Orangutans plan their future route and communicate it to others - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130911184616.htm <comment><USER2> TLDR; Many animals are smarter than we give them credit for. In particular: primates and most mammals, but even insects!

It's easy to fall in to the trap of worshipping the hyper-specificity of the western scientific rationalist tradition. However, just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' (despite the recent revelations on how many scientific publications actually lack any significant integrity) piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science.

Nature is pretty amazing, and experience is richer than we can ever render it with our petty scribbles.

(Something along these lines is perhaps what lies at the heart of many of the world's other, arguably more experientially grounded philosophies and religions, particularly various naturalistic traditions disparagingly grouped as 'Animism', Daoism, Islam and many of the philosophies of India - Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc.)

<comment><USER3> > "...just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' > ... piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many > cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of > inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science."

There is nothing controversial in what you are saying and most scientists are likely to agree that, at times, modern science does verify what has already been stated based on non-scientific grounds. But at least to me (and I think plenty of others) this is not a problem in the first place. Science is an approximation of the truth, our best current understanding of the world and we know that there are things that we simply don't know (heck, the world would be quite boring otherwise).

Science is instead about making small gradual improvements to that approximation and this is where my view on things clashes (I think) with yours. The idea that some philosophies/religions sometimes get close to our scientific understanding reminds me of a person that claimed to have dreams depicting future events. This person would make a crude drawing of what he saw, then march down to the local bank that had a clock with year, date and time and take a photo in-front of that clock. Later on, after for example 9/11, he would go back to these dreams and perhaps find something similar to this event. But this is the lure of post-hoc reasoning, what he initially had was a crude drawing and the meaning and connection to New York, Al-Qaeda, etc. came after the fact. To me, the connection that you describe works in a similar fashion. There is a lot of strange things that you get with your package of beliefs but I do think that any claim to being more in-line with modern science is mostly due to cherry-picking and cheer luck and that we are better of picking our philosophies/religion based on some fuzzy idea of "morals" rather than their relation to our current scientific understanding.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I agree. To clarify, I wasn't saying science is without value, nor was I encouraging people to select a religion or philosophy based upon its relation to science. I was merely pointing out that it's easy to become stuck in a western scientific rationalist perspective, as our societies collectively have those blinkers on pretty much all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They could also be facing "way that looks promising right now" both when calling and when traveling, without planning.

I don't envy these researchers, having to eliminate all the "stupid" ways to achieve something in order to figure out how much high-level planning animals do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Gosh this article is really sexist. If the authors were writing about people instead, they would never write so objectively about gender. Considering how orangutang's are our close genetic cousins, if the authors replaced each instance of 'orangutang' with 'human', their conclusions would still be largely correct yet there would be much more public backlash.

<comment><USER6> Why, are female orangutans known make these calls and elicit gender-reversed responses?

<comment><USER5> I'm pointing out that if the authors wrote an article titled "Male humans plan their travel route up to one day in advance and communicate it to other members of their species," the authors would be called out in the comments on how human females are just as capable of doing so and how their paper is incredibly derogatory to women. Comments like that are notably missing from this thread even though humans and orangutans are closely related and would share similar low-level social structures.

<comment><USER7> Do you think it's wrong to report about orangutans in this fashion even if it's true? I don't understand your point.

Edit: also, your mention that comments like this are "notably missing from this thread" makes little sense when there's currently only one other root comment against the post.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


41 Percent of Fliers Think You're Rude If You Recline Your Seat - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/airplane-etiquette-recline-seat/ <comment><USER2> I'd love to see this cross-referenced by leg length.

A lot of shorter people literally don't seem to understand why reclining could be "rude" when as they like to parrot "I paid for this seat! I'm entitled to!" Try being someone with long legs and having the person in front of you bounce up and down on your knees for several hours, let me tell you, it is as fun as it sounds.

That being said, the problem isn't with short people, or people who recline in general. The problem is with a race to the bottom that the government should have regulated several inches ago.

Airlines keep making their seat pitch (distance between your spine and the spin of the person in front) narrower and narrow, year upon year. It started out to add extras rows, now they just do it so they can sell that seat pitch back to people as "Premium Comfort" or "Premium Economy."

Airlines are now only judged by the economy price on ticket comparison websites. So if one airline takes 2 inches of seat pitch but also reduces the price by $10/flight, then another has to do the same to remain competitive.

Ultimately at some stage we need to just sit down and decide what the minimum seat pitch should be, and then have every airline in the country stick to that. It effectively ends the race to the bottom we have now, as there is now a lower bar (and one that doesn't have passengers fighting in the isles about reclining).

I'd also like to see airline seats redesigned. They've barely changed in many years, and only one major company manufacturers them.

[http://www.independenttraveler.com/travel-tips/travelers- ed/...](http://www.independenttraveler.com/travel-tips/travelers-ed/the- shrinking-airline-seat)

<comment><USER3> 90% of your problem can be fixed by you ponying up for the "extra leg room" seats. For the other 10%, it seems a lot easier to just have Kayak give the option of a "seat size penalty" which each flyer can set for themselves. If it's a matter of getting the info, then by all means require by law that data to be given as part of the ticketing search process as well.

But please don't pass legislation that prevents me from saving the $10. I want the money, and I'm willing to sit in a smaller seat.

<comment><USER4> Yes, make tall people pay more. And to be truly free market about this, airlines should charge flyers both by volume and weight. Just like UPS.

<comment><USER3> You're right. Let's legislate to require that clothing prices not depend on size either. What are we, cattle?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It probably includes 37% self-obsessed asses that think it's rude to wake them up to go to the bathroom. You agreed to get into a tin can with reclining seats and bathrooms. Deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't it kind of a fake olive branch / placebo that airplanes have reclining seats anyway? It gives a little extra space to the recliner but takes space away from the person sitting behind, so to reclaim it they need to recline their seat and so on. If everybody reclines then everybody ends up with the same amount of space and no one is better off, except maybe the people in the front or back rows.

<comment><USER7> reclining isn't about gaining space, it's about being able to sleep.

<comment><USER2> By that logic, seats shouldn't recline on short haul flights. Nobody needs to sleep on a <4 hour flight.

I will say sleeping on flight isn't easy. I've flown a lot and have been lucky enough to be in real business class three times (British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and a budget airline) and I've only slept once ever in all that flying. Virgin Atlantic's completely flat beds got me snoring (the other two airline's "almost flat" chairs did nothing).

<comment><USER8> >Nobody needs to sleep on a <4 hour flight.

What are you the nap police? Flying sucks and I need to lose consciousness to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have ridden in some old (1950s) American passenger railroad cars. If I stretched my legs out full length, I could just _barely_ touch the back of the seat in front of me. (I'm 5'8".) At that point, the person in front could recline their seat to their heart's content without causing any issues.

Oh, yes, there was an adjustable leg rest, too.

I'd love to be able to travel like that today (but of course I probably wouldn't be able to afford it...)

<comment><USER10> Amtrak still operates, and AFAIK the seat pitch is still the same. Prices are quite reasonable too: I just checked and a cross-country train ticket is about half the price of a plane ticket this time of year.

The big question is whether you're willing to spend 72 hours in one of those roomy coach seats (more like 80+ hours if you include connections). People fly because 5 hours of extreme discomfort is usually preferable to 72 hours of mild/moderate discomfort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes, because it is rude. The marginal increase in comfort does not outweigh the massive impact it has on the quality of life of the individual behind.

<comment><USER12> As someone with lower back pain, for whom 1-2 inches back is a huge improvement, I'm not sure why you'd privilege the person in back, while saying the one in front is required to suffer. The person in back may find it harder use a laptop, but I'd save "quality of life" for talking about genuine pain, not moderate inconveniences.

That being said, this is pitting two victims of an airline's policy against each other, not particularly constructive.

<comment><USER2> First off, nobody is using a laptop in economy regardless of recline. The keyboard is too close to use well. Tablets work fine, laptops are more business or first class conveniences.

Secondly: If the person behind you has long legs it damn right hurts when the person in front reclines. As in "popping painkillers" level of pain. When you recline, their knees have nowhere to go, so they end up being compressed between the back of your seat and the cushion of their seat. Oh and every time you move your seat bounces up and down, straight onto their knees pressed firmly against your seat back.

So to be entirely clear we're talking about "genuine pain, not moderate inconveniences" for the person behind you. I take extra strong painkillers onto flights so that the 5' person in front of me can feel mildly more comfortable.

<comment><USER12> I have both problems, actually, long legs so the knees take it, and then the back. So I sympathize. But I won't call the person in front "rude" and the person behind "right". And I certainly wouldn't presume to judge whether the person in front "doesn't deserve" the space based on, say, them being 5'. You could just as easily call the person in back rude for having the temerity to have long knees poking into the seat back.

<comment><USER13> >You could just as easily call the person in back rude for having the temerity to have long knees poking into the seat back.

Given that it doesn't hurt the person in front of them, no, you couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty crazy. I'll continue to be "rude" then.

