders who pout about our 'slow' progress are doing us a service by trying to motivate us. but i also see them as pesky and annoying.

while some measure of r&d benefits from the feedback loop of failure to industrialize or failures learned from in the industrialization of extant technologies, </comment><comment>the reality is that basic r&d needs to be done. much much more of it.

pushing relentlessly for industrialization at a stage in time where the technology IS NOT YET READY TO SCALE RELATIVE TO OUR EXISTING BASE</comment><comment>---is just foolishness and a waste of money.

BETTER TO SPEND THE MONEY IN R&D, THAN TO WASTE TOO MUCH OF IT ON NON- SCALEABLE SYSTEMS.

</comment><comment><USER4> "this summer we might see clear oceans in the Arctic." \- this is absolutely terrifying.

<comment><USER5> That made me remember the last time I read of some guys trying to reach the north pole. They almost died because the sea ice they were on broke up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Original title: 64% of new electricity in Q1 came from Solar Power – is it enough?

</comment><comment><USER7> "China aims to have 100 gigawatts (GW) of wind power capacity by 2020, and the nation's leaders plan to expand installed solar capacity to 20 GW during the same period. These are truly astonishing goals, and, if China even comes close to accomplishing them, it will become the world's renewable energy leader. But there is a problem. Total Chinese electricity generation capacity is 900 GW currently; with seven percent [GDP] growth, that means the nation's electricity demand in 2020 will be something like 1800 GW. Wind and solar together would supply less than seven percent of that. The only thing likely to boost that percentage much would be a dramatic reduction in growth of energy demand to, say, two percent annually."

I like this from The End of Growth (2011) by Richard Heinberg.

As much as the numbers are incredible we are really undermining the amount of energy produced by fossil sources.

Similar problem with nuclear.

Are we really on the exponential road to sustainability? I hope so.

<comment><USER8> This quote isn't recent, is it? Because it takes 10 years of 7% growth to double[1], and China's economy is becoming less energy intensive over time, so no, it's not going to double power usage in 4 years.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72)

<comment><USER7> 2011\. I'll edit it.</comment></comment></comment>