Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gkogan.co/blog/dont-design-emails/ <comment><USER2> Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being _different_?

If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they _would_ start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1.

Plus, I very much like the "Promotional" filters for email, both as someone that receives it, and someone that has sent it.

Email spam is annoying because it's in your way, it interrupts your day, and almost "forces" you to pay attention to it, which is annoying.

The "promotional" tab in gmail (or the similar group in Inbox) fixed that problem for me. Now I go and look through it when I want, and I not only read more of them, but i've done more "action" from them (rather than get annoyed at spam, i've seen that something is on sale, or a new product is released that i was looking forward to).

If there were a way to "mark" my emails to go into that tab voluntarily as a sender, I would do it. The whole idea that you should be fighting against how the user wants to group their email seems backwards. If they don't want to see it, forcing them to see it isn't going to make them like it...

<comment><USER3> One way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email.

So on my private personal account (not the ones I use for important things like banks), all HTML email is filtered directly to /dev/null.

That's caught exactly one personal email I'm aware of in ~15 years (I forget exactly when I added that to procmail). It might have hit others, but it is a far better false-positive rate than any other individual test.

<comment><USER4> Do the email client still default to TXT nowadays ?

Regardless how basic the email, it seems Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail always send them in HTML and I need to do something special to send it in plain text.

At work, the mail very often have some sort of minor formatting. A bold sentence here, a reply in a different colour there, or even simply links. Except for automated alert message from a system or another, the emails are basically always HTML.

<comment><USER3> Most of my friends and family to use Gmail; one uses Hotmail, and I have no trouble getting mail from any of them. I have no idea what Outlook does.

A lot of my work email indeed is HTML - people do love their red text and jokey memes. I'm talking about my personal mailbox that I use almost exclusively for talking to friends and family.

"Works on my machine."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was turned on to "no design" newsletters by Jeff Bezos' updates on Blue Origin. They read and feel like a personal note from him, even though I know I'm just an entry on a big list.

Since then, I've made all important announcements to my company's customers via this "personal", no-design style. The reply-to is my direct email address, which I think deepens the personal touch of this style, and prevents me from abusing this format for marketing spam (since I inevitably get a few dozen replies from customers every time I send an email like this).

On the note of this style being more effective just because it's different: There's certainly an element of that, but I don't think a really personal- feeling email can work for frequent marketing emails. First, I think the real reply-to is a critical part of a "personal" email, and second, I think companies will understand that this style works better when reserved for infrequent communication that you really want read. At our company, our standard marketing goes out designed. But when I want to announce a new product or feature, I'll send it out just like an email from my outbox (plus the mandatory unsubscribe link). My customers read those emails more than any others, and I've never had a bad response.

<comment> iam-TJ Your observation about the reply-to is an important flag.

I almost always instantly delete any email where I see the From: or Reply-To: has noreply@ or the email starts off with

"Please do not reply to this email it is sent from an account which is not monitored"

Unfortunately one of the big transgressors of this are banks and other major service-provider organisations where we have ongoing contract relationships.

My attitude is, if these people do not understand the fundamental purpose of email then, I don't want to deal with it.

In the snail-mail physical postal world - in most jurisdictions - there is a requirement that businesses identify themselves and provide a return or correspondence address.

Just because it's email doesn't obviate this requirement, and pointing to a web-site Contact-Us page is rarely very helpful since that loses context in so many ways.

<comment><USER6> Banks can't be taking inquiries over email because it's not a secure way to communicate. They have to take inquiries through their own secure messaging systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been sending plain emails to my list, because I like the ultra minimalism of it. If I've got two sentences to share with my list my email is "Hi" \+ two sentences + "Bye" \+ unsubscribe links.

Does it "convert" better than styled emails? I don't know. I don't care. Does it do well enough to meet my goals. Yes.

There's many things I'd rather be doing with my time than optimising everything for marketing goals.

<comment><USER8> I like plain emails much more than styled ones.

But the point with the "does it convert better" is a pretty big.

I mean, I work with people who hire marketing consultants who tell them what they need to do for better conversions. All decisions are based on that metric. So I wouldn't expect much change if there are no numbers that tell "plain converts better".

<comment><USER9> The article references a 3x click rate improvement, which is pretty good. Although this is just one data point (and there's a bias at play: All the people who tried plain text emails and _didn 't_ see a conversion increase won't have bothered writing a blog post about it).

<comment><USER10> Hah. Save 15% or more with GEICO. And all other insurance companies have similar slogans. Why can't you just keep switching between them until you pay nothing?! :)

<comment><USER11> Their phrase is "...could save you 15% or more," which, incidentally, includes any potential savings between zero and one hundred percent.

Their catch phrase contains literally no information except a suggestion of 15%.

<comment><USER12> 15% savings could also be the threshold of complacency vs pain for most people. Most insurance companies probably show a 15% savings for people to go through the hassle of switching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The plain email—which took no time to design or code—was opened by more > recipients and had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email.

I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers.

Designed email, for a lot of companies, is a matter of style, a VI (Visual Identity) for the receiver to remember. It's a good tool to differentiate your services from others.

Also, a well-designed email could increase the efficiency of email reading as you may already familiar with some email and their layouts, so you can guess it's content even you didn't actually read any word in it (Those "What's new" email from Twitter and Facebook for example).

If everybody start to send plain email today, then there will be a whole lot more of reading for the receivers to do.

So for me, I don't reject designed emails, as long as most content in the mail is what I needed. Maybe it's a notification, verification or something like that.

I hate some company send emails which heavily polluted with contents that have nothing to do with me, and if that email was also designed, I hate it even more.

<comment><USER14> > I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people > open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just > having those numbers.

I've seen plenty of people who make quite an effort not to receive/open anything that ain't plain text for simple security concerns. Similarly, many design emails end up being displayed butchered for users due to adblockers/email provider/client blocking outside resources and links.

Imho: If I want a website like experience I can visit the website, emails should be reserved for simple text communications, without adding needless design bloat, but that's just my personal preference.

<comment><USER15> How do they know they are HTML before they open them?

Also, I read in plain text. If you want me to read it in HTML format, include a link to the web version and, if I'm interested, I will actually click on that - which has the added benefit of putting me on your site.

Not many do that. 'If you want to read this in HTML format, click this link.' That works and I may very well click it.

Edit:

Never mind. I see they speak of unstyled HTML email, not plain text email. So, the email is still HTML, it's just not pretty. Chances are, I won't notice as I read in plain text most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The use of "plain" is slightly confusing. At first I thought you were referring to text/plain MIME type (i.e. truly only unformatted text) but based on your A/B image's hyperlinks it looks like you're still using text/html, just without styling.

Only mentioning it since based on other comments, seems like I wasn't the only one temporarily confused.

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot of this applies to web-design for (what should be) static sites as well. The more complex and "engaging" you make your site, the less likely people are able to read it cleanly. I wonder if anyone is doing a/b testing with those as well?

KISS

<comment><USER18> At this point that is a feature, not a bug. That's the only explanation as almost all websites for products/services you don't already know of are utterly useless at explaining what precisely it is they do.

I still get pretty upset by this and try to avoid buying from such companies whenever possible in my professional role, but I'm pretty convinced it's on purpose so you have to call someone and let them "engage" you in the "value add" sales process.

<comment><USER19> Maybe. But in many cases it's not a deliberate choice about motivating user behavior, it's about satisfying some highly-paid person's idea of how their business is special so the design must also be special.

OR they really have it together, and the design works great for their specific target buyer while turning off irrelevant folks like you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My first reaction was curiosity of how they would know the performance of plaintext email, so to spoil the surprise these are HTML emails with a plain _design_. HTML is still required to track how many people open the email, though obviously not how many click through.

</comment><comment><USER21> Click rate of plain text email: 1%

Click rate of html email: 0.3%

That's very low and yet the result was, loudly claimed in bold, that the plain text one had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email!! Also, the opened rate is within the margin of error and therefore insignificant. I may not be a data analyst, yet I look at the analysis and think to myself, "eh?"

<comment><USER22> Users can't really tell that an email is styled or plain before opening it, so if the opened numbers were too different, I'd be concerned that something was up.

<comment><USER23> Per the article, it's probable that the styled emails are being flagged as promotional (or outright spam) and thus being filtered from immediate view by various mail clients (including Gmail).

