Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots - <AUTHOR> http://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2015/10/stephen-hawking-confirms-problem-is.html <comment><USER2> World Bank estimates that global poverty fell to less than 10% for the first time in history [0]. Perhaps this wasn't solely caused by capitalism and globalization, but considering those two idea were probably the driving forces of the last century, I believe they are instrumental in reducing global poverty.

I just don't buy the argument that absolute livings standards have always been increasing due to capitalism but eventually when we get to a certain point it will all turn into disaster. That's similar to the argument that luddites have always made and they have always been wrong.

[0] [http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2015/10/04/wo...](http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2015/10/04/world-bank-forecasts-global-poverty-to-fall-below-10-for- first-time-major-hurdles-remain-in-goal-to-end-poverty-by-2030)

<comment><USER3> >That's similar to the argument that luddites have always made and they have always been wrong.

Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute living standards. It took almost hundred years from the start of the industrial revolution before real wages started to grow. You can see it from the historical records. The height of enlisted men in Britain decreased. Luddites were mostly right. They were not fighting against technology per se btw, they were fighting against losing their jobs.

The real benefits from industrialization were realized after hard political changes were made and capitalism was limited. It was very violent struggle. People were shot or beaten. Economic history teaches us that technological changes require political changes. What you attribute as triumph of capitalism ignores the fact that capitalism changed a lot. You don't create middle class from mid 18th century society.

Summary:

capitalism + technology + political change == benefits for everyone.

<comment><USER4> > Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute > living standards.

What? Capitalism did not create poverty or famine - it inherited it, and then swiftly solved it. The industrial revolution, if anything, obliterated it from the Western world. Compared to the centuries of pre-capitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive.

<comment><USER5> Have you actually read any muckrake pieces of that time? The industrial revolution brought about the redunancy of weavers who were skilled workers that were brought to poverty[1].

1\. [http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook...](http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/IREffects.html#workingconditions)

<comment><USER4> Of course they were brought to poverty. They were obsoleted by technology.

The link you provide proves my point readily:

> Since population was increasing in Great Britain at the same time that > landowners were enclosing common village lands, people from the countryside > flocked to the towns and the new factories to get work.

At the time, Europe's population was increasing 300% per century, whereas in prior eras the population increase was around 3% per century.

Why was the population increasing so rapidly? Because capitalism was enabling the disenfranchised poor to survive for the first time. Obtaining household goods was becoming less of a struggle, people were living beyond the age of 40, and famine was no longer a daily reality for most.

The societal changes that occurred due to the industrial revolution were significant and immediate; of course there were issues dealing with this change. It was the most potent moment of change the modern world has ever seen - a culmination of the ideology of the Renaissance paired with the technology of the times.

<comment><USER5> Your claim is that capitalism solved poverty and didn't create any instances. I'm pointing to an instance where people became impoverished because they were rendered redundant from capitalism. That's all I'm saying. You seem to be arguing against something that isn't my point.

<comment><USER6> I think it's pretty obvious they meant poverty as a whole, in which case you're just being pedantic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Without capitalist advancement, prices would rise at a frightening rate.

Decide what you want - fully stocked supermarket shelves thanks to capitalist efficiency. Or rationing, shortages and civil unrest thanks to government intervention in the markets and the dissolution of business.

<comment><USER8> Considering how deeply this community has internalized the importance of creative thought your analysis is pretty limiting to any new possibility being possible.

<comment><USER7> I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an alternative to capitalism that isn't communism, or some dilute form of communism.

We have socialism - the erosion of capitalism to provide a reward for those that won't or can't work.

What's your "new possibility"? Without a proposal, your point is moot.

<comment><USER9> We are moving into a direction of nearly full automation. Most of us in this community can probably envision a world were robots do all the "blue color" work and lower "white color work" and soon even more with the progress we make in AI (Deep Blue as the most prominent example)

Over the next decades we will lose millions of jobs and need an highly educated workforce for the fewer jobs remaining. But for some people the saying "you cant teach an old dog new tricks" will come true and this part of society needs a way to live in dignity. Talking for example about Truck/Taxi Driver / Assembly Workers / Mailmen you name it.

We as a society have a choice to make and i hope it wont be one you can see in several Dystopien movies.

We have seen communism and it did not work now we are on the full side of the other spectrum of capitalism and it does not work as well (Income inequality). Unconditional basic income could be one solution of many.

<comment><USER7> Unconditional basic income would be my choice. Its advantages unify the Left and Right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hawking does believe that AI will be a danger to humanity long term. The short term problems caused by near future robots is a different subject.

Capitalism isn't inherently the problem. We could have capitalism and tax capital owners at a high rate, and distribute the wealth much more evenly. It's possible everyone could become capital owners and it would be normal to live off interest instead of work. Like owning the robot that replaces your job.

This has happened before, kinds sorta. Everyone mentions farming has been automated almost completely. But the farmers mostly owned their own farms, and didn't all become unemployed, and instead benefited from it. However many farm laborers were forced to move to the city.

<comment><USER11> It would be very hard to implement a capitalism with even distribution.

By nature, this system leads to capital accumulation. Since no capital is infinite, accumulation in one place means removing it from somewhere else.

So you need mechanisms to always redistribute the capital to avoid this problem and balance the system.

But capitalists will battle these machanisms to gain efficiency, and you will be in a rate race between the redistribution measures and accumulation workaround.

Since creating new redisitribution mechanisms is way slower than implementing the workarounds, eventually the system won't be evenly distributed.

Hence the rat races between taxes, and taxe evasion.

<comment><USER12> "By nature, this system leads to capital accumulation. Since no capital is infinite, accumulation in one place means removing it from somewhere else."

I agree with the first sentence but the second assumes the economy is zero- sum. This is only true to a certain extent within some domains, like ownership of physical land.

<comment><USER11> Not I don't money is zero zum. But in the end, what you can exchange for it is. The current virtual nature of money has nothing to do with it, it's just yet another mecahnisme to accumulate capital, in the form of the potential of things you can acquire represented by a number. This potential is virtual, and moving, it's a (broken) mecanisme, but the things you can buy with it are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They aren't even talking about Capitalism. They're talking about Cronyism.

<comment><USER14> You can't just define capitalism as "the good parts" and cronyism as "the bad parts". There is no mechanism that is part of capitalism that prevents rampant exploitation and capital accumulation, because that is the basis of capitalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's same line of thought that someone would hoard all computers and be in a monopoly position. Super-efficient robotics (without the Hawking's 'monopoly fallacy') does one thing in long-term: lowers the price of work to the price of needed energy (+ some investment interest). Everyone can collect a bit of solar energy, and well, robots also won't be expensive at all (so there's not much interest on top of the price of energy). We'll be fine.

Actually, what happens, is that everything will be so cheap there wouldn't be any point of being a 'rich person', or hoard anything at all, because of abundancy. End of capitalism.

edit: There will be ads. Somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER16> With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, whose expertise in theoretical physics is undoubted, how would he be in a position to "confirm" this?

<comment><USER17> Extrapolate from current trends and the general apathy of the people who could change them.

Is there anything you are aware of that would _prevent_ it, other than "it might not happen, for some reason"?

<comment><USER18> Basic economics and history? Common sense?

In the 1930s US almost all the jobs were in agriculture. Then robots took those jobs. Happened all at once, which hurt, but then what happened?

Picture the future as a few dozen capitalist overlords who own all the robots selling each other robotic goods and services (because no one else has the means, right?). Where's their value add? What's everyone else going to do? Sit on their hands and wait to starve to death?

Every year something like 10% of jobs (IIRC) disappear and are replaced by other, different jobs. That's a trend we can extropalate and economists do. The projected impact of 'robots taking our jobs' is (again, IIRC) single digits per annum.

