Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sports-nfl-stadiums-insight-idUSKCN0VC0EP <comment><USER2> The Green Bay packers have an interesting approach to this problem, although it requires a fanatical fan base and special ownership provisions, and the fact that the team can't leave Green Bay (without a vote by the shareholders, who are all fans, which will never, ever, happen).

When they want to improve their stadium, they issue stock and sell more season tickets. This works because Packers stock cannot be sold or traded after purchase, and a season ticket is, for many working class Wisconsin families, an heirloom. A friend who's a Wisconsin native was put on the waiting list for season tickets at birth, and is in his parents' will to inherit his mother's ticket. His mom is probably going to die before he breaks 10,000th on the list, so that position will go to his kids. It's insane like that.

But it means that the taxpayers of Wisconsin, including those of us who, like myself, could really care less about football, don't have to foot the bill for maintenance and improvements to the Packers' stadium. But again, the Packers have a uniquely fanatical fan base, were created with provisions to keep them in Green Bay forever, and are owned by the fans.

<comment><USER3> The NFL changed the ownership rules, and the Green Bay model cannot be repeated elsewhere.

 _" The NFL does not allow corporate membership. Instead, it requires clubs to be wholly owned either by a single owner, or small group of owners, and requires that at least one owner owns a 1/3 stake in the team. The Packers are granted an exemption to this rule, as they have been a publicly owned corporation since before the rule was in place."_

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

<comment><USER4> That seems extremely anti-competitive. I wonder if that rule could be challenged.

<comment><USER5> Private company, go start yer own football league if you don't like it, etc.

<comment><USER6> that's a pretty horrendous way to change what's morally wrong with the world

<comment><USER7> The alternative is to change a majority of people's minds that this is something morally wrong with the world, make cases to supreme court and/or lobby congress and eventually turn the tide in your favor. Not really sure which way is easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not an unreasonable position for a municipality to chose lose money on a stadium. They typically lose money on symphony orchestras, ballets and performing arts centers. That one is considered low culture and the other considered high culture is not relevant is we assume that the people are being ably represented.

But what seems to infuriate people is that orchestras and ballets are typically not owned by billionaires, and they are not part of a league with a multi-billion dollar budget.

<comment><USER9> What infuriates people is these deals are always sold to the public as some sort of net-positive redevelopment, instead of what's really happening, which is a transfer of tax money to team owners.

With orchestras and ballets and performing arts centers everybody knows up front you have an ongoing financial liability. And the numbers are smaller.

<comment><USER10> > which is a transfer of tax money to team owners

It's primarily a transfer of money to players. In the next ten years players will earn around $50 to $55 billion in income. That's _drastically_ beyond anything owners will either earn via operations or extract through capital gains via a sale.

Take the Houston Texans for example. They're stated as the 7th most valuable NFL franchise per Forbes, generating $114m in operating income (not net income) annually - the salary cap is $143m. Green Bay? Tenth most valuable, they only generate $63m in profit - every 10 to 12 years, the Green Bay players earn more total than the entire franchise is worth. The bottom 20 teams? Forget about it.

Most leagues are the same, the players overwhelmingly extract the value. The top 450 NBA players are set (with the new TV rights money) to earn more than all of the Fortune 500 CEOs combined in terms of salary (~$17 trillion in market cap of the companies those CEOs operate).

<comment><USER11> That makes me feel better, actually. It's obscene money, and I don't agree with the subsidy. But, the players get beat up, and CET. Some commit suicide.

Fans paying high ticket prices, parking, meh whatever, make them pay more instead of begging from taxpayers though.

<comment><USER12> The rank-and-file football player, arguably, is underpaid, particularly in comparison to their colleagues in MLB or the NBA. I think the median salary for non-rookie deal NBA players is north of $5 million/year now. Baseball is similarly outrageous for veterans that reach free agency (the Red Flops were handing out $10 million deals like candy the last couple of years). Not to mention that those deals are guaranteed, unlike the NFL, where players are routinely cut when injured or just before they reach thresholds where bonuses kick in. s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I live in Calgary and our NHL arena is nearing the end of it's life. Our mayor, Naheed Nenshi, has been very vocal about public funding for arena's and is holding the owners group and the NHLs 'feet to the fire' so to speak.

>I have said for a long time — and continue to strongly believe — that public money must be for public benefit and not private profit. [0]

I don't think he's necessarily against using public money, but he's not willing to just throw money at a stadium just because the Calgary Flames and the NHL say it's a good idea, or because 'that's the way it's done'.

[0] - [http://calgaryherald.com/sports/hockey/nhl/calgary- flames/ma...](http://calgaryherald.com/sports/hockey/nhl/calgary-flames/mayor- nenshis-statement-on-the-flames-arena-project)

<comment><USER14> It's a terrible time to try to get public funding for a billion dollar project in Alberta while thousands of people are losing their jobs due to oil price.

They will try again. Here is a Grantland picce that covert it: [http://grantland.com/the-triangle/how-to-sell-a-stadium- in-s...](http://grantland.com/the-triangle/how-to-sell-a-stadium-in-six-easy- steps-calgary-gets-the-high-pressure-pitch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Between the scam of municipalities losing so much $$ on stadiums, how the stadiums cause urban blight sitting empty most of the time then causing major traffic headaches the other times, and the CTE injury rate, I can't fathom how football still exists today as a popular sport. Seems like the whole thing is a house of cards that needs to collapse.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand why it exists as a popular sport anyways, it's 5 seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of two guys talking about it. The average football game has 11 minutes of action[1]. Everything but the last ~8 minutes of the 4th quarter is boring. Yet Americans love it. I don't get it.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487042812045750028...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406)

<comment><USER17> As someone who recently moved to the US, should I first try to learn about American football, or about baseball?

<comment><USER18> Definitely football, it's more popular (unless you're in St. Louis).

Baseball games are really fun to watch in person though, more so than football in my opinion. It's just an excuse to drink and shoot the shit while hearing a bat crack every once in a while, always a great night out

Also checkout basketball, especially if you're in the bay.

<comment><USER19> That's why I hear some people say that Wrigley Field is Chicago's largest bar, and it happens to have a game field in the middle of it.

<comment><USER20> They must have reasonable prices? Here on the west coast its probably now $15 per shitty light corporate American beer. It was $13 last time I went about 4 years ago.

So, I couldn't imagine going just to have a few beers, in fact more likely to abstain on principle.

<comment><USER21> Depends on where, I guess. AT&T Park (SF Giants) serves decent beer (Guinness, among other things) for either $11 or $12 (as of last fall). Still highway robbery, but better than $15 for piss water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Money a city gives towards a stadium should be returned in the form of shares in the team. Otherwise no deal. St. Louis should be selling their shares to LA for a profit right now...

<comment><USER23> Unlikely. There is competition from other geographic areas. If a team can simply play one venue against another they do have the upper hand unfortunately.

<comment><USER24> Do any cities own their own teams? I was thinking about this the other day, and as someone who doesn't really follow sports I think I'd actually be _more_ supportive of things like stadium building if the city were involved _more heavily_ —namely, if the city owned the team(s), or at least a controlling share.

I'd also be way more likely to care about and cheer for "our" team if they couldn't just pull up stakes and move to another city if we don't bribe them enough to keep them. Fan loyalty to commercial teams that don't have any real ties to the home city (they don't even have to give up their name if they leave!) strikes me as bizarre.

<comment><USER25> If I understand correctly, the Green Bay Packers cut up the ownership of the team something like 3,000 different ways. They did this deliberately so that the team could _never_ move, because it would be impossible to get a majority in favor of moving.

When the (first) Cleveland Browns moved, the city negotiated that they had to use a different name. They became the Baltimore Ravens, and Cleveland was able to call the new franchise the Browns.

<comment><USER26> The Baltimore Browns probably also didn't play very well from a PR perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> John Oliver did a good piece on this as well and how crazy it is that the public pays so much for these things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm from St. Louis. The Cardinals also bilked > $500M towards their new stadium despite being the most profitable MLB team.

The mayor went around telling everyone it was a good idea. Of course the touted economic benefits are usually an order of magnitude above reality.

IMO basically capitalized on a huge inferiority complex.

<comment><USER29> $500M? The stadium cost $365M and most of it private money. The county loaned $45M for improvements.

 _Busch Stadium had a final cost of $365 million when it opened in 2006. Of that cost, $45 million (12%) came from a long-term loan from St. Louis County. Private financing came in the tune of $90.1 million in cash from the Cardinals, $200.5 in bonds paid by the team, and $9.2 million in interest earned on the construction fund the Cardinals held. The stadium has a seating capacity of 46,861 and is owned by the St. Louis Cardinals. The stadium does not have a roof, or its own named expressway. I was unable to determine who paid for the cost overruns of $20.2 million._

[http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2009/05/28/miller-park-vs-busch- st...](http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2009/05/28/miller-park-vs-busch-stadium- milwaukee-vs-st-louis/)

<comment><USER28> Roughly $520M.