<comment><USER22> Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How is it even possible to track the open rate without HTML? I'm not an email expert and genuinely curious.

I was under the impression that people use <img> tags for that.

<comment><USER25> When he says "plain text email", what he means is "HTML email with very little styling". Sending true plain text email without a multipart HTML section is much worse for deliverability, from my experience (assumedly because plaintext emails are almost always "automatic emails")

<comment><USER26> > Sending true plain text email without a multipart HTML section is much worse > for deliverability, from my experience (assumedly because plaintext emails > are almost always "automatic emails")

I find that statement very surprising. I haven't sent a single HTML mail in... all the time since I started using email. I never had deliverability problems that I could trace down to the mails being text.

(I also have surprisingly few deliverability problems to begin with and my gut feeling is 90% of hostmaster complains can be described as "you've been blocked by the spam filter because you were sending spam".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I share the sentiment and think there's a balance.

The problem is a lot of marketers or designers go overboard with HTML emails and they're overly designed with visuals and graphics in an attempt to look good or match their brand.

Using actual plain text is a bit of a pendulum swing in the other direction though and really restricts things, including the fact you can't add tracking pixels to get the analytics you might need.

An HTML email that is "designed" to still look like plain text strikes a good balance I think. Allows for some visual type hierarchy improvements, allows for links with clear anchor text and utm tags and any tracking pixels you need. Easier for you the developer to maintain. While at the same time isn't distracting to the user.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's gotten so I can instantly recognize the yesware and spam.io templates without even needing to look at the email's html. That plus the prompt to load external images for their 'text only' email that was totally sent by a human and not automatically sent on a 'proven' schedule every week or two in perpetuity. But they're totally not spammers who subscribed your email address to a marketing list without your permission after they bought it from the black market.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have had a job where they tried to implement emails 4 times. The last attempt is still ongoing and in my opinion destined to fail.

They wanted to implement few dozen of auto generated emails with huge content.

The task was suspended 3 times, always because of the same thing: cost. Its insanely costly and hard to make a good looking cross platform email. After every suspension there were new design changes to implement so we ended up starting almost from scratch in every attempt.

I worked on it for a bit and i can assure you email clients are the biggest shit. Specially Gmail and Outlook.

A few highlights:

* Javascript not allowed.

* Outlook processes HTML and CSS with a specific engine which is also used in Microsoft Word.

* Outlook does not support paddings.

* Gmail requires the styles to be all inline.

* We followed Foundation Zurb recommendations and used tables all over. Still didn't work on all clients.

Humanity urgently needs to replace the emails with something else. Not only because the clients suck but because the protocol is outdated.

<comment><USER30> >I worked on it for a bit and i can assure you email clients are the biggest shit.

All the complaints you listed are _features_ in my book. The only problem is that they even allow what they do.

<comment><USER31> You will never convince me that Microsoft rendering HTML using the MS Word engine is a feature.

<comment><USER29> I had nightmares about this during the project. I am not even joking.

<comment><USER31> You don't have to convince me. Writing HTML e-mails, especially for higher ups that have no concern for the limitations of the platform, is awful. This is why I just insist on using Mailchimp templates these days[1]. They've done the hard work, it just works (usually), let's just focus on content.

[1]Pick your poison, but I find Mailchimp a great mix of easy to use, flexible, and functional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've noticed more web companies lately are opting for much more basic emails than before, it's been a welcome change. Waiting for those image and layout heavy emails to load on a mobile device is pure irritation.

On the other end of that spectrum are the ones I get from ebay, which when the images don't load because security, actually just show as a completely empty email with the only words appearing being "Did you find this email useful?" followed by two broken images. Guess where that goes.

<comment><USER33> _> I've noticed more web companies lately are opting for much more basic emails than before_

Part of that is that it is easier to be misidentified (or, of course, correctly identified) as spam by automated checkers the more you do with a message. Logs of image and little text? Higher spam likelihood score, lots of CSS could be trying to disguise real links, higher score, ...

Even if not identified as spam there are less stringent automated classifications that can take your message out of the user's default view (the social and promotions sub-sections of gmail, for instance).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I see in your case text was better performing than html, but I would not bet it's the same for everyone. It's just actually depends, and anyone with a simple A/B test will determine if text is better than email.

However the 5 reasons supporting text email are pretty wrong:

1) Poor rendering. Just use a good email editor, such beefree.io or others. Not a issue at all.

2) Mobile clients. Same as above

3) Email CSS. Same as above

4) Design effort. Yes, if you want a good result, you need a little effort. But if you rely just on text, you should put the same effort in choosing the best words. Consider than with a single Image you can communicate much more (and deeply) than with 20 lines of text.

5) Approval. Any communication department would require to approve email content, not only design.

Regarding the other reasons mentioned:

a) spam filters. Text doesn't change the inbox placement rate, the impact if any is below 0,001%, so totally irrelevant.

b) promotions tab. It actually depends on other variables, it's not a matter of text vs emails. If a transactional messages arrives in Promotions instead of Updates, you should fix the content (use a different IP/domain for transactional vs bulk), not the email format.

c) true, a template looks like something "bulk" or automated, while a simple text email may look like a personal direct email. Unless you want to cheat..

<comment><USER35> > Poor rendering. Just use a good email editor, such beefree.io or others. Not > a issue at all.

You want me to use an "email editor" that I had never even heard of before, and yet you claim that the reasons supporting text email are pretty wrong?

</comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City Bad aesthetics and non-existent information architecture of visually obsessed people are unskillful detractions from credible calls to action. Even church and restaurant sites make actionable perusal difficult much less parking an event or registration in a calendar app easily.

Splashing colors, fonts and pictures around free text is not marketing. The prevalent transactional design SOP over the last few decades was A/B's on "pig lipstick" for customers often not capable of judging possibly good outcomes. We suffered (and sold) multiple delusions of "portals" and "destination sites" only imagining their own immersive relevance to customer gazes. Those who did better or avoided over investment were exceptionally wise.

We have years and decades to clean up the Web dump from inoperative airbrushing at most local or broad market service reaches. I don't know who teaches real decision support based information architecture for commercial markets. We have data now on what works and what does not with requisite methods and metrics. Someone might fill a gaping niche.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's hard to tell for sure from the blurred out image that the blog post contains, but the "designed" email doesn't appear to have actually made any effort at actual design. It's simply plain text wrapped in boxes with no images other than a logo sloppily dumped on top.

I'd be curious to see a real comparison between emails that had actually had some effort put into design and plain emails.

<comment><USER37> I also thought the example was poor. Shared with a coworker in my office and her initial response was "they both look like they have no design".

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> An informational question about "reputation": the way the big email providers and spam filters figure out whether my emails, or yours, are good or bad.

Does sending text/plain email, with its inability to put in the usual tracking junk like 0x0 pixels, hurt reputation by losing the ability to tell who opened the email?

I've been sending plain text transactional emails (via sendgrid) for years and I've never been dinged for this. I'm talking about welcome, password reset, "you changed your phone number," and that kind of stuff. (I figure the recipient benefits from opening the email as much as I do, so they'll open it.) Plus it's easier to get the job done without the need for designing and testing email templates.

But is email that can't track open rates sustainable going forward? Or will antispam algorithms start distrusting email with "zero" open rates?

There's probably something I don't understand about this. I am seriously looking for information.

<comment><USER39> Sending emails with no design doesn't mean you send it as plain text. You can still send the HTML version, simply without any markup or styles, and add the tracking stuff there. I think the author is talking more about how it looks rather if it's really plain text email or not.

<comment><USER40> Indeed, the example image shows html rendered plain text. Not monospace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is pretty much what I've experienced by accident. There were times in my app that I screwed up and had to send out some emails explaining or to users in some particular situation where it was necessary to communicate something all responding way more than from the MailChimp and had to scramble to get it out, not caring about looks and was high response rate. Another occasion where I was lazy to pretty up the announcement email also had a much better click rate than MailChimp. I was suspecting something was off but seems this article is making me think it wasn't a coincidence.

By the way, you can still send HTML and just wrap a DIV around your pure text with a style="white-space:pre-wrap" along with any font you want which is bad ass as it preserves your return breaks and stuff and you can put <strong> tags or whatever in there and spend way less time.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really like plain emails. Often times you have to allow pictures in your email client to load. Be it in the mobile app, you havend received yet a mail from them or you had to reinstall lineageos/custom rom for the X. time this month. So using just plain mail sounds great.