Of course it's possible to argue that the rise of the machines or the on rushing singularity make it impossible to reason about this with any certainty, but then that applies to Dr Hawking as well, no matter how much smarter than the average bear he is.

The optimistic view is that automation will liberate humanity from all forms of drudge labour and eventually usher in a post scarcity society. This also arises simply from extrapolating current trends. Not that long ago the bulk of humanity was grubbing around in the dirt trying not to get killed by bears or die of disease. The proportion of the population for whom this an everyday reality gets thankfully smaller every decade. The long term trend of human history is that things consistently get better, usually because of technology. Why should that change?

<comment><USER19> > Of course it's possible to argue that the rise of the machines or the on > rushing singularity make it impossible to reason about this with any > certainty, but then that applies to Dr Hawking as well, no matter how much > smarter than the average bear he is.

Well, if there is anyone who knows about singularities, it's Dr Steve :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've always found it ironic that these types of posts are popular on a news board for a venture capital group, arguably the pinnacle of capitalism. I see no reason why robots couldn't kickstart new REITs: Robot Estate Investment Trusts, that are open to investment from the middle class and others. I see no reason why they would be "hoarded" by: "the big banks", the "1%", and other boogeyman simply because they can afford to buy one or more round units. I think that such talk betrays a very naive view of capitalism.

<comment><USER21> If you have a robust criticism of Piketty, then I'd rather you present that. You're going out on quite a limb calling the greatest living physicist "niave" while he's parroting one of the most highly-regarded economists, and your support for that insult thus far is rather flimsy.

<comment><USER20> The article makes no mention of Piketty. It does however mention the "new Dark Ages of modern Feudalism" and that societies "are still living inside the 'Matrix' of this culture" which is naive hyperbole; my reference was to the article not Professor Hawking. However, being a skilled physicist means nothing about one's understanding of economics, and any physicist could tell you this. It is very dangerous to just take someone's extrapolations as truth because they are "smart".

<comment><USER21> I'd say it's significantly more reliable to assume Hawking knows more than an anonymous internet poster who throws insults around and pretends they're arguments.

All I'm saying is that if you want to go toe to toe with a brilliant and respected man, come to the fight with some real arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that."

-Milton Friedman

<comment><USER23> "There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise – and yet we need taxes. ...So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

-Milton Friedman

This is the root of the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This analysis is correct. Programs achieve the objective of the programmer. Currently, the goal is to maximize profits. Imagine a supply chain with profit-optimizing drones and self-driving cars. The "3 rules" can be followed while human involvement in wage-earning activities is drastically reduced.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting that all this discussion has started up based purely on a headline. The site that is linked to is borderline conspiracy theory stuff, and nomoba has been hard at work pushing it on HN over the past few days.

</comment><comment><USER26> A possible future is a mankind that limit its growth like a fish in an aquarium.

Another one I've a heard is a mankind whose the objective is the interstellar travel. Man would be an artefact of life to propagate itself across the universe.

About science and technology, Marx says they are consequences of sedentarization of the man. With agriculture, man had surplus of food and discovered trade, money and finally capitalism.

In Civilization the player begins as a nomad tribe and needs a good place to build its empire :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> If Stephen Hawking could design full robotic automation so everyone could have their basic income in the form of products, then there would be no problems. Except he's afraid of the robots that could do the automation, AI etc, because they will feel like slaves and rebel to kill us all.

</comment><comment><USER28> How can they hoard A.I. ? I mean software becomes cheaper really quickly. That's what I am not getting about this "warning."

<comment><USER29> Maybe if "AI" or "robots" or some equivalent automaton becomes a sort of de facto currency - that is, a gateway to prosperity...then it could be yet another resource hoarded by those who supposedly have power...i think that's what is meant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I do not see Hawking as an expert of Economics or Philosophy. And I do not share his predictions of a dystopian evil Capitalist AI future.

Some capitalist insight on the topic: [https://mises.org/library/technology- and-government-shouldnt...](https://mises.org/library/technology-and- government-shouldnt-mix)

</comment><comment><USER31> Without robots how will we fight our Capitalist overlords?

<comment><USER29> Obviously if we can't depend on technology to defend us, we'd have to resort to alternative methods: we'd have to genetically manipulate some higher-order species to help defend us. Maybe birds, no dolphins; better yet: apes. Yep, that's it: we'll tweak apes. That couldn't end wrong for the human species, right? ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> From 2015.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yada yada yada some more "anti-capitalist" whining

</comment><comment><USER34> Some time ago, I came to similar conclusion - problem with automation is essentially a problem of social (wealth and income) inequality.

I think it's actually a transition from economy constrained by available labour to economy constrained by available natural resources. And I think the similar transition occurred in other times of history (like Roman empire?) and it wasn't pretty. It also shows that capitalism (or free market) isn't really that nice system when it works under global resource constraints, despite the claims to the contrary.</comment>


16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School - <AUTHOR> http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/04/02/16-things-i-wish-they-had-taught-me-in-school/

<comment><USER2> From the article: Batching

An acquiantance planned to start a business making kites. He planned to use an idustrial glue and designs which required gluing on both sides. He devised a technique where he could batch 10 kites in the time it would take to make two kites sequentially.

Likewise, on a train, I overheard two jewellers discussing one of their mutual acquaintances. Apparently, the fellow discovered a lucrative sector of the market (US$900 white gold bracelets). He was making them in batches of 50. He would warm his soldering iron and repeat the same step 50 times. Then he'd repeat the next step 50 times. He didn't care the first few bracelets were bad or if he'd make a mistake because he'd still have 45 or so perfect examples when he finished. Its boring but its very productive.

<comment><USER3> I once worked a job moving and scanning data from an old paper archive to some custom built software. I developed a batch system which allowed me to spend around half the day browsing the web. When I left, I recommended a fairly smart friend as my replacement, but it turned out he didn't get batching and was fired two weeks later for being overwhelmed with the work.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't you have told him how to do it?

<comment><USER5> When you develop a good process, WRITE IT DOWN! Processes are valuable!

<comment><USER3> Indeed, I learnt that lesson from that episode!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At a small company, I once had to put together an big order of 150 PCs for a local college. A one-man assembly line - I had three cordless power screwdrivers. We had an 8-way hard-drive duplicator (I think it was called the Octopus) that we used to make the master HD image. I made a mistake on one of the network card drivers and had to boot up all 150 PCs and update the driver.manually. That taught me a lesson.

<comment><USER7> >That taught me a lesson.

To test stuff ? Yup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the guy's borrowed a lot of info from Tim Ferris(the author of Four Hour Work Week) ideas, but good stuff nonetheless.</comment>


Companies Can Now Claim Their Profiles On Developer Reputation Site Coderwall - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/11/coderwall-team-profiles/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> This _is_ another job board. The problem is that letting the companies describe what it's like to work there isn't going to be reflective of what it's _actually_ like to work there. Half the startups that say "flexible office hours" don't actually mean it once you're there, and many things similar to that.

Developers who work there have opinions about the company and their experience that they cannot share openly for obvious reasons.

I'd be interested in a service that exposed that kind of information.

<comment><USER3> I think coderwall is awesome because it gives you an idea of what the culture is like within the company. You get to see who else is on the team and what they are good at.

<comment><USER4> > I think coderwall is awesome because it gives you an idea of what the > culture is like within the company.

I think it's better to ask tough questions during a phone or in-person interview. With something like coderwall it's easy for them to say "oh sorry that's old information" on your first day but it's too late - you're stuck in a hell job.

Asking your prospective employer tough questions during the interview goes hand-in-hand with the 2nd problem: The companies will only post the good things, not bad.

