Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/retailer-jet-com-close-to-finalizing-550-million-cash-infusion-1446659335 <comment><USER2> I put in an order when Jet launched. No joke, from the best I can tell, they sent someone to a physical Walmart, where they purchased the product at full retail, _for more than they charged me_ , packaged it up, and shipped it to me with free two-day delivery.

But they'll make it up on volume, right?

Smart people have said, "do things that don't scale." I guess Jet took that at face value.

<comment><USER3> I ordered a wireless router from Jet. They filled my order by ordering it on Newegg and having it shipped to me. If they don't have stock of something on their website, they'll buy it somewhere else rather than lose the sale.

<comment><USER4> Subsidized, out-of-stock products for everybody!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The company is burning cash like crazy, they totally threw their business plan (to only make money via membership fees) out the window within a few weeks of launching and now they've slashed their originally proposed valuation by 50% in what would seem like a desperate move to get some cash in to keep the fire burning.

All for what? To try and compete with the likes of Amazon and Wall-Mart on price and logistics!?!?! Call me pessimistic, but this looks like its going to end in an expensive train wreck.

<comment><USER6> When someone is losing money someone is making money. While business does not need to be zero sum, most of the time it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jet.com doesn't seem to understand that Amazon can take losses in retail because they have margin from other sources--like AWS--as well as an overall ecosystem. And now, Amazon shows quarterly profits. They can go even deeper with discounts in retail.

Jet is just not going to win by simply undercutting Amazon as a pure retail play. They're just adding to the already exorbitant burn rate generated by their marketing team.

Unless there's something yet-to-be-publicized about their model, participants in this round are just adding their cash to the bonfire.

<comment><USER8> I don't generally disagree with your comment, but I don't think Amazon had other sources in its earlier days (at least not AWS).

<comment><USER9> Amazon didn't have other sources, but they also didn't have a ton of competition or one "big guy" like Jet has with Amazon.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this. Jet.com is literally building a business model for the mid-to- late 90s, as if there is no one in the space.

They are throwing tons of cash at poaching Amazon's (et. al.) customers and largely competing on price. It's completely nuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does jet do, exactly? Going to jet.com seems to suggest that they sell laundry detergent and laptops...but this honestly just looks like every other "build yer own ecommerce" website that is just an amazon webstore.

Like... _why_ would they be getting a $500M investment?

</comment><comment><USER11> Say what you want about Jet in particular but there's a real market opportunity here. Nobody but Amazon has much of a business in the "everything store" category, and Amazon's prices have gotten high.

Compare almost anything there to the price at your local Wal-Mart, Target, etc. and there's a significant gap. Significant enough that you could buy it at retail prices, sell it at Amazon prices, ship it from UPS, and still break even.

If nothing else we need a solid competitor to keep them honest.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious to see what items this applies to. I buy most things from Amazon, and when I comparison shop the prime shipping usually negates any price difference with other online retailers, and the price is very rarely beat by any in store prices where I live. Anecdotal to be sure, and I stick to items fulfilled by Amazon or direct from Amazon (mostly due to prime), but I see a lot of savings this way. And that doesn't include my time savings which has a measureable value top.

<comment><USER13> Actually most stores now do price matches to Amazon (including best buy and target among others), so there is no use for Amazon for me now. I used to go to best buy just to test the equipment before buying on Amazon, now I just show them the Amazon price on my phone and they match it. No shipping fee no waiting and cheaper. I think I'm going to have to try Jet.com now that Amazon is worthless

<comment><USER14> I guess you're one of the folks that would not pay a premium to simply not deal with ever having to set foot in a Best Buy. Returns? Gotta go to the store. Want a sightly different model (for instance the newer Canon Powershots are a downgrade) - wait for them to get stock. Plus the obnoxiousness of going to those stores.

It's great you like getting out, dealing with retail and advertisements. But I think you aren't representative.

<comment><USER11> Returns are WAY better at a big box store. Here's the Amazon return process.

1\. Go to site, fill out a form to get a shipping label.

2\. Print said form. That's pretty much all I use my printer for in 2015. I even upgraded to a wireless one so I don't have to plug my damn laptop into it every time I want to return something.

3\. I probably threw away the Amazon box. Gotta dig up a suitable one from the pile of spares I have in the attic just for returning stuff to Amazon.

4\. Print packing slip, insert in box.

5\. Gotta bust out the old packing tape. You know that stuff always comes out of the little guides on the side no matter how careful you were, so you have to unstick it. Do so while seething in rage that nobody has yet invented packing tape that doesn't stick to itself. Maybe a ratcheting roll that can't reverse?

6\. Shellack that damn label to the box with tape. I don't have shipping labels for my printer because what am I, FedEx? So I cover it in like 8 strips of tape.

7\. Go to whichever shipping service Amazon sent it from because unless you ordered a tiny USB cord, it's too big to fit into their drop box. It could be USPS, FedEx, or UPS, all of which are located next to the Best Buy where I could have just dropped the damned thing off in way less time and without having to fight a roll of packing tape.

<comment><USER15> You can do a UPS pickup; they come to your door. You can leave the package in the mailroom at work for free. You can drop it off in a random UPS store by walking in, making eye contact with the clerk, then setting it down on the counter. It's a 3 minute process to rebox, particularly if you have a tape gun from the last time you moved (seriously, buy one of these!) [http://www.amazon.com/Duck-Standard- Includes-54-Yard-669332/...](http://www.amazon.com/Duck-Standard- Includes-54-Yard-669332/dp/B0058I1R0Q) (amazon link, natch :D)

 _or_ you can spend 40-60 minutes driving to best buy or some other store. Even if the drive is 10 minutes each way, that's how long it costs from the time I touch my car keys to the time I'm back in my house -- walk to the parking lot, drive, park, walk, counter, stand in line, reverse the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not knowing much about the company's internals, my guess is this will end badly.

Consider:

* Fidelity is supposedly leading the investment in Jet.com -- not exactly a leading VC or PE investor.

* The investment totals $500 million -- not exactly a small one-off deal that flies under the radar.

* Jet.com is on track to burn all that cash in a year or so -- not exactly a lot of runway.

\--

Edit: added "or PE" to first bullet point in response to comment below.

<comment><USER11> When companies do rounds in that price range, it's often (maybe almost always) from PE or something other than VC. VC funds are usually not big enough for that. I wouldn't take that as a negative indicator.

<comment><USER16> Fidelity is not a leading PE firm either.

<comment><USER17> But they are a market maker probably positioning themselves to be the firm that takes them into an IPO

<comment><USER18> That's a very long term bet at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I honestly want a list of Jet.com's newest investors so I can remember to never do business with them. This is the most obvious tire fire of an investment I've ever seen in my life (I missed seeing the late 90s dot-com bubble in person).

The brand is completely irrelevant, they only have sales because they're losing money on each unit, they're losing $50 million per month and plan to keep losing that much ... what exactly is supposed to be good about this model/company?

<comment><USER20> Many of the same things were said about Amazon back in the 90's. I was _sure_ they were going to go down in flames when they moved from selling just books to selling everything...

Though to be honest, I don't think Jet is the next Amazon.

<comment><USER21> No, I remember Amazon well in its early days and it was nothing like Jet. Kozmo is a better comparison

<comment><USER22> Amazon was a pretty successful bookstore, and then they acquired CDNow and became a pretty successful music shop as well. They weren't selling things for crazy low prices, they were just convenient and had a huge catalog.

By the time they moved to selling everything, it seemed like a stable business.

<comment><USER23> > Amazon was a pretty successful bookstore, and then they acquired CDNow and > became a pretty successful music shop as well. They weren't selling things > for crazy low prices

Yes, they were. They built their customer base from day one on extremely deep discounts; that was always their big selling point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> c-slice Whoever designed their color scheme was nuts. The hue of their purple is incredibly nauseating, at least to me.

<comment><USER24> When I first saw their site I had to check a few times to make sure it was actually the billion dollar startup I had heard so much about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Oh man. You'd have to be seriously high on jet fumes to throw more money into the this sinkhole. I don't see this playing out well.

<comment><USER26> Good wordplay!! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Jet is starting to look like yet-another-startup run by a rich guy who thinks throwing exhorbent amounts of money at a problem solves everything

</comment><comment><USER28> The first I heard about jet.com was through this hanselminutes podcast - [http://hanselminutes.com/494/jetcom-scales-with-azure-f- and-...](http://hanselminutes.com/494/jetcom-scales-with-azure-f-and-more- with-rachel-reese).

Their tech stack looks interesting and despite the anecdotes from this thread and the fact that I haven't ordered anything from them yet (I am outside the U.S), I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The Amazon monopoly needs some competition and better it come from a company that's innovating with a better tech stack. I am confused about why they decided to get off a membership model, though...

</comment><comment><USER29> Jet.com's strategy is to get large enough that the brands have to list on their site (like they do an all major marketplaces). Many of the larger brands are currently sitting on the sidelines "seeing how it goes". You can think of their current strategy as "buying one side of a two sided marketplace". This may or may not work, but calling the strategy stupid just demonstrates a lack of familiarity with ecommerce marketpaces.

