The Youth Unemployment Bomb - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_52/b4064058743638.htm

<comment><USER2> I'm most worried not for the numbers as for the corrosive effect long periods of unemployment have on employability. You lose the simple habits which are required for lots of gainful employment, such as "getting up before 9 AM consistently" and "working mostly non-stop for 8 hours a day".

I see this in a lot of these articles where folks will, e.g., claim they applied for 15 jobs in 3 weeks. At some point the new normal for him has become that he works 15 minutes a day or less on his job search. (Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes _is for suckers_.)

<comment><USER3> _(Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.)_

The welfare-reform efforts of the past 15-20 years in most western countries have tended to do exactly the opposite, oddly enough. Out of a worry that people were just receiving benefits without really looking for work, you must now demonstrate that you're actively sending out resumes and filling out applications. Some jurisdictions even require you to show up every so often to a center where they help you search job listings and send out resumes.

<comment><USER4> John Maynard Keynes did suggest welfare should be employing people to do things, even pointless things like building giant structures and them demolishing them again.

It seems silly, but if we truly recognize that long term unemployment has a horrible way of killing one's ability hold a job, then Keynes idea is rather practical.

The government not as welfare but simply as employers of last resort. Much like the Fed is the lender of last resort.

Obviously this has the danger of government employees lobbying for ever better pay until it is economically irrational for people to seek work in the private sector.

<comment><USER5> How about putting back together giant structures that are falling apart? Our infrastructure is rotting away --- that Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007 was a bit of a wake-up call. There's no shortage of stuff in the United States that needs to get fixed.

<comment><USER6> You mean some sort of administration that would give people money to work on projects? Like a Work Projects Administration?

Sorry, Roosevelt did that, but nowadays I am pretty sure it would be called socialism.

<comment><USER7> So...when the government pays people to do things, that's socialism?

I seriously doubt that's how a governmental program training and employing the youth to repair the infrastructure would be viewed, and especially not as proposed to the more socialistic policy of welfare.

<comment><USER8> _So...when the government pays people to do things, that's socialism?_

Of course, but the statement itself is a bit meaningless and appeared to me to be flippant, at that.

When the government pays people _not_ to do things, that's a more extreme form of socialism.

To me, the question is one of subsidy. UI[1] is a 100% subsidy. A WPA type of deal could potentially be no subsidy at all, at least to the individuals. It would merely be directing tax money at a particular kind of boondoggle.

[1] Notwithstanding that the I stands for "insurance," since it's structured as a tax, at least here in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The simple answer is: These kids are training for the wrong jobs. College (in many areas) is a waste. Trade schools (vo-tech) offer a (almost 100%) guarantee of employment.

A trade is a gateway to self employment (once you have your hours in for licensing).

My brother has his master electrician's license in two states. He has more work than he knows what to do with.

I have two friends who recently went back to school (one finishing undergrad business/marketing the other MBA). Their job outlook is _poor_. The market is flooded with people that have _soft_ skills.

Our company is still hiring network technicians. Again a two year degree with _hard_ skill requirements. (Cisco certs, etc).

Tech school is way cheaper than college and your job prospects are good.

<comment><USER10> I agree that there are certainly plenty of opportunities presented by developing a technical skill. However the unemployment rate is only 4.5% for the college educated vs 10.7% for high school only and 8.4% for an associate degree/some college. So maybe college is not as much of a waste as you might think.

<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm>

<comment><USER9> Yes but show me the figures that break out Electrician/Plumber/LPN from 2 year business degrees.

My sister in law got a 2 year biz degree. You're qualified to be a secretary (without experience). She went back and got LPN with an additional year at school.

Her job outlook is amazing. Her income is 2 to 3 times what she could have made with only her business degree.

Associated degree/some college includes a lot of things like child care/business, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more.

Wealth is manufactured by machines not people.

Some generation has to close the gap between how wealthy society is and how much average member of society has to work for same basic needs.

You can't make basic necessities cost always nearly same amount of work because that work thanks to technology is producing more and more wealth.

You can't keep prices of meals to be higher than recent technological wonder. Someone at some point will call bullshit on that. "My sandwich is not worth same amount of wealth as 4GB flash thumb drive. They just want me to pay this much for sandwich to keep me working because I need sandwich. I'll just pass on working, buy cheapest food and see how this works out. They don't seem to want me in their companies anyway."

This unemployed generation can be the first one to take advantage of wealth humans get from technology en masse without need to cunningly trick everyone else out of their share. They'll get their share just by being more or less human dead weight that rich won't be able to shake off because they can't kill them or even let them die because there's for the first time too many of them.

<comment><USER12> _Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more._

This is a myth. The poor work very little - their full time labor force participation rate is only 10% or so (this includes both the employed and unemployed). 80% of the poor don't work at all.

<http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf>

(Before you criticize this statistic as being too simple, go see this thread where I answer many objections: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2129845>

In particular, this is not a result of the poor being disproportionately old or young.)

<comment><USER13> Please go read Howard Zinn. You are 100% wrong. Poor people work more hours, harder jobs, more dangerous jobs, are more likely to die at a younger age etc etc. Everything is worse for poor people and your argument of just blaming the poor is counter-productive and myth.

Zinn: There are two issues here: First, why should we accept our culture's definition of those two factors? Why should we accept that the "talent" of someone who writes jingles for an Advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? Who is to say that Bill Gates works harder than the dishwasher in the restaurant he frequents, or that the CEO of a hospital who makes $400,000 a year works harder than the nurse, or the orderly in that hospital who makes $30,000 a year? The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university?

Talent And hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively. Since there is no way of measuring them quantitatively we accept the measure given to us by the very people who benefit from that measuring! I remember Fiorello Laguardia (US Senator) standing up in Congress in the twenties, arguing against a tax bill that would benefit the Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, and asking if Mellon worked harder than the housewife in East Harlem bringing up three kids on a meager income. And how do you measure the talent of an artist, a musician, a poet, an actor, a novelist, most of whom in this society cannot make enough money to survive - against the talent of the head of any corporation. I challenge anyone to measure quantitatively the qualities of talent and hard work. There is one possible answer to my challenge: Hours of work vs. Hours of leisure. Yes, That's a nice quantitative measure. Well, with that measure,the housewife should get more than most or all corporate executives. And the working person who does two jobs -- and there are millions of them -- and has virtually no leisure time, should be rewarded far more than the corporate executive who can take two hour lunches, weekends at his summer retreat, and vacations in Italy. ... But better still, why not use as a criterion for income what people need to live a decent life, and since most people's basic needs are similar there would not be an extreme difference in income but everyone would have enough or food, housing, medical care, education, entertainment, vacations.... Of course there is the traditional objection that if we don't reward people with huge incomes society will fall apart, that progress depends on those people. A dubious argument. Where is the proof that people need huge incomes to give them the incentive to do important things? In fact, we have much evidence that the profit incentive leads to enormously destructive things -- Whatever makes profit will be produced, and so nuclear weapons, being more profitable than day care centers, will be produced.

And people do wonderful things (teachers, doctors, nurses, artists, scientists,inventors) without huge profit incentives. Because there are rewards other than monetary rewards which move people to produce good things -- the reward of knowing you are contributing to society, the reward of gaining the respect of people around you. If there are incentives necessary to doing certain kinds of work, those incentives should go to people doing the most undesirable, most unpleasant work, to make sure that work gets done. I worked hard as a college professor, but it was pleasurable work compared to the man who came around to clean my office. By what criterion (except that created artificially by our culture) do i need more incentive than he does?

End quote.

<comment><USER14> Please travel more instead of just reading. What you argue totally depends on the country.

Some of the 'poor' people here in Colombia work 3 hours a day, earn just the same money as someone who recently got a bachelor degree, and stay the rest of the day drinking beer and saving no money for tomorrow.

They also tend to have very big plasmas or LCD TVs and huge sound systems, while their houses are just bricks without any paint on them.

So, I live in a very rich country (you just can't imagine the delicious and cheap fruits here) but full of poor people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _But the failure to launch has serious consequences for society—as Egypt's > Mubarak and Tunisia's overthrown President, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, > discovered._

Mmm, what? Don't make it sound like overturning dictators is a bad thing, dude.

Maybe it's much better for "society" to have unemployed young people with not only the courage to fight for freedom but also nothing better to do with their time, than to have people with jobs who tolerate authoritarianism.

<comment><USER16> The trouble is that they might get confused between overthrowing our stalwart allies in the war against terrorism like Mubarek and start thinking that there is no real difference between a dictator for life and a government that relects the same group of millionaire business leaders every year or one where the same bunch of toffs from the same few fancy schools get to be in charge.

<comment><USER16> Suppose you have a 'democratic' country where the same party has been in power since independance.

The party leaders have got rich by telling everyone else the country is booming - when it was all a property scam. Now they have 30% youth unemployment and are cutting school and college funding to pay for it.

They were quiet happy to support terrorists in another country for their own political gains - they might want to start worrying about where the next car bomb will be placed.

And this is isn't in the middle east ......

