Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cutting-1000-jobs-in-finland-as-it-ends-phone-production-report-2016-5 <comment><USER2> I was around when the takeover of Nokia R&D happened in Febuary 2011, I remember walking around the offices of Ruohulati in Helsinki and seeing a massive queue to the IT room, previously linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows.

I asked one of the project managers: "why, will it really change that much for us, I mean, there's hope right?"

they responded: "This is a takeover, I've seen it before, they're just not calling it that- they'll kill MeeGO in it's crib.. and for us, it's adapt or die".

By the end of the second week (Elop did an eloquent speech about the future of Meego) all the really senior technical experts were working for Intel despite Elop saying "they just want to sell chips" and being generally derogatory to Intel), all the designers and senior management went to Jolla (which tried to enter a market which is fairly dominated already as a startup), myself, I was fired.. and everyone else is still running the ghost ship, I wasn't a large fan of microsofts products going in to Nokia, which is why I liked Maemo/MeeGO for the phone and I could use Linux at work- but this move cemented them as assholes in my mind.

Nothing they do nowadays for good PR is going to change my mind of how surreptitiously they took over nokia and sent it into it's death spiral. Microsoft really loves to own and eventually destroy Nordic companies. (skype, minecraft, nokia) - lets see what they do with TeacherGaming.

<comment><USER3> I too was there during those days, in Espoo.

But to be honest we also had our share of alienating developers, it wasn't only MS fault.

First the Symbian development was a mess with the Metrowerk tools and that Symbian C++ dialect, then came PIPS, followed by Carbide (Eclipse based).

Followed by the whole mess of open sourcing Symbian and closing it again.

Or the Symbian model moving from Symbian C++ / PIPS to Qt, also in the middle this process.

Maemo was GTK, but then everyone should move to Qt. Better not lets also move the OS into Meego.

I remember asking why the Nokia 770 didn't had a GSM modem and the team saying to me that wasn't the market they wanted to target. When they did the usual roadshow of upcoming devices.

Nokia was already quite bad in terms of relationship with app developers before Elop came into the party, due to the internal politics.

Of course, the famous burning platform memo was just the last way to alienate developers that were slowly accepting the new Qt based model for Symbian, after all the previous pain points.

<comment><USER4> What if Nokia 770 also was a phone? History could have been so radically different. I will never understand...

<comment><USER5> If the 770 was also a phone, it would have been a ghastly tablet with a phone inside.

<comment><USER6> But in 2007, the n800 would have been a ghastly tablet/phone with 2.5x the pixels, expandable storage to 64GB, and several different media players that sucked, but are still better than iTunes today. I'm still using the Canola media player on an n810.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway.

At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a buggy beta version which has ruined the experience for WP users.

What was the point of this whole exercise? A convoluted way of getting Nokia's masses of IP rights for mobile? Why not just leave Nokia to keep pushing WP?

<comment><USER8> Seems clear to me. They executed on a strategy and consumers weren't interested.

<comment><USER9> My wife really likes Windows Phone and wanted a Lumia 1020 for the camera. I offered her my 6+ and she refused.

Trying to upgrade her to a new model is basically impossible. At the time we bought it if you went to any carrier store the Windows phones were clearly second class citizens with the best models not present. Carriers like T-Mobile wouldn't even sell you a decent model because they don't carry them at all and if you buy one separately you find that carrier specific stuff (tethering) is broken.

With Windows phone it was really like they weren't even trying to move units. Sure they built the software and hardware, but actual retail presence seemed pretty broken.

They also failed at continuity. There is no Lumia 1020 successor. The lineup in general seems fragmented with no regular predictable upgrade path and iteration.

<comment><USER10> The wireless carriers have the final say on which phones they stock and promote, not the manufacturer. There most likely weren't enough sales of Windows Phone devices to make it worthwhile for them to bother trying.

<comment><USER11> Carrier sales reps didn't like selling Windows Phones, and you can't blame them. From their perspective, they want to sell you a phone in the shortest amount of time that has the lowest probability of return.

Windows Phones had a different UI that meant the sales rep had to spend time showing how it worked, and even if he/she did make the sale, he faced the high risk of a Lumia getting returned because the customer found out some key app wasn't available on Windows Phone but was easily available on iOS and Android (their bank, or airline, Snapchat, and let's not forget Instagram wasn't there for a while)

(source: I'm a former Nokia employee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android.

Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off.

Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update.

Also it was the only viable alternative to Android, on the countries where iOS devices are seen as too expensive, specially the ones where devices aren't subsidized.

<comment><USER12> Why do you think Microsoft continues to develop Windows Phone?

<comment><USER3> Maybe they don't want to loose their face?

You should follow this tweeter discussion from Sinofsky

[https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/733699065763004416](https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/733699065763004416)

It wasn't the difference between desktop and mobile stacks that pushed most away, rather the breaking changes between WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and WP 10. As explained recently on the Ars Technica article,

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/05/onecor...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/05/onecore-to-rule-them-all-how-windows-everywhere-finally- happened/3/)

And as a developer I cannot really get why WP 10 is still so buggy (according to the reports) versus the already stable 8.1.

<comment><USER13> >And as a developer I cannot really get why WP 10 is still so buggy (according to the reports) versus the already stable 8.1.

Microsoft eliminated QA as a job role and laid off all of its QA staff in 2014, with rather predictable consequences for both Windows 10 and WP 10. Plenty of articles about it if you Google around.

If anything, it's surprising that things have turned out as well for them as they have.

<comment><USER3> I completely forgot about it, yeah it might be a reason.

<comment><USER14> I only recognize it from its tile like interface... but yeah I think the ship has sailed for them a while ago about recognition

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just few weeks ago, Nokia announced that Nokia branded smart phones and tablets will be entering market soon. This time they are based on Android OS. It'll be interesting to see how well they'll sell (compared to Windows Phone).

[http://company.nokia.com/en/our-businesses/nokia- technologie...](http://company.nokia.com/en/our-businesses/nokia- technologies/hello-again)

[http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press- releases/2016/05/18/n...](http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press- releases/2016/05/18/nokia-signs-strategic-brand-and-intellectual-property- licensing-agreement-enabling-hmd-global-to-create-new-generation-of-nokia- branded-mobile-phones-and-tablets)

<comment><USER16> As the second article says, it's not Nokia building them, but letting another company ("HMD global Oy") build them under the Nokia brand.

This is similar to what they did with the somewhat recent Nokia N1 tablet: it was built by Foxconn.

<comment><USER17> This HMD global was founded by an ex-Nokia employee.

Seems like the sleeper agents are being activated.

<comment><USER18> I long suspected something like that. Let MS purchase and restructure a sinking ship. Allow the talent to move on and do R&D on the cheap via startups. Once the restrictions of the deal end, see what's flourished and return to the consumer market. I assumed Jolla but this other entity got it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We may never know the real story. Steve and Bill used to meet in Bill's jet flying over the ocean so that they could avoid any monitoring as they made deals to benefit each other (the whole "we're competitors" was largely fake - I was in plenty of meetings with Steve and also worked for a direct report of Bill. Their goal was to make each other rich.) It may not be a coincidence that Steve dropped Flash (at the time considered the competitor to Microsoft's CLR in the browser - their bet on the future of controlling future development platforms) and Bill took-over the biggest competitor to the iphone. There were plenty of other similar deals being made between them and the major computer vendors (and, if it isn't obvious, we paid the price by the limited competition and limited choices. Bill and Steve didn't just meet with each other. People who think "free market" is real are both naive and arrogant.)

And in a court of law I will say that I just made all this up.

<comment><USER20> How is two individuals doing what makes sense for themselves not a free market? Free market doesn't mean altruistic

<comment><USER21> Freedom requires transparency.

That's what free means. Not "companies free to do whatever they please".

<comment><USER22> >That's what free means. Not "companies free to do whatever they please".

The fact that you used the word "free" here to tell us what "freedom" _doesn 't_ mean implies otherwise, because I believe "free to do whatever they please" is exactly what it does mean. There are no "requirements" in a free market other than serving demand and making a profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A much better writeup here: [http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cuts- another-1850-job...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cuts- another-1850-jobs-takes-950-million-charge-in-phone-hardware-business/)

</comment><comment><USER24> A lesson from Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and every other small-to-midsize company in the Telco arena: Never let yourselves be acquired. It won't end well.

<comment><USER25> Nokia was a disaster for years before Microsoft bought them. Given that the alternative appears to have been a steady decline into bankruptcy, I think Nokia did pretty well for themselves in that deal. They sold the company for a lot more than it was worth.

<comment><USER26> For Nokia this turned out to be a good deal. They got good money for the mobile phone business. If they would have sticked to it that might have been the end of the whole company.

Now Nokia got several billions, bought Alcatel and continues other business. The feature phone business ended up in new company which is using Nokia's name and IPR and pays per unit royalties to Nokia. If this venture proves succesful, Nokia could just acquire them.

Years ago there was speculation that Elop was a trojan horse, placed by Microsoft. After things turned out as they did, I have started thinking that maybe it was the other way round. Maybe somebody planned all along that hiring Elop would open the opportunity of dumping the business to Microsoft in case it would nit start generating profits.

<comment><USER3> The Finn press discovered that the Nokia board had offered a contract to Elop where he would get a large bonus if he managed to sell the company.