I also like the idea of plain mails minimizing the memory footprint.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is focused on marketing mail, but (anecdotally) for internal notifications I've found people are much more responsive to lightly styled emails.

We've got a mountain of automated plain text emails written by the less literature elements within IT and all look the same. Often it takes even an expert a few moments to distinguish them. But with a little formatting the key details leap out and you can tell that this one is distinct from that one. Of course, it is just one more thing to sign off (as the article raises) but it's a one time task you can do in ten minutes and yields results for months or years

</comment><comment><USER44> "The trouble with text-only email"

[https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/735973/17bdb163fddd41ae/](https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/735973/17bdb163fddd41ae/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15478546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15478546)

Tracking users via email is such a lucrative business, we would need hundreds if not more of these blog posts to even make a small dent in the mindshare that HTML email has captured. How many phishing attacks rely on HTML email? All of them?

</comment><comment><USER45> We did the same thing however we branded with a background color and logo instead of a newsletter. [0] Great results.

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

</comment><comment><USER46> Most of the designed emails have images which will be blocked by the client(thunderbird), which looks really horrible. So I will have to be very interested to actually allow images to be downloaded.

</comment><comment><USER47> I try to force email to look like an RFC (e.g. [https://www.rfc-editor.org/in- notes/rfc-index.txt](https://www.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-index.txt)) or UseNet posting using GNUS or some other text only mail reader. Getting rid of all the animated images, markup noise, etc. allows me to focus on the pure information in the email. If the images are valuable, I'll open them up but it's surprising not that important most of the time. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER48> This might work until the bulk of users, like me, get so many "drip" emails a day that I have the opposite reaction to these types of "plain" emails.

<comment><USER49> Considering how most companies are structured, it's not ready to happen. Usually there's a guy high in the hierarchy who will "think like a user" and say that "users love pretty stuff" and damn, "we're professionals, we have to look professional."

I've seen it countless times, at this point "plain emails work better" is an elephant in the room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The opening rate is irrelevant. The users can't predict if it's a HTML or plain text email before opening. It's just accidentally higher on the plain text side.

<comment><USER51> The author claims that plain text emails are "less likely to go into the 'Promotions' tab in Gmail" and are "less likely to be caught in spam filters," both of which might increase open rate.

<comment><USER52> Those damn tabs literally ruined my gmail. :(

If I turn them off, half of my mails still get sorted somewhere that I cant see.

<comment><USER53> > If I turn them off, half of my mails still get sorted somewhere that I cant > see.

When the tabs were first enabled, I deselected all of them except the primary tab & haven't had any problems. The primary tab is essentially my one tabbinbox. I did...

Gmail.com > Settings > Configure Inbox > deselect all except primary

Or do you have a different issue?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Funny, I just posted a Show HN yesterday with another technique for increasing click/open rates [1]. Maybe some of the people reading this will find it interesting as well. The "design" is also very similar.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15510173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15510173)

</comment><comment><USER55> > The plain email—which took no time to design or code—was opened by more > recipients...

That's interesting. I wonder how this would have any effect on opening an email. In my mail clients on mobile and desktop, I cannot tell if an email is styled or not just by looking at the list of messages in my inbox. I have to actually open it to see if it's styled.

</comment><comment><USER56> Email marketing is such a thankless process, with really low conversion of any sorts and irritation the usual emotion associated with it. Having sent several cold campaigns and reported on (sorry) we just stopped it entirely. Unless you have a credible brand sending emails is like having a twitter handle.

<comment><USER57> Ive sent many campaigns and theyve mostly been received with open arms (including cold oned). The difference (IMO) is how much value you send on each email. If it's a standard pitch then forget about it. A good email campaign is more about making a connection than making a one stop sale. Think of it as a door to door salesperson selling pots and pans versus an insurance salesperson who just wants to get to know and protect you. Always put people first and they will respond positively.

Now, sending cold emails is old school. What works these days is to leverage one of two things:

1\. A general feeling surrounding the market.

2\. An influencer.

For #1, we can use the following example:

There is a lot of interest in machine learning. The market is feeling positive about it. People in the market want to learn ML. You happen to sell a course on learning ML. The focus would be on creating content around learning ML and offering additional value through a newsletter. You then reinforce your pitch on the newsletter.

For #2, it's a similar process. See below:

In this case, you'd hire / partner with someone known in a specific market. Let's use ML trainings again. Your job is to provide the influencer with an offer that is highly valuable to their audience. Then have the audience subscribe to your newsletter.

To put it into a concrete example: the influencer might do a daily live stream of them going through your ML course and provide buy it now links to the audience and a way to try out the materials themselves by joining your newsletter. That's it.

Email is still very alive and kicking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Really interesting article. How far does this logic apply?

Can I use very basic styling like bold, ordered lists and href links just to make the text more readable? Or do advocates of the plain email philosophy generally suggest 100% plain?

</comment><comment><USER59> I've always used text emails, but in html for links, and they've done well

</comment><comment><USER60> Generally I buy the argument, but I don't think the fact that it's easier to act when viewing from mobile was given enough weight. I think that probably made a huge difference. I'd love to see those stats.

</comment><comment><USER61> click rate is mere a metric for engagement. it's worth more or less nothing from business perspectives. i'd love to see a similar test with b2c content and KPIs like conversion. etc.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'll say this again - when I check my email, HTML emails go in the bin. Plain text emails get read.

</comment><comment><USER63> How big was the mailing list? In other words: What is the sample size for this experiment?

<comment><USER64> > As one example, I tested two versions of a newsletter that went out to > 24,000+ recipients:

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> The same principle should be applied to web design as well. Keep it simple.</comment>


Any ideas of how i can earn $1000 working for about 2hrs daily? - <AUTHOR>

Any ideas, anyone ? <comment><USER2> If you put in the requisite time and energy to learn photography and achieve a certain level of skill you could theoretically do 1 or 2 $4000 weddings a week.

This is of course considering that you have a portfolio, good reputation, steady clients, and someone else to take care of the business side (which will cut into your earnings).

Nothing compensates for hard work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Charge about $500 per hour!

</comment><comment><USER4> Man, there are soooo many ways! How good are you on the pole?

</comment><comment><USER5> Stock market (Penny Stocks). You have to be willing to lose it though....

A coworker jumped in a stock at .04 and sold at .07 initial investment was $400.

</comment><comment><USER6> I made $5000 a day just by filling out surveys online!

</comment><comment><USER7> Learn programming, and this could be possible.

</comment><comment><USER8> i don't see anything other than poker

</comment><comment><USER9> At $10/hr, you will make $1000 in just under two months.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lol

</comment><comment><USER11> \- Freelancing At A High Rate or start a porn site.</comment>


Nearly a third of blood samples taken in Chelsea show exposure to coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> Can we change the title?

Article title is "Nearly a third of 200 blood samples taken in Chelsea show exposure to coronavirus"

The sample is clearly not random

<comment><USER3> Yep.. I saw a similar headline claiming LA infections are 55x the reported rate. I think the math is likely simpler, and the infection is somewhere between 3x-5x (10x tops). I've read a few reports saying about 50% of people are asymptomatic, 30% show symptoms that aren't bad enough for hospitalization and 20% require hospitalization. I can't find the source I got it from but I believe it was a Chinese study

<comment><USER4> Based on several studies using different methods, the death rate (infection fatality rate, or IFR) is likely around 0.5%

So if you go back the average time from infection to death (2-3 weeks) you can get a sense what the ratio was in your area back then.

[1]: [https://mothership.sg/2020/03/iceland- covid-19/](https://mothership.sg/2020/03/iceland-covid-19/) (I did the work on the side, extrapolated to about 0.2%-0.5%)

[2]: [https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwis...](https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_0.pdf) (Germany study, 0.37%, decent sampling method)

[3]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32234121](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32234121) (Diamond princess ship, 0.5%)

[4]: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1) (Santa Clara county study, 0.15% - 0.3% if you do the math). Methodological problems with the method of sampling that might increase the number of positives and the test specificity issues might increase false positives, but probably still in the ballpark

<comment><USER5> Dimond Princess had 14 deaths out of ~700 infected or a 2% fatality rate though that number has slowly climbed over time. As they tested everyone initially finding a large number of asymptotic cases that's likely extremely accurate.