<comment><USER17> Ireland?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've spoken to a few Chinese about this, where manual workers get more than uni grads (though not as much as successful business owners). Chinese really value education (in the high culture sense), and education (in the sense of meaningless test scores), money, and status. Until a few years ago, degrees were a ticket to riches. Now, they just mean you are overqualified for higher- paying jobs. Their feelings about it tend to be _extremely_ complicated.

<comment><USER19> I think that you see this in places like Spain as well--you have a large educated, unemployed fraction of the population...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I grew up with an ex-drill sergeant for a father. My dad was a skilled carpenter, a certified electrician and welder (TIG, MIG and Stick), and has fixed every single car I've owned and totalled.

Passed down to myself and my brothers, we're both skilled in welding, my brother now has his own electrician shop. I work in IT. If suddenly my IT job goes away, I have a trade to fall on.

Skilled trades and physical labor it seems to be lost arts on my generation (I'm 25) and that depresses me.

<comment><USER21> Move out of the city. In the more rural areas that isn't as true. It's definitely trending in that direction, but there are still a lot of kids who grow up with parents in skilled trades who pick up a lot of those skills growing up. Combine that with high schools that have legitimate trades programs, and there's at least a much better opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In Mexico they are called nini's (_ni_ estudian, _ni_ trabajan). They often find "better" opportunities joining organized crime/drug cartels. This, in my opinion, is one the main challenges that need to be resolve in order to end violence in Mexico.

</comment><comment><USER23> They mention the product lifecycle being short as a primary reason for not wanting to bring on new employees. If it takes someone 12 months to get up to speed in an 18 month product lifecycle, it is too costly.

I've got to wonder what kind of industry takes 12 months to get up to speed unless you've got workers coming in with absolutely no training and education. For most programmers I know, the worst case ramp up time is around 3 months. That is often with a project that will never be profitable, much less make it for 18 months.

There are other fiscally attractive reasons to hire young so I'd think if training was the only problem, we could solve that problem. The problem I see with regards to education in most companies is that there is simply no one on staff who can do the training effectively or is given the time to do so. Perhaps this will open the door for the return of a mini trade school in the form of an app.

<comment><USER24> Hardware engineering can easily be 12 months out of 18. There are a sundry of reasons:

a) Moore's law. The technology your school is using for hardware design is easily 5-6 or 10 years out of date. This makes it easier to teach and cheaper to work on, but the "real world issues" like heat, leakage current, etc just aren't addressed at the same level.

b) Intel has its own RTL that is not taught in schools. Some technology companies also have proprietary in-house technologies (like Cachet, or Wasabi).

c) Ripple effects. Analog components might change/fluctuate and this impacts the entire design. Or a new antenna placement might merit new design, etc.

d) Scale. An undergrad in hardware engineering typically builds a 5 stage pipeline processor that supports 2-4 hardware interrupts and a memory controller. This is enough to run linux on an FPGA. You've engineered a computer! But a Core 2 Duo has 23 pipeline stages. Vector units. Out of Order execution. 96% accurate branch predictor. Each one of those things I've mentioned could be the focus of a masters or PhD thesis. Getting hired, you'd be expected to pick up the logic of all of them in about six months.

e) Minimization. More systems are being done by less chips. This is what is called System-On-A-Chip design by some. Previously, you'd need to know how to design a CPU. Now you need to know how to integrate a CCD into the CPU.

This is off the top of my head but i'm sure you get the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think one thing that we have in the US is that unemployment centers were set up in a different age and are designed to serve unskilled labor--but there are not so many unskilled jobs. Some of the training programs that are paid for are short "certificate" programs of dubious worth.

But, here's a question: currently sites like ODesk provide contract labor. Some of the jobs are for people to do research (for example, I wanted a listing of high schools/contact information for a side project I'm working on). I've only done a couple of postings, but I got very few American applicants. Is it just not well publicized? The rates are low, so it's not a good long term solution, but in some cases for "simple" research jobs, the rates could be $10/hr, which compared to some service jobs is competitive (since many service jobs here also don't provide health care)--especially in some lower cost of living states.

</comment><comment><USER5> One key bit: "more education is not always better. What matters is matching the skills of the workforce to the skills that employers demand. In Iran, where the percentage of people aged 15 and over with postsecondary degrees has soared from 2.5 percent to 10.5 percent over the past 20 years, the education system has become 'a giant diploma mill,' says Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech."

The same is true here, as many of our chronically "overqualified" unemployed could attest. What's worse, some of what counts as "training" here is a set of dubious commercial vocational schools --- cosmetology schools, and the like --- which soak up student loans, and leave the trainees with large debts that are hard to dismiss, even in bankruptcy.

(And these are pretty big business. One of them, Kaplan, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington Post corporation that has over $2 billion in revenue, accounts for just about all of the parent corporation's profits. Not without controversy by the way; reports of abusive practices from Kaplan have led to allegations of fraud: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/education/10kaplan.html> The Washington Post, of course, has editorialized in favor of its baby.)

<comment><USER19> This would seem to be especially true of "for profit" colleges. There was a pretty depressing tv special (frontline?) on it...They sell hopes and dreams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's time for youth to blaze new path to employment.

19 years old like me are trying to build a living on the internet by writing, programming, and selling ads. It's a lot of hard work to find clients and more scary when you're trying to deliver the work.

<comment><USER26> Buy an Arduino and start building robots. IMHO, there's a long, rewarding career there.

<comment><USER25> I don't have such capital but I have around 600ish dollars worth of saving(In an another currency!) that's earned through hard work.

Hopefully, the network of clients I am building will grows to such portion that I am able to find constant work as well charge more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The fact is than even the educated kids are unemployable. We constantly try to hire graduate developers here in London but the fact is that most of those kids are simply unemployable. They have impressive degrees from the best universities, but I simply can't hire someone who can't code a simple Fibonacci algorithm at the whiteboard in the interview room. In the language of their choice. I'd even accept an only marginally working solution with a few bugs. Still, most of them just can't do it. They don't even know how to start.

Universities simply don't prepare kids for the needs of the industry. After 3-5 years of higher education, many of the graduates can't solve even the most basic programming problems. I suspect that this must be the case in other professions as well. Something has to be done about the completely defective higher education systems.

<comment> mkr-hn I was fortunate in community college because the instructor for my major (Linux admin) liked to spend large parts of class time telling stories from working in the IT industry.

Many interesting stories from dealing with MS audits in a mixed source environment.

The most interesting classes were those where he had us solve a real world problem (like researching and preparing an executive summary for a purchase).

Or the time he mangled all the computers while we were on break and had us troubleshoot them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Luckily the soil is fertile: All over the world, the hittistes and shabab atileen, NEETs and freeters and boomerang kids are hungry for a chance to thrive._

Hmm, but how hungry? Compared to say people who came of age in the 40s or 50s? I'm not sure hungry is the right word. Restless maybe. Peckish.

<comment><USER3> The Americans at least that I know who came of age in the 50s as anything close to middle-class weren't very hungry at all. They lived in a world of corporate jobs for life, defined-benefit pensions, comprehensive employer- provided health-care with no deductibles/copays/exclusions, low unemployment, etc. Even blue-collar workers had quite strong unions, high pay, and great pensions/healthcare in the 50s.

Granted, if you meant coming of age in 1947 in Poland, that'd be another matter.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, the jobs paid for a much lower standard of living than today, the health insurance would pay a doctor to tell you "you have terminal cancer", and all of this was only available to white males.

(Meanwhile, a terrorist group with millions of members was setting off about 20 bombs a year plus assorted lynchings and other acts of violence. The response by law enforcement was mainly gun control targeted at the _victims_ of the terrorist group.)

The world of Mad Men is awesome if you get to be Don Draper. For everyone else, it sucked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The government should create jobs to solve this problem. Unemployment is cruel and inefficient. Prioritizing reducing the national debt over employment is short sighted.

</comment><comment><USER30> Things which cannot continue, won't.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anther problem is the education that people choose. The world is full of "VCR repairmen", while everyone is using disposable bluray players.

I see it again and again, students pick silly, simple or just useless degrees, such as

        * philosophy
        * international relations (every single one of those wants to work for the UN, maybe 0.001% ends up there).
        * arts, all kinds
        * history (how many historians do we really need)

Don't get me wrong, they are interesting and entertaining, but just not very helpful when it comes to being employable.

<comment><USER32> Not to troll, but Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Leonardo DaVinci etc. were all technical people with understanding of philosophy, art, history, mathematics. Obviously these are cherry-picked examples, but having only technical knowledge isn't a great solution either.

<comment><USER31> I never said anything about technical only knowledge. I myself took a few art classes, and enjoyed them.

What I said is that people pick these majors, and then we see these crazy unemployment stats. Most of these unemployed people are not qualified to do anything that society is willing to pay money for.

<comment><USER32> OK. Just making sure. Sometimes "the arts" get too much of a bad wrap here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm sure many people who are unemployed are unemployed through no fault of their own. But...

... the other day I checked out a site for finding tech/design-oriented interns. There were 50 listed in my city (Philadelphia)... and most of the eye-catching descriptions the interns had written for themselves were things like:

* "Coming soon"

* "19 years old"

* "I'm a recent graduate of the University of Miami"

* "My name is Brittany"

* "My name is [redacted] and I am a 19-year-old Korean-American student."

