Feds say Silk Road suspect's computer shows he (thought he) plotted 6 murders - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/feds-say-silk-road-suspects-computer-shows-he-thought-he-plotted-6-murders/ <comment><USER2> The link from his bookmarks bar.

[http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers- should-...](http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers-should-be- afraid-of-how-they-write-20130116-2csdo.html)

<comment><USER3> leet!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He kept a written journal of this stuff? Truly must not have expected to be caught, I can't imagine what world he was in inside his head to have believed that. Given the status of the website, it was only going to be a matter of time.

Fairly convincing looking fake Australian license though, wish there was a better photo of it.

<comment><USER5> I can't get over how he wasn't using full disk encryption.

<comment><USER6> The way I see it there are a few possibilities:

1) He isn't the real DPR

2) He is the real DPR, but he's extremely inept and didn't get caught before due to dumb luck

3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR

4) He wanted to get caught?

<comment><USER4> There's nothing to suggest that anybody apart from him ever ran the site. The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else. He's just someone who totally didn't prepare for his adversaries, who ultimately didn't need to go to any great lengths to unmask him. I'm surprised nobody in the general public managed to do it, quite honestly.

Just not as clever as he thought he was being, essentially.

<comment><USER7> > The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else.

Ah, so the original DPR is a true master then :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm extremely interested in who this 'redandwhite' guy is. It's still unclear if the murders even occurred, but if no one got killed then this might be one of the most effective cons (against DPR) I've ever seen.

<comment><USER9> Isn't it obvious it was the friendlychemist?

friendlychemist: "Hey, I need $500.000 I owe to some bad guys. Give it to me or I'll expose you."

silkroadguy: "Sure, can you get me in contact with the guys that you owe money to, first?"

(He ...really expects somebody that owes money to bad guys will give their address to someone he tries to blackmail????)

"redandwhite": "Hello, I'm the guy friendlychemist owes money to. Want me to kill him? I can do it for, say, $500.000".

silkroadguy: "Seems legit. Go ahead".

"readandwhite": "Done! Here's a photo of me^H^H him dead."

silkroadguy: "Great! Here's the money!".

(time passes)

"readandwhite": "Hey, I found somebody else who steals from you. Four of them? Want me to kill 'em? Wire some bitcoins".

silkroadguy: "Sure, wiring!".

I mean, is he dumb or what?

<comment><USER8> That does seem the most likely explanation, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Who he's been portrayed as is so not him, it's absurd," Lyn Ulbricht told > Forbes. "He's one of the best people I know."

Said every mother ever.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, as an armchair juror, 3 enourmous questions spring to mind:

1\. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptographic software, not have enough expertise to employ powerful encypted countermeasures on his personal machine? Why wasn't his hard drive encrypted? Why were there no plans to erase and destroy data at a moment's notice, in the event that he gets arrested? Are we expected to believe that his meticulous use of crypto-currency and onion routing go hand in hand with maintaining a silly plain text journal of his comings and goings? That he was simply naive to the idea that his local storage devices should not be a meticulously guarded has his network presence?

2\. Are screenshots honestly a valid form of evidence? Consider that there's a distinct lack of any sort of chain-of-custody for such evidence, and the fact that it's trivial to fabricate screenshots, why should I believe that any give screenshot can be regarded as authentic evidence?

3\. Screenshots aside, how can we honestly buy into any digital evidence presented to us, when there's no assured certainty to its integrity? Consider that one cannot even trust plaintext HTTP data to be safe from corruption by MITM attacks. Given that large quantities of digital evidence can be manufactured programatically, with relative ease, given the proper expertise, how are we to trust a large volume of digital data as anything more than artificially produced bits and bytes spat out by a machine? Logs? Logs, you say? Who maintained these logs? What program created these logs? And if I can possibly capture and replay a remote desktop session, doesn't it stand to reason that I might be able to spice things up, and insert salacious tidbits, and then programatically produce screenshots at will? So what if they have gigabytes of data demonstrating such and such? What is the true measure of authenticity when confronted by the fact that it's still just faceless bytes sitting on a disk?

<comment><USER12> The FBI appears to have seized a very large number of Bitcoins, posed as hitmen killing someone on his behalf, and they've got a wide variety of physical evidence like the fake IDs shown.

I doubt they needed to take the risky step of faking extra evidence here.

<comment><USER11> I'll readily entertain the possibility of tangible artifacts over some bytestream any old day of the week. If he's busted with a bunch of fake IDs on his person, I'd consider that to be evidence proper.

But anything transpiring in the netherworld of the internet needs to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when no real-world violence erupted.

It may be possible that this is the guy. The evidence that rings truest in my mind is that there was a real world cause-and-effect chain of events that occured immediately after his arrest. The shit hit the fan, and the site went down. Clearly, the real world arrest had a direct influence on the availability of the website.

But given the DEA's predilection for parallel construction, and the NSA's predilection for electronic dragnets, can we take the narrative of how they came to bust the Ulbricht at face value? Even if he was breaking the law, was he apprehended lawfully? Did they come into possession of this digital evidence in a lawful manner?

If Ulbricht gets off on a technicality for the crime he's charged with, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. He's being charged with the hypothetical thoughtcrime of killing an internet persona (or two). To me, that feels like a technicality to begin with.

If the people he killed never existed to begin with, then how can we be sure that the evidence that supports these ideas was collected and not crafted?

He may be the real deal, the guy himself, responsible for The Silk Road. But if you're going to put him away with that in mind, justice is not served unless he's charged with the crime he's being punished for, and justified by the true story of how they nailed him. I want to know what was truly so evil about The Silk Road, such that it might necessitate some sneaky peaky, in order to lock up the man responsible for it.

Maybe they achieve their goal of unmasking him, through this direct relationship of arrest and then site outage, but does that mean we have to swallow this murder-for-hire wrap too, no matter how flimsy it feels?

<comment><USER12> > If Ulbricht gets off on a technicality for the crime he's charged with, I > wouldn't lose sleep over it. He's being charged with the hypothetical > thoughtcrime of killing an internet persona (or two). To me, that feels like > a technicality to begin with.

I'm sorry, we're considering hiring a hitman and paying them large amounts of money for what you believe to be a successful torture and execution as a _thought crime_ now?!

<comment><USER11> A screen name on the internet, possibly a sock puppet, may or may not be tied to a real world person. He didn't have the capacity to visit this person in real life. He couldn't have possibly been sure whether it was a real person or not. He never met them, he never shook their hand, he couldn't have been sure of where they lived, because they didn't exist to begin with.

Another screen name claims to have the ability to reach out and eliminate the existence of this bothersome screen name. The only catch is that in order to have one user id destroy another user id, you have to part ways with an imaginary tally of digital crypto-currency.

This is not a case of high school classmates cyberbullying one another until one commits suicide. There was never any real world interaction, nor could there have been, because the target of the murder was always hypothetical. He couldn't have known for sure who was responsible for ANY of the screen names.

In contrast, consider cyber bullying, where a classmate knows for a fact that a given login assuredly represents a person they see everyday during class at school, and which point they begin a campaign of deliberate harassment and psychological warfare. One scenario involves verifiable individuals known to eachother in the real world, and the other scenario (the silk road hit) does not.

The drug trade and the bitcoin exchange for real money may portend that his intent to defend the black market network could _potentially_ turn violent, and that perhaps he was of a mindset _prone_ to acting as an accessory before the fact and an accomplice to murder, but nevertheless, I still question the reality of this sting operation, and what it may have actually represented to Ulbricht himself, in situ. Did he honestly think anyone was getting killed for bitcoins, if he never met them face to face? How can we know for sure?

<comment><USER9> > _A screen name on the internet, possibly a sock puppet, may or may not be > tied to a real world person. He didn 't have the capacity to visit this > person in real life. He couldn't have possibly been sure whether it was a > real person or not. He never met them, he never shook their hand, he > couldn't have been sure of where they lived, because they didn't exist to > begin with._

You don't pay $500000 to kill a "sock-puppet".

Besides, the whole premise is BS, based on "internet isn't real life". As if he arranged a kill on Second Life or something!

Well, newsflash, the internet is just a method of communication, like snail mail and talking is. And it's connecting very much with the physical world. When I order something from Amazon, it arrives on my doorstep, physically, and 4-5 people have worked on getting that to me.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I get it. He ran a drug ring. A mail order drug ring on the internet, with real world consequences. I get that.

What I'm saying is this: There was no murder-for-hire skull duggery, until the sting provoked him into it. There were no murderous provocations without federal law enforcement in the picture, conflating the whole scenario with their invented personas that didn't exist.

That's the reality of what happened here.

They explicitly state that they taunted and coerced him, with fictitious sock puppetry. I'm not inventing that. That really happened.

So we're being asked (as internet jurors) to convict this guy on what he _might have done_ if placed in a similar situation by real people. We're asked to throw him in jail because _maybe he would have_ done something like this, eventually.

Except I'm not convinced of that. I'm not convinced that he belived he was dealing with more than one person on the internet. He may have suspected that this was all an elaborate con game, architected by a single entity, and if he did suspect that, he'd have been right. Except that the single entity in this case was the FBI.