If Jet.com's strategy does work then its cemented itself as a multi-billion $ marketplace. In an era of near-zero % interest rates, funds are willing to take that risk for the potential return.

</comment><comment><USER30> Earlier this year the CEO said "I don't have any more plans to raise more capital." And at the time there he downplayed the size of the investment given that it was before the product was released. Back then it was implied that it would help ensure that they'd not have to raise money for quite a while.

I wonder what happened to that plan.

</comment><comment><USER31> A couple points that have been missed in the comments. #1 Amazon is just now starting to turn a profit. That's 20 years of losses. #2 Amazon seller's fees are huge, especially for items less than $10. I can sell Samsung 18650 batteries in my online store for less than Samsung sells the same battery for on Amazon. Customer demand is only one side of the coin, there is also vendor demand to consider.

</comment><comment><USER32> As somebody who works in ecommerce, I don't see the upside for a merchant to list there. The omnichannel solutions pushed pretty hard to onboard merchants to it.

Maybe somebody could persuade me

</comment><comment><USER33> Also, where are they spending this much on marketing, they've got almost no marketing presence imo?

<comment><USER34> They spend over $100k a month just on paid advertising.

<comment><USER3> Per the article, their advertising budget is $300 million for the first year, and they spent $25 million on marketing last month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I had never heard of them until now. I don't think this is going to have a happy ending.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is Jet doing anything exciting on the Software Engineering side of things?

<comment><USER37> Apparently, they have a pretty large stream of real-time price updates, powered by F# on Azure. Hanselminutes had an episode with (one of?) their senior software engineers recently[1]. According to the podcast, they're calculating prices based on a lot of factors, then sending them so fast to Google (Shopping, I suppose?) that Google's API was the bottleneck.

[1] [http://hanselminutes.com/494/jetcom-scales-with-azure-f- and-...](http://hanselminutes.com/494/jetcom-scales-with-azure-f-and-more- with-rachel-reese)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Jet.com is going to flame out so quickly, and fairly predictably as well to a lot of outsiders. I wonder what the Jet.com investors were smoking, must have been some good stuff.

<comment><USER39> I agree, but until then check them out. I just got a great deal on a new router. They are the cheapest in many categories and shipping was pretty quick too.

The only thing that could make sense is to lose money on a sale but acquire email and purchase data to resell. Or it could include building a big retargeting ad network for new product launches from CPG and electronics manufacturers. That's what I would do if I could blow money in the ecommerce space.

They could sell data to Facebook if they wanted to in order to improve their purchase based targeting. I'm sure Twitter would love to have purchase info on their users too to make them more relevant as an ad network.

Traditionally manufacturers know very little about most their customers because retailers keep that tight.

So they run coupons, rebates, other incentives and purchase data from cc processors among other things.

So an Amazon that cooperates more with manufacturers and other ad networks could be a decent play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Arg paywall! Clicking through from this link goes under it to full story: [http://www.techmeme.com/151104/p16#a151104p16](http://www.techmeme.com/151104/p16#a151104p16)

<comment><USER40> It's the WSJ. Paste URL into google. Click link. Presto!

<comment><USER41> this means you are allow Google to datamine every click

you should be running an add-on to scrape all tracking off Google

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Without any paywall - [http://pastebin.com/17fwFaut](http://pastebin.com/17fwFaut)

<comment><USER43> <3</comment></comment>


How I Handled Python, SQLAlchemy Threading for GhostiFi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/me/stats/post/4de18d052809 <comment><USER2> Here is correct link which doesn't require sign-in: [https://medium.com/@reillychase/ghostifi-python- sqlalchemy-t...](https://medium.com/@reillychase/ghostifi-python-sqlalchemy- threading-4de18d052809)</comment>


The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ <comment> cirrus-clouds Here in the UK, tomatoes from the Netherlands are the most common sold in British supermarkets.

Unfortunately, they are quite flavourless. The type of tomato (and price) makes no difference (organic, vine-ripened, salad). Most of them are usually semi-ripe. Even if you allow them to ripen at home for a few days, they are still quite tasteless.

Presumably, Italy keeps its best tomato produce for themselves and I don't blame them (although Italian tinned tomatoes are widely available in the UK, just not the fresh variety).

<comment><USER2> It's not just the tomatoes. Everything in the UK supermarket is quite bad. It's a cultural thing I suppose.

<comment><USER3> Where are you shopping? My experience is that UK supermarkets are normally higher quality (esp in fresh and refridgerated goods) than other countries. Often lower priced too. Supermarkets I've seen in other western countries (Italy, France, US, Finland) have invariably been pretty disappointing.

<comment><USER4> Seconded. I don't think the parent comment to this has a strong basis in fact. The UK retail sector is one of the most competitive and dynamic in the world. I live in a small town and within 10 minutes' drive I have 3 large supermarkets open 7 days a week, stocking thousands of lines, with products ranging from budget to expensive. There are many smaller grocery shops also open 7 days a week. There is fantastic local produce if you eat in season. For range, price and convenience few other countries are close to the UK as regards mass retail. I studied this in a uni course and also speak from personal experience of living abroad.

<comment><USER2> The prices are competitive and the stores are open 7 days a week, but the choice of products is quite bad and limited.

<comment><USER4> The implication of competitiveness is competition, and one aspect of competition is choice, both of type, and of quality. If you cannot create great tasting food with the plethora of choice available in the average UK supermarket the problem is not with the products on offer. The range and quality are near the best civilisation has ever had to offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am from the Netherlands and I have to say that regretably a large part of our country thinks that our farmers are incompetent, stupid, nature-hating animal bashers because of how the media treats them.

It's gross how strong the lobby is against our farmers, even though they're clearly among the most competent, intelligent, sustainable farmers around the world.

They always use cherry-picked facts (and even blatant lies), decades old photo and video materials and examples from foreign farms against our farmers, in order to put pressure on the government to regulate our farmers even more, to the point where our farmers feel that they are nothing more than underpaid workers for a huge governmental organization.

<comment><USER6> From the article: " This high-tech broiler house holds up to 150,000 birds, from hatching to harvesting"

No 'decades old photo' either. I find it hard to believe someone loving live animals would put them in such a place.

<comment><USER7> Funny, looking at the associated picture tells me a different story. Look at how uncrowded the chicks are and how much free space to move they have, and compare with US where they are so packed together that they can't even turn in place.

[http://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/right...](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/rights- exempt/2017/09/hunger-solution/hunger-solution-chickens.adapt.1190.1.jpg)

<comment><USER8> It seems strange to point out how well you are treating an animal when you are slaughtering it for consumption in the end. In fact that is the animal's only purpose of existence.

<comment><USER5> Maybe I, like all my predecessors, am not yet 'evolved' enough to give up on eating meat. In the meantime I like the fact that the animals are growing up disease free in relatively humane conditions.

<comment><USER8> It's not about being evolved enough, whatever that means. Eating meat is a conscious choice. Humans can do without meat. We are omnivores, not carnivores.

I mean yes, in the grand scheme of things, treating animals well before slaughtering them is better than treating them poorly, but it misses the forest for the trees.

<comment><USER7> I would be highly surprised if in 100 years we'll still do this.

It's only a matter of time until lab-grown meat is as good and cheap as the original, and then society will turn. Eating real animals will be something like hunting is now, a tiny thing and with huge image costs.

<comment><USER9> Hunting has huge image costs where you live? Are you sure it's not just inside your specific bubble?

<comment><USER10> I'm fairly sure hunting is declining in all of the western world.

As anecdata, consider the outlawing of fox hunting in UK, declining hunting love in France[0], and a similar decline in the US[1].

The more hunting becomes unusual, the higher the number of people who will consider it in negative light compared to those who view it favourably.

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37865215](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37865215) [1] [http://deerfarmer.com/wiki/hunting- decline](http://deerfarmer.com/wiki/hunting-decline)

<comment><USER9> You should've spent more time sourcing that last claim, considering it was by and large the most bold one.

Furthermore, whilst it may not be obvious in activist circles, seeing the topic was about eating animal produce, the obvious counterpart in hunting would be game animals, and not a sport (which fox hunting is, more or less). My (unsourced) guess would be that most non-vegetarians do not condemn hunting, and it would also be a somewhat hypocritical stance. Furthermore, meat consumption isn't exactly on declining in the world, but you can make your own conclusions about that.

(I'm a city dweller, and haven't hunted anything in my life. I'm not saying that to validate my opinion, but regardless I know quite a bit about the realities of hunting that probably apply to most places, and the reason it is in decline may well not be because of a shift in the moral landscape. It is a consuming hobby, but that doesn't in itself imply that all non-hunters would automatically start to disapprove it more and more.)

<comment><USER10> sorry, I should have phrased it better, I don't mean that hunting is declining because of moral reasons, I mean that as it declines and people grow more detached from it it will be considered more morally reprehensible.

It is obviously an opinion not a fact, but as an example, you can consider the attitude of people to eating animals that they ate in the past and not now (porcupine, turtle, cat, dog).

