Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31678-1 <comment><USER2> I recognize that my position is uncommon, but I am in favor of what I call "2-DST" (two minus DST), a position which recognizes that DST is fundamentally _backwards_. Fewer daylight hours in the winter means we should turn the clocks forward in the _winter_ , not the summer!

"2-DST" is permanent daylight savings, except we additionally set the clocks an hour forward for the winter (just like we do now, in March).

More opportunity for sunlight. More outdoor activity in the evenings. Less electricity. Less crime. Better for most businesses and most people.

<comment><USER3> I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static.

Must be a US thing, what with all its timezones. China has a single timezone, and doesn't observe DST. Do you think that means people in the extreme west of china _have_ to wake up at the exact same time as people in Beijing?

In fact, according to Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time)), the Xinjiang region of China has two timezones used concurrently. I guess people just wake up twice: Once at 7am, and again at 7am two hours later :)

Anyway my point is, you could have the US go on a single timezone and stop observing DST. Ok, well, you don't have to open your business at 8am across the country… if your new TZ is based on Austin TX, you just open at 8am in Austin, 7am in NYC and 10am in LA.

Want to give your employees more daylight in winter? Shift business hours by an hour.

<comment><USER4> _> I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static._

The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.

<comment><USER5> Why would changing business hours be so complicated?

<comment><USER4> There are thousands of businesses involved. Also, work contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Georgia is putting DST on the ballot this November. Voters will have a choice to stay with DST, going to standard time year around, or asking Congress for permission to stay on DST year around. My guess is none of the options will receive a majority vote but year around DST will get the plurality. Since that requires Congressional approval and the ballot referendum is non-binding, nothing will change as a result. Having discussed the issue over the years, it's also a bit sad realizing how people don't understand that this doesn't actually create an extra hour of sunlight, it just shifts an hour of pre-noon sunlight to be afternoon sunlight. A surprisingly large number of people are quite insistent that it creates more sunlight per day, citing longer daylight hours during the summer months as proof.

<comment><USER7> Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world.

UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adjust the clocks rather than the times people do things.

The current time isn't particularly useful either, noon isn't even directly tied to the solar apex in most places (due to the timezones and more complex orbit / tilt interactions).

<comment><USER8> > UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM > or 9AM or whatever as a common start time

You mean people want to think about hours in a way that is useful to them where they live? Doesn't sound crazy.

If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. Sure, everyone in New York could get used to their day starting at noon or whatever (to what benefit?) but if you wanted to schedule a meeting with someone in spain (or california) you would still have to figure out the time change to make it a reasonable time for you both.

Any way you slice it, you're just pushing the problem around to different places.

<comment><USER3> Your day "starting" at 00:00 sounds a lot easier to reason about than the day starting at 08:00.

We did get used to the day starting at a weird time for no particular reason, and whenever you change jobs you'll get used to a slightly different time anyway.

I don't see how it's more useful the way it is now than any other way. This is like trying to justify that moving summer holidays by one day would disrupt everyone's way of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To anyone advocating all-year DST: you're wrong.

The chronobiologists say permanent Standard Time is the best thing for humans:

* [https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00944/full)

* [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-turn-back-th...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-turn-back-the-clock-on-daylight-savings-why-standard-time-all-year/)

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

Edit: down vote all you want, that won't change the peer-reviewed published papers.

</comment><comment><USER10> DST is a very sensitive topic, so better use a throwaway ;) Here are examples what would happen if DST were abolished:

If DST ('+1') is adopted permanently, the main effects will be during winter in that sunrise is now an hour later (bad) and sunset as well (which is ok). An example for Berlin, in December: if sunrise used to be at 8:00 (8 a.m.) normal time it is now an hour later at 9:00 (a.m.) (spend some time further north and you will know how much this would suck). Sunset that used to be around 16:15 (4:15 p.m.) is now at 17:15 o'clock (5:15 p.m.) (good/ok).

If normal time ('+0') is adopted, the interesting effects are during summer: sunrise is now an hour earlier than it used to be with DST and the same of course with sunset.

Example for Berlin, in July again: sunrise that used to be at 5:00 o'clock (a.m.) in DST is now at 4:00 (a.m.) (bad), sunset that used to be at 21:30 o'clock (9:30 p.m.) is now at 20:30 o'clock (8:30 p.m.) (bad if you like spending long summer evenings outside).

From my experience most people do not actually hate either, they just do not like the _sudden transition_. Shifting the daily routing to later hours, especially the sleeping time, is not that bad in autumn. Changing it forward in the spring is harder but not really a problem if you _gradually change your sleeping and meal times in advance_. I'm currently at it by going to bed a bit earlier, getting up earlier and (trying to) change eating times. Lunch is a bit problematic but breakfast and dinner do not affect others so much, so it's easier to shift them.

<comment><USER11> It really affects me every year. My grades went down after the switch.

As long as we are not just able to gradually transition I prefer to get rid of it and I'm quite happy that it's going to happen.

Nonetheless if sun goes down at 4 instead of 5 I wouldn't feel any issue with it. Winter is dark I leave in dark and go home at dark.

<comment><USER10> What makes a gradual transition on your own impossible for you if I may ask?

<comment><USER11> My work schedule on one side and the additional effort on the other (coordinating with my wife, changing alarm regularly, matching that with public transport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I, for one, would like to wake up when the sun is up, and go to sleep when the sun is down. Isn't this this the same website where everyone is familiar with Why We Sleep? Standard Time forever

<comment><USER13> Standard time isn't perfect though. The more west someone is in a time zone, the less sleep they often get because the sun goes down later in the evening. Some have estimated it to be as much as 20 minutes of sleep less, which is very significant over time.

What we really need is for schools and work to start later in the day for a larger number of people so that the morning can be a time to sleep in, or if you are a morning person do your morning things.

I almost think that getting rid of time zones in the US might make it so that people are more cognizant of where the sun is and so that society runs on a more local time.

<comment><USER12> > The more west someone is in a time zone, the less sleep they often get > because the sun goes down later in the evening.

isn't this even worst in DST? Maybe I'm thinking about it backwards...

<comment><USER13> Yes, this is worse during DST.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Genuine question to the experts: What are the chances that this effect is caused by how we attribute the accidents to time intervals? I haven't read the whole paper, but when they say accident rate is increased by 6%, is that counted by 24-hour intervals? Or by calendar days?

<comment><USER15> It is also a question what happens in Autumn if it balances out then there is no news actually.

</comment></comment><comment> jagged-chisel I don't particularly care around what time range we center the day, I just want to stop changing twice a year. Pick one and stick to it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Now that we have so much digital we should experiment with a gradual shifting clock that spreads the time change out over the entire year. Clock that follows the tilt of the Earth. It sounds crazy and traditional clocks and watches and cars would all suffer but someone will come up with something like this, even if just conceptual, and it will be cool. Just wait!