And bitcoin? $500,000 in _bitcoin_? First of all, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the bitcoin wallet he allegedly had at his command. But really, any exchange rate you'd like to apply here is as turbulent, and volatile, and imaginary as whatever we pretend bitcoin is worth in general. It's a virtual currency people are still grappling with. The concept of bitcoin wealth is as absurd as internet fame. Yeah it seems to have real world effects, but how long will it last, and do we take it at face value? If he went from nothing to multi-millionairre _IN BITCOIN ONLY_ , almost over night, is that real money? Did he try to give real money to a real internet hitman?

The federal government acknowleges bitcoin's existence, but even they don't acknowlege it as a true currency. So when you boil it down, it's more like he committed some hypothetical crime for $500,000 in semi-precious baseball cards, or bottle caps or pogs. Bitcoin is regarded as a collector's item at the moment, and little more. You could say he did it for $500,000 in ham sandwiches, and you wouldn't be far off the mark. Maybe it's 7,500 KG of ham sandwiches? Are they fresh ham sandwiches, stored in a refrigerator? Maybe they're moldy ham sandwiches, _but what if they 're THE VERY HAM SANDWICHES THAT CHOKED MAMA CASS TO DEATH???_

Maybe it's still quid pro quo, no matter how you look at it, but when you bandy about dollar amounts, don't pretend like that's an objective value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the comments (Silk Road Tales) [http://antilop.cc/sr/](http://antilop.cc/sr/)

</comment><comment><USER3> most of the comments tend to say that he was stupid, but in some respects, i think the guy was quite bold and somewhat intelligent if he was able to roll something up this large over that long of a time period even if what he was doing was highly illegal. sure he could have been smarter about some things, but honestly, the fact that he got this far, this fast means that he was an enterprising individual, just on the wrong track.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems like a scum bag to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is like a movie</comment>


GPSD Project won the first Good Code Grant by the Alliance for Code Excellence. - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Bad-Code-Offsets-Open-Web-Innovation.aspx

<comment><USER2> Any idea who the other contenders were?</comment>


Getting started with Ansible - <AUTHOR> https://gorillalogic.com/blog/getting-started-with-ansible/ <comment><USER2> As a newbie to tech this was really helpful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it! We'll be comparing quite a few CI tools next week.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made an AppleTV party game using HTML SSE - <AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News, I was experimenting with HTML SSE (alternative to web socktets), and made a fun Apple TV party game in the process. It turned out to be great for my situation (where you need to do realtime synchronization from server to client(s) but web sockets were overkill).
You can check out the game here: https://electrollama.net/alphaparty
I wrote a post about configuring Nginx to work with SSE when used as a reverse proxy for node (this was a bit tricky... my server worked fine when connecting straight to node, but not through a proxy without some monkeying around) https://www.electrollama.net/blog/2017/6/22/html-sse-with-no...
Also, my first post on HN, despite being a lurker here for over 5 years! I apologize if I've formatted this wrong... <comment><USER2> It's good to see someone making use of SSE/EventSource. so many devs just jump on the web sockets bandwagon when all they need is one way data flow with maybe occasional data sent from the client, which imo works better using sse and xhr when required.

A key thing to me is that sse can be polyfilled for older browsers. Websockets cannot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is the app itself using HTML or TVML? If I recall correctly, it's against Apple's TOS to use a WebView on tvOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> The AppleTV part of the app is native tvOS.

It's using SSE as well... there are a few ways to do it, here's an example [https://github.com/neilco/EventSource/](https://github.com/neilco/EventSource/) I'm doing something quite similar in swift, had I known about this, I probably would have just dropped it in!

Every player uses their own phone and that part is just straight JavaScript.</comment></comment>


MBET - Masters of Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbet.uwaterloo.ca/Prospective_Students/MBET.html <comment><USER2> Next thing, it gets so long that they shorten it to MBE -- masters of business in everything.

ok, ok, joke.</comment>


Edward Snowden's Other Motive for Leaking - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/edward-snowdens-other-motive-for-leaking/370068/

<comment><USER2> Normal link, with encryption: [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/edward-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/edward- snowdens-other-motive-for-leaking/370068/)

</comment><comment><USER3> US tech companies have a choice now: Implement end-to-end encryption, or nobody will trust you.

Encryption works, and it can be made simple to use. The message to Google, Yahoo, etc. is make your customers secure or they will flee to the first competitor who does.</comment>


The failed Apple project that led to the acquisition of NeXT - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)

<comment><AUTHOR> More on the backstory at <http://macspeedzone.com/archive/art/con/be.shtml> (via Daring Fireball)</comment>


The Surprisingly Simple Invention That Allows Robots to Make Clothes - <AUTHOR> https://singularityhub.com/2017/02/03/the-surprisingly-simple-invention-that-allows-robots-to-make-clothes/ <comment><USER2> Not a huge surprise: this is why shirts arrive starched -- the starch made the fabric stiff and easier for humans to handle when cutting and sewing.

The article mentions starch in passing but doesn't point out why it was used in the first place, which makes the invention seem more magical. The actual invention is finding something washable that can deal with the rougher handling by robots.

<comment><USER3> I wish they'd use starch again, instead of "water soluble polymers." The oceans don't need more plastics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now only if we had a robot that folded clothes from the dryer.

<comment><USER5> During my brief search into this before I found one consumer device - [https://www.foldimate.com/](https://www.foldimate.com/) but wasn't a winner for me (having to pin up the shirts doesn't make it worth it imo)

And there's a video from 2011 but it's a huge humanoid robot - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FGVgMsiv1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FGVgMsiv1s) not something people would have in their home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> it's interesting how there are so many things to be solved/discovered. Giving the amount of precision that robots can achieve today, or how advanced robotic vision has become, even if the "sewing problem" was already solved using multi-million dollars, the given solution would be interesting (and cheaper) anyway.</comment>


Pandora Drops Flash for HTML 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/pandora_drops_flash_for_html_5/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that they're going full HTML 5 as opposed to just HTML 5 for the control layer while having a Flash core to play the audio.

<comment><USER3> I'm interested in this as well. I'd love some technical details about how they're going to do the DRM stuff with just HTML5 audio. Does anyone have ideas?

<comment><USER4> I can guess they'd so something like a unique URL that expires quickly and checks the user agent/headers/other stuff. Like all of this kind of stuff, it won't be bulletproof, but it'll be good enough. I'm sure I'm missing some other option that's better, though.

<comment> Apple-Guy Exactly. It's easy to record a Flash stream too. Nothing is bulletproof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've had some difficulty with HTML5 audio and can't wait to see Pandora's implementation!

<comment><USER6> Angry birds on Chrome Store had the same issue: [http://functionsource.com/post/html5-audio-issues-why- some-f...](http://functionsource.com/post/html5-audio-issues-why-some-flash- snuck-into-angry-birds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone verified that they completely dropped Flash? AKA that it runs on a computer without Flash installed?

</comment><comment><USER8> Even better as Pandora was using Flash via OpenLaszlo (translation: making flash even slower via another layer of indirection). Now to convince my company that Flash+OpenLaszlo is not the future...

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone say how this looks on the iPad?

<comment><USER10> Is there something wrong with the iOS app?

<comment><USER11> Yes, doesn't let me pick my Quickmix stations (at least on the iPad). On the iPhone app you can change your Quickmix stations.</comment></comment></comment>


The Watney Rule for Startups and the Return to the 'Old Normal' - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@firstround/the-watney-rule-for-startups-and-the-return-to-the-old-normal-cba75583365e#.p3b8um9m4 <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _... When the public stock price of marketplace lenders (like LendingClub and OnDeck Capital) dropped, it somehow (magically) had little effect on the valuations of private marketplace lenders. This was a new — and scary phenomenon. It was as if promising baseball players in the minor leagues were suddenly able to earn a higher salary than veteran all-star players in the major leagues. Perhaps this was partially driven by the limited supply of promising high growth companies — which created an auction-type dynamic in which Greater Fool Theory drove prices. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that public companies trade every day (on good news and bad news), whereas private companies control when they trade (so they were able to have far more control of their valuation by only trading on good news)._

This piece irritates me. The author (who clearly should know what's going on) is acting surprised, as if they did not see this coming. I can't believe he or she is not just stating the true reason that public and private market valuations have drifted apart:

It's that private market investments are on _much_ different terms than public market investments. Usually private market investors are given liquidation preferences and more, none of which a public market investor can ask for. When a public company goes down, the investors lose money right away. When a private company goes down the investors lose money only if the company is worth less than the invested money (the company value including what's left of the invested money!)).

I would not even call private market valuations "valuations". They are more like a valuation cap. Investors make money if the company sells for more than the cap.

<comment><USER3> > Investors make money if the company sells for more than the cap.

Actually, the investors with the highest liquidation preference could make a lot of money even if the company sells for much less than the cap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article: _" According to the WSJ, of the 48 venture-funded U.S. tech companies that went public since 2014, 35 now trade below their initial public offering prices."_

The venture market has been running on the "greater fool" approach, assuming that stage N investors will be bailed out by stage N+1 investors. Instead, the last private equity stage is left holding the bag. Look at Twitter's numbers.[1] Twitter still isn't profitable, which is incredible considering the simplicity of the business.