Not only it's considered disgusting, but it's often considered worse than eating other animals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Coming in from a country (India) which even today has a large agricultural community which still uses ancient tools for farming (tractors are pretty much the most many get up to, with proper cold storage facilities, greenhouses etc practically a pipe dream), looking at countries improve their techniques in such a manner makes me wonder what it will take to move my country to similar scale. Is it simply technical, or is there a major push by government involved? Is it the community embracing technology, or is it other factors which make farming unsustainable without technology? Is it simply that farmers in these countries are overall more well to do? Or is it a combination of all of this?

Especially in India, farmers have been moved even to suicide [1] during times of drought and flood, which seems to come up every other year (and farming is a very climate sensitive field anyway), I really wonder how tech can work to improve the status quo

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India)

<comment><USER12> I only scrolled through TFA (added to read later list). I am Dutch though.

A lot of these systems require enormous (and growing) up-front investments, not feasible for small independent operations. There are a lot of family business in Westland, but they require massive mortgages and/or loans to keep up with the times (and the investments that they require). There are fewer and fewer small farms and more and more 'mega-barns'.

Little space is needed, but a lot of it is high carbon and high capital.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I was wondering about that. Some of those farms look like they have million(s) dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. And farming isn't exactly a high-margin industry so starting a new farm must be quite a risky venture. Are there government programs that help with the financing or it's all private capital?

<comment><USER12> There are both subsidies and loan programs.

As far as I know (I am not a farmer, nor do I know any greenhouse farmers very well), lots of it is private capital though.

One of the biggest banks in the Netherlands (Rabobank) has a (positive) reputation for financing farmers and other agricultural firms. (also a negative one due to the LIBOR scandal, incidentally)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Netherlands will soon be a massive exporter of flood-control knowledge and technology as well. It's like they've been practicing for global warming for the entire lifetime of their country.

<comment><USER15> Well we "foolishly" decided to build half our country below sea level. We've seen this interest in the past in the afterwake of Katrina, and we've been exporting this knowledge for quite some time. Unfortunately, it's probably a difficult problem to solve on the massive scale the US needs.

<comment><USER16> > We've seen this interest in the past in the afterwake of Katrina, and we've > been exporting this knowledge for quite some time. Unfortunately, it's > probably a difficult problem to solve on the massive scale the US needs.

Interestingly, this is a nearly 200 year old problem in America. Most spectacularly in Chicago[1], where the city was barely above the natural water table (Lake Michigan). As the city grew they produced more sewage and the ground was unable to absorb water quickly enough, so water began to backflow into the sewage system. A single Cholera outbreak in these conditions killed 6% of the population.

The solution at the time was to just build the sewers above ground, which was obviously a terrible idea. Over 20 years they began raising most of Chicago over 6' into the air. I think this isn't necessary with modern sewage, but in the coming decades we may see stuff like this again for east and west coast cities in the US. It's cheaper to raise entire cities than rebuild them.

More energy in the atmosphere means more violent storms, so Southern coastal cities will probably have to move inland.

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

<comment><USER17> I presume this is why they reversed the river too?

<comment><USER16> The sewage drained into the river, which drained into the lake, which was where they got their fresh water, so they built a new river to reverse the original one:

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

It's kind of amazing that such a poorly-formed plan didn't go catastrophically wrong, but it's worked okay for over a century.

<comment><USER18> Interesting. Clicking around from that link and found that the famous Chicago cholera outbreak was a myth:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_myth)

<comment><USER16> although for the record that one is not the same as the one that killed 6% of the population, which happened in 1854.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The amount of privileged, snotty complaining here about how they don't like the taste. If you don't like the taste, don't buy it; pay extra for something you do like the taste of. They're able to make a lot more food on a lot less land using a lot fewer resources. As far as I'm concerned, it's basically magic and given that the spectre of starvation has loomed over humanity almost forever, and is by no means permanently banished to the past, coming up with ways to make more of the thing that keeps every human alive using less space and fewer resources is not deserving of snotty replies about how people don't like the taste. Nobody's forcing you to eat it.

<comment><USER20> I agree, there are a lot of strange comments here. First of all, you can get all kinds of tomatoes in the Netherlands, but everyone is talking about the super budget tomato that is so cheap it's nearly free. Second, there's a lot more than tomatoes to enjoy in the Netherlands. They have great asparagus, excellent bakeries, high-quality and cheap milk and yogurt, reasonably-priced and delicious fish. Lots of other vegetables are no less tasty in Holland than I've experienced in the U.S. or Asia, such as potatoes, cabbage, onions, broccoli, carrots. That the Dutch have figured out how to fill a demand for cheap vegetables for those who want them is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER21> Yep. I moved to the Netherlands from the UK 8 years ago, and I've found the quality of food in general to be consistently better than back home.

<comment><USER22> It would be hard to find a country with _worse_ food than UK, so no big surprise here. Just my personal experience reflected by many friends acquaintances living there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The food from the Netherlands is tasteless compared to Spanish or Italian in all seasons of the year, in the summer, all produce in Europe beats it.

High yields in a country that does not have record sunlight throughought entire year, can only be achieved by abusing chemicals in the process, faking natural conditions, etc. Low amount of natural sunlight can easily be tested using your taste buds.

If their farmer switch to other varieties, without slowing down and reducing the yields, they will still harvest tasteless produce in comparison to other countries that have better conditions or "slower" production.

<comment><USER24> You sound like every French, Spanish, and Italian chef I've worked for.

<comment><USER23> I'm actually a casual Polish consumer. While we get similar amount of sun as the Dutch do, our produce is much better in the summer than theirs.

Poland has lower yields, we have much more land than they do (lower pressure for efficiency), being a bit backwards to the Western Europe actually results in better food.

In early Spring and late Autumn, I'd always pick imported French or Spanish produce over Dutch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25>
        The Hague produces vegetables and fish in a self sustaining loop:
        Fish waste fertilizes plants, which filter the water for the fish.
        Local restaurants proudly offer the veggies and "city swimmers."

As a result, it takes about 1/10 of the amount of water it takes to grow 1 pound of tomatoes in the US.

See more at [https://qz.com/907971/the-netherlands-basically- reinvented-t...](https://qz.com/907971/the-netherlands-basically-reinvented- the-tomato/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The Dutch are also one of the largest landholders in the US with 4.8 million acres of farmland.[0]

[0] [https://www.agdaily.com/insights/not-just-u-s-farmland- forei...](https://www.agdaily.com/insights/not-just-u-s-farmland-foreign-held- whats-intentions/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm afraid Netherlands is only good for food that's over-engineered, cardboard-tasting and geneticaly modified for quantity. But that's future I guess.

<comment><USER28> It will probably improve as time goes by.

<comment><USER29> As long as there's an incentive for it to get better. Based on my experience in the US the incentives run the other way :-(. All about cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh my, NL tomatos taste like water sponges. This fact depresses me more than it should :/ They are the predominate tomato sold in DE, UK and others. Really, try a tomato from southern europe or some places in eastern europe, preferably while in southern or eastern europe.

</comment><comment><USER31> What's the energy cost of all that artificial lighting? The article notes that one of the farms produces its own (geothermal) energy. But is this generally true?

The article makes much of exporting knowledge. But how much of the "sustainability" of this model is tied to cheap renewable energy sources? Like geothermal in the Netherlands.

One researcher notes "on the assumption of efficient LED lighting, I estimate that plants like potato or tomato that produce a fleshy food product require about 1,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity for each kilogram of edible tissue they produce." About the same as what a refrigerator uses in a year.[1]

For example there's a New York indoor farming startup called Bowery Farms. Its gotten some tech VC and coverage in the tech press. Its marketing is all "green". They claim to use "far fewer resources" while producing "100x more on the same land... 365 days a year." They mention how very little water they use.

But if you look closely, they're suspiciously silent on energy use.[2]

[1] [http://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/enough_with_the_vertical_far...](http://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/enough_with_the_vertical_farming_partner/)

[2] [http://boweryfarming.com/](http://boweryfarming.com/)

<comment><USER13> That 1200kWh figure doesn't make any sense. It says that "edible tissue" excludes water content. Each kg of tomatoes has about 950g of water. That means 60kWh per kg of tomatoes, which will cost about 5 EUR. You won't be able to sell your produce at that price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> For all those complaining about the (lack of) taste - the best tasting tomatoes are the ones you grow yourself in your back yard, and this is from personal experience. You can muse all you want about how Italian tomatoes are superior to Dutch ones, but nothing can beat the knowledge that what you have in your plate was grown by yourself on your own little plot of earth, with just a bit of patience and diligence.

<comment><USER33> Quite right, and even apartment dwellers can easily have a few tomato plants. One thing that's critical is not to use hybrid (F1) seeds, they don't breed true / aren't reproducible, so you need to buy seeds every year. This means the plants will never adapt to your particular soil and climate. Unfortunately these are the most common seeds found on the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In the whole Dutch food line, shortcuts are being made for saving a cent here and there, at any expense - resulting in inferior products, over the whole line.

Grapes without pits, soft bread that stays good for 2 weeks, chickens that shrink to half after baking, everything is full of sugar, ...

This is what we can appreciate about the South, lots of things are done not so efficiently but quite often with higher quality.

</comment><comment><USER35> > More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the > Netherlands.

