Sprout - <AUTHOR> http://sprout.hp.com/ <comment><USER2> Engadget summary with videos: [http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/hp-reveals- sprout/](http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/hp-reveals-sprout/)

"It's a unique machine that combines an all-in-one Windows 8 PC with a set of 3D scanning cameras, a giant tactile touchpad and a downward-facing projector (for displaying graphics on said touchpad). The design is built around a concept HP is calling "blended reality" that blends the 3D physical world with our 2D digital one. The obvious target audience is creative types. You know: makers, tinkerers, designers, etc... Rather than the traditional method of control built around mice and keyboards, Sprout focuses on touch and pen input. The 23-inch LCD serves as the primary display, but it's the bottom display, the 20-inch capacitive pad positioned under the camera and projector that serves as the primary point of interaction."

<comment><USER3> Oh, I thought the lower screen was an e ink display, sort of like simulating a sheet of paper there.

I don't like the lower screen with a projector - then the image is obscured by the shadow your hands make...

<comment><USER4> Presumably, if you're reaching across the pad, you're looking at the monitor, and if you're touching something on the pad then you probably can't see through your arms/hands anyway.

That being said, I think a second screen would be preferable all the same, but it would probably bump the cost significantly.

<comment><USER5> Screens are [comparatively] cheap, esp. Vs a custom projector + touchpad + 3d camera set-up. I don't think they went this route to save on production costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The video works for me, but I have to agree with the other comments - I needed to work very hard to figure out what exactly this actually was.

The first 40! seconds of the video didn't show the product in action, the first image of it was from such an odd angle that I didn't even know it _was_ an image of it at first, and the later images don't actually show the camera that seems to be an important part of it.

Part of me thinks this is a solution in want of a problem, designed by the kind of person who uses a spoon for soup and a fork for their main course and thinks "If only I had a combination fork-spoon, my life would be so much simpler".

<comment><USER7> Dude, its called a spork. It was invented by taco bell, and its brilliant.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I know. My meaning was that you could spend thousands (millions?) of dollars designing and manufacturing sporks, or you could just switch utensil as required for free.

Whilst a spork is great for the singular task of "I'm eating minestrone", the benefits of it don't make it worth it having been created.

Much like this project. Why not use your already-good wacom and computer and webcam, which you already have, instead of buying a product which is probably a bit shoddy in at least one of those areas?

<comment><USER8> I'm going on a tangent here. The spork is the preferred tool for eating by many outdoor enthusiasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The _Aha_ moment for me was watching the beans spill on the touchpad and getting immediately digitized and put into a presentation.

They also should have taken a real necklace, placed it on the touchpad and had it instantly digitized, then manually manipulated around the woman's neck.

Very cool product. I _love_ seeing highly imaginative products, especially coming from well established companies.

Suggestion: Maybe whoever was in charge of this development project could push thru that super-cool HP logo and branding that HP was too scared to implement: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/14/please-save- hp/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/14/please-save-hp/)

<comment><USER10> It's neat to see some old concepts finally get implemented. Here's Sun's concept video from 1993:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0)

<comment> dj-wonk Thanks for sharing that. Why can't I stop watching it? I keep waiting for something sinister to happen. Instead, nothing. No plot; just the past's version of the future of computing* coupled with extremely bad acting.

* Not just computing; it predicts a zero-emission, high-performance sports car that will sell 80K+ units in the first year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, it's a combined 23" touch screen and projection surface with touch and camera-based tracking, at a 90 degree angle to each other. With a built-in Core-i7-based computer, of course.

Pretty nifty, but also extremely specialized. Daring move!

<comment><USER12> As a SDK developer for Sprout, it is indeed a daring move, we're all very proud :)

<comment><USER13> Any reason why there is no information on the projector's resolution anywhere on the website or in the datasheet?

<comment><USER14> It's on the website, under "Closer Look".

"1024 x 767 DLP projector"

<comment><USER15> They couldn't afford to spring for one extra line of pixels to make it a standard resolution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I gave this a cursory scroll but by the time I got to the bottom I didn't know what the product was. I was also annoyed by the overcooked design so I gave up. Sorry.

<comment><USER17> I did the same thing and also didn't understand what it was. I also can't watch the video right now.

Then I studied the images a little closer. It seems that thing on top the monitor projects an image on the mat on the desktop. The mat seems to be touch sensitive which means you're primary interface is no longer a keyboard/mouse combo but a new interface that will be unique to each application.

Sounds interesting but unless other manufacturers starting selling the same thing, I doubt it'll be widespread enough to attract a large enough group of developers to build apps for it which will probably mean it might be niche product. Still cool though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Radical hardware with a buy now button that doesn't go to kickstarter. Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder to what degree public perception of a company's brand (think HP, Microsoft, Ebay vs Google, Apple) helps or hinders their ability to get a product off the ground. It reminds me of the old Shakespearean "What's in a name?" question.

One would like to believe that the product, if good enough, will always win out, but that's probably not the case, especially if it relies on an ecosystem to develop around it to be fully viable.

If brand quality matters severely, then an interesting question is whether or not startups have an advantage against large corps with bad reputations. Is it better to be StartuppyMcstartup nobody's ever heard of or Microsoft?

<comment><USER20> I think it can hinder it quite a bit, especially for something like this. The UX design for blending physical and virtual environments _has_ to be nearly perfect. HP's track record with consumer facing software does not instill me with confidence that they can pull this off. I hope to be surprised.

<comment><USER21> I think this will have a huge impact on the success of the product. I have an HP laptop right now and all the HP made software is terrible, it doesn't run well, crashes constantly and doesn't use the UX rules of any Microsoft OS (in fact parts would feel more at home on OSX than Windows) If they can get their stuff together and have a team that actually puts out usable software, that would go a long way towards making this a viable product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> After watching the video on their landing page, I can't help but be reminded of the Generic Brand Video on Vimeo[1].

[1] [http://vimeo.com/89527215](http://vimeo.com/89527215)

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the video, which led me to the footage service:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At the time I'm writing this all posts are complaining about the presentation of the site... yes it sucks, but the product looks really cool. It appears to be a combination of a camera and projection tool allowing the user to add real objects, such as a coffee mug, to the projected image and have it added to that image. Then user can use their hands to digitally move things around and otherwise manipulate the image.

That is really cool, but I can't help but think how limited its uses are. The real-world objects need to be relatively small (like a coffee cup, not a car) and you are limited by taking pictures from the top-down angle. However, that kind of interaction is really natural and would be easier to learn than say Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER25> Really neat concept and (it appears) fine execution!

Right now, it's a really niche product, but I'm looking forwards to see if this is improved and adopted more widely.

Also, the main video doesn't show much. This is much better:

[http://bcove.me/0mvq74jn](http://bcove.me/0mvq74jn)

</comment><comment><USER26> As a pre-school lab coach with 300 children weekly in my lab I would LOVE to get two and see what kids could do with some help with teachers.

I really like the idea of kids putting a physical 3d object into something 2d and build a simple blue print. STEM tool for children seems perfect to me.

HP contact me :)

</comment><comment><USER27> This is the coolest thing out of HP in a long time. I hope they don't screw it up in the typical HP way through tone-deaf responses to the market. They are going to have to work pretty hard winning over consumers because their PC and device brand has been damaged almost irreparably through decades of selling characterless beige boxes with poor performance, durability, and customer support.

</comment><comment><USER28> Google terms to search for

"augmented desk" "InteractiveDESK"

This idea is introduced roughly every 4 years at least since the first time I saw it in the early 90s.

There has been some limited commercial success.

The local mall had a 100 sq ft model for kids to play with in one of the walkways. Balls bounce around and react when people walk into them.

Its more or less a kinect with substantial changes in scale and optical path.