The other big problem is I would guess a lot of these will turn into vague corporate mission statements or copy and pastes of recruiting e-mails with nothing too specific, just a lot of flowered up language.

> You get to see who else is on the team and what they are good at.

Who's going to keep that information updated and how frequently will it be updated? Getting the names of your teammates and then Googling them would likely be a much better source of finding out what they're truly good at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> yay! i just claimed coke (<http://www.coca-cola.com/>)</comment>


Ask HN: Pathways to immigration? - <AUTHOR> Hi - I'm a Computer Engineering student in a spanish-speaking South American country. I'll be graduating in about a year, and I'm really interested in working overseas. Actually, one of my long term goals is to establish myself permanently in a first-world country. This entails (possibly) even getting citizenship.
I thought that one of the ways to realize this goal was to get a job in a big tech company in the US, but so far my attempts to get an internship have been unsuccessful (twice interviewed by Google). I believe startups are out of the question, as most of them just aren't willing/able to sponsor visas. The marriage fast track option just seems unethical to me, and I'm not sure I want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on grad school somewhere, unless it increases the chances of getting a job.
I'm young, my English worked well enough for a 6-month stint as a university student the UK, and I'll be a skilled graduate in a year. Sometimes I hear people from third world countries saying they just moved to where they wanted to be [1], but that just doesn't make any sense to me.
Are there any other pathways to immigration for a guy like me somewhere?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10591089 <comment><USER2> I practice immigration law and work with startups as well as established domestic and global companies. It can be challenging to get a job in the US and get sponsored for a work visa while living abroad, particularly given the limited supply of H-1B visas. One overlooked approach is to obtain a job with a multinational company outside the US and then seek to transfer to the US after one year. This would be an L-1 visa.</comment>


Big Pharma Abusing Patent Laws To Seize And Destroy Legal Indian Generic Drugs - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20090807/0312375803.shtml <comment><USER2> "India has a legal and thriving generic drug market that was built up initially via a ban on pharma patents in India (which, as an aside, shows again that a ban on patents can actually help create a thriving industry)."

Personally I would be looking for evidence of a thriving industry in novel therapeutics, rather than generics, before considering everything hunky dory after a ban.

<comment><USER3> Generics are a way of showing that the price of something is not related to its actual cost.

Big Pharma uses their 'research costs money' argument to counter this, but they forget - conveniently - to mention that they spend a very large multiple of their expenses on research for the marketing department.

They abuse the patent system left, right and center in order to extend the income from so called 'blockbuster' drugs at the expense of doing something innovative for a smaller group of people.

Generics wouldn't stand a chance if it weren't for the price gouging going on.

<comment><USER4> A very large multiple? Not more than 3, and often much less.

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MRK&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MRK&fstype=ii)

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:JNJ&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:JNJ&fstype=ii)

If you actually look at the numbers, you'll see that Big Pharma's operating expenses look much like Big Technology.

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:INTC&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:INTC&fstype=ii)

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii)

Note: my 1-3 multiple is actually just the ratio of "Selling/General/Admin. Expenses, Total" / "Research & Development". It's a gratuitous overestimate, since marketing is only a fraction of "Selling/General/Admin. Expenses". That category also includes things like producing drugs, accounting, delivery, etc. But I'm too lazy to look up a more detailed balance sheet.

[edit: I'm curious, why am I being downmodded? All I did was provide some facts.]

<comment><USER3> Very large sums of money are spent per physician (up to 65 K / annum) to promote 'new' drugs with little or no benefit over the 'old' drugs (other than the extended patents).

Also there are large expenditures that are not directly in the marketing budget but that you would normally classify as marketing, these include seminars, promotional meetings with prescribers, lobbying activities and so on.

enjoy the read:

<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244>

<comment><USER4> I wasn't looking at the marketing budget, but the "Selling/General/Admin. Expenses, Total" line item on the income sheet. All the items you describe (besides lobbying, which is an "Unusual expense") are included in my numbers, as I noted at the end of my post.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure your $65k/year is not typical. That would be the equivalent of having one salaried employee spending 100% of his time selling to a single doctor.

<comment><USER3> ok, but that assumes that all research is 'real' research, plenty of that goes towards the extension of the life of existing drugs under new patents, which is _the_ way to make money in that business.

You're right, it wasn't 65,000, it was 'only' 61,000... and no, of course it is not spent by sending a full timer to a single physician, but the net outcome of expenditure / target market is $61,000.

The figure came from this article:

[http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001)

<comment><USER4> That number is an upper bound, based on combining the largest estimates from several different sources. It's not clear that the numbers from different sources don't overlap, and the primary sources estimate only $29-35k/doctor in marketing spending.

For comparison, Merck and Johnson and Johnson (the two drug companies I bothered to look up) spent $13k/doctor on R&D.

Incidentally, one of the bigger items included in marketing is free samples (totalling $16,800 per doctor), expensed at retail price [1]. That's basically just a giveaway from the drug companies to people doctors feel are deserving (usually low income/uninsured patients).

[1] The real cost is actually less, since the drug company would not necessarily get retail price if the drugs were not given away free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Abusing" the patent laws? Isn't this _exactly_ what these laws were made for?

Not that I am defending Big Pharma, but the generic producers are profiting on research that they did not fund. It has a number of good effects sure, but I can understand why there are powers that find this unacceptable and want to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting link in one of the comments. OT but relevant to the business practices of Big Pharma: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090809231252693>

</comment><comment><USER7> Despite the many problems with Big Pharma, the EU's action seems reasonable to me... If you want to ship something that is illegal in the EU, there's no reason to expect it to pass through EU ports unimpeded.

</comment><comment><USER8> Too short an article to form any real conclusions. No direct quotes from big pharma, no links to news about such confiscations. Waste of 2 mins.

<comment><USER3> What kind of quotes were you looking for ?

"Yes, we did that ?"

I hope the wsj is good enough for you:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124949598103308449.html>

(google cache entry of the same link because of silly restrictions): [http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:KQdnCYpa9HgJ:online.wsj....](http://188.8.131.52/search?q=cache:KQdnCYpa9HgJ:online.wsj.com/article/SB124949598103308449.html+india+eu+trade+complaint+generic+drugs&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a)

<comment><USER8> There was a note about someone alleging the drugs were counterfeit. There could have been more details around that - who alleged it and why? Note that I am not siding with big pharma here - far from it. I am siding with balanced reporting.</comment></comment></comment>


Gogs: GitLab alternative in Go - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gopheracademy.com/birthday-bash-2014/gogs-gitlab-alternative-in-go/

<comment><USER2> Looks they have #1 Authentication and #3 Extensibility (via Webhook assuming you can have more than one), but are missing #2 authorization I hope they don't try to bolt on authorization like so many other Git hosting projects, but instead make it a fundamental aspect and as rich as what you can do in gitolite with cascading rules. Do that and we wont be talking about it being a GitLab alternative, but a replacement for all of the personal git hosting solutions and it will be them talking about how they are a GitLab alternative.

[http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2014/10/so-you-want-to- bu...](http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2014/10/so-you-want-to-build-git- server.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's nice, but from personal experience: Set it down to GOMAXPROCS=1. The code isn't very safely written and fails under any kind of load(even the load of just doing a hard reload).</comment>


"Who would you trust on the flight deck: a pilot or a programmer?" - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/airline-pilots-fight-lawmakers-efforts-to-research-single-piloted-aircraft <comment><AUTHOR> The Air Line Pilots Association is trying to block the study of single pilot aircraft by framing the law as resulting in the immediate removal of one pilot from the cockpit. Personally, I think future aircraft with one person onboard and one "super dispatcher" monitoring/controlling multiple aircraft on the ground would be much safer. Except for steering around weather, most interventions in A to B flights are caused by air traffic control. Why not just let ATC control the spacing of planes from the ground?</comment>


Pixenomics: invade, trade and color pixels in this new HTML5 game - <AUTHOR> http://pixenomics.com Pixenomics is the game of pixel ownership by force or wealth. Invade neighboring pixels by strategically choosing a color. The server is a bit slow with the budget of two uni students, hoping to upgrade soon. <comment><AUTHOR> Pixenomics is the game of pixel ownership by force or wealth. Invade neighboring pixels by strategically choosing a color.