This is the point. Dutch earn a lot of money with vegetables because they sell most of the seeds of vegetables that Spain, Italy, Morocco and other mediterranean countries use industrially. Because disease resistance, homogeneity of size and time of production, research, availability, and sometimes... plain piratery and renaming of old varieties. Read about the napoleon cherry for example.

1) Tomato is a tropical plant that loves warm and light. More sun means more flavour. You can pick the seeds of the same variety of tomato and culture some in Germany and other in Spain. Unless you can afford to spend a lot of electricity, the last will be always better. The reality is that the bland and the yummy tomato will often belong to exactly the same industrial variety, because...

2)... different grades of quality. Wouldn't be fair to match the cheapest tomato against the better.

3) Consumers do not select only by flavour, they have other interests and will reject a soft and dented tomato. You can sell the first strawberries of the year for a higher price, even if they have virtually no time to develop any flavour. People still love it because strawberries with low flavour is still a better deal that no strawberries at all.

4) more rippen tomato taste better, but if you want your tomato to travel 3000 Km before to reach your table in perfect shape and colour you need to sacrifice something. Small farmers and amateurs that sell locally can afford to pick the fruit more ripe.

5) Antique varieties "taste better", you can enjoy the different flavour variations that came with a bigger genetic diversity, but tomato is a short living species and, unlike good antique apples or plums, seeds of good and true heirloom varieties of tomato are very difficult to find and there is almost not profit in selling it online.

</comment><comment><USER36> Lots of comments here about tomatoes without flavor.

Tomatoes are seasonal too, best ones are in summer. That's why people made sauces and kept them for the winter. Willing to have fresh tasty tomatoes during the whole year is not an easy task...

Another factor is that tomatoes are harvested green and ripened using ethylene gas just before hitting the shelves.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think that how much a country is "feeding the world" would be more properly measured in metric tons, rather than dollars. So saying that the Netherlands are "feeding the world" on account of the total value of their agricultural exports seems to me a bit misleading. Staples are cheap.

<comment><USER38> This is actually where the story gets really interesting. NL is producing an incredible amount of tonnage for such a small country. The division between lower grade (tasting poorly) vegetables and more tasty quality stuff (which is far more expensive) is severely lopsided (towards the poorer tasting variety).

Because vegetables are mostly water by weight quite a lot of produce leaves the country in freeze dried form to save on shipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yields are high, yes, but ranking by export volume isn't fair to larger countries. If you group the Netherlands with neighboring Great Britain, Germany, Belgium and France (combined ballpark half the population of the USA), export volume halves.

<comment><USER20> Yet if you look at the total value of the exports, the Netherlands is second in the world only after the U.S. For a tiny nation that is quite impressive.

<comment><USER40> A tiny and very densely populated country. That we manage to produce so much food is amazing enough in itself, but you'd think we'd need it for ourselves. Maybe we import all our own food, or maybe we really have such a gigantic surplus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> There will be 10 billion people on Earth. Growing food for them needs a tiny area in highly developed countries via industrial farming. But what would that 10bn people do then?

<comment><USER42> Are you seriously asking what productive work people can do other than farming?

<comment><USER41> I'm seriously asking what productive work can billions of people from underdeveloped and unstable countries do. Without access to lucrative markets, too.

<comment><USER43> Move from primary to secondary and then tertiary or just jump to tertiary or even reach quanternary sector

Talking about three sector theory

<comment><USER44> I think the parent implies that automation and lack of capital to invest into automation will make those sectors inaccessible to untrained and unskilled people in developing countries.

Usually inequality between countries or people is reduced by rich and poor trading with each other.

But what if the poor have nothing to offer to the rich? Then the only option is to work for their own sustenance which means farming.

<comment><USER41> There's this saying about comparative advantage. But what happens when poor country doesn't have any comparative advantages over rich country? Or a few really tiny and disgusting ones which definitely won't support hundreds of millions people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I can see this being a good option for fruit and vegetable production but I don't see this sort of intense farming being good for animals no matter how humane. There has been a big movement for completely free range and outdoor reared animals, although there are a lot of issues to do with CO2 emissions and run off from farms that are configured this way.

</comment><comment><USER46> Really interesting, are there any resources I can read about techniques used in Netherlands agriculture industry.

I have 5 ha (1 ha = 10.000 m2) land in my home country, but I do not know how to use it, even for what I can use. I will be really glad if someone points out me profitable/most profitable things for this land.

(I am from Central Asia, traveling and working abroad)

<comment><USER22> Farming is a very localized activity as it greatly depends on a climate, soil type, irrigation, demand etc., so I doubt anybody from outside can help you with that. See what neighboring similar sized farms are growing, chances are that they have been doing this for years and have already optimized for the best value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> produce is remarkably cheap at the markets in Amsterdam compared to southern California. Chicken is much more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER48> I just wish they would fix that taste problems. I'm sick of tasteless tomatoes...

<comment><USER20> Just buy any of the many other tomatoes available at a Dutch grocery other than the cheapest option.

<comment><USER48> I live in Germany and this was a general statement (even though we get very much from the Netherlands). Most of them taste like nothing. Sometimes even those who are especially marked as "something something sweet" taste like nothing most of the time.

I rarely buy the cheapest option. Most of the times we get the most expensive Bio (organic) ones. This legend needs to die. Just like the one that says that marked as "local" tomatoes (vegetables) taste better (or taste at all). For some times I thought I could smell it. Doesn't work anymore. There is no system anymore as long as you buy in a supermarket here. Unfortunately I'm asleep at local market times or they are when I'm at work but I'm sure you can get the good stuff there because my parents grow them in their garden. But this is not the problem we are talking about here. This is the 21st century. I can't believe that I can't get something as simple as tomatoes with taste for pretty hefty prices in a supermarket.

It's not like it was always this way. I can remember very good the moment where we switched from big tomatoes to those cocktail ones because they did not taste like water. Then those became tasteless, I've now seen micro tomatoes. Maybe there is some taste left...

<comment><USER20> I have definitely noticed a big difference in flavor among the common different tomato varieties available at a typical Dutch grocery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I was actually surprised that in Argentina most fruits and vegetables are exactly the same as in Holland. No difference at all! It must be the same efficient way of growing things all year round that the supermarkets use.

</comment><comment><USER50> Makes me wonder how much of this could be replicated and what it would yield in states (Florida) with amazing sunshine and access to fresh water and cheap power.

<comment><USER51> _> in states (Florida) with amazing sunshine and access to fresh water and cheap power._

Actually the model would work better in states with less arable land or with a colder climate.

Reasons:

1\. Better food security, less reliance on imported food

2\. As the article states, water use is much lower than open field farming, so it's better for places with constrained resources

3\. More environmental if the food is grown closer to the consumers as there's less need for storage and transport. Similar to #1

4\. Sunshine doesn't really matter for these greenhouses since a lot of them are using LED lights tuned to the species they're growing to increase output. [0]

[0] [https://www.verticalfarmingconference.com/indoor- farming/jap...](https://www.verticalfarmingconference.com/indoor- farming/japans-panasonic-moves-vertical-farming-singapore/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quite interesting that the Duijvestijns facility is allegedly close to fertilizer and energy self-sufficient. What about the economics?

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm so freaking tired of seeing articles about exciting agricultural tech, just to click on them and find a whole bunch of lettuce. (and tomatoes)

I mean, really, try measuring it yourself. They're virtually always all about lettuce.

Lettuce doesn't feed the world, staple foods do. Virtually nobody eats a whole head of green leaf lettuce a day, but even if they did, it'd be 50 calories. That's less calories than in a lollipop.

Lettuce is 95% water. It means if you want to eat say 10% of your daily energy intake in lettuce, you need to eat 250 calories of lettuce, that means 5 heads of lettuce and basically a soda can full of water.

That's not food, the way we normally talk about food. It's water, with a bunch of fibers and a tiny amount of minerals and nutrients.

Which is also the reason it's so easy to grow. You can grow a head of lettuce indoors under artificial lighting in a shitty growth medium in 3 weeks flat from start to finish, because you're basically mixing a tiny amount of energy with a bunch of water.

And that's precisely why all these new companies demo it. Look at us, we can grow a gazillion pretty green nature looking things you put in salads, the pinnacle of healthy foods, in no time, using much less water, factory-style. It's a joke.

Same with tomatoes. Five regular tomatoes is about another 55 calories, just like an entire head of lettuce, or a lollipop. And who eats five whole tomatoes on a daily basis?

And don't get me wrong, I've eaten about 1/3rd of a head of lettuce and two tomatoes pretty much every day of my life for more than 20 years. I like eating them and will continue to do so. Oh and I'm Dutch, too.

But I also get tired of 'revolutionary' food tech pretending as their new ways of cultivating it changes agriculture. It doesn't. It's just a fancy story for a fancy urban farm that sells overpriced produce to a fancy 'local' salad bar that has zero impact on our environment. I want to see revolutions in the production of staple foods, too, as well as a cultural change in the way we shape our diets and the food we choose to consume.

So no, the Dutch don't feed the world because we've got a bunch of high-yield lettuce/tomato installations.

Nonetheless a lot of interesting points in the article, but I just wish it was a lot less about lettuce and tomatoes. It's really becoming a bit of a parody, anyone else feel the same? You could literally do an Onion piece on an article featuring a 26 year old design student who runs a hydroponics lettuce factory in an old city office.

