Amazon Is Quietly Eliminating List Prices - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/amazon-is-quietly-eliminating-list-prices.html <comment><USER2> The thing I don't get about Amazon is they've allowed entire categories of products to become unbuyable from their site. Batteries? Every review seems to indicate what's sold is some substandard knock-off. Medical products like thermometers? They're all reviews from people who got the product for free in exchange for writing a review. Their brand is rapidly being tarnished in my view.

<comment> tuna-piano It's really an awful process buying a lot of items nowadays. It seems like the exact same item will be sold under 30 different brands with different star levels, with many reviews full of the "free product" in for honest (usually 5 star) reviews.

I wish Jeff Bezos would try buying a travel adapter (among many other items I've tried to buy recently) and tell me that it's a customer friendly process: [https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atravel...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atravel+adapter&keywords=travel+adapter)

There are approximately 5 actually different adapters sold under maybe 50+ brands, and all the reviews are so padded with 5* free reviews, it's tough to know which ones are crap and which are good.

Reviews aren't as important for retailers like Wal-Mart that curate their products. But for a marketplace like Amazon, reviews are absolutely critical to prevent scams. I hope Amazon realizes the enormity of this issue and is working on it.

I believe Amazon should:

1\. Fix the reviews. Disallow giving items for free or reduced prices in exchange for reviews. This may have worked originally for books, but any benefit received now is far out shadowed by the negatives. Alternatively, just limit it to 5 total free / reduced reviews per product to limit the negative effect. Police this policy heavily.

2\. For the duplicate products (where one identical product is sold under 10 different brands, like in the travel adapter example above): Group the products together, and choose the brand like you might choose the color or size on a t-shirt. I recognize that there isn't a UPC numbering system that makes this easy - but there are probably only a few thousand items required to group together to make the buying process a lot easier for a large percentage of purchases.

<comment><USER3> Sorry I don't understand your point about travel adapters.

1\. I go to your link

2\. "Oh cool, there's a lot of travel adapters"

3\. Filter by free shipping

4 (optional). See the top 2 are Sponsored, which makes me less likely to trust them, so ignore them. [NOTE: This is similar behaviour to using ANY search engine]

5\. Open the top 3 links ([https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal- Charger-Ad...](https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal-Charger- Adapter/dp/B00E0FZSQC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-4&keywords=travel+adapter), [https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal- Converter...](https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal-Converters- Charging/dp/B01DJ140LQ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-5&keywords=travel+adapter), [https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter- Ger...](https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter- Germany/dp/B004SY5O5K/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-6&keywords=travel+adapter))

6\. Dismiss #2 because it's twice the cost of the other ones and has lower reviews

7A. Pick #3 because it's a "best seller" \- which means it has been vetted by other customers

7B. Pick #1 because it looks the nicest

Both have mostly good reviews with some bad ones, but hey it's a 7 dollar piece of plastic that tries to work in 150 different countries, it's not going to be perfect.

What is so customer unfriendly about this process?

Oh and by the way, this is a POWER user process who really wants to get the best one. A layperson could have just as easily just went straight for the "Best seller" and been satisfied.

<comment><USER4> About a year ago, I purchased one of the bestsellers on German Amazon (which basically look the same as the bestsellers on the US store). It is flimsy, the springs on one connector are likely to break after using them a few times. The worst thing: one of the connectors didn't retract fully when not in use and was connected to live AC. Yikes! It had tons of great reviews both on the German and on the US store, including ones were you could see the bad construction in the customer photos. After looking closely at them, one of the three-star reviews casually mentioned sparks when used in one configuration...

I called customer support and wrote to the responsible regulatory body in Germany. This specific model is not available anymore. A dozen identical looking still are.

In the end I used one that is three times as expensive made by a reputable company.

That is the problem.

<comment><USER5> Here's a list of possible solutions:

1\. Ask for referral from people your trust, like your friends.

2\. Buy locally in a physical store with a good return policy.

3\. Buy from brands you trust.

It used to be Walmart, now it's Amazon; people will impoverish their local economy to save 50 cents.

Things I bought recently:

1\. A rake. I chose the 5$ more expensive one that looked more sturdy and was made in Canada (where I live) instead of China.

2\. A old generation smartphone. I chose Motorola G because it's a well-known brand and it had good reviews when it launched, two years ago. It's also got one of the longest battery time.

3\. Jeans. I bought Lois Jeans at a local store because it's the last barnd I know of that is still made in Quebec.

Buying is also a political action.

<comment><USER6> The adage, "Buy a cheap car, get a cheap car," applies to everything. Or, in other words, "You get what you pay for."

<comment> nommm-nommm It's hard to know of something is more expensive for the sake of being more expensive or because it is actually higher quality.

I once bought a higher end item because I expected it to be good quality. Ended up being one of the poorest quality items I ever bought, replaced it with something that cost 1/4th the price and is better quality.

I have a $200 phone. $600 phones also exist but the $200 does everything l need it to do perfectly. The expensive option isn't better for my needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have actually come to the conclusion that Amazon has "trapped" me with service not price. I often buy stuff that's a little more expensive on Amazon just because I know I get a reliable shipment and know when it will arrive. The "order until X and we grantee delivery on Y" is one of the key features for me. I always hate guesstimating when things will arrive if they ship in 2-5 days etc.

I usually bulk order so stuff arrives on Saturday if they'd have a "worker friendly" shipping service that delivers after 18h I'd be all over that.

I'm annoyed by a lot of stuff including the fact that pretty much everything is "reduced price" and that you have to wade through 5* reviews for every product but at the end of the day they are a brand I trust to deliver my stuff on time and do the right thing when there's a problem with some shipment.

<comment><USER8> I've found Amazon to be less reliable the sooner it is promised in the last year or so. Amazon's next day delivery will generally either go missing for a couple days or not be delivered at all about 1/2 the time here in NYC (confirmed by a couple other Queens residents). Then you have to wait 48 hours before you can report it missing (despite it saying "delivered" but not being here), then place the lost complaint with service, then wait for the next order which doesn't ship next day. So, about 4 to 5 days for a "next day" delivery. And the last time this happened, 2 out of the 5 items were supposed to reship and I would get a refund and have to re-order 3 of them from said missing package. Except 3 reshipped. So I wound up being charged for and receiving two of one thing I ordered one of. Queue having to get on customer service chat again, package up the duplicate item, walk it over to a shipping location, wait for a refund.

For a company that's supposed to be all about logistics, Amazon kind of sucks at logistics.

<comment><USER9> Thought I'd tag my opposing anecdotal data point onto your comment.. I live in London. I've had maybe 50 next day Prime deliveries in the last year - none of which have been late, lost or other.

They are very good at logistics for me!

<comment><USER10> Here in Tampa, the "standard" next day delivery services (where there usually is a surcharge) is fine (using the standard Fed Ex or UPS option), and I've never had a problem with the standard 2 day Prime service delivered via USPS or the like.

However, for some products, Amazon offers a "free next day delivery" service option. These services tend to be offloaded on sketchy "courier service" companies with names like A1 Courier Services, Lasership, Ontrac, Dynamex, etc. These carriers get generally _awful_ reviews (as seen here: [http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20carrier%20feedback/](http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20carrier%20feedback/)) and you hear a lot of reports of missing packages, late deliveries, etc. I've only used this option once, the item did arrive, but it was at quite a late hour (10PM). Based on the reviews, I would not use this service again.

I still use Amazon a lot, but they have become _way_ sketchier over time. Knockoff batteries are but one symptom of this.

<comment><USER8> It was indeed one of these sketchy courier services. They dumped my package by the front door of our apartment building at 10pm on a Saturday night in NYC. Or they claim to have. An hour later when I got home it was nowhere to be seen. I waited home most of the day for it until I had to go out to a previous engagement, too. The previous time I had a next day delivery, they claimed to have attempted delivery mid-evening while I was at home but never even rang the bell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wasn't the list price being nonsense marketing widely acknowledged?

I've had a fantasy of opening up a convenience store with absurd list prices.