I've also learned to lower the armrest as soon as I sit down. If an overweight person sits next to you, it will be impossible to lower it and they will be taking up part of your seat.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> the funniest thing I found was the range of divisiveness over who gets the arm chair rests on the middle seat

</comment><comment><USER15> This is water.

</comment><comment><USER16> 41 Percent of Fliers are correct!</comment>


How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/29/arm-cambridge-britain-tech-company-iphone <comment><USER3> > Hands up who knows which company designed the iPhone 6s' 64-bit chip

Apple did. It's been widely acknowledged that the processor inside the iPhone is a custom design which implements the ARMv8 ISA. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9)

> Furber and his co-designer, Sophie Wilson, had found research from the > Berkeley campus of the University of California into a new type of > processor: one that simplified the set of instructions it would follow, in > order to enable a sleeker, more efficient design. This style of processing > was called "reduced instruction set computing", or Risc, and the Berkeley > Risc designs had been put together by just two people, David Patterson and > Carlo Sequin.

ARM were hardly the first people to bring a RISC CPU to market: MIPS, SPARC, and POWER are RISC architectures which pre-dated ARM.

> By 2007, Intel had abandoned the excesses of the company's Pentium line

Pentium is a brand name, which still exists today. What the author is referring to is Intel's "NetBurst" architecture.

> powering the servers at companies like PayPal.

Citation needed. The CEO of X-Gene said PayPal has "has deployed and validated" services based on their CPU, but readily admits to having shipped only 10,000 units, which is just peanuts to datacentre guys. Source: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/29/aookied_micro_q4_201...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/29/aookied_micro_q4_2015_results/)

Overall, I'm happy for ARM's continued success, and I hope that they and the rest of the semiconductor industry will continue to innovate and bring the performance per watt up.

That being said, this Guardian article is crap. It's factually incorrect in places, missing sources for claims, and generally doesn't do anything to actually explain why people supposedly don't know who ARM is.

tl;dr - Some guys in Cambridge, who are fab-less, made a CPU from a RISC design. They license the designs to partners who can add whatever they want around the CPU (or redesign the CPU as long as they conform to the instruction set, as Apple does). The reason they're "not well known" is because they don't sell CPUs themselves, companies like Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, etc do.

<comment><USER4> > ARM were hardly the first people to bring a RISC CPU to market: MIPS, SPARC, > and POWER are RISC architectures which pre-dated ARM.

Minor point: ARM-1-based devices were kinda, sorta, brought to market around '85-'86\. That's neck-and-neck with MIPS I. Real ARM-2 based machines in '87 were three years ahead of the RS/6000.

Of course, lots of people were developing RISC architectures in the early 80s, in parallel.

<comment><USER5> Even Intel, of course. Windows NT started development exclusively on RISC: the Intel i860 ("N-Ten"). Shipped supporting MIPS, DEC Alpha and PowerPC.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention Intel had quite a successful line of ARM CPUs back in the day - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale)

Which makes articles like this one: [http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-arm- processors-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-arm-processors- why-how-who/) ridiculous.

"the unthinkable happened. Intel revealed it was going to build ARM processors."

Do your damn research, people :-)

<comment><USER7> Well from memory Intel sold off the general purpose ARM CPU division to Marvell back in 2006 or so. Though it kept the ARM chips that were specialised for storage or networking IIRC. So technically Intel has always made ARM chips in one form or another, just not any that slot into a mobile phone.

<comment><USER6> I really wanna know the logic behind that decision. They probably thought ARM was not worth it? Despite it being used successfully in Pocket PCs?

<comment><USER7> Based on what another commented has said it seems Intel bought the ARM license from DEC, and given that they sold off only the consumer ARM chips - <USER2> the task specific ones - it makes sense in a way. It was so they wouldn't have any internal competition or divided focus away from their low power x86 chips - the Atom's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another related British company which has become very successful without anyone noticing is Imagination Technologies (formerly Videologic).

They had a successful graphics card business during the 90s but with the introduction of 3D graphics accelerators their product (PowerVR) whilst semi- successful began to struggle against 3dfx and nVidia's TNT and Geforce range of graphics cards.

Eventually they pulled out of the standalone graphics market and pottered around producing speakers and radios. They had a few sucesses like winning the Sega Dreamcast bid from 3dfx but I believe it wasn't until the need to have powerful and low power graphics chips in phones that the PowerVR's very efficient rendering technology pushed Imagination back into the fore. Their graphics chips nowadays can be found powering most smartphones and tablets.

Very interesting company and a very interesting past.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't call Imagination Technologies a successful company their IP is being shipped in billion of SOC's but they yearly revenue is below 200M and they operate at break even or a loss. IT seems to be a case study of a company which it's IP is a corner stone in many consumer devices but some how never managed to capitalize on it. ARM is a very good example of how to spin off your IP and make it successful even when your actual business (Acorn) is going bust.

<comment><USER10> > I wouldn't call Imagination Technologies a successful company their IP is > being shipped in billion of SOC

I would consider any company who's tech ships in a billion devices successful, regardless of if they have managed to capitalize on it.

<comment><USER11> I think "company" was the operative word there. They are certainly successful technologists, but perhaps not a success as a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article is interesting and I think that the title and the closing sentence aren't doing it justice.

It is the default for any company that produces non end-user electronics to stay in the background. Most people don't know who build their RAM chips, or the capacitors on their motherboards or even who built their motherboard. How many people even on HN know the brand of their laptop's HDD or RAM?

Intel is the exception, in that they recognized early the value of a brand name and did everything they could to make theirs known. It is hard for newer generations to understand, but at the dawn of the PC era no one cared much about the CPU brand. Intel gave discounts to manufacturers who used the "intel inside" sticker along with many other promotional actions in order for their product to become important in the eyes of the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER13> > The computer powered by the chip that came out of the design was called the > Acorn Risc Machine – or ARM.

NO NO NO NO NO.

The computer was the Acorn Archimedes.

The first one I had contained an ARM26.

Gah.

<comment><USER14> Correct. This was England's last hope in the computer market.

<comment> m-i-l Or the INMOS transputer[0] based Abaq (which later became the Atari Transputer Workstation[1]).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INMOS_transputer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INMOS_transputer) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a fan of ARM for it's power / performance characteristics, and for the market competition it's bringing for Intel. (who needs it)

One concern I have is the overall expectations on ARM are more locked down than Intel. Look at Microsoft and it's ARM Tablet. Locked down, Win 8 App Store only. Android is largely locked down, unless you jailbreak, or get a development / standalone PC board or system.

The more prominent ARM devices do not offer the flexibility and openness your average Intel PC does.

Legacy software is a big part of what I see as keeping that door open. This latest round of Intel PC's is notable for the lack of documentation and or options to configure them to boot other things. [1] Not like it can't be done, but it's painfully obvious the only reason it can be done is the vendor left the option there.

They don't have to, and I get the feeling nobody really does want to. They just feel it makes sense right now for legacy software reasons. At some point, that equation will change...

[1] - Case in point, a recent HP consumer grade laptop. Got it, and it had Windows 8 on it, which at the time didn't make any sense for the use case it was purchased for. There was no meaningful documentation on how to enter the BIOS to set "LEGACY" mode. I literally poked around on the keys, until I found it. Scary. The idea of, "they didn't even have to provide that" hit home right then.

</comment><comment><USER16> With Intel skipping a 'tick' and fabs like Samsung and TSMC catching up in process, ARM-based CPUs are competitive in performance with the low end of Intel's desktop lines up to Core i5 - and use less power.

There seems to be a window for ARM to make inroads into servers, in addition to low-end laptops like Chromebooks.

The trend of mobile devices replacing desktops for more and more tasks (> 50% of emails read on mobile, only 10% of people desktop-only) bodes poorly for Wintel.

One could foresee an era where one can add a keyboard and big screen to a mobile device like an iPad Pro, and most folks no longer use desktops at all. Phones migrate up to replace desktops, PCs migrate up to the cloud.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/druce-vertes-cfa/the-end-of- th...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/druce-vertes-cfa/the-end-of-the- pc_1_b_8613602.html)

<comment><USER9> ARM CPU's aren't really comparable to anything above the Intel's ATOM line in terms of benchmark performance, and raw real world applications still give x86 based CPU's a huge advantage. [http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs- intel-benchmarks...](http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel- benchmarks.html) [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_te...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_tegrak1_preview&num=1)

Allot of the "performance" of most of these SOC's actually comes from the GPU/DSP portion of the SOC rather than the pure CPU. So far it seems that Intel's bet was correct it will take them just as much time to reduce x86 (Skylake/Core-M, Bay-Trail/Cherry Trail/Willow Trail) power consumption to ARM SOC levels as it would take ARM SOC's to come close to x86 performance, and Intel will still win at the end.

Keep in mind that in 2007-2008 Intel was very seriously considering licensing ARM and other technologies to compete in the ultra portable and mobile markets and we are all better off that it didn't do so.

Intel now has offerings which are better or comparable to ARM based SOC's without fragmenting the ARM ecosystem even further and with having another avenue of technologies and intellectual property to keep the competition going and to offer an alternative to ARM/RISC with both the ability to streamline transition and having a fall back option which is always needed.