</comment><comment><USER17> It's funny how the majority of people can't get politicians to undo DST for decades now. Makes the tiny change in healthcare for some look like a major miracle.

I think they just altered the DST start/end days, I remember it used to end before Halloween until too many kids got hit or killed by cars in the dark.

<comment><USER6> In the US the dates of DST were changed during the Bush administration as a cheap political gimmick to make it look like he was doing something about energy prices. It didn't help much in that regard but caused plenty of chaos in the IT sector where a significant amount of systems were designed to adjust twice a year for DST but weren't designed for the date span of DST to change.

<comment><USER13> From what I understand there are still a lot of hospitals that have to switch to paper twice a year because of DST issues. If I remember right it is mainly Epic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sunbear-lover Now that we have so many digital devices with GPS, why not go with continuous time zones? In the sense that if I move a certain distance to the east the time will change by a certain number of minutes, rather than chunking everything into hours. Seems much more accurate and useful.

</comment><comment><USER18> And so the semiannual discourse about DST begins, only to be forgotten a week after the clocks are changed. See you all again in November where we discuss, and again fail to implement any change in policy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Accident risk has been shown to decrease by the same amount when the time switches in the fall. It's a wash.

<comment> J-dawg I thought that as well, but this study appears not to have found that

> and there were no effects of the fall-back transition to Standard Time (ST) > on MVA risk

EDIT: It seems our assumption was correct, at least for the UK:

> There is substantial evidence that fewer people would be killed and > seriously injured on Great Britain's roads if this country were to put the > clocks forward by one hour throughout the year. The Department should take > the lead in re- examining the practice of changing clocks at the end of > British Summer Time with other central Government departments.

I wonder why the OP study (using US data) found something different?

Source: [https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpu...](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubacc/665/665.pdf)

<comment><USER20> First thought without even trying to compare the DST shift directly to guess a reason: Comparing sunrise and sunset across the year, London to Chicago, London is slightly more extreme across the year.

London: [https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/london](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/london)

Chicago: [https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/chicago](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/chicago)

Assuming my co-workers are typical, workday also seems to end more like 5:30pm in London vs 5pm in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very hard to believe that more daylight later in the day is a net negative for traffic safety.

In any case, the solution is to pick one timeframe and _stop changing it_.

<comment> java-man It's not the amount of light, it's the abrupt change in the sleep pattern.

<comment><USER22> Never changing it would only result in gradual changes of sleep pattern.

<comment> munk-a And humans tend to do alright with gradual changes - they tend to have problems with sudden changes (like flying to a different time zone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a fan of changing the clocks twice a year for the reasons nicely laid out in this article: [http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like- dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)

>If we stayed on Standard Time throughout the year, sunrise here in the Chicago area would be between 4:15 and 4:30 am from the middle of May through the middle of July. And if you check the times for civil twilight, which is when it's bright enough to see without artificial light, you'll find that that starts half an hour earlier. This is insane and a complete waste of sunlight.

>If, by the way, you think the solution is to stay on DST throughout the year, I can only tell you that we tried that back in the 70s and it didn't turn out well. Sunrise here in Chicago was after 8:00 am, which put school children out on the street at bus stops before dawn in the dead of winter. It was the same on the East Coast. Nobody liked that.

Changing clocks is a hassle but the alternatives are worse.

<comment><USER24> It would be better for children to start school later in the day anyway.

<comment><USER25> Don't DST in practice make school start an hour later parts of the year? Where I live it don't get dark for 2-3 months during the summer and it was never easy to get up in the mornings. The same at the middle of winter there is no sunrise so not possible for schools to start after dawn.

I think I did read some place that it was more connected to that our sleep pattern isn't accurate with 24h, so if we get up later we would go to be later and be back to square one.

<comment><USER26> > Don't DST in practice make school start an hour later parts of the year?

It's about half and half, when you consider the school year starts in daylight saving time, switches to standard, and then switches back. I don't see how changing the time kids go to school twice in the year is beneficial. And I certainly don't see how sleep-deprived bus drivers in the spring are an acceptable risk.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PayPal app has huge security flaw, update rushed to Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2010/11/03/paypal-app-has-huge-security-flaw-update-rushed-to-apple/ <comment><USER2> Seems like all of the security "threats" that I've read about recently have something to do with using a sensitive service on an unencrypted WiFi network. In reality, it's not advisable to be doing any banking or anything else really on an open network that you positively do not want to gamble on.

Good to hear PayPal took action and is fixing it right away. On the flip side, a silly issue like that could have been caught with proper security auditing practices.</comment>


Cryptographic puzzle at http://minotauragency.com/ - <AUTHOR>

I received an unsolicited email pointing me to http://minotauragency.com/, where there's a sloppy GoDaddy-hosted website containing a cryptographic puzzle. I'm not too apt to spend time solving it but I thought it might interest the community. (In case anyone thinks to scan for subdomains, I already did so and haven't come up with anything useful. I'm not sure I care enough to write a scraper.) Enjoy! <comment><USER2> The keys indicate it's a scrabble reference. Substituting values gives:

WHY HI THERE WERE A NEW MANHATTAN-BASED ADVERTISING AGENCY AND WE MAY SOON BE HIRING COPYWRITERS SECRETARIES SOCIAL MEDIA GENIUSES ART DIRECTORS INTERNS...

Then a bunch more spam. Basically a viral marketing job ad.</comment>


Microsoft's Resurgence Under Satya Nadella - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsofts-resurgence-under-satya-nadella-11549022422 <comment><USER2> Long story, short:

1\. Realize the world is moving beyond Windows

2\. Cede mobile OS to Android/iOS, that battle is lost.

3\. Realize, next great revenue stream is the Cloud (Azure).

<comment><USER3> The problem is they are no longer best-of-breed for any of their markets, except maybe Office.

Microsoft doesn't break out Azure revenue, but by all accounts it's quite small compared to AWS.

And Office is very much under threat. If you work with young people you'll notice they tend to prefer G Suite apps over Office - most likely because Google has done a great job getting their software into schools.

<comment><USER4> Uh, Azure revenue, by many accounts, is greater than AWS:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsof...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsoft- beats-amazon-in-12-month-cloud-revenue-26-7-billion-to-23-4-billion-ibm- third/#39c070312bf1)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft- tops-amazon-in-q1-cloud-revenue-6-0-billion-to-5-44-billion-ibm-third- at-4-2-billion/#3b3145d95d4b)

And sorry, G Suite is a joke compared to desktop Office for serious work. It doesn't matter what the youngin's prefer, what matters is what gets (or facilitates getting) real work done in the enterprise, which generally revolves around Excel and PowerPoint in some fashion.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft includes a bunch of non-Azure products under their cloud revenue. And they do it to confuse people and falsely claim they're outpacing AWS, which as you just proved, works.

<comment><USER5> Why shouldn't Office365 be counted in cloud revenue? "Cloud Revenue" doesn't exclusive mean IaaS or PaaS.