The difference is the population was more heathy than the general population, and while older on average, it had a lower percentage of people 95+ years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, I wonder if they attempt to control for bias. It sounds as though they were asking random passersby if they wanted a COVID-19 antibody test. If so, it seems that the sample group could be biased toward including more people who suspected that they may have been infected (previously or currently) than a truly random sample.

<comment><USER7> Also biased because they are sampling people who are out and about. People who are out and about likely come into contact with more people than people who are staying at home and rarely going out.

<comment><USER8> Out, about, and willing to speak to a stranger, which I think is the biggest bias. Pretty much everyone I know goes on the occasional walk, but we all stay the fuck away from other people.

<comment><USER9> My Hollywood movie plot theory is that Covid affects inhibitions.

<comment><USER10> It's certainly not a hollywood movie—for the flu, it's already the case!

Change in Human Social Behavior in Response to a Common Vaccine

[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/)

 _Conclusions: These results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Nearly one third of 200 Chelsea residents who gave a drop of blood to researchers on the street this week tested positive for antibodies linked to COVID-19, a startling indication of how widespread infections have been in the densely populated city.

>The doctors used a diagnostic device made by BioMedomics, of Morrisville, N.C., to analyze drops of blood. It resembled an over-the-counter pregnancy test and generated results on the street in about 10 minutes.

This is the only recent testing I've seen that appears to be anything remotely resembling random. The sample size is also not incredibly small. That said, this is the first I've heard that there's a handheld device which can deliver an antibody test in 10 minutes and being completely out of that industry I have to wonder how likely it is that it's delivering a high level of false- positives?

<comment><USER12> Because you quoted the article using BioMedomics' antibody diagnostic test, I will quote the accuracy from their site[0]:

> In order to test the detection sensitivity and specificity of the COVID-19 > IgG-IgM combined antibody test, blood samples were collected from COVID-19 > patients from multiple hospitals and Chinese CDC laboratories. The tests > were done separately at each site. A total of 525 cases were tested: 397 > (positive) clinically confirmed (including PCR test) SARS-CoV-2-infected > patients and 128 non- SARS-CoV-2-infected patients (128 negative). The > testing results of vein blood without viral inactivation were summarized in > the Table 1. Of the 397 blood sample from SARS-CoV-2-infected patients, 352 > tested positive, resulting in a sensitivity of 88.66%. Twelve of the blood > samples from the 128 non-SARS-CoV-2 infection patients tested positive, > generating a specificity of 90.63%.

[0]: [https://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious- disease/covi...](https://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious- disease/covid-19-rt/)

<comment><USER13> Specificity of 90% seems really low? Does that mean almost 1 in 10 would test positive even if nobody had it?

<comment><USER14> Yes, it's 10% false positive. But it's not "really low" in the sense that it's typical for antibody tests. Which is one reason not to do wide-spread testing.

<comment><USER15> Or you could flip that around and make testing so plentiful everyone is tested 3x (perhaps by independent labs), so the FP rate is more like...

1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 (1/1000)

<comment><USER16> This would require that false positives are truly random and not influenced by sample-specific factors. Is this the case? In antibody testing, I would imagine that false positives result from cross-reactivity instead of random chance.

<comment><USER15> Sure, there are certainly protocols that could be made that would almost ensure FP is due to sample factors.... or even test related factors that would maximize 3x FP (same lab, same lab tech, same machine, same day, back to back, same reagent stock).

We shouldn't adopt those protocols.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the R0 is truly near six, we have probably climbed near the top of the S curve already all over the place. We will know in a month.

</comment><comment><USER18> > The 200 participants generally appeared healthy, but about half told the > doctors they had had at least one symptom of COVID-19 in the past four > weeks.

The total sample size is small and this doesn't seem random enough?

<comment><USER19> You should be much more worried about bias than about sample size. See also this calculation, where it is discussed that a sample of 400 is more reliable than a slightly biased sample of a million participants:

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/bi...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/big- datasmall-bias.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This isn't random at all, lots of people are staying inside and going out to the store once a week or less, they will be dramatically under tested with this methodology.

Meanwhile other people are going out every day, or they know they previously had covid so they consider themselves exempt from shelter in place, or they have a job that requires them to continue heading out to work despite shelter in place (and therefore they have had far more exposure to covid than average).

</comment><comment><USER21> A third of a random sample taken in _Chelsea, Massachusetts_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea,_Massachusetts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea,_Massachusetts)

>Chelsea is [...] directly across the Mystic River from the city of Boston. [...] It is also the second most densely populated city in Massachusetts behind Somerville.

A random sample in a highly affected and extremely dense area is not a model for the whole state.

<comment><USER22> Chelsea is literally the hardest hit town in MA: [https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/the-20-communities- with...](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/the-20-communities-with-the- highest-rate-of-coronavirus-cases-in-mass/2108780/)

I have some natural doubts over all these antibody tests that indicate herd immunity while covering up major flaws...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://archive.md/UDrho](http://archive.md/UDrho)

</comment><comment><USER24> So halfway to herd immunity?

<comment><USER11> It was discussed in another thread that I'll try to dig up, but the percentage of the population required to reach herd immunity goes up the more contagious a virus is. If way more people are infected then we think, then it points to some of the higher R0 estimates being accurate and would therefore require a much higher portion of the population to be immune before we reach herd immunity.

Edit: Here it is: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22819057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22819057)

<comment><USER25> My understanding is it's (R0 - 1)/R0

So if R0 is 4 then 3/4 of the population is required to be immune before herd immunity kicks in.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I'm not an epidemiologist but I think the principle is simple: it's just a matter of getting the actual transmission rate below 1, so that any outbreak will naturally die out. If in the absence of any immunity the average infected person infects 3 others, but now 2/3 of people are immune, then the average infected person will actually only infect one other. Ditto for a transmission rate of four and 3/4 immunity, and so on.

It's worth noting, though, that the natural tendency during an epidemic is for the total number of infections to exceed the herd immunity threshold; I think the phrase to google is 'herd immunity overshoot'.

(It's also worth noting the serious problems with this study, as pointed out by other commenters.)

<comment><USER27> > herd immunity overshoot

I saw that too when mucking with simple models. The percent infected overshoots (R0 - 1)/R0. So that is a threshold for herd immunity not the ultimate infection ratio. They're only equivalent under steady state conditions.

Also saw an study released by the CDC that estimated that the initial r0 in Wuhan was 5.8. Explains what happened in Northern Italy and New York. The epidemic achieved break out while most infected were still mildly ill or asymptomatic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does this account for the rate of false positives, compounded by the low base rate of disease incidence? When designing such binary estimators, we have a trade off between precision & recall. If the virus affects 1% of the population, and we have a 5% rate of false positives, and close to 100% recall, then ~85% (5:1 odds) of tested positives would be spurious.

</comment><comment><USER29> It would be nice if it was more widespread than we think. Presumably that would mean we would be closer to the end of the tunnel?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anybody how these antibodies are being identified and how distinct they are from other, similar viruses (like the flu)?

</comment><comment><USER31> Alright. So what's the rate of false positives for that test?

In other words, if this test (and similarly the stanford study in LA) have even a small rate of false positives, combined with any sampling bias, it's going to lead to some misleading conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER32> Has anyone been able to figure out what the number of COVID deaths are in Chelsea specifically?

<comment><USER33> The article claims 712 detected cases resulting in (at least) 39 deaths.

Chelsea has a population of about 40k, this isn't mentioned in the article but matches the article's figure of around 1900 cases per 100,000.

Assuming 30% of the population is infected this puts the current number of deaths at around 0.3% of the total infected. There is some bias due to the rate of false positives of the test and the lag in the number of deaths, so the actual fatality rate may well be higher, but the order of magnitude seems consistent with the numbers discussed in previous threads [1].

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901311)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There have been reports of tests giving up to 30% false positives

</comment><comment><USER35> This sucks, but also means we're inching closer to the 70-80% necessary for herd immunity so maybe a silver lining?

</comment><comment><USER36> This is another irresponsible headline.

I cannot read the article, so correct me if I am wrong, but if what others said is true...

It was not random because they didn't randomly select people, they let people self-select!