[http://www.lindenwood.edu/moPolicyJournal/issue02/articles/c...](http://www.lindenwood.edu/moPolicyJournal/issue02/articles/click/click.pdf)

>However, the Cardinals also receive significant returns through an estimated $520 million in public subsidies: $350 million from St. Louis City's five percent admission tax 30-year waiver, $20 million from St. Louis City's 25-year property tax abatement, $108 million paid by St. Louis County to retire the $45 million in stadium bonds, and $42 million from Missouri tax credits and highway ramp construction. Further, the Cardinals also receive an additional estimated $150 million in new stadium selling sources: $100 million over 30 years on stadium naming rights, $40 million from the Ballpark Founders Program that charges season ticket holders $2,000- $7,500 for new stadium seats, and $10 million from old Busch Stadium memorabilia sales

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why aren't stadiums shared multi-use endeavours?

Here, square stadiums are used by rugby (union and league) in the winter and soccer in the summer. Oval stadiums are used by AFL in the winter and cricket in the summer. In between, they occasionally host concerts - for example, when there's away games, or mid-week, or between seasons.

This seems like a way better approach than the NFL one. Is it just because NFL / baseball / basketball (the 'big 3' in the US as far as I can tell) are all so radically different in field/court size and design that they can't be housed together? Is there any overlap that _can_ occur in stadium mixed-use?

<comment><USER31> > Why aren't stadiums shared multi-use endeavours?

Because nothing about this whole thing is rational. Sharing makes sense if the owners want to split costs and get year-round use out of it, but if every major sports team in the area can strong-arm its own special-purpose stadium from the local government, then they will.

There are exceptions, like sibling comments note. In LA, the Staples Center is actually shared by 3 teams (2 NBA, 1 NHL) and is also a popular concert venue. It works great for the city having the one building in the heart of downtown to build an ecosystem around rather than 3 or 4 similar ones spread out.

<comment><USER31> And I don't recall the details of the deal to build the Staples Center, but as a city LA has been pretty steadfast about not providing public money for sports venues. This may have pushed the incentives to make sharing much more sensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't know. When cities get involved in a venture like this, it's usually because that is what their citizens want. For example, Levi Stadium in Santa Clara went before the voters, who approved it's funding model (1). On a moral level, I have a real problem with a sport that when played successfully leads to debilitating brain damage (2), but it's pretty clear I am in the minority on that.

1\. Without going too far out on a tangent, there was more to the story, see here: [http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20107165](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20107165)

2\. "Stabler is the seventh former N.F.L. quarterback to be found to have had C.T.E. by Boston University, which has found C.T.E. in 90 of the 94 former N.F.L. players it has examined" [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/sports/football/ken- stable...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/sports/football/ken-stabler-nfl- cte-brain-disease.html)

<comment><USER33> Excuse me, local resident here.

Santa Clara City residents approved $400 million in financing.

City Council went ahead with a promise for ... $1.3 billion so far. So most of it was not voted on at all.

<comment><USER34> But how were the council members appointed? Resident approval must be involved somehow. If this city council is doing a bad job (seems like it), push for a new council. If the tide is too strong against, you have to challenge ideas.

A lot of folks seem to believe there's a legal apparatus we need to invent that can solve this, when it's perfectly sufficient to just get traction for a critical stance on concussionball (gasp!)

<comment><USER35> When you fire a council, you don't get the money back.

<comment><USER36> And they get to keep all but the most egregious bribes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The article seems to focus on "because they might leave" but the real reason is this line:

> Even before the team decided to leave, the city's stadium revenues didn't > cover its payments, leaving the city with annual shortfalls.

</comment><comment><USER38> "This is why no city..." "Any city" sounds more like non English grammar.

That said, I most certainly agree that cities should not be in the business of subsidizing sports teams, when those are private money making enterprises.

St. Louis should sue the NFL and all cities in the same position (potentially liable for stadium costs, if team were to leave) should hold out till the NFL guarantees debts.

Build schools, get more teachers, do something worthwhile with the tax dollars you have.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Houston's iconic Astrodome, once dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, sits > empty a decade after the facility housed 25,000 evacuees of Hurricane > Katrina and nearly 20 years after the Oilers left.

It's worth noting that the Astrodome sits in the NRG complex, next door to the NRG Stadium where the Texans play, and in the same parking lot as the NRG Center, where events like the Houston Livestock and Rodeo take place. Just this week they were planting grass outside of the Astrodome to beautify it for the upcoming Rodeo. (NRG Arena is in the same complex) In other words, it's not the isolated abandoned property that other properties in the article describe. (it's not finalized, but it will likely become a park to bridge NRG Center and Stadium)

<comment><USER5> > but [the Astrodome] will likely become a park to bridge NRG Center and > Stadium

Only because so many people are too sentimental for the damn thing to knock it down. It's likely to become a greater boondoggle than anything else that exists on the property.

<comment><USER39> costs to demolish have been estimated between $30m-$60m

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://www.kansascityfed.org/~/media/files/publicat/econrev...](https://www.kansascityfed.org/~/media/files/publicat/econrev/econrevarchive/2001/1q01rapp.pdf)

"So does it makes sense for metro areas to use public funds to attract and retain major league sports franchises? The answer is definitely not if benefits are limited to increases in economic activity and tax revenue collection. A strong case can be made, however, that the quality-of-life benefits from hosting a major league team can sometimes justify the large public outlays associated with doing so"

Either way, there's always a risk of teams relocating, and this should be taken into account.

<comment><USER41> That report or whatever it is is really low quality. I just read the "How hosting a professional sports team contributes to quality of life" (page 71) section, and it reads like a middle schooler's homework.

It is devoid of facts and has questionable logic and very questionable conclusions. Honestly it is junk.

Essentially their entire quality of life argument boils down to "BUT SPORTS ARE AWESOME!!!" then just pull random dollar figures out of thin air and attach them to how awesome it is for fans to enjoy watching sports (????).

<comment><USER42> >Formally, the quality-of-life benefit to a particular fan who attends a sports game is the amount above the admission price they would have been willing to spend to attend the game. For instance, if someone is willing to spend $30 to attend a game that only costs $20, they receive a $10 quality-of- life benefit. Adding up the individual quality-of-life benefits of all residents who attend games yields the total metro area's quality-of-life benefit from game attendance.

Nope, this is real economic theory. It's not something the Fed invented out of thin air, and it's used in a wide variety of fields. Of course, there is a (widely-acknowledged) epistemic problem in assuming a person's desire for something is proportional to the happiness they will receive from it -- this is called "the theory of revealed preferences", and it is used primarily because all of the alternatives people have been able to think of so far (for assessing happiness) are even worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I am from Europe and this looks almost surreal for me. It is unheard of here that team simply packs players and go to other city. Sport culture and sport business so different in USA.

<comment><USER44> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relocation_of_Wimbledon_F.C._t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relocation_of_Wimbledon_F.C._to_Milton_Keynes)

<comment><USER45> This was literally blasphemy in the UK, so not sure what you're point is?

<comment><USER46> Fans in the U.S. don't take too kindly to it either. See fan reactions to relocations of the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, St. Louis Rams, etc.

<comment><USER45> How can you compare the top tier relocation to the third tier?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am from Brazil.

You should not build any stadiums for a private team using public money, the only stuff you should build with public money is stuff aiming for public use (example: community centers, bicycle race tracks that anyone can use, public olympic swimming pools for anyone that wanna learn and train, and so on).

The World Cup stadiums are right now mostly abandoned, and giving us lots of trouble, some of them saw like 3 games during the tournament, and were never used again, it is a waste of money and land.

Other stadiums now we found out that were just a means to funnel corruption money in certain people pockets, and even the stadiums that ARE in use, don't made the government profit.

The World Cup in fact made the country lose money, the tourist spending don't covered all the money we lost. (and no, it didn't drove the economy either, one of the effects of the World Cup is that the government defaulted on many companies, that were forced to also default, and so on, resulting in my parents shop being defaulted too, and now we are in deep shit, including struggling to buy food sometimes, my parents are unsure when a potential new costumer shows up, if they sell because we desperately need the money, or if they refuse the sale because we've been defaulted too much and cannot afford another default).

</comment><comment><USER48> The NFL is a unionized, state-supported, maximally regulated market with rigid spending requirements, price fixing, supply shortages...

... held up as the conservative free market jingoistic ideal.

<comment><USER49> Unions only come into existence because of capitalism. In a cooperative, the employees _are_ the owners, so there's no such thing as a union.

The NFL is certainly not maximally-regulated, in that more regulations are possible.

But the key here is that corrupt corporate wealthy powerful people are _always_ happy to claim that _whatever_ they are doing to stay wealthy and powerful is actually based on some ideal whether that's socialism or capitalism or whatever. It's basically never true, of course.

<comment><USER50> _Unions only come into existence because of capitalism. In a cooperative, the employees are the owners, so there 's no such thing as a union._

What about unions of public workers? Even in the USSR there were unions. Worker cooperatives are not the only alternative to capitalism.