Candy bar, was $1,200, now only $1.29! Save over $1,100! 99+% off! Maybe have multiple numbers slashed down to get to the final price, etc.

Then when the person leaves the store with 5 items I'd say things like "You've saved $94,650 today!"

<comment><USER12> Lots of countries actually have laws against this.

(But you might get away with it, if it's outrageous enough to be clearly a joke.)

<comment><USER13> In the UK he would have had to have offered the candy bar for sale at $1,200 for at least 28 contiguous days in the last year.

But that's easy enough for retailers to work-around these days when they can ask suppliers for multiple UPCs for the same item

<comment><USER14> Must be how Sports Direct operates. Everything was at least 60% off at all times in that store when I was in the UK 2 years ago.

<comment><USER15> I _think_ you can get away with not selling ever at full price if your comparison price is the manufactures RRP.

You can't do this for "bespoke" products which is where the UK law seems to most hit businesses - things like furniture which are specific to the retailer.

Of course the $1200 candy bar price is never the RRP :)

<comment><USER11> oh man ... furniture stores. The one down my street has been going out of business since the day it opened 20 years ago. Every few months they replace the "We've lost our lease!" sign when it gets too disheveled.

I took some pictures in Portland once of the most extraordinary version of this I had ever seen[1][2]. I thought they had taken it up as a high art, but a few months later, they genuinely went out of business.

[1] [https://goo.gl/photos/FvZ3r8mRR9KrtiGm9](https://goo.gl/photos/FvZ3r8mRR9KrtiGm9)

[2] [https://goo.gl/photos/MktLKzD4E3bqkkaG7](https://goo.gl/photos/MktLKzD4E3bqkkaG7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've learned over the years to completely ignore the 'list price' and simply check camelcamelcamel.com, a website that tracks the prices for most items on the site. If it's within 10% of the lowest price from the past year, I bite. Else: I shop around.

I think consumers are getting savvier over all, and the list price is losing its effect.

<comment><USER17> Interesting. Amazon has rules on their affiliate program against storing price information. They have recently kicked out a big player in the space for this reason. Any info on why camelcamelcamel has been allowed to stay?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure there's anything Amazon can really do. AFAIK, it's a script that just scrapes the information on a timer, like Internet Archive does. It's no different from checking it yourself and making a spreadsheet, right?

<comment><USER17> Depends. Amazon's terms and conditions for participation in their affiliate program explicitly states that doing that is breach. What they can do, and like I mentioned do do, is they close down your account and keep your money, and now you're out of business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I read this article, puzzled, thinking ... Amazon provides the list price? How haven't I noticed? I had to do an image search to remind me of an example of that. Of course, once I saw the page, I understood what they were referring to but apparently my brain has been filtering that part of the page due to years of conditioning.

For all practical purposes, the list price on American e-commerce sites is a worthless bit of information on a product page. I don't think in somewhere around 20 years of purchasing things online and from catalogs I've _ever_ paid anything close to list price and I've never felt like I got a "good deal" simply because the gap between list and actual was large. In fact, I'd probably be disinclined to purchase a product with too large a gap between list and actual, making the assumption that something must be horribly wrong if they're trying to get rid of the thing at such a steep discount.

Though I'm very glad this deceptive practice is being targeted, if only from the perspective of eliminating one more useless bit of noise from product pages (can we also filter out the two word reviews?), I'd imagine _very few_ people[0] actually believe that price represents a realistic product price for 99% of products[1].

[0] In the US this is a _ridiculously_ common practice with the worst offenders being auto dealers. They'll list MSRP along-side a nearly impossible to qualify-for manufacturer incentives (unless you're active military, employee of the brand, have the brand's credit card points maxed out, are a previous owner of the brand ... in one case I discovered the discounts couldn't actually be combined making the deal truly _impossible_ )

[1] About the only time this _is_ true is when the product provider has a minimum advertised price requiring an extra step to see the price only once the item is in your cart (somehow, that's a loop hole?). Or Apple products...

</comment><comment><USER19> Most likely, they A/B tested it and liked what they saw. Interesting development considering Nordstrom's failure with the same experiment.

<comment><USER20> > Interesting development considering Nordstrom's failure with the same > experiment.

Not really. I think the customer bases are different enough that it's an apples and oranges comparison. Not only do you have a different type of customer on Amazon (people shopping for groceries, or carpentry tools or even computer parts and hygiene products. While on Nordstrom, you have people shopping for not clothing, but high-end clothing.) but the scale itself is on an entirely different level. Amazon has millions of people buying stuff from them every single day. The volume of traffic and orders on Amazon is like comparing the entire economy of the United States with that of Kobe, Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Didn't JCPenney try this? Didn't it go very poorly for them?

<comment><USER22> No, JCPenny went from very frequent "sales" which took "normally" overpriced items and drastically reduced them to a consistent fair priced model.

Before this, it wasn't that there was a constant sale... prices went up and down wildly with whatever coupons or sale you could get to work...

It turns out that their customers really liked the up and down sales. They went back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am going to let my prime membership expire for the first time in years because of this.

Honestly I think I will miss the video streaming service the most at this point

</comment><comment> open-source-ux I've noticed on the Amazon UK site that books are discounted far less than they were in the past. Now, only major titles and bestsellers are offered at a discount, anything outside that category has no discount or minimal discount.

If you're in the UK, an alternative to Amazon for books is [http://www.wordery.com](http://www.wordery.com)

<comment><USER24> I would also recommend Book Depository: [http://www.bookdepository.com/](http://www.bookdepository.com/)

<comment><USER4> Which is actually owned by Amazon. But I don't know how much they cooperate internally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is interesting but I think based on a false assumption. Speaking only for myself I currently buy a lot from Amazon, but it's based entirely on whether a given product is a good deal or not. I have no particular loyalty to Amazon (even though I'm a long time Prime member.) Anything that isn't a good deal, I don't and won't buy from Amazon.

<comment><USER26> That's what they want you to think ;)

<comment><USER25> That's a silly response. Amazon is an online retailer, they are the absolute most vulnerable to cross shopping. If I'm at a local grocery store or farmer's market and see something I like I'm much more likely to buy it there since I'm already there.

If I'm shopping for something on Amazon it takes basically zero time to look at what the price is on Costco, PC Part Picker, my local stores, etc. and be sure I'm getting the best deal. I'm not a compulsive shopper who just buys things instantly when I see them.

<comment><USER27> _Amazon is an online retailer, they are the absolute most vulnerable to cross shopping..._

The 60 million+ of us that have bought into Amazon Prime are very unlikely to cross shop very often; we've happily locked ourselves into the Amazon ecosystem.

<comment><USER28> "Happily" may be an overstatement. I'm a Prime member, but some of the more recent changes have felt like they're designed to cheat me out of what I payed for. From "add-on items" (designed to avoid having to pay the cost of shipping them to Prime members for free) to wildly deceptive definitions of "two-day shipping", Amazon is more unpleasant to use than it's ever been for me.

<comment><USER29> This is largely why I quit Prime. I liked it when I paid $69/yr and Amazon had competitive pricing. All these programs they're rolled out ("free" Apps, "free" Netflix clone, "free" iTunes Radio/Google Music All Access clone, "free" "unlimited" photo storage) that I have no interest in, and don't want, plus the whole add-on item thing you mentioned, plus most items being unable to Subscribe & Save to, plus the intersection of Subscribe & Save and Prime Pantry being absolutely retarded (can't S&S PP-able items, can't PP S&S-able items).

Walmart is eating Amazon's lunch now, and I'm laughing my ass off. Good job, Jeff Bezos, you just destroyed your company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How many brick-and-mortar shops have "Discount" in their title? That trick is probably as old as capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER31> aren't list prices stupid and shouldnt we be glad amazon is getting rid of them?

</comment><comment><USER32> > "Amazon doesn't have to seduce customers with a deal because they're going > to buy anyway."

If Amazon are so comfortable they don't need to price compete, when can we expect another online department store to get big?

I'm not loyal, my £ will go to whoever sells textbooks and bike gear cheapest.