From the startup perspective, the trouble with becoming profitable is that you're then evaluated as an operating company. Investors look at GAAP earnings, not growth or EBITDA ("earnings before all the bad stuff") numbers. Operating companies are usually valued around 10x earnings. (Apple is around 11 right now). On that basis, many of the "unicorns" have negative valuations. If you're stable and profitable but not hugely profitable, you can't get another round of funding.

[1] [http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=TWTR](http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=TWTR)

<comment><USER5> If you are stable and profitable why do you need another round of funding?

<comment><USER4> To expand. You have the thing working, customers are happy, and, traditionally, that's when you grow the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous HN discussion on a similar topic [1] from Heidi Roizen's "How to Stay Alive" [2]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11111753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11111753)

[2] [http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/139377970205/dear- startup...](http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/139377970205/dear-startups- heres-how-to-stay-alive)</comment>


Afterlife exists says top brain surgeon - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9597345/Afterlife-exists-says-top-brain-surgeon.html

<comment><USER2> Blogspam. Original article: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of- he...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a- doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html)

They might as well headline a story "Aliens exist, says top plumber".</comment>


New Solar Power Material Converts 90 Percent of Captured Light into Heat - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1589 <comment><USER2> I find it quite annoying that the original papers are not mentioned anywhere in the article. How difficult can it be to include a link/reference/doi to the source? I understand that for many people these scientific articles are too much, and unfortunately most of the times the scientific sources are still behind pay walls, but it is very important if one wants to verify the claims made in the news article.

I believe the following articles are the ones on which this story is based: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2014.06.016](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2014.06.016) [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2014.10.018](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2014.10.018) (behind a pay-wall unfortunately)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Fortunately there's a media contact details at the end of the article. I'm sure they'd like that feedback as well. Did you email them in addition to posting this comment on HN? :) I just did, expressing similar sentiments.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be great if you could just annotate that article and include the link? It seems you can now that hypothes.is has launched[1].

[1] [http://hypothes.is/](http://hypothes.is/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So... black latex paint? Asphalt? Water?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albedo- e_hg.svg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albedo-e_hg.svg)

The advance is not that they "reached 90%", that's absolutely trivial, and nothing to do with a "Solar Power Material". They seem to be claiming that their advance is a black material they can paint onto thermal pipes that is _durable_ at 1000K for an extended period of time in Earth's atmosphere, made out of blends of nanoparticles.

"High temperature black paint created that lasts 5-10 years instead of 1 year, reducing maintenance needs for concentrating solar thermal" would be a more honest title.

<comment><USER6> it's actually rather surprising, and important, that they were able to get 90 percent solar absorptivity combined with 30 percent infrared emissivity. this is difficult because absorptivity is the same thing as emissivity, but of course you can have different emissivities at different wavelengths; that's why things are different colors. but the vast majority of opaque solid materials have rather pastel colors, which is to say that their absorptivity (and thus emissivity) varies slowly with wavelength. this is undesirable for concentrating solar power, because it makes it hard to transfer the heat energy from the sunlight to the coolant rather than reradiating it as infrared. all the materials you named with albedos of under .1 are also great absorbers of infrared, which means they're also great emitters of infrared, so they wouldn't work very well for this application. (you also happened to pick three that won't withstand kilokelvin temperatures.)

there are a number of 'spectrally selective coatings' already in existence with this unusual combination of emissivities, but they are all very expensive to produce.

the longer lifetime is useful too, but not so useful they bothered to mention it in the abstract of their paper.

the small particles mentioned are made of a silicon-germanium blend, although they claim you can use different semiconductors for this. they picked that blend because its bandgap is about a volt, so it absorbs photons of more than about an electron volt.

<comment><USER7> The latter: would that be "structural absorbtion" related to structural color?

<comment><USER6> i don't know! i didn't know about structural coloration, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration). the crude absorption is not structural (it corresponds to a bandgap in the semiconductor), but clearly they think the structure is important. i didn't read the paper closely enough to know why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Solar power is a bit of a misnomer here because most people reading that will assume it implies eventual conversion into electricity or motive power.

Electricity is like steak, heat energy is more like hamburger. It's useful but not nearly as useful as electricity, so you're going to need another conversion step (steam turbines are best at this right now) to get to a more usable form of power and that conversion step will have losses (radiation losses, mechanical losses, electrical losses).

So 'overall' efficiency is the key, not the efficiency of a single step in the process (they should at a minimum then list their current efficiency next to the previously achieved maximum for that step and how cost effective this new method is).

<comment><USER9> The heat does not have to be converted to electricity, 60% of a home's energy usage is in the form of heat. 42% for space heating and 18% for water heating.

I am deriving 33% of the energy used for heating our startup headquarters with a solar thermal system we rigged up out of cardboard and black aluminum foil. We are bootstrapping and the electric heat the building has is much more expensive per BTU than oil/gas.

Black aluminum foil will reach 156F in direct sunlight in December in Southeast Connecticut. I have read that black aluminum foil will convert 88% of light to heat. We have 50 square feet of these panels that spend every clear or partly cloudy day between 130-156F, warming the building through convection. On a clear day with an outside temperature of 27F our rig heats two floors to 61F. We are going to add another 50 sq. ft. of panels to attempt to reach 70F+

And the heat mass of the building keeps it warm for four hours after the sun sets. We have some large floor to ceiling windows and we installed the panels so they stand behind the bottom three feet of some of the south-southeast facing windows.

The total cost of our system was $94 and a couple hours of time.

If we owned the building I would install solar hot air panels (basically an insulated rectangular box with a plexiglass top and black aluminum foil tacked into the inside with an intake and exhaust) and run a couple air ducts into the building.

This building already had a solar hot water heating system, with two 4' x 8' water heating panels on the roof. This gives us much of our hot water.

We are awash in solar energy, and heating air with the sun is the cheapest and most efficient way of capturing it. Solar hot air is THE low hanging fruit of solar power.

The only downside with our system is that there is no energy storage. But that could be engineered easily. A concentrated solar trough connected to a buried large cement block or other heat sink could easily store a day or two worth of heat for night time and cloudy days.

55% of the days here are clear or partly cloudy and great for solar heating.

Update:

If you were wondering what we are doing in Southeast CT, we are participating in the first of what we are calling The Winter Startup Challenge, our own laid back, low burn rate version of Y Combinator.

My team rented a waterfront three bedroom house in a beach community for the offseason, October-May. Being the off season we got a great deal.

We have to leave May 31st. We have 8 months to develop the product and reach ramen profitability or get funding. The product challenges have been overcome, the prototype is being built, we have committed buyers waiting for the first production run. Five months left.

<comment><USER10> Can you share some pictures of your setup, and how it works? From your description, I think the aluminium foil is propped inside your windows, and absorbs energy from the sun. This then warms the room via convection.

What I don't get is why thin aluminium foil is good for this. Don't you need a bigger heat absorber? Or is it surface area that's important?

<comment><USER9> Sure, I'll email you.

The aluminum foil is cheap, and I found some anodized foil that is really dark for great absorption. Anodized black foil is much better than painting foil black.

I don't believe the total BTUs would be any higher if one replaced the thin foil with a 1" sheet of aluminum. An aluminum sheet with fins on the backside for heat dissipation might help, but I still think the total heat would be the same because the amount of energy hitting the surface is the same.

It is surface area and temperature of that surface that counts and we don't need fans because of convection.

If you take an infrared thermometer and take a reading off a baseboard heater you will see 140-180F temps radiating off the casing and the metal fins inside that are put there to increase surface area.

These flat panel aluminum foil based collectors work the same way.

When light/heat energy enters a room through the window some of it turns to heat and some is reflected back out the window. That is why you can see objects from the other side.

Seeing those objects is how we lose our heat. These collectors let us capture and convert a much higher percentage of the energy coming into the window already.

If you look at one of these collectors through the window from the outside it appears invisible almost, they are hard to see, nothingness from which precious free energy is harnessed and consumed and not allowed to escape.

<comment><USER11> If you can make that material/pictures publicly available (e.g. in a blogpost), I'm sure other people would be interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Converting light into heat is by far not as difficult as turning it into electricity. So don't mix this up with the 20-24% efficiency that are achievable in photovoltaics.

<comment><USER13> 40%, since some days. :)

[http://www.livescience.com/49133-super-efficient-solar- energ...](http://www.livescience.com/49133-super-efficient-solar-energy- system.html)

<comment><USER14> 44.7% actually

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/PVeff%28r...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/PVeff%28rev141208%29.jpg)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency)

<comment><USER12> Ah, nice graph! Thanks for posting!

I was unaware about the steady progress. Still far away from the 90+% thermal efficiency that is possible with solar heating.

My hopes on photovoltaics are on the relatively new contender Perovskite. Really nice to see the steep progress in efficiency there.

<comment><USER14> The theoretical limit for solar cells is much lower than 100%:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> phys.org is often just regurgitation of press from original sources, typically university press sites.