If they gave the total number of people who took the test, and total number of people asked, you could at least get a range.

Of course, that range would still be biased to people who are walking around during a time when they should be sheltering in place.

At best, 30% of people who were offered a covid antibody test in public had antibodies.

I think its safe to say that journalists have a responsibility to get the headlines right on this topic or they risk causing a lot of people to make bad decisions after hearing that 30% of people already have this disease. There is a real human cost of this click-bait, and it will be deaths.

<comment><USER37> This is a strong response from someone who claims not to have read the article.

<comment><USER26> Is it wrong, though? I did read the article, and I don't think so.

One relevant thing GP may have missed is that the researchers "excluded anyone who had tested positive for the virus in the standard nasal swab test". So they weren't quite trying to directly estimate the proportion of people with antibodies, but the proportion of _people without a positive test_ with antibodies. But I suspect this didn't change the results much: how many people in the area have tested positive _and_ recovered sufficiently to be out in public?</comment></comment></comment>


DNS API provider Zerigo acquired by 8x8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.zerigo.com/news/zerigo-acquired-by-8x8

<comment><AUTHOR> Slightly nervous about this, as I've just moved 15 domains over to Zerigo after reading @stammy's endorsement of them…</comment>


Ask HN: What's the weirdest JavaScript source code you've seen? - <AUTHOR> I'm writing a Javascript parser, and I wanted to try parsing unusual JS code found in the wild.<p>Weirdness can be abuse of unicode, code obfuscation, unusual programming paradigms, etc <comment><USER2> If you're not limited to 'production' javascript, code golfing sites like [http://dwitter.net](http://dwitter.net) will be a good source of strange javascript!

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope nobody's using it in production, but the "JS without letters" thing would probably tickle a few edge cases in a parser:

[http://patriciopalladino.com/blog/2012/08/09/non- alphanumeri...](http://patriciopalladino.com/blog/2012/08/09/non-alphanumeric- javascript.html)

<comment><USER2> Also, for _js without numbers_, this is the most compact way to write something that evaluates to the number 2: -~!""</comment></comment>


Notch offered to not (tm) Scrolls etc, but Bethesda sue ahead anyway - <AUTHOR> http://notch.tumblr.com/post/10990169550/a-short-response

<comment><USER2> It's important to note Notch not only offered dropping the trademarking of "Scrolls", he also offered adding a subtitle or new words to the game title to not make it just "Scrolls" (on top of the non-trademarking stuff).

Bethesda/Zenimax essentially sues to prevent Mojang from using the word "Scrolls" at all, in a game which is all about, well, scrolls.

<comment><USER3> Why would anyone want to make such a compromise, build a brand, make money, and then risk a lawsuit that will lead to a massive settlement. alternatives: "Scrollings", "Scrollables" etc...

<comment><USER2> > alternatives: "Scrollings", "Scrollables" etc...

That does not make much sense, it's not a game about scrolling it's a game about scrolls. As in rolls of parchments with words on them.

<comment><USER4> > rolls of parchments with words on them

I truly believe that Mojang could change the name to this and it would still be a smash hit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anybody at Bethesda considered that nobody actually calls their games "Elder Scrolls"? I've seen pretty much all the footage on Skyrim, and I don't recall I've seen the series title _once_.

In their nonetheless strong position I'd try to create a culture where gamers point out, when talking about Notch's Scrolls, that this is not _that_ scrolls; I see this as an opportunity for cheap marketing.

And what happened to the Quake 3 duel? It'd have been a win-win PR maneuver too. Unless they plan to play it in front of the judge.

<comment><USER2> > And what happened to the Quake 3 duel? It'd have been a win-win PR maneuver > too.

The Bethesda/Zenimax lawyers "declined"

<comment><USER5> Thought so. It's a pity because that unusual move alone would worth a couple of bucks in terms of advertising. At least they didn't sit down to play _AND_ sue Notch at the same time.

Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I heard Bethesda's next version of the game will be titled "The Elder Patent Trolls". I also heard they are sueing all patent trolls for being patent trolls, as they consider themselves have (TM) on that in the current game industry. Will be interesting to follow. :)

<comment><USER7> You can't sue someone for being a patent troll just because you have a trademark on a game called "Patent Trolls"! Just like Bethesda can't sue scrolls for being scrolls now.

<comment><USER8> You can sue for whatever you want. If you are a rich bully, you'll almost always win one way or another. The law is barely relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Serious question: Have we heard from a human [1] in Bethesda's ranks about this issue? Or are they just playing the silent giant?

If I were the head of Bethesda's PR team and I saw this post, I would be having conniptions.

Footnotes [1]. "human", that is, an individual person speaking on-the-record, having identified themselves by their name and position within Bethesda. _Not_ a legal team, committee or any other culpability-diffusing vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bethesda suing over "Scrolls" when their trademark is for "The Elder Scrolls," even in the light of notch's offer to relinquish his trademark seems irrational.

But, they're still doing it.

So, what are some rational alternative reasons?

One conspiracy theory immediately comes to my mind: they want Mindcraft. They can't buy it; but, they sure as hell can "settle."

</comment><comment><USER11> Bethesda makes awesome games, but their legal dept is clearly full of industrial grade a-holes. Notch has clearly show he is willing to back down. Get that in writing & call it a day. Instead they decide to take it to court.

Sounds like lawyers trying to justify their existence.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well since Notch has TM'd Scrolls he in fact might be in a better position than if he TM'd XYZ Scrolls or Scrolls XYZ.

Either way this will be thrown out and Notch will win, but only after spending 6-7 figures on defending it. :-(

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they are looking to extract some money out of notch.

</comment><comment><USER3> They kind of have to, protecting your trademark is part of your obligations. They seem to have a good case for it too, it s not like their claim is unsubstantiated.

<comment><USER14> Next up: "Apple sues makers of 'Pod People' video game for trademark infringement. Apple legal says, 'We sorta have to or people will get confused.'"

<comment><USER15> Trademarks tend to be tied to a specific type of business. A better analogy would be if Apple sues an mp3 product named "Pod: The Music Player".

<comment><USER16> Or Infogear's iPhone trademark, which Apple aggressively violated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What would happen if the first company which has used "war" in a video game title sue the other ones...

</comment><comment><USER18> i think it is time to create a different court system for silly law sues like this

<comment><USER19> This has nothing to do with the laws, and everything to do with the lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You fucking Bethesda bastards, leave notch alone. * chris crocker _

</comment><comment><USER21> Even if Notch doesn't register Scrolls, he is still violating their trademark. That's what trademarks are for, ensuring that nobody else uses your name.

<comment><USER22> Scrolls is just an English word. You shouldn't be able to trademark it in the first place.

<comment><USER15> That's exactly how trademarks _don't_ work. Windows. Apple. McDonalds (a proper name!). Name combinations: Pizza Hut, Quaker State, Bank of America.

<comment><USER22> Yes I know how it works. I was commenting that I find the current system of being able to trademark English words like "orange" a pretty silly system.

<comment><USER15> You really don't see a problem with someone other than Microsoft selling an operating system and calling it Windows?

What about a company that does mail delivery calling itself the "United States Postal Service" ?

An airline called "Virgin"?

<comment><USER23> It should be called 'microsoft windows'. That way we can have 'Apple windows', 'digital research windows' and so on. Window managers are a class and you should not be able to monopolize a class name without some sort of addition.

<comment><USER3> "Hello, I have a problem with Nokia Photoshop not loading on my Fujitsu- Siemens Macbook Pro after installing the latest upgrade of 'Google Snow Leopard Windows'".

<comment><USER24> "Google" is an English word, so you'll have to be a bit more specific.

<comment><USER25> Technically, "Google" isn't an English word - it's a misspelling of the English word "googol."

<comment><USER26> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_(verb)>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator#Loss_of_trademark_rig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator#Loss_of_trademark_rights)

<comment><USER3> The point is it was not a verb before Google the company

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Read the article linked: [http://kotaku.com/5846111/mojang-v-bethesda-or-i- hate-it-whe...](http://kotaku.com/5846111/mojang-v-bethesda-or-i-hate-it-when- mommy-and-daddy-fight)

Notch is trying to own the word "scrolls" in all media. This has implications not just for that single company, but every gaming company that ever wants to use the word "scrolls".