This was talked a lot in Finland, you can easily find it if you google for it, but Microsoft haters like to ignore this _little_ action from Nokia board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The table graphic in this article really eschews clarity. The most recent figures on the left and a giant emoji slapped over it? Seems like a graph would've been better suited. The source even has the table in text format for easy processing.

<comment><USER28> _eschews clarity_

Those are rather nice words, I'm tempted to use plain 'ridiculous'. Feels like a child could do better. Ok it's not some scientific article, but still, you could put at least some effort in it.

<comment><USER29> I had an image of Businessinsider as something staid like FT, but on clicking through some of those links it appears to be more like a non-ironic version of Clickhole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.

<comment><USER31> I don't think so. Nokia got $7.2 billion from Microsoft for a loss-making device business. Nokia still exists today and swallowed Alcatel-Lucent last year.

It's hard to imagine a better outcome for Nokia than Microsoft buying the phone albatross in 2013. I honestly believe that it was part of a contingency plan that had made Nokia's board approve the Windows Phone plan -- that Ballmer basically promised a buyout in case WP doesn't fly. (I don't have evidence of this, but clearly Ballmer really, really wanted Nokia's phones and Nadella really, really doesn't.)

In the alternate universe where Nokia's board decided to go with Android instead of Windows, I think they would have ended up as a kind of European HTC or Sony in the Android market. And in that scenario the Nokia phone unit wouldn't have been worth $7.2 billion either.

<comment><USER32> Either way, how was the unit worth $7.2 billion in 2013 to anyone? Why did Microsoft pay such ridiculous money for a loss-making business, only to essentially burn it down over the next two years? From April 2014, when the deal was finalized, to May 2016, when the last employees are being laid off, the damage Microsoft incurred from this deal amount to about $1.8 million per HOUR of business. Did they really think they could pull off some magic trick to make Windows Phone fly, or were they bound by some backroom deal to buy the phone business at set price in case it started to weight down on Nokia?

<comment><USER11> It was driven by Ballmer's ego more than a rational plan.

They imagined they could speed time to market for devices by eliminating frictions inherent in being 2 companies working on 1 product (and as an employee I can say there were indeed inescapable frictions). But ultimately it couldn't get around the core problem: (almost) nobody wants a Windows Phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm just surprised how long this took. I was expecting this to happen for the past few years already. Thanks and goodbye.

<comment><USER34> It has been already happening for the past few years. The first round was handled by Nokia. Last year MS announced layoffs of 2300 people in Finland. After this there is pretty much nobody left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "The Californian search giant" \- typo, or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER36> I remember reading an article which explained the pragmatic reasons for the MS purchase of NOKIA.

Namely that MS wanted to bring back some of the billions they have offshore without it getting heavily taxed. Taking this into consideration the acquisition of NOKIA and eventual write down as a loss is not that bad. Especially considering it has kept it windows phone alive, and most likely moved any essential expertise to their other departments

</comment><comment><USER8> Makes sense. The sooner they cut their losses and focus on cloud/productivity apps the better off they'll be. IMHO

</comment><comment><USER37> There's an interesting article over at Anandtech discussing the fate of Nokia and what projects might occur under Nokia licensing contracts. [http://www.anandtech.com/show/10333/foxconn-and-hmd-to- retur...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10333/foxconn-and-hmd-to-return-nokia- smartphones-and-tablets-to-market) I hope that some of the folks getting the boot by MS will join the Helsinki based HMD Global who got an exclusive global license to create Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets for the next ten years.

</comment><comment><USER38> I see it as Nokia was a very good hardware company that couldn't turn itself around into a software company. Before iPhone you needed many moving parts, good supply chains, great hardware variety, spare part production and who knows what. Now you need good software. Nokia was less likely to turn itself around than IBM.

</comment><comment><USER39> The best thing that happened after MS essentially killed mobile division of Nokia is that Jolla was created. I hope Jolla will succeed. Their latest troubles and tablet project failure were unfortunate (I was a backer and won't be getting the tablet).

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://youtu.be/2e_YBgh9O48](https://youtu.be/2e_YBgh9O48)

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what Tomi Ahonen thinks of these latest developments.

<comment><USER42> May 20, 2016 So the Nokia brand returns.. with a Vengeance

[http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2016/05/so- the-...](http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2016/05/so-the-nokia- brand-returns-with-a-vengeance.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nokia is dead.

Get over it.

</comment><comment><USER44> "... linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows."

Microsoft/Windows is a cancer. Ballmer once said Linux was a cancer. He later retracted, after it was well-known Microsoft itself uses Linux.

There's nothing more pathetic than when you see Microsoft's businesspeople or lawyers at conferences all faithfully using Windows, as if there was no other choice, and rambling on about how their products can solve any problem. These are not stupid people, but they are blinded to independent reasoning about computer software.

And then there are the people at Microsoft Research. What a waste (not for them -- they probably get paid handsomely). It is like MS is keeping these minds locked away, so the zombie-like adherence to Windows can persist. Keep the monopoly going.

Microsoft is a cancer on the brain. It creates a zombie-like, tunnel vision of computing. Everything must pass through Redmond.

Microsoft continues to remain dangerous to the future of computing, because they continue to work dilgently to effectively quell all independent thought from being implemented and made accessible to users.

Intent, malice, etc. is irrelevant. Regardless of why they do it, the end result is suppression of non-Microsoft software.

And now hardware.

<comment><USER45> This comment breaks the HN guidelines by calling names. Please don't do that on this site. The old-fashioned technology flamewar is one of the things we're trying to avoid here, regardless of how one feels about Microsoft etc.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11770051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11770051) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER44> OP: "... cemented them as assholes in my mind."

That's "name-calling".

But I understand the need to detach the silly hyperbolic responses my comment triggered. I was not expecting those.

Please accept my apologies for any incomvenience I may have caused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can we start saying Ballmer was a better CEO than Nadella?

<comment><USER47> This is all happening because of a decision made by Ballmer. Disclosure: MS employee whose wife was a Nokia employee.

<comment><USER46> Everything was in place for UWP to take over the world, but they failed to produce a good phone OS, or produced one that was worse that what it was supposed to replace.</comment></comment></comment>


RIP Bob Givens, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry Artist - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Givens <comment><USER2> Bob Givens helped design the look of Bugs Bunny. This early model sheet is attributed to him.

[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/WildHare_Mode...](http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/WildHare_ModelSheet-775227.jpg)

Full link from: [http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/bugs-bunny- evolution-...](http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/bugs-bunny-evolution- egg-shaped-head.html)

<comment><USER3> Kinda cool to see the cutouts on that. He wasn't so good at experimenting that he drew these all together. It looks like he cut and pasted them together in this format.</comment></comment>


Apple terminated FlickStackr dev account no reason provided - <AUTHOR> http://carlosmejiagreene.tumblr.com/post/150198222535/flickr-and-me <comment><USER2> Well done for making money off Flickr while you could. Just accept it and move on.

<comment><USER3> Uhm, "making money off Flickr"?

You clearly haven't used FlickStackr. It did a lot more than what the Flickr app does. I use it every day and it's sad that Apple have decided to arbitrarily kill it for zero reason.</comment></comment>


Go Fishing - never-the-bride http://theweek.com/articles/780681/fishing <comment><USER2> I grew up fishing, skateboarding, surfing, wakeboarding, playing baseball, playing in bands and generally getting into trouble as a younger man. I still surf and skate and wakeboard from time to time and I'm generally amazed at how friendly, welcoming and uncompetitive anglers are. I very rarely encounter any "get off my wave" type attitudes, it's mostly people asking how it's going or telling me what bait is and isn't working. I've had more friendly conversations with strangers with a fishing pole in my hand than I have with a drink in my hand. What a relaxing way to get away from the computer and screens.

If you're interested, there are some great youtube resources for learning how to fish. I'm a bass fisherman so I'd recommend looking for videos and articles from bassresource, tacitcal bassin, and flukemaster. For anyone interested, bass fishing is a much more active form of fishing than most people imagine fishing to be. You're actively casting and retrieving rather than tossing a line into the water and waiting. Here's a video of a really great good ole Alabama boy doing some topwater bass fishing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvP0GBBiaLg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvP0GBBiaLg)

Edit: I live in New Jersey about 10 miles outside of New York City and fish for bass nearly every weekend. I've caught bass in Central Park before. There are fish in nearly every park pond across the country.

<comment><USER3> Lure fishing "cast and retrieve" as opposed to waiting is very common and not at all just a bass thing fyi. Maybe it has something to do with the particular species here in mid east coast Australia but fishing stores have tons of space dedicated to lures.

I remember fishing as a kid, my dad would be bait fishing while I lure fished because bait was super boring.

<comment><USER4> Same in NZ. Cast and wait is what we did as 5 year olds, but once we were older we had lures and better rods and reels and it was a lot more fun. Also caught more interesting fish!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I spent a lot of time fishing as a child, as my father was an avid fisherman. Some of my best memories are of stream and lake fishing in the Sierras, tuna fishing off boats in Cabo, and bass fishing of the coast near Del Mar.

And yet I can't get myself to do it as an adult, even though I have two young children who I know would love it. It's with very mixed emotion that I decide not to go. My social circle finds fishing repugnant, and while that's a factor, I could just do it and not tell them. But there is also the aspect of hooking a fish and dragging it in for sport. I eat meat and don't even find the act of fishing particular offensive, but I guess I do have some buddhist sentiments lurking in the back of my mind. It seems that if I wish to harvest fish I should do so in the quickest and least painful way, and not as a sport. I do wish I did not have this lingering concern as I would love to go fishing without guilt.