<comment><USER29> So True!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me so much about osmo [https://www.playosmo.com/](https://www.playosmo.com/) Disclaimer: Not affiliated with the company

<comment><USER31> Yes! Disclaimer: I own an Osmo. One thing where Osmo wins for sure is the name. The name appart, sprout is trying to be much more than Osmo. I have to emphasize the "trying" though. Sprout is going in all the directions between the 3D scanning, the touchpad and the projector. Osmo is much more modest with just a camera looking at the table, but this also means they could concentrate on user interactions that really made sense and an incredibly good pattern recognition experience.

Anyway if I have the opportunity to play with Sprout I will!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Neat machine. Desktop computers need things like this. After all, what can you do with today's desktop computers that you can't conveniently do with a tablet?

I can't predict a mass market destiny to this but it warms my heart to see a huge company release some kind of engineering chimera

3d cam is what is a perfect addition to 3d printers. Well, 3d printers prove pretty useless without 3d cams. It also enables 3d movement detection.

Something bugs me though, how is it possible for the 3d cam to see beneath the object (bird origami) to come out with such a perfectly scanned shape?

</comment><comment><USER33> I still can't tell what Sprout is.

<comment><USER34> Yup, same here. Video doesn't load, and I'm not gonna take N minutes just to figure out what am I looking at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I see some interesting potential to make a three-dimensional experience using camera tracking and perspective effects on the surface.

Although at first I was a bit skeptical of the replacement of a touchscreen with a projector, there are some capabilities of a projector that you just don't get with a touchscreen – mainly, projecting images on real objects placed on the pad. This, combined with a 3D printer, could allow designers to create 3D shapes and project surfaces onto these objects.

</comment><comment><USER36> Reminds me of the augmented reality sandbox [1] I've played with at a museum [2] and which was really cool.

[1] [http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/](http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/)

[2] [https://naturalhistory.novascotia.ca/](https://naturalhistory.novascotia.ca/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting that it's being sold as an all-in-one, where it could easily be a peripheral that works with any computer. It's packaged as signature bold product but they got there incrementally, using (as others have pointed out) an idea that's come around at times before (but in even more niche areas like museums).

</comment><comment><USER38> I was big into experimental interfaces in around 2006. There was a similar peripheral for the Mac whose name escapes me. (I only ever saw marketing material for it.)

It had a sensor to detect the depth and positions of your hands above your desk. Its software would then cast a hand-shaped shadow on your screen, so you could see what you were about to interact with. The UI was like a touchscreen, but you'd abstract the touching away from the displaying for ergonomics.

It was a cool concept. Bummed it never went anywhere. Sprout could be interesting, but it would be a lot more interesting if it came from a brand that moved platforms (like Apple). I don't know if HP has the developer mindshare (or sales volume) to have a "revolutionary" product that people get excited about. There are too many other Windows machines (both inside and outside HP) for this to get the attention it deserves.

<comment><USER39> It's called Leap Motion. [https://leapmotion.com](https://leapmotion.com)

In my opinion it's no better than a touchscreen because you have to wave your hands in the air which is more work than keeping it on a desk. I wouldn't buy it.

<comment><USER40> I think Leap still has huge potential (mainly commercial) but unfortunately not as a general purpose UI device. In fact, it's much worse than a touchscreen for all 2-D situations (ie, pretty much everything that's being represented on a flat screen).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The first image on the website [0] made me believe it is some kind of tablet with a big special case, as the picture is taken from an unexpected angle. But hey, first impressions...

That being said, this looks like some real innovation and makes for an interesting creative workspace setup.

Soon we'll have flexible flexible displays to close the gap between the screen and the projected area (see the moment in the video where she flicks an item from the screen on to the projected area? Quite literally, a gap in interaction).

I can imagine this being used in some of the user interface research labs which have been working with similar hand-made setups before.

Good move, HP.

[0]: [http://store.hp.com/wcsstore/hpusstore/Treatment/sprout_meet...](http://store.hp.com/wcsstore/hpusstore/Treatment/sprout_meetSprout_1900x603.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER42> About time some serious attempt at blurring the lines between creating in digital and physical worlds. This along side paper and a 3D printer is going to be a fantastic tool in the creator toolbox.

Let's see how the dev community reacts to non-Apple/Google new platform.

</comment><comment><USER43> For history buffs, Pierre Wellner built a similar system at EuroPARC in 1991 called the Digital Desk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8lCetZ_57g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8lCetZ_57g)

<comment><USER44> Wow, impressive! Did anything build on that do you know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> In case other people are having trouble telling what it is, it appears to be a projector over a touch sensitive white board it can project on to placed in front of the computer where the keyboard normally is. Then it can track your hands for touch input.

I scrolled through the entire landing page, tried to watch the video which got stuck at 24 seconds before revealing something, then finally managed to get some frames from later on. Really terrible marketing since they are hiding what it is, but whatever. Seems inferior to a Wacom Cintiq in every way so far (an LCD with pressure sensitive pen with buttons that graphics artists use).

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm always looking for the next note-taking device, and I got the idea it would be cool to combine a pico projector and a document camera, so I could project an image over my notepad and then just take a picture of it. This way I could, say, annotate web pages/pdfs with a real pen and scan quickly w/o having to rip the page.

That's how I found this guy's work I posted a couple days ago [1].

Anyway, turns out HP has done the hard work for me. Now I just need to waste some $2k USD to verify my silly idea... :p

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8502303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8502303)

</comment><comment><USER47> Are any of the hp Sprout folks from the MS Research 'illumishare' team from a couple years ago? the video reminds me of this demo of kids playing games over skype with a similar system: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODx5t53j66M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODx5t53j66M)

also, an even older demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnL34XwTgag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnL34XwTgag)

I'm actually a bit surprised they didn't stress the collaboration features more, guess there's an initial fear of how many people will own the same device.

</comment><comment><USER48> I like the concept in general, but I have two main problems with it:

1\. A vertical touch screen! my arms hurt just from watching the video showing that lady stretching her arm and dragging objects across some presentation slides. You simply can't do that for more than a few seconds.

2\. I'm fearing a chicken and egg situation with the software aspects. I mean the photo editor they show looks nice and original but pretty limited. Without wide adoption from software makers you won't have more professional grade apps, and without professional grade apps, you'll still have the limited set of toy apps and no adoption.

</comment><comment><USER49> My immediate reaction is that it looks pretty useless apart from being a foray into bringing digital and physical closer together, which may lead to other interesting things. We need springboards like this to find out what works and what doesn't and make something better, but in and of itself it doesn't seem too interesting.

Just the first reaction to some of the videos that are mostly bleh marketing. Might have to revise my opinion once I see some more.

Looking forward to seeing someone do a hands-on video, or just create something for 30 minutes with a camera looking over his/her shoulder.

<comment><USER50> I think it looks insanely useful, just wish it wasn't so expensive (and I might make a few tweaks to the hardware - if there aren't cameras embedded in the frame of the vertical screen, which I didn't check yet, then there should be).

This is one of the most innovative products I have seen in the last several years.

<comment><USER49> Don't mind me by the way, I'm not much of an artist so I don't really fit the immediate target group :P

Could you talk a little bit about what kind of things you'd like to use it for and how that either couldn't be done before, or is better than what you could do before. The videos didn't really do it for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Really impressed with this. I'm glad HP is trying something innovative in the desktop market. As a father of a young girl, I'm really interested in something like this. Could be especially great for her.

</comment><comment><USER52> If your target audience is 'makers' then why is this being marketed as a toy? The underlying idea is great, and I'm very much looking forward to someone implementing this correctly — but I'm not interested in buying a giant toy for creating more 'moments' for my 'followers'.

I want something for doing actual creative work, and that's the only metric that matters for a product like this anyway. Maybe Bret should give it a try ([http://vimeo.com/97903574](http://vimeo.com/97903574)).