</comment><comment><USER53> You can do some amazing things with enough energy! And the Netherlands have a _lot_ of extra energy because of all the geothermal energy they get.

This is not [yet] replicable to other places though.

Hopefully soon - unlimited energy would utterly change the world.

<comment><USER54> Do you have more information on this geothermal energy? Clicking around here[1] suggests the Netherlands doesn't actually use much geothermal energy at all.

[1]: [https://www.geothermal- energy.org/direct_uses/netherlands.ht...](https://www.geothermal- energy.org/direct_uses/netherlands.html)

<comment><USER40> It's also news to me. Most of our energy still comes from coal and gas, I believe. I believe we were once ahead of the pack in wind energy, but the conservative politics of the past decade and a half has made us fall behind the rest of Europe in switching to sustainable energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Can we put "(Netherlands)" after the word "country" to overcome the clickbait title?

<comment><USER56> As a Dutchman I had no idea it was going to be about us. We feeding the world? Mkay, that's new. Anyway, +1 on making it less clickbait.

<comment><USER57> I'd go for "Netherlands feeds the world, despite its size."</comment></comment></comment>


Project Veil: Jarvis-Like Assistant for Your TV - <AUTHOR> http://diatom.tv/veil/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! My friend and I (former MIT Media Lab researchers) started a project that has gotten a lot of momentum, and wanted to see what you all think. It's a Jarvis-like AI that uses HDMI pass-through to control and overlay assistive content on your TV.

Basically, we're trying take the hassle out the things you do every day: In the morning, Veil is ready to call you a Lyft, show your commute time, and summarize today's agenda. In the evening, Veil's ready with your favorite Spotify playlist and Netflix shows, all without asking or grabbing a remote control/sifting through apps.

[http://diatom.tv/veil](http://diatom.tv/veil)

We built this because Amazon Echo & Google Home were a bit of a let-down. They're not really "assistants" so much as servants; they can't do anything without being told, and don't know who's using them.

Our AI-device aims to be:

1) Proactive - it anticipates needs and shows information on the TV without being asked. A speaker can never to this without blurting out. That would get annoying.

2) User-aware - it's always helpful to the current user (or group of users) and accesses their accounts automatically (current AIs are tied to one account).

3) Always-ready - our device sits BETWEEN your TV and existing media boxes. It overlays content on every input, so you never have to change input to use it. It's always ready to help and even manages input switching (which is a terrible experience for most people).

We're using Google's Voice/Language API and eventually hope to integrate Assistant.

Would love to hear your thoughts! If you're interested staying in touch with our development, or getting your hands on our alpha unit, check our project page or PM me!</comment>


Slashdot and SourceForge sold to Dice Holdings - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dice-holdings-buys-geeknet-websites-125531940.html <comment><USER2> I remember that wonderful day in 2007 when I noticed that there was a little news aggregator bodged onto the back end of Paul Graham's essay blog and I thought to myself "wow, this is like /. only it doesn't suck so much".

<comment><USER3> LOL, I had roughly the same experience. I'd already moved onto Digg (before it was went downhill) and then to Reddit. But if I'm looking for more serious (if sometimes negative) technology conversation, this right here is the epicenter.

<comment><USER4> This was exactly my experience.

/. then Digg and then Reddit.

I got tired of reddit being too political and too liberal (although I am a liberal myself) so I was hoping/looking for something else.

Then in a StackOverflow podcast Jeff and Joe was talking about a new place where all the cool kids hung out. They didn't want to say the name in fear of it being overrun and ruined.

With a little research I found HN and haven't left since.

<comment><USER5> "I got tired of reddit being too political and too liberal (although I am a liberal myself) so I was hoping/looking for something else."

Unsubscribe from /r/politics

<comment><USER4> Well back then I was just reading the main feed.

<comment><USER6> This is the same path I took too. It must be a really obvious cycle we're all participating in. When a community gets to some set size, the number of cock- gobbling assholes who post mean things that contribute nothing becomes larger than the smart and thoughtful people.

I swear, this almost always occurs right around the same time that these news sites start complaining about not making enough money...

<comment><USER7> The question is, is there some other group that has already superseded HN? I haven't heard of any thus far. HN is still pretty good though so I have not bothered to look.

<comment><USER4> my thoughts exactly. The only group I could think of is LessWrong but that's a different main topic and can hardly be called superseding HN.

<comment><USER6> Lobste.rs

The thinking there is: Only links about development of software, no entrepreneurial stuff.

<comment><USER8> seems as if there also isn't any comments stuff

<comment><USER9> it's the old community chicken & egg problem, people go for the comments, but unless there are enough 'seed' users the comments aren't there to attract the others. Then along come the trolls and disruptors and before you know it, the community forks and the whole process starts over.

<comment><USER10> Lobste.rs has an interesting way of handling the influx of trolls and such by making the site invite-only. If someone ends up being banned, so does whomever invited them.

<comment><USER11> Trolls are a Madserati problem for lobsters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In late 2008, I attended an "open-source CEO" dinner, at which I was coincidentally seated between the CEOs of SourceForge and CollabNet (principal developer and supporter of the Subversion VCS). I asked the CollabNet CEO what he thought about Git, and he was dismissive, indicating that Subversion had already won as the definitive open-source VCS. I then asked the SourceForge CEO if he knew about GitHub; he was vaguely familiar with them, but appeared utterly unconcerned that they might be a threat. I thought to myself, _All the battles have been fought and lost, and these guys don't even know there's a war._

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been posting on Slashdot since the early 2000s and have stayed on the site primarily for its community; the higher-modded comments tend to come from some pretty intelligent people. Unfortunately it seems like the current staff don't really understand why the community that is there remains and have been trying out a shotgun blast of different strategies recently: Slashdot TV, SlashBI, SlashCloud, SlashDataCenter... I just want to discuss IT with intelligent people. If they only got that the community is their power, they might be able to make the site more relevant again. It seems like when Rob Malda knew something was going on behind the scenes when he quit last year. (For more, read his AMA: [http://www.topiama.com/r/137/iam-rob-cmdrtaco-malda- founder-...](http://www.topiama.com/r/137/iam-rob-cmdrtaco-malda-founder-of- slashdot-ama) )

At least there's HN if this latest sale makes /. go south completely.

<comment><USER14> With slashdot being sold for that little, I am still holding out hopes for Rob somehow getting his hands on the site again, gutting it, and bringing it back to its old (albeit not really profitable) glory.

<comment><USER15> That would have had to been one hell of a kickstarter ;)

<comment><USER16> No reason it can't be one now. Make membership in the site exclusive with a donation, a minimum of $10 gets you first years membership and donations above $10 are used to assign visible user ids by sorting from highest to lowest donator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have very little perspective here, but this seems like a low price for /. and SourceForge ($20M). The article states that last year alone the two sites brought in that much revenue, but I'd assume they weren't bought if the purchaser didn't think there was growth potential.

<comment><USER18> $20M in revenue, but how much in profit? Slashdot and sourceforge can't be cheap to host.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps, but how much revenue did Instagram have?

<comment><USER20> The had millions of users using it for photos when Facebook, who had lots of money, was worried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They must be trying to set a record for how many corporate overlords they can have. Andover.Net, VA Research, VA Linux, VA Software, SourceForge, Inc, Geek.Net, Dice, ...

<comment><USER22> To be fair those were a lot of names for what pretty much was the same company, as VA Research went on a decade-long journey from being a Wall Street IPO hit selling Linux workstations to selling T-shirts to people who use Linux workstations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anybody here still use SourceForge to host their projects? Back in its days it was the place for open source software, but these days I shudder when software I want to use is hosted there. I think it failed to evolve and become what is now github. Or maybe they target an other market?

<comment><USER24> SF is not "social", quite slow and is more difficult to use for developers. However, I feel that it is more end-user friendly. Maybe not inherently, but because of the differences in culture. There are tons of software there that I can just download and install without any tinkering. I don't recall a single application that I've ever _installed_ from GitHub.

<comment><USER14> I think for most software on Github, the "end users" are themselves developers. Libraries, vimscripts, languages, programmer oriented utilities, etc.

I almost never got that sort of software from SourceForge. Most things that I have gotten from SourceForge are more "user application"-y. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head since it's been so long.. maybe things like Wesnoth.

Basically what I think I am saying is it depends on who the end user is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ouch. I'd venture this is a fair indication of the directionality of the value of these aging 'name brands'. It seems not unlike a former arena-filling headliner reduced to doing van tours of Holiday Inn lounges.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was on the SF.net "Ignition" team (and am still close friends with 2 of the original 4 project team) and what Sourceforge aspired to be versus what inevitably was done to it...to what it has been sold to...God, what a depressing fin de sicle.

<comment><USER27> I still wear my "cold storage" T-shirt sometimes.

<comment><USER26> As do I. I think there were only a few dozen made, so they are actually a "rare" item.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bye bye /. .. you will be missed.

<comment><USER29> It's been awful ever since the narrative on there was almost entirely changed to "freedom and rights from the point of view of socially awkward software engineers". You cannot curate a community based on negativity, bile and cynicism and expect it flourish.