I do not take offense to anyone else fishing for sport, so forgive me if my comment sounds judgmental, as that is not my intent.

<comment><USER6> I grew up fishing as well with the same wonderful memories, but can't enjoy it with my kids for the same reasons you mentioned. There is something beautiful about the slow, patience of fishing that feels refreshing. I just can't imagine someone stabbing a metal hook through my cheek and dragging me out of my home. But I'd love to find an activity that feels similar to fishing without enforcing my dominance over a wild animal.

<comment><USER7> Try sailing. No need to have an expensive yacht - a sailing dinghy or a humble daysailer will do. (In fact, the smaller the boat the more direct and intense the experience will be.) Older but perfectly usable small boats are surprisingly cheap. What you do need of course is a quiet stretch of water, preferably without too much other maritime traffic. Read up a bit and have a try yourself, ideally on a smaller lake during a light breeze. Perhaps using a rented or borrowed boat first.

And if fiddling with sails is not your thing, or your area has only rivers but no lakes, canoeing can be very relaxing too. Today you can buy light but sturdy inflatable canoes made from hi-tech drop-stitch material that take just 10mins to deploy.

Of course, even when the risks are minimal, always think about safety - <AUTHOR> vests etc., especially in case you take children with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the author that captures fishing best is Hemingway. If you've never fished, or never quite got why fishing might be enjoyable, I'd highly recommend 'Islands In The Stream" by Hemingway, or his collection of short stories "Hemingway on fishing".

He does an amazing job of making the reader "feel" what it feels like to fish. Fishing is all about how it makes you feel (IMO). It's less about the technical aspects of rods and equipment and strategy (as it might seem to a non fisherman, since fishermen tak about this stuff incessantly) more about a state of mind that no other activity can emulate.

<comment><USER9> Another interesting book about fishing by Hemingway is "The Old Man and The Sea".

I read it as a teenager.

Googled it now because of your comment.

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

Only now did I get to know this about it - from the Wikipedia article:

[ The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952.[1] It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.[2]

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.[2] ]

<comment><USER10> A book I love (and that's saying something because I never got the whole love of reading) is "The Young Man and the Sea". I have no idea the author or relation to Hemingways work, as I've never read "The Old Man and the Sea".

<comment><USER9> Interesting. Will check that book out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love fishing, slayin bass, rentin a crappy boat and drinkin zodes is an IDEAL time for me. One of the best parts is that you can catch 'real' fish and have a good time with crappy walmart rods. I think 50 bucks is probably enough to get you started. It aint for everyone though. my love of fishing started as a young buck exploring my neighborhood with other dudes, finding little ponds etc and trying to catch anything!

<comment><USER12> I can agree with most of this, but what is a "zode"? I grew up in the mid-west and have never heard that term.

<comment><USER13> Maybe they got an autocorrect for "sodas"?

<comment><USER14> Nah, probably something out of H.P. Lovecraft.

<comment><USER15> Something tells me that "zode" will mean "beer" if we are talking about fishing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No other activity settles my mind quite like fly fishing. Contrary to popular belief, fly fishing's primary objective is to catch fish, but I have to admit that perfecting the cast sometimes takes most of my focus. If I'm catching fish, great! If not, no matter, I'll be enthralled with trying to gracefully land a caddis imitation 40 feet away over and over and over again. Once I picked up a fly rod I never looked back. The casting is pure poetry.

<comment><USER17> Fellow HN reader/fly fisher here. I tie my own flies as well. As a friend once said - you get to work on these flies through the year as a way to do something fishing related when you don't have time to fish, then when you catch a fish on a fly you tied you can tell it "I started catching you months ago."

<comment><USER18> You should try building your own rod as well. You can do it pretty cheap and it's a he'll of a good feeling when you get that fish on your own rod and fly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite part about fishing is that it has nothing to do with catching fish. As a catch-and-release fly fisherman, the entire point of the exercise is in matching the hatch, tying a perfect fly, perfecting your cast, having the perfect presentation, and finding the exact right riffle. At that point, actually hooking a fish is just a side effect of what you are already doing.

<comment><USER20> Then why not practice without a fly - with just a pole and a line?

You would not bother any fish, and you would derive as much enjoyment.

(I am not into fishing so I may be missing something)

<comment><USER18> I often do basically that. I love fly fishing the pond on my parents property but the weeds and algae blooms make cleaning the hook annoying chore every few casts. So I just cut the hooks off. I have fished that pond so many years I just don't really have any need to reel in a fish there. I know exactly how big of bass and bluegill the pond supports and simply love perfecting the art and watching the fish slam the flies I learned to tie by catching the insects I have seen there growing up.

<comment><USER20> great! I do not know fishing (I just tried for a week with my grandfather) but I can related to watching the fish almost jumping out of the water!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Used to fish a lot in my teens and twenties. I liken it a lot to golf in that its a great _waste-the-day_ activity that can be enjoyed alone or with friends.

Fast-forward several years and I don't fish much now. Last Fall I took two of my kids up to Central Oregon to camp for a week and watch the solar eclipse. I had never taken them fishing as I figured they'd hate it in this age of instant gratification mobile devices. Nonetheless I decided to drive to Walmart, buy some gear and spend half a day fishing in the river.

We did. They loved it, proclaiming "Dad this is so fun. Why have you never taken us fishing before?!"

We didn't even catch anything.

</comment><comment><USER22> "If it were easy, it'd be called 'catching'"

\- Papa, and every grandfather, ever.

</comment><comment><USER23> I got hooked a few years ago and started recording information here: [https://fishing.github.io](https://fishing.github.io)

Too bad the bay area doesn't have great fishing. You gotta go up to the delta / clear lake. Palo Alto even has a "Palo Alto resident only" lake.

Deep-sea/surf/pier/lake/pond/river/stream fishing each have their unique challenges. Also contrary to popular belief some styles / quarry don't require extreme patience.

</comment><comment><USER24> A bad day fishin' beats a good day workin'.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe it's because I grew up bass fishing and associate it with good times with my dad, but nothing centers me quite like finding calm water and throwing a jig or Texas rig for Largemouth. I'd suggest it to anyone; don't knock it until you try it. It's my #1 de-stressor.

<comment><USER26> 100% Moving away from the midwest its one of the things I miss most

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Spearfishing fits into this narrative of escape as well, but to a greater extreme. It's really changed my life since I started two years ago and being thirty feet under the waves stalking in a kelp forest on the weekends affords me an incredible reserve of patience in the workday world.

</comment><comment><USER28> > One thing that keeps many people from fishing is the simple fact that they > have never done it. Indeed, I think it is probably the only reason, apart > from vegetarianism. (If you do not eat meat or otherwise object to taking > the lives of gill-bearing aquatic craniates, there is always catch-and- > release.)

Fishing is one of the cruelest things I can imagine doing to an animal. The closest way I can put it to a human is... imagine thinking you're about to bite into an apple and then being yanked, naked, into outer space by a metal hook through your face.

It's significantly more cruel than instantly ending the life of a cow or chicken, even if you catch and release. Just go sit in a boat and do drugs or something.

<comment><USER29> Is it ok if other animals do it?

<comment><USER30> The "ok" doesn't exist, just moral/ethical standards we set for ourselves. We could go by nature's standards but we can also do better (social care is nice to have).

The practice of taking lives for pastime doesn't sit well with my ethical beliefs for two reasons: the first is empathy for another creature, and the other is I'm uncomfortable with destroying something so complex for no real benefit to me. It's like a child destroying sand castles others have built, amplified thousand times.

<comment><USER29> A lot of people need fishing to survive (I've done it while living at a shore village near armutlu) so I'm not sure how imagining being shot into space via a hook solves that problem.

Sounds more like first world problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been fishing for a few years and learned mostly on my own by scouring forums plus lots of trial and error. I've always likened the draw to be similar to the problem solving nature of programming and engineering in general, and have always wondered if there are other engineers that enjoy fishing. From some of the comments here it looks like there are some, but not many.

I've actually created several pieces of fishing software, for personal use, such as a journal/logging app for recording outings (locations, conditions, results, etc.), a crawler/scraper that extracts EXIF location info for good fishing spots, a notifications app for ideal fishing conditions, etc.

<comment><USER32> I owned a domain for a couple of years with the intent to crawl Flickr for fishing photos and to link them on a map. Never got around to it though. A shame as I feel like it would have got me fishing more often.

<comment><USER31> For me, I've never been able to get over the internal conflict of wanting to build a useful tool like a map of fishing spots and releasing it openly, with the downside of good fishing spots getting overrun should the tool become popular. I also started working on a similar idea as yours a couple years ago, but for Instagram instead. It turned out the GPS tagging on Instagram was fairly inaccurate, and sometimes intentionally misleading, especially amongst anglers who tag incorrect locations since the number one no-no is spot burning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Funny. Just saw this omw to bed before I totally blow off work tomorrow to take a newbie floating down a PNW river in my driftboat in search of his first steelhead.

</comment><comment><USER34> Angling is the most popular sport in the UK based on participation numbers. It is televised at least once a year as a legit sport.