This was the only part of the profile that was really custom to them, other than checking off a list of skills & available times/dates.

Don't even get me started on the usernames they chose to present to potential employers. (Musicbabi_87?!)

Their chances are pretty much zero. Obviously nobody taught these kids (and, in a few cases, adults) anything at all about professionalism or the fact that when they take a job, their job is to serve the employer. And they obviously haven't been reading books on their own that would teach them that.

Only a precious few mentioned anything that would tell me what I'd get out of the deal, how they could help me/be useful to me. Almost none even expressed any interests or goals of their own.

So, obviously, I'm not hiring any of them -- when I would have liked to. They got in their own way. This is, sadly, their fault.</comment>


Silicon Alley Insider goes Slinkset. - <AUTHOR> http://slinksetmatch.com/2008/09/08/silicon-alley-insider-goes-slinkset/ <comment><USER2> I have a feeling this is has been talked to death, but i haven't seen it.

What is the range for core-member group size for which Slinkset/Reddit/HN - like is advisable. Naturally, there's a lot of squeeze room depending on the activity of member but... Anyone have upper/lower limits?

<comment><USER3> That's a really good question. We've got some data to that end, but don't have a definitive answer yet.

My sense so far is that surprisingly few people can make it work, but the interaction changes a bit. With everyone using feed readers the site can move at much slower pace than something like news.yc. We use slinkset internally w/ just 2 people and it's helpful, but again it's a slightly different format (e.g. we disable voting for that).

<comment><USER2> I see what you mean. Naturally, there are various uses for the system, especially with minor variations. But what I really meant was as a social news site.

BTW, do you have any sense of ceilings?</comment></comment></comment>


The Local-global Flip, Or, "the Lanier Effect" - <AUTHOR> http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip <comment><USER2> Lanier is fascinating to me in that his perspective seems so far askew from my own that the exercise of even trying to understand what he's saying is necessarily broadening.

 _If you had talked to anyone involved in it twenty years ago, everyone would have said that the ability for people to inexpensively have access to a tremendous global computation and networking facility ought to create wealth. This ought to create wellbeing; this ought to create this incredible expansion in just people living decently, and in personal liberty. And indeed, some of that's happened. Yet if you look at the big picture, it obviously isn't happening enough, if it's happening at all._

Is he really questioning whether the internet has created wealth?

His whole section on automated cars is well trodden (as he notes, since Aristotle) and his position basically seems to land on Ludditism.

 _Because in every example in which there have been very large numbers of people who were just taken care of by a society, it eventually breaks._

But we've also never really had a society that had that much excess labor before, have we?

I also think he misrepresents the current convservative stance. It's not "Don't you dare support my dialysis, don't you dare support my nursing home expenses! That reduces my liberty! I need my freedom and my options." It's more like: "don't take my money, I'll spend however much I need to and that will align incentives in the most efficient way to provide the optimal outcomes." (Not that I agree with that, necessarily, I just object to the mischaracterization.)

He also sets up a false dichotomy between liberty of expression and economic prosperity which I don't really understand.

 _To me, a lot of the culture of youth seems to be using the Internet as a form of denialism about their reduced prospects. They're like, "Well, sure we can't get a job and we need to live with our parents, but we can tweet", or something. "Let us tweet!"_

I mean, I guess I sort of recognize the phenomenon, but I don't think internet use has a causal relationship with economic prospects. We would be using the internet, and we would be proponents of internet freedom regardless of our job prospects. (Note: I am employed, married, and live in my 'own' house.)

The meat of the post seems to be his ideas on people selling their information. They're interesting, and I empathize with his desire to keep the middle class alive, but I'm not sure how this works.

 _Google has done something that might even be more destructive of the middle class, which is they've said, "Well, since Moore's law makes computation really cheap, let's just give away the computation, but keep the data." And that's a disaster.

What's happened now is that we've created this new regimen where the bigger your computer servers are, the more smart mathematicians you have working for you, and the more connected you are, the more powerful and rich you are. (Unless you own an oil field, which is the old way.) II benefit from it because I'm close to the big servers, but basically wealth is measured by how close you are to one of the big servers, and the servers have started to act like private spying agencies, essentially.

With Google, or with Facebook, if they can ever figure out how to steal some of Google's business, there's this notion that you get all of this stuff for free, except somebody else owns the data, and they use the data to sell access to you, and the ability to manipulate you, to third parties that you don't necessarily get to know about. The third parties tend to be kind of tawdry._

But the kind of information he's talking about, stuff about me, my interests, and my browsing habits, are all basically worthless to me. I can't do anything with that information. But when Google aggregates that information with everyone else's it becomes hugely useful, and worth a ton of money. That's a bunch of wealth they created. From nothing. And what do they do with that wealth? They make amazing things that make the world better for everyone. It seems obtuse not to see that.

 _It's funny to say that because I'll often get a lot of pushback and they'll say, "No, no, no. There are all these people who are being empowered by all this stuff on the Internet that's free", and I'll say, "Well, show me. Where's all the wealth? Where's the new middle class of people who are doing this?" They don't exist. They just aren't there. We're losing the middle class, and we should be saving it. We should be strengthening it._

See above.

I agree that this seems to have a concentrative effect on power, i.e. the rich (Google engineers, financial sector, and the like) get more, the middle class get poorer. But I'm not sure his prescription, Ted Nelson's "marketplace of ideas" is viable.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be the first in line to try to make a living from my "head and heart," but I don't believe it works.

His idea for a car with a better UI instead of a driverless car sounds _a lot_ like a horseless carriage vs. a car.

 _If we enter into the kind of world that Google likes, the world that Google wants, it's a world where information is copied so much on the Internet that nobody knows where it came from anymore, so there can't be any rights of authorship. However, you need a big search engine to even figure out what it is or find it. They want a lot of chaos that they can have an ability to undo._

I disagree with this premise. Google wants maximum idea _generation_ for this reason, not maximum copying. I don't think people care about authorship. People care about getting the correct idea. And Google is better when the ideaspace is larger. Copying is irrelevant.

 _It should be pointed out that the original design of the Internet didn't have even a copy function, because it originally just seemed stupid. If you have a network, why would you copy something? That's just inefficiency. I'm convinced the reason copying happened on the Internet was because Xerox PARC was so important as an early supporter of computers, that for Alan Kay to go to the Xerox people and say, "Oh, by the way, copying itself, even in the abstract will become obsolete because of computer networks", would have just blown their minds. We ended up with copying on a network.

But anyway, when you have copying on a network, you throw out information because you lose the provenance, and then you need a search engine to figure it out again. That's part of why Google can exist. Ah, the perversity of it all just gets to me._

Copying is rampant on the internet because the benefits of redundancy outweigh the drawbacks of (provenance) data loss.

I think 3d printing that can replace low-end manufacturing is still a long way off.

 _The use of networks can turn you from a local player in a larger system into your own global system._

I don't understand that statement. At all.

 _But Google's thing is not advertising because it's not a romanticizing operation. It doesn't involve expression. It's a link. It's just a little tiny minimalist link, and basically what they're selling is not advertising, they're not selling romance, they're not selling communication, what they're doing is selling access. What they're doing is they're saying, "You give us money, we give you access to these people, and then what you do with them is up to you." It's a gate keeping function. It's an arbiter of access. It's turning connections instead of being open into being paid. That's essentially what Google does. "We'll own the data, you'll pay for access to other people, but we'll give a whole ton of other stuff for free." And then it leads to this very strange schizophrenia, I'd say, where you think you're the user, but you're the used, or you're the product, and then you end up doing all this stuff to control your online presence, and your online reputation, and people become obsessed with that._

This resonates as true, but I don't see how this is a distinction from traditional advertising. They were also selling access, you were also the product then. The difference to me is that that's not the only avenue for access. In fact, Google embodies the other one, which is actually much bigger, and it's a basically democratic one: search.

His main point that the means for a middle class to sustain itself are disappearing is valid and well known, I think. His solution is to monetize ideas. But I'm not sure how that works.

The problem with direct monetization of ideas is that it's friction, which reduces the overall system-wide proliferation of ideas, which also hinders more idea-generation. Bad all around. Doesn't help the middle class.

I think the thing about ideas is that you don't know how good one is until you already have it. And that's why advertising works well with it. Not only because you can see it with little cost (having to see an ad), but also because it's freely shareable, which means good ones get spread more, and make more money. In a sense, our ideas are already monetized by ads. I don't think ads are the only way, either, though. I think kickstarter is an interesting model that would work for ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Lanier is fascinating to me in that his perspective seems so far askew from my own that the exercise of even trying to understand what he's saying is necessarily broadening._

Yes! Not that he's _so_ far afield of what I might think, but sufficiently contrary to my own opinions while at the same time offering plausible reasons for his point of view.

Even if I'm ultimately unpersuaded at least I've had reason to reconsider some things.</comment></comment>


'MAYBE IT'S a PIECE OF DUST' - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macbook-keyboard <comment><USER2> HN thread on the linked blog post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've also found the new 2017 MacBook w/ Touchbar keyboard to be extremely problematic. Many of the time the keys that I press don't work and I have to press them again. Tried compressed air, but to no avail :(

Meanwhile my 2012 MacBook still has a perfectly functional keyboard and has never had these sorts of issues before...