<comment><USER33> If Amazon relaxes on pricing, most likely Walmart, Target, BestBuy and similar large retailers will benefit first and foremost. The cost to build out a large selection online retailer is so vast, and the profit margin so mediocre, we're unlikely to see another Amazon-like company in the next 20 years. Amazon's survival was practically a fluke to begin with, the dotcom bubble and the capital it afforded them was the only reason they made it out alive and were able to scale as they did to get out in front of old-line competitors. Had the bubble ended maybe just six months earlier, Amazon goes bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Horrible for the book lovers who like to do price comparison with discount book sellers like Half-Price Books. looks like I'll have to use Barnes-and- Noble or Half.com to get sale prices now.

</comment><comment><USER35> Thats why I end up checking the items price history anyway...the list price is meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER36> I just wish we could somehow eliminate this middle man.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've just noticed AMZN is also filtering/rigging search results e.g. "car battery 45Ah"

<comment><USER38> Could you explain a bit more?</comment></comment>


Zapcc: A faster C++ compiler - <AUTHOR> http://www.zapcc.com/ <comment><USER2> How history repeats. A company takes a BSD-licenced work, closes the source, and makes money selling "improvements" while the original authors get nothing.

Instances like this is why the GPL has the teeth people complain about. Without them, GNU would've been cannibalized decades ago.

<comment><USER3> is it really that unusual in our industry to work for money :) ?

<comment><USER4> How is it different than someone selling barely modified WordPress websites? I'm not into that line of work but obviously, many small businesses in America rely on selling custom open source software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The really big (obvious) missing comparison here is with clang's pre-compiled headers code, and also using ccache.

I'm tempted (as they are providing no evidence otherwise) that this is snake- oil -- they are just calling stuff which already exists in clang, maybe with a bit of ccache on top. I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is snake oil. The reasons that are typically given for _not_ automatically pre-compiling headers (we're not talking about manually specified pre-compiled headers here) can all be worked around.

For example, some might say that you can't automatically cache headers because of code like this:

// file1.cpp

#include "foo.h"

// file2.cpp

#define float double

#include "foo.h"

But if you're a bit clever about it you should be able to cache opportunistically and then detect if your cache is invalidated.

<comment><USER7> I am the prinicipal developer of zapcc. We have added a FAQ

[http://www.zapcc.com/faq/](http://www.zapcc.com/faq/)

and more tech details in the cfe-dev mailing list

[http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe- dev/2015-May/043174.h...](http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe- dev/2015-May/043174.html)

To the point, zapcc will not reprocess foo.h. This is a limitation. However, zapcc does deal with templates instantiations and such correctly and fast, such as boost various libraries, Eigen and LLVM source code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems they're benchmarking on toy programs to create media hype. In my previous job I found out two non-removable bottlenecks in C++ builds: 1) linking (I don't know of any parallel linker), 2) IO (writing of debug information). None of this is relevant in their benchmarks.

In my case, the build result, in _release_ mode, was a DLL file of about 40MB, and corresponding debug info of about 100MB. In _debug_ mode, multiply debug info by a factor of ca 5-10. (Individual PDBs on disk collected together were ~GB, but final PDB was smaller.) Release parallel builds on a 4-core machine, with optimizations and all, (with HT) were noticeably faster because they generated less IO.

Link time of _another_ DLL consisting of many (thousands) separate object files took more time than compilation itself.

There's also another product (I won't name it because it created more problems for me than it solved) which integrates in VS and seamlessly distributes the compilation over machines in the local network. I stopped using it because it often generated corrupt PDB files and messed up IntelliSense in VS.

To summarize, I have two issues with their system (apart from "good enough" solutions for distributed compilation already existing): 1) they say nothing about speeding up the linking stage, and related to that 2) if they mess with linking, I'm not confident that they are reliably handling debug info. Sure, everything works in "toy projects", but.

<comment><USER9> > 1) linking (I don't know of any parallel linker)

How about ld.gold?

<comment><USER8> Oh, I wasn't aware that it was multithreaded. I just found out about it now.

Did you benchmark gold to find out how much MT speeds up linking?

<comment><USER9> I didn't make precise benchmarking, but when used on a real-world codebases, it speeds up linking about 2x.

One trick to know: never make ld.gold the default system linker, because there would always be awkward kernel modules which will be corrupted at some point, because they would rely on ld.bfd.

Instead, it's recommended to specify -fuse-ld=gold in the command line for your code, see [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Link- Options.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Link-Options.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't find any mention about the speed of the _output_... so I wonder if they just disabled the optimiser completely.

TCC is an extremely fast C compiler because it doesn't do _any_ optimising at all.

<comment><USER7> The optimizer is not disabled, few global optimizations are. The speedup is mostly the result of not having to reparse the headers, reinstantiate and codegen the generated templated code rather than skip minor opts. This is really slow process that frequently needlessly repeated on multiple compile units. We are looking into this tradeoff, maybe making the decision user- configurable or based on opt. level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So they forked Clang into their own closed source version?

I guess you'll get things like this when you use a BSD license.

<comment><USER12> > I guess you'll get things like this when you use a BSD license.

That is by design. As the other commenter said, they will either have to release fixes upstream, or be forced to re-apply them over and over just stay up to date.

<comment><USER7> We frequently merge with llvm svn, last time three days ago. It is a pain but that's the price to keep up with such a dynamic project. We do upstream enhancements and bug fixes for clang and LLVM code, see the {cfe,llvm}-commits mailing lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From their test cases, Qt 5 to be specific:

>Initial compilation took 28.53 seconds in Zapcc, and 41 seconds in Qt Creator.

>Thereafter, re-compilations took 1.15 seconds in Zapcc, and 12 seconds in Qt Creator.

This doesn't fill me with much fate in their other statements. Qt Creator is not a compiler, it is an IDE and can be set up to use a variety of compilers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's some info on clang mailing-list from zapcc author: [http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe- dev/2015-May/043174.h...](http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe- dev/2015-May/043174.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> see the zapcc developer's post on clang.devel:

[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.devel/42...](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.devel/42950)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is mostly a waste of time. C++ modules will do the same thing when they are completely finished (folks i work with are the ones doing it, and it is very far along), and will be standardized, etc.

<comment><USER17> Looking forward to this. By "very far along" do you mean in terms of specification, implementation, or both?

<comment><USER16> Both :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I typically use ccache on Linux, which does the headline feature of this. If there's a Zapcc rep here, how does Zapcc compare? Is the precompiled header feature a big improvement?

<comment><USER19> I don't know anything specific about zapcc but based on the numbers here:

[http://www.zapcc.com/case-studies/compiling- boost/](http://www.zapcc.com/case-studies/compiling-boost/)

even their _first_ compilation (the one you still need to perform when using ccache) is twice as fast as GCC.

In any case, I think the primary audience for this is people using clang, not GCC.

<comment><USER7> You are correct, zapcc should be compared only to clang from the same svn. clang to gcc is another matter altogether.

Even in first compilation, zapcc will cache between the first and second files compiled. The only case where there is no caching is when zapccs starts or re- startes, for example when compilation flags are changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> anyone know if it uses warp?

[https://code.facebook.com/posts/476987592402291/under-the- ho...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/476987592402291/under-the-hood-warp-a- fast-c-and-c-preprocessor/)

<comment><USER21> When warp was released, Clang's built-in preprocessor was already faster. I haven't seen any updated benchmarks.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489532)

<comment><USER20> how interesting, thank you very much.

<comment><USER7> Note warp commits, the project is not too active. Maybe it's mature enough and requires few updates, I don't know as zapcc uses the clang Preprocessor and not warp.

[https://github.com/facebook/warp/commits/master](https://github.com/facebook/warp/commits/master)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FCC says AT&T and Verizon 'harm consumers' with free data schemes - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/2/13820294/fcc-att-verizon-sponsored-data-letters <comment><USER2> It'll be interesting to see, in Trump's new FCC, how far the anti-net neutrality camp will allow telcos to go with their greed before stepping in to protect consumers. If I had to guess, I'd say the state of the internet would have to get worse- as bad as those of us in the know know it can get, before the masses of luddites see that it really is (was) better with net neutrality intact.