However, The Compleat Angler is a different kind of fishing, and what the author of the linked piece is alluding to is a little harder to come by these days.

I live < 5 minutes from the Thames. I'm about 30 minutes walk from Teddington Lock where the Thames stops/starts becoming tidal. This area was once inhabited by Alexander Pope and he referred to it as "Arcadia". There is a corner in the river near me, the view of which from a hill on the opposite bank is protected by an act of Parliament to this day.

I have never seen somebody fishing down there. What's more, it's way too busy to be able to catch fish or enjoy the solitary lifestyle an angler might be hoping for.

I'd love to know why anglers avoid it. I'd love to know where they go instead. As a man about to turn 40, perhaps I would like to learn to fish myself, and spend the odd weekend or even mid-week day (yay for flexible working), sat next to the water, quietly awaiting a fish.

</comment><comment><USER35> I really love fishing. It has become something like a tradition for the guy- part of my family to go on a fishing trip every year and spend some weekends at a nearby river.

Fishing taught me many valuable lessons in my childhood and youth. I remember countless hours of fixing my rod after casting into a tree, days without even having something nibbeling when all you want is finally catching a fish and of course loosing a fish right before you get it out of the water (some of these memories are still painful today). But all that didn't matter when you finally caught that huge beast.

Early on I learned the value of patience and delayed satisfaction, how to manage anger and defeats, and using trial and error to solve problems (not catching enough fish). It also gave me a perspective on what it really means to eat animals. When you kill and evicerate your first catch, meat stops being something you just buy at the super market.

</comment><comment><USER36> > _One thing that keeps many people from fishing is the simple fact that they > have never done it. Indeed, I think it is probably the only reason_

I have tried fishing a few times, and found that it isn't for me. I'm extremely bad at it. The whole setup is very clumsy and difficult to transport by anything but a car, and it's all quite boring. If the point is sitting on a chair in nature while reading or having a beer then fine, but fishing doesn't look like a useful addition to that kind of setup.

Also I don't enjoy the idea of hurting wildlife (I'm not a vegetarian but kind of wish I would be).

<comment><USER37> "Fishing" isn't really one thing. There are a lot of different kinds to try. My preferred kind is fly fishing for trout. You are constantly casting and retrieving so unless you're in a boat there is no sitting down, and being able to cast is an art in itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> OK, another way, involving nothing but your hands: tickling.[0] But catching fish by hand is iffy where other animals might bite off bits.[1]

I first read about this in Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, about Logen Ninefingers (not a fishing accident).

0) [http://www.cracked.com/article_19236_6-tricks-that-let- you-c...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19236_6-tricks-that-let-you-control- animals-like-beast-master.html) [#5]

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

</comment><comment><USER39> I'd rather play WoW with my wife if I have free time and want to escape.

<comment><USER40> And hey, you can always go fishing in WoW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "there is nothing better than being in or near water with a long stick attached to some kind of cord."

Yoga or meditation could? (in a quiet area with water if you like)

I guess this is difficult to totally order set of possible activities by their goodness. Activities each have their strengths. But I'm uncomfortable with qualifying an activity that involves purposefully hurting or killing living beings good. There must be better ways to spend one's life.

Instead of catching fishes, start catching ideas! Write, paint or draw near a lake! :-)

</comment><comment><USER42> I can't understood the appeal of fishing. I grew up fishing with my grandfather which was a lot of fun, but since then I've always found it mind- numbingly boring. When someone takes me fishing now (or to a baseball game, which is equally tedious), I always bring a book to read. I wish I could tune in to why people like these activities, but I seem not to have the gene for it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Whenever I hit a creative drought, I go fishing out on Black Lake. Yeah, with the wind in your hair and the water flowing. It's perfect for inspiration.

It isn't about fishing, we ain't been fishing for years now. Old Neville over there, he's never been fishing. It's about telling the tales. You got to set the scene, spin the yarn. That's what fishing's about.

</comment><comment> a-b I like this Bay Area guy [https://fishermanslife.net/](https://fishermanslife.net/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Steven Wright said, "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." I was always just standing on the shore (or in a boat) with a rod in my hand, like an idiot. So, yeah, fishing isn't going to do it for me. Ultimate frisbee is pretty good, though...

</comment><comment><USER45> >There is nothing worse than sitting at a desk all day. And there is nothing better than being in or near water with a long stick attached to some kind of cord.

Hiking along that water - that can be wonderful. Just leave the fishing pole to people who care.

</comment><comment><USER46> "once the most widely printed book in English apart from the Bible" I've heard this distinction for so many books now, there must be a list somewhere.

<comment><USER47> I'd love to see that list as well. I imagine that in different times and places that this factoid has been true for a number of books. I read the same thing, and find it very believable, about "Dr. Chase's Recipes" ([https://www.ebay.com/bhp/dr-chase](https://www.ebay.com/bhp/dr-chase)). I tend to see copies of it more commonly than Walton's book in used book stores in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Any recommendation for fishing around the Bay Area? I read that the water's quality of nearby lakes and rivers is pretty low.

<comment><USER49> All along the Bay Area coast, you can catch surf perch, striped bass, dungeness crabs, and many more. Pacifica Pier and Half Moon Bay jetty are popular spots that doesn't require a license, but please make sure to read up on CDFW regulations.

I would highly recommend Kirk Lombard's "The Sea Forager's Guide to the Northern California Coast" It details a lot of the species of fish around the bay area, and also non fish species that are foraged like clams and seaweed.

Here's a summary of regulations for the Coastal waters of the Bay Area [https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Ocean/Regulations/Fishin...](https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Ocean/Regulations/Fishing- Map/San-Francisco)

<comment><USER50> I second the suggestion for Kirk Lombard's "The Sea Forager's Guide to the Northern California Coast". One of the most entertaining books I've read in awhile.

Kirk also does tours, sells what he catches and has an entertaining youtube channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's kind of boring. Fine for a diversion to get away from a desk, I can't imagine it as a lifestyle though.

<comment><USER52> Im with you on this. Ive been fishing a couple times, caught some dinner, but I've never felt the urge to go fishing. Lots of more fun active outdoorsy things to do that satisfy all the wanting to be out in nature, but are also active and exciting and fun. Might just be sampling bias, but all the people I know who love to fish are in no shape to climb a rock wall.

<comment><USER39> Being fit is not the most important thing in life (Overweight, but not obese people, have a higher life expectancy than standard weight people.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Counterargument: If you sit all day at the desk you should seek an _active_ hobby in your spare time!

</comment><comment><USER53> It seems based on this thread that lots of HN people expect tastes (in activities or in foods) to be universal? They're not! Everyone in my family loves fishing; I can tolerate it if I'm spending time with them or if there is boating involved. Yet I'm perfectly happy sitting for hours in the cold woods waiting for a deer to wander into range. It doesn't mean that I'm right or wrong or my brother is right or wrong or whatever...

If you have a strong opinion about eating or not eating fish or meat harvested in one fashion or another, that _also_ is a matter of taste. You and everyone around you will be happier from the moment you accept that.

<comment><USER54> In general, I agree with you, but there are degrees of morality. I hope most would agree that someone who's tastes include hunting endangered animals should not be accommodated. Likewise, if you were to go fishing in someone's koi pond or go hunting for a buffalo that someone was raising on their land, you'd also be rightfully punished.

So it stands to reason that all of these "tastes" exist on a spectrum from morally repugnant to the Buddhist practice of refusing to kill anything. And while we all draw our own line on that spectrum between what we consider acceptable and unacceptable, society will also draw that line and consider some of those activities to be illegal.

<comment><USER55> I think the Western myth that Buddhists are somehow all peaceful people who wouldn't hurt anything is debunked by events in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Yes, you can say "well, the Buddhists who attack minorities aren't True Buddhists", but that's the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

<comment><USER54> Just because not all Buddhists live up to it doesn't make it not a Buddhist practice nor a "no true scotsman" fallacy. The fact that it's part of Buddhist teachings and _many_ Buddhists do live it does make what I said correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Contributing to open-source vs. startup projects - <AUTHOR>

I have always been interested in doing my own startup, so I constantly have side projects, but because of this, I struggle to find the time to contribute to open-source.
Is it overblown how much employers look for open-source contributions? Do they give any respect to closed-source (potentially profit-driven) side projects? Or might they even see a startup on the side as a negative? Does this vary by the size/type of employer?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Agree with mehdim - you can do both. All of my "side project" work is open source (well, %99.9 of it anyway) is totally open-source, but it's in the context of a startup where we intend to make money.

 _Or might they even see a startup on the side as a negative?_

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is "yes" for a non-trivial number of potential employers. At the end of the day, some people are always going to be suspicious that your startup will distract you from what they're paying you to do, or that there will be some conflict of interest, or that you'll quit as soon as the startup gets some traction, and/or that you'll poach all of their good people away when it does, etc. And none of these fears are totally unreasonable. So yeah, if your startup is an ongoing concern, I would expect it would be a sticking point for some companies you might want to work for.

 _Does this vary by the size /type of employer?_

My feeling is that larger / more bureaucratic companies will be worse in this regard, and companies that are in a field that is more closely related to what your startup does. If your startup is building mobile app games, and you go to work for EA, you might find more issues than if you went to work for John Deere or Caterpillar. That's my perception anyway. YMMV.

Does this vary by the size/type of employer?