All on a brand new $3k laptop. This computer has caused me so many problems.

<comment><USER4> What on earth would cause you to buy a $3,000 laptop? Are you a mechanical engineer?

<comment><USER5> Well, if he works at a place like I do - my company pays for all of my hardware and software so I never take cost into consideration. My boss wouldn't approve it if I got too outrageous though ($3000 would not be considered outrageous).

<comment><USER6> All factors considered, that's like the cost of one week's work. And you'll probably use it for 2-3 years, 5 days a week, so around $20 per work day.

<comment><USER7> By that math, many companies would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year if they could save $14 per employee per day in laptop costs.

<comment><USER5> Heh, I work for a Fortune 150 company and almost everyone has a macbook pro (at least judging by what I see in meetings and walking around campus). I can't even imagine how much would be saved if everyone used cheap Wintel machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We seem to be at this awkward stage in the simplification of technology. Consumers no longer want to engage in maintenance and minor repairs—peterwwillis above points out using compressed air on your keyboard and taking care of your mouseball used to be standard, and I remember slightly-but-not-very tech-savvy people adding RAM, swapping a hard drive, replacing a keyboard, etc. However, the reliability of devices hasn't quite reached the point where we can get away with zero maintenance.

Improving reliability is hard and this is HN, so I'm in favor of gently reminding consumers that a basic understanding of how things work is useful—in laptops, in cars, in home improvement. And I wish companies would make more maintainable and repairable products. I've been using old Thinkpads for years since I can replace individual parts that fail. I also bought an old Jeep Wrangler to learn how to do the same with cars.

<comment><USER9> > I remember slightly-but-not-very tech-savvy people adding RAM, swapping a > hard drive, replacing a keyboard, etc.

I'd argue those were still early adopters, a part of the 10% or even 5% of the world that owned a computer at the time.

<comment><USER10> It's getting increasingly difficult to swap those things as they are more and more soldered on or the case cant be opened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The thing that's notable here is that it's Daring Fireball calling Apple out here...

That aside, I'm glad I put one of the silicone skins (from Uppercase) over my keyboard from day 1 and leave it on 100% of the time. I mostly use an external keyboard anyway, but at least I feel somewhat protected.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Rarely has a negative word about any Apple product been written on Daring Fireball.

Normally the only reasons to read it is if you want to feel good about an Apple purchase you've already made.

<comment><USER13> > Agreed. Rarely has a negative word about any Apple product been written on > Daring Fireball.

I pulled these from the front page of DF today, 2017-10-18. While John Gruber clearly writes an abundance of positive Apple stories, your charactarization is inaccurate.

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM OF USB-C > USB-C is a dual disaster… Now that all modern Apple MacBooks are USB-C-only, USB-C's problems are MacBook problems, too. [https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of- usb-c](https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c)

IOS IS RIPE FOR PHISHING PASSWORD PROMPTS [https://krausefx.com/blog/ios- privacy-stealpassword-easily-g...](https://krausefx.com/blog/ios-privacy- stealpassword-easily-get-the-users-apple-id-password-just-by-asking)

IPHONE CHARGING TIMES BY CHARGER > I'm on the side that this is Apple cheaping out. [https://twitter.com/dwlz/status/917443870509715456](https://twitter.com/dwlz/status/917443870509715456)

Cultural Insularity and Apple TV > It's not enough to make a better set-top box. It has to be obviously better. I don't think Apple TV's current lineup makes that case. [https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/cultural_insularity_and_a...](https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/cultural_insularity_and_apple_tv)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Retire Ive, I've had enough with thin. There is no point in going further with this guy. I want a laptop with a mechanical keyboard.

<comment> amiga-workbench I don't think there is any sense in shrinking laptops any further, it's just compromising repairability, thermal management capacity, battery capacity and input device haptic feedback.

I miss socketed CPUs on laptops, I've upgraded the CPU in many of my old ThinkPads over the years to get some more life out of them. Of course, disposable computing is more profitable...

<comment><USER15> The only reason to stop shrinking laptops is that the physical UI can only get so small before UX suffers - and that includes making it thick enough to hold onto. Leverage that limit by continuing to shrink components so we can fill the remaining space with more battery.

They physical overhead (size, weight, cost) of socketed CPU/RAM/etc just isn't worth imposing on 99.99% of users who will never make use of that capability. This is exacerbated by the increased synergy of the components: a major part of Apple's success comes from managing the interconnectedness of all things, all carefully balanced for exact purposes - _not_ generalized for 3rd-party parts swapping (for which failures get blamed on Apple, not the cheap POS part you thought might work).

You want a lightweight high-quality device with long battery life? You're not going to get it with CPU sockets and access panels.

By now, most users have learned that computers ARE disposable: come end-of- life, vanishingly few will want to futz around with upgrading parts at cost of time spent, only to extend the life of a machine straining into obsolescence. We all dearly want to hang onto those old familiar machines, but fact is by the time a product hits that point you don't want something running the best of 5-year-old+ tech, you want the next generation with better everything.

I keep coming back to a rule of thumb: for something used heavily, daily, is it worth $X/day? An iPhone X over 3 years is $1/day. A robust MacBook used for work is certainly worth $3/day. Come practical end-of-life, it has more than paid for itself. ...and that's why Apple has made it so easy to switch up to a new machine, and abandoned notions of component upgrades. If coffee costs more during that time than the hardware in question, get a new one and sell/donate the old (making the switch even cheaper).

<comment> amiga-workbench System modularity allows me to be self reliant when it comes to my hardware conking out a day outside the warranty period. I simply will not be beholden to a third party for servicing. I will get the component next day delivered to me, or I will pull something out of my parts bin.

I'm grateful for the fact that if my motherboard kicks the bucket I can just unplug my SSD and read it in another computer, my data isn't lost.

This rat race of planned obsolescence and software bloat lighting a fire under consumers asses is getting very old. A piece of hardware is obsolete when I decide it is, not the manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I found it worrisome that Gruber's post is on top of HN rather than the original, much more informative post.

<comment><USER17> The original post is a day old now - it was discussed on HN in depth: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745)

I'd agree though that this Gruber post doesn't really add anything of note to the original post. I suppose the fact that even an Apple diehard like him is drawing attention to is worth noting, but that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've had my TBMBP for just over six months. Already had to flush out the keyboard with compressed air twice because of stuck keys. Apparently I'm one of the lucky ones, because that actually worked. I've had at least a dozen laptops before, every one more than twice as long, and _none_ of them have ever had this problem even once. ___Not even the super-cheap super-tiny netbooks_ __so don 't blame the technology. The technology to do better has existed for years. This is either shoddy design or shoddy manufacturing, and if I had to pay for this thing myself I'd be livid.

</comment><comment><USER19> If my $5 keyboard started inserting double spaces (without being flooded, or otherwise damaged), I would blame (and check) software, down to BIOS, before I thought it's a mechanical failure.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's what ya get for blindly buying everything Apple makes. The moment I checked out the keyboards on these new laptops in the Mac store was the moment I switched to Linux on Thinkpad.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm in no way a Apple Hater. I follow Apple blogs and listen Apple podcasts, I never get any work done during an Apple keynote and I've had 4 Macs, and Apple //e, countless iPods, iPhones, and iPads over the years.

But I can't for the life of me find anything appealing about any of Apple's Computer offering aside from the Retina iMacs.

The MacBooks just feel limiting to me compared to a good Windows laptop with multitouch trackpad. Currently I'm a fan of Dell's midrange and high end 2-n-1s

</comment><comment><USER22> I've actually had far more problems with my previous keyboard for my previous MBP (which was amazing for the 5 years I had it aside from a dead pixel I got 3 years in and the keyboard woes).

I would constantly break keys. Especially the arrow keys which were smaller. It was mind boggling to me that I was typing enough to have to replace keys. The new keyboard feels so much more robust and solid. I just wish I could put the touchbar into emoji mode after pressing a touchbar shortcut.

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't it important that we have like the number of failure out of the total? I mean, given a few millions laptops, it is almost guaranteed that some of them will go terribly wrong. If those who go wrong are very vocal, this might gives the impression that the Macbook Pro sucks.

I'm typing from the 2014Pro and it is the best keyboard my hands have been working on. I tried the 2016 at the Store but I don't think that is eligible for a review.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have macbook pro with touchbar. My letter B started behaving just as his space. Sometimes it would print twice on one hit, sometimes 0. I removed the button and cleaned everything and now it is fine.

</comment><comment><USER4> So buy a different computer?

I can't be the only person who remembers when a can of compressed air was a part of performance tuning, or when your mouse ball got its regular maintenance.

<comment><USER25> If a can of compressed air could have fixed the problem, this wouldn't be a problem. You should read the linked article, it's good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well apple has been cruising on past successes ever since Steve Jobs died in my opinion and it seemed to work just fine for them but they seem to be getting a bit lax in their QA these days.