</comment><comment><USER53> Kudos to them for trying something new! This looks great. I can't help but think they would have a little more credibility if the industrial design wasn't a wanna-be iMac. Oy.

</comment><comment><USER54> Really neat. Reminded me of the D&D downward projecting map setups:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPGPV4-e3JI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPGPV4-e3JI)

</comment><comment><USER55> Really cool idea, too bad it comes with an operating system.

1) This should be a sold as a peripheral, not with its own CPU

2) Turn the bottom into a matte finish Cintiq monitor that can be quickly shut off

</comment><comment><USER56> "Hands. They've always done amazing things..." That's a great beginning for a video parody of some Silicon Valley startups.

<comment> atom-morgan Remember Facebook's "Chairs"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> You're looking at low end parts for the price, particularly the inclusion of a "Hybrid HDD". Hybrid HDDs do almost nothing for for Windows, but putting an SSD into a Windows machine makes it dramatically more responsive. If you want people to experience a new thing in computing that is tactile you can't make people wait for a disc to spin up, ever.

</comment><comment><USER58> Reminded me of the original Microsoft surface

</comment><comment><USER59> It's actually pretty cool, too bad they leave the punchline at the end of the too long video talking about hands.

</comment><comment><USER60> Side note: "prout" is French for "fart". For a French speaker, this product's name hence sounds like "sfart".

<comment><USER61> Seems like no tech name is safe with the French. Just the other day someone was stating the name of "Puer" someone chose for their server app means "to stink" in French.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8513314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8513314)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I knew I had seen that first image somewhere... [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Fatboy_Slim_-...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Fatboy_Slim_- _Halfway_Between_the_Gutter_and_the_Stars.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER63> Neat idea, but I don't necessarily want a whole new computer, just the projector + 3D camera.

Someone should hack together an open source version. The hardware should be pretty straightforward: a commodity projector, a couple webcams, and perhaps an Xbox Kinect or similar.

</comment><comment><USER64> First thing that popped to mind was projecting on top of a goban so I could get stomped by GnuGo while playing with my nice board and stones. There's something lost in playing Go w/o the tactile nature of a physical board and stones.

</comment><comment><USER65> Video does not play on safari.

<comment><USER34> Same in FF.

Edit: Only primary Call to Action doesn't load the video. I got it to load when I randomly clicked on something. Here is a link: [http://bcove.me/gqbyor0d](http://bcove.me/gqbyor0d)

<comment><USER66> Interesting -- it played fine for me on FF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think the product looks like one of those shitty toy computers from shoprite.

</comment><comment><USER68> I love the fact that when created the advert for sprout they user doesn't actually type the words Ice cream party but it comes up.

The user never actually hits the letter P but somehow it magically appears!

<comment><USER8> This might seem like a minor issue but it annoyed me like hell. At that point I knew all I was seeing were the visions of a drunk marketeer anyhow, but at that point I realized that they weren't even bothering with reality.

<comment><USER69> Same here.

I still think it's an interesting concept, however. If they want it to gain traction, they should sell it as a peripheral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Looking at the "apps" section's picture, I can't help but feel like they've created a giant Nintendo DS. I also can't tell if I feel like that's a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER70> Loved it! Feels nice to see the pioneering spirit at HP is still alive.

A cursory look at the SDK shows that it's mainly WPF and C++ (QT?) which might make it easier to develop apps. Looks interesting.

</comment><comment><USER71> This product must have sounded like a good idea to some clueless but slightly rich tech charlatans. Looking at the product page, a mediocre genius like me can tell:

The intro video tells zilch about the product. Tries to sell some grandiose vision about hands. As if they have evolutioned hands for snakes. That's a sore sign that there's not much to the product.

"A creativity station. A fully functioning PC. Whatever you want to call it, Sprout can do it. " I want to call it the spaceship voyager on a mission to the planet of the MBAs.

"Blending the physical and digital worlds that you live in, Sprout unleashes your creativity like never before." if by that you mean it makes you want to rant creatively, sure.

</comment><comment><USER72> This looks pretty awesome. Looking forward to giving it a whirl.

</comment><comment><USER73> Looks nice, but the 1-year warranty is a huge dealbreaker. If I'm going to be spending $1900 on a PC, it had better be guaranteed to last longer than that.

</comment><comment><USER74> This looks really cool.([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBnf_lHxPdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBnf_lHxPdE))

</comment><comment><USER75> Huh. This is novel. I don't know what to call it (initially I thought it was another tablet thing).

I'm kinda intrigued by where it'll go.

</comment><comment><USER76> This looks like something Apple should have been working towards for the Mac Pro, geared toward creative professionals.

</comment><comment><USER77> Wii or Virtual Boy?

Ambitious in any case, glad HP is trying!

</comment><comment><USER78> Finally, the problem of creating those fancy desktop-at-a-coffee-shop splashes is solved! _throws away SLR_

</comment><comment><USER79> Did the woman in the video search for images and then steal the dolphin one to go with the HP logo?!

<comment><USER80> Good artists copy, great artists steal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I almost thought "Wow, someone finally starts building Apple-level PCs". But the machine still only runs Windows. To a certain crowd of IT profrssionals, Apple has raised the standard to "I need both quality gear and the unix experience (including the command line but not only)".

So much that it would make sense that HP starts supporting Ubuntu by default.

</comment><comment><USER82> Looks cool, but not sure I could get into it without any sort of haptic feedback.

</comment><comment><USER83> That does actually look somewhat interesting but what is a "20-point touch mat"?

</comment><comment><USER84> Looks like a neat concept of something that Apple will commercialise in 3 years

</comment><comment><USER85> This is a neat idea but I'll bet in practice it is very tiring to use.

</comment><comment><USER86> You'd think they would write a description of the product. Basic SEO.

</comment><comment><USER87> Wow, this makes me wish HP didn't make shit hardware.

</comment><comment><USER88> Two screens at a 90degrees angle? Just imagining it make my neck hurts, they could have at least tilted the bottom one. There is a reason I learned to touch type...

<comment><USER26> To me this is the way all pen and paper works. When I write I have a piece of paper on the desk and the screen in front. Seems natural to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> With Tim Cook running Apple, there's a void in the "Well designed, but not cheap prosumer hardware" space. HP seems to want to stab it.

<comment><USER90> I'm not sure the connection between your two clauses -- are you saying that because Tim Cook is running Apple, Apple no longer produces "well designed, but not cheap prosumer hardware"?

<comment><USER89> Yes. Steve Jobs was notorious for driving his team to do the impossible, no matter how marginal the utility might seem. He set the bar pretty high for design. All outside indications seem to demonstrate Tim Cook doesn't drive it to the same degree. I think Apple will still try to deliver on those traditions, but especially as the iphone 6 shows, they're not doing a great job at it.

Apple seems to lead the way in making things thinner, and following behind in making "new" things. Its a clear void.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> I'm probably a bit weird in that regard, but the large image immediately reminded me of the Left4Dead cover image.

</comment><comment><USER92> is the primary text input supposed to be a virtual touch keyboard?

</comment><comment><USER93> As w/ everything. Great software makes great hardware. Only 8 apps at launch (not that it is actually bad per se) and I find it hard to believe that it will gain traction among current developers. I can't think of any reason to start developing for sprout, a platform with zero users right now. Users won't buy because no apps, developers won't code because no users; it will be interesting to see how HP will manage to solve this.

Still, it's good to see a big consumer-oriented company like HP trying (at least) to innovate in some new way.

<comment><USER94> At the same time, at $1800, it still makes a solid all-in-one PC with decent specs. I tried to configure an iMac with similar specs but there weren't any 1:1 comparisons.

An iMac with an i7 of roughly equal speed, same 8GB RAM, a screen 2" smaller diagonal, similar nVidia graphics, same native resolution display (without touch capability), similar 1TB hybrid SSD/HDD, and none of the fancy projector/camera stuff would cost $1899.