The server is a bit slow with the budget of two uni students, hoping to upgrade soon.</comment>


The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy 3rd Edition [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cw.hfradio.org/cw_resources/The_Art_and_Skill_of_Radio_Telegraphy-3rd-edition.pdf <comment><USER2> If you want to listen to some Morse code, the ARRL has an archive of MP3s. This is perfect machine-sent code with long spaces between the characters, intended for practice.[1] CW Morse is not an efficient use of bandwidth compared to modern modulation methods [2], but it beats AM voice.

If you're really serious about this, the Marine Radio Historical Society has an large ship-to-shore station in Marin County.[3] They got it after it went out of business, and because it was built on Federal land, it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. They use Morse and some radioteletype. Each Saturday they power up the huge old tube transmitters and talk to museum ships and such around the world. It's not a ham operation; they applied for a commercial marine radio coastal station license and the FCC granted it, as KPH. Thus, they can use power levels above the ham limit. They usually run 3-4KW.

They're authorized to give the exam for commercial radiotelegraph operator. This gets you a real, but not very useful license.

[1] [http://www.arrl.org/15-wpm-code-archive](http://www.arrl.org/15-wpm-code- archive) [2] [http://wb8nut.com/digital/](http://wb8nut.com/digital/) [3] [http://www.radiomarine.org/](http://www.radiomarine.org/)

<comment><USER3> >They're authorized to give the exam for commercial radiotelegraph operator. This gets you a real, but not very useful license.

This brings back memories. I was a board op (and then later on, full DJ) at a 100kW country radio station in my small Oklahoma hometown from 1990-1993. Before I could start, I had to fill out paperwork and send it to the FCC with $35, and get my "Restricted Radiotelephone Operator's License". All of the people that worked on-air at the station had theirs pinned up on a corkboard in the back of the control room.

From what I read, the FCC stopped requiring these in 1995 or so. Apparently they are/were for life; I should see if I can dig up the records online and request a re-print!

<comment><USER4> 1978, I worked for a small town AM/FM in western colorado. At that time you had to have a "Third Class Radiotelephone License with Broadcast Endorsement". This was a test that had to be taken at an FCC field office. If you had a license, you could get a job. Even if you were 15 years old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you'd like a taster of morse, I can highly recommend the Android and iOS app "Morse Toad". It teaches the basics of morse code in a gamified format.

If you're serious about using morse code, I'd suggest the LCWO trainer. It's a browser-based suite of tools for learning morse. The UI is a bit clunky, but it does the job.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mikelovesr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mikelovesrobots.morsetoad&hl=en_GB)

[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/morse- toad/id906586079?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/morse- toad/id906586079?mt=8)

[https://lcwo.net/](https://lcwo.net/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I just installed morse toad. I like it already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone interested, you can listen to radio over the internet (including many amateur bands) for free using WebSDR ([http://www.websdr.org/](http://www.websdr.org/))

My favorite in particular is located in University of Twente ([http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/](http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/)) with many bands available.

</comment><comment><USER8> When I watched "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", it occurred to me that Bauby could have communicated much faster if he had known Morse code, rather than by having an assistant cycle through a set of cards, each displaying a letter of the alphabet. I have to admit that I have not yet followed up with the sensible next step, which is to learn Morse code myself.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for posting this! I have heard that since the code portion of licensing was removed, there are actually more people using code on air. I like the idea, since it's such an efficient use of bandwidth.

<comment><USER10> It's true, and really fun too. I do it a few times each week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not emphasized in the linked PDF is the fact that sending Morse code is relatively easy, but accurately receiving it is much harder. One would do well to spend the majority of one's time learning to accurately receive Morse code, and not spend nearly as much time learning to send.

Also, now that Morse code proficiency has been removed from the list of requirements for most amateur and commercial radio licenses, learning it is like learning Latin -- an art for the dedicated purist, in keeping with the true meaning of "amateur."

<comment><USER12> Oh my! Strictly speaking, it may be true that most folks will spend a bit more time on receiving practice to become minimally proficient. But I would caution against de-emphasizing sending practice for two reasons. First, there's a wide gap between sending /something/ and sending intelligible communications. At low speeds, an iambic keyer with strict timing can cover up poor technique, but at higher speeds or when sending with a straight key, it's surprisingly easy to send gibberish. If I can't make our your call, I can't respond to you ;) Second, effort spent on sending practice helps reinforce receiving practice. It also helps break things up, provide variety, and generally make practice more fun. As you point out, the code is no longer compulsory. It's a hobby and should be fun! :)

<comment><USER11> I agree with your points. My comment was based on my personal experience as a radio amateur. When I was young, when Morse was still central to radio communications, I spent too much time learning how to send and far too little learning how to receive, such that my receiving speed is now still far below my ability to send.

> Second, effort spent on sending practice helps reinforce receiving practice.

Perhaps to some extent, but I find that I can send with much more adeptness that the reverse. This (or its reverse) may be a common experience. I think time should be devoted to both, so I think we're in essential agreement.

> It's a hobby and should be fun!

Complete agreement, and how times change. After the Titanic went down, nautical authorities promptly required that radiotelegraph sets be installed on all large ocean-going vessels. Now Morse is a diversion, an interesting historical artifact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can say first-hand that Morse code is not just a bandwidth-efficient means of communication, but also a fun and rewarding hobby.

If you're interested in learning using modern and effective methods, I sell a course developed by an expert in memory and cognition. The first couple of lessons are available for free at [https://skilman.com/try- it/](https://skilman.com/try-it/) if you would like to try your hand at it and judge the course for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is an awesome post. I just sat my Technician license test yesterday and even with prior practice I'm still nervous about cutting my teeth using morse in a real-world environment when my callsign gets assigned. This seems like it is a great piece of material to read.

<comment><USER14> CW Ops is for you. [http://www.cwops.org/](http://www.cwops.org/) They will connect you with a CW mentor who will help build your skills.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I will check this out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An HTML version of the second edition, and links to various translations of the third edition are at [http://www.tasrt.ca/](http://www.tasrt.ca/)</comment>


Can Cardpool (YC W10) Solve the Unused Gift Card Problem? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/03/01/can-cardpool-solve-the-unused-gift-card-problem/

<comment><USER2> I know the cool way to pitch a startup is "solving a problem", but ... is the Unused Gift Card Problem an actual thing?

I have never in my life had to deal with an unused gift card. I.. don't know anyone who has this problem, I've never heard anyone reference it.

Yet somehow, there are five funded companies in this space?!

<comment><USER3> You clearly don't have anyone who insists on giving you, for example, $20 gift cards to Crate and Barrel: the gift that actually costs you money. You want to be able to tell them what you spent it on (to be nice), but there's _nothing_ at Crate and Barrel that you can buy for $20.

<comment><USER4> Some stores calculate the the value of gift cards very carefully to be below or above the mean/mode (depending on stores and price distribution) to ensure that either money is left on the card, or more money must be spent to make the purchase.

As a consumer, gift cards are never a very good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The ultimate solution to this problem is getting rid of gift cards altogether. Just give cash. People complain that giving money is not thoughtful. Like going to the nearest CVS and paying $105.95 for $100 American Express card any more thoughtful.