Here's a better source URL:

[http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release....](http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1589)

<comment><USER16> Thanks. It's nice to be able to read the article without the "37 People With The Worst Eyebrows You'll Ever See".

<comment><USER17> That one is a classic. You have a connoisseur's eye. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What was the previous best conversion rate? This doesn't get us all the way to electricity, so its not really interesting info without a point of reference.

<comment><USER14> The previous one was 99.965% efficient.

[http://www.iflscience.com/technology/new-super-black- materia...](http://www.iflscience.com/technology/new-super-black-material- absorbs-99965-light)

So yeah, this article is bull.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In other words it's a material which has a very low reflectance across a large range of frequencies (i.e. a black material)?

</comment><comment><USER20> It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body)

</comment><comment><USER21> Does this mean that we are closer to replacing fossil fuels? It seems as though for energy we could do it now if we wanted, yet we still obsess about fracking and to a lesser extent middle eastern oil? The cost difference is certainly not the reason we don't dive in and make these changes.

Those in charge still seem to be of a 'secure the oil and the heroin' and you rule the world.

Oh dear -> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW3XeT7qavo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW3XeT7qavo)

<comment><USER22> The problem with renewables lies in unpredictability of wind power and photovoltaics, and in transmission infrastructure designed for predictable (and controllable) power sources.

We don't have good storage for electricity at the scale that is needed, not within few orders of magnitude, so at all times energy produced must be equal to energy used (the available storage is insignificant globaly, it is very expansive and is limited by geography - basicaly we can pump water upstream and let it flow back through turbines - this is only possible when you have a lot of water and some place much lower, where it can safely go, and it's still not cheap).

Additionaly each transmission line has maximum capacity and it will destruct itself if you try to send more.

With old-style energy sources we had baseload produced by water dams, coal, gas and nuclear plants, and peak load produced by plants that can be quickly (in less than 30 minutes) switched to produce more or less energy depending on demand - these are usually gas or coal powerplants. So with average demand for X, and peak deamd of Y you need X of stable powerplants and (Y-X) of controllable powerplants. Network is designed around that Y, using assumptions that power is divided into smaller and smaller lines from source to destination.

Only thanks to that, and to accurate predicting of demand by each level of power distribution hierarchy (I know about details of Polish system, but I guess it's similar everywhere) - the system works.

If you just swap 1000 MW of coal/gas/nuclear baseload plants with on-average 1000 MW of photovoltaics or wind turbines - you will literaly destroy your energy network. Half of the time it will produce too much energy (which results in blackouts and costly repairs), the rest of the time you will have blackouts because of not enough energy produced. You need to prepare infrastructure for that.

You need to adjust the whole network to bigger load, and to change the network topology from "connected stars" to peer-to-peer (or at least orders of magnitude more stars, connected orders of mganitude more intimately), and you need to expand the transmission lines a lot, because the only way to provide baseload with renewables is to average out production from a lot of places with different weather.

Right now electric networks aren't designed for that, and upgrading the whole infrastracture is going to be very expansive.

Germany is trying to do that - props to them, but in the meantime they are kinda problematic to their neighbors, because when they cannot deal with excess energy produced by renewables - they dump in on Polish, Czech,etc networks. Germany needs to pay for that (too much power is exactly as bad as not enough power - Polish and Czech controllable powerplants need to adjust production because of that and it costs both ways, also routing the power through the lines need to change because some lines may exceed capacity with that additional energy, and that cascades through the whole network. Energy distribution is organised in such a way, that when somebody predicted demand or production wrong - they pay for the rebalancing of network caused by that.

Sorry for wall of text...

<comment><USER23> From the article (which I suspect you didn't read):

>CSP power plants create the steam needed to turn the turbine by using sunlight to heat molten salt. The molten salt can also be stored in thermal storage tanks overnight where it can continue to generate steam and electricity, 24 hours a day if desired, a significant advantage over photovoltaic systems that stop producing energy with the sunset.

<comment><USER22> I skimmed it, but I missed that part, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We already have materials that can achieve 75% efficiency [1] and probably more(it's just a rough search), so the 90% figure is much less impressive . But they also claim low cost and low maintenance over other methods, which are highly valuable.

[1][http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/cermet_solar- thermal_OE.pdf](http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/cermet_solar-thermal_OE.pdf)

<comment><USER25> ... or, on the residential scale, a black rubber membrane sandwich known as a solar pool heater.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Checking out some of the Fresnel videos on Youtube really helps one appreciate the power of the Sun. If the new material can withstand 700 C then point a Fresnel at it and hook up the output to a Stirling engine for conversion to electricity.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. Should open source patent this.</comment></comment>


When respect for diversity is taken to crazy extremes - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/05/15/when-respect-for-diversity-is-taken-to-crazy-extremes <comment><USER2> This feels like the Intellectual Property/Patent mindset creeping into the cultural sphere of ordinary memetic transmission. Which hilariously of course is also a case of memetic transmission.</comment>


Italy Now Home to World's Deepest Swimming Pool - at-fates-hands http://sourceable.net/italy-now-home-worlds-deepest-swimming-pool/# <comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a fun way to practice deep scuba techniques - learning 'for real' in large water bodies is full of additional risks. However I'm a bit concerned at the 'caves' [not shown on the diagram]. Martyn Farr's book ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Beckons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Beckons) a rather short, blunt and to the point entry which makes sobering reading) makes it pretty clear that cave diving is pretty incompatible with long life (many people he talks about were killed on cave dives). Anyone I know who has done any sort of confined space dives has a terror story of things going wrong in even the most benign of holes. I think adding caves to the pool is a disaster waiting to happen - regardless of whether they are there to train techniques or not.

<comment><USER2> Whether or not you like cave diving, some scuba divers need to know how to handle confined spaces. It's useful for search and rescue, and for retrieval or repair in underwater structures.

Luckily they're building this in Italy rather than in the US. So they can treat people like adults, inform them of the risks, and let them make the decision about whether to go into the caves-- without being sued out of existence.

I feel sure that it will be much safer for divers to learn these skills in a commercial pool, surrounded by people and equipment that can help in the event of a crisis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I enjoy swimming and diving and scuba as much as the next guy, but I can't say I'd appreciate people watching me from below while I did those things.

<comment><USER4> They're watching from under water but not below the divers. That tunnel seems to only be a few meters from the surface.

[http://sourceable.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/italypool2....](http://sourceable.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/italypool2.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Un'altra grande vittoria del PD.</comment>


StartupList: The first startup gets funded - <AUTHOR> http://venturehacks.com/articles/startuplist-first-funding

<comment><USER2> I'm on the list and have seen some interesting companies.

However, I also put my email address in the AngelList part, figuring, how bad could it be? ... pretty bad. I am now thinking of making a "how to pitch me via email" post.

<comment><USER3> Let me know if you write that post and I'll link to it. Thomas Korte (AngelList member) has his take here: <http://thomaskorte.com/archive/how-to- cold-email>

I've been surveying people on AngelList to see if they want to remove their e-mail address. So far, about 5 people have said "keep it" and 1 asked me to take it off.

<comment><USER2> I've also seen some interesting stuff, too. Nothing actionable.

I guess I want to see screenshots and actually get a hint of what they're doing and why it's interesting.

I get:

\- request to come meet so they can tell me the Big Secret (can you just tell me so I can figure out if it's interesting?)

\- no screenshots or link to prototype

\- an understanding of what angels do (stop asking for a million dollars)

\- pitching ideas very far away from what I invest in (multiple pet product pitches already)

Thomas's "catch me in person" via 4sq etc scares me. I even find referencing a joke I made on twitter somewhat creepy (it smashes the register frame.)

<comment><USER4> Can you guys put together a few basic questions (to filter) you would want answered? Or link to a best practice guide somewhere on the web and make it required reading prior to email pitching? Or a slide deck template? Something like Guy Kawasaki's 10 slide presentation?

Perhaps get VH to tell e mailers to use this?

<comment><USER2> Well, a bunch of things are specific to me. I care more about screenshots than pitch decks.

OTOH, a "I'm a high school student and entrepreneur, and I've got an idea that is going to change the world! Let's meet to discuss" gets tired pretty quickly. Given that I have an enormous load already (day job, plus the other incoming requests) anyone who can't figure out that lowering, rather than raising, other people's transaction burden is necessary is probably someone I wouldn't invest in anyway.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps ask VH to create an 'email requirements' section? In which you could state "Meeting in person probably won't happen, let's start by you sending me screen shots"

<comment><USER2> Nivi, above, is part of VH.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers? - <AUTHOR> Some, outright demand it. This would be considered unacceptable just 2 years ago. They don't even pretend it's for 2FA now. <comment><USER3> What I find most annoying is mandatory SMS confirmation for business accounts. We've got plenty of phones at work, but they cant receive text messages, so employees have to use personal cellphones to open accounts on these types of services.

If your site does this and doesn't offer a actual phone call option, see if you can do something about it. A company I opened an account with a couple weeks ago almost lost our business over this -- seemed very unprofessional. I can guess why this company requires verification, its an attempt to stop bots from signing up en masse to get the small free portion of the service (first X amount was free, if I could script creation and use of 100 free accounts, I'd never need to pay them).