</comment><comment><USER3> Revenue-generating projects have the advantage of not only impressing potential employers, but also generating revenue, potentially making "employers" optional and letting you move to Switzerland for six months because it's ski season.

Open Source projects may impress potential employers, but beyond that the best you can hope for is extra credibility from people who smell vaguely like soup.

I think I may have tipped my hand as to which one I'd spend my time building, given the chance.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can do both. I will take our example at OAuth.io, we have built an open source daemon for OAuth that solve a problem for developers and we made a startup to sell the service on top. Look what Docker is becoming. Being a startup and contributing to open source are not opposite.

Or you can see even Github that contribute to open source by making a startup to help everybody contribute on open source...

Or Twitter with Bootstrap etc....</comment>


Nanoparticles and Magnets Offer New, Efficient Method of Removing Oil from Water - <AUTHOR> https://news.utexas.edu/2017/06/08/nanoparticles-and-magnets-remove-oil-from-water <comment><USER2> _"This new technique is really aimed at removing that little bit of oil in that water that needs to be removed before you can consider it treated."_

This is for the tail end of oil/water separation, after existing processes have done most of the work. Here's an overview of oil/water separation.[1] Note the line "Very small particles, such as those of 10 microns (micrometers) and less in diameter, do not rise according to Stokes' Law (or hardly at all) because the random motion of the molecules of the water is sufficient to overcome the force of gravity and therefore they move in random directions." This is a way to apply magnetic forces to those tiny droplets.

The lines at the end of the article, about this being useful in oil fields, probably were added by some PR person.

[1] [http://www.hydroflotech.com/oil-water-separator-theory-of- op...](http://www.hydroflotech.com/oil-water-separator-theory-of-operation)

</comment><comment><USER3> This work was done years ago at MIT, and MIT holds the patent. Look up Zahn and Hatton.

[https://news.mit.edu/2012/how-to-clean-up-oil- spills-0912](https://news.mit.edu/2012/how-to-clean-up-oil-spills-0912)

<comment><USER4> They don't even seem to cite that work: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11051-017-3826-6](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11051-017-3826-6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They mention at the end of the article they are working on larger scale water processing systems which would recover and reuse the particles. I think this is critical not only for efficiency but also health and safety. I'd rather not end up drinking unknown nanoparticles... I hope the musings in the article that it might also work for lead removal turn out true. Good luck!

<comment><USER6> By "recover", they mean recovering them out of the removed oil. The nanoparticles are fully recovered from the water by the magnetic force (it wouldn't really be a useful invention otherwise) but much of them are trapped in the oil they bring with them (that being rather the point) and this means that it's hard to "clean" the now-dirty nanoparticles in order to make them useful for extracting more oil.

(Though, I'm not too clear on why this is a hard problem—couldn't they just, say, throw them into some nitric acid to destroy any organics, like you'd do with chem-lab glassware?)

<comment><USER7> I'm super unclear on exactly what these nano-particles are made of, or the nature of the charged polymer coating that is required for binding.

There was an oil spill on the East River in NYC a month ago, about 5000 gallons of oil[0]. Since each nanoparticle binds to some small amount of point, then would we need some close fraction of 5000 gallons worth of charged-polymer coated nanoparticles to extract it all?

If the production of this awesome substance is even close to as straining on the environment (aren't most polymers oil-based?) then I don't see it as a magic bullet for solving all of our water-contamination problems.

Still super freaking cool though.

[0] [http://www.amny.com/news/east-river-oil-spill-thousands- of-g...](http://www.amny.com/news/east-river-oil-spill-thousands-of-gallons- seeped-into-water-coast-guard-estimates-1.13601845)

<comment> semi-extrinsic This isn't for cleaning up large spills, it's for polishing water with O(0.1%) oil dispersed, to the point that it's clean enough to release into the environment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some people are abusing "show dead" on HN - <AUTHOR> As we know HN uses hell banning to deal with trolls.
As we also know, people are not perfect, both moderators and the general public, so for that reason sometimes people get hell banned that probably don't deserve it. Sometimes for a single bad post, sometimes for a post that isn't that bad but for some reason rubs a moderator the wrong way. Mostly however people that are hell banned, deserve it.
For various reasons (mostly related to the above) I like to have my "show dead" setting on so I can see dead posts. Now some people know they are hell banned but keep on posting as normal, probably because they know that quite a few people, like myself, will see their posts, but also because they are trying to prove a point. No problem here so far.
There are a very few idiots however who know that they are hell banned but post just to annoy people that have "show dead" on. They post huge walls of completely OT, and sometimes utter nonsense, text that take up a whole page and they do it often. I won't name names and give them any recognition but perhaps the time has come to implement total bans so that these trolls cannot post at all or limit post lengths for people with only 1 karma or negative karma.
I never cease to be amazed out how some people will go out of their way to be annoying and disruptive, fortunately they are a very small minority. <comment><USER2> I think we need to err on the side of caution here.

In particular, we need to carefully distinguish between (1) those users who post maliciously/troll, and (2) those users who suffer from mental illnesses.

I don't know which user(s) you have in mind, but there's a well-known, regular HN poster who posts on a 'dead' account---or accounts---and suffers from severe schizophrenia.

When I see his posts, I---as a member of the community---feel quite guilty. He has been ostrasized through no obvious fault of his own. In fact, I use 'show dead' in order to assuage that guilt. Although his posts don't add to the discussion, they are, at the very most, an inconvenience.

I worry about the psychological toll that permanent bans could have on such people. With the recent suicides of both Jacintha Saldanha and Aaron Swartz, I think caution is advisable.

We often underestimate the effects of our actions.

<comment><USER3> Losethos, I believe. His accomplishments are greatly regarded in the community.

His comments, not so much. It makes me sad when people with such talent are hindered through an illness they didn't deserve to get. He has an extremely bad reputation in the community from people too immature to understand schizophrenia or mental illness.

That said, the "show-dead" option is there for a reason. Posts that do not add to the discussion will get downvoted whether the commenter is schizophrenic or not.

I do think that sometimes HN goes a bit over the top in some aspects of authoritarianism, but for the most part, HN is pretty fair and square.

<comment><USER4> Now SparrowOS.

Some of his comments are actually pertinent. Notably regarding OS design.

<comment><USER3> Certainly. Just by looking at his website you wouldn't even tell that he had a mental illness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rename "hellban" to "probation". When on probation, your posts get hidden. If three of your posts get upvoted while on probation, you are restored to normal status. If three of your posts get downvoted while on probation, you get banned permanently. Those who have "show dead" are like the Hacker News PO squad.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I see thoughtful posts from hellbanned users and wish there was a way to help them restore full posting status.

When looking through their post history, it looks like one post that the community didn't like was enough to get them hellbanned and there's no recourse once it happens.

<comment><USER7> Hellbanned users can create a new account.

Sometimes hellbanned users can write a _short_ email to PG, with a link to the post the triggered the hell ban, and ask for an unban. (If it appears to be a mistaken ban.)

<comment><USER8> But only if they are aware of it. That's kinda the point here. It's not a regular ban, so you don't know.

<comment><USER7> That's why it's important to have contact details in your profile.

People who see someone who has been unfairly hellbanned send email to let them know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let me get this straight. HN has a mechanism to deal with abusive users. You deliberately disabled that mechanism so that you see posts from abusive users. And now you're complaining that you see posts from abusive users?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering if/when someone was going to make a post like yours....I believe you missed the point entirely - HN does not always get it right and on many occasions hell banned people still make posts worth reading.

There are reasons why HN allows the "show dead" ability and probably none of those reasons have to do with people trying to punish themselves by seeing "abusive users'" posts.

<comment><USER10> I agree with mikeash here. If a hellbanned person still wants to remain part of the HN community, it's really not that hard to create a new account. Sure, sometimes they get it wrong, but the vast majority of the case, they get it right.

That means, that by you turning on dead posts, you are subjecting yourself to the 80% case where they get it right. If one of them is spamming with huge blocks of text, etc... well, you signed up for it in the low-probability case that one of the dead posts actually contained valuable information.

Keep it simple. Don't start adding multiple layers of hellbanning protection just to fix a low-probability edge case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps a simple solution would be to allow down-voting on dead posts (I only seem to be able to upvote?) This would allow such users to continue losing Karma, and give a way of distinguishing users who gain karma and should lose their hellban, and those who need permanent banning?

<comment><USER12> Do upvotes have an effect on dead posts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Total banning is unnecessary; there's already a mechanism to avoid seeing hellbanned users' posts. If people like me and you choose not to use it, that doesn't worsen the experience for anyone else; besides, I _like_ to see the Amazon-length screeds now and then. It reminds me to take my meds and go to bed on time.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, and also: total banning is on balance _less_ effective than hellbanning, because it's obvious to a troll when they've been banned... and they immediately get a new username to start afresh (via a new IP if needed -- you don't have to be highly technical to know restarting your DSL router will often let you back into sites that banned your IP...).

The whole point of hellbanning is that it's not immediately obvious to trolls that they have been banned at all; so they keep on trolling (in the hellbanned account) without troubling other readers.

Obviously some trolls are clever enough to grok hellbanning, but it still weeds out quite a few. Total banning is simply whack-a-mole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, SparrowOS makes a good point about Don Quixote here...although in his usual cryptic religious incantations.

<comment><USER16> I see losethos has made a new account...

<comment><USER4> He renamed his OS, and his account, accordingly.