<comment><USER49> True, I really meant more like "capitalism naturally leads to unions" rather than implying that nothing else can do so. But unions don't exist within cooperatives. The bigger point is: Unions are a _symptom_ of bigger systemic problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Not just stadiums. This is why no city/state should be able to offer anything like this for any private entity, be they sports team, movie crew, or private company.

<comment><USER52> There is never a case when there is a net positive benefit for th city by enticing a corporation to move in?

<comment><USER51> You'd have to measure that against other things that money could have done. And in many times, the company would be moving anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Green Bay has an interesting structure in that it is a non-profit with the community owning shares of it, and have no financial incentive to own it -- only team support and voting rights. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers#Community_ow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers#Community_ownership))

It would be a fascinating experiment if more teams did this, but I can't imagine an owner giving up control like that.

<comment><USER54> The Saskatchewan roughriders do this as well. Its CFL though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Relevant Onion article, which Chinese media reported as true:

[http://www.theonion.com/article/congress-threatens-to- leave-...](http://www.theonion.com/article/congress-threatens-to-leave-dc- unless-new-capitol--98)

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/U-S-satire-tricks- Beijing...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/U-S-satire-tricks-Beijing- paper-Satire-fools-2829911.php)

</comment><comment><USER48> Convert them to exotic hanging gardens of babylon public spaces then. Or water parks. or something similar.

There has to be SOMETHING you can do with a structure like that.

<comment><USER56> At one point, ignoring the significant maintenance costs, you could buy a huge stadium in Detroit for less than my house is worth. A friend and I would joke about living in the corporate suites and raising livestock and crops on the interior field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Phoenix built a huge sports stadium, then gave the naming rights to University of Phoenix in return for a donation, which rankled a lot of taxpayers who had footed most of the bill.

They levy a tax of several bucks on every car rental called the "stadium tax", ostensibly to help fund the stadium, although critics say it punishes tourists and locals who need a rental car, and anyway the money is apparently routed to other uses.

I see nothing wrong with building a world class sports facility. Build it, and they will come. It brings in millions of dollars in tourism and related business. The problem is when cities that build these things don't know how to budget properly, don't monetize the stadium properly, and piss away a lot of the money in corruption, fraud, nepotism, are taken advantage of by unscrupulous contractors and unions, and so forth.

Probably a public-private consortium would do a better job in the long run. Public to get the initial rights-of-way and easements, private to run the thing efficiently and profitably and defend against the con artists who plague all such major projects.

</comment><comment><USER58> What I find fascinating that the most anti-government people (usually right wing) are usually for these deals and the more pro-government people (usually left wing) are against these deals. At least this is my observation.

Scott Walker for example signed a stadium deal in Wisconsin and campaigns on small government.

<comment><USER59> Because its often more a cultural issue than not. And right-wingers are hardly anti government when it suits their own ends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This article reminds me of a report that John Stossel did some years ago on the economics of sport stadiums. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bGNIgdOLa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bGNIgdOLa0)

</comment><comment><USER61> The article linked to is promising.

[http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know- so-m...](http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-much- about-sports-so-little-about-world-affairs)

</comment><comment><USER62> I dont agree with the way the title is worded: as if to indicate that it is wrong in principle to build a stadium for NFL team. I think this is a case of a bad business deal or contract. The NFL clearly had a better contract here. If the deal was worded such that St. Louis Ram's teams were obligated to play there for X years or something else that guarantees cash flow, probably the city wouldn't have had such a loss. It is just poor deal making.

</comment><comment><USER63> Because NFL have been allowed to set up artificial caps on the number of franchises that can exist, owners have repeatedly used the threat of relocation to extort municipalities into paying for stadiums.

While European soccer clubs are punished by relegation into a lower league for sustained mediocrity, the pro sports monopolies in the U.S. ensure that even the most poorly-managed franchises are still immensely profitable.

</comment><comment><USER64> So it's just like Wall Street, tax payers take the losses while the team owners take all the profits.

Brilliant, when will the so called "fans" comprehend this?

</comment><comment><USER29> To be fair, that stadium now can be used for conventions. It's attached to a large convention center.

The problem was for years the Convention Authority couldn't use the stadium 6 months a year (August to Jan) as NFL releases their schedule around March (I think). Conventions are typically planned far ahead than NFL.

Now maybe the Convention Authority can start to utilize the space and pare down the debt faster. Who knows.

</comment><comment><USER65> It looks pretty clear, unless you have the NY or LA market, you're going to pay some team to play in your city. Dallas, Atlanta, SF, NE are runners up on getting a team to invest their own money.

You would think at being the 3rd largest market, Chicago would be in the same situation as NY/LA, but I'm assuming the systemic corruption led to the bad deal on Soldier Field.

</comment><comment><USER66> For those interested in the topic, this book [0] is a pretty good starting point for understanding the modern stadium construction game.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/New-Cathedrals-Politics- Construction-E...](http://www.amazon.com/New-Cathedrals-Politics-Construction- Entertainment/dp/0815631324)

<comment><USER67> Now if only stadia were built to last, like cathedrals...

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Cities shouldn't go into debt for stadiums.

But...I can see spending some public money towards sports venues.

I mean not everyone takes a stroll in city parks, or uses the library or visits the aquarium, but it would be peevish to insist that people only pay for what they themselves use.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why are these stadiums not financed with revenue bonds? Municipalities typically issue bonds as general obligations or as revenue bonds where there is no obligation to the broader municipality, only to the revenue producing entity.

</comment><comment><USER69> No, that's not why. Cities shouldn't do it because sports are not a public concern.

<comment><USER70> Sports are a form of entertainment....entertainment can and does drive spending.... and spending can contribute to more jobs and more tax revenue. Seems fair that sports are, in turn, a public concern.

That isn't to say that building a stadium or hosting the Olympics is inherently a profitable affair.

<comment><USER69> Except, whoops, the bucks only ever go to sports teams.

<comment><USER70> What of all the employees of the stadium? Of all the travel to and from the stadium? Of the merchandising deals? And any other numerous subsequent results... what does the money that goes to the employees or third-parties count as? They don't get paid in company scrip.

That's akin to saying that the money for any government funded project only go to the party directly responsible for building/supporting it, and all of the consequences from the initial project are inherently zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> The contrary view is the story of why the Brooklyn Dodgers left for California. Ball clubs are semi-public goods, so it gets tedious very quickly trying to factor it all out.

</comment><comment><USER72> "The fans are left holding the bag."

If only that were the case. Unfortunately, it's the taxpayers, not the smaller subset that are fans, who are left holding the bag.

</comment><comment><USER73> obligatory Last Week Tonight video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs)

</comment><comment><USER74> The billionaire owners in the NFL socialize the costs of building stadiums, not paying cheerleaders, etc. but keep the profits for themselves. I wonder how little in taxes they pay.

</comment><comment><USER75> So what happens to the Edward Jones sponsorship?

<comment><USER13> They likely have a section in their contract that covers this and can probably back out if no NFL team is present.</comment></comment>


Grafana v6.0 Stable Released - <AUTHOR> https://grafana.com/blog/2019/02/25/grafana-v6.0-released/ <comment><USER2> This is an awesome release. Especially the Explore feature is pretty dope.</comment>


Canada's Top 100 Startups  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadas-top-100-startups-2011-11-19

<comment><USER2> Using Alexa ranking to generate a list like that is ridiculous. I used to work for one of the startups on that list and it's been basically shuttered for the last 2 years.</comment>


New Statistical De-minifier and De-obfuscator for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsnice.org <comment><USER2> I took the code presented and put it into packer - [http://dean.edwards.name/packer/](http://dean.edwards.name/packer/) , and the "nice" output was not very helpful in that it still looked obfuscated. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

So the input to js nice was the packed generateSeries function:

eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,r){e=function(c) {return(c<a?'':e(parseInt(c/a)))+((c=c%a)>35? String.fromCharCode(c+29):c.toString(36))};if(!''.replace(/^/, String)){while(c--)r[e(c)]=k[c]||e(c);k=[function(e){return r[e]}];e=function(){return'\\\w+'};c=1};while(c-- )if(k[c])p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\\b'+e(c)+'\\\b','g'),k[c]);return p}('4 3(e){2 t=[];2 n=f+e;2 r=6+e;k(i=1;i<=6;i++){2 s=5.y(5.a()*(r- n+1)+n);t.b([i,s]);n++;r++}c t}$(d).B(4(){2 e=3(0);2 t=3(g);$.h($("#j"),[{7:"l",8:e},{7:"o",8:t}],{p:{q:{u: ["#v","#w"]}},x:{9:z},A: {9:m}})})',38,38,'||var|generateSeries|function|Math|200|label |data|ticks|random|push|return|document||100|300|plot||flotcon tainer|for|data1|10||data2|grid|backgroundColor||||colors|D1D1 D1|7A7A7A|xaxis|floor|20|yaxis|ready'.split('|'),0,{}))

<comment><USER3> The various jsBeautifiers special-case the eval() obfuscations, and in particular packer.