<comment><USER6> Because SaaS isn't cloud computing. SaaS is essentially a fully available software application that you don't run on your own machines.

There's similarities, but key differences that you can easily look up to better understand. Hence part of why most aren't huge fans of including O365 to claim Azure's bigger than AWS.

<comment><USER7> Do you think Amazon subtracts their own massive utilization of AWS out from their numbers? Not likely.

<comment><USER8> How is buying your own product GAAP? None of the cloud providers can claim their usage of their own products as revenue, it is a cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://outline.com/9BWnsj](https://outline.com/9BWnsj)

<comment><USER10> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have mentioned this to many.. Satya could go down as one of the greatest turnaround masters of all time. I had consulted with MS a long time ago (2005-6). The work place was toxic. I might have been with the wrong group..but even uttering Java was considered sacrilegious. If you took a Mac to their office, the security would look at suspicion. Needless to say, I never returned back after my stint. Fast-forward. MS is the largest contributor to Linux source. In MS Ignite conferences, it's not about Windows and .Net anymore rather you would find healthy all round discussions. The developer community has slowly started trusting them more than other biggies. Not just Satya himself but he has his second line all focused in creating a customer friendly environment. I will put my money on MS till Satya is at the helm of affairs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Steve Ballmer, technical bits aside. Just couldn't play as a successful CEO in PR Role. He was too aggressive, abrasive and even somewhat rude.

Aside from that, one of thing most amusing things and one Ballmer excellent business moves was suing nearly every Android Smartphone Company for patent infringement. Microsoft literally makes money off of Android Smartphones but what's confusing to me is how Apple takes all of the flak.

<comment><USER13> IIRC the android revenue is rolled into the x-box revenue under some nebulous category when they break out revenue in their earning (forget the exact title). This hides the massive losses they are taking on x-box and all things x-box related. The android revenue is almost pure profit and nearly $2B annually. (they make this money by licencing patents to phone makers that use android such as HTC and Samsung)

<comment><USER14> Arent most of those patents pure junk? Afair the only valid patent in there was something to do with FAT long filenames , and that one was killed with Linus help back in 2013.

<comment><USER12> I can't recall but I think many of them were User Interface related and rather specific.

Not like the Apple claim of "Rounded Rectangles" but I will admit that it did appear even at face value that both Apple and Microsoft had a strong case against HTC, Samsung, etc.

But I guess one of these makes better headlines for clickbait. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A VC friend of mine characterized these kinds of answers nicely: incredible, profound bullshit that no one seems to know how to cut through.

On a level specific to Microsoft, their biggest threat is how agreeable and self-deprecating everything they do is now. Corporate cultures thrive on hierarchy, and yet their employees are pretty comfortable admitting to their friends that Windows and Azure are crap. The quiet trie flippers at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Oracle and Apple never speak ill of the product. Those people go and hunt _leakers_.

Nobody at Microsoft wants to hunt leakers anymore. That bloodthirsty lust for dollars is what made it possible for a whole generation of middle managers to hit the country club in the first place. So what does it say that the us- versus-them mentality is gone?

The CEO should be going out and saying, "Come work for us. Look how much _nicer_ we are. Trie flippers might score better on their programming quizes, but they're insufferable." Instead he's talking, in coded language, about expanding to serve the Chinese government, which is impossible in an organization that believes in personal freedoms and positive life outcomes.

On a meta-level, what do we do with all the CEOs who are essentially beneficiaries of our increasingly correlated bull runs? Has it really boiled down to, "Since non-mineral and utility revenues are correlated at huge market cap companies, you're a good CEO as long as your likable?"

<comment><USER16> Microsoft deserves to go gentle into that good night because of all the damage they've done to the computing industry over the years, for example killing Be and Netscape with monopolist tactics and creating a terminally insecure software monoculture of the lowest common denominator of Windows and IE, that we're still recovering from today. (Google is repeating the lesson today - Android is the Windows 98 of mobile).

I'm glad to see them disappear and it drives me crazy to talk to all of these people who think Office 365 and Azure are sex on a stick. They've either forgotten the past or they don't care.

Microsoft deserves to die.

<comment><USER17> > They've either forgotten the past or they don't care.

Or they're too young to know or remember!

Working with recent grads, I've discovered that for most of them Bill Gates has always been this grey-haired, well-natured philanthropist. They can't believe it when I tell them of how universally reviled Microsoft was, and I feel like Grandpa Simpson talking about onions in his belt :(

<comment><USER18> I speak here perhaps not only for myself but others: although _Microsoft_ had been reviled, and still is, somehow _Gates_ escaped that personally. I've never felt that I dislike Bill Gates.

There had been a smaller Microsoft before the rise of MS-DOS and Windows. Microsoft was a vendor of BASIC interpreters that were integrated into some 8 bit microcomputers, which I used. The Apple II's "Applesoft" basic was derived from Microsoft's work. Its name is a portmanteau of Apple and Microsoft, a kind of touchstone that highlights a complex history of cooperation and rivalry between the two.

<comment><USER19> Here, let me fix that for you:

[https://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmenti...](https://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=43014&stc=1)

Bu xie, my pleasure.

<comment><USER18> I actually had that in an earlier edit of my comment!

I got rid of it for lack of stability in the URL. There doesn't appear to be a nice semi-permanent home on the web for these photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's important to know when to give up, sure, but what did he actually start? Everything that carries MS today (Azure, Exchange Online, subscription software, Office 365, XBox) was started and got traction under Ballmer.

<comment><USER21> Everything is about perception. What Satya did was change Microsoft's image and culture for the better, insuring Microsoft's cash cows have a future and stay relevant in a world that is changing rapidly with other strong competitors.

Ballmer's style of leadership would not fly today. Saying stuff like Linux is cancer, the iPhone a toy/joke, acting like a clown during conference.

<comment><USER22> "What Satya did was change Microsoft's image and culture for the better, insuring Microsoft's cash cows have a future and stay relevant in a world that is changing rapidly with other strong competitors.

Ballmer's style of leadership would not fly today. "

Totally disagree.

Which of MS customers do you think care about 'perception' of how nice the CEO is?

Do you think Siemens is going to spend $500M on Google cloud because their CEO is nicer than Ballmer was?

Which Windows users are thinking about Satya vs. Ballmer? 99% of Windows users have no idea who either of those people are :)

Satya's 'nice guy ways' are almost irrelevant to the business overall, other than maybe recruiting, or something like that, but I doubt they've ever had a problem.

Analysts and investors read GAAP statements and those are 100x more important than 'how nice' the CEO is perceived.

Some issues, like Linux as you mention, I think are important, but I'll bet that Ballmer would have arrived there anyhow.

Linux support was not so much a strategic decision as it was a 'forced hand'. They had basically no choice and the decision was inevitable.