I'd be interested if anyone with expertise in this area could note here how they speculate as to how the downslide might be expected to manifest in the new environment we'll be in early next year.</comment>


Exploring Client-Side MVC with Backbone.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/12/19/exploring-client-side-mvc-with-backbonejs/

<comment><USER2> Nice write-up. We're using backbone on a project which is an SPA with a pretty rich domain model. At any point, we may have multiple representations of the same models on the screen. When changes come in from the server, we update the appropriate models and all of the views update accordingly. It's pretty awesome to see it in action.

I've observed that there's a notable learning curve with backbone (maybe all client-side mvc). It may be because the framework doesn't dictate best practices (it's pretty unopinionated, as they say). Also, I've seen backbone thrown into web apps that weren't a good fit, resulting in a lot of friction.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a decent post, but why did you decide to use CoffeeScript? It seems like just another hurdle for people trying to learn Backbone.

<comment><USER4> Author here...I went with CoffeeScript because it's the default in Rails. It also dramatically reduces the total lines of boilerplate code and syntactic noise.</comment></comment>


Oracle's Aggressive Sales Tactics Are Backfiring with Customers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/oracles-aggressive-sales-tactics-are-backfiring-with-customers <comment><USER2> Fourteen years ago (!), I reflected on why software vendors are able to get away with bad behavior[1] -- until they can't, of course. That two of the three database companies I mention are in the dustbin of history should be telling -- and I stand by my most basic conclusion that proprietary software companies cannot outrun open source equivalents in perpetuity. May the long run arrive sooner rather than later!

[1] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of- soft...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-software/)

<comment><USER3> Any thoughts on business models for Databases going forward? Some interesting recent developments make DBs a challenging vertical to bootstrap in

a. Proprietary is a non starter, since increasingly large customers will insist on the source being available.

b. Integration / Consulting is no longer viable since the cloud providers will likely offer a hosted / managed solution around a new OSS.

c. Licensing is difficult to enforce if you are giving your code away for free.

Will DBs join file systems and debuggers as pieces of the stack where the only way to build one is to be inside a megaco or as a side project? Am struggling a bit to understand how to monetize infrastructure software going forward. (I have ignored the option of raising $X M to build something and be acquired before shipping to a large customer base).

<comment><USER4> Disagree on B. There's always opportunity for consulting and integration. Not everyone wants to be in the cloud and not everyone can be in the cloud.

And you know DBs always need tuning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oracle's email marketing uses similar tactics to scammers. Several people at my company got emails that went something like:

"Hi I'm ___ and I'm the new account rep for the services you have with us...."

We don't have any services with them, so this certainly raised an eyebrow. Did someone open an account with them in our name? Did someone at my company subscribe to their services without me knowing?

Discovering this was actually a sales phishing tactic certainly cemented us never wanting to do business with their cloud services.

<comment> le-mark You are required to register an account with them to access JDK downloads, sql developer, their help forums etc. Its really quite a pita. It may be these accounts they're targeting?

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't you just get this from your distro's repos? Openjdk and the like are already there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oracle always does high pressure high priced sales. It does not catch up with them generally. They push their customers hard and there has always been backlash but then Oracle adjusts slightly so it is still high pressure, high priced, but not too high.

I sort of respect them from a sales perspective, they push it to the margin on the sales front. From a pure sales perspective, few are as good as Oracle for extracting value from their customers. I am not that ballsy personally and it isn't my style but I am not anywhere as financially as successful as Oracle.

<comment><USER8> Oracle has the best technical sales people for a reason.

<comment><USER9> Even if that were true, which is highly debatable, what does that statement have to do with Oracle's high pressure sales tactics, and what does it have to do with them destroying the Solaris and SPARC market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The thing is that not only do they demand a high price for licenses and support deals: when the shit hits the fan and you NEED the support deal, you discover that the one you have is worthless and they only want to extort more money from you.

Quite a few companies have blacklisted Oracle over the past decade. Big ones.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if Oracle has a looming problem developing new customers. I can't imagine any startups are banging on their door for a database when Postgres is good enough for most cases. As these startups become the corporates of the future are Oracle going to struggle?

<comment><USER12> its a big problem.

I worked as a Sales Engineer for them years ago when they rolled out their sales cloud and marketing cloud offering (shortly after the eloqua acquisition). The majority of all deals are upsold or cross-sold into existing accounts. They also created a promotion that allowed customers to early terminate their on-premise licenses and roll the credit (that would have otherwise been surrendered) into the corresponding cloud product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a longtime ORCL investor, and sold it all a couple years ago because of this. Any company where customers use it because they have to rather than they want to is a company with little long term prospects.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anybody remember when a default install of Oracle RDBMS also installed ask.com? It was at that point that I realised that a significant part of Oracle Corporation no longer cared about how disreputable they appeared. I can't even imagine that they got all that much money from ask.com, on the scale of their total revenue.

<comment><USER15> Even though I've got no love for Oracle business, there are a few facts: The Oracle software with the bundled Ask.com toolbar was the Java client installation. And the decision to bundle the toolbar was made by Sun microsystems (before they were bought). They probably signed a contract for a few years which is why Oracle couldn't get rid of it earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read a similar article in 1995 about how MySQL was going to put Oracle out of business.

Oracle now owns MySQL.

I live in Austin, Texas and definitely do not work for Oracle. However they have plans to hire 10,000 people here. For reference, that number represents 40% of Facebook's headcount. Apple, another old-guard company (Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were great friends), is doing something similar.

For all of Oracle's badness, there is a certain Trump-like authenticity to them. They kind of know their bad, and they just keep on keeping on. Facebook, meanwhile, had to shove it down our throats how awesome and beautiful and world-connecting they were.

<comment><USER17> > Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were great friends

Whoa whoa whao, this is the opposite of what I believe to be true, I have little to believe they were really friends, in fact when Oracle bought Sun Apple stopped integrating ZFS because Jobs didn't want to be associated or beholden to Larry Ellison...

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/zfs-the-other-new- ap...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/zfs-the-other-new-apple-file- system-that-almost-was-until-it-wasnt/)

<comment><USER2> There were absolutely friends -- to the point that Larry would say "my best friend Steve" almost as if it were one word. This left me with two questions, both essentially mean-spirited: (1) Could "only" be substituted for "best"? And (2) Did Steve ever say "my best friend Larry"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Mirror:

[https://archive.li/P2au0](https://archive.li/P2au0)

</comment><comment><USER19> Nothing new at all, they've been doing this for 20+ years. Interesting to see the Halliburton mention though, I worked there in IT for 12 years and there was an embedded Oracle install in most of our major software products.

</comment><comment><USER20> I still don't understand what Oracle does better than Postgres. For free, it provides a cleaner data structure, DDL transactions, better performance, closer to SQL standards... Of course Oracle does sales better.

<comment><USER21> Sometimes I wonder if it's just not some kind of stockholm syndrome.

You're an enterprise class CxO and negotiating with Oracle is playing with the big boys. All CxOs around you sing praise for Oracle. You can reasonably well get Oracle to drop their prices with 40% at a new sale, so now you feel like an ace in negotiating. Things are looking great.

Then you have to pay. And again. And again. Meanwhile, the support is bad, the quality is low, and people start to grumble.

It turns out that 60% of a lot of money is still a lot of money, and you're in a position where you have to defend what you've bought to your peers. Oracle is very helpfull here, it has an enterprise aura that rivals Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. Oracle makes sure the other CxOs you meet are very pro Oracle and very enterprisy. So you either drown or learn to sing the qualities of oracle.

At that point, you're ready to be one of those peer CxOs that will lure the next generation of CxOs into oracle's traps.

Add to all this that at the end of the 1990's, oracle was the best database, no discussion. It coasted along on that reputation until now. Postgres is mostly there today, but this is 20 years later

<comment><USER9> PostgreSQL, however good, has nothing even remotely comparable to Oracle ASM and real application cluster.