I think the scope of this tool is to annotate and de-uglify js code without changing the logic, so you get a more readable version of the routine that generates the eval()'d code, that sounds right to me.

EDIT: btw, can you please put the code in a code box, it messes with the layout. Mods: this is happening frequently, is it a bug?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it is a bug and on our list to fix. In the meantime, we fix it manually when we see it. It would be helpful to fire a note to firstname.lastname@example.com when you notice it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> About: [http://www.srl.inf.ethz.ch/jsnice.php](http://www.srl.inf.ethz.ch/jsnice.php)

Apparently this is a machine learning research project.

It seems that this would be quite useful for looking at the code of closed- source webapps. Would love to see it open-sourced or available as a service (via an API perhaps). Think auto-deminifying browser extension.

<comment><USER6> _On average, more than 60% of the identifiers are recovered to the same name as before the minification process._

I wonder how much of that 60% comes from common libraries like jQuery or Underscore. Still, a neat project.

<comment><USER7> We tried to evaluate on data that is as much as possible independent from the training data. So we evaluate on projects outside of github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, I saw this and wanted to see if it could decode output of something I saw earlier: [http://patriciopalladino.com/files/hieroglyphy/](http://patriciopalladino.com/files/hieroglyphy/)

I took the source of a sample pasted here and ran it through the heiroglyphy generator:

var expect = function(val) { return "string" == typeof val; };

which output something along the lines of (truncated):

[][(![]+[])[!+[]+!![]+!![]]+([]+{})[+!![]]+(!![]+[])[+!![]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]][([]+{})[!+[]+!![]+!![]+!![]+!![]]+([]+{})...

But JSNice was unable to deobfuscate this code. Any ideas why?

<comment><USER9> This involves program optimizations. JSNice doesn't optimize `var x = 1+1` to `var x = 2`

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Naturalize ( [http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/naturalize/](http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/naturalize/) ) is another related machine learning based tool that suggests appropriate identifier names for Java. Details on the implementation and an evaluation may be found here [http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.4182](http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.4182)

</comment><comment><USER11> Whoa, it even infers local variable names automatically.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some rather spectacular failures, though of course these things happen with statistical methods:

      /**
       * @param {string} val
       * @return {?}
       */
      var expect = function(val) {
        return "string" == typeof val;
      };
      /**
       * @param {boolean} deepDataAndEvents
       * @return {?}
       */
      var clone = function(deepDataAndEvents) {
        return "boolean" == typeof deepDataAndEvents;
      };
      /**
       * @param {(boolean|number|string)} obj
       * @return {?}
       */
      var isString = function(obj) {
        return "number" == typeof obj;
      };

Still, neat idea. Seems like there's a lot of room to train it, probably a lot of fun to try to improve things :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why was it unable to infer the type of the return value for generateSeries? The function only has one return statement, and it already knows the type of the return variable is {Array}.

<comment><USER7> It never shows types of return values, unless it is undefined. The reason is that the method may be overridden with a method with other return type.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can this approach be extended to for example generating "matching" tests for the code? Like "I see this function processes dates, here are some popular test cases learned from 1000s other projects"?

Could someone point me to good resources about mining code, most data mining and machine learning articles deal with points in multidimensional space and not objects with complex internal structure like programs...

<comment><USER11> The complex internal structure of programs could be reduced to graphs, and machine learning has been working with graphs for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting project. Would be great to get some more info on the actual algorithms being used. The about page offers relatively limited info.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how many people, like me, right off the bad went and pasted minified jQuery into this thing. Looks like an invaluable tool for reverse-engineering when unminified code is unavailable.

</comment><comment><USER17> didn't do too well on [http://js1k.com/2014-dragons/details/1903](http://js1k.com/2014-dragons/details/1903) :)

but processed jQuery relatively fast.

</comment><comment><USER18> I put in some real world JS found on Hulu, and got a slew of errors like this one:

Line 1: Parse error. missing ; before statement

<comment><AUTHOR> Josh,

Thanks for trying it out. I tried few large samples from Hulu and they seemed to work fine, e.g.:

[http://static.huluim.com/huluguru/i18n/en- us/translations-9d...](http://static.huluim.com/huluguru/i18n/en- us/translations-9d4d6e9074fa024132b56b9ce3aeee71.js)

But indeed, sometimes there could be issues if the code does not compile with the compiler of choice.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for the comments...keep them coming.

we will definitely soon provide more details on how the overall system works...

</comment><comment><USER19> > var width = $container.height();

Hehe

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, it is statistical. A browser extension would be cool!

</comment><comment><USER20> Handy tool to have. Works suprisingly good.

</comment><comment><USER21> What is this sorcery?!?!?

Infinitely helpful in reverse engineering google stuff like www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js

Thanks!!!

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it doing something beyond pretty print in Chrome?

<comment><USER23> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice tool!</comment>


Why every entrepreneur should cook - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-every-entrepreneur-should-cook-9a75826d8ce7#.k16tnonw8 <comment><USER2> marinades - 2 lessons:

1\. sometimes they are better as a sauce - salt-and-wait is 90% of the battle with pre-prep on chicken and pork - 30 minutes is often enough - then you can cook it in the delicious sauce

2\. if you do marinade, don't eat that stuff unless you cook it</comment>


Cockroaches are becoming immune to insecticides - <AUTHOR> https://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_b695311f8fc519da3c87c1d6f10ee241 <comment><USER2> > Scientists from Purdue exposed German cockroaches to different insecticides, > and found that the cockroach populations not only developed a resistance to > the insecticide they were exposed to, but also picked up resistances to > other insecticides.

Hmm, this might mean that these will be the attack method again:

[https://www.amazon.com/Pack-Black-Roach-Motel- Insect/dp/B01M...](https://www.amazon.com/Pack-Black-Roach-Motel- Insect/dp/B01M08AWX6)</comment>


Show HN: Stylebot, adapt the web's appearance - <AUTHOR> http://stylebot.me

<comment><USER2> Looks neat, but I probably won't add it until there's a Geocitizer ( <http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/index.php> ) or Cornify ( <http://www.cornify.com/> ) mode</comment>


Self-Balancing Electric Scooter (mini-segway) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G4yiO1Cmv4

<comment><AUTHOR> I live on the Venice Beach boardwalk and have been increasingly seeing people zip around on these scooters. They seem to have fixed what was originally wrong with the Segway -- when presented with an obstacle, the Segway was too bulky to lift or maneuver around. They're also relatively inexpensive at about $300-$500 a pop.

Does HN think this is the transportation revolution the Segway tried to usher in?

</comment><comment><USER2> A Seattle group is selling a unicycle with the same idea. I'm not affiliated, I just see these around the city. [http://solowheelseattle.com/](http://solowheelseattle.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm completely unaffiliated as well. Just thought it was interesting because this mini-segway has been adopted by hip hop and urban culture.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8STWRdtziY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8STWRdtziY)

[https://twitter.com/Colts/status/627455094209048576](https://twitter.com/Colts/status/627455094209048576)</comment></comment>


Things you should know about USB 2.0 and 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1265

<comment><USER2> And I still do not have an answer to my #1 USB 3 question: Have they solved the CPU utilization and data pipelining / overhead issues?

The biggest advantage of Firewire over USB has been the controller which alleviates CPU usage on the host machine, and allows for pipelining of data that makes the protocol more efficient than a given USB connection with the same base data rate.

I equip all my Windows machines with Firewire ports for this reason, and use external firewire hard drives for extra storage and for backup. I also have a significant investment in Firewire camera gear, because USB just doesn't cut it for streaming live HD video. However, I would love to abandon Firewire in favor of an optimized USB, if for no other reason that USB has wide industry support, and Firewire seems to be fading away due to its licensing issues.

<comment><USER3> No. There is no direct memory access (DMA) in the USB 3.0 spec. It would be a security nightmare.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure DMA happens between the controller and host - there's no way they could achieve those speeds with PIO. And DMA has nothing to do with pipelining - the controller could easily be programmed with a list of buffers in which to place USB responses.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon announces Prime Wardrobe, tackling fashion retail head on - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/amazon-announces-prime-wardrobe-tackling-fashion-retail-head-on.html <comment><USER2> Not a good day to be Stitch Fix...

Those 10-20% discounts on kept items are very appealing, especially considering how you get to choose the items in the box as opposed to having a "stylist" choose them for you.

Seems like they're going to have to really embody 'fashion discovery' if they're going to find a role, much like Hastings said Netflix has to embody entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know what they have to stop people from just ordering/returning a new set of clothes every week??</comment>


Webbynode's take on rapid node.js deployment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webbynode.com/2010/09/29/screencast-our-take-on-node-js-deployment/ Today we released support for node.js application deployment on our Rapp deployment engine.
This engine is installed on your Webby (a VPS server) and then you can publish multiple node.js (along with rails, rack, php, ...) applications using git.
We would like to get feedback from HN and we've recorded a 2 minute screencast that walks you through the process.
Let us know what you think.
Thanks,
Webbynode Dev Team <comment><USER2> Today we released support for node.js application deployment on our Rapp deployment engine.