I think that the reason Ballmer was disliked by Wall St. was A) the failure of Windows Mobile b) the perception that Windows was in decline (it's not) c) Cloud revenues had not yet hit the big time yet.

I actually feel that the P/E ratio pushed on Ballmer would have come around for him eventually.

I like Satya, I think he's the right choice - but he still has to prove himself. As of today, he's mostly riding Ballmer's coattails.

<comment><USER20> There is one area where Satya is better leadership-wise. The success of Microsoft in the long term ultimately depends on its ability to run a good engineering organization. Everyone at MS knew Ballmer was never an engineer, so he had very little respect from the engineering rank and file. His brash, business oriented personality and the lack of "filter" did not help matters. While it is true that customers largely don't give a shit who runs Microsoft as long as it's run reasonably well, Microsoft employees (and prospective employees) do care, and the ability to attract and retain them is the cornerstone of Microsoft's continued success.

I saw a post in another thread that suggested that former enlisted men do better as officers than people who were never soldiers. The same is true here in terms of people leadership, if not the vision.

<comment><USER12> Does anyone know the major departures during Ballmer? I know the original lead for Microsoft Windows Server Manager and MMC.exe literally quit and morale hit the absolutely floor among the entire organization. He eventually ended up at Amazon and another guy ended up at what became Pivotal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A big resurgence: They make an operating system that supports Linux with just a few clicks. They make hardware devices that can also natively run Linux very well, for when I need it.

It feels like Apple when OSX was introduced, only better.

Many people here may not like Windows 10, but the more I use it, the more I like it.

<comment><USER24> I am writing this from my personal Windows 10 machine and I am not a big fan.

Random things that have aggravated me just in the last few days:

      * For some reason I suddenly had to create a pin a few days ago to login instead of my password. why?

      * skype is now magically in my list of background programs.

      * There is news in the start menu when I want to launch an app!?

      * whenever I want to do something a little hard, like copy a large number of files, things tend to go pear shape very fast.

      * It's very hard to find basic settings from the start button search thingy.  Chrome OS and OS X are way better at that.

      * windows shell still is unpleasant, and the goobuntu subsystem just isn't convenient due to the incompatibility of windows file paths. Also it's very ugly for some reason

      * More generally dealing with Windows drives drives really sucks. I'm always shuttling things around trying to fit them into particular drives. Linux LVM is so much better.

I could go on. I wish they'd just go back to being an operating system. Now that they're not considered a monopoly anymore they're taking the opportunity to jam their whole 1st party ecosystem of crap down Windows 10 users throats. It's not fun for me.

The only reason I pay for Windows is to play games. I prefer Linux as a user, but the hardware and display issues are a pain. I also agree that Windows feels snappier and prettier. Chrome OS with Crostini would actually be pretty perfect if it didn't crash on me every couple of hours.

<comment><USER25> Have you tried Linux recently? I installed arch a few months ago, and almost all of my steam games run on it out of the box (no extra setup required).

I have an AMD Vega 64 graphics card, drivers are all handled automatically.

My Xbox 360 controllers with wireless dongle are handled automatically.

If you want to use xbox one controllers, any bluetooth adapter will work out of the box, but you do have to install a package called xpadneo.

AMD drivers on Linux are great right now, and most hardware is supported with nothing extra.

<comment><USER24> I use it daily for work. Haven't used it at home for years.

My main blocker games wise is Battlefield series which I don't believe works on linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why is somebody posting articles behind paywalls?

And then: "We do not accept cancellations by mail, email, or by any other means. "

Really?

</comment><comment><USER22> "When Satya Nadella took Microsoft Corp.'s helm five years ago, the conventional wisdom was that the company's glory days were behind it."

Have a look at this MS revenues [1] and consider why for a moment there is any 'conventional wisdom' like this?

MSFT stock price did languish during this time of amazing growth which I guess validates that 'conventional wisdom' was in fact sour, but it's hard to see why it was.

Robert Shiller, in a recent interview on the FT alphaville podcast [2] indicated how so much of valuation was based on 'narrative' and that a lot of this narrative is in fact fiction.

For whatever reason, the industry press never liked Ballmer, and I guess they like Satya. Surely, there have been some changes afoot, but in terms of fundamental business orientation, I don't see any reason why Satya is 'better than' Ballmer. At HN, we might see things like VS Code and open sourcing Chakra as 'important', and although they are relevant, those issues are _small_ peanuts in the MS bigger picture.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts- global...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global- revenue-since-2002/)

[2] [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/robert-shiller-market- na...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/robert-shiller-market-narratives- are-like-diseases/id448302257?i=1000427224773&mt=2)

<comment><USER2> > For whatever reason, the industry press never liked Ballmer, and I guess > they like Satya

Ballmer made several missteps:

1\. Fruitless foray into mobile with acquisition of Nokia and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone strategies.

2\. Billion+ dollar acquisition of Skype that basically went no where.

3\. Remember a company called aQuantive? Don't worry, neither does anyone else. Ballmer's MS purchased them for $6 billion.

That's off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more examples.

<comment><USER22> "Ballmer made several missteps:"

Growing an already massive company company by 3x in revenue is the important thing, which is the 'bottom line' in which missteps have to be contextualized.

Any company in tech is going to make mistakes, this should be happening, so listing them off doesn't so much help - what matters is how all of this works out in the mix.

I worked in mobile during that time, it was vicious. Surely MS could have done better, but I view it more as lost opportunity than failure.

Remember that 80% of acquisitions fail. Google spent $3B on Nest. Apple spent $3 Billion on Beats, it remains to be seen if they'll make that up in profit.

<comment><USER2> > Growing an already massive company company by 3x in revenue is the important > thing, which is the 'bottom line' in which missteps have to be > contextualized.

Yes, he managed to creatively squeeze revenue out of existing markets. This is what he was known for.

But as far as finding new markets or growing existing markets, he failed and that's all Wall Street cares about.

> Surely MS could have done better, but I view it more as lost opportunity > than failure.

Non other than Bill Gates himself refers to MS Mobile strategy as a failure: [http://fortune.com/2013/02/19/today-in-tech-why-bill- gates-c...](http://fortune.com/2013/02/19/today-in-tech-why-bill-gates-calls- old-microsoft-mobile-strategy-a-mistake/)

> Remember that 80% of acquisitions fail. Google spent $3B on Nest. Apple > spent $3 Billion on Beats, it remains to be seen if they'll make that up in > profit

Ballmer's failure rate on major acquisitions may have been 100%. (I'm not even kidding)

<comment><USER27> Beats was already profitable when they bought it.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2018/03/08...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2018/03/08/dr- dres-3-billion-monster-the-secret-history-of-beats-3-kings-book-excerpt/)

Beats Music was also the foundation of Apple Music which is also gaining subscribers like crazy.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/careypurcell/2018/05/15/with-50...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/careypurcell/2018/05/15/with-50-million- subscribers-apple-music-still-lags-behind-spotify-for-now/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The only product from Microsoft I use is Windows and they're ruining it. So, sorry Satya, but...