Obviously these are going for different users and the iMac comes with Apple's trademark thin, industrial design whereas the Sprout adds the touch screen, pad, camera, and projector. Still, if you wanted an all-in-one and had $1900 to spend, I can see how you might pick up one with equivalent "guts" which came with the unique input options.

Worst case you don't get much use out of the projector stuff and still have a solid all-in-one on par with an iMac of similar price.

<comment><USER95> FWIW, the iMac's Fusion Drive includes a 128Gb SSD and a discrete spinning HDD, whereas the sprout appears to have a 'hybrid drive' which is a spinning disk with a small SSD used for cache. Much less expensive, flexible, and speedy.

A more Apples to Apples (sorry) comparison would be the non-fusion drive iMac for $1699

That said, the added hardware on this still seems to make it a relative bargain.

<comment><USER94> Yeah, good call. I was trying to find a configuration that was fairly close to see if it was roughly in the same range. Seems like it is so if you were comparing the two, you could spend about the same amount of money and either get a nicer storage option and Apple materials or a larger screen with touch, touch pad, and all of the projector/camera stuff.

My main interest was whether this was drastically more or less expensive than the most popular all-in-one PCs out there even if you don't care about using the unique Sprout stuff all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> looks very interesting, shame if its tied to Windows though...

</comment><comment><USER97> It's kind of cool from the video, but honestly I lost interest half way through. I'm not sure if it solves an existing problem or would appeal to the mass market though.

I guess when you have cash that needs to be spent, you do stuff like this? I can't imagine this is the best innovation HP can come up with.</comment>


Oracle on why it thinks AWS winning the Pentagon's $10bn Jedi contract stinks - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/01/oracle_jedi_case_filing/ <comment><USER2> What's funny about this is that Oracle has a long and colorful history of doing the exact same thing[1] that they are accusing AWS of doing in this case. It feels like Oracle is just unhappy that they got outmaneuvered at a game they practically invented.

[1]: [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-04-me- oracl...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-04-me- oracle4-story.html)

<comment><USER3> Wrong is a wrong.

<comment><USER4> so when others do wrong it's wronger :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Oracle's filing said that US "warfighters and taxpayers have a vested > interest in obtaining the best services through lawful, competitive means... > Instead, DoD (with AWS's help) has delivered a conflict-ridden mess in which > hundreds of contractors expressed an interest in JEDI, over 60 responded to > requests for information, yet only the two largest global cloud providers > can clear the qualification gates."

Changing the thing being procured shines a light on just how bad this argument is: "Over 60 potential manufacturers declared an interest in designing and building the latest jet fighter, yet all but two were excluded by the qualification gates of being able to provide a product capable of remaining airborne. Hundreds of potential suppliers could provide the odd wing or ejector seat, which put together stand a good chance of resembling a plane."

(Realisations that this is actually maddeningly close to how some jet fighters are built are welcomed)

<comment><USER6> Great metaphor. To play devil's advocate: if only one or two companies can satisfactorily make cars, should other less capable/affluent manufactures accept defeat and hand over the automobile market to them? Look for another line of business to break into?

There's no question that Amazon and Google are the most capable (perhaps the only viable) choices for a contract of this scope. But giving them 10 billion dollars and relative corporate invinciblity (Amazon will not go under unless the US government decides so/collapses) is just exacerbating the problem. A government concerned with preserving the free market (and thus the prosperity/happiness of their citizens) should be stimulating smaller competitors, not funneling all available resources to a small handful of megacorps they're in bed with.

<comment><USER7> Google did not big on JEDI and it's questionable whether they would have been able to compete with AWS and Azure if they had.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the correction, I don't know nearly enough about the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They wrote a 50 page filing, apparently, but the issue comes down to this: AWS is an existential threat to Oracle as a going concern.

<comment><USER9> Can you elaborate on how AWS is an "existential threat" to Oracle?

<comment><USER8> They are direct competitors, as another replied said. Case in point: the Pentagon contract in question.

Edit: To expand a bit further: [https://aws.amazon.com/getting- started/projects/migrate-orac...](https://aws.amazon.com/getting- started/projects/migrate-oracle-to-amazon-redshift/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks! Oracle is an RDB and app provider, mostly web-based.

AWS is a cloud platform provider.

Unless one (or both?) have changed while I wasn't looking... but even then, is the Cloud now so central to Oracle that its _existence_ depends on it?

EDIT thanks for the link. "Oracle data warehouse" isn't Oracle's central business. Also, I'm not a fan of Oracle, but I doubt it's so easy to steal their customers. Finally, how can the loss of one govt contract be so harmful? Few of their customers, not even govt ones, are so security conscious... BTW I realize you're just reporting their claim, not making it.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the issue is how important the cloud is to Oracle. The threat to Oracle is that AWS provides directly comparable database products (RDS, Redshift, DynamoDB) that don't require the licensing fees and (sometimes) hardware costs that come with Oracle products.

As an aside, I regret not disclosing earlier that I'm an engineer at Amazon. I did not expect to participate in this discussion this much, and also, it just didn't occur to me. My apologies.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Oracle already has competing cheaper/free RDBs - though not an integrated suite. (I accept O's app businesses are secondary).

From your first link, compatibility is hard: _AWS SCT clearly marks any code that it cannot convert so that you can manually convert it._

I would expect O to be upset that they don't even get a look in to an incredibly lucrative contract, and argue it's bad for the govt's well-being to exclude them. I can't see how or why they'd argue it threatens their existence...

Oh, so you _are_ making the claim! Your comment makes a lot more sense now.

BTW congrats on winning the contract, that's amazing!

<comment><USER8> I haven't made any claims about Oracle's claims in the filing. Perhaps they are entirely valid. I don't disagree with anything you've said about the details of the competing services. Perhaps you are entirely correct and Oracle has a superior offering.

The thesis of my argument is that, in my opinion, Amazon represents a true threat to Oracle, and that moves like this filing should be examined through that lens.

For the record, my opinions are my own and I have no knowledge of this situation or AWS decision making that is not public.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

direct competitors != existential threat

But you're describing a "disruption": AWS's offering is comparable yet far cheaper. Which sounds like an "existential threat".

Oracle should be immune to this disruption: the same people are doing the same thing to the same data for the same purpose - so, the cloud is a "sustaining" innovation in this context.

Plus, Oracle is a sales company, not an engineering company, and I don't think AWS is oriented to compete that way.

You've softened your thesis to a "threat", and yes I agree of course it is. And yes, their competitive situation will inform their actions.

But... $10 billion dollars is reason enough to file in itself, right? They have huge departments devoted to just this kind of thing. And recall the fuss they made vs Google over Java, for much less (though TBF, that had strategic advantages for them).

I still don't see how this particular contract would have knock-on consequences for Oracle, making it an existential threat. Maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER8> I have not softened my thesis. For the sake of brevity I assumed that just saying threat was sufficient.

> Oracle should be immune to this disruption: the same people are doing the > same thing to the same data for the same purpose - so, the cloud is a > "sustaining" innovation in this context.

The idea that any company is immune to disruption seems obviously wrong to me. But in this case, it seems very clear. You're correct that people use databases the same way for the same purpose on cloud vs self host -- no one disputes that. What the cloud dramatically alters, among many things, is pay- what-you-use pricing and scalability. AWS database offerings render license fees obsolete. How could that be anything less than an existential threat to a company that is reliant on license fees?

<comment><USER9> They're not immune from losing, but they are immune from the technical definition of disruption (from _The Innovator 's Dilemma_, where "sustaining innovation" also come from).

But you're right, pay-per-use is different from license fees (though they do try to approximate volume), and scalability is also different.

Oracle have also been shifting to the cloud, so they are scalable. I'm assuming they also modify their fee structure to make sense with SaaS, i.e. charge-per-usage.