Not even Citus comes close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't read most of the article because of the paywall, but I'm glad Oracle's greed is catching up to it. Besides its database and Java (which is still really Sun), every of their products I've been forced to use have been overpriced, poorly supported crap.

Also, their cloud pricing must be _really_ bad. My employer has been 100% Oracle database _for decades_ , but it's now officially banned from all cloud projects due to licensing cost.

<comment><USER23> We used to use PostgreSql. But our CIO was able to negotiate very inexpensive Oracle licenses. Now we have a bunch of crappy databases that are a pain to upgrade. But we are saving a lot of money.

<comment><USER17> Are you really saving money, if you wouldn't have spent it otherwise?

I mean, how can you know that even the worst postgresql installation wouldn't require only 10% of what you're paying now in contractors/support?

<comment><USER23> We went from free and great to cheap and crappy.

But the CIO got to show off his negotiating skills.

<comment><USER24> That's page 37, section 2 of the Oracle sales playbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Paging Bryan Cantrill. Paging Bryan Cantrill!

Oldie but goldie, by bmc: [https://blogs.oracle.com/bmc/the-economics-of- software](https://blogs.oracle.com/bmc/the-economics-of-software)

EDIT: Oops, bcantrill already commented.

</comment><comment><USER26> My old colleagues at a previous employer used to get hounded by Oracle sales reps. Now they're moving to Microsoft SQL Server. I wish they would've moved to Postgres, but still, getting rid of Oracle is huge progress

</comment><comment><USER27> Why is this even a story?

When has agressive sales tactics gone well for a company?

<comment><USER9> This is a story because Oracle needs to change their practices. Yesterday.

I for one am glad someone brought it up and that it's being discussed. It's overdue by about two decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting timing. Just today we got a cold call from an Oracle sales rep. ;-)

Fortunately, our awesome Purchasing person got rid of them quickly.

</comment><comment><USER29> Paywall

<comment><USER30> Just press the 'Reader view' button. The whole article is 3.5 paragraphs

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oracle s just a sucky company. Plus there is now excellent open source data bases and even better cloud options.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why link to an article behind a paywall ?

<comment><USER33> Nothing against it in the guidelines.

<comment><USER34> The FAQ[1] says:

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

Is there a workaround in this case?

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

<comment><USER33> If you had continued to read on: "In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."

Anyway, I was not 100% correct, I didn't know about the workaround requirement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't geeks care about climate change? - <AUTHOR> Maybe it's just me, but I'm surprised by how little the tech community talks about climate change.
Searching HN, the top climate change story has about 100 points. Anecdotally, I don't see geeks discussing it elsewhere either (Twitter, blog posts). In terms of leaders and startups tackling the problem, I can only think of Elon and Tim Cook.
Air travel, electricity consumption (think server farms), manufacturing, and shipping are big pieces of the startup culture and rarely seem challenged.
This surprises me. We geeks have rational, logical minds. Is it just me, or do geeks not care about the issue? <comment><USER6> > We geeks have rational, logical minds.

No. Geeks just like tinkering with computers and/or electronics, and are better at that than others.

 _Some_ geeks think that because they're good at computers they must be equally good at everything else. (To be fair, I guess that also happens to other hobbies/professions.) That might explain why some geeks have so little respect for the opinion of actual experts.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the (many) reasons I went vegan was to cut my impact on the environment. I don't own or use cars. Where I can I walk, where I can't I take public transit. I've made considerable changes to what and how I buy, to source food with less of a total impact. I've started to look at alternative clothing and technology strategies to reduce my environmental impact there too.

I know there are plenty of geeks who have done similar things. The truth is that a new tech or more companies aren't going to solve this problem - <USER2> problem is we (who live in large economies) now live in a world which is completely separated from the daily realities of where our stuff comes from. We have spent the last 50 years enabling large mono-cultures and promoting specialization - which has done amazing things for food availability - at the expense that now a single plate of food easily contains ingredients from every continent - at a huge environmental impact. Similar trends have happened in manufacturing, textiles and practically every other industry.

Trends in tech that might help us:

* Hyper-local agriculture

* Locally-efficient down-cycling / recycling programs - for clothes, tech...pretty much everything.

* Teaching people how to buy and cook produce.

But the truth is that every individual needs to make a transition in how they live - that means eating less (hopefully no) meat and animal products, repairing instead of buying new, developing ethical supply chains (starting by knowing the supply chain is a good start!)

And yes, companies need to change and adapt too...that means more environmental regulation, more incentives to develop and adopt renewable sources of energy - how we structure those is completely beyond my expertise though...and I don't have much hope there.

<comment><USER8> > I went vegan was to cut my impact on the environment

Maybe you can explain to me then how it is that this makes a significant difference in global warming. The carbon that is released by cows and humans after consumption of plant matter was derived from said plant matter. The carbon in those plants came from the air. Hence, this is a closed system where carbon is taken from the air by the plants, consumed by the animals, and then put back into the air by the animals. There cannot be a net gain of carbon from this. The only reasonable argument I have thought of so far is that of methane, although in theory that can be pulled from the air and used as fuel (whereafter it becomes available to plants again).

The burning of fossil fuels, on the other hand, puts more net carbon into the air since those fossil fuels are being pulled from deep reservoirs that otherwise would be keeping their carbon to themselves. The fossil fuels are being burned far faster than they are being deposited back into the earth, which lacks the balance that the grass-cow-human-air-grass loop has.

I completely agree that transportation should use electricity and related energy sources wherever possible. However, I don't believe this will come any sooner than economics demands it. All the countries in the world cannot be controlled. Just look at all the unsuccessful wars where one country tries to control another's internal affairs. Without the majority agreeing to bite the bullet and use green energy, the first-world nations would become even less competitive than they currently are, making first-world jobs harder to find. Even many of the jobs related to building green technologies would most definitely be outsourced to lower-cost nations who don't follow the guidelines. Outside of fully socialised (zero-profit, public-benefit) production of green technologies, the cost is too prohibitive.

One of the reasons why this topic is rarely discussed here is because people often get very emotional. I hope people can understand that I'm simply trying to point out the problems with non-socialised green. Please don't shoot the messenger, as I care about the environment more than the average person; but that doesn't give me or you magical powers to make people stop using fossil fuel.

<comment><USER7> > Maybe you can explain to me then how it is that this makes a significant > difference in global warming. The carbon that is released by cows and humans > after consumption of plant matter was derived from said plant matter. The > carbon in those plants came from the air. Hence, this is a closed system > where carbon is taken from the air by the plants, consumed by the animals, > and then put back into the air by the animals. There cannot be a net gain of > carbon from this.

Instead of the energy taken to grow those plants going to feed people - <USER3> are used to grow animals. This takes an enormous amount of input energy from farming the plants, to transporting them to the animals. Not forgetting water transport also. Then there is the energy that is taken to manage the huge sums of waste that these animals produce (most of which is stored in huge silos or pits, which ends up leaching into ground water - but that's another thing). Then there is the energy to transport, kill, transport, package, transport and eventually sell - so the energy / calorie of animal food is no where near efficient as it is for plants and beans. Basically, it is not a closed system - we input so much energy into sustaining our meat habit (as well as the ethical implications of killing 100,000,000-500,000,000 sentient animals a day - including fish and the resulting bycatch)

I think we agree when it comes to the impact of a solution - there needs to be a HUGE concerted effort to even make a dent - people can't immediately change the nature of the worlds largest companies - but I believe that our only hope is to promote local change (to get people to commit to a lifestyle change that has to happen one way or another) - and push for governmental reform - will it be perfect? no. Will it be easy? nope. But we have to start somewhere - and I think diet and local economies might be a good first step.

<comment><USER8> > we input so much energy into sustaining our meat habit

Well, the energy alone wouldn't really be a problem if we were using green energy. The Sun provides more than enough energy for all sorts of human endeavours. At the same time, I absolutely agree that much of the current production and delivery system, food and otherwise, is inefficient. Efficiency is an important matter, but alone it's probably not enough to curb global warming in the _long run_ , especially not if the population keeps growing.