<comment><USER29> You don't use GitHub or LinkedIn or Skype either?

You might also rely on sites that are built with Microsoft technologies (Stack overflow for example) or find that your workplace gets by with Excel.

It's hard to say you don't use their technologies.

<comment><USER28> I don't use github or linkedin. I don't use skype either... because Microsoft ruined it and everybody left (for business now I use Hangouts and for gaming now I use Discord).

<comment><USER30> that's clearly wrong. not everybody left. you left

<comment><USER31> Everyone I know quit using Skype too.. it's tough to have this argument without access to expensive market research reports, though

More anecdotally, the only time I used Skype in the last few years was when I had a remote job interview with LINE. (Ironically, LINE's core product is a Skype competitor, and they refused to use it for the interview even though I said I'd rather stick with LINE and not install Skype. If that isn't a red flag, I don't know what is, haha)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What resurgence? From a consumer point of view, MS is all but gone to the corporate pastures where Oracle feeds.</comment>


EpubPressJS: Bundle websites into ebooks using JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/epub-press-js <comment><USER2> Does this support both grunt and gulp? Because for many people thats like required to get it working in production stacks ...

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by support? You could import it into a Gulp/Grunt file and use it there if you wanted. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Project home page: [https://epub.press/](https://epub.press/)</comment>


Illegal Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://www.timhunkin.com/94_illegal_engineering.htm <comment><USER2> Great piece (or at least what I skimmed through). However, I think this hypothesis is not well-founded:

> _I suspect the main reason for the disappearance of the craftsman criminal > is simply that there are fewer and fewer people with the practical skills > and confidence to even try to break into a safe. Engineering apprenticeships > have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, > replaced by 'craft, design and technology', which seems to mainly involve > making things of cardboard._

As he mentions later in the piece, the rewards just aren't that great. Moreover, I think surveillance technology has reached a point where getting access to the safe is harder than cracking the safe itself. And that if you have the means to bypass the surveillance, then you have the sophistication needed to bypass the safe's physical locks without traditional safe-cracking.

<comment><USER3> For a year or so in college, I worked at night for a security firm. I spent several months working in a bank's operation center, watching the camera feeds from the branches overnight. Anyway, for some reason part of the training for that job mentioned that the average bank robbery at the time grossed only about $1500 (about $4000 now). Plus the robbers would almost certainly be on video and the FBI was automatically involved. And with dye packs (bundles of cash that explode with brightly colored dye) and other measures... Well, robbing a bank was a pretty stupid plan.

The other months of that job involved patrolling the HQ for a phone company, including the central computer rooms. One day we got a memo about a well-known hacker group that had dressed up in suits and just walked into the building because the daytime guards weren't checking IDs. Ha.

<comment><USER4> It is a well known social hack to simply put a good suit on, walk up to people like you belong there, make them feel important and then get them to do whatever it is you want.

<comment><USER5> You can go anywhere in life if you look serious and carry a clipboard

<comment><USER6> And a full size video camera. I've been issued temporary press passes at a Republican fundraiser by signing out a professional grade camera at the local cable company (after a four hour course), telling security we were with CCTV (they didn't blink), and CNN let us use some of their lights!

<comment><USER7> Not sure whether you were aware of this, but CCTV are a real network - it's China's state owned TV company, which also produces global and English language content - so saying you're from a global TV network is probably not that blink-worthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love a bit of Tim Hunkin. Anyone reading HackerNews would probably enjoy his television series from the early 90s: The Secret Life of Machines. Details, including links to download locations (bittorrent for preference I'd imagine) here: <http://www.timhunkin.com/control/n_tv_index.htm>

<comment><USER9> He's amazing. I absolutely devoured his book 'Almost Everything There is to Know' as a kid, which was the collection of all his cartoons from decades at the Observer. It's now online <http://www.timhunkin.com/40_rudiments_book.htm> but I highly recommend getting a second hand copy of the book. I must have read it cover to cover about 5 times and I think it's the source of my reputation of always knowing ridiculous random facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the "DT" mentioned in this article? I have no prior knowledge of that acronym.

<comment> excuse-me Design Technology - it's drawing pretty pictures (sorry `design concepts`) of what you would make if your school still had proper shop class.

It is to "metal work" what "information technology" is to programming.

<comment><USER11> My son has just started doing Industrial Arts at school. A lot of it just seems to be dreadful spouting of design and architecture jargon.

<comment> excuse-me But what do people want from a wheel? How do they relate to it? What colour should it be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the past week I have been reading _Essays Ancient and Modern_ by Bernard Knox. In the autobiographical introduction, he writes of being trained for infiltration behind German lines in WW II, including a class with a master safe cracker, then an inmate of Pentonville Prison. Knox flunked, as having insufficiently sensitive fingers, and the safe cracker advised him to stick to dynamite. As matters worked out, Knox never had the chance to practice burglary, though he saw a good deal of action.

</comment><comment><USER13> I hadn't previously seen this video, but it's a great insight into his slot machines. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mkhI-KB_U>

</comment><comment><USER14> I was shopping for safes a while ago. It's pretty amazing how bad the low-end safes (gun safes, in particular) are -- 12-16ga steel with some concrete. You can open one (destructively) with a heavy ax or sledge in a few minutes. Even when the door is something semi-acceptable (1/4" steel plate), it's often the only part, with the body of the safe being much lighter.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, at the bottom end of the market safes are competing against Kensington lock cables and hiding valuables on the top shelf of your wardrobe.

If anyone broke into my home I assume it would be a brick through the window then in and out in five minutes grabbing any laptops, jewelery and cash rather than a planned attack with thermal lances and diamond core drills!

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I just feel a particularly high level of responsibility when it comes to securing weapons. In addition to the financial loss, you've got moral and potential legal liability for how they're used. (I think only civil, and a lot of that would be addressed by taking reasonable precautions to secure them, plus reporting theft in a timely manner).

<comment><USER16> I'm in the same boat as you. I would like to have a safe a thief couldn't open easily with the tools in my garage.

On the other hand, my guns aren't rare or particularly high quality. A reasonably good safe will cost more than the contents.

<comment><USER14> The generally accepted solution to that problem is to buy more guns, so as to raise the value protected and thus justify a Graffunder or ISM safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "In the last twenty years, the craft of safe cracking has tragically declined."

No kidding, bank accounts with proliferation of various ways money is transferred and stored - budding criminals and kids who want to play mischief - look to the internet now. Cracking safes is so quaint.

</comment><comment><USER18> From the title "Illegal Engineering", I thought this would be about titling yourself a "Professional Engineer" in Canada and similar countries, where calling yourself that without a professional engineering license is illegal. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_eng...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering#Canada)

I don't mind reading about safe-cracking, but it's a little disappointing that the article never talks about when safe-cracking is illegal, or how specifically it relates to engineering. The title doesn't fit.