        ---- For those without showdead: ----

_SparrowOS 2 hours ago | link [dead]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086744>

Irony.

God says... C:\Text\QUIX.TXT

ced into execution.

Andres went off rather down in the mouth, swearing he would go to look for the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha and tell him exactly what had happened, and that all would have to be repaid him sevenfold; but for all that, he went off weeping, while his master stood laughing.

Thus did the valiant Don Quixote right that wrong, and, thoroughly satisfied with what had taken place, as he considered he had made a very happy and noble beginning with his knighthood, he took the road_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're referring to SparrowOS/losethos I hope you know who it is and why he posts like that. He should definitely not be banned.

<comment><USER14> I think hellbanning is a useful solution for his posts; for now he is not posting content that adds to the discussions, but he is compelled to post what he does, so it's fine with me for him to post as hellbanned -- enough people keep showdead on that it will be noticed if one day he manages to surface enough that his posts would be positive additions to the conversation again... and his account can be restored to normal status.

Agreed there's no good reason to try to block him from the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can show what it takes to be "hellbanned" so you can decide if you might miss out on good posts by turning off show dead.

I created an account for work to post open jobs on monthly "Who's Hiring" post. I literally made 2 comments that weren't job posts (I'm assuming job posts don't get you banned) - so those must be the ones that got me banned?

you can see them here, halfway down: <https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ginkgoo>

I'm pretty sure there were 3 or 4 months of job postings that were hell banned before I figured it out. Moderating sites is hard (I've been there), but this is a bit extreme IMO.

<comment><USER19> I'd say it is a lot more likely that your account got "banned" because you posted the exact same thing several times. HN has a dupe checker. If you post the exact same message twice, it assumes you screwed up, and kills the second one.

This is something that really bugs me about these meta threads. People attribute really heinous motives to the maintainers around here without knowing all the facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another idea: people who are _really_ annoying get double-hellbanned, and there's a checkbox that says "show very dead"!

</comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like a UI issue more than anything else. Auto hide most of the text in long wall of text posts with a "view more..." link which expands the post to view all of the text.

This could be implemented with very little javascript or using a separate page load for large comment threads (similar to how reddit does it)

</comment><comment><USER22> Its ironic that HN is a discussion forum, but plenty of websites are banned by default:

From: Audrey To: Joe Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2012 5:56 PM Subject: Re: dead account

Hi Joe,

That post was killed because it came from prisonplanet.com, which has been the source of too many inappropriate or off-topic stories in the past.

Cheers,

Audrey

2012/12/27 Joe

my article was killed. why? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974986>

<comment><USER23> Given what I know of the site, it's absolutely appropriate for it to be autokilled. (It's a pretty well-known right-wing conspiracy-theory site.) If the subject of the article is significant, there will be better articles about it on other sites which you can submit instead.

<comment><USER24> This is essentially an argumentum ad hominem. It is an irrational position to take. Arguments should be judged on their merits, not who's mouth they came from. I'm quite disappointed to learn that HN is censored in this way. I had no idea.

Does anyone know of less draconian social news sites which still try to maintain a high quality discussion?

<comment><USER12> I don't have an answer to your question. A subreddit with quality moderation could be an answer, but the readership is probably going to be much lower, to the point that it isn't useful.

I am probably more turned off by anything coming from Techcrunch, for intance, than anything related to Alex Jones (for whom I have my own reservations, to say the least). But I tolerate it. Anything that I find to be truly inappropriate, I flag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > sometimes people get hell banned that probably don't deserve it.

Speaking about that...

There are also accounts that have their comments show up just fine, but all their submits get "hell banned"... That is, you think your submit is shown on the new page, but it's really "[dead]" and you can't see that unless you have "show dead" turned on.

If you have "show dead" on in your account, see my submits history for an example of this - <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=powertower>

Right after I submitted an article that criticized Apple stock, all new ones became dead.

Would love to know why 1) my account is like that and 2) what happens when I upvote someone elses submit (if my upvote hurts them, or even counts).

<comment><USER26> _There are also accounts that have their comments show up just fine, but all their submits get "hell banned"... That is, you think your submit is shown on the new page, but it's really "[dead]" and you can't see that unless you have "show dead" turned on._

Are you sure that that kind of autokilling is by user, rather than by site submitted? There are quite a few story source sites that are autokilled on submission because experience has shown that those sites consistently produce blogspam, political rants, or other kinds of stories that violate the Hacker News guidelines. It may be that some users have preferences in what they submit that happen to coincide with sites that are on the Hacker News autokill-on-submission list. Or it may be, as you surmise, that some users have a partial hellban that allows them to comment but not to submit new stories. You asked us to look at your own submissions list

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=powertower>

for an example, and it may be that your submission history was evaluated (algorithmically?) as a submission history that makes it more likely than not that any of your newer submissions would be off-topic or otherwise contrary to the HN guidelines. Over the years, I've observed some users become very astute at submitting that which is well liked here, and they don't have any problems making new submissions.

I'm glad I saw your comment, as this is an interesting meta-question. AFTER EDIT: It occurs to me, while we are in a thread engaged in meta-discussion of HN moderation, that I would like to know why one of the recent submissions I made

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tokenadult>

is dead. If I remember correctly, the link was live as I submitted it (in other words, it wasn't autokilled), and yet a while later I looked for it, and saw that it was dead (as I too have showdead turned on in my user settings). I'm not sure why that happened. The last time I had a submission, from a source that I was sure was an acceptable source for HN, autokilled, I asked pg about it by email, and his response was that a text string in the URL tripped a spam detection algorithm. That submission was restored to life, but by then the submission had sunk out of view on the new page, so there was never any discussion of that submission here.

<comment><USER27> Your dead submission certainly isn't very good on its face. I might flag it if I saw it. And I have no difficulty believing that some people would always flag it.

However, the answers are certainly worthy of consideration.

<http://edge.org/responses/q2013>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can you be less vague? If you're talking about SparrowOS/losethos, then you ought to try to learn about who that person is. Otherwise, I have showdead and I've seen ONE or maybe two troll posts every few weeks from people who are hellbanned and most of the time it's what I would lovingly call a reddit- style-comment rather than an outright troll.</comment>


So Where's My Low Voltage DC Wall Socket? - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2016/12/21/so-wheres-my-low-voltage-dc-wall-socket/ <comment><USER2> We don't need DC sockets as they dont solve any problems. The stupid simple AC mains distribution system is well tested and proven. Who cares that they provide up to 3kW. The "last meter" problem is perfectly solved using AC-DC wall warts and bricks. If the power supply dies, you buy a new one and just plug it in. No electrician required. Putting things in wall or central distribution is not a solution to any existing problem and introduces needless cost and complexity.

A better solution would be to get everyone on board with a single DC voltage and connector. Then we can buy larger multi socket bricks that are just AC-DC power strips. You can then add batteries and give it UPS functionality. But good luck getting everyone to agree on a single standard.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it be more efficient to have e.g. one DC power supply for the house that can power everything that needs DC power, instead of lots of individual (and likely cheap/inefficient) power supplies?

<comment><USER4> Most electronic devices require low voltage DC, so resistance losses in cabling across even quite short distances (10+ metres) would be significant. This is why DC distribution in data centres if it is used is normally 48V.

<comment><USER5> It's also more difficult do do straight transformation on DC voltages, it can be done but the reason our power grid settled on AC was getting high voltage transmission levels down to reasonable ones for use is simple with some wound coils.

It's really easiest to just keep everything AC until the point of use, putting a transformer and a bridge rectifier in most devices is a better solution than needing switching power supplies everywhere to convert DC voltages (or wise options like linear regulators).

Switched mode power supplies also have EMI to deal with due to the higher switching frequencies, an AC transformer runs at line frequency (50/60Hz).

<comment><USER2> Dumb DC supplies using just a bridge rectifier and filter cap(s) isn't really ideal if you need a stable voltage. If the mains voltage sags, so does output. Then factor in ripple from the cap bank under higher loads and the associated nonlinear harmonics and power factor issues from the rectification. You could add a linear regulator and increase the transformer output and burn the excess off as heat but efficiency goes down the toilet.

Switchers, for all their complexity, are pretty damn clean in terms of output and input PF correction. Even in audio and sensitive analog applications where dumb supplies were preferred have been replaced by switchers. A good design goes a long way and it's unfortunately easy to design junk switchers because of the complexity involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like USB A/C are going to be that. You can already buy outlets that have both mains and USB ports, there are even dual USB C outlets now, that can do 30 watts:

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PTWG5DV](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PTWG5DV)

<comment><USER7> The author makes the valid point that USB-A is too low power, and USB-C requires active cables. (Translation: expensive or dangerous)

<comment><USER8> If you want one port that can charge multiple devices of varying needs safely, you need smarter cables. Sounds like a reasonable tradeoff.

Otherwise every single cable would have to be built to handle the highest possible power delivery rate (100W for USB-C).

<comment><USER9> Looking at that plug and how chunky the holes are for ac power, when access is limited and you can't see, shoving a usb c plug into the ac hole is going to happen often.