As you might have guessed, I eat meat. The funny thing is, I don't do it for taste reasons. I do it because it's cheap protein that works well with my digestive system. For some reason, I can't consume more than 15g fibre per day without problems, and I've tried for months at a time before to see if I would simply adjust, but that didn't happen. If there were _affordable_ , _safe_ (no mercury or other contaminants), and _quick-to-prepare_ plant-based food that went well with my body, I would certainly be on it. So far I haven't found such a thing. One of the most peculiar aspects of all this is that I constantly hear about how efficient plant-based foods are supposed to be in terms of production, yet plant based protein (without high fibre) is never cheap. It's always more expensive than meat/egg/milk based protein. How is it that plants are so expensive when they're supposed to be so efficient? Without that efficiency being seen by the consumer, it's unreasonable to expect everyone to switch.

On the topic of changes in the system, I personally would prefer the government-based approach where essential technologies for green energy were at least subsidised enough that they were on-par with fossil fuels. The problem is that companies might take advantage of the subsidies to increase their own profit margin, which is why I suggested that the production be _fully socialised_ , so that profit doesn't get placed at higher priority than the environment. Moreover, there would be no unreasonable burden on individuals, as would be the case to expect everyone to simply buy a Tesla.

<comment><USER7> One of the reasons for the relative expense is the heavily-subsidised corn (and a few other) industries which pretty much all goes to animal feed.

That being said, my food costs were easily cut in half when I went vegan (and now, they are about 1/4 after some fine tuning of some other recipes) - <USER4> mostly get protein from chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils - which are all super-cheap compared to meat. I also eat a fair bit of tofu (which is very low in fibre and which is also very cheap compared to meat). Tempeh is another option, but I don't tend to make it often. We generally cook a big batch of food at the beginning of the week - which means time to prepare is amortized nicely (and frying tofu is very quick also)

I will admit that processed vegan meat-alternatives do tend to be more expensive than their animal derived counterparts, and not the healthiest - <USER5> I tend to avoid them - most of the expense is due to small production runs and limited quantity - and the extra processing.

<comment><USER8> I just looked up the price of bulk tofu, and it looks like the protein/price ratio is less than that of ground beef but ~2x that of milk or eggs. I can't say I've actually tried tofu. Maybe some day I'll give it a whirl.

For years now, I've wanted to see a wider availability of affordable plant- based proteins, particularly at normal grocery outlets. At the same time I understand that for many folks, beans are ideal since they're quite affordable. Soy milk is a prime example of the difference in cost between plant and animal protein. Not only does soy milk cost about 2x what cow milk costs, but it has only about 65% the protein per serving, making it more like 3x the price. Perhaps there will come a day when these things are more affordable, but I fear it may never happen since food seems only to get more expensive with time.

The main thread was talking about technology, so maybe someone can come up with a way to process and distribute plant products more efficiently. There is a certain dilemma here in that many plant-goers like small-scale operations, when large-scale operations and bulk processing are necessary for the lowest prices. In this sense, there seem to be two separate goals being combined together -- the desire to return to the olden days of family farming, and the desire not to eat meat. I have also felt that there is something of an elitist culture surrounding some of the vegan circles, where much of the food is very high quality yet rather pricey. Perhaps it dates back to Hitler's plant-based diet, which was also seen as high-class and elite. I can't help but wonder if the prices are kept where they are as a result of this elitist culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are plenty of geeks who care deeply about the planet. No offense, but it doesn't sound like you're looking very hard. In terms of superstar techies, how about adding Bill Gates to your list? How about Google's investments in solar? We're in the midst of a vast societal transformation to sustainability -- certainly all the sectors you mention -- and it's being invented by techies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree: I see movement at the top (Gates, Elon, Google, Cook). But it doesn't feel like there's much of a grassroots movement.

Maybe I'm just missing them, but are there examples of this? I've been looking for prominent new startups attacking this problem, and haven't come up with much.

(For example, search Product Hunt for: climate change, sustainable, ecology, solar... It doesn't feel like there's much there)

<comment><USER10> I don't think that the lack of a "grass roots movement" implies a lack of caring (on any groups part, but specifically "geeks").

Also, I don't think the lack of startups in the (pardon the buzzwords) "sustainability space" implies that tech people don't care.

Maybe the tech people that _do_ care work for established companies in that industry?

Maybe there are constraints that make it _extremely_ hard for a startup to (again, pardon the buzzwords) "gain traction" in the industry, i.e. companies that already have huge market share, overbearing regulations, etc.

idk, I just think it's a little premature to think that "geeks" don't care about renewability/climate change _just because_ there aren't a ton of _tech specific_ startups trying to solve it.

There are _tons_ of companies that don't list themselves on Product Hunt, etc.

There are _tons_ of engineers that don't use twitter (and that's not specific to engineers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a comment in this thread that discusses slaughtering people in order to reduce their carbon footprint.

Also see this ad: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM)

This kind of attitude is one of the reason why I do not want anything to do with the climate alarmists. Quite possibly the cure is worse than the disease.

As regards the climate change itself, even the pessimistic projections of its effects are not too bad as I see it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am skeptical of many absolutes. Specifically when they become politically charged. I used to stand behind climate change much more before it became such a hot political topic.

My trust in scientific findings and reports is not blind trust. Studies are often funded by people or governments with special interests. The ethics of university researchers is not as great as I would hope. The first time I can remember a big scandal such as that is the aftermath of the financial crisis in the US back in 09. I've worked under professors in academia and experienced first hand how data is presented and funding is acquired, and it was not always done with absolute truth and honesty.

Take a look at the front page here. It's a story about CMU academics taking funding to do something very unethical.

I'm not denying that we are the direct cause of Earth warming up or anything, but I am willing to listen to both sides make their case, and I will remain silent while I listen and develop my own opinion.

Also,

>We geeks have rational, logical minds.

I see lots of irrational, illogical comments and threads on here and other places. It's interesting to bunch everyone together and say we're perfect.

<comment><USER12> Well seeing as how this comment got down voted for simply explaining my opinion, I guess that's another reason why you don't see climate change being discussed on here.

People can't even stand the fact that I don't Share the same opinions and want my opinion silenced by down voting it. So I guess see the last sentence of my previous post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I care about the Earth and climate change.

However I think those of us with rational, logical minds might have reservations about a group of scientists who can be so sure that the earth is warming and that human activities are the definite cause of it.

So most of us might be a little quiet on the issue of climate change since we're not positive that human activity is definitely the cause of it and temperatures are definitely going to rise 2 degrees (C) causing all kinds of calamaties.

I think this explains why you don't wee more votes, comments and tweets about it from engineers/developers.

I think we should definitely reduce emissions, I think the policies being pursued are justified and smart to do just in case this theory is accurate.

My problem is scientists saying that without doubt human activities are definitely causing the global temperatures to rise. At this point in time with the data we have how can we be sure. It needs more study/data.

I'm definitely not saying that's an excuse for inaction. Reduce emissions now just be careful about over stating what we really know for sure.

I think a more scientific approach would be to say that our data is pointing in that direction we need to reduce emissions now just in case, here are our finding and our data. We welcome other theories and review of our data and we are going to collect more and more data to track this trend and determine if our theory is accurate.

The Earth goes through climate cycles/changes over time. Ice Ages, warm periods, little ice age, etc. And all of these changes/cycles previously were independent of humans or human activity.

I'm not saying humans are not the cause of it, I'm just saying lets hold off on saying they definitely are, collect more data/and more accurate data, be open with the data and work together, be open to new theories, then determine what is really happening while reducing emissions at the same time.

Also there is a possible solar minimum coming that might cause a 30 to 40 year little ice age. Maybe that will give us some time to develop some break through technologies that nearly eliminates the need for using fossil fuels while avoiding the predictions of increased hurricanes, sea levels rising, etc if temperatures would rise.

Most of all improve, perfect and invent green energy sources so we can eliminate most emissions.

The Earth is amazing, lets take care of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate this thoughtful response (and the respectful tone). Thank you!