<comment><USER19> If you insist on everything conforming to your exceedingly narrow interpretation you must find life very difficult. I would stick to reading law books and phone books.

<comment><USER18> Your reply greatly exaggerated how much I dislike the title. It was rude of you to attribute a straw-man worldview to me and then snidely insult it. Your reply implied that I did something like call for the deletion of the article because of its title, though I had even stated that "I don't mind reading about safe-cracking".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone else read it aloud in his voice, pauses and all. Occasionally picturing him blowing himself up while setting the charges and all that?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not, I think I must !

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the article there are some references to medieval locks.

I was impressed to see early roman (Pompeian and Herculaneum) era locks. If anyone is interested this query served me [https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+%22roman+OR+pompeian...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+%22roman+OR+pompeian%22+key+lock)</comment>


Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf <comment><USER2> The point of this, as posted previously, is given in this 2014 post: [https://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts- pro...](https://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity- laced-anti-spam-paper/) (also previously submitted to HN as [http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper- scam](http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam))

Essentially, predatory journals spam scientists, seeking to publish their paper for a small fee. Someone wrote this in 2005 as a joke response to spammy conference invites, then someone else more recently sent this to one of those predatory journals.

>After receiving a spam email from the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology, Dr. Peter Vamplew of Federation University Australia's School of Engineering and Information Technology sent the anti-spam article as a reply to the spam email without any other message, expecting that they might open it and read it, but not that it would be considered for publication.

>To his surprise, the journal accepted the paper and sent him an acceptance email that had two PDF attachments. One was a formal statement of acceptance and the second was the reviewer report.

>It's clear from examining the reviewer report that the same filled-out form is used for most or all submissions. Certainly, no peer review was completed despite the journal's claim to be a peer reviewed journal. The acceptance indicates that the next step for Associate Professor Vamplew is to wire USD $150 to the bank account of Tej Pal Singh, and the paper will be published, but I don't think he'll be doing that.

<comment><USER3> I receive several of these per month. They range variously from bogus conference CFPs (in locations like Hawaii and Rio) to bogus journals to invitations to serve as the editor for a bogus journal. Most of them seem completely automated, scraping authors and emails out of databases of papers.

Most of them stand out as obvious (especially when they spam me based on a journal article that wanted names formatted like "J. Triplett"). But sometimes they have _almost_ enough believability that I could imagine someone not familiar with this type of scam falling for it. Some of them stand up to a quick search, and someone seeing the journal title and CFP, not doing the research on it, sending a draft ("spray and pray"), and following along with the process and any fees. (Some journals charge substantial fees as well, sometimes by the page, with extra for diagrams.)

The mails often follow the usual tactics of playing up the recipient's status. And any university IT department would tell you that students and professors are not by any means immune to scams. When one "success" earns hundreds in fees, it wouldn't take a significant success rate to make this scam profitable.

<comment><USER2> Excellent points, and it's also worth pointing out that respectable publishing does, of course, cost a fee, and a far more exorbitant one at that. It can be easy to fall into the trap since that's not a red flag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well I read the document in its entirety, and I'm still a little unclear as to what the authors' specific point was. Perhaps a clearly articulated thesis statement might have helped.

<comment><USER5> I found the diagram on page 3 enlightening.

<comment><USER2> I know we're all joking here, but the final figure (last page) intrigued me. I generally read the X-axis first but this would have you read the Y-axis first. Is that something people generally do, or were the authors going for a left- to-right consistency?

<comment><USER3> In this case, almost certainly left-to-right consistency. But depending on the diagram, sometimes you do care more about the Y axis than the X axis; I wouldn't say I have a consistent reading order between the two, though generally I'll look at the diagram caption first.

For the graphed data itself, I suspect people do tend to pay more attention to the Y axis, and more specifically to the extremes; the results in most papers tend to talk about those extremes (with the exception of the rare graph that highlights consistency across a range of results). Given that, it makes sense to check the scale for "how high" or "how low" first, and then check "by varying what".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The references are a nice touch.

[http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt](http://www.rfc- editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt)

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt)

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of "The Shining" [http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/All_work_and_no_play_make...](http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/All_work_and_no_play_makes_Jack_a_dull_boy)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ahh, this is among my favorite papers, alongside the two medical papers in which one said to fake the NMR data (in first person) and the other said '(insert statistical method here)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to know the story here. Someone spent a fair bit of time on TeX to make this.

<comment><USER2> See my comment, but it's a joke response to a spammy predatory journal, which was then accepted since they exist just to take money from scientists.</comment></comment>


Internet Archive goes Dark to Protest SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.archive.org/

<comment> Tim-Boss 4 hours 20 mins to go to the 18th (Here in the land of GMT at least!) a little late in the day for announcements like this isn't it? Not that I'm in any way upset they're taking action, I truly believe it should be 'all hands on deck' when it comes to defending against internet censorship!</comment>


Warren Buffett: Investing mistakes to avoid - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/10/26/warren-buffett-investment-advice/3188499/

<comment><USER2> I learned about the index funds from a great book _I 'll Teach You to Be Rich_ by Ramit Sethi. Despite terrible title it's quite nice and recommends investing in index funds heavily. I live in Poland where, unfortunately, this segment of the market is highly underdeveloped. I have no more than three funds to choose out of which only one is accessible for a small investor wanting to save for the future. I can't wait for other funds to enter the market!</comment>


Bubble talk (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk <comment><USER2> I dont think he won the first bet did he? Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, Uber, Spacex, and Pinterest together are less than 200 bn and falling. All still pretty good companies (not you Uber), doing interesting things though.

bet 2 - I have not done the calculation, but just stripe puts it way beyond the 27 bn figgure.

bet 3 - plenty of good companies in that batch. Razorpay was valued at half a billion dollars in last round. Overall seems like he was right. [https://www.ycdb.co/batch/w15](https://www.ycdb.co/batch/w15)

<comment><USER3> Uber: 50.73 bln Spacex: 33.3 bln? Airbnb: 35 bln? Palantir: 26 bln ? Pinterest: 10.4Bln Dropbox: 7.44 Bln

They are far from $200bln, so he certainly lost the first one. Might have won the other 3 though.

<comment><USER4> To me, the outcome is just another example of the power of diversification and that we really don't know anything about which stocks or companies are best. Stripe alone made Bet 2 worth it.

<comment><USER5> I'm inclined to read it as early opportunities having the highest average growth potential. Big companies are more likely to be already around their actual ceiling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Datapoint for reference: if you invested in an SP500 fund during the same time you would have roughly doubled (around 180%) your money (an annualized return of 11%).

<comment><USER7> That's the proper comparison.