In the following, I'm arguing in good faith not just to score points or win but seeking insight, and I hope you are too: I'm not sure if that transition matters.

It might matter, if Oracle can't adjust to it: organisationally (internally), can't sell in this new way (e.g. sales pitches and sales schedules must change), etc. Whereas, for AWS, it's business as usual, their systems and people all deal with it, have overcome the problems, and have been optimising it, and continue to.

It is a big change, and it's not clear that Oracle will do it smoothly, although they have made big changes before.

But here we return to disruptive innovation vs. sustaining innovation... does this change in scalability and pricing structure make a difference to the business relationship?

For example, if it became a smaller monthly fee rather than larger annual contract, and a different person lower in the customer organization was in charge of it, it could make a huge difference. Different contact, different stakes, different metrics. OTOH, if the total is similar, they'd probably have the same person handle it the same as before.

<comment><USER8> I'll be honest, it seems disingenuous to argue that Oracle is immune to disruption in a debate about whether Amazon poses an existential threat, and then later reveal that you were using a specific, hidden meaning of the word -- especially when the plain, obvious meaning is directly applicable to the discussion. I will try to assume positive intent.

The last thing I'll say is a bit of advice: In future debates, it would be useful to indicate at the beginning when you're using a specific, non-obvious definition of a word, especially when the broadly accepted meaning is directly consistent with the debate topic, and especially when the definition you are using has little to do with the overall discussion. It will save time and will help avoid misunderstandings that damage your credibility among your counterparts in the discussion.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, no ill intent, I thought the technical meaning was common knowlwdge on HN, since the technical meaning is where the term originated. I was actually afraid I was being condescending by referencing the source.

But I only introduced it in my 4th comment in the debate, and clarified it in the next one, when I sensed there might be a misunderstanding. I didn't use it at the "beginning" of the debate.

The definition is central to the debate. I see now it's hard for us to discuss this, as disruptive vs. sustaining determines whether the incumbent (Oracle) or entrant (AWS) wins. The debate turns on the distinction.

"Disruption" is just a theory, doesn't have a perfect track record, and I sense you're not interested in it, but the original research on the hard disk drive market was pretty influential, about how some dramatic tech changes in e.g. the magnetic surface made no difference to who led the market ("sustaining"), while changes in form-factor (8", 5.25", 3.5" etc) "disrupted" the market by changing who bought them and why... and also changed who led the market. Wikipedia on "the innovator's dilemma" is a pretty good summary, IIRC.

It's a shame a misunderstanding has prevented you from participating in a discussion. I thought we were reaching the crux of the issue... oh well. It was interesting to me, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Oracle also accused Amazon of breaking the rules by hiring two senior DoD > staff, Deap Ubhi and Anthony DeMartino, who were involved in the JEDI > procurement process. Ubhi is described as "lead PM". A third name is > redacted in the publicly released filing.

<comment><USER11> More important is the next paragraph (apparent typo on the name left in):

> It is alleged that Amazon failed to notify the DoD that it was offering > Udhi, the DoD's lead for the procurement project, a job. AWS has always > denied any wrongdoing.

If it can be shown that Ubhi influenced the decision before departing for Amazon, then there are some serious legal problems in store for both Ubhi and Amazon.

<comment><USER12> > If it can be shown that Ubhi influenced the decision before departing for > Amazon, then there are some serious legal problems in store for both Ubhi > and Amazon.

Honest questions coming out of legal ignorance: isn't this just normal m.o. in the USA these days? Isn't that what "revolving door"[0] is all about? Is this really a legal issue for the participants in this scheme at-large? If not, what did the AWS hires do differently that was more egregious?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_\(politics\))

<comment><USER11> > "Under current law, government officials who make contracting decisions must > either wait a year before joining a military contractor or, if they want to > switch immediately, must start in an affiliate or division unrelated to > their government work. One big loophole is that these restrictions do not > apply to many high-level policy makers..., who can join corporations or > their boards without waiting."

From your link (didn't bother following it to its source, but it's a correct summary). The President's Cabinet members can freely go back and forth between industry and policymaking positions (well, up to confirmation after nomination which will limit things). But a member of the military/civil service is limited in how quickly they can go to a contractor and in what role they can work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In all fairness Oracle does have a superior cloud infrastructure, their cloud control code and user application code does not run on the same physical hardware.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can't they just say "multiple key decision makers have worked with Oracle projects, Oracle sales and Oracle license audits in the past."?</comment>


The Fate of Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://theinteractivist.com/messages-from-the-future-the-fate-of-google-glass/

<comment><USER2> Personally, I think Google Glass could take off but it definitely won't be an instantaneous hit. Here is the way I see things playing out:

1) At first the main use is in the car. It's a place where you can wear them and not feel super awkward since the majority of the people around you probably wont be able to tell you have them on. It has the navigation system built in and you could even record the trip as if your glasses were a dash cam (hey, worked for Russia!).

2) People gradually forget they have it on when driving and end up getting out of the car with the glasses still on. You'll maybe see a few people wear them briefly while walking from the parking lot to the store but it still won't be that public. At least by now it will have been out long enough that people know about them.

3) People wear them more and more out in public and eventually it becomes the norm. Sure, some people might be like "oh that's weird" but they won't think too much about it.

I highly doubt that suddenly the streets will be flooded with Google Glasses right from the start. But I could see a gradual increase in usage if it's primary function is used in one location (like the car).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a huge fan of the Glass project, but what tweaked me about this article was how the guy constantly said the iphone was 'so innovative' you can't possibly nail down the thought process that lead to it. I can do it right here, in one sentence:

"Let's make a blackberry that's not a pile of shit."</comment>


Spark vs. Snowflake: The Cloud Data Engineering (ETL) Debate - <AUTHOR> https://www.prophecy.io/blogs/spark-vs-snowflake-the-cloud-data-engineering-etl-debate <comment><USER3> A quote from the article I would object to is "for large datasets and complex transformations this architecture is far from ideal. This is far from the world of open-source code on Git & CI/CD that data engineering offers - <USER2> locking you into proprietary formats, and archaic development processes."

No one is forcing you to use those tools on top of something like Snowflake (which is just a SQL interface). These days we have great open source tools (such as [https://www.getdbt.com/](https://www.getdbt.com/)) which let you write plain SQL that you can then deploy to multiple environments, perform automated testing and deployment, and do fun scripting. At the same time, dealing with large datasets in a spark world is full of lower level details, whereas in a SQL database it's the exact same query you would run on a smaller dataset.

The reality is that the ETL model is fading in favour of ELT (load data then transform it in the warehouse) because maintaining complex data pipelines and spark clusters make little sense when you can spin up a cloud data warehouse. In this world we don't just need less developer time, those developers don't have to be engineers that can write and maintain spark workloads/clusters, they can be analysts who are able to do transformations and have something valuable out to the business faster than the equivalent spark data pipeline can be built.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very valid points: 1) Agree that Snowflake is far easier to use than Spark. 2) Agree that DBT is a great tool.

ETL workflows normally processing 10s of TBs and workflows with large and complex business logic is the context. With Spark code, you can break down your code into smaller pieces, see data flow across them, write unit tests, and have the entire thing still execute as a single SQL query.

Don't large SQL scripts become really gnarly for complex stuff - nothing short of magical incantations. I can't see data flow from a subquery for debugging without changing code.

Prophecy as a company is focused on making Spark significantly easier to use!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love to get perspectives from HN community - did you decide between Snowflake and Spark for data engineering? Which one did you pick, and why?

<comment><USER4> Snowflake through and through.

I haven't used Spark, and have used Snowflake extensively, so I may be quite biased. I imagine Spark has advantages in certain very high performance ML workflows.