</comment><comment><USER4> Spam and abuse are much easier problems to solve when it's reasonably difficult to obtain a new identifier with a clean reputation.

As much as you may consider it your human right to open thousands of new untraceable accounts per second with full functionality at zero cost, humoring you requires bending over backwards and resorting to a cat-and-mouse arms race of probabilistic anti-spam and anti-bot techniques. As the adversaries get good, it becomes more and more attractive to just require a phone number (and block well-known bulk suppliers of anonymous phone numbers like Google Voice, Twilio, and Flowroute).

I think this is actually a pretty reasonable arrangement. Someone motivated to stay pseudonymous can obtain a handful of extra phone numbers in a way that would take some effort to connect to his real identity. It's better than drivers license scans or credit card verification.

I think the only realistic alternative would be a proof-of-work scheme. This could protect privacy better, while still making it inordinately difficult to overwhelm a site operator with millions of pseudonyms for the same person. But there are no real standards here. More people have SMS than BTC.

<comment><USER5> Slow down there. Where's this hostility coming from? I would rather not give my phone number to companies either.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you: I would rather not give my phone number to companies either.

But once you start to see spam or get spam messages from other users (imagine a dating site) you would like this spam to stop. Having a (unique) phone number a mandatory requirement during registration can make spam fighting much easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Phone numbers are more convenient in contrary to email: every individual has only one phone number, which hardly ever changes. They consider the phone number as unique identifier of a user.

Many websites think that lots of users have multiple emails and thus maybe sign up twice. Again, it's only about convenience.

<comment><USER8> "every individual has only one phone number, which hardly ever changes"

[Citation-needed] As someone who had been holding _three_ different phone numbers at the same time, and who used to be accessible at about 10 different cellphone numbers, I feel you are mistaking your beliefs for facts.

<comment><USER9> Outliers don't matter for marketing.

<comment><USER8> Fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > would be considered unacceptable...

A more honest way of saying this would be that it wouldn't have worked -- requiring a phone number during onboarding would drastically lower your conversion rates. So what's changed? Is this a generational (grumble grumble millenial grumble grumble) thing?

Also, I'd love to know what sparked your asking this question. I don't see a particular uptick in services requiring a phone number for signup, which is something I'd have definitely noticed as I don't carry a phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Twitter demanding a phone number to unlock a 5 min old account after saying it was optional and then pretending I broke their rules just to get my phone number.

As for the uptick in services requiring phone numbers? All the messaging apps, all the freelance websites, facebook, google, classified ad sites/apps. And these are just examples of things I tried using.

<comment><USER10> I use/have used literally all of the things on that list, and none have required a phone number for normal use. I've had Facebook, Google, and Twitter all require phone numbers when I've naively tried to set up bots against their services, though, which is what I'm guessing you're having trouble with here.

<comment><AUTHOR> >works for me.

You guessed wrong. If I was trying to set up bots, why would I start blabbing about it on HN? Oh right, you assumed I'm like you.

<comment><USER11> Calm down, personal insults aren't necessary. I have to admit I've had the same experience, don't know my phone number and don't carry it with me for the majority of the time and I've needed it twice so far. Once for a Twitter bot and once for a Telegram bot.

Never before have I been asked for a phone number that hasn't been optional from any other service (of which I have quite a few, LastPass counts about 2,200 of them).

(Of course, sometimes I do still take the optional road, two factor authentication is exceptionally nice).

<comment><USER12> Many services support otp authentication and don't require a phone number for 2fa anymore.

facebook, google, dropbox, evernote, github, gitlab, amazon, ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lead qualification as a service is a growing segment.

[http://www.upcall.com](http://www.upcall.com) is a thing.

Also, people are tired of bots signing up.

[http://ringcaptcha.com](http://ringcaptcha.com) is a thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Didn't Google spearhead this behavior? One of the biggest reasons I don't use Gmail.

<comment><USER15> How do you deal with spam? This is the one and only reason why I still use Gmail. Many years ago I tried IPCop plus a trainable spam filter addon; it worked well but required constant attention/tweaking because spam is a moving target, so in the end I gave up.

<comment><USER14> I had Hotmail/Live/Outlook, Gmail and iCloud accounts at the time I started gravitating to iCloud (mostly because there I had gotten the exact address that I wanted, and convenient aliases), and at that time, the level of spam I got was the same on Gmail and iCloud: next to none.

In 7 years that I've been using it exclusively I must've seen barely 5-10 junk emails on the 2 iCloud accounts (6 addresses in all) that I use.

Poor Outlook on the other hand.. I check my old accounts for sentimental reasons once every few months, and they're still beleaguered by spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd suggest that you read about the Overton window: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

</comment><comment><USER17> I never give out my cell phone to any company. Doing so constitutes "prior business" , and so putting my cell phone on the do not call list is moot. I get enough crap phone calls for people who had this number before me. It is too expensive to have a crap or garbage cell phone, like I have crap or garbage email adresses

</comment><comment><USER9> It helps to identify users in the real world for long term.

It's relatively common to have multiple email addresses. Fewer people buy extra SIM just to have a pseudonym.

If the website decides to sell your information to advertising companies, banks or insurance companies, they can use phone number to attach users even if the other identifying information is false or slightly different. It adds directly into the bottom line.

Carlos Danger needs dual SIM phone.

</comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't it help ensure the user is using a phone and can get notifications when you couple it with a text message code entry? Then you can skip the typical authentication flow? I would think it would be quicker overall for signup and for making the code simpler but I guess weird for users not used to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know if it happens anymore but Facebook used to ask you to scan and send them a government photo ID like a passport. Absolute madness, one more step towards making real identifications on the internet a normal thing. Tech companies are pushing towards a nightmare web.

</comment><comment><USER20> Because they can target you with you Facebook and Google ads.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I'm selling something especially a service than most likely we will need to talk. Having your phone number makes this much easier to kick start.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been thinking on making a user forum - some people don't have email - <USER2> human verification could be alternatively done by text/voice.

</comment><comment><USER23> So that advertisers can upload a list of phone numbers and have the ads target those people.

</comment><comment><USER24> And Birthday.

</comment><comment><USER25> stop spam and automated sign-ups

<comment><USER26> Those things will find their way out… but the nuisance for common legitimate well-behaving users will be kept, likely.</comment></comment>


Chrome 69 will keep Google Cookies when you tell it to delete all cookies - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/itwlWx0 <comment><USER2> It is designed for average users it seems. Many users (me included) when they delete cookies or do a clear browsing data don't want to be logged out of their accounts. Usually, this meant I never cleared cookies while clearing the browsing data. (for me, it was tedious, so I changed my browser behavior to not allow cookies by default. Makes life easier. If some website can't function without cookies, I open it in guest mode)

Although rather than forcing it, maybe they should give an option to log out of google too, and/or do a fresh start. (And may be allow the users to mark which websites they dont want to be logged out of, though that kind of information with Google does not feel right.)

<comment><AUTHOR> In the Developer Tools, you can hit the 'Application' tab at the top then 'Cookies' on the left. Here you can delete cookies by domain (for dev etc.)! :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I came across this on /r/webdev [1] and thought HN may find it informative and discussion worthy.

This is related, I believe, to logging in to Gmail et al now logs you into Chrome the browser at the same time. I'm unsure if there is a flag to override this behaviour.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/9iqtsf/chrome_69_wi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/9iqtsf/chrome_69_will_keep_google_cookies_when_you_tell/)</comment>


Foldscope: Origami-Based Paper Microscope - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098781 <comment><USER2> A similar low-cost telescope for science education: [http://galileoscope.org](http://galileoscope.org)

Not quite papercraft cheap...

</comment><comment><USER3> optical heathkits WHEN</comment>


"Write Drunk, Edit Sober" Is Bad Advice - <AUTHOR> https://goinswriter.com/write-drunk/ <comment><USER3> I had always heard this used as kind of a metaphor: do whatever the hell you want to in writing, follow every thread, wander all over the place, believe your own bullshit, and just get all the ideas out of you and onto the page. When you edit, then it's time to worry about what your point actually is and how your reader will understand it. It's a little weird to me that someone would take this aphorism literally.

<comment><USER4> Former copy editor here, would not recommend this approach for writing anything non-artistic. Imagine a coder or engineer following this recommendation: no plan, no structure, just throwing ideas willy-nilly. Eventually, you then have to sift through all the ideas, find what's good and what gels, and then re-write to make it coherent, narrative, and logical. You'll probably incur a lot of technical debt and overhead with this approach.

However, if you go into the initial phase with a goal/structure in mind, you're going to be much closer to the final product after your first effort. Many, many writers use outlines/plans. Something that happens a lot in research is that articles are formulaic, they generally have the same sorts of content, so writing them actually becomes easier once familiarity with the structure is obtained.

I would say your approach could be useful for either an artistic format OR for someone who is severely writers' blocked. If you truly have no idea what to write, something is better than nothing. But generally speaking, having a plan/outline is very useful.

<comment><USER5> As a coder I do a lot of my best work with a beer or two.