This engine is installed on your Webby (a VPS server) and then you can publish multiple node.js (along with rails, rack, php, ...) applications using git.

We would like to get feedback from HN and we've recorded a 2 minute screencast that walks you through the process.

Let us know what you think.

Thanks,

Webbynode Dev Team

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll get down voted for this but IMO, how can we trust a VPS provider if it goes down when it hits HN?

</comment><comment><USER4> The site doesn't seem to be loading. This seems to be the norm across the entire node.js landscape. 9/10 of the blog posts, tutorials, competitions and demo apps I try to access while learning node.js are offline or broken. It does not inspire confidence in the stack that the early adopters can't keep their sites online for even a few weeks. Can you not set-it-and-forget-it like throwing up a PHP script on a server?

<comment><USER5> Just so you know it loaded fine for me and the blog is running wordpress not node.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg appears on CNBC to discuss a social network (2004) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/cnbc/videos/vb.97212224368/10153395251424369/?type=2&theater <comment><USER2> What's with the hate in this thread? He achieved something quite remarkable. Back then, most people wouldn't have guessed that this silly campus site ever became as big as it is now.

And now, Mark created a business with thousands of employees, changing how we communicate, how we discover information about the cities we live in.

Give the man some respect. This isn't about his privileged background, but about the perseverance he showed for the last 11 years.

<comment><USER3> >changing how we communicate...

Perhaps, though I'm not convinced it was for the better. every time I log into Facebook I log off within five minutes wondering why I continue to waste my time with it. Maybe that's just my problem, I don't know.

<comment><USER4> This is highly dependent on your circle of friends. It's much more enjoyable when you're following people who are doing interesting things

An RSS reader wouldn't be compelling if you're just subscribed to Buzzfeed, after all.

<comment><USER3> Well, you're probably not wrong. 99% of my ~400 "friends" are people I knew in high school who I haven't seen in 15 years.

I keep in contact with my actual friends, but not via FB.

<comment><USER5> Unsubscribe from their feeds. Unsubscribing, I've basically ignored most of my facebook friends. It's great.

<comment><USER6> So then what's the point? Since I deleted my account my relationships with my real friends and family has definitely improved. When I see them in person we actually have things to catch up on and talk about and those in person interactions have much more value for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He is a much, much better public speaker now:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-19/mark- zucke...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-19/mark-zuckerberg-q- a-the-full-interview-on-connecting-the-world)

<comment><USER8> He wasn't so bad at age 19!

<comment><USER9> I came here to say just this. Considering he had no prior experience and by his own accounts he is quite the geek I thought he spoke very well. He was articulate, kept his answers on point and not too long, perhaps a little wordy but people tend to over talk when nervous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seriously. That was a rather good presentation. Doing an interview for TV without much experience and come across without stumbling is not that easy.

</comment><comment><USER11> We never know if our idea or product will grow big. Take the risk and launch it. There are some chances if we launch it.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want to watch the video without having to install Flash, just replace "www" with "m" \- Not the best video quality since it's optimised for mobile, but a nice productivity tip for Safari users ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> Good memories. 15y ago I built a social network for our graduation year, 50% signed up ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> So, what happened after that?

<comment><USER15> It went pretty much like he said. They expanded to every college, then to high schools and then the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who's the scary looking bearded kid?

<comment><USER17> See this:

[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,689438,...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,689438,00.html)

"Two years ago, Dan Stillman and Matt Eaton, then sophomores at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, launched WesMatch.com, a site featuring a humorous, elaborate personality questionnaire. The service allows students to rate themselves and their potential mates in categories ranging from sex drive to "socialisticbutterflyosity." "

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> More interested in the algorithms of Google than a copy and paste of MySpace.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that a little like saying Google is a copy and paste of Alta Vista?

<comment><USER18> If I can copy and paste what you're thinking, then yes. Otherwise, nope. Too hard to tell what's underlying the code in the case of a search engine, machine learning or artificial intelligence system. Large difference between the code behind intelligent algorithms and text entry boxes with DB calls.

BBSs, TheWell, Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, TheGlobe, Geocities, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, what's next? Fill in the blank I guess.

DMOZ, Yahoo, HotBot, WebCrawler, AllTheWeb, Excite, AltaVista, Lycos, Google, what's next? Too hard to tell.

Google was founded on principles in artificial intelligence and now has a good handle on how to implement portions of AI along with all the other things they're doing.

Facebook was founded by a guy who was a voyeur and called its users "dumb f*cks" for giving out personal information while rocking a biz card that said "I'm CEO, bitch!".

Big difference and big difference in revenue too.

<comment><USER19> Actually what Google does is fairly trivial and not based on "artificial intelligence" ...

<comment><USER20> Well it is no longer trivial at scale and I'm pretty sure they've moved beyond the Page Rank algorithm long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And thus began the fall of Western civilization...

</comment><comment><USER22> Really shows the incredible privilege and connections he had, so early in his life, that catapulted FB over all the other budding social networks.

It's always about who you know to give your work wings (which is apt, since his project was a social network)

<comment><USER23> If you really go back and do some digging into the roots of facebook, you'll be amazed at how much press he got early on. He supposedly offered to do computer support work for the Harvard Crimson and in return he got press connections. Even before he launched thefacebook, he was getting write ups with facemash.

<comment><USER24> Don't people always say that you need to spend as much time promoting your product as building it?

<comment><USER14> Distribution is as important as product.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, that's why there are so many Christians right now.

<comment><USER14> Totally. They aren't digging it out of the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Facebook CEO Admits To Calling Users 'Dumb Fucks' [http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling- use...](http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb- fucks)

"Mark Zuckerberg admits in a New Yorker profile that he mocked early Facebook users for trusting him with their personal information."

<comment><USER26> It's almost like he's a human being and is fallible.

<comment><USER27> What seems to be passed off as a foible seems to me to be sociopathic.

Edit: less accusatory

<comment><USER28> Trash talking at that age is an embarrassingly normal thing to do. Accusing people of sociopathy without evidence is worse.

It's also hugely diluting of signal/noise ratio in threads. Grandiose accusations are noise, and no evidence means no signal. Please don't post such things to HN.

<comment><USER27> Re: accusatory tone - I adjusted my comment to reflect more clearly this is only my take away. But I think his words and actions are the evidence. I understand trash talk, but calling your users (behind their back) "dumb fucks" sounds like nothing but contempt.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for adjusting your comment. I want to expand on the point a bit further because I think it's important for Hacker News. But I don't mean to pick on you personally, so I hope you don't feel that way.

How many people have any real basis for knowing what Zuckerberg meant by those words? A line like that could mean almost anything. You'd have to have known him at the time. Also, how many people can truly claim never to have said anything just as bad or foolish? Those two groups must be minuscule, yet to be justified in making such an accusation, you'd have to belong to both of them.

Far more likely, what's going on here is wishful thinking, where the wish is e.g. to see someone else as a monster. The quote is just a convenient prop.

People bring it out at the slightest provocation. It has become an internet reflex, so it no longer adds any information. More importantly, it's the opposite of the principle of charity—i.e. giving the other person the benefit of the doubt—which we try to practice here.

<comment><USER29> > How many people have any real basis for knowing what Zuckerberg meant by > those words? A line like that could mean almost anything. You'd have to have > known him at the time. Also, how many people can truly claim never to have > said anything just as bad or foolish? Those two groups must be minuscule, > yet to be justified in making such an accusation, you'd have to belong to > both of them.

I did know him at the time. He was not a friend, but I saw him every day. My friends were his roommates and in the same circles as some of the early fb people, so I saw and heard a lot to explain the guy and his motivations.

It is not an exaggeration to say he has done sociopathic things. He didn't hurt people physically (obviously), but he exploited them to the maximum extent that he has been allowed. Harvard attracts people like this guy, but honestly he was a bit extreme, maybe even out of our league. If you don't care about what people feel or think beyond what they can do to you, you can make the most optimum decisions for yourself.

He demonstrated this capacity in impressive form on several occasions which are now public so don't need to be described here. My initial reaction, before the media had taken up and transmitted its own interpretation of these stories, was exactly what many here are saying. So you don't need to moderate the discussion by noting that no one involved knew the guy at the time--- what people are saying is on point. His character is evident in his life's work.

Life requires compromise, so it's unlikely that he can do anything really bad now, due to the size of the operation and how many people are working together toward the greater goal of making "the" communication platform. That said, the idea that people need facebook to communicate on the internet is a conceit. The goal of this company is to centralize your communication and social life so it can be analyzed, exploited, and manipulated. That structure has grown from the motivations of this 19 year-old, aloof, and rather arrogant kid. The world has accepted it. Fair enough.

<comment><USER28> Assuming the details are true, your comment does count as substantive: it describes concrete personal experiences. It also seems to have an agenda, but readers can evaluate that for themselves.

The moderation point is off, though. An unsubstantive smear doesn't suddenly become a good comment just because someone else shows up and posts a better one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Zuck

</comment><comment><USER31> And 20yrs later, they are still trying to serve me a flash video.

sigh.