<comment><USER14> The tone is nice but I don't think he is right about the science of it. For example he talks about how more data should be gathered about this but climate change has been in the public eye for more than a decade now so there's tons of data on it so this sort of hedging of the bets isn't necessary anymore.

This paragraph is a good example of the problem here: > However I think those of us with rational, logical minds might have reservations about a group of scientists who can be so sure that the earth is warming and that human activities are the definite cause of it.

This person is probably a computer scientist and yet they don't trust a "group of scientists" which I am assuming by context to be climate scientists, who are literally the experts in the field he is talking about

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unless you are a genius inventor that's going to reduce everyone's carbon footprint the best thing you can do to help prevent global warming is to kill yourself.

Also, what if I just don't care?

<comment><USER16> Well, you went there, regarding killing yourself, so let's think this through, using your own assumptions.

Devil's advocate:

I think your suggestion of suicide is perhaps one of the best ones possible if you want to prioritise reducing your personal carbon footprint over all other concerns, and are unwilling to (coercively or non-coercively) influence the behaviour of other people. There's not a lot of difference one of us can make, in terms of individual lifestyle choices. There's billions of us (and some of us, like myself, have carbon footprints of 10x or 40x those in other nations with less affluent lifestyles).

If you are willing to non-coercively influence the behaviour of other people, then if you can convince 200 people to each reduce their carbon footprint by 1%, and that wouldn't have happened otherwise, you've just paid for your own carbon footprint twice over (assuming your footprints are all of the same size, etc). Note that this doesn't need technological wizardry - one might be able to do this merely by talking to people, or perhaps being involved in the odd act of political resistance.

If you are willing to coercively influence the behaviour of other people, well, then you could e.g. kill 200 people (ideally those with large carbon footprints, who were not going to kill themselves or be killed otherwise) and yourself, and by your own logic that would seem strictly better (we're glossing over secondary consequences here, this might cause a huge backlash and security crackdown on environmental groups, which might make the overall situation worse, but you get the idea).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hm, I think your data is rather skewed. Sure, most people on HN would probably self-describe as geeks, but that doesn't mean that all geeks are here! As for the Twitter and blog posts you mention, I'd put that down to a sampling bias.

I think the geeks who do care are elsewhere - the natural sciences, for example. HN is a place mainly to talk about technology, and so obviously that is what gets most attention. Go to science fora, and you might find more about climate change.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe they know sources like these:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg)

and are still trying to fit a regression line showing any kind of global warming...

<comment><USER16> Sure, I guess it depends on your perspective. It's good to look at things over a geological time scale, and to have a broader perspective than the human species, or human civilisation.

Regarding very recent climate change, maybe it is easier to focus on the subset of the timescale that has supported human civilisation -- say, the last 10 thousand years. You'll note the temperature was relatively stable during most of this time. Interesting!

If you look really closely at the right side of the second graph you posted - over the last hundred years or so - you'll notice the temperature is shooting up. It's a bit hard to see on that graph as the change is happening so quickly relative to geological time scales.

If you look at a graph that focuses on the last 100 years, a trend is easier to spot:

[http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global- temperature/](http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/)

I've had a go at drawing a regression line by hand myself:

[http://imgur.com/ixnuDX4](http://imgur.com/ixnuDX4)

Hypothetically, supposing this strange recent warming trend were to continue, it is plausible that by the end of the century our planet might be experiencing environmental conditions never previously encountered by our species, and indeed not experienced by the planet for the last 5 million years or so.

Perhaps not much interest in a geological sense, nothing to see here, but perhaps from a shamelessly anthropocentric perspective we might have some cause for concern.

<comment><USER18> In time series analysis picking the right time scale is everything.

Let´s do a small experiment:

One hot summer day I measure the temperatures in my home town between 6:00 and 12:00 and I get some data like this:

6:00 - 10 C

...

12:00 - 32 C

Now I make a small regression analysis and say that at 24:00 we are going to die a painfull death because the temperature will raise with a probability of 95% to 70-80 C.

In this case I obviously forgot about the periodicity of daily temperatures.

The global temperatures have a periodicity of ca. 400.000 years. Therefore any analysis based on a time period shorten than 400k years has the same problems as my summer experiment.

>> the end of the century our planet might be experiencing environmental conditions never previously encountered by our species

\- 2*2 might be 5...

\- at the end of the century I will be dead and "our species" will be only one of million other species. For example the dinosaurs loved the 12 C more and had a happy life on the ice-free antarktis a couple of million years ago...

<comment><USER16> So what are you arguing? That it is not possible to come to any conclusion regarding the earth climate without first waiting some multiple of 400k years? That it's not possible to separate a long-term 400k-year temperature variation trend from short term temperature variations due to unusual/novel forcing conditions?

The thing your hot summer day analysis is missing is a clear physical explanation that explains why the trend you are observing is occurring, and why it is going to keep occurring until 24:00. We probably don't even need the explanation to be 100% accurate for this to be useful, merely accurate to a first or second order approximation.

I believe "we" [1] have got enough understanding of the earth system to make some pretty reasonable inferences on limited data. Certainly not complete understanding, but it's not like a bunch of people are merely using e.g. some deep learning voodoo to perform regression on climate data and have literally no idea what the underlying physical processes involved might be.

Here's an example of my own: consider the geoengineering "launch a bunch of disk-shaped satellites to block x% of the sun's light from hitting the earth" thing. Let's ignore the fact that this isn't necessarily a great idea, and assume someone has gone ahead and done it. We can predict with reasonable confidence what the primary consequences of this intervention will be: less light from the sun hits the planet, planet's mean temperature lowers a bit. This behaviour won't be at all explainable as part of a 400k year planetary periodicity.

[1] not in the sense of you or i, necessarily, but the relevant scientists in the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most geeks care, but I think most geeks recognize that the currently proposed solutions like carbon caps and rationing are regressive and insufficient anyway.

We can:

1) Ration our current carbon-producing technology (carbon caps)

2) Figure out more efficient technology

1 sounds good in theory but doesn't seem practical in reality. I don't drive, yet most of my friends who are ardent "greens" wouldn't dare contemplate giving up their car and red meat.

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess we are too busy delivering the next billion dollars to the likes of Steve Jobs to think about the future of the planet.

</comment><comment><USER21> Some of us work in the renewable sector by choice :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> What the hell is a geek?

</comment><comment><USER23> I reject the premise.

<comment><AUTHOR> The premise of my question, or the premise of climate change?

<comment><USER23> Oh, sorry; I wasn't clear :( The question :)

Climate change (and that it's almost certainly human-induced) seems pretty clear-cut. Like a forest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Most of us went to college and saw that Climate courses were where athletes were routed for an easy A.</comment>


Patents are living up to their ideals - <AUTHOR> http://justinsb.posterous.com/patents-are-living-up-to-their-ideals

<comment><USER2> One particular example doesn't make for a very compelling argument. The vast majority of software patents (probably above 99% of them) are A) never followed up with scientific papers, B) represent nothing that someone else trying to solve the same problem wouldn't come up with, and C) are written so incomprehensibly that no one could ever derive any intellectual value from reading them.

Throwing out counter-examples of "good" software patents doesn't really attack the thrust of the main argument put forward by the anti-software-patent people, which is that _almost all_ software patents are total trash that should never be granted.

I think you can make one of foudarguments here. 1) You can dispute the assertion that almost all software patents granted should have failed the obviousness/novelty test and/or be invalidated by prior art. 2) You can argue that the patent system should be tightened up so that most patents aren't granted, but to still allow certain types of patents (encryption algorithms, whatever else) and then discuss how to classify what sort of patents really are useful. 3) You can admit that but argue that the good done by the "good" patents outweighs the evil done by the "bad" patents. 4) You can argue that you should ditch all software patents entirely because the harm caused by bad patents vastly outweighs the good done by good patents, and that it's too difficult to legally distinguish between the two, so on balance it's better to just disallow them

Again, keep in mind that copyright and trade secret law cover already cover the theft of the software itself, and that plenty of people online talk about what they do and how they do it without any sort of patent protection.