<comment><USER6> There are better, less poisonous and destructive, drugs.

Is it really worth sacrificing your health for? It doesn't even taste nice once you cut through the cultural programming to pretend otherwise.

<comment><USER7> Having a beer or two is not "sacrificing your health". And if liking the taste of alcoholic drinks counts as being "programmed", then so does every other preference and desire human beings have.

<comment><USER6> But it is, alcohol is very poisonous; which is why you feel like shit and loose your memory when you overdo it, and why it's so hard to hit just the right amount of poisoning to feel funny without feeling sick.

Drinking poison that tastes like shit doesn't really happen without outside pressure. That's not true of every other preference and desire.

But keep lying to yourself, not my problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has this guy ever actually done any creative writing, or just written advice books?

There is a _definite_ use for getting mildly buzzed as part of the creative process. Alcohol makes it easier to turn off the part of your brain that demands perfection and get a lot of stuff that may not be great but can be _fixed_ rather than slowly trying to make one perfect sentence after another. Weed is great for when you need to sit back and stare at the shape of your whole plot and figure out how to get from where you are to where you want to be; surprising and wonderful connections get made. Then you put it down, and sober you comes back and finds the good parts. Weed is also pretty useful for visual tasks; it makes it easier for me to sit there doing fiddly details on a drawing without really seeing time pass. Sometimes it also gives me a power-up to my visual cortex and I can start tracing what I see in my mind's eye instead of the longer route of constructing stuff, but I don't do that much as it's perilously close to the point where I am too high to function. And then there's people who claim that regular microdoses of LSD have lots of benefits for both general braining and creativity. Never tried it myself but I can see it helping.

You don't have to get completely hammered to get useful creative effects. You just have to hit the bottle or bong or whatever hard enough to have _some_ effect. And sometimes you can get in the groove without any chemical aid; that's great! But when you can't, and there's a deadline... there's mind- altering chemicals. Use them responsibly.

<comment><USER9> I'm a professional sculptress who makes math and physics visualizations, weed is indispensable to my creative process for exactly the reasons you described. It helps me get into that state of flow faster, helps me better visualize abstract concepts and figure out how to translate them into physical objects, makes the boring repetitive parts more fun, and it helps me find more novel and interesting solutions to different construction problems I encounter. I never get stoned, just buzzed, because if I get stoned then I can't do anything. And I really only smoke when I'm sitting down to get to work, I'm not much of a recreational smoker at all. Weed is for business hours! If I just wanna have fun, I'm gonna drink beer.

Alcohol has a pretty negative effect on my work, though. I get sloppy and it's a terrible idea to play with sharp objects and permanent inks if you've been drinking anyway. Loosening up and being unafraid to make things I think might fail isn't something I really struggle with because my creative process is super iterative and experimental. That one Ira Glass quote made me realize the power of full-on wallowing in and relishing the ugly prototype stages of things, so I do a lot of that knowing that after a few different versions to work out the kinks and try some different approaches, I'll have something really good on my hands. I love putting a final sculpture beside the ugly prototype it began as and seeing how far it evolved, it's like looking at a baby picture beside a picture of the successful, well-adjusted adult the baby grew up to be. I can't help but take pride in both of them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used to do this so much. I'd get incredibly wasted and feel like I was creating amazing art, I'd pass out from exhaustion (also, drugs and alcohol) incredibly excited to show my bandmates what amazing insight I'd come up with.

Then I'd see it sober and be like, "'Club me with your love truncheon'? I can't work with this. I can't ever even admit I wrote this. What the hell even is this."

<comment><USER11> I used to do similar things, except in my case it was writing longform "satire" while utterly trashed and posting it on social media.

When I'd read it in the morning, it just came across as me being a drunken asshole. I became fond of the Delete Post button.

I also only write sober now.

<comment><USER12> "Post drunk, delete sober" \- said no one ever ever ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article offers a binary choice between 'sober' and 'drunk' (my phrasing) while developing art and says that 'drunk' art is bad because it glorifies addiction and propagates the myth of creativity. It also equates art with work where being under the influence is clearly unprofessional / dangerous.

Personally, I've found that an occasional beer - and some music - <USER2> working on a piece of art (as an unwinding activity) can help me get into a zone and sometimes seems to help me think creatively. If you drink so much that you lose coordination or a sense of what is viable then clearly the effects are negative, but I don't think it's as black of white as the article suggests. I'd agree that if I was a professional artist (I'm not) who couldn't work unless they were stoned, this would be clearly undesirable.

<comment><USER14> Same here. I sometimes have a glass of wine or beer while working with some music on and zone out and get some proper work done. Maybe it calms down my hyperactive brain a bit - I did have ADHD as a kid and used to take meds.

Of course, there is a fine line between having a couple to calm down and getting drunk, when you don't get stuff done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think having a couple drinks or smoking a little weed can help you get the seeds of ideas. But I'm not talking about whipping out a laptop in the bar. More like telling yourself you're going to stop working for the night, have a bowl, watch a movie, maybe surf HN or Reddit a bit and read whatever you want. If you happen to have what feels like an idea or an aha moment, send yourself a short email.

I've done this a few times to great success, but I attribute it more to allowing myself an evening off to rest and relax rather than any specific substance. I'm also talking about moderation not getting completely wasted.

</comment><comment><USER16> I agree that being outright drunk is probably going to be bad for anything that needs precision (or patience/grit). But:

> We would never say this of other crafts. You would never nod understandingly > if a plumber came to your house, completely wasted, assuring you he'd return > to clean up the mess when sober. That would be ridiculous.

We _do_ say this about other crafts. Musicians notoriously get drunk or high when recording [0-1]. Lots of programmers report doing good work after a beer [2]. I myself find that speaking Spanish gets way easier when buzzed. And so on.

The point is to not overdo it.

[0] [https://pitchfork.com/features/profile/9683-cosmic- neurotic-...](https://pitchfork.com/features/profile/9683-cosmic-neurotic-the- heady-perfectionism-of-tame-impalas-kevin-parker/)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20101228123251/http://www.comple...](https://web.archive.org/web/20101228123251/http://www.complex.com/CELEBRITIES/Cover- Story/kanye-west-project-runaway)

[2] [https://xkcd.com/323/](https://xkcd.com/323/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I _really_ like writing prose while high on editable cannabis. The end result is rarely useful except to document my stream of conscious. I have a private hg mercurial version control repository called "journal" that I have used for the past 6 years.

It is very therapeutic and lots of creative ideas are stored away. Each year gets it's own text file and I write in ReStructured Text just in case one day I decide to make my journals public in PDF form or something. Not all entries are influenced by mood enhancing drugs.

I have been known to read what I wrote the night before and swipe some of the cooler ideas as a tweet or expand the idea as a full post on my public blog.

When I drink I don't usually find myself drawn to writing or coding.

I think the more inclusive version of this advise should be:

Write crazy, Edit sanely

</comment><comment><USER18> There's some great comedy by the late Bill Hicks about his drug and alcohol use and that by rock and roll bands like the Rolling Stones and The Beatles and what music would sound like without drugs.

Not to disparage the author but I see he is selling a book called: Real Artists Don't Starve.

I haven't read the book, I have to ask myself what if that was the approach taken by Van Gogh? What would his art look like? My guess is probably pre- Impressionist Manet.

Carl Sagan was a famous pot head who said something like re-evaluate the ideas that you come up when you high after you've come down.

I find the ideas can flow when I drink. I have heard other people say that that doesn't happen for them.

There's a great quote on the floor of the Guggenheim in New York: LET EACH MAN EXERCISE THE ART HE KNOWS

I think it's really, find what works for you.

</comment><comment><USER19> Completely misses the very important necessity of a creative process, which is to work free of self-criticism.

Alcohol, which lowers inhibitions for a lot of people, can help with that. That's not to say that everyone should, or even that anyone should _all the time_ \-- but it can be a productive tool, just like taking a walk, reading a book, or getting some sleep.

I think the larger point that the quippy aphorism is getting at is that one should approach creative work with a sense of openness and abandon, before tightening up and focusing on details. Entertain and explore the variety of "YES" before committing to the bounding "NO"

</comment><comment><USER12> What kind of source of a man's life is a granddaughter?

I am in my mid-thirties with 3 kids. Perhaps someday I'll have a granddaughter. It is unlikely that she will have a full picture of how I conducted my life at any stage. What a strange way to support the debunking of a quote. Also, I think his take is mostly wrong.

Writing and editing are two different worlds. The comparison with drunk/sober works. Write with abandon, let the spirits, daemons, or whatever out onto the page. Then go back, with clear, focused attention and sort that garbage out.

Not to say a glass of the hard stuff won't help the process along.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, "terrible advice" if you want to have a clear mind for the tame trite that passes for modern writing.

But it worked well for writers in the past, from Baudelaire and Artaud, to Hemingway (who did wrote drunk), Lowry, Thompson, Miller, Bukowski, Burroughs, and tons of others...

Of course if you want to merely tie sentences together in your Mac on some Starbucks and never stray into self-destruction or anything resembling an outside-the-mainstream experience, sure...