<comment><USER30> But enough about 1999.

Honestly, wasn't that always what /. was about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is surprising. I just spilled hot grits onto my lap. This (and Netcraft) confirms the rumors that Slashdot is dying.

</comment><comment><USER32> Unique monthly users:

      * Slashdot: 3.7 million
      * SourceForge: 40 million
      * Freecode: 0.5 million

<comment><USER33> Hmm. Let's assume 2 page views per visit for simplicity.

44.2M visitors /mo = 88.4M page views /mo

If they're bringing in $20m revenue per year, that means $1.66m per month, or $19 CPM, more or less.

Either they've got a lot of page views per user or they're monetising at pretty high rates. Do /. or Sourceforge have non-ad monetisation methods, or are they just getting very good ad deals?

<comment><USER34> Or 2 pages per visit is an absurdly low number.

<comment><USER35> Back when I used to visit Slashdot, it'd be more like a pageview every 5 minutes. The core audience used to be extremely dedicated. I wouldn't be surprised if their pages per visit number is still abnormally high.

<comment><USER36> Yes, but I think we all use adblock, so I'm not really sure where their views and clicks would come from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does this include Ohloh as well? That's a pretty nice code analysis site, which was acquired by SF back in 2009:

<http://meta.ohloh.net/2009/05/sourceforge_acquires_ohloh/>

<comment><USER38> Black Duck Software acquired Ohloh from Geeknet. <http://www.blackducksoftware.com/news/releases/2010-10-05>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Would have been interesting to see github acquire SorceForge, for nothing more than the projects. I guess a migration wouldn't be worth it, the projects with life and activity would have left SF sometime ago?

<comment><USER40> Not really. At least when it comes to desktop software a lot of free software projects I use regularly are hosted on sourceforge. Don't confuse the popularity of github on Hacker News with general popularity.

<comment><USER41> Conversely, a lot of free software I use on both the desktop and on servers is hosted on GitHub. (I'm not sure how this argument is a rebuttal against GitHub acquiring SourceForge)

Though, GitHub is in the collaboration business. They take the standard git model and remove 99% of the complexity of me trying to share my repo with my co-workers while I'm at a coffee shop and can't passthrough a NAT router, for example. Hosting software is kind of a by-product. SourceForge has always been about software, not collaboration between people. Buying SourceForge wouldn't solve anything since dead software will still be dead software without someone to take the reigns and become a manager of incoming patches and contributing him or herself, which all can be done without spending 20 million.

<comment><USER40> Wasn't a rebuttal against GitHub acquiring SourceForge but against "the projects with life and activity would have left SF sometime ago".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> [http://www.google.com/trends/?q=slashdot,+digg,+reddit,+hack...](http://www.google.com/trends/?q=slashdot,+digg,+reddit,+hacker+news&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

<comment><USER43> Just out of curiosity, what Sub-Reddits have interesting tech discussion? I love reddit for interesting/ridiculous/obscure internet finds, but I don't see a lot of leading edge tech/business talk.

<comment><USER42> I'm still exploring that myself. There's /r/linuxadmin, but traffic's fairly low. You can toss search terms at the front page (sitewide) or through Google/DDG and see where you end up.

I'm having better luck at focused technical discussion on Stack Exchange rather than Reddit. I've found a few non-technical subreddits of interest though. For that, it's been a pretty phenomenal community builder. Better than any other forum I'm currently aware of, HN included (though HN's focus on tech and the startup world is pretty good).

Farmsteading Reddit seems to work reasonably well, though it takes time to generate traction. Seed, fertilize, and weed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This would be like Monster.com purchasing Fark.com. Not really news because none of those things have mattered for years.

</comment><comment><USER45> So basically geeknet = thinkgeek. Is this some kind of really delayed stealth IPO?

<comment><USER46> No but it could be prime for an Amazon acquisition.

GKNT is already public <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GKNT>

<comment><USER45> Sorry I should have been more clear. Yeah, geeknet _is_ already publicly traded, but with these divestitures, their only remaining property is thinkgeek.

I agree it looks like they're setting up for a sale of some sort, especially in light of some recentish departures from Thinkgeek management clearing the way for an acquisition.

<http://investors.geek.net/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=701230>

 _edit_

also this makes sense in light of their Q2 financials, with their media properties losing money (no wonder the acquisition by Dice was at 1x revenue)

<http://investors.geek.net/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=697536>

 _ThinkGeek e-commerce revenue increased 24 percent to $17.8 million for the second quarter of 2012, compared to $14.3 million for the second quarter of 2011.

Orders received increased by 21 percent in the second quarter of 2012 as compared with the same period last year.

Media revenue decreased 8 percent to $5.3 million for the second quarter of 2012, compared to $5.8 million for the second quarter of 2011.

Total cash and investments at the end of second quarter 2012 was $34.6 million._

TG has long been the revenue backbone for geeknet. Getting rid of the other properties effectively makes TG the same as geeknet meaning TG is now effectively a publicly traded company.

 _edit 2_

also it looks like they were grouping geeknet media into a bundle prepping for a possible sale for a while, that division even had it's own web site that doesn't seem to have much purpose beyond trying to promote the properties as sales targets

<http://geeknetmedia.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I, for one, welcome our new Dice Holdings overlords.

I used to love slashdot, coffee and a discussion about boot loaders for breakfast. It all went to rat shit of course, but that's just the natural order of the universe.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wow. I remember when my older brother introduced me to /. when I was a teenage nerd just starting to run Linux in 1998. There weren't even user accounts.

Now I feel like reading a Jon Katz article for nostalgia.

<comment><USER48> That would be an excellent way of curing yourself of the risk of ever feeling nostalgia again.

<comment><USER49> Ha ha... I found this ([http://tech.slashdot.org/story/01/11/17/204207/message- from-...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/01/11/17/204207/message-from-kabul)):

(About "Junis", a hacker from Kabul two months after 9/11)

There are many computers in Afghanistan, Junis said, many in clusters in cities like Kabul and Kandahar (news reports have frequently mentioned that Bin-Laden's organization used both e-mail and encrypted files to communicate). Computer geeks are already hooking up with one another all over the country; Junis isn't the only Afghan e-mailing these days. He says other coders and gamers hid their PC's as well. Meanwhile, he's especially eager to get his hands on the Apple iPod, and has been drooling over the Apple website site since he got back online. And some things, of course, never change. "I thought they were going to get Microsoft," he wrote. "I guess not."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I was so pleased when I acquired the username `bogomips` on sf. Never did use it for much though.

Sad how obvious it is how it slipped away long before github filled the vacuum.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seems like GeekNet is going to focus on ThinkGeek.com. Good move I'd say. Well unless their next step is to sell it to Amazon (a la woot.com).

</comment><comment><USER51> If they are generating $20m/yr in revenue doesn't a $20m purchase seem a bit low? How did they agree on $20m?

<comment><USER52> According to TechCrunch, they are on track to do $5 MM in EBITDA, so they have about $15 MM in annual operating costs (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization). This means that Dice paid about 4x operating profits.

Here's the link: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/dice-holdings-buys- slashdot...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/dice-holdings-buys-slashdot- sourceforge-and-freecode-from-geeknet/)

<comment><USER53> $20m is the price you would expect. Rule of thumb is 3 years earnings + a little extra for goodwill/brand name/human capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Well you can jump the shark and sometimes the shark eats you. Too bad.

</comment><comment><USER55> Will it mean any changes for my project hosted on SourceForge?

<comment><USER56> maybe more dice ads

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> That's like, half of the internet!

</comment><comment><USER58> Oh man, look at the awful sites currently maintained by Dice Holdings...

> <http://www.dice.com/> (recruiting and career development)

> <http://www.efinancialcareers.com/> (finance recruiting and career > development, UK)

> <http://www.clearancejobs.com/> (U.S. government security clearance career > development)

> <http://www.rigzone.com/> (oil and gas industry content/advertising)

> <http://www.allhealthcarejobs.com/> (healthcare career development)

> <http://www.targetedjobfairs.com/> (IT and security related career fairs and > open houses)

<comment><USER59> I think it's fairly likely that their new acquisitions will be used to drive traffic to their job hunting sites. The more active members of SF and FC are pretty much ripe targets for recruiting messages driving them to job hunts.

Given the sad state of the economy, the more active of them will make for a good pool of hiring candidates.

*there was a complete thought in there, but it derailed on the word economy.</comment></comment>


Gartner IT predictions for 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/predicts/index.jsp

<comment><USER2> $495 a report?? Moreover many of them are unavailable for individual purchase - not that I was interested at the price anyway.</comment>


AT&T mauled in oral arguments in arguing for "personal privacy" for corporations - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/19/AR2011011907414.html

<comment><USER2> That only seems fair, since, as law enforcement and the last 20-odd years of Supreme Courts have reminded us, no mere human has a right to privacy.

Indeed, the Supremes seem intent on slicing the constitutional basis for privacy (4th amendment prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure) so thin you can see through them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree that AT&T should not have "personal privacy" rights but the reasoning described in the article seems very odd to me (IANAL, obviously). To me, "personal" and "person" seem obviously related. And more importantly, the fact that the outcome of the case hinges on this grammatical detail seems silly. But, I suppose until corporate personhood is repealed or overturned, this is the only way to restrict corporate overreach.