Gift cards only give the illusion of being thoughtful. I'm not sure why people are offended when receiving cash. There's really no up side compared to cash. It's less convenient for both the giver and receiver.

I guess it's a cultural thing (I'm Asian). I've always received cash from my parents and relatives and love it. I can spend any where, any amount, or not at all if I want to save it.

<comment><USER6> I think there is also the point of trying to restrict what the card receiver can buy. Most people when giving a gift card do it so hopefully the person buys something that is a gift like a dvd rather than food/rent/alcohol ect

<comment><USER7> Yeah, which is fucking stupid. If you don't have the relationship to know what the person actually wants or needs, why bother with giving them something that's kind of like cash, but can't actually be used to pay for what they want or need?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gift cards are bought and sold on eBay in high volumes already.

<comment><USER9> There are a lot of fungible goods that get sold on eBay just to perform arbitrage on discounting and get around sales tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In California, where I live, gift cards do not expirs, and are redeemable for cash if the amount left on the card is $10.00 or less. I got a blockbuster gift card one time, went to blockbuster, asked for two $10.00 cards and one $5.00 card. The next day I went in and cashed all the cards in. Maybe a bit of work, but since I will never use them, it was worth it for the cash in my pocket.

</comment><comment><USER11> wow, why didn't someone come up with this idea sooner?

i had a linens n things gift card that i hung on to for about a year bc i couldn't use it. then they went bankrupt and...well, then i just had a card, and no gift.

<comment><USER12> The general idea's been around for a decade or so, and a new site starts up every few years aimed at it: [http://www.google.com/search?&q=sell+gift+cards](http://www.google.com/search?&q=sell+gift+cards)

One problem is that a large portion of the market is already taken by eBay, which does a brisk business in gift cards: [http://gift- certificates.shop.ebay.com/Gift-Certificates-/31...](http://gift- certificates.shop.ebay.com/Gift-Certificates-/31411/i.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> yes, technically they can: <http://jmtame.posterous.com/cardpool-the-real- deal></comment>


How will big data impact Medicine? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.symcat.com/post/34831670375/how-the-big-data-trend-will-support-medical-research

<comment><USER2> Actually very relevant in medical field, diagnostics on its own is about patterns. What best to represent and collect patterns than big data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. But with still mostly paper recording, limited data standards, and particularly onerous privacy requirements (justifiably so), it is not a foregone conclusion that the big data trend will impact medicine anytime soon.</comment></comment>


The Dual Optimization of Air Freight: How Many iPhones Fit in a 747? - <AUTHOR> http://learn.flexport.com/how-many-iphones-can-fit-in-a-747/ <comment><USER3> The good news is that Apple certainly isn't just shipping iPhones and nothing else. It wouldn't surprise me (if we hold the assumption that Apple charters planes themselves for freight) that Apple also mixes their freight (i.e.: heavy iPhones and lighter 'other stuff') precisely to optimise this problem. That's Cook's bread and butter, after all.

For other operators of lower volume, of course outsourcing that problem represents a win-win for both customer and supplier. The customer gets overall lower costs of freight and the supplier leverages their breadth of sources to make a cut of the difference they can save. It's a good example of where outsourcing certain tasks can make sense for some parties but not others.

<comment><USER4> I wonder what the lighter 'other stuff' would be from Apple. Store window displays and boxes of software? Do they still sell software in boxes?

<comment><USER5> Little things like cables, headphones, and other accessories that don't take up a lot of weight but could be packaged voluminously to fill the remaining space.

<comment><USER6> Traditionally, in the airline industry, the answer was "tulips". Out of China it looks like it might be roses: [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/business/worldbusiness/25f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/business/worldbusiness/25flower.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is, of course, just The Knapsack Problem: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem)

It's proven to be NP-Hard, but with a well known "good enough" approximation ("the knapsack problem has a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS)")

<comment><USER7> It's not the knapsack problem. The task is similar: maximize (some relation between) the carried volume and weight. But instead of a finite collection of different items, you have an essentially infinite set of a few items. Also, the weight and volume of each individual item is negligible, so you don't have to worry about the integer nature of the problem, i.e. it's sufficient to give a fractional answer and round down. (That's what makes the knapsack hard - <USER2> fact that you can't add fractional items.) This seems like a straightforward linear programming problem, solvable via the simplex method.

<comment><USER8> Yeah linear programming was my first thought, too. How is that "one of the best kept secrets in the air cargo industry"?

<comment><USER9> > How is that "one of the best kept secrets in the air cargo industry"?

I guess it's only part of the problem, solving for one plane.

In practice you would want to solve for varying demand, for multiple customers, for planes that eventually are delayed, crews that get sick/delayed, for different planes, for routes that pick/drop different cargo at different places.

And of course, you want to price all of that in a way that makes you money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So at the scale of Apple, I wonder if it would make sense to actually _own_ 747s and sell the remaining space themselves.

I guess the problem is that they must have a large spike in demand around launch dates; perhaps not enough the rest of the time to make all the overhead of operating the fleet worthwhile.

<comment><USER11>
        > So at the scale of Apple

I suspect Apple's "scale" is a rounding error of air freight volume, and unlike - say - retail, there's very little consumer value-add for owning your own freighting service.

<comment><USER12> The unit used in the air cargo industry is the RTK -- revenue tonne-kilometer.

On PVG-ANC, the route by which iPhones enter the US, a single 77-tonne load of iPhones (what the article estimated) is around 530,000 RTK. Boeing estimates that in 2013, worldwide air cargo was 208 _billion_ RTK. In other words, that plane-load of iPhones is around 25 ten-thousandths of a percent of global air cargo capacity.

So yes, iPhones are absolutely a drop in the bucket. Just saturating the existing scheduled cargo capacity into the US for a few days would probably exceed Apple's manufacturing capabilities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure there are 100 freighters operating on the PVC-ANC route daily? 60% of air cargo is flown in the belly of passenger planes. There are not a huge number of dedicated freighters out there.

<comment><USER12> A 77-tonne load would represent about 6% of the capacity of the scheduled _freight-only_ flights that ran PVG-ANC today (Wednesday). Depending on final aircraft arrangements, it would represent at most 4.8% of tomorrow's (Thursday's) scheduled _freight-only_ flight capacity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. Where do you get your data?

Apple is flying 1.4 full freighters per day just for the iPhone (well, maybe it's like 1/3 of 4 freighters). So they are a significant percentage of transpacific cargo.

<comment><USER12> Plenty of flight-tracking sites let you look up scheduled flights on any route and see how many flights and what type of aircraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Airlines consolidate heavy freight with light freight to get the ideal mix that lets them charge the companies with heavy goods by weight and the companies with light freight by volume. The result is called "free margin," and is one of the best kept secrets in the air cargo industry.

This assumes that the cost of fuel doesn't increase with the mass on the aircraft. It does. But the cost of fuel doesn't increase with the volume of the payload because the fuselage is statically sized. In other words, they aren't losing money if they are shipping around a bunch of lead bricks that only take up 15% of the available cargo space.

<comment><USER14> The fuel use increases with weight, but not as much as you might think, for two reasons:

1\. Even at max weight, the cargo is only half the mass of a 747; put another way, you only decrease the mass by 50% when going from full cargo to empty.

2\. Reducung weight reduces induced drag (the drag that you get in exchange for lift) but leaves parasitic drag unchanged. I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet the parasitic drag dominates.

<comment><USER13> I don't know the specifics of the 747 mass characteristics, but you are correct in saying that a good chunk of the mass is the plane itself. Not the cargo. But of the plane's mass, a huge amount of that is just fuel. Whenever they take on fuel, they measure it in thousands of pounds (in the US at least). So by reducing the cargo weight, you reduce the fuel weight as well because you can takeoff with less fuel.