Investing into startups and unicorns should provide significant yield over diversified and less risky investment. Getting the same result from taking more risk is not a good investment.

from the end of March 30, 2015

+56% SP500 Price index

+70% SP500 Total return index

+83% Nasdaq price index

Uber, Palantir, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, and SpaceX doubling their valuations would give only +3.2% annualized return over Nasdaq. I don't see the risk/reward ratio of a good investment if the price just doubles in that period.

(FAANG is another good comparison).

<comment><USER2> How is investing in companies which are already 100 bn in valuations more risky than SP500?

I am sure all investors who put money in these companies when they were risky, made very good returns, far more than SP500.

<comment><USER7> It's not the size but the way they operate:

* plan is to forego profits to gain market share, negative earnings

* free cash flow is negative

* lots of debt.

Dropbox -40%, Uber -28%, Pinterest -23% since the IPO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Regardless of the fact that he missed by a bit, this type of writing is way more valuable than the standard NYT/Bloomberg "OMG IS IT A BUBBLE???" articles?

<comment><USER9> I would say so. The writer is giving analysis with money and reputation on the line using specific metrics.

It gives us something to measure and review. It also adds/removes credibility when we read another article with his analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Of course, there could be a macro collapse in 2018 or 2019, which wouldn't have time to recover by 2020.

Which hasn't happened...

There was another thread about bubble and calling me out. Just to point out, If you bought S&P Index in 2015 you would now have roughly 200% return.

But this is in the context of tech. We forget Apple, Microsoft, Google are not just doing _fine_ , they are doing great. And not just in US, TSMC and Samsung representing SemiConductor industry are all doing great, thanks to those ridiculous profits from NAND and DRAM; Samsung is reinvesting everything into making DRAM NAND and Foundry more competitive. Which will hopefully fence off those State sponsored Chinese Competition.

In terms of Startup, While Sam might have loss on first proposition ( I think he won the other 2 ), but they are operating just fine with similar valuation if not more, just not meeting the 200B target. Unlike other Startup that cashes in from IPO and then devalued into nothing.

Will we see a correction? Very likely. Are we in a bubble? No, at least not yet. ( Unless you like to redefine any correction as bubble burst )

<comment><USER11> > Are we in a bubble? No, at least not yet.

I agree with everything you said except for this. Not because I am definitively saying we are in a bubble, but just pointing out it's impossible to know if we are. Very few people saw the last financial collapse coming.

<comment><USER10> [https://imgur.com/a/7ntUkKC](https://imgur.com/a/7ntUkKC)

That is a simple chart of recent 30 Yrs S&P 500 P/E.

> Very few people saw the last financial collapse coming

While media points the last financial collapse blame to CDOs, the fundamentals of it was housing prices. May be it is new to many Americans, but for those who have lived and seen through Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong housing prices collapses in the 90s, it was rather obvious. I remember the moment when I mention it in 2005 and 2006, but no one believe market would collapse, the idea of housing prices would fall was literally unheard of.

[https://imgur.com/a/0jPNE26](https://imgur.com/a/0jPNE26)

Now there are concerns of Cooperate Debt reaches new height, which is often the argument of bubble. The trouble is you cant look at cooperate debt alone and judge it. Amazon is 25B in debt, but they have 45B in cash. Apple are 100B in debt, but also ~250B cash. Amazon were issuing at 10 years and yields about 3.2%, for reference US 30 Yr treasuries has been floating at around 2.4 The vast majority of companies are swimming in cash. ( There is less of it now because of buy backs, which is what pushes those stock prices up )

So while the market, and general economy may not be _healthy_ , I argued it isn't in a bubble either.

<comment><USER11> > So while the market, and general economy may not be healthy, I argued it > isn't in a bubble either.

You're completely missing the point. You can make arguments either way. Hindsight is 20/20\. You're making an educated guess based on data which is informative, but it's theoretically impossible to predict a Black Swan event. And even without a Black Swan event, your analysis could be wrong. It's not like all analysts agree on much (if anything) - so how do you decide who's right when nobody has a perfect track record? You're making the best guess you can and I respect your analysis, but I don't assume it's correct.

My point is simple: _nobody_ knows for sure.

<comment><USER10> I sort of agree with what you said.

>My point is simple: nobody knows for sure.

Absolutely. I am suggesting to those who consistently points to doom's day needs better explanation rather than just debt alone.

Edit: Actually it was my understanding that all bubbles, by definition must have some form or irregularities or speculation. After all that is what bubbles means, turns out when I was going to quote wiki for this reply, I discover there are whole set of economic papers suggesting bubbles completely unrelated to its intrinsic value and economic fundamentals. Will Read those paper when I have time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No macro collapse, and the first proposition didn't work out: Uber: 50B, Palantir < 40B, Airbnb < 40B, Dropbox < 10B, Pinterest ~10B, SpaceX < 40B. So total 160-180B market cap. Close, but not quite.

<comment><USER13> Biggest difference was that the public market valued a bunch of these companies waaay less than VCs did.

<comment><USER2> So it was a bubble then?

<comment><USER13> Not sure if it's the right nomenclature, since bubbles are supposed to be pop. Instead they just grew in value slower than they were.

<comment><USER14> The muffins didn't rise properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Although Sam would have lost this bet, I respect that he had the courage to make a forecast with a specific number and a specific future date.

Too many pundits make grand but imprecise predictions like "AI will become dominant in the next decade". The book 'Superforcasting' tackles this problem in detail: [https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science- Prediction-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction- Philip-Tetlock/dp/0804136718)

<comment><USER16> If I recall correctly, the bet was accepted.

EDIT: Ah, I found documentation:

"Michael de la Maza, a Boston-based investor and TechStars mentor, has taken my recent bet on valuations."

[https://twitter.com/sama/status/582292425449730049](https://twitter.com/sama/status/582292425449730049)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for using Twitter to remind Mr. Altman of the bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm actually surprised that he didn't win this bet since it wasn't really based on non-bubble metrics in the first place. A more interesting bet to me would have have involved profitability, P/E ratio, or some other long-term indicator that current high-rolling unicorns are actually sustainable businesses. I think WeWork has demonstrated pretty clearly that billions of dollars of VC money can prop up unsustainable companies for more than 5 years (i.e. the market can remain irrational longer than the term of this bet).

</comment><comment><USER19> His bet was a parlay so it lost, but not by a lot. Had he been able to include Snapchat it probably would have done worse.

I think what we've seen in the last five years is that there's some bubble- like irrationally exuberance but overall it's far from 2000 all over again. Companies have high valuations but this time also often have financials and growth prospects to go with them.

<comment><USER17> Matt,

When will portfolio 1 reach $200B?

Michael

<comment><USER19> I certainly don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People were projecting that he will lose last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792890)

</comment><comment><USER21> He technically has until March of 2020. I still think there's a chance that he pulls #1 off (SpaceX pulling off human flights in Q1 and re-raises, Airbnb going public as a profitable and defensible business, Uber and rationalization in ridesharing and delivery + continued execution)

<comment><USER22> ...no? He said it himself, he has until January 1st of 2020. He lost the bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So... Did he win? I'm especially curious about part 3 :)

<comment><USER24> Part 1 didn't quite make it. Eyeballing it I think it's around $150B, which I think still substantially backs his point, but it loses him the bet.