<comment><USER4> "Personal" and "person" are obviously related, but as Roberts observed, so are many other noun-adjective pairs like "edge" and "edgy," and edgy things very often don't even have edges. You can't infer the precise meaning of one from an arbitrary definition of the other. It seems very unlikely that Congress had the law's idiosyncratic definition of "person" in mind rather than the common definition of "personal privacy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we stop with the reddit-style headlines?

<comment><USER4> Strong headlines can come across as flip in a Reddit-y sort of way, but it's really dependent on the link. I think grellas has a pretty good handle on what is and isn't fair to say about a legal proceeding, so if he says AT&T got mauled, I don't feel qualified to complain about the headline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I confess that it is editorializing but this was _really_ bad for AT&T and the tenor of the argument was quite unusual.

The case involves the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which was passed decades ago and has mounds of decisions on the books interpreting its provisions. This is federal statute and the legal rules concerning statutes center on what the legislative body intended in enacting any given statute. FOIA has 17 categories by which a party can be protected from disclosure, including one for "personal privacy." AT&T's _central argument_ \- the centerpiece upon which the lower appellate court decided the case in AT&T's favor and upon which AT&T's counsel was riding hard hoping to gain a victory in the Supreme Court - rested on the idea that Congress, in enacting FOIA, defined the word "person" to include corporations and, hence, when that same Congress, elsewhere in that same statute enacted at the same time, specified that there was a right of "personal" privacy, it must have intended "personal" to include every one listed in the statute as a "person," i.e., corporations.

Basically, after the justices ripped AT&T's counsel apart, Chief Justice Roberts said, in effect, OK, if "personal" derives from "person," let me see if I can think of other cases where an adjective links with its noun counterpart, then let's see, "craft" and "crafty", "squirrel" and "squirrely", "pastor" and "pastoral" and so on - of course, making it look absurd that anyone would argue that some common meaning was intended by Congress simply by the force of the linguistic connection between "person" and "personal." By all accounts, this salvo had a devastating effect, leaving AT&T's counsel stammering about how his client had other arguments upon which to rely beyond the "grammatical imperative."

On the merits, too, this is the same court that, in _Citizens United,_ had found that the idea of corporate "personhood" should be recognized such as to give corporations free speech protections vis-a-vis attempts to limit their speech through campaign finance reform legislation. However (though this is not sufficiently appreciated by those who disdain the idea of corporate personhood), the idea of a corporation as a "legal person" dates back at least to Blackstone in the 1750s and is deeply rooted in the law (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099625>). _Legally_ , it was not that big of a jump to say that the idea extended to protecting the speech of corporations under the First Amendment (of course, the case could have easily gone another way as well but this court had no problem with such a result). The FOIA case, though, is entirely different. Here, Congress enacted a statute with specific purposes and built in protections for "personal privacy" without any hint that this might apply in some nebulous way to corporations. When that statute is examined, it becomes very difficult to justify the idea that Congress would have intended any such result in using the phrase "personal privacy" and the court of appeal had reached that result primarily based on the flawed grammatical argument noted above. That is why the Roberts comments from the bench were so devastating.

The government's counsel, sensing a good thing, waived the last 10 minutes of time for rebuttal and was more than content to let the matter rest when his turn came. When a lawyer voluntarily decides to shut up, you know that something major has just happened!

All in all, a really bad day for AT&T's lawyers and for its case.

<comment><USER6> I read about this on the SCOTUS blog and it really stood out for the reasons you mention. But there was also the part where one of the justices mentioned that they'd always construed the parts of this statute narrowly and the FCC counsel actually said that they're prefer not to interpret personal privacy too narrowly due to their broader interests (i.e. not wanting to gut it for everyone), only to find out later that the justice was essentially trying to help him argue against AT&T's arguments.

Like you said, highly unusual.

<comment><USER7> The government doesn't want it construed too narrowly for reasons other than relate to this case--and isn't to defend the people, but rather to defend the Government's ability to withhold things via FOIA exemptions. The Justice's "help" in arguing for a narrow interpretation here would hurt the Government in later cases where they also want to redact information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sure, corporations are people, they have feelings. Of course they need privacy.

<obvious sarcasm tag></comment>


Code your way into a job - <AUTHOR> http://woto.com/code

<comment><USER2> That was really fun to read through actually. I hope this pulls them in some great candidates.</comment>


Norman layout: less effort than QWERTY - <AUTHOR> http://normanlayout.info/ <comment><USER3> > 46% less effort than QWERTY

For whom?

For programmers?

For Vim users?

For Emacs users?

For Photoshop users?

For writers?

For English writers?

For Non-English writers?

For Mathematica users?

For LaTex users?

For my mother browsing the net on her iPad?

Everyone has a different use case, programmers use special characters more than non-programmers, Vim users use different shortcuts than Photoshop users, C programmers use the semicolon while Ruby programmers don't, American writers use the letter y more than German ones and so on. Claiming 46% less effort than qwerty needs further clarification.

Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be > able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping,_

Desktop and laptop, sure. Mobile (which I assumed meant a palmtop such as a smartphone), not so much. If you change the layout of your keyboard, you will touch type. This is a very different kind of memory than the typical hunt&peck. Phone virtual keyboards are even _more_ different.

In practice, my dekstop and laptop use the Bépo layout (a Dvorak-like for French), and I kept Azerty (French Qwerty derivative) on my phone. The discrepancy never caused me any problem.

<comment><USER3> > Phone virtual keyboards are even more different.

Why? I type on an iPhone keyboard without any assistance as fast as on my keyboard. I'm almost touch typing. Even if you have to look at the phone's keyboard—you are way faster if the keys are at their expected place on the keyboard (which is QWERTY in my case).

Edit: If you disagree don't downvote, rather express why you disagree

<comment><USER4> How on _earth_ do you accomplish that? Or, do you mean that you don't actually touch type on a real keyboard either?

I believe that my years of touch typing experience are the reason I hate typing on glass so much. I follow the text I'm writing and not the keys I'm pressing, so with no physical feedback about the locations of the keys, my text is an endless stream of aggravating typos requiring laborious correction.

I really miss my Blackberry. Every phone since has felt like the designers calculated the experience to be just one notch less annoying than the threshold at which I would _actually_ pound the damn thing to bits with a sledgehammer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I write on Norman. AMA?

I started in high school by switching to Dvorak, missed keyboard shortcuts, switched to Colemak. Didn't like it, switched to Workman. Didn't like it, found Norman. Haven't looked back. I also use Plover for stenography. I like typing.

<comment><USER6> What makes a person switch to a non-default keyboard layout?

How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)?

Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard)

Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better.

<comment><USER7> QWERTY was designed specifically not to be optimal so old typewriters with character arms wouldn't get tangled up.

<comment><USER6> > QWERTY was designed specifically not to be optimal so old typewriters with > character arms wouldn't get tangled up.

It's not that it was designed to not be optimal. It just was optimized for not jamming v.s. pure typing speed.

The emphasis was on having keys on opposite sides of the keyboard based on the frequency of their sequential occurrence in common text. The idea being that it'd predominantly be a left/right/left/right sequence of the typewriter arms hitting the page that would be less likely to jam then two arms right next to each other.

If you factor in the time to "un-jam" the typewriter, I bet it'd be faster than a modern layout (Dvorak, Colemak, Norman, etc) when typing on an old school typewriter.

<comment> V-2 > _The emphasis was on having keys on opposite sides of the keyboard based on > the frequency of their sequential occurrence in common text [..] If you > factor in the time to "un-jam" the typewriter, I bet it'd be faster than a > modern layout (Dvorak, Colemak, Norman, etc) when typing on an old school > typewriter._

What do you base this on? Actually every source I looked up shows that QWERTY doesn't rate well even in this aspect alone.

Eg. [http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?keyboard_statistics](http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?keyboard_statistics)

> _In, QWERTY the left hand is used for <=2 consecutive strokes 68.5% of the > time. The left and right sides of QWERTY are not balanced well, since the > right-hand run length is better, with <=2 consecutive strokes 82.9% of the > time._

Also see [http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout- analyzer/#/results](http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/results) (go to Miscellaneous tab; I loaded chapter 1 of "Alice in Wonderland", but selecting a different English text shouldn't make a significant statistical difference of course).

Under "Consecutive Hand and Thumb Use" QWERTY is almost the worst - <USER2> for your convenience under [http://i63.tinypic.com/2ykgx2v.jpg](http://i63.tinypic.com/2ykgx2v.jpg) \- the lower the better.

<comment><USER6> > What do you base this on? Actually every source I looked up shows that > QWERTY doesn't rate well even in this aspect alone.

It's based on a combination of late 1800s guess work and trial and error: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter)

<comment> V-2 Well, it only indicates this was their _intention_ , but not that the execution of that intention was any good ;) in particular that they did a better job than modern layouts, as you said you'd be willing to bet.

Note that it's not like high hand alternation factor (favoring often left- right-left-right switches) is only good for not jamming typewriters, and therefore dismissed as unimportant by keyboard layout designers in the modern era.