<comment><USER32> Still better than serving only HTML5 video as far as I'm concerned. Until someone makes a browser that can natively (...or at least with some plug-in) block those players and make them click-to-play like I can do with almost any Flash.

<comment><USER31> uh... i'm not sure which crappy browser you use, but firefox mobile, the only browser you should be using this day and age, has this in the settings menu (don't even have to go to some hidden about:config) page.

<comment><USER32> Can you name a browser that can natively block Flash objects and HTML5 videos? FF can't as far as I know.

I'm talking desktop, mobile is irrelevant for me.

Edit: Oh, I didn't notice that "the only browser you should be using this day and age". That's enough to know about you to not be interested in anything you have to say. Have a nice day!

<comment><USER31> firefox desktop there isn't a UI option, but about:config media.autoplay.enabled=false will do the trick.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-10-mathematicians-possibility-gravitational.html <comment><USER2> "The discovery could lead to a new means of data transfer in space, e.g., between space stations."

Sure, we'll be building space stations with gravitational wave transmitters as soon as we can figure out how to wiggle stars and planets in a controlled fashion to produce them. That should happen Real Soon Now.

<comment><USER3> C'mon, we can already transmit data across different dimensions using a wrist watch & morse code. Yeah, bandwidth isn't that great but hey, we could use a wall clock.

<comment><USER4> I know you are joking, but transmit information through dimensions using gravity is one interesting conjecture why gravitational force is so much weaker than the other forces. It leaks through dimensions. And maybe this type of communication will be necessary when we have to leave this dimension to hyperspace because of the entropy [1].

[1] [http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html](http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)

<comment><USER5> For what it's worth, evidence has come out (explained well by this PBS Space Time episode [1]) that makes the "gravity propagates over more than three spatial dimensions" theory a bit less likely.

[1] [https://youtu.be/3HYw6vPR9qU](https://youtu.be/3HYw6vPR9qU)

<comment><USER4> Interesting video, so it is possible that there is no leak after all, but I think this does not prove that there are no extra dimensions, as the video tries to portrait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> From the title of the actual paper:

"gravitational waves of nonmetricity"

It looks like these "gravitational waves" aren't the kind that LIGO has been detecting, but a hypothetical kind in a hypothetical theory of gravity that is not the same as General Relativity (there are no "gravitational waves of nonmetricity" in GR). So for this to be even possible in principle this hypothetical theory of gravity would have to turn out to be correct (and we have no evidence to suggest that GR is wrong and some other theory of gravity is correct).

</comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't seem surprising or particularly exciting. It still propogates at the speed of light and it is hard to produce/detect. The benefit is... Stuff can be in the way?

<comment><USER7> Not a scientist in this field at all but could it possibly have less interference from mediums such as the atmosphere? Hence less signal loss over transmission?

<comment><USER8> imo it seems like data transfer would be difficult to use gravitational waves for. LIGO had to measure very tiny compressions occurring due to very very big things happening faraway in the universe (though I guess being distant isn't a prereq):

> On January 4th, 2017, LIGO detected two black holes merging into one. One of > the black holes was 32 times the mass of the Sun (32 M⊙, where M denotes > mass and ⊙ is a symbol for the Sun) while the other was 19 times the mass of > the Sun. When they merged, they created a black hole 49 times the mass of > the Sun. The coalescence instantly converted 2 solar masses of black hole > mass into the energy that rattled spacetime enough to generate the > gravitational waves we detected almost 3 billion years after it occurred. > (Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab)

> Despite the stupendous energy released by colliding black holes, detecting > gravitational waves is excessively difficult since the effects they have on > LIGO's instruments are incomprehensibly small. This latest wave caused the > spacetime occupied by LIGO's arms to stretch and shrink by > 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 (or 1×10-18) meters (a.k.a. an "attometer"). > That's 1000 times smaller than a proton!

[0] [https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20170601](https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20170601)

<comment><USER9> It surely is science fiction today but from a physics point of view there's nothing that would make it impossible. So as a physicist I'd say it's merely an engineering problem ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any wave that can be modulated and detected lends itself to data transfer, in principle. The question would be how practical it is.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible that alien civilizations are using gravitational waves to communicate? Maybe that's why we've literally had "radio silence" so far.

<comment><USER12> Exactly what I was thinking, given we are beginning to go dark (in terms of radio transmission) as well, perhaps SETI are looking at the wrong type of information transmission to detect our neighbours. A hypothetical alien civilization could be using an entirely different type of technology to transmit information to what we have previously assumed, maybe gravity waves maybe something else, that we haven't even thought of yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you like hard sci-fi, the amazing trilogy by Liu Cixin The Three Body Problem uses gravitational wave communication as an important part of the plot.

<comment><USER14> Long membrane communication.

<comment><USER13> Such a great chapter. It amazes me how the author can take a huge step back and get into the mind of this curious character

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not to sound condescending, but…

You can transmit data by modulating in on top of something that propagates through space? Well, big deal, who'd thought? /s

In all seriousness, the big problem is, how to create gravitational waves in a controlled manner in the first place. Because the fact remains, that gravity is, by several orders of magnitude, the weakest force in our universe and it takes stooopid amounts of energy (and I means that in an all-encompassing way, referring to anything that goes into the metric tensor) to create an even noticeable ripple in spacetime. If we break down spectrally, its easiest to detect stuff close to DC, I mean, people did it 200 years ago, so to speak, but only over short distances, and really long integration times ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment)).

But anything meaningful for data transmission would require to operate at significant high frequencies. It's hard enough to wiggle around some "condensed energy", i.e. mass in the milligram scale at high frequencies, although in the lasers I build, the end facets of the optical filter are thrown around with accelerations on the order of 10e6 g-ees, at ~500kHz, but the gravitational waves created by that wouldn't register at LIGO even if several thousand of these, running in phase were placed right next to the test masses.

To make any sensible use of gravitational waves, we'd need to invent some form of gravitational …aser (light: laser / microwaves: maser), i.e. a gwaser. Gravitational Wave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Okay, I admit it, this is one of these gedankenexperiments I play through in my head from time to time, trying to come up with some technological setup, that could do it. If I had to make a bet, I'd say whatever it'd be, it'd be similar to a free electron laser.

But it's foolish to even go further than rough speculation, what components it possibly may involve, because to really make headway in that direction, we'd need a workable quantum theory of gravity. And last time I've checked, that's still an open problem.

On the uphand, should we ever figure out, if one can, and if so how to build a gwaser, this would open up possibilities far beyond new modes of communication. I'm talking propulsion that uses gravitational radiation as "reaction mass" (that'd be a no brainer, since gravitational waves to carry momentum, that's why the orbits of binary black hole systems decay in the first place). But maybe even stuff that's really outlandish science fiction, maybe even not causality breaking (not all timelike curves do violate causaility; go ahead, draw a few Minkowsky diagrams, to see what I mean) FTL travel.

And given that, I'd put this mathematical result into the same category of applicability as the Alcubierre metric: A nice consequence of mathematical rigor, but without further understanding of fundamental physics of little practical interest, so far.

<comment><USER16> What does "close to DC" mean?

And "end facets of the optical filter"? What is being thrown around?

<comment><USER17> "close to DC"

I assume he's meaphorically using the term "direct current", so the low frequency stuff. As far as I know, LIGO effectively bandpasses gravitational waves in the range 7 to 30 Hz, or so.

Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous.

I'm not quite sure about the laser facets comment, though.

<comment><USER15> > Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, > is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not > wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous.

I didn't see the need for sarcasm tags. But then again, if you're honest about it LIGO is not that much different in _basic principle_ from the Cavendish experiment (measure the displacement of test masses), only that the sensitivity of the displacement detector is a lot of orders of magnitude higher.

And remember that a core step in the Cavendish experiment is to "flip" around the position of the big masses, so there's some kind of gravitational transient pulse event, which, if you're honest about translates into a very broadband spectrum, when compared to the integration time of the experiment.

<comment><USER17> First off, thanks for engaging in a bit of debate. I came off a bit needly when I was trying to allude to a technical point.

I'm guessing that we're talking about different things. If you think of gravitational waves as any non-zero Fourier transform of some gravitational potential, then you and I agree, but that's not what we typically mean by "gravitational waves" which are, formally, metrics admitting a covariantly null vector field.

One reason for the distinction is that in a GR analysis of the 2-body problem, the radial potential energy contains an extra term not in a Newtonian analysis. This is interpreted as energy carried away by gravitational radiation. Even in a classical case, an external observer witnesses a periodic gravitational potential, but only in GR do the waves carry energy and cause Mercury to precess.

The error bars on the early Cavendish experiments were way bigger than any GR correction to Newtonian gravity. As such, we can safely analyze it within the realm of Newtonian mechanics which only admits DC offset "gravitational waves". That was the intent of my original comment.