Well that's the story of almost every major company though. They make a great splash become famous and big then they start slacking off and cutting corners to increase their profits as much as possible.

It takes quite a lot of conscious effort to not fall into this pitfall and not many companies can do it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Every time I see news like this one about Apple products and what seem like obvious defects, I can't help but imagine the same situation with Google or Microsoft as the party at fault.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure what you mean, but when you pay through the nose for "the best quality", this stuff matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can't just criticize Apple. Have some respect.

</comment><comment><USER30> I just manually fixed my mouse's scroll wheel middle click functionality from doing this 'double click' problem. You can take apart the switch and bend the spring a bit manually to get it back to shape. I don't know how the Mac keyboards work, but I'd be taking to Google to find a similar solution. Then again, my mouse was long out of warranty. Sad that the store assistants have to stupidly run through the diagnostic tests when that's obviously not the kind of problem here.

<comment><USER25> You should read the linked article. You can't remove the spacebar without breaking the mechanism. The solution to a broken spacebar is to replace the whole "top" of the computer which will cost $700 when out of warranty. That's why they ran so many diagnostic tests first.

<comment><USER30> Okay, sorry I read the article linked and not the article linked by the linked article that was hidden in the title of the first article. It was completely unclear to me that there even _was_ a second article; it looked like just a few paragraphs of mini-rant.

<comment><USER25> Yup, a good reason to observe the rule to only post original articles, and kill this one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joystick Bike - <AUTHOR> http://joystickbike.ch/ <comment><USER2> It does somehow not mention what problem it solves. Is it easier? Faster? When i first encountered these bikes (not to unusual in Switzerland) i assumed they are for people with physical disabilities.</comment>


ML more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images - <AUTHOR> http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspa0000098 <comment><USER2> This is the sort of thing that's really neat technologically but also scares me -- what happens when [insert homophobic government here] starts to use this sort of thing to persecute people?</comment>


Ask HN: Save my company please. Anyone needs Android dev? - <AUTHOR>

Waking up at 3:30am every day worrying about the future isn't fun. Getting a high blood pressure of 150 due to all the stress is terrifying. Yet it is what's happening to me right now and my doctor told me to rest. After tossing and turning in bed, I figured maybe I could beg some help here.
I started this company two years ago and we've launched a unique product for Android devs. Everything seemed to be moving towards a good direction: great co-founders, encouraging customer feedback, healthy services revenue. Things seemed particularly good when a big company knocked the door with an interest for acquisition. All of the sudden things fell through. I made a mistake in my financial numbers after hiring a new developer. Two projects that were supposed to kick off last week suddenly both went dark -- I'm basically running out of money in 2 months. The co-founder told me that he would have to find a job in two months if we can't make a living on this. I don't blame him. He's a good person and has helped me in many ways. I blame myself for poor planning and being overly optimistic (although I suppose, as entrepreneurs, we need to be optimistic in difficult situations?).
The funny thing is that we don't need a lot to survive. A $20K would buy me a few more months to fix up things. I'll talk to the bank tomorrow to see if we could get a loan of some sort.  I'll keep making new releases of the product and keep finding customers. I'll keep looking for projects. I'll do whatever it takes to make it work.
I'd appreciate any suggestions, comments and critics. What would you do if you were in my position? If you know anyone who needs Android dev, I'd be happy to help. Our main area is Android, but we can do general Java dev, Haskell, Ruby, and web dev (not as experienced as in Android).  Thanks for reading!
BTW: I'm posting on a new account as I still want the company to look good in public. I'd appreciate your understanding. <comment><USER2> I'm in no position to help you (sorry) but it sounds you could keep the company in life support by focusing on consulting - you'd be better off looking for referrals from your network.

If you have a "healthy services revenue", I guess a bank loan isn't out of the question, but you have to get a plan in place on how you're going to pay it.

Try not to stress too much, I know it's not easy. Maybe looking for alternatives and having a fallback plan will make you sleep easier (get a commitment/offer to hire you from someone?). Paying back 20k doesn't sound like the end of the world, neither does going back to a job. Can the project be put on hold while you build up some money? (I guess you'll have to fire your employees and that must suck) Can you maintain the project while you work a job to sustain it?

I wish you good luck, and take care of yourself first. The money issues can be fixed, health problems aren't that easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words, GFischer! I'll try to keep my life balanced. It's just become a bit difficult lately. Hope you all the best!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please read this (patio11 and Thomas Ptacek comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140231)

There are also very valuable advices from both in another thread, I'll keep trying to find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link man. I've read and re-read those comments. That's a goldmine of great advice. Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why can't you lay off any employees?

I know thats a shitty thing to do but it seems like your best choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I can't. I made personal commitments to them that we had the money to pay them, due to my faulty financial numbers of course. I feel particularly bad to break my personal promises...

I definitely learned a lesson though.

<comment><USER5> Are you being serious? IF you can't afford the developer you HAVE TO lay them off, give them an extra week's severance pay or whatever, but give them and yourself a chance to move forward

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure if I absolutely can't pay them, that's what I have to do. But I'm just trying to make it work. I'm trying to squeeze all possibilities in the final month or so to make it work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lets exchange email and talk, maybe we can help each other out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks John! Could I please have your email address?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _I'm posting on a new account as I still want the company to look good in public._

Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying. This is because I don't want the company to have a public "almost-broken" tag and I still have high hope in what we are doing.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER7> The point is that it is horrible that it is even needed.</comment></comment></comment>


Jetbrains 2016 year in review - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2017/02/24/jetbrains-2016-in-review/ <comment><USER2> Made a lot of developers mad but I think it worked out well for Jetbrains. I use their stuff, can't complain.

<comment><USER3> Even though I have licenses for PyCharm, PHPStorm and CLion I find myself using Visual Studio Code more and more. One single IDE is just way more productive for me than 3.

Their products are very good but I'd be a little worried if I were Jetbrains.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried IDEA? I used to jump between their products but after getting IDEA you can stay in just 1.</comment></comment></comment>


The lawyer taking on Uber and the rest of the on-demand economy - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/118401/meet-the-lawyer-taking-on-uber-and-the-on-demand-economy/ <comment><USER3> This right here is one of the driving forces behind American corporatism. While these cases are always launched claiming to be on the side of the angels, they ultimately ignore that all that extra legal overhead is not free, and only the currently large companies will be able to manage it, essentially barring any smaller competitors from entering the market. If a court rules that Uber drivers must be employees, then Uber can easily sue any competitors that try to enter the market unless they do the same. Uber will be able to prevent competitors from receiving the same advantages they did.

Also, look at:

> Deep-pocketed companies like Uber, which has raised nearly $5 billion in > venture capital since launching, could surely afford the additional expense > of putting drivers on its payroll.

The implications of this are decidedly harmful to both consumers and drivers. Once you set this precedent, it will only be the deep-pocketed companies that can afford to put drivers on their payroll. This is especially problematic in the States, where in spite of a substantial amount of their federal budget being for healthcare, lacks a comprehensive public healthcare system, so employee benefits can be quite expensive.

I've recently incorporated in Ontario, and working as/hiring people on contract is very easy. A big part of that is because, apart from issues relating to workplace safety, we're not responsible for paying for healthcare services for people who do work for us. It was also very easy to leave my cushy corporate job for a startup, because I didn't have to worry I'd be made destitute if I had to pay for a few nights in a hospital were I to contract a really bad flu or get hit crossing the street.

More and more I see the US turning into a country where you _must_ work for a large, established corporation. Lawyers like this are just helping those already on top stay there, at the expense of those in the middle or bottom.

<comment><USER4> That's kind of an entitled attitude. Society puts certain obligations on businesses, and providing certain benefits to employees is one of them. If you're too small to meet those obligations, then you shouldn't get a free pass on them. That just leaves the workers out in the cold.[1] I'm certainly willing to entertain the notion that we should pay for those benefits with taxes instead of pushing the burden on employers, but that's a separate argument.

[1] Although I'm actually not convinced the premise of Uber drivers being employees is correct.

<comment><USER3> _American_ society puts those obligations on businesses, and those obligations have created an economy that rewards those who are either already wealthy, or the backing of those who are. This is very directly giving more power to the rich. I don't see how criticising the very necessity of health benefits, one of the biggest costs of hiring employees, is at all a separate argument. There are many other countries which don't have such strict requirements around employee classification, yet are still serious about important obligations such as workplace safety and protections against harassment.

I don't want to spend my morning dumping on the US, but I'm amazed at just how often your poor and very poor are convinced to support causes that only help the very rich.

<comment><USER5> Don't the very richest companies in the US tend to lobby against employer health care mandates? Wouldn't Walmart, for instance, be much better off in a single-payer system?

<comment><USER3> Walmart was very in-favour of the PPACA, at least in favour of it applying to other companies. In practice, they have teams of lawyers and accountants making sure they pay as little as possible. It's the SMBs, on the other hand, who now pay twice: once to meet their obligation to their own employees, and again to pay for government assistance for all the Walmart employees we expected would be receiving company benefits.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/12/09/walmart- bai...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/12/09/walmart-bails-on- obamacare-sticks-taxpayers-with-employee-healthcare-costs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An analog that sprang to my mind early in the article, and briefly raised with the comparison to Craigslist, but which I feel is more apt than Craigslist: eBay.