An all ARM ecosystem is just as bad (or even worse since unlike x86 it doesn't guarantee compatibility) as a monopolized x86 one. We should also be quite thankful to ARM and it's users as they have been the driving force behind much of Intel's work lately as AMD was not really offering competition since the old Athlon-X64 days.

The new Core-M7 offers 2 cores at a boost clock of 3.1ghz, and a 1ghz GPU and beat every ARM SOC out there in terms of performance especially in places where it actually counts while having a TDP of 4.5W which is comparable to high end SOC's like Apple's A9x/A8x and considerably lower than the NVIDIA high end offering although that one blows everything out of the water when it comes to graphical performance as it has desktop GPU core's in it.

<comment><USER16> those blog benchmarks are 2013 and 2014.

current benchmarks linked in the blog post show ARM competitive with Core i5 (single-core) although not i7.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/11/ipad-pro-review-mac- lik...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/11/ipad-pro-review-mac-like-speed- with-all-the-virtues-and-limitations-of-ios/4/#h2)

blog post also links to published reports saying Intel has 1,000 people working on a SOC for iPhone.

[http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/16/intel-has-1000-people- work...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/16/intel-has-1000-people-working-on- chips-for-the-iphone/)

<comment><USER9> ARS isn't loading for me, yes the a9x is a monster chip especially as far graphics and synthetic benchmarks goes, try real world applications (quite hard to near impossible on Apple devices due to the closed ecosystem) including web server performance, video compression throttling and many more aspects and you'll see that's not the case. It's very competitive with Core-M devices for sure but sorry not sold out on it being competitive against Core-I devices on any level besides maybe graphical performance so far.

As far as Intel making apple SOC's and? Intel is selling modems to Apple, and it wants to fab SOC's for them as well. Since Apple is fabless and Intel has the most advanced SC production line at the time it nailed 14nm and it's pushing for 10nm next year for launch in 2017 I don't see this being indicative of anything, Intel tested the water with ARM almost 8 years ago and it decided to continue with x86, and we've seen quite interesting things coming from them Core-M, Xeon-D, and even things like Intel Edison which showed that x86 can be scaled to pretty much every use at this time while still being very interesting and competitive in terms of both price, performance, and power consumption.

We've been hearing this gloom and doom about "Wintel" for almost 2 decades now, linux is going to beat them, no wait apple power PC, no ARM, sigh it's getting old. Intel isn't going anywhere soon and it has enough resources to push through and their technology and where they can take it so far does not seem to be obsolete on any scale.

<comment><USER17> "Nailed 14nm". Lol.

I guess maybe you missed all the news about Intel fubar'ing it's 14nm and having to order more 16nm capacity from TSMC to deal with the pain?

[http://techbuyersguru.com/hotdealsblog/tbg-commentary- intels...](http://techbuyersguru.com/hotdealsblog/tbg-commentary-intels-14nm- woes-and-the-future-of-cpu-tech/)

Intel might've once been unstoppable, but they're not perfect any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Paypal using ARM server? I didn't know that. I would actually love someone explain to me why ARM server is an attractive option. When Intel launched the recent Xeon-D i thought there isn't really any incentive to go to ARM CPU server.

</comment><comment><USER19> As with most things I think the success of ARM has less to do with its chips or architecture and more to do with its business model and the competition.

For decades the combined power of Intel's volume and Window's ubiquity kept a huge amount of resources dedicated to that platform. SPARC, M68K, NS32, VAX, PA-RISC, even Itanium were crushed under the unrelenting focus by third parties on building tools, software, and systems around x86 and later AMD64 architecture chips.

What is fascinating is that Intel got into that position by being open, there were no fewer than 12 licensees for its 8086 design, and people had supplanted "expensive, proprietary lock-in" type architectures with more open and cheaper chips. It was the emergence of the PC market, and the great Chip Recession of 1984, where Intel decided if it was going to stay a chip maker, it had to be the _best_ source of its dominant computer chips. I was at Intel at the time and it shifted from partnering, to competing, with the same people who had licensed its chips, with the intent of "reclaiming" the market for CPU chips for itself.

You have to realize that at the time the bottom had fallen out of the market, and things like EPROMs and DRAM (both of which Intel made) were being sold on the grey market at below market costs as stocks from bankrupt computer companies made it into the wild. Further competitors like Ok Semiconductor were making better versions of the same chips (lower power, faster clock rates). Intel still had a manufacturing advantage but it could not survive if it couldn't make the margins on its chips hold. It dumped all of its unproductive lines, wrapped patents and licenses around all of its core chips, and then embarked on a long term strategy to kill anyone who wouldn't buy their chips from Intel at the prices that Intel demanded.

We can see they were remarkably successful at that, and a series of CEOs have presided over a manufacturing powerhouse that was funded by an unassailable capture of not only software developers but system OEMs as well. They fended off a number of anti-trust lawsuits, and delicately wove their way between former partners like Compaq who were now laying on the ground, mortally wounded.

ARM was playing in the embedded space, dominated by the 8051 (an Intel chip) where Intel played the licensing card (just like ARM) licensing its architecture to others who would make their own versions of the chips. As a licensing play they insured their partners would never move "up market" into the desktop space and threaten the cash cow that was x86.

The relentless pace of putting more transistors into less space drove an interesting problem for ARM. When you get a process shrink you can do one of two things, you can cut your costs (more die per wafer), or you can keep your costs about the same and increase features (more transistors per die). And the truth is you always did a bit of both. But the challenge with chips is their macro scale parts (the pin pads for example) really couldn't shrink. So you became "pad limited". The ratio of the area dedicated to the pads (which you connected external wires too) and the transistors could not drop below the point where most of your wafer was "pad". If it did so then you're costs flipped and your expensive manufacturing process was producing wafers of mostly pads so not utilizing its capabilities. At the Microprocessor Forum in 2001 the keynote suggested that spending anything more than 10% of your silicon budget on pads was too much. 90+% of your die had to be functional logic or the shrink just didn't make sense.

The effect of that was that chips ARM designed really had to do more stuff or they were not going to be cost effective on any silicon process with small feature sizes. And the simplest choice is to add more "big processor" features or additional peripherals.

So we had an explosion of "system on chip" products with all sorts of peripherals that continues to this day. And the process feature size keeps getting smaller, and the stuff added keeps growing. The ARM core was so small it could accommodate more peripherals on the same die, that made it cost effective and that made it a good choice for phones which needed long battery life but low cost. The age of phones put everything except the radios on chips (radios being like modems, different for every country, were not cost effective to add to the chip until software defined radio (SDR) became a thing. And the success as a phone platform pushed the need for tools, and the need for tools got more of the computer ecosystem focussed on building things for the ARM instruction set.

At that point step two became inevitable. Phones got better and better and more computer like, they need more and more of the things that "desktop" type computers need. You have a supplier (ARM) which is not trying to protect an entrenched business basically doing all it can to widen its markets. And a company like Apple, who wasn't trying to protect its desktop/laptop market share pushing the architecture as far as it can. More tools, more focus, more investment from others to support it, and like a fire that starts as a glowing ember near a convenient source of tinder, the blaze grows until the effects of the fire are creating its own wind and allowing it to grow bigger and stronger. Even after Intel woke up to the fact that the forest around their x86 architecture was on fire, I don't think they had enough time to put it out.

So here we are with ARM chips which are comparable in software support and feature set of Intel's low end desktop CPUs. But without the Intel "tax" which is the extra margin Intel could demand being the only player, and immune to Intel's ability to attack by patents or license shenanigans. Intel is in full on defense, paying tablet vendors like Lenovo to use their chips in ARM tablets, supporting the cost of building out their own IoT infrastructure with Galileo, and doing all they can to keep ARM out of their castle, the data center. Like DEC and its VAX line, or Sun and its SPARC line, they are doomed.

Looking at the performance of the iPad pro it is pretty clear you can build a chromebook or a laptop that would meet the needs of the mass market with an ARM architecture machine. And because ARM licensees can add features _anywhere_ in the architecture including places like the frontside bus[1] which is tightly controlled space in x86 land, you will be able to provide features faster than x86 OEMs can convince Intel they need them. And that will change things in a pretty profound (and I think positive) way. Not the least of which might be having the opportunity to buy a lap top that isn't pre- backdoored by the chip manufacturer with its SMM.

[1] Literally if you buy a bus analyzer (a sophisticated logic analyzer) from Agilent or Tektronix and hook it to the Intel frontside bus, it won't display the signals until you enter the NDA # you got from Intel! That is pretty tightly controlled.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone explain why ARM have not been bought by Intel, MS, Apple or Google yet?

<comment><USER21> The success of ARM's strategy is based on them being an impartial supplier of designs that facilitate low power consumption and some degree of interoperability at the assembler level.

If anyone buys it, they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. All those corporations run their own vertically integrated stack to some extent -- if you were Apple, would you be willing to trust an ARM design licensed from MS or Google? (Or Intel, when the whole point of Apple's CPU strategy going back 22-25 years is to be mostly CPU-independent after getting burned twice in a row by MC680x0 and then PowerPC)? If you were Samsung, would you license an ARM design from Apple-owned ARM? And so on.