<comment><USER8> You'd have to shove awfully hard -- hard enough to crumple the metal shell of the USB connector, since it's wider than the opening in 120VAC socket. (I just tried it with a spare electrical outlet, and even with a fairly hard push and wiggling it around, I couldn't make it fit)

<comment><USER9> Yikes and thanks - I'm in New Zealand and our plugs are way smaller so you couldn't make that mistake here, but it's good to know the terminals are far enough in that it's safe. I've seen some surprising things people have forced into the wrong port. USB into Ethernet etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is "Digital Electricity" a real thing? Its billed as an alternative to AC or DC. This may be as good a place as any to ask this question, but I am a hotel developer, and we've had a few people reaching out to us trying to sell "digital electricity" that sends high voltage over cat5 (up to 2000w per the Belden materials) by essentially sending high voltage for very brief blips with the ability to switch off before any damage occurs if a short is detected. they claim it is supposed to be significantly more efficient, doesn't require electricians to run cables, and its safer. I declined... but im still curious. basically every device in the room is connected via lan to a power server.

[https://www.belden.com/blog/smart-building/digital- electrici...](https://www.belden.com/blog/smart-building/digital- electricity-5-things-you-need-to-know)

<comment><USER11> Looks like buzzword marketing bullshit to me. Apparently they're just sending pulsed DC power over Ethernet cables? Nothing else in that article is as new or exciting as they dressed it up to be. GFCI outlets are standard in modern houses, they claim to be safely transmitting "high voltage" but 120V is not, and the "digital" buzzword stinks of marketing.

>It transfers high levels of power over non-power cable

You can't beat physics. Wires heat up from current, regardless of whether it's AC, DC, or "digital" pulsed DC. I doubt Ethernet cable is rated for any significant amount of power, but searching for "cat6 max power" doesn't return any relevant results because search is broken in 2019.

It's also likely to be rather inneffecient, as they are converting from AC to DC and then potentially back to AC? There may be an advantage to pulsing DC but I'm not sure, typically AC is more efficient for power transmission because of lower losses for the same power over distance and higher transformer efficiency (no need for an inverter).

<comment><USER12> It's apparently a bit smarter than GFCI. [1] says it measures the loss in the wire to determine if a person or whatever is touching it. So that would protect people against shocks from touching both wires, which GFCI can't do.

[1] [http://magazine.connectedremag.com/publication/?i=488126#{%2...](http://magazine.connectedremag.com/publication/?i=488126#{%22issue_id%22:488126,%22page%22:6})

I think this is a pretty nice idea except for the patents and only having one or two suppliers and lack of technical details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always thought running low-voltage DC through a house from a single supply was doomed due to voltage drop over the distances required....

<comment><USER14> That absolutely is. You could be better with 48 or even 24 volts, but then you are out of luck if you want to power a majority of devices which are 12v. So your only option is to go for USB-A wall socket which essentially is a wall- wart hidden in your wall. I do not see a good solution here.

<comment><USER15> A buck convertor in the socket (cost: $1) with a voltage dial or selector would do the trick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I dont think DC wall socket is the problem - its the small electronics that each have their own power pack.

Ideally to me every led lamp, settop box, alarm clock, phone, laptop would not come with a power supply box. It would just take a USB cable or similar standard. Then you could buy a good quality power supply adapter that you can reuse for lots of products - and avoid the abundance of random adapters everywhere.

<comment><USER17> That is sort of happening already. A lot of devices are just using USB standard for their power supplies.

I suspect that with PD, that allows even lamps to negotiate that they need more power, maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting idea, but running an extra set of cables is a non-starter. The cost/benefit analysis would never make sense for existing structures, and newly built structures wouldn't do it unless it was almost certain to become a universal standard. This is a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

You would also still need something similar to a wall-wart to step down the voltage to whatever your device actually uses (e.g. from 12 V to 5 V to charge your phone), so its not clear how much benefit there would really be from such a system.

Whatever specs we adopted would probably also end up not being appropriate for some future devices, so we'd probably go back to a substantial number of devices bundling their own PSUs anyway.

Interesting idea, unlikely to ever be worth the cost. If wall-warts really bother you, then just invest in some wall outlets with integrated USB sockets - there are many good options on the market.

<comment><USER19> Also, the biggest non-starter is just how _inefficient_ it is to move 12v any reasonable length. 12v domestic wiring only makes sense in very tiny small dwellings. (Think studio apartment or 3rd world country shack.)

Otherwise the voltage sag and resistance makes it cheaper and more efficient to do normal 120/240 voltage with device-specific converters. (For example, if I had to run 0-gauge cable from my breaker box throughout my house to support 12v, the cost of copper alone would be prohibitive.)

I honestly think standardizing on USB for devices that can use it is the best approach, given that we already have tiny AC->USB converters that don't block other plugs, and outlets with USB built-in are on the market. Furthermore, I wonder just how much we can shrink the typical wall-wart so it won't cover other plugs?

(I also think we're better off trying to do a global domestic 200 or 400 volt DC standard.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The solar/RV/golfcart world has and entire ecosystem of standardized 12v DC power distribution and the appliances that use it if you really feel the need to have DC. Works pretty good...last year wired up a friends mountain cabin with 12v solar, batteries, inverter for AC, led lights, fans, dorm room sized DC fridge. Different manufacturers and everything popped together fine.

<comment><USER21> Most laptops can be charged from 12V auto-style sockets as well.

12V DC is fantastic for a solar setup (vacation cabin, off-grid home, or whatever). You can still have some standard AC outlets using an inverter, but there's no reason to have lights running off of AC -- especially if you have LEDs! Since inverters cause a slow but constant power drain, it makes sense to leave them off most of the time.

Edit: I also wanted to mention the amazing "3-way" fridges, which I was not aware of until looking into solar a few years ago. They can run on AC, DC, and propane, giving you an alternative if the power goes out. The RV world has tons of this stuff, and the appliances usually aren't that much more expensive. Some are even cheaper than regular appliances since they are usually more compact.

<comment><USER22> Keep in mind that your typical RV refrigerator capable of running on AC or propane, and possibly DC, will run much less efficiently on electric power than a standard electric refrigerator. That might make them less-than-ideal for a solar + battery configuration. In an RV context one typically uses the electric mode only when connected to "shore power", where the lower efficiency is less of an issue.

Propane-based refrigerators use an absorption cycle which depends on heat produced by burning the propane; in electric mode they just substitute resistive heating. A pure electric refrigerator would use a compressor-driven heat pump, which is considerably more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think that with low power LED lighting, as well as all rechargeable devices, there is a case for some (not all) 12VDC sockets around the house (and cars/vans/RVs). Actually, I think mobile applications will be first: in an RV, it makes no sense to have a big inverter to take your 12V batteries to 120V AC, just to plug in wall warts to charge to camera, phone, etc.

I have a friend who installed 12V in parts of his house, backed by a solar charged battery system. See my previous comment for some details:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21109247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21109247)

Talking to this friend, we discussed the same problem as the OP. In RVs that are wired for battery power, they use wall-mounted cigarette lighter plugs, and you can buy some small appliances that use them. They are ugly and take up too much space, it would be so much better to have a plug of a regular shape and size. Of course it has to be polarized for DC, so something like ( - | ).

There is also the problem of breaking the arc in DC, so one prong needs to be longer and making contact further in so it can't arc outside the plug. Or maybe it needs some internal mechanism such as plastic slot covers that close and break the ark (like child-protected sockets have now). Anyway it definitely needs some research and design, but I think it would be cool to have a new 12VDC standard plug, then people could start designing products that use it to get the whole ecosystem started.

</comment><comment> jon-wood I don't get why they write off USB so quickly. It's small, it's reasonably convenient, and is almost ubiquitous already.

<comment><USER24> The article explains: USB A's power is too limited for a large percentage of household uses, and USB C is complicated and expensive, requiring digital circuitry to negotiate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > ...and incorporate a fuse to protect the appliance cable from fire. Those > British BS1363, fused-mains-plug habits die hard.

Lots of car barrel connectors have fuses inside. I'm not seeing much reasoning behind not using the car barrel connectors, aside from 'it was designed for cars, not as a general purpose connector'.

<comment><USER26> They break easily. Spring loaded bits (actual springs). No properly defined standard and they vary a lot. Come out easily depending on quality. Easy to contact center pole to side poles on insertion. No ability to add earth.

<comment><USER27> 12v plugs are indeed a standard, and can be quite robust. Other than size and cost, there are no such downsides. On DC there is seldom an 'earth', gound is analougous to dc negative/neutral depending on local standard.

ANSI/SAE J563 and UL2089

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_lighter_receptacle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_lighter_receptacle) shows the UL standard.

<comment><USER26> The case was made as a dc plug in general. Though 12V does definitely not require "earthing", you are correct about that. With earth in this case it is not the ground perse but some connection schemes (and standards) require either a third connector or open return path for DC which this connector cannot provide.

Apparently they decided to make it a standard in 1994 after years of mismatching equipment all over the world, which is longer than I would have ever guessed. Interesting to see. Apparently UL "standard" does not translate well to actual standard. My experience is that most devices fail on the spring center contact, and do not fit for all cars. Anecdotal but still: even the expensive charger I have doesn't work in one car I've owned (opel) due to the misalignment of the outer contacts and it jumps out too much). It says it's UL2089 compatible though so I guess opel was at fault. There are so many "extension cords" out in the wild which hardly work or go lose after time due to bad design or because they are just a bit too wide. I own several of them and have thrown most away.

The funny thing is the standard describes two sockets with differing size which is not helpful in any way and looks like a legacy of some manufacturers made into the standard.