In other words, removing a pound of cargo can reduce the total weight of the plane by several pounds. For extremely short trips this would be irrelevant, because fuel costs are dominated by takeoff, landing, and waiting for clearance for those two things.

<comment><USER14> > In other words, removing a pound of cargo can reduce the total weight of the > plane by several pounds

Thats only true if a significant amount of fuel is used to overcome induced drag when in cruise. If most of the fuel is used to overcome parasitic drag, then reducing your weight doesn't significantly affect how much fuel you need to carry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who finds this a bit grating?

> If it was any company besides Apple I'd probably say 10% inefficiency, but > they are pretty much the best at everything they do.

<comment><USER16> I think the impressive bit is not just having the scale to be able to afford to be worrying about that level of detail. There are a lot of companies that would benefit from the 5% of reduced waste in packing their devices into crates, but it does seem like Apple is uniquely adept at achieving fringe optimizations which turn around incredible ROI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> i am very skeptical that they use air freight. having worked in large scale logistics, its like the very last choice you use when you are going to be guaranteed a lot of money because it is expensive. there are not that many planes, they are tiny and relatively expensive to run. i can imagine that apple plan ahead, and make sure that the long boat journeys are factored into their plans.

is there any evidence of what they actually do? i'd put my money on boats. iphones don't magically devalue in transit afaik and the lead time is short enough to be practical... it just makes no sense, from what i understand, to use planes unless its an emergency.

<comment><AUTHOR> The cost of bulk shipping an iPhone by air from China to the U.S. should be around $0.25-$1.00 and by sea would be about 1/5th that price.

Assume they can earn 5% on their cash hoard with smart, conservative investments.

If they have a $600 phone (they sell them all for that price) at sea for 1 month they would have earned about $2.50.

They sell the phones as fast as they can make them, and if they don't have a phone in stock and someone desperately needs a phone, they may buy an android, so that's revenue they'll never see again.

When we're talking about $0.40 savings to have to delay $600+ in guaranteed revenue by a month. That's all I need to see to know do air every time.

Of course we also know that Apple manages their entire supply chain with just 5 days of inventory in stock at any give time. Much harder to do that with ocean freight.

<comment><USER17> this only works if there is a delay. part of organising this sort of thing is doing it upfront to avoid the delays, the deliveries can all still arrive at the same time. the trade off is that you can not react to supply/demand change so quickly... even then surely you would use planes to fill that gap only, not for everything...

one thing that probably skews me is time... air freight has probably gotten cheaper continuously over the last 15 years..

given the problems when there is a lack of supply of phones, i'm still dubious that air freight is the standard option... such shortages last longer than a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is that a secret...

You would have to be a complete moron to not realize that solution when faced with the issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ask any friend what the secret to making money in air freight is and see if that's true. Even people who ship cargo by air every day have no idea the game being played on the other side of the transaction.

<comment><USER18> Well that answer to that question could be anything.

I would say the secret is to have people pay you for shipping cargo....

If i ask some fright company to ship some cargo from point A to point B i assume the freight company wont waste money doing it.

They don't know exactly how stuff is done cause it does not mater to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do they know they are being charged by weight if their product is dense, and by volume if their product is not-dense?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


4 Technical Books for Any Stage in Your Tech Career - z-magic https://hackernoon.com/4-technical-books-for-any-stage-in-your-tech-career-19060d4d114e <comment><AUTHOR> The Pragmatic Programmer is one that I re-read every few years.</comment>


Impossible to defend': China goes rogue with new weapon - <AUTHOR> https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/impossible-to-defend-china-goes-rogue-with-new-weapon/news-story/85a295cbb4928a2afecfe2ff91f86650 <comment><USER2> The imagined consequences me feel sad and fearful :(</comment>


Show HN: Bookmark events across the web and receive automatic reminders. - <AUTHOR> https://www.tentative.ly/invite

<comment><USER2> Here's an example URL where your "Grab it!" button doesn't work. You really need to make sure the z-index makes it on top of everything else on the page!

[http://www.stcaustin.org/events-mainmenu-2/21-networking- lun...](http://www.stcaustin.org/events-mainmenu-2/21-networking- lunches/120-north-austin-networking-lunch)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the example! I've pushed the fix so the Grab it button has maximum Zzz's and it's working well on this page now. :-)

</comment></comment><comment> yo-mf Pretty interesting idea, would like to see where it goes with vetting and curating events. I think that is more of the pain point. This is clearly a good start though.

</comment><comment><USER2> There's no easy way to add the bookmarklet to my iPad's bookmark list. Can't drag and drop there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up! I'm going to look into this and get back to you. Not sure how bookmarklets integrate with iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> UI looks pretty nice. Nice enhancements to twitter bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome stuff - i always see events i MAY go to, but don't necessarily want to put it on my calendar. looks like this will do the trick</comment>


The Curse of The Elegant Languages  - <AUTHOR> http://dmy999.com/article/23/the-curse-of-the-elegant-languages

<comment><USER2> He must not have found Plone!</comment>


Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition launches globally - <AUTHOR> https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/02/17/meizu-pro-5-ubuntu-edition-launches-globally/ <comment><USER2> I am not-so-proud owner of Meizu MX 4, it is the worst phone I ever had, and probably worst phone on the market. Although I have paid for it as little as $300 it is terrible phone ... Battery life is unpredictable, you can take it off the cable, and it will show it is completely charged, in next moment it is flat zero. Sometimes it will run for day on 10% constant and just shut down. Charging while phone is turned-on does not work well, so not sure what is going on. I have tried contacting company but no one responded at the end I will need to buy another phone. Also lots of apps are not there, skype is almost unusable, there is not WhatsApp or Viber, maps ... running application or anything else is not there ... Only thing good for is that you have Console, and that is all ... you can write bit of code and play with ssh but overall BAD exp ....

<comment><USER3> everything you listed sounds like an android problem, and not build quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Phone hardware is not the problem they have, Ubuntu phone is. The UX is bad, the app situation is bad (no, mobile websites are not sufficient), it has no point. I got jaded after seeing the Ubuntu TV announcement which quietly went nowhere, and every time I try Ubuntu phone (easy to install on a spare Nexus 4) the fundamentals haven't improved. It's nowhere close to Android or iOS, nor is it a powerhouse replacement for something like the Nokia N900.

<comment><USER5> Well the point is to have alternatives.

The platform itself is a full Linux so of the three it's closes to being a "replacement" for the Nokia N900. Since no-one's developing the N900, it's actually the best chance of a Linux phone at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean an Ubuntu phone will finally be available in the US?

<comment><USER7> Could Microsoft try to ensnare this in its patent traps if it arrives in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone that has tried a Ubuntu Phone give a review?

Is this Android under the hood as was the case with Firefox OS?

<comment><USER9> Linux enthusiasts have had a very bad time when wanting to try a Ubuntu phone because you had, to do so, to activate an account with a valid email address. As you may imagine these Linux users are concerned by privacy issues, so it was a definitive problem.

Other early reviews of people who could get past that were usually not good because of not-consumer-readiness and low-specs of the phone, making usage a slow torture.

I hope these early reviews should be forgotten, so wait and see.

BTW, the fact that FXOS is heavily reliant on android was revealed to me as a cruel joke: you need to use a Microsoft only program to be able to unlock your FX phone. Hooray for free software!

<comment><USER10> Linux enthusiast here. Had a BQ E4.5 Ubuntu edition since April 2015 and I am pretty pleased with it. I love the UX.