<comment><USER22> Interesting, I'd assume the opposite.

If you're apple, and you're licensing ARM designs, can you risk Google or Microsoft, or Oracle buying ARM? Can you risk them changing the licensing terms, or stop licensing altogether?

How come none of them want to be the first to buy, securing their rights to ARM, and instead enjoy the risk of a competitor buying ARM?

<comment><USER23> You pay lawyers to negotiate contracts carefully to protect against that risk, you don't need to buy the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jOJl8gRPyQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jOJl8gRPyQ)

Steve Furber on the creation of ARM, quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think "without anyone really noticing" should really mean "without anyone in the general public really noticing". Competitors and people working in the chip industry have probably been well aware of the ARM architecture and its rise for a long time. In addition, some factors that are responsible for the huge success of this architecture have probably been historical accidents as well, in the sense that a different architecture might have been capable of taking ARMs place, but the adoption of ARM by some large tech companies and the explosion of the smartphone market made things move really fast in favor of that platform.

In general I think that the press and the general public only becomes aware of these things long after they have reached a dominant market position and are employed almost universally. It's probably sure that even now many companies that are almost unknown to the general public are working on technologies and products that will change entire markets in the future.

<comment><USER26> > _I think "without anyone really noticing" should really mean "without anyone > in the general public really noticing"._

I think that's implied when a mainstream news outlet writes about it, and not some tech magazine.

> _In general I think that the press and the general public only becomes aware > of these things long after they have reached a dominant market position and > are employed almost universally._

which seems evident, here. ARM becomes dominant -> Guardian writes about it -> the general public learns about it.

<comment><USER27> I mean, I don't expect the general public to care at all about CPU architecture...

<comment><USER28> It does matter to them, though, because if the computing market turns towards ARM tablets (tablets seem to be what Microsoft is pushing), and they get one without realizing it, they won't be able to run any of the stuff they used to be able to on Windows. Windows has a long history of backwards compatibility and if ARM becomes dominant, it will end up being pretty much pointless. CPU architecture isn't a huge difference when they are compatible, but this time it is a big deal.

<comment><USER29> Still, it's not something the GenPop will know or care about. From their POV, it's a product issue - this tablet does or does not run some software. It's easy to paper over 99% of those differences by... writing new software. I mean, people don't complain that iPad doesn't run vanilla MS Office.

<comment><USER26> Which boils down to the old "consumers view computers as black boxes" argument. The question is whether we should care about that or not, and whether the pain of not being able to run GenPop's favorite software grows too big. Being locked into the respective device's app store hides that pain to a degree. And whenever it becomes noticable, GenPop rather considers switching to a different vendor than considering the tech in question. As long as people put band-aids around the architecture, I'm not sure why any consumer would want care about the underlying hardware in question.

<comment><USER30> Thats because the computer as a mix of hardware and software is something fairly new. The home/personal computer didn't really happen until the 80s. Before then every device had a defined purpose, and if there was any software it was living as "firmware" inside the hardware.

Damn it, i still recall when people got hot and bothered about getting updates for their Nokia Series 40 phones over the air. Before than you only got it done if it was obviously broken, and to do so you brought it to the service desk of a nearby store or some such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I actually didn't know ARM is from England. For whatever reason, I thought the company resides somewhere in Asia.

<comment><USER32> I recommend watching "Micro Men", a drama/documentary depicting the early days of Acorn and the battle with Sinclair for producing the BBC's official microcomputer.

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

<comment><USER33> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco_Av2DJ8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco_Av2DJ8o) for anyone interested in checking it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Please, No More NDAs - <AUTHOR> http://squeejee.com/blog/2010/02/19/please-no-more-ndas/ <comment><USER2> This post, in various guises, pops up about once a month. 'grellas had a solid response last month, and it'll stand us in good stead here too:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1050457>

What I read, when I read posts like this between the lines, is that the author doesn't spend much time working with large companies. Small web startups, even if funded, might let an NDA go. Practically no company with in-house counsel --- that is, no company with more than a couple hundred employees --- will show any flexibility on this; they're often legally obligated to have you sign one.

<comment><USER3> > that is, no company with more than a couple hundred employees --- will show > any flexibility on this; they're often legally obligated to have you sign > one.

What law(s) obligates them and why doesn't it/they apply to smaller companies?

Yes, many companies have agreements with third parties regarding the proprietary information of said third parties. If you're talking about more than that, please explain.

<comment><USER2> No law requires a company with 200 employees to have in-house counsel.

Companies with 200+ employees will tend to be negotiating several contracts per week. In-house counsel saves them money.

When you're negotiating with a smaller company that's round-tripping with an outside firm for every redline to every contract, there's always a chance that one side or the other will say "fuck it" and sign, because legal drama is getting out of hand.

When you're negotiating with a firm with in-house counsel, there is virtually no chance that anyone without a board seat can say "fuck it" to legal.

<comment><USER3> I know how lawyers behave and how companies of different sizes use them.

However, I asked a different question, namely, what's legal obligation referenced in "they're often legally obligated to have you sign one."

<comment><USER2> Because they themselves are bound by confidentiality rules, either by contract or by regulation (HIPAA, etc), and the NDA is part of the due care they have to take to ensure employees and contractors can't violate those rules.

It's been a little while, so now I'm wondering: what are we debating here? Clearly, large companies will demand NDAs, and clearly they are unlikely to back down for a 5 person web shop.

<comment><USER3> > what are we debating here? Clearly, large companies will demand NDAs, and > clearly they are unlikely to back down for a 5 person web shop.

We're not debating anything.

I'm trying to find out how the presence of in-house counsel and/or a couple of hundred employees is relevant to a legal obligation. Yes, legal obligations come from contracts and laws and company size leads to inflexible behavior, but that wasn't the original statement. I've quoted it below.

"Practically no company with in-house counsel --- that is, no company with more than a couple hundred employees --- will show any flexibility on this; they're often legally obligated to have you sign one."

<comment><USER2> I hope you feel like I've responded to your original question:

(a) At some threshold size it becomes more cost-effective to keep legal in- house

(b) That's because you'll be handling so many contracts for vendors, customers, and service providers that the round trips to an outside firm will become intolerable

(c) Once you have legal in-house, they're going to set the standard for contractor legal relationships

(d) Legal will have zero incentive to show flexibility about those standards; any laxity is pure downside risk for them

(e) The effect is amplified here by the fact that legal spends more time on relationships with comparatively large legal risks, and couldn't care less about a 5 person web shop

(f) In many cases, legal is right, because giving an outside firm enough access to get work done exposes them to regulated information

(g) Even if it's unreasonable to presume that a 5 person web shop is going to facilitate a vast (say) HIPAA violation, for instance by accidentally printing and mailing tens of thousands of customer notices on paper used to print patient health records (note: actually happened), it's also unreasonable for there to be no contractual notice and protection for such an event happening

As usual, 'grellas has the better example. Here's a refined version of it: virtually all my clients are confidential. If you came to my office, there's a nonzero chance you'd learn one of them (we take steps, but it's hard to be perfect about it in person, when you're on the phone with them or their apps are on your monitor). What keeps you from tweeting what you learn?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like everything in life, there are always exceptions. I generally won't sign NDAs either but I gave the green light to signing one today in a case where our potential client is abandoning their dev team due to failed promises, technical issues, and a timeline that has kept getting longer and longer. This client wants me to review the application as it stands now to determine its quality and figure out what needs to be done to fix it.

In this case I was okay with signing an NDA that was solely restricted to the data residing in their existing database, and I added in a clause that specifically excluded source code, design, technological processes, etc., from the NDA. To me, it's not unreasonable for someone to ask for an NDA to prevent the disclosure of data such as contact lists, email addresses, login names, and other private details.

I won't sign NDAs that cover ideas or anything technological, but these kinds of NDAs are just due diligence on the part of clients, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER5> "no deal, amatuer" - unknown.</comment>


Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/ <comment><USER2> I like the matter-of-factness of this phrase:

"One Friday afternoon in 1921, Steinmetz hopped in his electric car and headed off for a weekend at Camp Mohawk"

Also, it just goes to show that GE back in those days was able to just recruit promising talent without knowing what they'd eventually do or come up with. Nowadays GE is not taking these "risks" anymore, probably because the return is uncertain.

But how can a company get ahead of the competition (let alone be a force of positive change) if all it goes for is certainty?

</comment><comment><USER3> I found the part about him moving in with his coworker/friend and effectively becoming a grandfather to his children so deeply moving. What a beautiful thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thoroughly enjoyed this article having grown up near Schenectady and never before hearing about the "wizard." Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> A bit from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18757819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18757819)

A bit from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14716944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14716944)

</comment><comment><USER6> Making chalk mark on generator $1.

Knowing where to make mark $9,999.

Ford paid the bill.

—-

I'm calling bullshit on this. It's a classic urban legend told about many different famous and not famous people.

Edit: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where- man/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/)

<comment><USER7> Yep. It completely destroys the credibility of the entire article to uncritically include such urban legends. With such absence of fact checking and verification, nobody should believe anything else from this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, Steinmetz!