(see my HN profile for links to my writing on the topic of Snowflake)

I didn't really understand the blog post to be honest, and I also don't really know how appropriate a direct comparison between Snowflake and Spark is? Perhaps you can give your perspective.</comment></comment>


Chrome connects to three random domains at startup - <AUTHOR> https://mikewest.org/2012/02/chrome-connects-to-three-random-domains-at-startup <comment><USER3> This has some interesting ramifications- some network security appliances (I work for a company that makes one) look for suspicious sets of DNS requests that match the Domain Generation Algorithms that malware like Conficker use to find a command and control server.

These "random" requests look almost exactly the DGA for Murofet- a Zeus variant. This has caused some problems for us (and other vendors, I would assume) in the form of massive numbers of false positives. In short, it's been kind of a PITA.

I wish they wouldn't do this, but it is definitely a tough problem to solve and I can't think of a better approach off of the top of my head. The ultimate culprit is the ISPs that return an A record for a DNS request that really should return NXDOMAIN. These ISPs are essentially breaking the Internet, and we're all just scrambling to put band-aids in place to get it to work again.

<comment><USER4> This is a good reason not to stick to the DNS-resolver the ISP gives you with DHCP, but to explicitly set it to a DNS resolver you trust.

Wondering why Chrome is not simply using the Google resolver on 22.214.171.124. Of course this would yet be another band aid that breaks the internet even further, when applications start implementing their own network stack.

<comment><USER5> We use chrome for internal apps. Forcing you to use 18.104.22.168 means our users have to remember ip addresses instead of <http://nameofapplication/>

Not a problem for me, but I'm sure a lot of people would complain.

<comment><USER6> Put your internal apps on real IP addresses with real DNS and just firewall them?

<comment><USER5> So instead of having these machines in our serverroom inside our office, we'd have to pay for using them in a data center and register URL's, only because some ISP's use an insane way to handle NXDOMAIN? There are many valid reasons to "go into the cloud", but this is not one of them.

<comment><USER6> You can assign real ip addresses to machines in your server room, give them dns, and firewall them externally. Just ask your isp for some addresses. There is no reason why this is any different from using nat in security, but you can use real dns. You can use ipv6 if you can't get ipv4 addresses.

<comment><USER7> Or, the browser can just not default to name servers it deems best for everyone and work how it's always worked: well.

This just seems like adding duck tape to a self-inflicted problem.

<comment><USER8> Non-publicly-routable addresses are a hack that will cause you nothing but trouble, and are going away with IPv6, so you might as well move away from them now.

(Not that having chrome use 188.8.131.52 is a good idea either. As is often the case with hacks, either on its own works fine but the two interact poorly.)

<comment><USER7> Not sure I agree that non-publicly-routable addresses are a hack. The ability to run your own DNS server and having a firewall are pretty elegant components of most networks.

That being said, it very well maybe time to find a better alternative :).

<comment><USER8> Firewalls have their place but should not be conflated with routing; the two are separate, and treating them as the same can lead to confusion and broken security.

As for DNS, it has a very elegant hierarchical delegation system, such that organizations can control their own while also ensuring that all the world's DNS servers give consistent answers (and if you need short names for your internal systems on your own network, that's what search paths are for).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I noticed this two years ago, and eventually had to stop using Chrome (and Chromium browsers) as it would result in my ISP blocking all DNS requests from my IP (for a seemingly random amount of time). Even requests to public DNS would fail. It took awhile to identify Chrome as the culprit, and I wasn't convinced after seing the bogus DNS requests in TCP traps. So I started a cycle of using/not using Chrome, and it became obvious.

The easy solution was to stop using Chrome. The hard solution was to move. I've done both, but have yet to start using Chrome again.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand. Why would your ISP block your IP for bogus DNS requests? And why are they monitoring your traffic to public DNS servers? I presume this means they have to look at all traffic that goes over port 53. Is there a security concern?

<comment><USER11> This is common practice if the queries appear to be originating from worms like Conficker, etc. Others have reported that this behavior of Chrome's can set off false IDS alarms for the same reason.

<comment><USER12> And it's also common practice to send all bad DNS queries to an ad-ridden search page. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> if you go to chrome://chrome-urls/ and then down to net-internals, you can get a pretty transparent view of exactly what chrome is doing. plus there's a bunch of other stuff there too.

<comment><USER14> chrome://net-internals/#dns

<comment><USER15> It appears that Chrome aggressively prefetches DNS results for most of the links in pages you visit too. It's quite strange to watch as DNS requested for hundreds of domains you haven't even intended to visit start flowing past. The first time I saw it I had to check that nothing unscrupulous was running on my computer...

<comment><USER16> that's configurable in preferences / under the hood / privacy (the "prediction" option - <USER2> [https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=114836))

i have all those disabled and chrome still appears fast to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting, yesterday I moved to a local caching DNS server (much faster and more reliable than what isp provided), however I forgot to set it to run at start up, first thing I do today is try to get to my gmail account, everything is working ok then I try to enter another site, dns lookup error, then I remembered I had named turned off, which means that chrome may have hardcoded google sites ip addresses or is caching them (which is less probable the other site didn't work).

</comment><comment><USER18> Neat feature. In my opinion, they should go even further and make use of the information and inform the user, too:

"Your ISP (network administrator, ..) is intercepting and manipulating DNS requests. Do you want to use Google DNS instead?"

Comes in real handy when we need to have a "DnsManipulationDetector" in the future that checks if your DNS is actively censoring...

<comment><USER19> > "Your ISP (network administrator, ..) is intercepting and manipulating DNS > requests. Do you want to use Google DNS instead?"

I would prefer

"Your ISP (network administrator, ..) is intercepting and manipulating DNS requests. Do you want to install a local caching DNS server and use it instead?"

Unbound [1] is a local DNS server that I have installed on all my machines. Small, fast, security-oriented, IPv6, BSD, made by NLnet Labs.

[1] <http://unbound.net/>

<comment><USER8> So you'd install a local caching DNS server that only chrome would use... and this is better than chrome doing its own DNS lookups how?

<comment><USER19> The grandparent said "use Google DNS" not "chrome doing its own DNS lookup".

If you use Google's DNS (or anybody's DNS) you are basically telling them which sites your are visiting. If you have a local DNS resolver you will not leak all that information to a single third party.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand. Your local DNS resolver still needs an upstream; either that is your existing broken DNS server, or it's google's DNS server; in either case we're back where we were. Sure, your local DNS resolver could do some caching, but so could chrome; and a local resolver doesn't combine your lookups with those of your neighbours, so you don't get any privacy advantage that way either.

<comment><USER19> > I don't understand. Your local DNS resolver still needs an upstream

No, not a single upstream.

When my browser asks my server on 127.0.0.1 to lookup news.ycombinator.com it will first contact the root DNS server, then `com` DNS server, then then `ycombinator.com` DNS server. Who knows about the fact that I was looking for `news.ycombinator.com`? only the `ycombinator.com` DNS server. Who knows about the fact that I was looking for `ycombinator.com`? only the `com` DNS server. Now I go to slashdot.org. Who will know about that? Only the `org` DNS server. If you use the Google DNS, Google will know that you requested both `news.ycombinator.com` and `slashdot.org`. Do you want them or any single company to have all these information?