Some points:

* eBay can ban a seller for not following the rules.

* eBay absolutely requires its sellers to earn revenue.

* eBay can set expectations and incentivize behavior with its various seller-partner programs at different levels.

* An eBay seller may depend on eBay for their livelihood.

I am not proposing this as a slam-dunk against the case, but I'd love to see some discussion on these points.

I will state clearly and unambiguously, though, that I do not believe Uber should have to treat all of its drivers as employees. This does not imply that I am opposed to discussion or hearing opposing viewpoints.

Ninja Edit: Typoes (grammar-oes?).

<comment><USER7> The article points out some aspects that make this a not so great analogy - <USER2> particular, companies like Uber set the rates, and put the burden of costs on the workers for stuff like gas, wear and tear, etc. Uber in particular is taking half of the tips according to the article, which sounds unethical.

My only opinion on this is that the balance should probably be tilted a little more in the workers' favor for these arrangements, although I am not sure full categorization as an employee would be the correct approach.

<comment><USER6> >The article points out some aspects that make this a not so great analogy - in particular, companies like Uber set the rates, and put the burden of costs on the workers for stuff like gas, wear and tear, etc. Uber in particular is taking half of the tips according to the article, which sounds unethical.

These are very good points and I am glad you brought them up.

I think the rates and tips are very valid concerns here, but categorically different from one another.

I think that offloading costs to drivers still fits the eBay analogy, though it is certainly weaker. A seller must store goods, prepare them for shipping, and in many cases add value to the product in some way (e.g. refurbishing is common, which includes cost for all related equipment). Again, not a perfect analogy, but offloading costs to the seller/driver seems to bear some resemblance between the two.

Setting the rates is a strong argument in favor of a relationship more toward the traditional employee end of the spectrum. I think I need to think about this more.

As to the tips, I glossed over that section so I am glad you've raised it here. I do not know the exact details of the agreement between Uber and drivers as regards tips, but this seems at first glance to be a pretty severe violation of _any_ relationship between driver and Uber. I agree this needs to be addressed, and a class-action suit does seem appropriate here. I think this can and should be viewed independently from any classification as partner/employee.

>My only opinion on this is that the balance should probably be tilted a little more in the workers' favor for these arrangements, although I am not sure full categorization as an employee would be the correct approach.

I think you're right on this point. I am still unsure as to what I think is best to achieve this. My initial reaction is to ensure that there is an environment where competitors are likely; I believe a strict requirement on the type of relationship between company and driver will only hamper this (limit the type of relationships => limit the viable business models => limit the possible solution space).

<comment><USER8> I think the real point of challenging Uber is this: they can either set the rates or they can push the cost of materials on to drivers, but they can't do both.

That is, they must either embrace the full employee or full contractor package, and not just take the parts they like of each with none of the liabilities.

<comment><USER6> Do you think that it is really that binary?

I think that this quote from the article is apt:

>U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who is overseeing the Lyft case, said that existing labor law doesn't map well with these companies' business models. Lyft drivers don't seem exactly like employees or independent contractors, he wrote in his motion. "The jury in this case will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes,"

Just because we have two clearly delineated buckets to drop people into doesn't mean that these accurately describe those individuals.

<comment><USER8> Running a business that relies on questionable legal intrepretations doesn't necessarily have to be something we support.

That Uber set themselves up in such a way that they can't relate to their workers in a clearly legal way is suspicious -- which is exactly the accusation: they're dodging liabilities they should have by making up their own kind of square peg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Proponents of on-demand startups argue the Craigslist side of the analogy. In their view, these workers do have more independent agency than a typical employee, and therefore are properly classified as contractors. After all, Uber drivers and Homejoy cleaners aren't required to work a certain number of hours per week, and they set their own schedules, even though some companies try to steer them to busy times by incentivizing them with "surge pricing."_

I have been an employee without being required to work a set amount of hours per week, is called a zero hours contract and didn't make me any less of an employee, it just meant it was really difficult to plan anything.

<comment><USER10> Zero hours contracts are just another method that companies use to avoid paying employee benefits. This is precisely the type of behaviour that is being targeted by this lawyer. You have the responsibilities of being an employee but the company does not have a corresponding duty to you as an employer.

<comment><USER9> I had a funny conversation when I left after they repeatedly failed to provide working equipment while still wanting the job done.

I told them I wouldn't be coming back and they told me that my contract required me to give notice and that I would have to turn up to work for two more weeks on whichever shifts they wanted.

I pointed out that the contract also stated that I had zero hours contracted and that shifts had to be agreed on a week by week basis, so if they really wanted I could give them 2 weeks notice but for that 2 weeks I would not be agreeing to do any more than the hours they had written on the contract.

I also asked if they could go and count them for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Actually it seems to me like she is utterly correct and Uber is fucked if there's any justice in our legal system.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love how lawyers and the gov assume what my preferences are and what's best for me. I work as an independent contractor and I don't want any benefits from the company I'm providing services. I want to provide my services and get paid. That's the only benefit I want.

And this: "..but the company also gave them strict guidelines for participation which made them look like employees according to the IRS's 20-prong test. Uber screened and trained its drivers, and drivers could get deactivated by Uber for having their rating dip below what local managers set as a cut-off, for not accepting a certain percentage of trip requests, or for customer complaints."

How are those strict guidelines? So now contractors are exempt from any scrutiny in the services they provide? Makes no sense. Then Uber would be getting sued for putting passengers at risk by having zero QA.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Fiona Ramsey, the director of communications for Peers... added: "We worry > the share economy will cease to exist if these cases are successful."

> That worry may be exaggerated, however. Deep-pocketed companies like Uber, > which has raised nearly $5 billion in venture capital since launching, could > surely afford the additional expense of putting drivers on its payroll.

What a silly argument! Raising a ton of money in venture capital doesn't mean that the business model itself is profitable, and in the long run that's what matters. If the profitability of the entire business model is built on illegal classification of workers, then the model is a failure (within this legal framework, at least) and won't work.

Either change the law or change the model, but something will have to change.

</comment><comment><USER14> I actually like this lawsuit, as if I'm honest, I don't think Uber/Lyft, etc. should have gone the contract-service offering route. I think they might have been just as well off as a middleware provider, connecting customers with existing cab services, and offering their tools as a SaaS.

It's interesting to think about how different the world would be right now if Uber had gone into software sales as opposed to attempting to be a cab competitor.

I realize the inventors largely created the service as an alternative/competitor to cabs, which they disliked for various reasons. It's still interesting to think about what could have been, if only they'd been more interested in fixing the logistics of cab companies than "inventing an industry".

If this attorney is ultimately successful, I can easily see Uber/Lyft's business model morphing as a result. I don't think there's enough profit in their business if they have make all their contractors W-2 workers.

</comment><comment><USER15> The thing is Uber drivers _are_ independent contractors. The ability to work whenever the hell you want or to drop into any city and make money, at will, are fundamental motivators to driving for Uber. Regular benefits means minimum regular work hours. When that's it play it completely changes Uber's marketplace and value-add.

<comment><USER16> In the article it states that drivers have been fired for not taking a certain percentage of passengers. While it isn't a strict hours, it is firing someone for not meeting their determined amount of work.

As she says these companies are square pegs that are trying to be forced into round holes. Uber drivers are not normal independent contractors, but nor are they full employees. I really like Uber, but forcing employees to pay for gas, maintenance, insurance, etc is abusing their position. There needs to be a reclassification that can work for the on demand companies. Place these employees somewhere in between and require certain things be met, maybe pay for gas whilst they are driving passengers, or a stipend for maintenance costs.

<comment><USER17> > In the article it states that drivers have been fired for not taking a > certain percentage of passengers. While it isn't a strict hours, it is > firing someone for not meeting their determined amount of work.

Drivers are only fired for not taking a certain percentage of rides offered while the driver is logged in and active. That's an _enormous_ distinction.

Drivers don't have be active, and they can go inactive at any time. In fact, over half of the drivers with whom I've ridden are logged into both Uber and Lyft while waiting for a fare, and then log out of the other app when they accept a fare from one. (Yes, I quiz my drivers on the particulars of driving for these services and keep track of what they tell me).

The whole point of threatening to fire (and actually firing) drivers for not meeting acceptance rates seems to be to incentivize them to log out during the times they aren't actually willing to take a fare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
      If cases like Liss-Riordan's are successful, on-demand
      companies would have to pay overtime, deductions from
      wages, and, in California, the expenses incurred by their
      service providers. Those costs would mount into the
      millions, and proponents of the on-demand economy worry
      that they could force successful companies out of business.

Surely taxes and expenses still have to be paid, and the "independent contractors" set their prices accordingly?

I mean, either Uber pays an independent contractor $10, they pay $2 in tax and $3 in expenses and end up with $5 in their pocket; or Uber pays out $2 for tax, $3 for expenses, and pays the employee $5. In both cases, Uber pays $10 total and the driver takes home $5.