That said, drinking/drugs as an artistic pose can be even worse than no drinking/drugs at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> If anything, I prefer the opposite. I can't write or be creative when I'm not sober, even if I've had just a little alcohol and am in all other respects sober. But, reviewing your work when inebriated can help you see it as another person would. Flaws and successes both become far more obvious.

Obviously not something to rely on or to make a regular part of your life, but hey, it's definitely a thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've read this article before and I got a little annoyed. I've never ever heard "write drunk, edit sober" been advised in a literal context, but a metaphorical context.

Write drunk - shitty first draft where you don't care.

Edit sober - reasonable editing done when you have a fresh pair of eyes.

Why on earth did the author take this advice literally?

<comment><USER23> Write Drunk, DEBUG Sober :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Taken literally, I've learned that a bit of wine helps in writing, if and only if I was already writing before I started drinking the wine. And not too much wine.

</comment><comment><USER25> This was never about being ACTUALLY drunk. You have to be drunk to believe it is.

I think this is just an intellectually dishonest blog post trying to get some easy clicks.

</comment><comment><USER26> Bukowski seems to have written drunk many times.

<comment><USER27> Alcoholics can develop a tremendous tolerance to booze.

It does not mean anyone should emulate his lifestyle.

Bukowski describes his semi-fictional self Henry Chinaski as emotionally broken person, who medicates his pain with alcohol, horse racing and the like. He never actually glorifies this state of being, rather, he's brutally honest about who he is and how he behaves.

There can be poetry in damage, but it's tragic beauty, and it's the sort of beauty one should not try to emulate on purpose.

<comment><USER26> Definitely, I wasn't trying to support the use of drugs to enhance creativity. I wanted to point out that even though Hemingway could have been sober when he wrote, it doesn't falsify that there have been drunk authors throughout history. Being an addict is bad, that's unarguable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Smoking weed is way better than getting drunk to enhance creativity (in my experience).</comment>


Show HN: RealTalk: Consumer to business messaging. Feedback welcomed - <AUTHOR> https://realtalk.im/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. There are a lot of new players in this space - Path Talk, the newly announced Businesses on Facebook Messenger. How can RealTalk differentiate from the others?</comment>


Apple Said to Be Exploring Switch From Intel for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-05/apple-said-to-be-exploring-switch-from-intel-chips-for-the-mac.html

<comment><USER2> If one day ARM offered competitive performance to future high-end Intel chips, it would be hard to say no to a switch.

From a developer perspective it's a bit annoying, but having survived the switch from 68K to PPC to Intel, all of which were surprisingly painless, I'm sure this next one could be pretty straight-forward as well.

If there's one rule that's proven itself over and over it that emulating today's CPU is trivial on tomorrow's hardware. A 68K requires inconsequential resources even on an iPhone, and even the then powerhouse G5 PPC is barely a fraction of the speed of the slowest Intel chip shipping today.

To a large degree Apple has already "switched" in terms of units sold. Intel continues to shrink in terms of share and might even sink to 10-15% of CPUs within a few years as the iPad, iPhone and future iOS devices continue to sell well.</comment>


Adblock Plus for Safari Beta released - <AUTHOR> https://adblockplus.org/releases/adblock-plus-for-safari-beta-released

<comment> k-mcgrady What's the difference between this and Adblock which has been available for a long time on Safari?

<comment><USER2>
      > What's the difference between this and Adblock
      > which has been available for a long time on Safari?

The Adblock extension that has been available for Safari is written by a guy named Michael Gundlach at a time when no other ad-blocking extensions were available for Safari. It shares no lineage with any other extensions called Adblock [1]. I like it and I donated money to Gundlach.

The Adblock Plus people apparently had some sort of shady dealings going on awhile back [2].

You'll also see "Adblock Edge" [3]. This is a fork of ABP after the above incidents [2].

1\. [https://getadblock.com/#about](https://getadblock.com/#about)

2\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_plus#Advert_filtering_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_plus#Advert_filtering_and_.22acceptable.22_ads)

3\. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock- edge/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/)

<comment> k-mcgrady Thanks I never knew they were unrelated.</comment></comment></comment>


Ruby will no longer ship with a testing library - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9711

<comment><USER2> The current thread title here ("Ruby will no longer ship with a testing library") is neither the original title nor the conclusion of the discussion in that bug.

Basically, as I understand it, the current test-unit and minitest libraries in Ruby's stdlib are testing dependencies for Ruby, but are completely different from (in the case of "test-unit") or older, incompatible versions of (in the case of minitest) the libraries under the same names released as gems. As a result, there is a decision to stop shipping them in stdlib, and make them part of ruby-core's test suite separate from stdlib.

It looks like there is also a decision of what to do to provide a testing library in the standard distribution -- it looks like the discussion centers on replacing both of the libraries with current ones, but with a preference to do it as standard gems (along with potentially replacing the other stdlib libraries with the corresponding gems as part of the standard Ruby distribution.) The exact resolution of this seems to have been directed to a developers meeting and will likely be separate from the ticket.

So, it does not seem that the decision is not to ship a testing library with Ruby, just to stop shipping _outdated_ testing libraries with Ruby.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't read that conclusion as surely as you seem to. The commit removing minitest entirely has already landed, and while it may be added back in in some capacity, I don't think it's certain.

FWIW I took the title from this tweet by Ruby Core member zzak: [https://twitter.com/_zzak/status/469953823122157568](https://twitter.com/_zzak/status/469953823122157568)

<comment><USER2> > I didn't read that conclusion as surely as you seem to.

Huh? AFAICT, you are the one positing that there is a sure conclusion: "Ruby will no longer ship with a testing library".

The decision _in_ the thread is to move the older versions ruby-core depends on itself out of stdlib into test, with the decisions on what to do in stdlib left to the stdlib library maintainers. The minitest maintainer made a detailed recommendation which, if done in full, would have broader impact on the distribution (distributing libraries in stdlib that are also gems as gems with the standard distibution) which has been deferred to another venue. The only sure thing is _not_ shipping the old libraries -- not shipping _any_ test library is neither certain, nor, AFAICT, _anyone 's_ preferred resolution (but resolving what to in stdlib seems likely to be outside of the scope fo the referenced bug.)

<comment><AUTHOR> The current decision is "we're not shipping a testing library". A solution to the problems with shipping one may be found (the need for Ruby to test itself with a certain version, but ship another to users, but they'd clobber each other), and that may change back, but unless that happens, minitest is gone.

<comment><USER2> > The current decision is "we're not shipping a testing library".

No, its "we're not shipping either of the current testing libraries".

Its true that a _consequence_ of that decision, if the identified followup tasks _don 't_ come with some other resolution that is ready before Ruby 2.2 is frozen, would be that Ruby wouldn't ship with the testing library, but it is clearly _not_ a decision anyone involved has made at this time that any version of Ruby should will or should ship without a testing library.

At most, you could fairly characterize the decision to remove the existing libraries from stdlib without resolviing the question as a decision to accept the _risk_ that Ruby might end up shipping without a testing library, but even that is very different than a decision not ship a testing library.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Gloves Are Officially Off: Google Vs. Apple - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/the-gloves-are-officially-off-google-vs-apple/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> _"We discovered something really cool, it's called the Internet."_

Ouch. Also, bad form for injecting "READ MORE! <http://techcrunch.com?> into my copy paste, techcrunch.

<comment><USER3> This is why I am beginning to consider NoScript essential for web-browsing.

<comment><USER4> You know Google Chrome has noscript functionality built in right?

<comment><USER5> "This is why I am beginning to consider heated outside mirrors essential for driving in cold weather"

"You know the Toyota Prius II has heated outside mirrors built in right?"

(Edit: Oh, I think I somewhat see your point: noscript is the Firefox-specific name for this function. Still, Chrome isn't the only browser to have this.)

<comment><USER4> Right, I didn't mean to imply that no other browsers have some kind of noscript functionality built in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting how Apple's real, live products constantly have to compete against demos.

<comment><USER7> It's also interesting how I can "git clone git://android.git.kernel.org/whatever", edit the code, and install it on my phone. Without any permission from anyone.

<comment><USER8> Which is interesting (much less understandable) for about 0.0001% of the people that have a phone. But yes, you have point. That is nice.

<comment><USER9> <http://gear.ign.com/articles/108/1088942p1.html>

<comment><USER10> It is my understanding that very few of those devices are developer devices, where the user is allowed to install their own OS. Otherwise you have to root the phone, which is a violation of the increasingly international DMCA-style anti-circumvention law.

I haven't checked this info in a little while though, if most Android devices are sold with root I'm very happy to be corrected.

<comment><USER7> Rooting your phone is not a DMCA violation. sudo simply is not pre-installed, it's an app you have to add yourself, just like anything else. Reverse engineering for interoperability is a DMCA exception, and there are plans to make the language in the law specifically refer to "jailbreaking" phones.

Also, at least with Android devices I've worked with, there is no trickery involved to flash a new firmware. You just do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The moment flash was announced for the Android I realized that my next phone won't be an iPhone, but a nexus one.

Sad. History is repeating itself.

<comment><USER12> Really? You miss flash that badly?