Obviously you need an upstream, an authoritative server somewhere. But why do you need to concentrate all these requests on a single DNS server? ISP are actively tracking users and, probably, selling their DNS histories to advertiser. Nominum (makers of a widespread DNS server) is quite explicit about it: «Data gathering and measurement are a vital part of network operations and DNS data represents a rich vein to be mined that has been underutilized in the past». [1]

[1] <http://www.nominum.com/technology/analytics>

<comment><USER8> So you'd contact the root server directly? If that's really desirable behavior (and I suspect it isn't), why not just make chrome query the root servers and walk the hierarchy, not using a DNS server at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> .. and a really great reason for using open source programs

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure what you meant by that, but the article does in fact link to the relevant source:

[http://code.google.com/codesearch#OAMlx_jo- ck/src/chrome/bro...](http://code.google.com/codesearch#OAMlx_jo- ck/src/chrome/browser/intranet_redirect_detector.cc&l=78)

<comment><USER22> That might have been his point - that we were able to find out the reasons why because of it's open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No wonder I've been seeing youporn.com in my history.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know one thing chrome leaks memory badly in OSX lion, not sure if these magic things happening in background has something to do with it</comment>


Why are functional programming trainwrecks good and oo ones bad?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.glenstampoultzis.net/blog/2010/04/12/train-wrecks-in-functional-languages/

<comment><USER2> Basically, use maps to represent data structures where you'd use several different classes in an OO language, since in principle you're still basing the same data structure from function to function.</comment>


This Internet fix is no pipe dream - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.infoworld.com/securityadviser/archives/2009/02/call_me_a_dream.html

<comment><USER2> There sure is a lot of rhetoric about how "insecure" the Internet is, but there is a serious lack of definite agreement about what "security" means in this context. Does it mean lack of hard and fast authentication? Does it mean lack of flexible but not too flexible authorization? Does it mean exposure of children to porn? Does it have to do with software bugs and exploits? Or is it based on a belief that we'll somehow overcome the limitations of information theory and DRM will be a reality? None of these things, and many more, are "fixable" through a protocol change, or even an infrastructure change. Most issues arise because people put too much of the wrong kind of trust in the tool that the Internet is and the tools that the Internet provides. There is no silver bullet, and those who keep themselves up at night thinking that they are going to somehow figure it all out and be the savior of the Internet are only doing themselves a disservice by losing sleep.

</comment><comment><USER3> This author obviously lives in the corporate world, where SOAP sells (and WS-* protocols as well).

Way too complex for mortals...</comment>


Shuddle 'Uber for kids' service reaches end of road - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Shuddle-Uber-for-kids-service-reaches-end-7249450.php?t=f4327bfb984832b814&cmpid=twitter-premium <comment><USER2> This was a great service and it's a shame it closed. I used it every week.</comment>


Don't register your idea as a company - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/25780940137/dont-register-your-idea-as-a-company <comment><USER2> This is a really good article and I like the thinking, however there seems to be an underlying assumption that a company is like a disposable paper plate -- once it's been used for something, it can't be cleaned and reused like a china plate. A company doesn't have to be horrendously expensive to set up, and can even be dirt cheap in some jurisdictions like the UK. If the idea fails, so long as the company isn't otherwise insolvent it can be reused or even kept dormant for the price of a decent lunch, ready for the next idea.

The thing that bothers me about this pre-incorporation experimentation phase is liability. This advice would lead to a window of personal liability in the beginning for the founders. Although I'm not used to the same level of litigation risk American entrepreneurs face, incorporation in any jurisdiction can (in most cases) serve as a really cheap form of legal liability insurance.

I also wonder (and this will be highly dependent on the jurisdiction) whether the founders will be liable for their pre-incorporation actions. For example, if they write software that infringes on someone's patent, would incorporating later ease their personal liability for the time before the business was incorporated and IP rights were transferred to the company?

<comment><USER3> This is what I did, too. I registered an Ltd in the UK with an unrelated name (Stochastic Technologies) and it serves as an umbrella for my consulting, products and experiments. It's very easy to register, and all you need is a good accountant.

Even if I had no products, the company would still be useful.

<comment><USER2> You don't really even need an accountant. You can file it online at Companies House's website for something like £15 and minimally adjust a standard memorandum and articles of association. The record keeping is easy and all the processes for incorporating, running, and dissolving a company are very well explained by CH's guidance booklets.

The UK, for all its faults, is one of the easiest and cheapest places in the world to incorporate, and all the other formalities combined are trivially trivial. The only qualm I have about incorporating in the UK revolves around how much personal data Companies House sells that subsequently gets splashed across the internet for all to see, free of charge. It's better than it used to be (directors' and secretaries' home addresses are now finally protected under the 2006 Act) but it's still a little too much unnecessary data that's made public.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, do you have any details as to the filing? My accountant helps me with advice and only costs about 100 pounds a year, but it would be nice to know how I can file by myself in case I need to...

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on your 29th birthday btw! ;-)

Have a look at Companies House's website[1]. All their guidance is listed there, and they're very responsive both by phone and email.

HMRC are also super helpful and have very comprehensive documentation on their website relating to personal and corporation tax.

[1] <http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/>

<comment><USER3> Thanks, but how the hell did you know?! Thanks for the information, I'll have a look at the site and see what I can glean. The HMRC are indeed very helpful, I even have my own tax officer I can call. I'm beyond satisfied, especially when comparing the experience to the Greek one (ugh).

<comment><USER2> All your personal details you filled out on form 10 become public record, including your date of birth, former names, etc. Before the 2006 Act, all former directorships and personal residential addresses were also part of the permanent record. Also, all amendments you make become part of public record too.

If I really wanted, for a few pounds I could buy copies of your filings from Companies House! [1] [2]

Search your own name and you'll see a lot of information show up about you and the two British companies you've been involved in.

[1] [http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/d9905cee41fe8bc6bc1e30b72c...](http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/d9905cee41fe8bc6bc1e30b72c33e8a6/compdetails)

[2] [http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/daf03799bf17832767f99543e5...](http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/daf03799bf17832767f99543e5a1aa2b/compdetails)

<comment><USER4> You can get copies of the filings from <http://duedil.com> for free - no need to pay Companies House!...

<comment><USER2> Ugh, that's horrible how accessible people's personal information is.

New York State has it right:

How can I find the names of officers and directors of a corporation or other business entity?

The Department of State does not require or maintain information regarding the names and addresses of officers or directors of corporations, the members or managers of a limited liability company, the limited partners of a limited partnership or the partners in a limited liability partnership. These records are internal records maintained by the corporation, limited liability company, limited partnership or limited liability partnership.

<http://www.dos.ny.gov/corps/faq_officers_directors.page.asp>

<comment><USER4> Actually, I find Duedil an extremely helpful service, and I think the increased transparency is a very positive thing.

If you start a business, you're not just a private person - you are the Director of a "legal person" who could be up to all sorts of stuff, including many bad things. You are entrusted with limited liability, lower taxes, and all sorts of other goodies, but there is a tradeoff.

The net effect of increased transparency is that it's much easier to tell when a business is dodgy. For example, Duedil allows me, when doing the due diligence on a possible client or supplier, to check the trading history of the owner. If, for example, I can see that the Director of that business has previously run 10 different businesses with similar names over the last 10 years, that might save me from a very, very costly mistake.

Transparency in the business world promotes trust. Trust is fundamentally necessary for a healthy business environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should consider the tax treatment of your decisions. Do you want expenses written off against your personal income or not? If you have something that must be capitalized, how do you transfer those assets (and tax deductions) to the company? How do you properly move any intellectual property that you developed on your own into a company?

I didn't incorporate my project. It only earned a bit of income but was then bought by another company. The sale ended up being more costly for me because of the extra work required to roll over the assets of the business (especially the intellectual property) into the newly created company.

<comment><USER6> I'm genuinely curious about the ip transfer aspect. Could you expand on what IP did you transfer, how was it transferred and how much did that transfer cost?

I'm asking because I might be in the same situation in the future so I would like to know what exactly is involved in changing from an individual to a company when the product has already been developed by an individual.

<comment><USER5> The IP was the software I had created (web app + marketing websites), and bundled in with that was the customer list. Basically any intangibles.

In Canada it was done through a Section 85 election and there was some corresponding paperwork (T2057 + T2 tax return) But I needed to involve an accountant and a tax lawyer to make sure that the new company was structured properly to take advantage of the lifetime capital gains exemption, plus the lawyer's time to help me get specific wording in the sale contract to make sure I qualified for the exemption.