To me, that's scummy behaviour. People should not be able to trademark single words across all forms of media. It does not matter if they made minecraft or not, they do not deserve to own the word 'scrolls'. It's an english word, it belongs to all of us.

<comment><USER2> Have you read TFA? Notch offered to drop the trademarking entirely.

And while their attitude could (of course) change in the future, so far Mojang has only used trademark law in a single case: against a fellow selling a minecraft ripoff as "Minecraft" in the AppStore (which is about as clear-cut as you can be for trademark infringement). Not even FortressCraft[0], a blatant ripoff of the game using a very similar name structure and reusing half the trademark, has triggered any giving of fuck from Mojang (as far as I know, I might be wrong) although it has drawn the ire of the community.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHdWswvezds&feature=mfu_i...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHdWswvezds&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL)

<comment><USER28> Notch even congratulated them: <https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/115752966702628864> . And people didn't believe him so he posted: <https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/115753196785381376></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use DB normal forms in their job? - <AUTHOR> I learned about the different normal forms at uni and to be honest I don't remember them and have never used them explicitly in a job. Had some conversations where the word 'denormalize' has been used but that is about it?<p>Has anyone used DB normalisation levels at work, explicitly referring to the level of normal form and advantages/disadvantages etc. when designing schemas? <comment><USER2> I use them indirectly like I use design patterns. I'm not thinking "Oh, I'm using 3rd NF" or "I'm using Singleton" at work. Instead, when designing databases I'm thinking about removing duplication (which is the crux of normal forms). However, like proofreading, you can go too far and normalize your database too much, making it hard to work with, so you allow duplication of some fields (hence denormalization).

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER3> Agree. Any database design over two tables should include review of NF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Similar to you, sometimes my coworkers and I will use the terms 'normalized' and 'denormalized' when talking about databases. It is usually in reference to and ideal schema versus a performant schema. We don't actually use the precise definitions of the various forms, or verify our schemas satisfy the various laws. Maybe there would be value in actually formally normalizing a schema.</comment>


We made this to make dumb work easier for a developer. - <AUTHOR> http://prope.rs

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love some feedback...thanks!</comment>


Bring back the evening paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.sachinagarwal.com/bring-back-the-evening-paper

<comment><USER2> In other words, the author wants a magazine (= newspaper - news + articles). Published daily (or rather, nightly.)

I'm not saying this is impossible, but I believe that there are good reasons for there being no well-known examples of this model.

<comment><USER3> There were also good reasons for not having cars before Henry Ford mass- produced them. Along with not having lightbulbs before Thomas Edison made them practical.

Although to be fair, I'm pretty sure a case could be made that it's just too difficult to have in-depth analysis _every day_.

<comment><USER4> Isn't there an issue of time sensitivity here? Suppose the paper is supposed to start showing up at 6 PM. You need a few hours to start printing papers, so let's say all articles have to be in by 2 PM. Then you need time to let people write articles and analysis and whatnot. So you wouldn't really be reporting on things that happened during the day - it would only really be events that happened in the morning in the US, late at night in Asia and towards the end of the day in Europe. Seems to me that there's not enough of a market for that..

<comment><USER2> Let's presume there's no distribution involved, though—that the "paper" is something you receive on your Kindle at 6PM sharp. The dynamics seem more forgiving then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Newspapers needs more than a small niche of audience to succeed. Just because the author gets warm feelings reading evening news and comics, doesn't mean there are many people who feels the same.

Newspapers are a dying breed not because they lack in depth analysis or quality of writing or lack of entertainment. NP are dying breed simply because its inconvenient.

If you already have cable tv and internet, NP is another way of getting the same news but much later when news has been beaten to death by other news source. Its not fast enough, you don't get instant update or instant follow- up. You have to wait for next day to get follow up on an interesting news, by the time you get update on that news; its already old stuff.

Comics and puzzle is not good enough to sell newspaper.

Newspaper has a special place in my childhood memory. I grew up reading multiple newspapers a day, waited anxiously for comics or movie reviews. It made sense then. There is a time and place for everything, the time for daily newspaper is coming to an end.

</comment><comment><USER6> You mean like MX? ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_(newspaper)> ) inspired by ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_International> ) and then crossed with the economist. The first part (comics, light reading) has been done. the second is harder.

<comment><USER7> MX is a little light on content is shifted a long way towards gossip rather than news. Still it's a good size for some light reading while catching transport home. I think they do have a fairly healthy business model going forward though.</comment></comment>


Native Client is Widely Misunderstood (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://chadaustin.me/2011/01/native-client-is-widely-misunderstood-and-what-google-should-do-about-it/ <comment><USER2> I don't think Google cares about it as a web standard. They just want to deploy it widely through chrome, ChromeOS, and chrome on Android (eventually), and use it as a Trojan horse for their own binary applications and OS components.

<comment><USER3> I don't follow the trojan horse logic since they already have the unfettered ability to ship any binary component they want to the platforms you list without using Native Client.

<comment><USER2> The Trojan horse logic is about being able to ship binary apps to those platforms within chrome without having to build everything in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Native Client implies x86 False. Originally, Native Client was positioned as > an x86 sandbox technology, but now it has a clear LLVM story, with x86-32, > x86-64, and partially-implemented ARM backends. Portability is a key benefit > of the web, and Google understands this.

And yet, Google seems to be pushing Intel chips in Chromebooks, to the point where Intel almost completely dominates the Chromebook market.

NaCl actually doesn't work "as is" on ARM, only PNaCl does, and I think Google tends to prefer NaCl over PNacl, which is why they keep pushing Intel Chromebooks in the market.

<comment><USER3> As someone who has actually developed in NaCl and participated in that community, your statements have no basis in fact and sound completely biased against Google.

Out of the box, PNaCl is now the default toolchain. All the NaCl docs discuss PNaCl as the target of choice. The build target of the tutorials in the NaCl docs is PNaCl. Also, in the dedicated NaCL Google Group, the NaCl team has been saying for years that PNaCl would eventually be the default and preferred target for NaCl components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's also a MIPS implementation now too.

</comment><comment><USER6> I understood it won't pick up, and lo and behold, I understood it right.

People _were_ right that an x86 sandbox is a silly idea for a web standard, this is why it's no longer one.

As it is right now, it's ASM.JS, without the .JS (and so, without the backwards compatibility).

<comment><USER7> I can tell you didn't read the article because it addresses your point first thing.

<comment><USER6> I actually _did_ read it. And I'm responding to the idea that "see, you complained, and Google changed it, so your former complaints are now misunderstandings" is really not a valid thesis.

<comment><USER8> Your claim that it was ever meant to stay "an x86 sandbox" is contradicted by a lot of things, including the _actual launch announcement for NACL_ :

[http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/08/native-client- brings-...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/08/native-client-brings- sandboxed-native.html)

" The next milestone for Native Client is architecture independence: Portable Native Client (PNaCl) will achieve this by using LLVM bitcode as the basis for the distribution format for Native Client content, translating it to the actual target instruction set before running. "

I actually dislike PNaCL for a different set of reasons, but claiming it was built as an x86 sandbox, and meant to stay that way, is just revisionist history. If you believed otherwise, it was, in fact, _your misunderstanding_.

<comment><USER9> Your history omits an earlier chapter, which was the period during which Google introduced NaCl to the world.

[http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/34913.pdf](http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/34913.pdf) (2009)

[http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/sneak-peek-at-native- client...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/sneak-peek-at-native-client- sdk.html) (2010)

No mention of PNaCL anywhere. Eventually they did change their public messaging away from x86 sandbox and towards PNaCl, though not before causing lots of external confusion and fear. And even then, with the time it took to get PNaCl released, some of the external confusion persisted.

The earlier poster does indeed seem to have misunderstood the history, but it's easy to see where such misunderstanding may come from.

<comment><USER8> This is not how it was introduced, the blog post was the introduction. We published earlier research papers because we publish papers.

The plan was always the same.

Before this, the project wasn't really real, it was just research.

If you consider this "public messaging", then I guess google should never release research papers or research SDK's without fear of being raked over the coals?

If so, that's a sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER10> They held the sandbox breaking contest (our team came in second!) in 2009. You're suggesting they announced in 2011, right?

<comment><USER8> I'm suggesting in 2009, it was random cool research (I actually can't even remember whether it was being funded by chrome back then), not something with a real and true plan to become what it is now.