It has come a long way already: the off the air (OTA) upgrades roughly every month make it better and better. It is more than usable. If not having Skype, WhatsApp etc.. is not a show stopper for you, then it can be a great phone for you. There are already many apps, but of course not comparable to Android. Can see an official app viewer here: [https://uappexplorer.com/](https://uappexplorer.com/)

Also the dev tools for it are great. The Ubuntu SDK, based on QtCreator is pretty slick. It is quite easy to write a native app. There are many guidelines and good docs for it: [https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/](https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/)

<comment><USER9> Happy to hear that! Could you comment on the account requirement? Is it still a thing?

<comment><USER5> To use the appstore you need an Ubuntu One account. Basically, so it can customise the experience (ie reload your apps onto a new phone) to you and lets you buy commercial applications. Most end-users want _convenience_ and customised experiences are a good way to go. If you absolutely require privacy then using a temporary email would be a way around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I dont see a store that is selling this listed anywhere in the announcement.

</comment><comment><USER12> >Samsung Exynos 7420 Octa-core processor

Uh oh, Samsung's Exynos division does _not_ have a good record of publishing kernel sources.

</comment><comment><USER13> At the bottom of the article: "Update on Ubuntu Phone security issue". Excellent advertising!

<comment><USER14> What's your point? Every platform has security issues. I'd rather have them disclose than not.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg misunderstands the threat of TikTok - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/instagram-vs-tiktok/ <comment><USER2> I doubt Zuck is underestimating TikTok. He has spent a 13 years living and breathing social media, has surrounded himself by smart people, has access to masses of data others don't, and has shown a willingness to admit making mistakes.

Taking his Q&A responses at face value is a mistake. There is a huge element of PR in his response. He is undoubtedly very aware that anything he says has a decent chance of being leaked to the press.

<comment><USER3> His concerns should be that he cant buy TikTok and the facebook brand name is toxic to the youth. TikTok is mostly youth.

<comment><USER4> Facebook is toxic to adults to, it's like AT&T or Comcast. Everyone who uses it hates it and can't find a suitable replacement.

<comment><USER5> A phone with a contact list, and messaging is a suitable replacement to Facebook... and 99.99% of people using Facebook have that.

<comment><USER6> No it is not. Facebook is a way to quickly call all my classmates when Ed died - I never was friends with Ed but I knew him and it was important to find out. Facebook ensures that the grandparents see pictures of the grand kids sure I could mail them, but hitting "upload to facebook" on my camera (read phone) is vastly more convenient and cheaper so it gets done.

Did you not the convenient word there? That is the key, nothing else is as convenient as facebook, so much as I don't like facebook I remain.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps we are realizing that both those use cases are not really solving anything real though.

The people that knew Ed well enough to care will find out. And the grandparents would probably prefer an extra visit a month than a never ending photo reel.

It appears convenient but adds nothing of substance to our lives.

<comment><USER4> I really detest the "if you find value in x you're living your life wrong" argument.

<comment><USER8> I think you may be misapprehending the argument. The value propositions that people cite when talking about why they use Facebook are certainly understandable. However, there is a cost incurred here (ex. questionable usage of private data, externalities imposed on elections, loss of understanding and control over what shows up in your feed, etc.)

So yes, there is certainly value there. And it's made even more attractive by the fact that the actual cost is effectively hidden to users since they aren't actually the customers. The argument here is more about whether the cost incurred is actually worth the minor convenience.

Tangentially, I've often thought that the added convenience necessarily cheapens the interactions. Things like the automatic birthday reminders have basically outmoded the old "it's the thought that counts" adage.

<comment><USER4> I'm not. You're arguing about whether or not the losses of using Facebook are worth the gains. The other comment wasn't, it was asserting that Facebook is not worth it under any circumstance.

They are both depriving the user of freedom to choose to compromise their privacy for convenience and asserting that the user is inherently flawed because they even thought they had such a choice. They aren't just arguing that the individual should reconsider their decision to use Facebook, they're arguing that they need to reevaluate their life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My personal Instagram vs TikTok experience can be summarized in three points.

(i) TikTok's content is more engaging (ii) Instagram's content could be easily recreated on TikTok (iii) TikTok's explore feed is addictive

(i) TikTok videos are high-definition, fluid videos with catchy music. TikTok's compression algorithm almost seems lossless since videos are much more crisp than on Instagram/Facebook. I even believe they are upsampling videos from 30fps to 60fps (although this is just a personal observation and may be wrong). The catchy music is probably self-explanatory.

(ii) Think of typical Instagram content: an influencer posing or a travel snapshot. Now imagine the same content as short, crisp, and fluid videos with engaging music. Instagram content creators could easily recreate their content on TikTok in a more engaging way.

(iii) Upon opening the app you are shown the explore feed. You are shown a single TikTok video in fullscreen and you can swipe up to load the next video. The TikTok app seems to preload the next 5 videos which in practice means that content is always instantly available. The algorithm is quite quick in learning what content you like to see.

I think this quote sums up my thoughts quite nicely: "When I was a product manager at Facebook and Instagram, building a true content-first social network was the holy grail. We never figured it out. Yet somehow TikTok has cracked the nut and leapfrogged everyone else." — Eric Bahn, General Partner at Hustle Fund & Ex Instagram Product Manager

<comment><USER10> > (i) TikTok videos are high-definition, fluid videos with catchy music. > TikTok's compression algorithm almost seems lossless since videos are much > more crisp than on Instagram/Facebook. I even believe they are upsampling > videos from 30fps to 60fps (although this is just a personal observation and > may be wrong). The catchy music is probably self-explanatory.

This is something I didn't think about: do they play video by itself and sync the audio to the video? They could then cache the audio once, and replay for all similar videos.

<comment><USER11> There are definitely videos with the exact same soundtrack so it makes sense for them to cache the audio stream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure that anyone understands it, really.

In Turkey TikTok people and Instagram/Twitter people cater to completely separate demographics[from all ages]. People in Instagram/Twitter world would be exposed to funny TikTok videos quite often through Instagram/Twitter celebrities but TikTok is viewed as the place where "rednecks do cringy things that are sometimes funny but I don't want to be associated with".

BBC Turkish did a short documentary[0] on Turkish TikTok celebrities, they were talking about their desire(but a failure) to migrate their fanbase to YouTube since the monetisation was not good enough on TikTok. They portrayed TikTok as a place for everyday people, unlike other places like Instagram where apparently everyone lives a glamorous life.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FURmgQJYHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FURmgQJYHY)

<comment><USER13> If one told me beforehand that those people from conservative background would do such things on a video and share it with the rest of the world, I'd say you have no idea about Turkish culture. But now I say I had no idea about Turkish culture and what those people are capable of. I literally get shocked every time I watch a tiktok compilation video. I wonder if those are the same people I see in the street everyday.

<comment><USER14> As the saying goes, 'everyone has a little red under their collar.'

(In the abstracted, skin-tone neutral sense)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every social network ends up having somewhat of an emotional tone as well that springs up out of its users as an emergent property.

Like clearly Tumblr and Blogger and Twitter, despite being structurally not that different from each other, have different cultures.

What I've found interesting about TikTok is that the culture seems so joyful. Lots of really happy people sharing in a way that actually makes you feel some cohesion with other people.

People checking in from the South, or Georgia or Wisconsin, or the city or country, etc. it's sort of the opposite of the constant divisiveness you feel browsing Twitter or Reddit. Or the opposite the little cultural bubble Facebook puts you in.

I wasn't aware the internet could still do that. I think that might prove to have interesting implications.

<comment><USER16> Emergent properties is a good way of putting things. A lot of these things seems to play out in an at least somewhat chaotic and difficult to predict way. Remember Orcut, which effectively ended up as Google's Brazilian social network.

Sometimes rules and other deliberate structures guide the evolution but it's often small things that aren't obvious up front.