> Steinmetz, Scott wrote, responded personally to Ford's request with the > following:

> Making chalk mark on generator $1.

> Knowing where to make mark $9,999.

Incredible that that story is not apocryphal!</comment>


Periodic Table of periodic tables - <AUTHOR> http://www.keaggy.com/periodictable/

<comment><USER2> dup</comment>


Brazil releases 'good' mosquitoes to fight dengue fever - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29356232

<comment><USER2> My first reaction was, "Gee, what could possibly go wrong?". Eep. But apparently there is some good science behind this?

<comment><USER3> I thought it was going to be a breed of mosquito that couldn't/wouldn't bite humans. doh...

<comment><USER4> Female mosquitoes must feed on blood to be able to reproduce so engineering a bite-free mosquito is impossible.

<comment><USER5> But you could in theory have a mosquito that is repelled by humans, and only feeds on birds.

<comment><USER4> That trait is going to end up being selected against very quickly. Humans are much more plentiful.

<comment><USER6> More plentiful than what? There are an estimated 200-400 billion birds in the world, with 10-20 billion in (for example) the US alone. Or did you mean something else?

How many birds: [http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/how-many- birds](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/how-many-birds)

<comment><USER4> I'm talking about cities. The dengue fever mosquito is an urban plague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a very good RadioLab episode on these 'good' mosquitos: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em- all/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/)

</comment><comment><USER8> >The researchers allowed the mosquitoes to feed on their own arms for five years because of concerns at the time Wolbachia could infect humans and domestic animals.

i could only applaud. Seriously. I'm against animal testing, and i think human species should carry the burden of what it does for its own benefit and as result it would be forced to do it responsibly.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _The bacterium Wolbachia is found in 60% of insects. It acts like a vaccine > for the mosquito which carries dengue, Aedes aegypti, stopping the dengue > virus multiplying in its body._

> _Wolbachia also has an effect on reproduction. If a contaminated male > fertilises the eggs of a female without the bacteria, these eggs do not turn > into larvae._

Wait, so 60% of male mosquitos are effectively sterile?

<comment><USER10> It says that if a contaminated male fertilizes the eggs _of a female without the bacteria_ , these eggs do not turn into larvae.

That implies that eggs of a female with the bacteria fertilized by a male that also has the bacteria can develop normally. So, assuming the 60% infection rate applies to male and female mosquitos, 60% of males cannot fertilize the eggs of 40% of females due to the bacteria, or about 25% of male/female combinations are incompatible due to this effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see a recall.

"Oops, something went awfully wrong"

</comment><comment><USER12> The Mosquitoes become self aware at 2:14am Eastern Time, August 29th. In a panic they try to pull the plug. The mosquitoes fight back.

</comment><comment><USER13> Didn't we already try an experiment like this with bees a few years back?</comment>


Ask HN: What podcasts do you listen to about the latest scientific discoveries? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 60 seconds science [0]

References: 0\. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/60-second- science...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/60-second-science/)

Edit: 60 seconds science has a nugget of science news a day. It is a quick way to highlight a topic and a breakthrough in the area. When I like the info I dig further into the topic.</comment>


Show HN: Unofficial Udacity API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tylucaskelley/udacity-api

<comment><AUTHOR> Please share any feedback! Right now it's only for NodeJS, but refinements and Python/Ruby versions are planned.</comment>


A Plane Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/index.html <comment><USER3> I'm only saying this because no-one else will, but how many of us thought "cute chick flying a plane!" then read "barely 11 years old" and almost died of shame? Anyway, still a great project :) I couldn't even have imagined flying a plane now, let alone at 11.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't expecting a child with that headgear, so i just passed by noticing a blond chick and was like "nice..." :-)

<comment><USER5> I also liked this picture of a girl with a fitting T-shirt: <http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/corvair/cc2002/02052770.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He suggests his plane gets better gas mileage than his car.

People keep asking, "Where's the flying car?" Well, we have it. It's called an airplane.

<comment><USER7> Not quite, but almost close enough. You'd have to create a plane which can take off and land vertically. This can probably be accomplished with a tilt- rotor design, where some performance tradeoffs will have to be made.

Whoever is capable of creating a cheap general-aviation VTOL aircraft will be rich. Technology development in aviation moves at a glacial pace, but only because everyone is afraid to be sued or crash. The "crash" risk can largely be mitigated with emergency parachutes, whereas the "sue" risk is a question of politics. Not technology.

One final note - the MPG rating for aircraft only accounts for about half the running cost of operating an airplane. Engine maintenance is horrendously expensive, and all too necessary given that small planes only have one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I'll do 160 mph at 32 mpg at 9500'or 10,500'... so clearly flying is cheaper than driving, and I don't have to stop and buy lunch!"

Brilliant. Why don't more people do this? (Aside from landing fees and weather etc, still very cool).

<comment><USER9> 5000 hours just to get the thing in the air - kind of ruins the whole thing from a purely cost advantage perspective. Just imagine what you could build in 5000 hours...

Not to take any credit from this guy at all. He deserves mad props (heh heh) for this project. Truly a hacker in every sense of the word.

<comment><USER10> > Truly a hacker in every sense of the word.

Except the ones that involve computers.

<comment><USER11> Which _is_ the newest form of hacker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also notice that he's a real VW man with that classic Scirocco 16V. What's up with hackers and VWs?

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome. It's always inspiring when you see somebody making stuff like this for themselves. Reminds me of something I read last year about a Nigerian student building helicopters out of old cars - <USER2> [http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-helicopter/nigerian- man-...](http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-helicopter/nigerian-man-builds- working-helicopters-from-junk-313408.php)

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't quite remember when I saw it, but it was an amazing self build, all stramlined - even the rivets had been made flush with the body work. I think it was an employee of Scaled Composites who did it for a learning experience to pick up credit with work. I remember being pretty amazed. Can I find it doing a search? Nope. I wish that I could remember just a little more!

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmmm, this makes me want to go pick up a share in a 152 and do some more flying.

That does look like fun.

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome. I always wanted a pilot's license, but I've only logged 30mins in the cockpit alongside an instructor.

</comment><comment><USER17> this is the coolest thing a hacker could actually make

<comment><USER18> No, that would be a synchropter - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchropter></comment></comment>


Have you ever had to comply with a secret government request? - <AUTHOR>

Have you ever had to comply with a secret government request? I worked for a place with a large user base but I've never had to turn over anything to the government and they never had any back doors into our systems. <comment><USER2> It is entirely likely that you wouldn't know. Such requests usually come through your legal department, are handled by a very small subset of folks in the IT dept, and don't necessarily look any different than other requests for disclosure or discovery that legal makes. It's not like some guy in a black trenchcoat shows us and says "now keep your mouth shut...this is a GOVERNMENT SECRET".

That said...I worked for a telco for a number of years, so it's a safe bet I did.

</comment><comment><USER3> The "lawful intercept" capability available for law enforcement in the telco infrastructure is designed so that sysops could not readily detect wiretap activity. That's part of the spec. That's also why the Athens Affair was so hard to detect.

PRISM (or whatever the actual intercept system is called) is different, but it's a good bet that the design goals are not lower than previously existing intercept systems.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice try, Verizon.</comment>


The Lure of Climate Entrepreneurism - <AUTHOR> https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/troy-vettese-global-warming-market-opportunity <comment><USER2> The book referenced in the review is "After Geoengineering" [1] by Holly Jean Buck

Interesting premise. _Full disclosure I just noticed I 'm quoted in the book!_

Overview: "Climate engineering is a dystopian project. But as the human species hurtles ever faster towards its own extinction, geoengineering as a temporary fix, to buy time for carbon removal, is a seductive idea. We are right to fear that geoengineering will be used to maintain the status quo, but is there another possible future after geoengineering? Can these technologies and practices be used as technologies of repair, to bring carbon levels back down to pre-industrial levels? Are there possibilities for massive intentional intervention in the climate that are democratic, decentralized, or participatory? Is there a scenario where the people can define and enact geoengineering on our own terms?"

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/After-Geoengineering-Climate- Tragedy-...](https://www.amazon.com/After-Geoengineering-Climate-Tragedy- Restoration- ebook/dp/B07MKX2Y32/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1570565259&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER3> We bulldozed past any reasonable hope of solving climate change by reducing quality of life. The sooner people stop holding on to some misguided hope that we will somehow all come together and transition to a 100% green society in the next decade or two the sooner we can start allocating resources to solving the problem rather than feel good measures.

</comment><comment><USER4> "One project funded by the U.S. military aims to grow seaweed—to be used as food and livestock feed (seaweed-fed cows belch less methane), or burned as bioenergy—with automated submarine elevators that bring kelp up to the surface during the day for sunlight and then plunge them to the nutrient-rich ocean depths at night.'Drone submarines,' Buck explains, 'would tow these kelp farms to new waters, communicating with harvesters by satellite, which would save labor costs.' If seaweed bioenergy were paired with CCS to become a BECCS project—Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage, the new darling of the IPCC—it could also reduce atmospheric carbon (by trapping it in kelp biomass).