I assume Uber's business model doesn't rely on contractors tax-dodging or skimping on vehicle maintenance!

So why should they worry about the reclassification putting them out of business?

<comment><USER19> > I assume Uber's business model doesn't rely on contractors tax-dodging or > skimping on vehicle maintenance!

I'm not sure that's a good assumption.

Nobody is valuing taxi companies at $40b. Part of why they're so appealing from an investment perspective is that Uber's model is a heads-I-win-tails- you-lose proposition. Any time money gets made, Uber gets a big cut. Costs and most downside risks are transferred to the drivers.

That includes risks that the capital costs (that is, buying the cars) and the maintenance costs aren't really justified by the revenues. It also includes the risk that there are too many drivers available.

If I were in Uber's shoes, I would worry about the defensibility of the business model. At least here in SF, drivers often participate in multiple services. For consumers, switching is as easy as installing a new app. If Uber is consistently more expensive, then I could imagine a lot of people switching. One way to keep costs low is to screw the workers as much as possible, and pretending that employees are contractors is a pretty popular way of screwing workers.

<comment><USER20> _Nobody is valuing taxi companies at $40b_

A legal Uber already exists (in London): it's called Addison Lee. Smartphone app and everything. It's worth £300M, not $40Bn!

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- london-22230868](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22230868)

<comment><USER21> Addison lee had 4500 drivers at their time of sale. I don't think the number of uber drivers is disclosed, but it is at least 162,000 active drivers as of this past December: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/22/n...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/22/now- we-know-many-drivers-uber-has-and-how-much-money-theyre-making%E2%80%8B/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Just because your services are dispatched through a smartphone doesn't make you a technology company."

</comment><comment><USER23> > If Uber had indeed misclassified its drivers, the company's entire business > model was built on a legal mistake.

Uber's business model is based on violating regulations.

</comment><comment><USER21> The opening lines are crazy. The moment she heard about the app, before she knew anything about it, she had the idea "to put them out of business"? That doesn't seem like the behavior of an altruistic person. Shouldn't she have, you know, researched the structure of uber before deciding that she wants to destroy them? How would she know that the employment status of the drivers from her friend saying "You have to see this"?</comment>


How our tribute to "The Hacker Way" pissed off a Facebook designer - <AUTHOR> http://elweb.co/hacking/how-our-tribute-to-the-hacker-way-pissed-off-a-facebook-designer/

<comment><USER3> Hey.

As the hacker behind the version at <http://print.imaj.es/> \- I figured I'd share my response here too.

Ben's response is understandable - designers and hackers alike are proud of their creations and often are quick and strong-willed in defending their work.

However, the project that he's been running internally at FB itself aped the original British Ministry of Information project during wartime - the keep calm and carry on meme.

Ben's sentiment to keep focused is good. It's so good that when I saw it, I felt a resonance, a reminder that I should be shipping - so that I wanted to right there and then, make it, produce it, ship it.

So I went to work with my (legal) copies of illustrator and photoshop, and crafted my version. (see it here: <http://print.imaj.es/products/stay- focused>).

The comparison ends here, though. I took the sentence, sure.

But my process is letterpress, with really awesome paper, all made by hand (by me) locally.

So, I think at this point there's a valid conversation about what is art, what is originality, and how that can be defined - my work can easily be seen as derivative, implied.

I don't make a comparison here with Andy Warhol (who's work will far outstrip anything I'll ever make creatively), but Ben's argument here extends to the notion that Warhol's Campbell's soup work is theft; whereas many others (myself included) see it as a valid expression of the modernity the cans represented. I see the poster as a valid expression of the notion of being a developer-entrepreneur, of needing to keep on the track and ship - a mantra we can all live by.

Ben accused me of theft, suggesting I should donate profits to charity. He used language such as this being a rip-off, and worse.

I have thought about it and frankly I don't see it as theft, but as the normal course of art. Theft would be to make it and not reference the original - <USER2> ignore the ancestry and pretend it doesn't exist.

And, for the record, I'll donate any profits to charity- if there are any. As it stands, there's little chance the project will even get printed, as there is not yet sufficient orders.

<comment><USER4> So @benbarry made some cool posters. Solid idea. Good job buddy. But seriously, everyone involved in this needs to contemplate the ridiculousness of these whiny teenaged first world problems. Print your posters. You can't copyright text on a page.

<comment><USER5> "You can't copyright text on a page."

uh... what? Of course you can.

Granted, Fair Use may or may not come into play depending upon the length of the text being reused, but "text on a page" is exactly what copyright was invented for in the first place.

<comment><USER6> > Granted, Fair Use may or may not come into play depending upon the length of > the text being reused

Sort of. Judging by a cursory glance at the USPTO indicates that there's no real hard-and-fast rule on just how much you can use, legally, before copyright kicks in. It's really something that has to be decided on a per-case basis:

<http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html>

In short: You can copyright text on a page. That much is obvious--that's why we have copyright, as you pointed out, but it doesn't just depend on length. It depends on presentation, typography, stylistic decisions, and so many other things that this particular situation is probably a legal gray area. That said, I very much doubt a judge would be willing to hear this, and I seriously doubt the designer would bother himself with pestering Facebook to take it to court.

Another argument worth considering is this: At what point does it become copyright and at what point does it become protected speech?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Article A: Geeks super pissed off about someone daring to copy their work

Article B: Nerds insisting that content producers are too dumb to understand that piracy is just a marketing channel.

(repeat ad nauseum)

<comment><USER8> Article C: Wiseasses that don't distinguish between the ethics of copying and the ethics of (enforcing) copyright.

(stop repeating, please)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The key to successfully using the Internet is to ignore people that type in all caps. Everyone hates everything; no matter what you do, someone is going to claim that it is ruining their life. The key is to ignore them and do what you think is right.

Making a sign that you saw in a photograph is not much different from sticking a clever caption on a picture of Homer Simpson. No, you didn't create the sign or the Homer Simpson character. But that doesn't mean it's not cool or funny.

</comment><comment><USER10> Am I missing something here? Are they mad that they use their tag line, "Stay focused & keep shipping"? Because the design of the actual poster is different.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's what they're mad about. It's the Internet. People are mad about everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a designer, I am impressed with how graciously Collazo handled the situation, and disappointed that he had to go to such lengths to satisfy Barry.

I'm hoping that the inherent bluntness of Twitter exaggerated Barry's response; the poster being sold was a different layout & typeface, not a "straight ripoff".

I'm not saying Barry doesn't have a case, just that if I were in his shoes I wouldn't have reacted in the same way in the least. He's reinforcing a stereotype of designers that I'm not particularly proud of.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately he also replied in a similar fashion on his FB page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The ever-present danger of assuming intent rather than establishing it directly. Sites like Twitter seem to have an uncanny ability to enable a person to shove their foot directly in their mouth.

</comment><comment><USER13> i can't even see the problem here if they were selling them for $0 profit. let's assume for a second they sold them for $5 each and that is the actual cost of production. would ben show the same hostility to individuals who spent $5 to make the poster for themselves?

that said, i'd think it was a silly response even if they were selling it for profit. do you really want to focus your creative energy defending your authorship of a white poster board with red lettering?

<comment><USER14> Promoting their own event is not without self-interest, even if the poster sales aren't directly profitable.

Also, it's not authorship over "red on white" as a concept, it's authorship over this specific combination of type, size, layout, & copy that implies _association_ with Facebook. If they just wanted to maintain the message, and not the association, they wouldn't have kept the visual style. Implying an association (with Facebook, or Ben) that isn't really there is the dishonest part.

<comment><USER13> no one, for all intents and purposes, would associate these signs with facebook.

<comment><USER14> And why wouldn't they? They're explicitly an homage to a photo that hundreds of thousands of people (especially those in the startup scene) saw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This Barry guy is seriously mad about a sign using his unoriginal slogan?

Here is a solution:

I release the following to the public domain:

STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP SHIPPING

There you go, just copy and paste this into your design program of choice, pick a big font, and send it to the printers.

Crisis averted

</comment><comment><USER8> The most astonishing part in this whole story seems to me the fact that people apparently think that it is a good idea to hang "inspirational" slogans in uppercase on the walls of a modern tech company, in a way that is clearly not meant ironically.

I would run like hell from a company that did this.

<comment><USER16> hah! Yes!

Better to have read:

IPO TIME.

YOU JOB IS AT RISK.

WORK HARDER.

<comment><USER6> Seeing your post brings the following to mind:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't kinko's handle fairly large prints? Seems like it shouldn't be that hard or expensive to print off a large sheet of paper with some big words in red Impact.

<comment><USER18> Do you not see this as immoral and disrespectful to the original artist?

<comment><USER17> Not really. As far as I can tell, the original artist wasn't selling his works, right? And apologies in advance to all the designers reading this, but the posters are a sentence fragment in a standard font. They're not printing off bootleg copies of the Mona Lisa here.

I suppose I'm being immoral and disrespectful, myself. Should I send Dos Equis a letter of apology, see if KC Green sells prints of his comics, and try to track down both the artists working on the Spiderman show as well as the person who placed text on this image? <http://imgur.com/3CHhp>

Let me know if I'm factually wrong in any of my statements.