Cost wise it was probably an extra 15-20 hours of professional time.

Feel free to contact me directly (email in profile) if you want more details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with Joel that we shouldn't launch a company, but an experiment. Very true! And the goal of that experiment should be to find a product/market fit. Again, true! But I don't agree that the above points mean that we should delay incorporating.

Creating an LLC is cheap and simple, and it doesn't have any tax complications. Moreover, it gives tremendous benefits in terms of reducing liabilities (what happens when a pedophile decides to use your website to look for victims, and you get sued?), and clearly defining ownership (can you be sure that your friend, who worked on the experiment for the first two months, and then quit for a job at Facebook, won't come back to claim ownership when you see any traction one year later?)

His reason for not incorporating -- your ideas will change -- can be easily taken care of. Just don't tie the ideas to the LLC. Maybe to remind yourself of that, you can name the LLC, Joel's Experiments LLC. And when your experiment is ready to be a VC-backed business, converting the LLC to a C-Corp is easy.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best comment was something like

      Think of it not as a startup but an experiment.

So much of our self worth gets rolled up in this great idea that if it is attacked, criticised or does not take off we feel personal failure. Putting up a once-removed buffer is likely to make that first step easier for many more people than the traditional entrepreneur mindset.

Henley school of business claims to be able to identify the personality type that will succeed as an entrepreneur. I think what we are seeing the lean startup movement might send them back to the drawing board.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would generally agree that there isn't much of a reason to worry about company formation until there is an idea that you have has shown has some viability.

Otoh, for some incorporation or forming an LLC is a demarcation point in their thinking that they have something "official" and a certain level of seriousness about what they are doing.

While someone can easily hack together a website over the weekend (as the meme goes) having to put some effort into business registration, accountants, possibly attorneys and trademark registration seems to make some believe believe they are taking the first step toward something they are committed to and ties them up at least a little from walking away (consistency principle). Many things in life work in a similar way (marriage comes to mind as only one).

This is a relatively new phenomenon as starting a business before the internet generally required quite a bit more money (the commitment) as well as possibly renting a physical location or at least placing advertisements in the local newspaper or yellow pages. Even getting phone service was expensive.

</comment><comment><USER10> While I'm sure Joel has some interesting points of view; for some reason I always get this error when I try to read them. ___This webpage is not available The connection to joel.is was interrupted._ __

<comment><USER11> It's because he uses Tumblr. I repeatedly have this problem with my own and other tumblr blogs (the only pattern I have noticed is that they all use custom domains) and the only way to get around it is to refresh a few times and then it'll let you through. It's incredibly annoying, not sure if it's my ISP (who do you use?) or a problem with Tumblr.

<comment><USER10> Comcast Business. I built my personal blog on Rails and use Heroku so hopefully people won't have an issue like that (Once I get around to actually posting something!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Once you have other people involved, or any substantial expenses to offset, it's really worth incorporating.

I hate that California imposes a minimum $800/yr tax. That's the single worst tax law in California for startups -- a really pro business California would give companies years of minimal taxes ($50?) as domestic or foreign-registered corporations. Also, minimize all the compliance paperwork for a company with less than N employees, or where all employees own more than 5% equity. No UI/UC, WC, etc. Possibly a federal FICA holiday for small employers for 1-3 years, too.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would say to register a company anyway and treat it as a way to charge for your work. You can use it for products and services too, if you want to sell any, but regardless of that it's a good mechanism that you will need anyway if you're into something big.

Note that this wouldn't work for a country where setting up a company would be a "heavy" operation so I can understan the author's advice in that setting. On the other hand, if it costs 50 euros or less and doesn't require much overhead if you have little or no activity, then why not.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any developer freelancing or working on random side-projects should have an LLC in place. You can't go wrong, all it takes is about $300 on <http://legalzoom.com>, but it covers you personally if your product/services ever gets into any trouble and provides tax advantages too.

<comment><USER15> I would agree for freelancing but not so much for side-projects, though this depends upon your state.

If you form an LLC in California (my state of residence) you are now on the hook for paying at least $800/yr in taxes even if the LLC never earns a dime of revenue. The theoretical amount of legal protection you get from an LLC here is not worth the cost, IMO, for simple non-profitable side-projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, if you have something that's still an "idea" (with a bit of prototype software attached to it), which you really _are_ only working on as a "hobby" (since you have a full-time job and can only fit in an hour here or there in place of your lunch breaks to hack on it), and you haven't made a single dollar from it yet--

 _but_ , you have a tiny, dedicated userbase (which you've purposefully kept small so you could personally tend the garden of your own community and work out bugs), and more than a few people jumping to _invest_ in your idea, who want some sort of corporate entity to exist so they can own shares of it--

is it time to register as a company?

<comment><USER17> If you've got "more than a few people jumping to invest in your idea, who want some sort of corporate entity to exist so they can own shares of it" you've probably already made it. The scenario where that happens while it's still just an idea you're treating as a hobby seems pretty implausible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've talked with a lawyer and you can establish a business and then run other businesses under this umbrella company to avoid liability. That's my understanding -- but this isn't legal advice. It makes sense if you have a product that isn't as polished as it should be (experiment) and it causes loss or damage to your users. Of course most people are fucking around with twitter api's and mashups and whatever is hot these days, so I think that is where the author is coming from.

</comment><comment><USER19> If I had a penny for every time I doled out ~$50 for a business registration when I was ~10-15 years old... I would have ~10 cents.

I don't blame people for running out to incorporate their business or register their new idea with the local government, since that is seemingly the first step you must take before starting a business.

After you register a few business' however, you find out it's not.

<comment><USER20> Registering a company here in Australia costs enough that you usually need some traction first (it tended to be at least $1k in government fees, and ballpark $3k if you used an accountant, although I see now there are services for ~$500).

<comment><USER21> And yet, look at all of the Australian Twitters and Flickrs out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence I also think it is beneficial to incorporate/at least an LLC when you have a friend/business partner that you are working with on this hobby. This way you can have a common bank account, you can keep track of expenses, taxes are paid at differently and you have a common name to operate under.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Don't incorporate a hobby. Incorporate when you are serious about making your startup a business."

</comment><comment><USER23> 1) When you need to take advantage of the liability shield.

2) When you take on investors, who will typically want a C corp or at least a LLC structure.

3) When you have good reason to bring assets or income under a company umbrella (for any number of potential legal or tax reasons).</comment>


I'm Pretty Sure This Time I've Found the Best Way to Charge EVs - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/im-pretty-sure-this-time-ive-really-found-the-best-way-1833787982 <comment><USER2> A 2km pilot of a similar solution has been deployed in Sweden.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds- first-electrified-road-for-charging-vehicles-opens-in-sweden)</comment>


Kong 1.1 Released with Declarative Configuration and DB-Less Mode - <AUTHOR> https://konghq.com/blog/kong-1-1-released/ <comment><USER2> When would I want to use DB-less ? Isn't that where the configuration lives.

<comment><USER3> Hello, Marco CTO of Kong. You can choose between two modes for Kong now. Kong with database (PostgreSQL or Cassandra) so that the configuration lives in the database and can be propagated automatically across any Kong node that connects to the same database. Or, starting from v1.1, Kong with no database dependency (db-less) with configuration stored in the declarative configuration file which now becomes the source of truth. In the latter, as long as every Kong node starts with the same declarative configuration file, every Kong node is effectively looking at the same data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you do declarative config in Kong without turning on DB-less?

<comment><USER3> Yes, with DB Import.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will the user be able to choose DB-less vs. using the DB?

<comment><USER6> Yes! DB-less mode will be an option that can be turned on. If you don't want to use DB-less, or your configuration is too large to be held in-memory, you can continue using a DB.</comment></comment>