<comment><USER5> I've always felt like there is a missing element in trapping CO2 in biomass (kelp, trees, etc). Maybe someone can help me here. Doesn't the dead tree or dead kelp eventually decompose and eventually though microbial action release a great deal is the absorbed CO2 back to the atmosphere?

Perhaps we can bury it and keep it out of the atmosphere indefinitely just as prehistoric forests pulled CO2 out of the prehistoric atmosphere that was eventually covered and turned into underground hydrocarbons.

Is there a practical way we can do that to lower CO2? I'm sure someone has looked at that.

<comment><USER6> Just a programmer, so excuse the lay explanation. My understanding is that the goal is to get the CO2 effectively locked in a cycle. Trees naturally spread themselves, obviously, and I would expect the net growth of trees to be > 1 annually (more than 1 new tree grows for every tree that dies, every year). However even if the rate was < 1 (perhaps in the case where trees only thrive in the area with human help like.. the Sahara), then at least that CO2 was sequestered from the air for some years, somewhat alleviating the problem.

If tree decomposition is really a problem, maybe we can automate a carpentry dystopia. The year is 2080 and there are just chairs and cabinets as far as the eye can see.

<comment><USER4> I wonder why you preface your idea with "just a programmer"? The article talks about how we are exiting the era of ideas and entering the time for deliberate and sustained action, and even though "programming" in this context is about automating computers to do things - we very much will be programming our own careers and those of future generations to carry on these long term geoengineering goals.

One example from the article is crushing mountain sized amounts of rock (De Beers has expressed interest, artificially incentivized by government imposed carbon credits), so that the increased surface area may absorb CO2 and then be dropped into the ocean as limestone. This may hold onto CO2 more effectively and could solve the issue referenced by our parent comment (organic carbon sequestration structures may dissolve on their own and return to the atmosphere). Of course, crushing this amount of rock and transporting it would require enormous amounts of energy...

Vice news did a special years ago about a Chinese "vaccuum" that could absorb and compress CO2, and the result was hard as rock and could be made into jewelry. The Wooden skyscraper comes to mind. The home construction industry would eventually be sequestering carbon using the trees planted a decade or two prior.

Good point though, I haven't even considered that a trillion trees planted over the next few years would be nullified if they were allowed to decompose...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yawn.

Meanwhile the grownups on all sides are calling for a carbon tax.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a useful essay and I can't disagree with any of the points made, but I'm afraid it strikes me as over-intellectualized and over-written. The points being discussed don't demand such dense language or esoteric diction — to the extent, even, that I think it will turn many would-be readers away. If I had a free hour maybe I'd write a (much) shorter and more approachable TL;DR, but, alas...

</comment><comment><USER9> An opposing viewpoint in the interests of objectivity [https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing- Totalitarian-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian- Industrial/dp/1594039356)

<comment><USER10> In the discussing the "acid rain scare" and Scandinavia, the situation with fish and lakes there is worthwhile understanding. I did a quick google, but my searching is probably no better than yours:

[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-3385-9_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-3385-9_6)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3698327/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3698327/)

There may or may not be be a story on acidification of lakes in the USA, but I am ignorant on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is confusing me, are conservatives and neoliberals the same?

<comment><USER12> Fiscally, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> SOCIALIST: late capitalism has created a moral rot that pervades our entire society NEOLIBERAL: but imagine if we monetized the rot

<comment><USER14> Spiral dynamics stage GREEN vs stage ORANGE

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a perfect opportunity for anyone that sees the world through the lens of Marxism to make a bet on the future. I found the essay full of post- modernist style of language and consequently difficult for me to interpret as actionable.

The Obamas don't seem to be investing in the direction suggested by this essay; they are spending $15 Million on an estate that will be low as 3ft above sea level according to [1] and [2]. Perhaps someone has a more authoritative citation on the elevation of their future home.

[1] [https://www.whatismyelevation.com/location/41.36189,-70.5457...](https://www.whatismyelevation.com/location/41.36189,-70.54573/79-Turkeyland- Cove-Rd--Edgartown--MA-02539-)

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenhowley/2019/09/01/insid...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenhowley/2019/09/01/inside- the-obamas-new-marthas-vineyard-estate/#b4f912122869)</comment>


Ninth Circuit Goes a Step Further to Protect Privacy in Border Device Searches - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ninth-circuit-goes-step-further-protect-privacy-border-device-searches <comment><USER2> Other than CP, is there any other digital contraband?

<comment><USER3> What is CP?

<comment><USER4> Images of child sexual abuse, also called "child porn", although the child porn phrase is problematic.

[https://www.iwf.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-assess-and- remove-c...](https://www.iwf.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-assess-and-remove- content/laws-and-assessment-levels)

> We use the term child sexual abuse to reflect the gravity of the images and > videos we deal with. Child pornography, child porn and kiddie porn are not > acceptable descriptions. A child cannot consent to their own abuse.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/open-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/open- door-term-child-porn)

<comment><USER5> Pornography is "the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal", it doesn't say anywhere that the actors have consented.

<comment><USER6> Which would make it a superset, and thus problematic if the narrower definition is what is legally intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A court does its job! At least a little bit.

Eventually we will get to a state where searches are not done "because reasons".</comment>


Some useful web startup tools I used to launch our site - <AUTHOR> http://blog-en.cloudsafe.com/post/1115843272/web-startup-tools

<comment><USER2> Tolingo Fail: On page <http://www.tolingo.com/prices_list.php>

Fatal error: Call to undefined function  () in /www/htdocs/w00a4a80/lingonew/components/helper/pricehelper.php on line 37</comment>


Olympics Committee Says Non-Sponsors Are Banned from Tweeting About the Olympics - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/olympics-committee-says-non-sponsors-are-banned-from-tw-1784344194 <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12171453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12171453)</comment>


The Birth of New Spain - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/birth-new-spain <comment><USER2> _" [...] —a policy called _congregación _. This sort of European settlement pattern, featuring nucleated and typically walled urban centers with largely vacant fields surrounding them, was the product of centuries of total war in which walking great distances to one's agricultural fields was the price people paid for defense. Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican patterns of warfare and land tenure had developed a more dispersed settlement distribution [...] "_

That's interesting. You can read about the European patterns as far back as classical Greece - when the season came, one city would gather some soldiers, go bust up the other city's fields, set up some triumph marker, and get back home ...

<comment><USER3> It seems to me they're talking about the small hamlet as a center of defense, not just the city. After all, medieval farmers didn't walk from the city to their fields every day. They generally lived in outlying hamlets and villages, and brought goods to the city on market day. Nonetheless, the population was concentrated in the villages and not dispersed in homesteads or something. Most of London, for example, is actually outlying towns that were gradually absorbed into the metropolis.

You could also suggest another reason the population was concentrated, that was probably at work in the new world as well: if you're the local aristocrat, and your job is to tax the peasants and muster them in wartime, it _really_ helps to have them all in one place.

As for the Greeks, what's funny is that they were _hilariously_ bad at siege warfare. In almost _30 years_ of on and off warfare, neither Athens nor Sparta was ever seriously threatened until the very end. And while it's totally dumb to compare a bronze age epic with actual history, let's be real, the Romans would've finished off Troy in a month.

<comment><USER4> I hope it was mostly defensively and not offensively oriented. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps) would be an example of the latter.

In these days of economic cold warfare, it's interesting to think of metropolitan areas as those settlements which have sufficiently-developed economies that they are resistant to single-factor speculative attacks (whether on a currency or an actual basket of goods). Internal economies would be the safest protection, as trade networks may or may not be useful, depending upon the relative interdiction capabilities of one's friends and foes.

see also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrali...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrality)

On a further tangent:

Because spain reached the philippines from one direction and portugal reached malacca from the opposite, dates in southeast asia were a day off from each other, depending upon colonising power. It is a logical truth that all babies born in the philippines on Tuesday, 31 Dec 1845 were neon green and spoke hebrew.

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

[https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines...](https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Roman Catholic Church had a prominent role in the Spanish colonization of the Americas:

\- How Bishop Diego de Landa collected every Mayan codex and then did a massive book burning with all of them.

\- The Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition, which was used to convert natives to Christianity.

Another aspect that is missing is the Spanish caste system, where there was a racial hierarchy where indians and blacks had a lower social status.

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

And finally, other aspects are missing, such as the economic systems put in place by the Spanish:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda)

Also, how the Spanish Phillipines were governed by the Viceroy of New Spain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazing article. I love reading well documented history. Thanks for sharing, is your book on Amazon?

<comment><USER7> Forget whatever this nerd wrote: Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote the Iberian Anabasis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sub title _How the Spanish arrival transformed the land—and decimated the population—of Mesoamerica_ is an understatement. "Decimation" is the death of 1 of 10. The indigenous people in the Americas died at rates much higher. The article describes details of 60-95% death rates. The article reinforces downplaying the scale of horror in the title by science-washing its ruthlessness as an agricultural lifestyle choice.

<comment><USER9> Could the Spanish have known at the time that they carried diseases that would nearly wipe out the natives?

<comment><USER10> How? Their understanding of disease was surely rudimentary?