Actually, as far as I understand it, the Cavendish experiment is simply a static equilibrium analysis. We measure the deflection of a torsion pendulum with and without the test masses present. I'm not sure what you are referring to with the "flipping" procedure, but I'd guess it's more about homogonizing erros rather than generating "force pulses".

<comment><USER15> > First off, thanks for engaging in a bit of debate. I came off a bit needly > when I was trying to allude to a technical point.

Totally got that, no worries. And yes, I do see where you're coming from. But I base my argument not on the concept of the quasi-static potentials of a field theory with infinite speed of potential propagation (i.e. Newton).

> Even in a classical case, an external observer witnesses a periodic > gravitational potential

But this assumes instantaneous propagation of the potential.

In every field theory in which changes (i.e. disturbances) of the field propagate with limited speed any accelerating movement of the generating sources of the field will create waves in that field.

Wiggle around some electric charge and you get EM waves carrying away energy. Einstein's first (and failed) attempt toward a relativistic theory of gravity was to apply the concept of retarded potentials. Didn't work out, something was missing. But even in such a retarted gravitational potentials theory, gravitational waves do show up.

> and cause Mercury to precess.

Isn't the precession of Mercury an effect of contraction of space by mass and that at the radii of perihel and apehel the metric of space is different?

Even the tiniest spec of dust moving at Mercury's orbit should experience the same precession, yet will radiate much less energy away through gravitational waves, as far as I understand it.

> but that's not what we typically mean by "gravitational waves" which are, > formally, metrics admitting a covariantly null vector field.

Yes I know, GR permits for additional wave modes, that you don't have in e.g. electrodynamics in the vacuum. But I think it's dishonest to dismis the more "mundane" modes to be not gravitational waves.

As far as I see it, in any field with limited propagation delay, any disturbation propagating through the field is a true wave in a its right in that field. If you want to reach a fundamental theory which can be applied universally without the requirement of a-priori choices being made on the system modelled, all aspects of the theory must be "enabled" all the time.

> As such, we can safely analyze it within the realm of Newtonian mechanics > which only admits DC offset "gravitational waves"

… which is what I was saying by having long integration times. And as far as nature goes, in any real system there is no true DC offset, because that would require integration from -inf to +inf. Yes, I did mention "DC", but in a practical sense DC just means "frequency which interval is an order of mangitude longer than the integration time of the observation".

Here's a little food for thought: Say you have an mechanical shutter and shine some long coherene (= narrow bandwidth) laser through it. Then you quickly close and open the shutter. How does the spectrum of the light look like after the shutter? Integrating over the spectrum before and after the shutter does the power change? If so where did the delta in energy go / come from?

This is some practical wave dynamics engineering we laser guys do on a regular base and solely rests on the fact that in a universe of finite age there is no such thing as a true DC component; you can get infinitesimally close to DC, but never reach true DC in the first place. So for example we use (fast) modulators to create spectral sidebands and even do things like carrier and single sideband suppression to shape the light to our bidding; becomes really interesting if you throw nonlinear effects into the mix that allow to all sorts of up-/downconversion.

> I'm not sure what you are referring to with the "flipping" procedure, but > I'd guess it's more about homogonizing erros rather than generating "force > pulses".

You're remembering right. What you do in the Cavendish experiment is to rotate the big masses by 90° so that the torsion pendulum is twised in the opposite direction, so that offsets in the pendulum cancel out. However consider this: Instead of moving the big masses at descrete times, let them (slowly) oscillate, maybe at the resonance frequency of the pendulum. If the pendulum has a high Q factor it will eventually reach quite the significant oscillation amplitude.

So what is this? I'd say this is energy transfer through gravitational waves in the near field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hurra: yet another way for the NSA to exfiltrate data from my keyboard.

<comment><USER19> Do you have fingers forged from the core of a neutron star? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what in what scenario would it be more practical to send a letter through gravitational waves rather then light?

<comment><USER21> Maybe if there is a medium between the emitter and receiver that scatters light, like an atmosphere.

Or if you don't have line of sight because there is an occluding object like a planet or star in the way.

Or you have line of sight but it's really close to a super bright object so you can't see anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> would be great for a doctor who episode, I dunno</comment>


8-bit maps of world cities - <AUTHOR> http://8bitcity.com/map?San%20Francisco#

<comment><USER2> I was a little disappointed because I thought this would be about 8-bit isometric cities. Like Youcity, an isometric map of SF: [http://youcity.com/2009/website_front/index.html#](http://youcity.com/2009/website_front/index.html#)

And some cities based on OSM: [http://bitsteller.bplaced.net/osm/](http://bitsteller.bplaced.net/osm/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Love how they used the sprites from The Adventures of Lolo ([http://nintendookie.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/adventures-o...](http://nintendookie.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/adventures- of-lolo.gif)) Makes me nostalgic. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Fun to see, familiar and new at the same time as intended.

For the Amsterdam map there appears to be a large part of what I know is water that is rendered green? Why is that?</comment>


Video lectures of mathematics courses available online for free - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/q/54430/85415 <comment><USER2> Very very useful.</comment>


Feedback after coding interview - <AUTHOR> Yesterday I've applied to a job and as a first step there were a coding challenge. So, I've spend about an hour to complete this.
And the only feedback I received was:
"Dear %name%, thank you so much for applying at %company% and taking the time to do our coding challenge. We discussed your results within the team and unfortunately need to tell you that we are not able to offer you a position at this point in time.
I wish you all the best in your professional endeavors."
Basically no real feedback what I do good, what I do bad or wrong. And when I've asked abut feedback, reply was: "unfortunately we have not enough capacity to provide feedback to every applicant."
I do not want to say that I'm the best developer ever, but when I invest my time I expect that company will provide a feedback.
What do you think guys?
Is that ok? Is that common case? Do you have same experience and what do you feel about this? <comment><USER2> Companies _should_ provide constructive feedback to any candidate that invests time into a test or an interview process but the reality is that the majority don't.

Most will state that it's too laborious to provide individual feedback which is simply nonsense and insulting to the candidate. The reality is that most companies shy away from providing feedback for two key reasons. It becomes difficult and more time intensive to deal with a candidate who challenges the feedback and it can also _potentially_ expose the company to a liability risk if the feedback isn't completely objective and factually based.

</comment><comment><USER3> You've probably dodged a bullet.

An hour does seem short to me though - how long did they say it should take? I've generally found them to be 3-4 hours. Did you write tests? Any documentation?

<comment><AUTHOR> They tell me it should not take longer then one our, so I provide pretty simple solutions. This from their mail: "The challenge should not take you longer than 1 hour and focusses on your problem-solving skills."

So, I was thinking they tell me is I solve problems or not, at least.

<comment><USER3> In that case, unless your code was horrifically formatted or just plain bad, I think I'd go with my first answer and say you've dodged a bullet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to my (small) experience, smaller structures like startups tend to give better feedbacks than large companies.

I guess they have more respect and care more about human relations.

</comment><comment><USER5> Providing feedback, especially negative feedback, is perceived as a legal risk to the company.</comment>


This is how the next World War starts - <AUTHOR> http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/trump-russia-putin-military-crisis <comment><USER2> lies</comment>


Google to Comply with EU Search Demands to Avoid More Fines - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-29/google-faces-tuesday-deadline-as-clock-ticks-toward-new-eu-fines <comment><USER2> Ed Felten's article on this from a couple of months ago provides an excellent analysis.

[https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/06/28/european- authoritie...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/06/28/european-authorities- fine-google-for-search-tactics/)

"At this point, I need to put some of my cards on the table and admit that I know more about this topic, having worked on the FTC's investigation which asked some of the same questions. But that investigation was confidential, for good reasons, and I will not violate that confidentiality. All I'll say is that the FTC had the legal power to compel answers to factual questions about Google's practices (and an obligation to keep the answers confidential) and, having conducted a thorough investigation, the FTC decided not to bring a case against Google."

<comment><USER3> So 'Trust me, I can't say why, but they are okay'.

FTC applies US rules, the EU Commission applies EU law. You can stay clear of one while still violating the other.

<comment><USER4> And given that Google is an American companies, there is a strong possibility that they got helped for the FTC that they will not have with the EUC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NPR's Planet Money had a great recent episode summarizing the whole situation. It includes an interview with one of the people whose complaint led to the EU's initial investigation: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/04/541643346/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/04/541643346/episode-787-google- is-big-is-that-bad)

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the search bar at Amazon.com doing essentially the same thing?

<comment><USER7> I don't understand how tech people continue to misunderstand the logic of the EU's argument or antitrust law in general, even with the benefit of the history of the Microsoft case.

<comment><USER8> Because Google appologists. Because Google technically isn't a monopoly. And that lessons learnt from Microsoft has began to fade away in the zeitgeist.

<comment><USER9> Also because people like typing "weather tomorrow", pressing Enter, then immediately seeing what the weather will be like tomorrow.

<comment><USER10> Just because one company offers a superior solution, doesn't mean that it cannot be harmful. I also find Google the best search engine for complicated queries (while I use duckduckgo.com for everything else) but I'm still concerned about their market power.