That really didn't happen until late 2010 or 2011, AFAIK.

<comment><USER10> I think I could debate this point with you, but I just clicked up the thread to see the context (I only found this subthread because I follow your comments) and can now see why we wouldn't want to perpetuate this subthread.

Your original point, that Portable Nacl is within the original charter of the Nacl project, was valid, even if we can quibble about the timelines. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Musk's Hyperloop - <AUTHOR> http://prattleat.us/post/5 <comment><USER2> It sounds like a Lofstrom loop <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop>

<comment><USER3> That was my leading theory, and "cross between a rail-gun and a Concorde" all but confirms it. Flight path like a Concorde, propulsion like a rail-gun. Exploit the natural vacuum above our heads without expensive tunnels.

Let's look at the attributes Elon has described publicly, and see how they compare to a launch loop:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uegOUmgKB4E#t=43m13s>

* could be cheaper than CA high-speed rail? Check (no right-of-way).

* "theoretically fastest way" from A-B? Check.

* can't crash? Check (w/ well-designed rails).

* immune to weather? Check.

* twice as fast as a plane? Check.

* lower energy cost than a car? Check.

* self-powering with solar panels? Check.

* stores power w/o batteries? Check.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=18m20s>

* requires aerodynamic expertise? Check.

* "ground-based Concorde – as fast as a Concorde, but on the ground"? Arguably. All weight is supported by the ground, and cars take a Concorde-like path.

* rails are not needed? BZZT!! However, he may be talking about the "right-of-way" aspect of rails here.

[http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/71590-elon- musk...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/71590-elon-musk- the-21st-century-industrialist)

* leaves right when you arrive? Check (w/ individual pods).

<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/224406502188916739>

* isn't a vac tunnel? Check.

Of all the ideas that have been kicked around, the launch loop seems to fit best. Elon would certainly have been exposed to the idea when brainstorming for SpaceX.

My only question for the past few weeks has been, "How do you _build_ the thing?" It doesn't inertially support itself in the air until the rotor is spun up, and the rotor can only be spun up when it's fully constructed between the endpoints. Catch-22!

There are basically three ways to do it, each with their own challenges.

Build it in the air. You would need huge numbers of lifting balloons (presumably of zero-pressure solar Montgolfier design, ala ARCA), and the portions of the system in the troposphere would be incredibly susceptible to adverse weather while under construction. You would want to have the entire thing already built, then unreel it as fast as possible. Smart tethering would reduce this risk, and the whole thing would need emergency descent parachutes for operation anyway. This seems like the least unworkable scheme, imho.

Build it in the water. Ocean currents and tides are now your problem instead of wind. The requirement to survive the corrosive salt water environment puts additional constraints on material selection. Oh, and you have to shut down all boat traffic from LA to SF. And your base station either has to be mobile (to start out in the ocean) or you have to start with a big arc out from the coastline and "tip it up" vertically. Do the math on how big the rotor endpoints would be (given reasonable assumptions about bending magnets), and you quickly realize that building them in place is the only option.

Build it over land. This seems the most unworkable – all the risk of having it fall (or worse, lose containment), and now you have to build tall towers every few thousand feet and string a high-tension support cable between them. Imagine explaining to homeowners that the "rail" we're building above their house will have parts moving at 10 km/s inside before it lifts off. Ouch.

<comment><USER4> Over water seems rather reasonable considering what we can do with cable laying ships.

Whatever method is used to get it up in the air, it'll need to be safely reversible. Over water bringing it down is much easier. And you'll have to bring it down for repairs. Every five minutes it will do a full loop.. Iron is fairly ductile, but those stresses will add up. And wikipedia says the kinetic energy involved is close to a small nuclear bomb. Back of the envelope math suggests the iron cylinder would be very thin. It will wear out sooner or later.

My guess is that Musk's big breakthrough is for a cheap and reversible deployment system.

I'm double checking my numbers now (and reading the original papers) but the entire contraption might weight a lot less than we are implicitly assuming. Like, light enough that a single large plane/blimp could support the entire cable/sheath system. And a small fleet of planes could safely tow the cable through the sky. Or a fleet of blimps could support the entire cable while it was stopped for maintenance. (Both would need a large number of well trained pilots, it would make the skycrane maneuver look simple.)

edit: The original paper talks about a ribbon 5cm wide and 7.6mm thick weighing 15.6 Gg. I dropped a kilo in the back of the envelope calculations. So it would need at least 100 very large aircraft to hold up. Still feasible, but more than a little crazy.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. The linear density given is 7 kg/m, which if you wanted to lift to the tropopause (density 0.35 kg/m^3, temperature ~266 K) you would need a continuous 30 °C solar Molgolfier balloon 18 m^2 in section, or a 10 meter strip of of 15 µm HDPE. Not as bad as I thought. Still, it would be hard to roll it out before sunset.

Hydrogen is another possible lifting gas, with all its associated foibles. Obviously lifting bags would have to be isolated to prevent catastrophic failure, but you could get a lot more lift out of them.

This must take place in a La Niña year, when the jetstream is north. Reel out the track, drag it into place with two airships, join the parts and start 'er up. You could even name the airships Jupiter and Number 119. ;)

This simplified strategy that would avoid the need for aerial stations at both ends, intead using a gentle curve achieved by anchor cables and varying linear density. Acceleration would begin immediately upon departure, leaching energy from the rotor (generating eddy currents), then contributing it back by braking off the rail on the descending side.

Of course, maybe I'm just dreaming here…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The OP suggests (jokingly?) that driverless cars and Musk's Hyperloop are somehow in competition. I don't see that. Cars today are about transportation and cabin conveniences. Why can't the two be separated over time? Your "car" takes your cabin to the train that takes your cabin to the high-speed rail (Hyperloop?) that takes you from Atlanta to Kansas City. Perhaps you switch cabins based on price to transport... maybe you rented a bigger one for local travel, but don't want to pay a higher price for long range travel... lots of ifs, but to me, this and/or scenario seems more likely than driverless cars vs. Hyperloops.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Here I was getting excited about Google's work on driverless cars.

OP here, only competing for my (unfortunately limited) excitement. There is definitely room in this world for both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe that the Hyperloop is some sort of cannon. He has earlier revealed that it won't need a tube or tracks

Edit: Source to the no-tube from Elons twitter: "Will publish something on the Hyperloop in about four weeks. Will forgo patents on the idea and just open source it. Not a vac tunnel btw."

<comment><USER7> Are you sure he specifically said it wouldn't require any sort of tube? I was under the impression that Elon's Hyperloop would be a derivative of the concept of Evacuated Tube Transport - a capsule containing passengers launched inside a tube under vacuum (eliminating air resistance) and levitated using some sort of MagLev (eliminating rolling resistance).

The concept isn't entirely new but having someone with Musk's credibility and resources as a proponent may be the catalyst required to make it happen.

I distinctly recall seeing some PR material circling the internets a few months back from a consortium known as ET3.com The group claims to have been working on a similar project for the past decade.

<comment><USER8> I don´t think is a vacuum tube, it seems more like a tube with railgun like propulsion(elevated via towers, like power lines, even using the same power lines routes), but the guiding is maybe based on aerodinamics. There must be some kind of sound contention because he says it is supersonic.

He also said that it would be energetically independent so he may be using the external part of the tube to install solar cells, and the tube itself may be used for accumulation (capacitation maybe?).It doesn´t need to be air tight, just somehow sound insulated. The steering or "levitation" inside the tube may be obtained via shock waves (note his actual experience with high energy aerodinamics due to the development in spaceX).

He surely is taking advantage of the knowledge gained in the R&D of SpaceX, Tesla and Solar city.

<comment><USER3> With all the aerodynamic losses in such a system, it will use much more energy than a plane ride.

"it would cost you much less than an air ticket or car – much less than any other mode of transit – because the fundamental energy cost is so much lower" – <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uegOUmgKB4E#t=46m03s>

Oh, and he said elsewhere that you wouldn't have to wait, which implies individual cars. That means much more frontal area per person than a regular plane.

My money is on this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4806350>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The cynic in me is reminded of the Segway at this point. I'm not calling bullshit on this, but I'll wait to get excited when something is actually shown.