So I'm not sure which argument this article is trying to make (though it's obviously not #4): are you arguing that software patents aren't, on average, total garbage? That standards should be tightened up to allow only a limited subset of what's currently patentable, and that the Google patents fall under that umbrella? Or that the good done by these few patents somehow outweighs all the harm done by all the garbage patents and associated trolling?

It's totally valid to point out that not all patents are a joke, and that some good can come of them, but that in and of itself doesn't really address the real meat of the debate.

<comment><USER3> I'm arguing simply that Google's papers were IMHO the most influential Computer Science papers of the past decade, and they wouldn't necessarily have been published without patents. The patent system is designed to encourage exactly the sort of disclosure we saw here, in this particularly important case.

I chose this 'one particular example' because it's the inventions where the papers are published that are important; not the 'bad' patents which should never have been granted and where the USPTO overturns the patent on re- examination (as I suspect many bad patents, like the linked-list patent, would be.)

I like the idea of a standardized patent argument list! I'll take argument #3 please.

<comment><USER2> I'm a fan of clearly-delineated lines of argumentation since it's difficult to have a debate if people just talk past each other. It's much more fruitful if you can really pinpoint exactly where it is that you disagree with the other person: if I think "B" is true and you disagree, it's much more useful for me to say, "Well, I think A->B and A, so thus B is true" and then you can say "Well I agree that A->B but think A is false" or "Well I agree A is true, but I don't agree that A->B", and then we can have a much more useful conversation instead of talking past each other.

In the case of the patent issue, there are so many entangled issues that it's often difficult to find the real points of agreement and disagreement.

I'd be interested to see someone actually try to make the argument that more good comes from the current system of software patents than would come from a system with no patents, since from my perspective the balance is pretty negative. On the good side you have inventions/work that wouldn't have happened without patents, the resulting utility created by them both in the form of direct usefulness to end-users and in terms of economic activity they fostered, and the knowledge sharing enabled purely by patents and all its resulting downstream effects.

On the bad side, you have all the inventions and work lost due to patents: all the work not done because of fear of patent litigation, jobs lost due to companies sued of existence by patent trolls, all the resulting loss of utility to end users, and the economic cost of diverting so many resources to patent litigation.

Personally, I would argue that far more is _not_ done or is lost in the software world because of patents than is gained because of them; if you just eliminated all software patents I think you'd see a net gain in worldwide utility rather than a net loss. Copyright and trade secret protections mean that most software activity would still happen (that's what pretty much everyone uses for protection anyway: only big shops have the resources to really use their patent portfolio, and then it's often purely defensive), so the main loss would be in terms of disclosure. What you'd lose in terms of, say, not reading papers on PageRank, you'd more than gain back in terms of startups that don't get shut down and by diverting all that money spent on the legal system to better purposes.

<comment><USER3> I agree that reasoned and clear debate is the best approach. I've tried to make the case 'pro' by citing the impact of PageRank/MapReduce/GFS, and suggesting that the impact is no less than reshaping the way we think about computing.

So what are the (non-anecdotal) examples of the costs? It's also important to put those costs into context, because everything has negative unintended consequences in the real world. What's the total annual expenditure on patent litigation benchmarked against (for example) medical malpractice cases? Which companies have been shut down by patent trolls benchmarked against (for example) the companies shut down by new environmental legislation? Which inventions are available on some platforms and not others (e.g. ClearType), and what's the productivity cost of them benchmarked against (say) not pursuing remedies against the Microsoft monopoly?

<comment><USER4> See this book for a complete discussion on these topics and more: <http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/imbookfinalall.pdf>

That book weighs all of the costs and perceived benefits of patents form every angle in every industry and makes a very fascinating conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "disclosure" argument would hold more water if people actually read software patents, or went out of their way to license patents from other companies. But it seems to me that the vast majority of software patent cases are ones where the infringing company has either come up with the invention independently or imitated the external behavior of something else. In which case, the disclosure aspect of software patents is practically worthless.

The article argues that we wouldn't know how Google works without patents, but the truth is that those Google patents alone don't get you Google performance -- most of their system is protected not by patents but trade secrets. And this has not stopped Yahoo, Bing, or others from coming up with viable search engines.

<comment><USER3> But people do read the papers, and I'd argue that the papers are only published because the patent has been filed. I'm willing to bet that 80% of the hackers here have read the MapReduce paper (and for anyone that hasn't, you should!), but I agree I'd be surprised if people have read the patent.

Independent invention is a problem, and that's why there's a non-obviousness test for patentability. Of course, that's a very tricky thing to implement in the real world. So what you're really arguing is a higher standard of non- obviousness; I hope you'll be submitting that proposal to the USPTO.

I'd actually argue that Google's performance _does_ come from MapReduce. The trade secrets (that we know of) are around their customized hardware and the weighting factors in their algorithm, but I'd argue that makes a relatively small difference compared to Google's big idea, which was figuring out how to harness together lots of cheap computers, rather than investing in making each computer more efficient (e.g. Altavista, whose original raison-d'etre was to demonstrate how the DEC Alpha computer was powerful enough to support searching the whole Internet of the day)

<comment><USER6> It would seem to me that I cannot use the described algorithm and put it to work without landing in possible legal troubles.

These patents may actually slow down technological development rather than increase the pace.

We get the fringe benefit of knowing something for real but we are unable to put it to work.

In the world where open source hardware companies like Makerbot Industries are coming into existence and that the phrase "the atoms becoming the new bit" is becoming more true everyday, this is a worrying obstacle in technological progress. People cannot voluntary share and benefit from each other without a fear of patent holder infringing on their ability to do so, no matter how innovative he might be.

The patent system is incompatible with certain business models that relies on the openness of their product, and a whole path of technological development.

This is the price we pay for assuming that people won't share information about algorithms and other useful knowledge. The only question is, will the positive black swans of the patent world will truly outweigh all the lost potential of the open source paradigm?

Just remember, positive black swan in the open source world can happen too!(Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and more)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Academics continue to publish papers in fields where patent protection is unavailable (history, literature, etc.), so I fail to buy the argument that no scientific papers about computing would be published if it weren't for software patents.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author uses the timing of Google's patent filings and published papers to imply that Google would not have published the papers without patent protection. I think the timing of the events does not provide enough information to determine what Google would have done without the patents. Google might have freely published the papers in a world with no software patents.

<comment><USER6> It is probable that Google would have published their algorithms after a long period of time. By the time that happen, the old algorithm would probably have no competitive advantage anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once read/heard an argument against the patent system in that the patent system didn't really help disclose secret inventions.

What it does is shift the focus of inventions from the highly secretive kind to inventions whom inter-working would be rapidly discovered anyway.

Something to think about.

(BTW, everyone should read Against Intellectual Monopoly at [http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm))

</comment><comment><USER9> Google only published because they felt secure with the advantage conferred by their patents?

That idea only makes sense if Google now starts enforcing their patent-granted monopoly on these techniques: suing people who are doing the things they've published. They haven't.

Until they do, this model of Google's patenting/publishing motivations is flawed.</comment>


Clojure and Overtone Driving Minecraft - <AUTHOR> http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/overtone-driving-minecraft.html <comment><USER2> Seems that your SSL certificate is untrusted. Is this intentional (personally signed?) or an error?

<comment><USER3> If you look at the certificate, it's issued to *.herokuapps.com, which indicates he's hosting it on Heroku.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > java -XX:MaxPermSize=1G

Really? I mean really?

<comment><USER5> New to java, but just wondering ... would that be due to intern()-ing (strings/symbols/etc.)?

<comment><USER4> Nope, interned strings are no longer in PermGen since "forever" [http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6962931](http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6962931). Also if you really care about this you'd likely be better of running Java 8u20 or later which automatically deduplicates Strings.

Reasons for running with -XX:MaxPermSize=1G that I can imagine:

      * you run Java 7 (which goes EOL in March)
      * and one of those:
        * your code base is twice as large as Eclipse and JBoss combined
        * you have a PermGen leak
        * you have no idea what you're doing</comment></comment></comment>