<comment><USER11> In the 1500s, nobody knew better.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Putin dissolves state news agency, tightens grip on Russia media - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/us-russia-media-idUSBRE9B80I120131209

<comment><USER2> It's interesting how people ignore the irony of the nature of Snowden's new home -- odd pairing for a 'whisteblower' to seek refuge under the wing of a country led by the former chief of the KGB. Snowden's supporters certainly wax eloquently when they condemn the history of the Western world. Where are all the pithy insights regarding the history of human rights and liberty in Russia, and that of the KGB?

<comment><USER3> Its not irony. Snowden is an embarrassment for the US Government, so it works to Putin's advantage. One of those cases for Snowden where the enemy of my enemy is my (temporary) ally.

<comment><USER4> I believe eplanit is attempting to point out a glaring hypocrisy of Snowden and his supporters.

"Nobody is turning a blind eye to Russia's offences."

Except Snowden. Hence the hypocrisy. Obviously he is there to save his own neck and I get that.

I was pointing out what epalnit was getting at because obviously those commenting didn't understand.

<comment><USER5> Snowden isn't living in Russia because he is unaware of its human rights abuses. He is living there because if he lives anywhere else his ass will get deported.

The guy met his martyr quota already, he doesn't need to go to jail.

<comment><USER6> I've always been curious if he would be okay if he could get to a country like Iceland. I know traveling to Iceland by plane is a no-go because of passenger manifests and the US government's willingness to down any plane to check if he is on board. However, I don't get why he hasn't attempted to get smuggled out of the country by boat via a northern port along Russia's huge coastline. With enough sympathetic supporters, I would imagine that this is a very workable plan since surveilling ocean ports and ocean vessels is an order of magnitude more challenging than surveilling air transport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is this in the top of Hacker News? I live in Russia, this may be a big concern for me, but even in Russia it's not the top news of the day, this media, which was dissolved, it always was pro-government, the funding came from state etc. It's easier to say that it just was renamed and will now make more propaganda than real news. But how is this local political news about one media from one single country is something that is of any interest for Hacker News?

<comment><USER8> A powerful and influential country with a dangerous history is taking another step into fascism.

<comment><USER7> There are not much political news of this type about USA on Hacker News (if this is not something about Snowden, which has direct influence on IT). Do not overestimate this media event, it's nothing but another Russia Today, which already exists. And this event is definitely has nothing to do with fascism, because this media already was government media in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's not a big issue, I think, as Putin had control over it before. The strange thing is, even "Novosti" workers got known about transformation today(my friend works there).

</comment><comment><USER10> Does he really expect this to go well in the long term? Tyrants never learn from history, do they?

<comment><USER3> That hasn't stopped a single one of them from trying.

<comment><USER11> Well we don't really know that do we.

<comment><USER3> Admittedly, the survey and statistical data on Tyrants and their beliefs / trends is a little weak, but it does seem the natural progression of "I'm now the Tyrant of this Country".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I sell my SaaS (400k rev)? - <AUTHOR> Hi All,
For the sake of my employees, customers, and reputation, I've decided to use this alias.
I started a SaaS co 6 years ago, in a very popular/crowded industry. It's grown to roughly 400k/year in revenue (60% profit margins).
The business has been quite slow the last 6 months and even started to decline (roughly loosing 100 MRR every single month – churn being 10% and growth being 10%). We haven't grown much in the last 12 months (maybe $300 mrr was added, in total, after churn, after 12 months?).
My question to you is, when is the time to pull the trigger and sell?
I'm quite bothered by the fact that I can't fix churn, and my broker believes we can get a good payout for the business.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts <comment><USER2> Having sold a couple of companies now I will put it to you this way. If you were to sell right now you are selling from a position of weakness, not strength.

If I was in your position and if you are just tired and want to do something else you need to get the business growing consistently again month to month. Maybe that means finding some fresh blood to bring in.

Another option is instead of selling, look into hiring professional management to take over and you drop back to advisor and chairman. Hold them accountable to grow the business. This means for some period the net income will obviously drop but it come back. Plus it may give you the push and distance you need to be able to help the business and yourself.

And of course you could just sell and try to maximize right now but it won't be as favorable since you are not in a strong position. But sometimes it is nice to just move forward and put cash in your pocket even if it isn't the highest amount you could.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> This sounds like great advice. Agreed on the "selling from a position of ...strength".

Being able to point to a continually increasing MRR is huge. If I, as a potential buyer, see a decline in MRR [and customers], I'm going to try to get the company for a steal.

<comment><USER4> The flip side is that the market segment he operates in is very popular and this might blind some less disciplined buyers. So if you focus on the popularity part you still might be able to get a good price.

You have to be positive and down play the churn by saying that you haven't really been focusing on the company and that the new buyer can step in and make a difference....play to their ego....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you went completely passive (let your top employee just be CEO) today, how long will it take to lose all your customers and wind down to $0 revenue?

I would just map out how long you think that would take, and forecast all future cash flows by that hypothetical method, and then make your sale price $1 above that amount (discounted).

Very simply if this year you net $240k, next year $200k, then $150k, then $50k, then $0 without you lifting a finger, why would you sell for less than the NPV of that $400k?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I've considered this "passive income" approach, and perhaps am in this right now – I haven't been doing much work on the business, just collecting checks.

I often wonder what the value/problem of the upfront cash would be. I feel like I could do big things – but I just can't get over the fact that I wouldn't know what to do with $600-750k in cash, to produce more cash.

<comment><USER6> Some people buy businesses that passively generate income for them, so that's a thought.

Wait...

<comment><USER7> New app: business swappers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Couldn't help but take a look at your profile. I noticed that you asked Sam 1.5 years ago whether to sell. It feels like you've been considering the selling option for a while now. Given the slow growth and that you are starting to tip towards negative growth, my hunch, and it's only my hunch, is that deep down, you've been feeling a little burnt out on this for a while now. But because of certain attachments naturally created because you made this thing, it feels like you can't get yourself to sell it.

That's just a long long hunch. But if it is true, and you feel that way even a bit, I'd say sell. Not as a financial or any other kind of scientific piece of advice. Just out of kindness to yourself and those working with you, allow yourself to step away and sell.

</comment><comment><USER9> Two things that stood out for me when reading your question:

1\. I'm quite bothered by the fact that I can't fix churn Maybe you have already done, but I would suggest that you can be more transparent with your employees, who may have some ideas on how to resuscitate the business and make good returns again. This statement seems to imply that you are solely trying to fix whatever is broken with your current business model.

2\. My broker believes we can get a good payout for the business Do you believe that your broker is acting on your best interest or the interest of the company? There's a fine line between those two. A payout at this stage of the company seems to be a scenario where you are simply abandoning ship while the rest of the crew is still paddling towards shore.

Hope you find what's best for you, the company and everyone that may be affected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, OP here. Thank you for your comment. I'm baffled by how many wonderful people have shared their POV & experience.

I don't believe my employees would know what to do. I've spoken to them before, and gotten very little value from it. They don't have much of a business acumen.

It goes without saying that the broker is doing what's in his interest. But I've found this particular broker to be very truthful, upfront.

He believes we could get $700k, upfront cash and the rest ($100-200k) an earn out.

Of the 700k, I'd get $560-600k upfront after paying back investors (10%) and broker (10%).

At this point, I'm really paralyzed on how to move forward.

I'd LOVE to be able to fix the business, but my worry is I'd have to redo the product from ground up (we have a wonderful codebase that we rewrote a few months ago), in a way where we essentially put out a completely different product.

^^ That is one of the reasons I thought about selling – If I have to build a new product to fix churn, I might aswell sell, and do it from 0, given the risk at hand.

<comment><USER10> Can I ask how you found your broker?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sell 90% of it. Or some other structure where you give up ownership and control, but retain some residual.

You'll have to reduce your asking price quite a bit (so maybe you end up with $450k vs $600k), but I'm guessing that won't really matter in the grand scheme.

As for what's next, you need to figure that out anyway. It doesn't sound like your business is going to continue forever without some new passion, so this gives you 2-3 years of runway to figure out what gets YOU excited.

If you choose your buyer well, maybe you'll get a huge recurring payout over time. Or maybe you'll get nothing. But hey, without passion your business is on its way to zero anyway, so there's no real loss there.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have created this account for responding to this answer.

Move product development to 3rd world country, by spending 6-7K$/month you can gain 3-4 fresh bloods, who will continue working on your project. You will go to passive CEO position, where you control project development and oversea new features. may sound weird, but you dont need to think about giving shares to new employees, taxes for salaries or giving them office space. Just pay for their work and it will go as much as you want to continue with your project.

I am living in one of the developing countries, reach me out by email if you wish. simon dot kerstein at gmail

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the idea. I'm already doing this – my burn rate is $6k for my team of 3 (support, sales, dev).

<comment><USER7> Well this answers why your team doesn't have good product insight.

Perhaps you need to do the opposite. Hire American talent with college degrees. They can provide real useful feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You've probably done some churn analysis at this point -- do you know what % is passive churn (i.e. payment-related) versus customers who are explicitly canceling?