<comment><USER18> "But the posters are a sentence fragment in a standard font. They're not printing off bootleg copies of the Mona Lisa here."

\---

A 63-year-old Picasso got out his pen and paper and sketched the woman, who passing by had asked for a quick self-portrait of herself.

It took him 30 seconds, once finished, he asked for 500,000 US dollars.

'Why? It didn't even take you a minute!' she replied.

'Madam, that sketch took 63 years."

And off he walked, with the sketch in his pocket.

<comment><USER19> I think many people on hacker news recognize good design skill takes years to develop, but this is an extreme. They took a simple four word sentence and printed it in red. Do you think the public benefits by having this designer have a ~150 year copyright monopoly on something as simple as this sentence?

It's a simple poster people were excited about and when it was unavailable went out to make it themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Apparently, Ben Barry just released the posters under Creative Commons.

<https://twitter.com/#!/benbarry/status/165493765526667264>

</comment><comment><USER21> as lame as it sounds, i was looking to buy these posters as inspiration for my 'hacker way' office :(

</comment><comment><USER21> originals were here: [http://www.designforfun.com/display.php?id=115&e=1](http://www.designforfun.com/display.php?id=115&e=1)

<comment><USER22> It's linked from the blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Error Establishing database connection" I think we killed the site.

 __Edit, it's working for now __

I can understand how making a profit off of something like that could rub you the wrong way. However I think I personally would just be happy the message was worthwhile to other people and leave it at that.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The Hacker Way" is no excuse to steal.

Your intentions are irrelevant. Unless somebody has clearly stated you can reproduce their creative work you shouldn't, nor should you want to.

Please do not use the guise of a 'hacker mentality' to mask your lazy and disrespectful actions.

<comment><USER24> Good artists copy, great artists steal?

<comment><USER18> Good artists copy, greats artists steal and make that they've stolen their own.

We are all influenced by the same things, it's what you do with that influence that matters.

<comment><USER25> Why do I think that by your tone and anonymity you are the offended designer?

<comment><USER18> I'm a designer (and developer, depending on the task).

Not the designer.

<comment><USER26> So, are you a good designer, or one who's work has never been used by others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Did they also pay "tribute" to Adobe by downloading a copy of Photoshop from a torrent site and using it?</comment>


The bandwidth of a fully laden 747 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/07/bandwidth-of-fully-laden-747.html

<comment><USER2> While shipping tapes fits the original metaphor (station wagon full of mag tape was what we were told to never underestimate back in the 80s) a more practical example would be to use 2T hard disks. You would lose out a bit on information density, but the drives could be slammed straight into a storage array without the transfer step that tape requires.

A 2T disk is about 400cc of volume and 660g in weight. A 747-8 freighter has close to 690 m^3 of cargo space. Round that down to 680 and we could put 1.7 million disks into a 747-8 by volume. Unfortunately they would weigh more than one million kilos. By weight it could hold around 212,000 disk drives containing 424 PB. This gets you close to the same numbers that jgc came up with, but in a more useful format for attaching directly to a storage array.

<comment><USER3> You could do the same with SD cards, the card readers for that are very, very cheap and you could fit a lot more data into it.

<comment><USER2> True, but I was trying to keep this in the realm of reality. A large org could actually shift this much data in a single day from step A (shutdown/pull drives) to Z (start using the new cluster on the other side of the world) using this method. Expecting someone to have a million or more SD card readers is not really a practical plan. I could have probably also increased the density by using blue-ray data disks, but having a similar number of optical drives waiting for disks was also not really practical.

At one time this general process was how chunks of yahoomail migrated from our original Four11 colo on stanford campus to the yahoo colos in san jose and sunnyvale (except it was netapp drives and shelves packed into my miata instead of a 747 -- 1T of 18G drives with the top down doing 80-90 southbound on 101...fun times :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's going to take a lot more time than 10 hours to get 427 PB onto those 2.8m cartridges, and then get the cartridges onto the 747.

<comment><USER5> assuming you use DAT 320 tapes and use 3 Gb/sec, [http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/12169-304612-3...](http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/12169-304612-3446234-3446234-3446234-63890.html)

It would take about 55 min to load each tape and another 55 min to unload. Being there are 2.8 million tapes it would take 2,566,667 hours to load, and the same to unload.

((427 petabytes) / 5 million) / 60 = 1.49247317 gigabytes per sec

<comment><USER6> Except you can parralelize the workload significantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A more thorough (and dare I say entertaining) version involving SD cards in a station wagon: <http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm>

</comment><comment><USER8> 32GB microSD cards (the largest currently available) at ~0.5g each have a much higher data density.

</comment><comment><USER9> In South Africa, pigeons are "faster than broadband": <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248056.stm>

</comment><comment><USER10> What do you mean? An African or European 747?

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be more interesting to compare the cost along with the total bandwidth. It's very expensive to fuel a 747 for a trans-Atlantic flight, but the information density should be high enough to make the cost comparison interesting.

<comment><USER12> Very rough estimate based on passenger ticket prices gives about $20 per GB/s.

      SF <-> London is about $1,200 for return ticket (Kayak)
      747 can have about 400 passengers
      bandwidth is 12 TB/s (from the post)

      400*1200/2 = $240,000 cost of flight
      $240K / 12,000 GB/s = $20 per GB/s

This should be an upper bound. I assume flying cargo (bought in bulk) would be significantly cheaper than flying people with individually bought tickets.

<comment><USER11> $20/GB/s for ten hours. If you want to compare to bandwidth prices, it has to be scaled up to a month:

      24*30/10 = 72 flights/month
      $1440 per month per GB/s

Like, you, I suspect it would be significantly cheaper than this, but that calculation would require data I don't have.

<comment><USER12> Ah, yes.

For the lower bound, we can estimate just the price of fuel (no plane amortization, crew and ground personnel costs, airport taxes, etc).

This seems to be currently about $54K per flight (London to San Francisco).

      747 burns about 5 gallons per mile
      LHR to SFO is 5,367 miles
      current jet fuel price is 201.1 cts/gallon

      5367*5*2 = $53,670

So monthly price per GB/s should be somewhere between $322 - $1,440.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I upvoted this _only_ because of its delightful title. I don't even need to read the article - the title alone has made my day brighter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I made someone smile. Did you ever read my article "Tonight, I'm going to write myself an Aston Martin"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Last year Carlos (aristus) and I launched <http://www.cloud-peering.com/> and spoke at a few conferences to highlight exactly this issue.

Essentially the biggest interop problem in the cloud is the lack o backhaul sharing. It's the only thing we can't code our way out of.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just to play devil's advocate.

There's unit's miss-match here. The information transfer rate that would apply to physically moving a storage device would be bits per second per meter (information-unit/time-unit/distance-unit). Bandwidth is normally measured with bits and seconds, with no distance unit. The two aren't directly comparable. If you somehow you had a 20 Kbs rate to Pluto, it would be a comparable information/time/distance transfer to a fully laden 747.

<comment><USER16> All that means is you need to add a distance conversion factor in, and it all works fine, albeit tied to that distance. And, lo: "Now assume it flies from San Francisco to London in 10 hours." The two may not be directly comparable, but that's ok, because they weren't directly compared. Defining the bandwidth of that specific flight is perfectly reasonable and no "devil's advocate" is needed.

(And if you want to point out that this isn't a practically useful number... well, yeah. But it's perfectly well-defined and unit-correct.)</comment></comment>


Amazon Considering Online Pay-TV Service - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304757004579334981130200324-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMTEyNDEyWj <comment><USER2> This is an unlikely move. The cable companies and broadcast networks have pretty much killed every effort for a straight streamed internet based TV services. Including a very costly failure by Intel (ironically just purchased by today by Verizon who _may_ have a chance because of their existing content deals)

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5330172/intel-tv- project-v...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5330172/intel-tv-project- verizon-sale)

</comment><comment><USER3> From Ars Technica @ [http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/amazon-may-spawn- liv...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/amazon-may-spawn-live-tv-to- complement-its-on-demand-service/)

> Update: Amazon spokesperson Drew Herdener has denied the WSJ's report, > saying that Amazon is "not planning to license television channels or offer > a pay-TV service," according to Seattle Times Business Reporter Jay Greene.

</comment><comment><USER4> An excellent move by Amazon. This is something I've been waiting for. I hope it becomes a reality though...

<comment><USER5> Buy a Slingbox, you don't need to wait. You can stream live TV to all your devices today. The one I bought in 2005 is currently sitting in my father's house, so that he can watch his home TV from the back office of his store when there are no customers.

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingbox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingbox)

> SlingPlayer is not available for Linux, BSD or other open source systems

Polling the HN hivemind: what are the best alternatives that do support Linux and BSD?

<comment><USER5> You can watch your Slingbox on the web on Linux, as that wiki page says in the Linux section. There's just no native app.

[http://slingplayer.slingbox.com/embedded/slingplayer.php](http://slingplayer.slingbox.com/embedded/slingplayer.php)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the tip!

The last time I tried, the standard player didn't work because it depended on their OS-specific native libraries. It's good to know that there's an alternative now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>