The article also mentions other bad characteristics about the connector and plug like bad contact causing high resistance which is simple due to the design but might also be present with other designs of course.

I mean, it's nice it became a standard as it was in every car anyway since everybody smoked in them but there are way better solutions which do not have the problems I already mentioned and are way better solution for home appliances. If there is not yet a proper standard, why chose one which is not designed for this usage and most definitely was never designed for what it is used for today with all kinds of side effects (good or bad).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Crazy, USA needs higher voltage AC, not DC...

People in the 240V world get to pull 3KW from their wall sockets, I'm jealous.

[http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2012/04/16/why-kettles-boil- slow...](http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2012/04/16/why-kettles-boil-slowly-in- the-us/)

</comment><comment><USER29> No mention of Power-over-ethernet?

<comment> mark-r What is the maximum power provided by PoE? Wikipedia is surprisingly vague on the subject, probably because there are multiple standards. PoE was never intended to power more than just network equipment.

<comment><USER30> I am not sure how Wikipedia can be more explicit, they even have a table showing the voltages and wattages of the different standards. [0]

According to that table, the latest standard, 802.3bt Type 4, can provide 71 W to the device at the end of the cable (and inject 100W into the otherside).

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

<comment> mark-r Clicking on the link "Power capacity limits" brings you to nothing useful. Are you looking elsewhere?

<comment><USER30> Scroll down to the table "Comparison of PoE parameters".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have to deal with this problem constantly and I haven't figured out a good solution yet. I'm not sure this is particularly meaningful in a normal mains- connected environment but as someone who's base power source is a finite amount of 24v DC, I hate eating the inversion losses when I could save ~7-16% using switching supplies off the main bus.

Currently everything I have is connected up with a hodgepodge of those green pluggable terminal blocks. It's not an elegant solution but it's hard to standardize on something, especially when I have devices that run off 5, 9, 12, 24 and 48 volts. I still run an inverter most of the time (I have two, pure and modified depending on the load).

I think it's possible to devise a decent solution here, I like the XLR based designs but I'm afraid of plugging things into the wrong voltage. I think maybe the good solution is to make a color-mapping for the common voltages up to 48v (past that you require an electrician to do wiring in the US iirc) and then make cables that are XLR on one end, and whatever-plug on the other end with an LED that lights up corresponding to the voltage. That way you know if your barrel jack is 12 or 5. It doesn't have to be foolproof, or even customer friendly really. People setting up DC buses to run all their electronics should be able to accept the responsibility of frying something if they give it too much juice.

</comment><comment><USER32> The telecom industry has 48 volt as a de-facto standard, bur never came to a mechanical standard.

Thus you see daisy chains of mechanical adaptors in telecom closets.

<comment><USER20> Well...the daisy chains were the standard for mechanical connections. :-)

What there never was was a connection standard safe enough to put in a house, made to be (ab)used by normal people. 48v DC as it lives in the telco world is flat out dangerous if you aren't careful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If none of the current plugs are usable, can we have a low-power plug standard based on PoE?

Having both ethernet and low power from one socket would be perfect for IoT devices, save people from having to run Ethernet wiring themselves afterwards, and cut down on wireless spectrum use.

And your 'smart fridge' would just plug into both outlets and use a relay to cut 230V if the motor doesn't need to run.

<comment><USER34> Wouldn't the labor/effort cost to run and terminate Ethernet vs. 120v wiring be significantly higher?

My perspective is just that of someone who's run a bit of both at an amateur level through my house, and finds terminating stupid-simple 120v wiring much, much easier than ethernet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yeah, we are kind of running low on actual high power devices to plug into residential outlets these days. Those that remain are pretty much confined to specific parts of specific rooms. Various stand alone cooking things on the kitchen counter. Hair dryer in the bathroom by the mirror. The vacuum cleaner seems to be the exception and there is a tendency toward built ins.

Heck, I don't know that there is even much need for high power ceiling lighting any more. Everything that people want to see with any detail is self illuminated these days. Just scatter some low power LEDs around (you don't even have to provide a way to turn them off) and you are done. If you actually want to read a paper book or do some knitting then an appropriate lamp is not going to take hardly any power as it would only have to illuminate a small area.

</comment><comment><USER9> More than a low voltage plug (which I'd love) is the need for in wall smart plugs that have a wired connection rather than wifi. I can't believe I'm the only person that wants this and while I've found a few in wall smart plugs, I've never found a wired one.

<comment><USER36> There are classic home automation systems like x10 that potentially predate wifi and offer wired solutions that use the power lines themselves for wired communication, you might want to check these out

<comment><USER37> Powerline Gigabit Ethernet is a thing, but it's bordering on wireless (uses the power wiring as a "guideline" as to where its RF energy should go). This makes the network attachment unit costly and adoption low. For most applications WiFi is cheaper and more convenient. Anyone who wants really solid connectivity will lay Cat5.

<comment><USER36> The use case here is turning an outlet or light on/off, so latency matters, but it requires nearly zero bandwidth (assuming that you're not talking tcp). Granted, x10 security cameras exist.

x10 speaks a protocol designed for this purpose and requires a base station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > USB C meanwhile requires active cables, sockets, and devices, sacrificing > any pretence [sic] of simplicity.

Passive USB-C cables should be fine up to 60 watts. Beyond that you need a chip to certify safe construction but that's a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER39> A DC solution is WAY overdue. Put your hand on your AC->DC converter, or your wall-wart. Above ambient room temperature? Wasted energy. "It's only 2-10 watts." Multiply by 5 units (underestimated) per 100 million households. That's >= a gigawatt. 8700+ GwH / year.

That's aside from the environmental costs of making & disposing of these pernicioius devices. Time for that decades-old solution to retire.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't see how going to 12 V would help simplifying devices. Most chips don't run on 12 V, so one will anyway need a switch-mode power supply or linear regulators with big heat sinks inside each device. The added expense of a rectifier and mains-capable transformer is minimal.

On the other hand, at least fewer people would be electrocuted by their crappy Amazon USB chargers.

</comment><comment><USER41> We don't want low voltage distribution. It's dangerous. The currents have to be MUCH higher, and actually increases fire risk.

</comment><comment><USER18> Comments below the original post are great.

</comment><comment><USER42> go look at copper prices...

</comment><comment><USER43> 2016</comment>


Stripe is building a Ruby typechecker - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/byteconf/stripe-is-building-a-ruby-typechecker-d6cd7cee6abf <comment><USER2> This looks really cool, and something I've wished had existed in the past. Have you thought of doing unions with a syntax like this, following after languages like Crystal, TS, Elm, etc?

        class A
          sig(foo: TrueClass | FalseClass).returns(String)
          def bar(foo)
            foo.to_s
          end
        end

The T.any(…) syntax seems very … verbose, for Ruby at least. And Ruby doesn't have a true "boolean" class (it has TrueClass/FalseClass), so that would be riddled everywhere unless you created a boolean type yourself. Same for indifferent hashes, i.e. a hash with keys of type T.any(String, Symbol).</comment>


Canadian immigration site crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/canadian-immigration-site-crash-election-2016-11 <comment><USER2> dupe, front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12906232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12906232)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a shock... a lot of people are going to get the hell out of dodge. Reagan and Dubya were too vivid a preview of what this is going to be like, and Trump is going to choose at least one critical SCOTUS judge. I think you'd have to be pretty naive to think that this isn't going to get incredibly bad.

I think.. there is also the disgust factor. How invested can anyone with a brain and conscience be in this train wreck? It was hard over the last 16 years, now... now it's going to get worse.

</comment><comment><USER4> How might a Trump win affect Canadian startups?

<comment><USER3> In terms of talent fleeing this dumpster fire? Probably in a good way. In terms of the likely economic catastrophe which will hardly be limited to the US? Well...</comment></comment>


Verizon ordered to finish fiber build that it promised but didn't deliver - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/verizon-ordered-to-finish-fiber-build-that-it-promised-but-didnt-deliver/

<comment><USER2> ... and yet, they won't. At worst, they'll pay some small little fine (the "financial damages") and go about their normal business.

It's laughable how they tried to blame the timing of the report on their union negotiations. Regardless of whether that's true or not, they still failed to hold up their end of the deal.

I would encourage those of you who live in NYC to call up Verizon and inquire about FIOS service availability at your residence. If they tell you it's not available, notify the DoITT.

</comment><comment><USER3> For whatever reason, Verizon has "given up" on FiOS. Perhaps decided it was too expensive? They're willing to milk it for continuing revenue, but don't want to spend new money. Perhaps they've harvested the low hanging fruit? The net result is the antithesis of the original gonzo deployment that took place all around the country.

Verizon is content to emphasize wireless, especially now that they own 100% of their network (previously Vodafone owned 45%).

Still, it could be worse. It could be _far_ worse. Verizon aggressively deployed FiOS in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. It was great. Then they sold us and a lot of other "rural" areas to Frontier Communications. That clown show is 100x worse than the worst you could imagine about Verizon.

Frontier originally decided to drop cable TV altogether (keeping legacy customers for a transition period). Then they reluctantly reversed themselves. They also shutdown entire FiOS towns where they didn't like the penetration numbers. They don't have any physical offices, you need to mail back a DVR or a CableCARD to them. Etc. I could go on and on but it's not pretty. Comcast is eating Frontier's lunch.</comment>