<comment><USER10> There is a segway-esque secrecy around it. However if there is one person I would give the benefit of the doubt, that person would be Elon Musk, and he said they'll open source the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The real question is - will you have to go through TSA first to get in it?

<comment><USER12> I'm sure people will find a way to lose my luggage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since there are no details, we can only speculate. There are only a few practical implementations. At the top of the list is an evacuated tube.

The linked article says it's desirable to do this without requiring a right- of-way or moving people out of their homes. So that puts the tube below ground level -- well below.

Let's say an evacuated tube, below ground level, in California, between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This really isn't going to work, because (all other considerations aside) the route crosses any number of known geological faults that are in constant relative motion -- some creep past each other, some wait and then periodically move all at once in an earthquake. You can't build a subsurface tube that crosses geological faults.

I don't think this is a practical idea. But it's a nice one in principle.

<comment><USER3> >At the top of the list is an evacuated tube.

Except for the small problem that Elon said it's not an evacuated tube: <https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/224406502188916739>

<comment><USER13> Yes, I noticed since I wrote the original, but that might be smoke. It's not obvious how the system would work without some sort of dedicated pathway that remains the same day after day. The word "tube" leaps to mind. :)

<comment><USER3> This discussion may get you started: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4806350>

TL;DR Build a rail with a high-velocity rotor inside that inertially supports it above the atmosphere. Essentially it's a space fountain with two base stations instead of one.

So yes there's a pathway, but since it's not on the ground it requires no right-of-way.

<comment><USER14> I'm not so sure about the right-of-way issue, since we are talking about a permanent structure. The case law that weakened the old "Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos" ("for whoever owns the soil, it is theirs all the way up to Heaven and down to Hell") rule, as far as I've seen, all involved aircraft passing over land. I'd not be surprised if a court considered that case law irrelevant when it comes to permanent structures overhanging someone's land.

<comment><USER3> Good question! I found a summary of the ruling:

>However, while the Court rejected the unlimited reach above and below the earth described in the common law doctrine, it also ruled that, "if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere." Without defining a specific limit, the Court stated that flights over the land could be considered a violation of the Takings Clause if they led to "a direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land."

Would a hyperloop cause direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land? It might if it failed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > killing countless people daily

2.09% of deaths, according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate>

Question: what would an Elon Musk of those even more common causes of death build?

<comment><USER16> For cardiovascular disease, how about a way to stop people stuffing their faces with greasy and fattening food?

<comment><USER17> So the Paleo Diet community (and Taubes/etc) would say that the greasy food is part of the solution (and that some perceptions of "fattening" food are wrong)

<comment><USER18> I am doing a low carb thing, and as far as my experience goes, I think they're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I suspect there is no hyper loop. I wouldn't put it past Elon to use his reputation to spur people to think big about these kinds of problems.

It's worked, too. The ideas people have had, just trying to "figure out" what the hyperloop might be, are very interesting and diverse.

<comment><USER20> I've never heard anything about Elon Musk that indicates he speaks lightly about things like this. He has an amazing track record and a habit of taking on huge problems. There is no reason to think that he's not working on a hyper loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would this possibly be using a railgun to initiate takeoff speed (reducing fuel a lot) and then some for a plane that then obtains very high speed in very high orbits to then be able to land and use existing airports.

This is only logical given the prospect to use a railgun type launcher to eliminate booster rockets or reduce fuel for space flight. So would marry in with other avenues of research and as such be less of a risk and Musk don't like risk.

This at least would fit the criteria, maybe with the initial speed a form of electric powered plane, maybe Musk and Dyson could get together and invent a good electric jet engine (yes probably be ion based but still).

</comment><comment><USER22> In the past, it sounded like he really wanted to see someone work on the idea, but was not interested in doing it himself. Now it seems he's coming around to the idea. This is really exciting.

</comment><comment><USER23> Elon Musk is Leonardo Da Vinci of the present times. More power to him.

</comment><comment><USER24> " This is over 100 years after the first mass-produced automobile was sold, with the announcement of (another) successful nano-scale teleportation experiment just the other day."

So what? This is 40 years after the first Man walked on the Moon and we are still all living on Earth. It's been about 60 years we have discovered the double-helix structure of the DNA and we still have yet to see revolutions in medical practice coming from it. What is your point, exactly ? There are clear reasons why no huge technology leaps take place at once. Most innovation is progressive, iterative and it is very likely that you will not see a drastic change of technology within your lifetime.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps I am just much more impressed with the last 30 years than you. I'm not a point-by-point rebuttal man, but its very tempting. Try thinking about the massive changes if you don't limit radical progress to being in a straight line going the direction you want.

<comment><USER26> Cars were doing 100 Mph on the German autobahn in the 60's, they're not much quicker today and most drive a lot slower than that.

There is progress, but on the transportation front from a practical point of view the biggest one so far is the electric bicycle.

<comment><USER27> Fastest production car from the 60's that I can think of would do 171 mph (Lamborghini Miura). The fastest production car today will do damn close to 100 mph more than that (Bugatti Veyron Super Sport).

Certainly the top speed of either of those cars isn't practical, but the reason that the Veyron can go so much faster is that there have been massive improvements in automobile technology since the 60s, in just about every every way imaginable. Safety, efficiency, control, materials tech, aerodynamics, etc. That we still drive so slowly can be probably attributed to momentum in automotive laws and/or driver skill / lax license requirements. If we were willing to invest more in our roads and stop thinking of driving as a right instead of a privilege, we could be driving _much_ faster today.

<comment><USER26> The biggest factor is reaction time.

Also, above 100 Mph or so the aerodynamics change substantially. There is a clear cut-off point above you are definitely in 'no mistakes' territory, even ignoring a bit of cross wind as you come out from under an overpass get get you slammed into the guardrail or driven off the road.

Add to that ice, snow, rain, night conditions, glare, low sun and so on and pretty soon the driver (automated or not) is not the limiting factor but physics and getting reliable sensor inputs is.

Anything over 140 will probably not be practical for mainstream deployment, even in Germany where there are lots of skilled drivers and it isn't rare to see an old lady do 150 Km/h there is a sharp drop-off above that point reserved for those the possession of more money than brains. It simply isn't practical from a fuel consumption and safety point of view and even the safest cars are death traps at speeds beyond that.

See 'crashedexotics.com' for the end result of that route.

<comment><USER27> Certainly when you get up into the sort of speeds things become very tricky and unpractical. The problem right now though isn't really that we aren't all driving at 100+, but that we still have all of those straight as an arrow 55/65mph roads criss-crossing fly-over country in the US. Those may have made sense at some point, but modern cars can easily do 100mph on those roads with no particularly unusual danger. Pretty much everywhere in this country speed limits are artificially low though. Most country/wooded area roads don't make any sense in cars with ABS or traction control; my limiting factor on most Pennsylvanian roads is the danger of deer, not road geometry or car capabilities.

I think with the spread of autonomous driving technology we'll be able to see even more proper, and reasonably safe, speed from cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like the Segway.

<comment><USER29> Agreed</comment></comment>


I got a new Samsung TV (Tizen), do you think I can write an app for it? Hell no! - <AUTHOR> https://i.imgur.com/tkO5V7V.png <comment><USER2> Now, it's just funny that Samsung hasn't learnt important lessons from its success with Android: serve hackers first, and market-share will come automatically. Someone please show them the Ballmer "song".

</comment><comment><USER3> <sarcastic tone> You mean that on top of its closed firmware this is closed software as well? </sarcastic tone>

Forget the shiny stuff they ship with their TVs with and use an external hardware instead. It's not ideal but you'd be amazed by the things a Raspberry Pi2 can do when wired to a TV.

<comment><USER4> My 5 year old Sony TV can no longer support Netflix and can't be upgraded. External hardware is absolutely the way to go.

<comment><USER3> Indeed!

On the plus side you can benefit from your hardware with other viewing medium.

With a HDMI switch I can watch some Netflix either on my TV or my video projector this way - Not on a Pi though as Netflix uses proprietary encryption which is a pain to setup for it. But other things like a WDTV HD does the job fairly decently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the warning, I'm not going to purchase a Samsung (will upgrade TV in 2016).</comment>


CSS Can Do That? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ananyaneogi/css-can-do-that-18g7 <comment><USER2> Cool, but at least one of the demos requires chrome.</comment>