Part 2 was an easy win from Stripe alone.

I scanned the YC '15 Winter list and I don't think I recognize any of them. Someone could track it better via Crunchbase, but I rather doubt that he bet correctly there either.

EDIT: Oh, GitLab.

<comment><USER25> Part 3: Gitlab alone is almost $3B

<comment><USER24> Ah, cool. Missed them somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sucks that Sam lost his bet because as far as I'm concerned he "won" his point (I.e. there was clearly not a bubble and all these 1,2,3 companies did amazing). Still, it's great that it's going to a charity

</comment><comment><USER27> Wonder who took the other side and where they chose for him to donate to.

Edited due to ambiguity.

<comment><USER28> Well, the other side won. So the other side will not need to donate. Albeit that it was close.

<comment><USER27> Sorry for my poor wording. "He" was referring to Sam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems odd to me to deny bubble talk, then base "success" on market cap. Outsized market caps are associated with bubbles. There are a few companies in there for which survival is questionable.

<comment><USER16> The idea of the bet was that if there was a bubble in 2015 it would have deflated by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bet 1 should be less than 200bn. Bet 2+3 was spot on and easily won.

</comment><comment><USER31> Many here are claiming he lost the bet on #1, but consider the details:

Predicted Aggregate value: $200B

Actual value: $145B (Math in [1])

His prediction is off by 25%. Technically a lost bet, but I'd say a prudent bet as a VC.

As for #2, #3, he wins them outright. Overall, being 25% off the most optimistic prediction isn't too bad a loss. I'd say he won the argument convincingly.

I will note that anyone above average intellect in his position (as an investor with gobbles of analytics, best in class prediction models and advisors, and access to thousands of high quality pitches to see down the pipeline) would likely predict as he did, so while he won, he wasn't clairvoyant, he was merely following the data.

[1]: Math: Uber: $50B

SpaceX: $35B.

Airbnb: $35B

Palantir: $25B

Pinterest: $10B

Dropbox: $7.5B

</comment><comment><USER32> 2015, March.

<comment><USER32> Original title lacked a date -- and comment pointing out the omission gets downvoted. Such downvotes are destructive to the quality of information on HN. @dang?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, a better bet would be about those companies actually delivering profits and "growing into their vaulations", as people politely put it. None of those companies have earned a single dollar for shareholders. Not a single dollar.

<comment><USER9> > _None of those companies have earned a single dollar for shareholders._

Is that what shareholders are asking for, right now? Don't they want fast growth more than they want profits?

<comment><USER34> I suppose, yes, and this is a little scary - the world being in such a state that you can wait 10 years for a company to make profits and it is still considered OK. Cheapening money.

But also how much longer can we wait? Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook were all turning profit _before the IPO_! Find the old S-1s if you don't believe me. And back in those days IPOs happened much much earlier.

<comment><USER9> I think Amazon is one of the rare examples where it paid off. They were making losses in exchange for extreme growth in many sectors.

<comment><USER35> Correct me if I'm wrong, but Amazon was strongly cash flow positive as of 2002. Moreover, their operations were throwing off cash the year they went public (1997).

Everyone should be considering this a bit more because it says something about the irrationality of the current market. Large VC funds were investing under the thesis that some of the current crop of (now) less than impressive unicorns could follow the Amazon model: invest in growth at the expense of net income. These unicorns haven't simply failed to produce positive net income by intentionally following the Amazon model, rather they've simply burned through mountains of cash following less than impressive business models. They never followed the Amazon model to begin with.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's your worst IT failure to date? - <AUTHOR> Last week I failed pretty hard with a website migration to a new platform. So hard that I was forced to put online again the previous website version. To date, in almost 20 years of career, this is definitely my worst failure. What's your story, if any, of IT failure? <comment><USER2> VMWare snapshot of our Master Domain Controller failed, Windows crashed and the snapshot corrupted.

Slept at the office, while I made a backup, and then manually corrected the snapshot chain in vi. Got it up and running right as people were getting into the office.

Most terrifying moment of my IT career.

</comment><comment><USER3> My worst failure was a 3am production database drop half-asleep. We had backups but we lost an hour of transactional data. My worst IT failure to date.

</comment><comment><USER4> This story is ancient, and I may have written it up before on hn:

In the weeks leading up to Christmas 1998 my team and I were in the process of migrating our web site to a Y2K "safe" complex. Our site ran in two data centers, using Andrew File System (AFS) to mirror content. The new complex used Distributed File System (DFS), which was the new new thing then. The migration got put on hold because a "key customer" needed to use the new complex for the weeks around Christmas, so we were stuck on the old complex indefinitely.

The week before Christmas there was a security update to the routers in use across the hosting infrastructure. Now, it's Christmas, and it's end of the year, so there's not supposed to be any breaking changes, and the bureaucracy of the hosting organization should insure against any stupidity.

However, one of the senior managers decided that it was a truly critical security update, and pushed through a series of changes to the routers on approximately December 22nd, 1998.

Roughly 24 hours later the AFS cell began to melt down. I don't recall the precise changes that occurred, but something to do with the MAC addresses of the routers becoming virtual messed up how AFS communicated across the cell.

Over the next 48 hours my team and I desperately tried to keep the site up over dialup lines and cell phones from a ski chalet, and our various parents' homes since we'd all gone into vacation mode and there was absolutely no reason to expect the site to melt down. And almost no one had broadband at home, let alone at parents' or relatives' homes.

In the end we cobbled together a half–assed simulacrum of the site on the "new complex" based on a weeks' old snapshot and hand–copied over updates, which worked to keep the site up through Christmas Day until the "old complex" could recover from the unexpected router changes.

As far as I could tell it didn't hit the press, and barely made mention in various newsgroups at the time.

The following week, the sysadmin (who worked sort-of dotted line to me but reported into the hosting organization) was effectively fired for telling me that the site had gone down. Seems none of the management chain in the hosting group had any idea, and since I reported more or less directly to the CIO, they were caught short in the weekly roundup meeting. Wasn't the sysadmin's fault, her management declined to keep the management chain informed.

A separate result was that the Y2K migration got delayed until August 1999 because the whole event exposed many, many holes in the hosting group's processes and procedures.

<comment><AUTHOR> In your story I can find a similarity with a problem I had: you were put on hold because of a "key customer" while I haven't enough "bargaining power" to have my customer to stop the former website from receiving new orders and new registrations (it is an ecommerce website) for a time long enough to have the site correctly migrated without further pressure. In both cases there were an added difficulty because of being too much "compassionate" with the customer needs.</comment></comment>