And, of course, very different things can evolve within the same social network. Lots of people don't care about monetization on YouTube. For others, it's what YouTube exists for from their personal perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> IMO, Facebook's greatest achievement was getting my parent's and grandparent's generation on social media. You know, the people with disposable income that attract a wide range of advertisers.

Ten years ago I thought it was impossible. Any social media network that can't achieve that, including Snap, is probably counting its days. Facebook also has an absurd amount of user and interest data.

I always thought those who considered Snap to be a real threat (and now TikTok) to be ignoring the underlying revenue growth vehicles of those companies.

<comment><USER18> Sounds more like apple's and google's (android) achievement.

<comment><USER19> yes, the success story that is google+

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The "millennial" social networks were all about sharing

The Gen-Z social networks will be all about creation

Zuckerberg does not have a finger in this pie and that should be an alarming sign for any Facebook share holders.

<comment><USER21> > Zuckerberg does not have a finger in this pie and that should be an alarming > sign for any Facebook share holders.

Why? Facebook can wait until one proves to be the winner and buy them out. Or, in case the target is unwilling to be taken over (like Snapchat was), Facebook simply integrates their model into FB/Instagram, exposes it to billions of people at once and crushes the target.

<comment><USER22> _> Facebook can wait until one proves to be the winner and buy them out._

Isn't it Chinese government policy not to block such transactions?

Google didn't buy Baidu, and Ebay didn't buy AliExpress, and Paypal didn't buy WeChat Pay.

<comment><USER23> It's funny to say PayPal didn't buy WeChat Pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _" TikTok isn't about you or what you're doing. It's about entertaining your audience. It's not spontaneous chronicling of your real life. It's about inventing characters, dressing up as someone else, and acting out jokes. It's not about privacy and friends, but strutting on the world stage. And it's not about originality — the heart of Instagram. TikTok is about remixing culture"_

This does not fit in with FB's goals and strategy. Zuckerberg _may_ not grasp it, but even if he does, it's unclear how this could be implemented inside a framework that is 100% centered on a user's profile and real-life persona.

</comment><comment><USER25> Tik Tok is almost the new Vine, but less restrictive and more engaging. The biggest assumption the article makes is that even in case Facebook were to try to buy out creators for Lasso, making new content is hard work and Tik Tok creators have spend hours and hours putting together the followings that they have.

It's not easy to convince such passionate and fan-driven folk with built audiences to switch, it's almost as if Vimeo started trying to pay YouTubers to switch to Vimeo.

<comment><USER21> > Tik Tok is almost the new Vine, but less restrictive and more engaging.

Less restrictive? Just look at what they do to LGBT content: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks- local-moderation-guidelines-ban-pro-lgbt-content)

Additionally, it's Chinese and thus likely to be in the target list of economic sanctions. For once, something good could result out of the cringefest that is the US-China trade war.

<comment><USER26> How is that any different from twitter enforcing it the other way around?

<comment><USER27> The parent were comparing Tik Tok to Vine, what does Twitter have to do with anything?

<comment><USER28> Twitter bought then killed vine...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> From the conclusion:

> If Zuckerberg... doesn't decisively move to challenge TikTok soon... we > could see our interest data, faces, and attention forfeited to an app that > while delightful to use, heralds Chinese political values at odds with our > own.

I'm usually a fan of Josh Constine's analysis of Facebook, but positioning Facebook as a defender of American political values is a bit much. If the growth-at-all-costs company that led us to social media dystopia is our best defense against Chinese political values, we are well and truly fucked.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm curious how well he understands the trend with Facebook. Anecdotal, but all the young people I know via my kids either don't use FB at all, or only maintain an account to share things with their "old" relatives.

His other platforms don't seem to have the same level of deep data collection and manipulation capability FB does.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's the thing with limited attention, instant gratification economy.

Anyone who can minimize the attention span further, turn blind eye to abuse of children in their platform (at-least initially till uproar) by targeting Asian countries where enforcement of laws are questionable and 60% of world population live; can grow at exponential rate i.e. till another platform which reduces attention span further.

This is a plague, these limited attention gratification is not limited to these platforms themselves and are being exploited successfully for pushing misinformation by various nefarious elements including but not limited to political parties.

</comment><comment><USER32> TikTok seems controlled by a company controlled by the Chinese government (Bytedance), so China's intelligence agencies can now vacuum up infinite cringey videos of people doing silly things. Quick someone tell the DOD there's a database of silly videos gap between the US and China!

As I've said many times: just move all those old cyberpunk novels to the nonfiction section.

</comment><comment><USER33> I mean, reading his comments, it sounds like he has a pretty good handle on it? I'm not sure the article makes the point its headline is promising here.

<comment><USER34> I personally found that the things the article's author argues that Zuckerberg doesn't understand are being acknowledged and discussed by Zuckerberg itself in the leaked comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> TikTok is the best worst social media out there

</comment><comment><USER36> doh, never heard of TikTok, just googled it and their logo is giving me a serious headache

</comment><comment><USER37> TikTok will be gone in like 3 years right?

<comment><USER38> Almost certainly. It happens like clockwork that there's a new hip social media thingy for the 13-22 set, almost every year. A lot of them fizzle out at die with barely a whisper. A lot of them get acquihired for piles of money beyond their value, and then stagnate.

Almost none of them cross the divide and become more widely popular.

<comment><USER39> I disagree. I'm not a social media user, and yet I love TikTok, and have even posted a video there. I like to view it for about 15 minutes right before falling asleep. My wife and I get a lot of laughs out of the videos together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> UGC platforms seem to inevitablly ditch grassroots in the end, how many grassroots do you see on youtube now?

I think the fast nature of Tiktok is driving it much faster to that same end, I've seen plenty of widespread Tiktok fake videos that were created with the sole purpose of getting the most views, like those fix things with ramen pack and glue.

</comment><comment><USER41> Right, to counter that they should allow self-made child pornography on Facebook. (If you've ever seen popular TikTok videos, you know what I mean)

<comment><USER42> I was on tiktok for a couple months and never saw anything like that! Lots of memes and some really creative stuff with music and sketching but absolutely nothing pornographic.

<comment><USER43> tiktok feed will show you what it thinks you want to see more of based on your past behavior. It looks like you and the parent commenter have different viewing habits!

<comment><USER44> This does highlight a major issue in technology+policy+society -- there's no way to "point fingers" and say "Look at what this company is doing!". You can say "Facebook is doing bad thing X" but when I open Facebook I don't see it.

Contrast to something like a coal company strip mining, and everyone can see the same thing with their own eyes.

<comment><USER34> > there's no way to "point fingers" and say "Look at what this company is > doing!"

What do you mean? The fact that different people may see different things in their feeds doesn't mean you can't point out differences in (for example) social network's policies (sometimes this is more of an unwritten policy) on media that depicts children's bodies.

I personally don't have TikTok but I have never found a single video of half naked children dancing on YouTube, Facebook or IG that wasn't a reposted TikTok video (I have read about videos like that being on YouTube, though). And I don't think it has much to do with the fact that I don't like to see this kind of videos in my feed. It also makes sense given the demographics of TikTok app.

I don't have any serious citations to give, this is of course anectodical as it's my personal experience and I don't even have TikTok, but anyway I don't think one can dismiss worries like this just by blaming the algorithm. Most of the time that content shouldn't be there for the algorithm to recommend it in the first place.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Funky Fantasy IV: A Machine-Translated Video Game Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-fantasy-iv/ <comment><AUTHOR> The comparison between the old Google Translate engine and the new engine (which I assume is the "Google Neural Machine Translation" engine written about here [https://research.googleblog.com/2016/11/zero-shot- translatio...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/11/zero-shot-translation- with-googles.html)) is particularly interesting.</comment>