Other than the occasional restaurant website, what are you missing? Most flash apps are very awkward on a phone, having been designed for a mouse. And most flash games apparently don't perform remotely acceptably on Android (not enough horsepower in the phone).

The remaining reason would be Hulu - but they won't stream to your phone, even with flash - since they don't have mobile distribution rights to the content.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't be able to live without flash and here's why.

If I visit 100 sites a day maybe 5 of them will be dependent on flash in some way. Menus, slideshows, etc. Without flash the site is worthless. I won't remember the 95 sites that work, but each and every one of the sites that don't will annoy me endlessly. Maybe I needed that quote on a new Dewalt powerdrill from the local website programmed in flash. Maybe I really wanted to see the funny link someone posted on twitter. But I can't. Not without flash.

The problem is a lot like spam: False positives are a _serious_ problem. If 5 e-mails a day were mistakenly labeled as spam my spamfilter would basically be useless. This is exactly the same.

I don't endorse flash, and think it's annoying as hell but until 99.5% of the sites I visit work without flash not having it simply isn't an option.

<comment><USER14> 5% would be a conservative estimate of the sites I find completely unusable on my phone for reasons that have nothing to do with Flash: text too wide and tiny to bother, centered popups that are bigger than the screen (so I can't close them), essential functionality based on mouseovers, random failures of over complicated JS/CSS, neglected mobile sites that mangle content or don't show it at all, mobile sites that break hotlinking and just take you to the home page, and so much more.

The point is, Flash is just a small part of a big problem. Web design still has whiplash from the mobile explosion. But it's going to recover real quick, and when everyone starts making mobile friendly sites, they won't be using Flash. It's on death row and Google is just dragging it out for a cheap shot at Apple.

Just grit your teeth and bear it for a little while longer. You'll have to do that anyway, with or without Flash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok, I think I missed the genesis of whole rainbows and ponies meme. Someone mind clueing me in?

I seem to recall first hearing it connected with Django somehow, but I figured it was a reference to something I didn't get...

<comment><USER16> There are various pony memes, including a Django one, but in this case I believe they're just trying to exemplify openness by using a picture of a toy that lets you complete the design yourself:

[http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Decorate- Figure/dp/B001...](http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Decorate- Figure/dp/B001E3P5F2)

Also, I don't think it's rainbows, just colorful hair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is big for online video advertising. The price (I believe) is substantially less than regular TV now. But put in online video advertising being on a TV in front of the average user and you gain a ton of potential dollars. I'd actually be surprised if the only thing that Google TV doesn't ask from you is your zip code for giving localized ads.

<comment><USER17> I'd like to clarify I was talking about the price of online video advertising, not the cost of google TV - I think that may have been confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> With the acquisition of SimplifyMedia, it seems like Google's aiming straight at Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy. (Which I doubt Apple is still really following.)

</comment><comment><USER19> OH: Why would thet need all these people on stage? One Jobs does a better job.

<comment><USER20> I give Google some slack for trying to be different than Apple in this respect but man, you're so right. Maybe it's the democratic way of Google having each manager demo the feature they're responsible for.

But it felt like at one point the techno music wouldn't stop as people shuffled in and out of the stage. Did we really need the music bringing all the CEOs out? It just got silly at that point.

And was it me or did Vic come off like a douchebag during this second keynote?

<comment><USER21> Vic ended up pretty badly too with Conan O' Brien

<comment><USER22> I actually thought Conan gave him too hard a time. Vic came out looking like an affable, though slightly stiff, nerd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "On Android's upcoming over-the-air music download capabilities versus Apple's tethered syncing: "We discovered something really cool, it's called the Internet."

huh? did this guy even say that with a straight face? itunes (i.e. music, movies, tv, podcasts, audiobooks and iTunes U) is available on the device.

<comment><USER24> Do this fun experiment: Go buy an iPad and try to figure out how to use it WITHOUT another computer to sync it against.

That's what they're talking about.

<comment><USER23> many people have used ipods, iphones, and I presume ipads without syncing with a computer.

<comment><USER25> You must sync a new iPad (on a computer with iTunes) before first use. I don't know if that still applies for the iPhone (though it probably does, for activation). The iPod is worthless if you don't have a computer, for how would you get music on there otherwise?

<comment><USER26> You are right, this is stupid.

Apple will do this for you at the store, but I imagine for updates you still need a computer. You do for the iPhone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lyft uses dark patterns to hide unsubscribe button for marketing notifications - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/BrenttBlakkan/status/1106354182573817856 <comment><AUTHOR> I spent 5 minutes digging through menus and trying to figure out how disable this setting. There are clearly many people who are frustrated by the marketing notifications, and Lyft has decided to (1) turn them on by default, and (2) make it super hard to find where to turn them off.

Considering how Lyft tries to position themselves as the kindler/gentler Uber, using dark patterns is a pretty bad decision.</comment>


Sandia magnetized fusion technique produces significant results - <AUTHOR> https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/mag_fusion/

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is not the original source but has an illuminating diagram that shows how it works. [http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/09/20140923-maglif.html](http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/09/20140923-maglif.html)</comment>


Would we miss the Media Lab if it were gone? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/08/would-we-miss-the-media-lab-if-it-were-gone/ <comment><USER2> We'd miss eink, guitar hero, Lego mindstorms, Scratch (though we'd have Blockly), and wireless mesh networks (though DARPA prioritized that too).

I've used the Oblong system & it's pretty cool. The concept of each pixel having a 3D coordinate in a multi-display room is very interesting.

I would have expected a more recognizable list.

Are there similar lists for other universities?</comment>


How Much Do Average Apps Make On Each Platform? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/08/10/how-much-do-average-apps-make/?partner=yahootix

<comment><USER2> I have a very popular app for iOS and Android. Both have the same functionality. These figures (5x more revenue on iOS) is pretty consistent with what I see. For many apps moving forward I am actually not creating Android versions as it is simply not worth the effort.

<comment><USER3> can you say which platform you released first on? or did you make it at the same time?

I'm quite surprised at that big of a revenue difference

<comment><USER2> I released on Android first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems very misleading to me to just calculate average revenue by "money paid/downloads". At least a while ago a popular model on Android was to publish the app free and make money with advertising. So the average payout per app is probably much higher.

Although I also suspect it follows a power law, so a few apps make lots of money and most apps make little to no money (on all platforms).

<comment><USER5> Oh sure, this is called working with the data you have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You _really_ want a survey of some folks who have released similar apps on multiple platforms, and to cover the development-cost and revenue sides, including in-app purchase and any ad revenue, if that's a substantial source for anyone.

Just comparing aggregates, it's hard to tell what differences are thanks to the platform and what's simply because "the average app" on Android is different from "the average app" on iOS (because of review, barriers to entry, etc.). And there's nothing about costs.

Much as I like Android, I bet iOS tends to be the better deal for paid-app developers right now. You have fewer devices to target and no equivalent of Android's Gingerbread situation. ("The Gingerbread Situation" is also a new punk band I'm forming, BTW.) And Apple customers seem to skew a little spendier, though maybe that's changing.

<comment><USER7> I think the average Apple user will continue to skew spendier, but the sheer number of Androids will mean that there is a portion of Android users who will spend as an iOS user would. And when the overall number of Androids is high enough, it could be so that even is 25% of Android customers were valuable against 75% of Apple's customers, Android being 5x the size means there are just as many (or more) "valuable" Android users than iPhone users.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure about that. I spent >$1500 on Android phones, but less than $10 on apps. There are a lot of free/ad app equivalents for the paid apps - I did not need to buy anything. The only paid app I am regularly using is JuiceSSH for the port forwarding feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't speak to the iOS and Android numbers, but they are significantly off on the Windows Phone numbers.

MSFT just announced their WP downloads stand at 2 billion (a significant delta from the 0.65 billion estimated here) As for units sold, Nokia alone has sold 20 million Windows Phones or so, and there is another 20% of non-Nokia WP phones on top of that.

<comment><USER9> Nokia forms the majority of WP sales and boosters are the cheaper models like 520/21\. A good quarter of the sales are pre-WP8 models.

Finally, Nokia sales in North America and US, is lagging behind other continents. That's maybe from an app sales perspective Nokia doesnot make a lot of bang!.

US is mainly an AppleLand, and app store app sales get huge boost from having a big portion of iPhone/iPad subscribers here.

<comment><USER10> Android is now more popular than iOS in the US, see "Smartphone Platform Market Share" [http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/6/comSc...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/6/comScore_Reports_May_2013_U.S._Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Simply averaging does not mean a lot. Does anyone have any stats which take into account the fact that 5% top apps get a lot more reveneues than the bottom 80%?

<comment><USER11> Agreed. A comparison of medians would be more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Median value would have made sense here, not mean value.

<comment><USER13> Agree.

This article is just ridiculous. FunFact: half of the revenue from the app stores go to the top 25 developers.

[http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/top-25-us-developers- account...](http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/top-25-us-developers-account-half- app-revenue)

<comment><USER14> A similar ratio to most things in economics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This would be useful if the distribution of downloads/app were a bell curve (meaning being "average" was actually common). I doubt it is.</comment>