Every monopoly (or quasi-monopoly which Google is in Europe) should have intense scrutiny by regulators and governments. That doesn't mean nationalisation but it means that these companies will have less freedom to further extend their market power.

If Google has an issue with that they could just do what other conglomerates have done before and split up. The same applies to Amazon where synergies between AWS and the core business are not really clear to me. Only facebook really has only one product, the other companies have a collection of loosely related products.

<comment><USER11> Why doesn't someone build a competing search engine for Europe? Serious question. Seems like the EU prefers to tax and harm the incumbent but do little in the way of improving tax policy that would encourage US style venture investment and the resulting innovation. It's very difficult for investors in Europe to make any money — in a place like France, capital gains are punitively taxed and apparently there isn't a French Google competitor. Go figure.

<comment><USER10> Microsoft has spent billions trying to beat Google, without much success. They now get a lot of traffic because it's the standard engine in Win10 (basically doing what they did with IE a decade back) but not because of superior quality.

I try to get away from Google and try Bing regularly (directly or through duckduckgo). For complicated queries, results on Google are clearly superior. Google knows that the whole company indirectly depends on this so that they constantly improve their algorithms. I doubt anyone could reach their quality, even with a few billion € to spend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No, Google is merely talking about complying. They haven't actually done anything yet. They have until September 28 to do something, if they can't stall further.

</comment><comment><USER13> kinda interesting that EU law requires you to reduce the usefulness of your products if you have too much success...

<comment><USER14> All of the useful little tools that google shows you based on your search could now be subject the same treatment. If I search for "Seattle weather" google shows me a nice weather forecast at the top of the results (courtesy of weather.com). Could Google be forced to stop showing this because it unfairly disadvantages other weather websites?

<comment><USER15> This is actually an ongoing process, too.

The opinion of the EU is that Google should be forced to either allow the user to choose the provider of these widgets (maps, weather, etc), or to require Google to rank these widgets at the same position that they would show up in regular search.

For example, in a search for a product, Google returns first a Shopping widget, then the Amazon result (and in it, an amazon widget), then several competitors, and only then Google Shopping.

Google should rank the widgets of each provider the same way as search results, without any bias.

<comment><USER16> It sounds good in theory, but since Google's ranking algorithm ranks pages, how is Google supposed to apply it to widgets?

Most widgets do have _associated_ pages, such as shopping search result pages, but they're not the same. They have different interfaces and contain different information, and often they have low PageRank because there's little point in linking to them. If I search "My name is Daniel in Spanish", I would probably like to see a Google Translate widget (or at least some kind of widget), even though the associated page [https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel](https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel) isn't ranked highly.

And some widgets have no associated pages -- if a user searches "96 tablespoons in cups", Google simply shows the answer (6), with no associated page. Should that not be allowed? It would be unfortunate if Google was forced to send users to some conversion website for that.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that Google has a monopoly on search (>96% in EU), and is using that to gain a monopoly in other areas.

For example, where I live, Google maps hasn't updated map data since 2009. They have no transit in it, no integration with taxi or ridesharing companies, nothing.

Here maps has up-to-date maps, with all that in it.

Yet, people use Google maps, and not even consider that there might be a better competitor – because Google maps is the default, and shows up first in search.

A significantly worse product is winning here, and doesn't even have a market pressure to improve, just because of anticompetitive powers.

You surely can see how that'd be problematic if you'd ever try to disrupt an existing market as startup.

<comment><USER16> I don't see why Google's market share matters. If it was 60% instead of 96%, couldn't you make the same argument that Google Maps was receiving an unfair advantage, just of a somewhat different magnitude?

I also don't see why it matters whether there are different business categories involved. If you typed "best search engine" into Bing, and Bing artificially ensured that bing.com was the first result, wouldn't the same criticism apply?

It seems to me that the arguments being made apply to all cross-promotions. You could say that Yahoo is giving Yahoo Mail an unfair advantage by promoting it on their portal. I don't see a meaningful difference.

<comment><USER17> Having more market share means you have more power. The level of overall harm you can cause is greater.

If you're a minor player, and you cut out a particular competitor from your results, they're not hurt that much and people are less likely to come and use your service.

If you are the main entry point for the vast majority of people, then limiting your results can easily kill whole groups of businesses.

Yahoo only linking to yahoo mail when people search for email providers isn't going to kill off other providers. Google (if almost all results are found through it) doing the same could.

That's ok if Google treat their own services like they treat other people's, and let them compete on merit. But if they use it to just kill competition then that's not good for consumers.

<comment><USER16> But in general, we consider things right or wrong (both morally and legally) irrespective of scale. Why should this be different?

In utilitarian terms, the ratio of benefits and costs to society is the same whether it's Google or Bing that's showing a search widget, so we should allow both or neither.

If Google and Bing had 50/50 market share, then do you think the widgets would be acceptable? Bing also shows shopping widgets, so unaffiliated sellers wouldn't be any better off in that scenario.

<comment><USER17> > But in general, we consider things right or wrong (both morally and legally) > irrespective of scale. Why should this be different?

We do see things differently based on scale or level of power though, both morally and legally.

We have different standards for people like doctors being in relationships with patients than two regular people, for example.

Thefts will also be treated differently based on scale.

Killing more people is typically seen as worse than killing fewer.

I'm not really sure what you mean about considering things the same irrespective of scale.

> In utilitarian terms, the ratio of benefits and costs to society is the same > whether it's Google or Bing that's showing a search widget, so we should > allow both or neither.

I don't see how the costs and benefits are the same. The problem is that so many people use Google that having them promote their own product can be enough to completely kill off competition. If they were smaller they'd not have that power.

There's no point stopping Bobs Search Engine with 20 users from not listing Google because he wants to beat them. Google aren't really harmed much by this. Maybe 20 fewer customers come through. Google not listing Bobs search engine because they don't link to him (deliberately because they want to beat him) could mean the difference between being in business and not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google _is_ a monopoly and so are Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, Walmart, and several others. I think we will eventually replace these oversized companies with something like sophisticated semantic protocols.

</comment><comment><USER19> In related news Intel still hasnt paid its fine for directly bribing retailers and computer manufacturers in exchange for refusing to sell AMD processors.

</comment><comment><USER20> It is kinda surreal that a company obeying the law is headline news.

Note that they appear to have responded on the final day allowed. Throughout this process, Google has repeatedly asked for extensions to review the claims or come up with a response for all of these cases. It seems like, knowing the result, Google has attempted to draw out this process as long as legally possible. The PR damage from keeping this case ongoing presumably pales in comparison to the profit from their unlawful conduct.

<comment><USER21> It's headline news when the law is not only ridiculous, but protectionist, and inconsistently followed.

It's pretty obvious that the EU is only doing this because Google is a US company.

I am quite sure that google considered simply pulling entirely out of Europe. It wouldn't affect them as much as you think - it's the internet, you can run a website from anywhere.

And it's not like the EU would prevent their citizens from buying ads from Google, so their revenues would not be affected all that much. Their EU sales force could be through a third party (so that Google would not have any assets in the EU).

All that Google would lose is EU employees.

The bare fact this this plan I am outlining is even worth considering rather than bow to the EU demands tells you a lot.

<comment><USER22> > It's pretty obvious that the EU is only doing this because Google is a US > company.

If it is obvious, it will be easy to explain the reasons for it

> I am quite sure that google considered simply pulling entirely out of > Europe. It wouldn't affect them as much as you think - it's the internet, > you can run a website from anywhere.

I'm quite sure that Google is glad to not have people like you as CEO.

> And it's not like the EU would prevent their citizens from buying ads from > Google

Tell me how a company like Google, or Apple or Microsoft can do business with the EU without being there. And please, no't give nonsensical reasons like internet is everywhere, that just shows that you don't know much about economy.

<comment><USER23> They did it quite easily prior to when certain EU nations decided to give them massive tax breaks (up to and including zero tax) if they located offices and production facilities in their nations, so your last point is moot. Until then, they didn't have offices in the EU because there was no point in sinking that kind of money into countries that would just tax you to death for little in return.

<comment><USER22> Please, can you give any information of any of those companies working for EU customers without having any presence in the EU?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Techmeme summary: _Google says it 's sharing a plan to comply with EU shopping search demands today; the search giant had initially said it "respectfully disagreed" with the ruling_

<comment><AUTHOR> What's wrong with my posting of this summary?

<comment><USER24> I imagine that a company can present a plan for complying with a ruling which they also disagree with. Maybe you seemed to be implying they were contradictory?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just post the summary from [http://techmeme.com/river](http://techmeme.com/river) verbatim as a sort of TL;DR.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Copyright extended from 50 to 70 years in the EU - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14882146

<comment><USER2> This headline is misleading. Most copyrights have been 70 years in the EU for years. This change brings an exception into line with the majority.</comment>


Tell HN: My friend, unimpressed with formspring.me, made her own version - <AUTHOR> http://ask.ednapiranha.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> In particular, she did not appreciate that formspring.me was displaying generic DB errors.</comment>