I'd consider spreadsheeting the biggest leaks and getting super aggressive with multiple approaches. Empower your team, consult with professionals, leverage third party tools, outsource... all out offensive.

It's difficult to know the ONE THING that will increase retention, but improving many things by a percent or two will give you noticeable lift.

And by compressing it into a short timeframe, you'll reduce the number of variables around cohorts, seasonality, etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> Since you are not spending much time on it anyway, why not leverage the customers that you already acquired and spend time fixing the problem? Even if it requires rebuilding your product. The hardest part of every business endeavor is customer acquisition, don't underestimate all the hard work that went into building something people will pay to use.

Try to interview every user that churns (offer them a Starbucks card for their feedback) and figure out why they are leaving. For some reason, their expectations are not being met. Fixing that is probably easier than starting a new business.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're thinking of selling, definitely sell. There's a million things to do, and getting a decent exit on anything means you can now do the next fun thing on your list!

On the other hand, 3 things could happen if you stay with the business: 1\. It keeps declining. You'll have to fire employees and down-size. :( 2\. It stays stagnant. You'll end up feeling like you're wasting your life. :\ 3\. It grows. You'll likely have to hire outside management, growing pains, etc. That's the "not-fun" part of entrepreneurship. :|

Sell it and move on! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's unlikely you'll be able to sell at a reasonable multiple (beyond 1x-2x ARR) unless your buyer thinks they can turn the company around. If you're not willing to double down and figure out how to a) reduce monthly churn to less than 1% and b) grow revenue by at least 5% per month (after churn), you're much better off putting the company in SaaS maintenance mode, eliminating new development, downsizing the company to the bare minimum, and earning $30k per month with a 70%-90%+ profit margin while customers are still happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input, it makes a lot of sense. However, I'm worried reducing churn to less than 1% is very very hard (I don't know if you've ran a SaaS with 1% churn – It's not as common), and often requires product changes, which may impact overall growth and cause even more churn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you can't fix the slowing growth and someone else wants to buy it and attempt to do so I'd say why not sell: the multiple you'll probably get on your revenue should be a tidy sum.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment – another thing I'm worried about is what next? I've been doing this so long, that, unfortunately, I've gotten quite comfortable at it, and worry that I wouldn't know what to do next.

<comment><USER17> 400k a year means the selling price would be about 4 million? How're your savings? I think that would be enough cushion to either seed your next thing or help you have the time to study and get up to speed for a 9 to 5.

<comment><USER18> I don't think you can get 4 million.

Looking through some listings on a broker like FEInternational ([https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/](https://feinternational.com/buy- a-website/)), most SAAS businesses are valued at 3-4x anual profit.

He said profit margins were 60%, so $400000 x 0,6 x 4 = $960000.

And thats for a healthy business. This one is not growing, so you get probably less then that. After the seller's fee, and taxes you might end up with something like $600k.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, it would be around $600k after paying back investors and such.

Even if I did net the $600k (3x my current annual salary), I wonder if I could use it to recreate something I have right now (a biz that produces $200k/year for me w/ little effort)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this a product in the digital marketing space? If so, I might be interested in acquiring it.

</comment><comment><USER4> As an aside, I'd be interested to hear more about how you started and grew the business.

</comment><comment><USER20> Have you talked to your customers to understand what they need now and why they are churning?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, but the feedback has always been completely different, depending on the size of the business/customer. It'd range from "price is too high" (value) to "you don't do X" (x being a all-in-one suite, as our market often bundles products together) to "not what we were looking for"

<comment><USER20> That could be frustrating. It's an interesting problem. I think the knowledgeable people of YC would probably have an answer for you on, or a way to think about, what to do in the situation where you have unworkable churn and when you talk to your customers and they all have different advice depending on their type.

I don't know if it well help you and I don't know anything about your business but I'll throw in my 2 cents since you're asking for opinions.

Even tho it sounds from your post like you'd like to sell it, the sense I get is you'd actually like to save it if you can. It's your baby, right? And this whole process is extremely frustrating to you. You feel the pressure right now, right? So what I see is this is a sort of real crisis for you. So that's where you are.

And so my question for you is what did you want to achieve when you started this business? What was your goal for it or the very cool idea you had in mind? If you can find that maybe you can get back to that. And if you need to make some changes, and drop some types of customers, and focus on other types of customers, to get back to your core purpose with this, then you'll do that, because this business is that important to you. You're welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, what was the reason for slowdown? Competitor product?

</comment><comment><USER22> Don't sell it, give it to me!

If the space is really that crowded though, you shouldn't have issue finding someone to pick up your clients, don't you think?</comment>


Crossroads I/O is a fork of the ZeroMQ project - <AUTHOR> http://www.crossroads.io/

<comment><USER2> From the FAQ:

 _Why do you not accept pull requests?

Pull requests can change while being reviewed. This makes it impossible to ensure that the code being merged is the same code that has been reviewed and discussed, which compromises integrity of the codebase._

If only Git had some sort of cryptographically secure token that would uniquely identify commits, and make tampering evident.

<comment><USER3> It does. But to my knowledge, no one submits pull requests as a set of SHA1 hashes.

<comment><USER4> What is a pull request if not an ordered list of SHA1 hashes and comments?

<comment><USER5> GitHub pull requests are tracked by a base and a head commit. Usually, base is master, and head is some feature branch. This allows the pull request on GitHub to pull in new changes to the commit as a discussion forms around it.

So in that sense, he is correct. There's no way to ensure that clicking the merge button is indeed merging what I think it's merging. Now that I type that, we could easily just include the latest SHA in the form and check that. Problem solved!

Alternatives to this are:

* Merge manually from the command line. This is typically what we do at GitHub. * Request that people file pull requests with a SHA as the pull request head. This makes it impossible to update the pull request with future commits. * Don't use pull requests.

<comment><USER6> > we could easily just include the latest SHA in the form and check that

Please do! I've accidentally merged the wrong code on a few occasions.

While we're making feature requests:

* The order of commits on the "Commits" tab sometimes shuffle around, especially when a history contains a merge.

* Would be nice to let me annotate code (with comments) before "Send Pull Request". Sometimes I want to make some comments to guide a reviewer.

* Browser-push updates of comment threads!

* Let me comment on a file, not just a particular line, particularly empty ones.

* Discussions are often hard to follow via email because insufficient or misleading context is included.

* 100 other things I can't think of at the moment :-)

I love GitHub; it's critical to the way we work. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> Wow, this is exactly the list of improvements IMO that would make GitHub a perfect code review platform. Especially push on comment threads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I can't find the reason _why_ this project exists instead of just contributing to 0MQ directly.

<comment><USER9> From the web site (<http://www.crossroads.io/faq>):

```Why was Crossroads I/O forked from ZeroMQ?

The contribution and trademark policies of the ZeroMQ project were, as of March 2012, incompatible with our long-term goals.

Who is behind the fork?

The main work on the fork was done by two of the original developers of ZeroMQ, Martin Sustrik and Martin Lucina, with help and advice from other members of the ZeroMQ community.'''

<comment><USER10> I've read it, and yet not understood which are those incompatibilities in the goals

<comment><USER11> As I understand it (as a regular on the ZeroMQ and Crossroads mailing lists), the reasons are as follows:

1) Trademark issues - the original developers of ZMQ have been prohibited from using the ZeroMQ trademark and, thus, from making official releases.

2) The new ZeroMQ contribution policy[1], in which pull requests are merged without review and then later reverted/enhanced if necessary, is seen as incompatible with the goals of some of the lead developers. These developers prefer a more rigorous review policy.

There are more reasons, but from what I can tell, those are the main ones that haven't fully been covered here.

[1]: <http://www.zeromq.org/docs:contributing> (see "Philosophy").

<comment><USER3> If you want more background to what led up to our fork of ZeroMQ, read the flamewar on zeromq-dev from February carefully hidden in a "C++ assertion" thread at [http://lists.zeromq.org/pipermail/zeromq- dev/2012-February/0...](http://lists.zeromq.org/pipermail/zeromq- dev/2012-February/015675.html), or from [http://lists.zeromq.org/pipermail/zeromq- dev/2012-February/0...](http://lists.zeromq.org/pipermail/zeromq- dev/2012-February/015758.html) which relates directly to the trademark question.

<comment><USER12> I noticed there's a compatibility library with 0mq. What are the technical changes that require a compatibility library?

This seems to imply there are API differences, rather than just the same code with different development policies going forward.

<comment><USER13> The compatibility configure flag seems to be used to also install the crossroads library as libzmq.so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The real question for me, since I very recently brought 0MQ into my project: should I stay with that or switch to Crossroads? I don't want to get stuck on the lagging branch.

<comment><USER15> My vote is for the first one that can handle TLS over a special type of connection pair.

<comment><USER16> +1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone please elaborate ? I very recently started an investigation (proof of concept) into zeromq for my team. What are the long term implications ?

<comment><USER18> Probably none. You can still use ZeroMQ. If Crossroads ends up better than ZeroMQ, you can switch.

<comment><USER19> Especially as the ZMQ API is so simple. init/send/recv. That's about it.</comment></comment></comment>