Quite the contrary, it's essential for keyboard ergonomy; try typing "pumpkin million stewardesses reverberates" a few times in a row... you'll feel the problem that has nothing to do with your keyboard mechanism jamming ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 I used carpalX for a while: [http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/](http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/)

I did feel it was more convenient, but I never got up to my typing speed with regular QWERTY (~130wpm), I peaked at about 60 or 80, can't remember. Surely I would get there with time, but it would take time and be limited to English anyway, which isn't my first language.

The website itself is very interesting though: the guy developed an algorithm for assessing the quality of keyboard layouts, and another - based on simulated annealing - to create his own. The theory behind this was more interesting to me than the layout itself.

I played with Dvorak and Colemak too, but neither felt as comfy.

One great idea I adopted from Colemak though is setting that useless caps lock key to backspace. That feels really great, especially the ability of deleting the last word with only left hand; ctrl + backspace requires both hands on normal keyboard layout, ctrl + capslock doesn't and feels very natural. It's about the first thing I set up on every new machine I lay my hands on.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish my key layout were the problem.

<comment><USER9> It's weird, as this is mostly a programmer-related community, I am a programmer and I never found that typing is the bottleneck. Mostly the thinking part is the bottleneck.

<comment><USER10> Depends on what you're typing. For coding, it really doesn't make a difference... so much of the typing is punctuation anyways. But for prose - emails, blog posts, HN comments, etc - typing speed matters.

<comment><USER11> If it mattered that much, everybody would be typing steno instead of qwerty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> User of bépo (more or less a French dvorak), I am frustrated by the locations of x, c and v for cut, copy, paste. It's not easy to change those shortcuts in software.

Norman took care of that by keeping those keys in place as in qwerty, which is good.

</comment><comment><USER13> I type on Colemak — it already has many keyboard shortcuts same as QWERTY, most common letters on the home row, and it's old and popular enough to be included in many places out of the box (FreeBSD console, Xorg, macOS, iOS, Android). I don't see the how Norman is better.

</comment><comment><USER14> As long as keyboards can not show a different layout (e. g. OLED keys), all these efforts will not get much traction.

<comment><USER15> Assuming you're using a mechanical keyboard like a proper human, you can switch the keycaps around.

If you're using a laptop then I have no sympathy. You have chosen that life.

<comment><USER16> You can change the keys on a laptop usually. I'm using a 2013 Macbook Pro and while it's disconcerting to pop the keys off, it can certainly be done.

<comment><USER15> Good to know. I've never owned a laptop.

I have a desktop machine at work and another at home and just virtually never have a need to do computer work when I'm not in one of those two places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what about the best layout for writing code? usually you use a lot of characters that require 2 key press like (){}:"|<>?~$+...

<comment><USER18> This. And the Ctrl key so far away you easily overwork it.

<comment><USER19> Definitely swap the Ctrl and Caps Lock in your OS. Ctrl on the home row makes so much more sense for coding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm genuinely curious about people who have actually switched typing layout for day-to-day use. I've played with Dvorak for awhile, but I already type at over 100 wpm with QWERTY, and I know whatever keyboard I'm likely to come into contact with that is not my own is likely to be QWERTY. Add to that, the changing of shortcuts, vim commands, etc. (which Norman attempts to address somewhat) and I'm not strongly motivated to try.

Has anyone found it valuable to switch and if so, why?

<comment><USER21> I switched in college to Colemak when I wanted to learn how to properly touch type. Turns out that unlearning a weird QWERTY typing style developed to talk shit during Age of Empires 2 games as a kid.. is hard. While trying to learn QWERTY proper I also got frustrated by how inconvenient it felt. So I did some research and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try a different layout.

If you already touch type quickly on QWERTY, I only think it would be worth it if you wanted to potentially help with RSI.. although I'd try an ergonomic keyboard first.

<comment><USER22> I have a similar tale. Was having pains in my wrists in grad school and decided it was way past time to unlearn my broken QWERTY touch typing technique (in my case my left hand was shifted a key left such that the pinky was homed primarily shift/caps/tab/ctrl and my right hand "wandered" to compensate). Trying to relearn QWERTY itself just lead to falling back into old habits. Forcing myself to learn an entirely different one (in my case, also Colemak) was a huge part of making good habits stick and I've been glad I did so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm on neo. Sadly optimized german and german keyboards. It features really lovely re-use of the keys for caps-lock and the alt-gr.

hover the layers here: [http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html](http://neo- layout.org/index_en.html)

layer 4 is numpad, arrow keys, backspace, del escape. the layer above I don't use, maybe handy for mathematicians.

Some hidden bonuses too: [caps]+[tab],[U],[C],[1],[+],[2],[=] produces: 1+2=3

</comment><comment><USER24> I actually learned Norman a number of months ago to a pretty reasonable level (90WPM) with [http://type-fu.com/](http://type-fu.com/).

However, I couldn't get over the hump to use it day to day. It's hard to unlearn vim commands and all.

Strangely, I'm able to switch pretty effectively between qwerty and norman. Also strange is if I think about typing in my mind, it's in the norman layout.

<comment><USER25> I found that it was possible to retain two layouts when switching, but at the expense of efficiency. I could not make significant progress until I abandoned any effort to retain my former layout. Having switched three times now, I found this to be the case every time. I'm up in the 120s at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> For people who have other layouts than us on their keyboards, it's easy in *nix to remap keys to get special chars.

For instance I use xmodmap to remap ALTGR + [ for å, ALTGR + ; for ö (+ SHIFT produces capital letters of the same)

Example: xmodmap -e "keycode 108 = Mode_switch" && xmodmap -e "keycode 48 = apostrophe quotedbl adiaeresis Adiaeresis"

This can of course be used for any kind of remapping in case your unhappy with some key locations.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems like the best way to quantify such claims is a small daemon that listens to your keystrokes. Which would use a config file to configure which finger hits which key. Then with the logs you could record top typing speed, and total finger distance.

Then users could contribute their speeds, accuracy (number of backspaces), and finger distance for whatever mapping pleases them.

</comment><comment><USER28> Even sidestepping the 46% less "For Whom" : Qwerty/dvorak/whatever .. No one is really worried about cranking out Words per minute anymore. Nor is it going to significantly change RSI injuries where one wasn't already going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've always wonder why Norman, Dvorak etc. preform so much better than qwerty by most metrics, but real-world studies showing that much of a difference are rather lacking.

I can imagine it must be hard to design a good study comparing them when almost everyone uses qwerty.

<comment><USER30> I don't think the gains are manifested as speed. They come as better ergonomics. Try this tool [1] to see how different layouts compare.

[1]: [http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout- analyzer/#/main](http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'll stick to Dvorak until I get around to getting a stenosaurus/stenoboard/opensteno or some other form of stenograph system. The primary problem I've had with Dvorak over the years was learning a new layout when I started French!

</comment><comment><USER32> For those of you who type with a non-QWERTY layout and use either Emacs or Vim bindings for your text editor, how have you adapted? You would think you'd have to retool your muscle memory for the new bindings, is this the case?

<comment><USER33> I've been typing in Dvorak for over 10 years. I kept the same shortcut / vim command as standard and I got used to the different physical position. For some shortcut, it is indeed sub-optimal (ctrl+c / v in particular) but it works without any additional configuration on any system / software.

That's also one of my reason of choosing US-Dvorak as an alternative to Qwerty rather than more modern / efficient alternatives : it is available in most operating systems out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> They might as well name one Quixote, or Windmills. Because it's an equally pointless gesture expecting anyone to take on the quest to use one.

</comment><comment><USER35> Kudos for the effort, but it's always going to be extremely hard getting people to adopt a different layout.

<comment><USER36> Maybe easier than ever with most keyboards being virtual now...

<comment><USER35> Most? Mine is plastic.

If you're talking about cell phones and tablets sure—but you certainly don't type with both your hands like on your laptop...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How much better is Norman than QWERTY? I am learning Dvorak right now but I miss keyboard short cuts!

<comment><USER33> As I wrote in response to another comment, I think Dvorak is still the best qwerty alternative because of it's ubiquitousness.

Once you make the switch to an alternative layout, having to write on a qwerty layout becomes very unpleasant. Unfortunately, it is often common that you have to type on a borrowed system and you want a layout you can easily switch to.

Dvorak layout is standard in all operating system whereas most alternatives are not and requires additional drivers / setup files.

While most people will let you change a system settings for a while, it will be frowned upon if you start downloading strange software from the internet...

Switching to Dvorak and back on any modern OS take less than 20 seconds so it's not an issue to setup even for a short time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am much more bothered by the fact that I can't control my mouse and keyboard at the same time. Still, I applaud efforts like this to make things better. However, key layout seems to be one of those things that just won't change once the majority uses one standard.

<comment><USER39> Isn't that exactly what Touchpoint (or whatever it's called these days) is for?

My boss has been informed that laptop with a Touchpoint is a "condition of employment" \- I cannot imagine working without one. I see people trying to work with touchpads and it just makes me cry...

Sample Image: [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/think...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/thinkpad_x1_carbon_touchpoint.jpg)

Edit: Apparently Wikipedia imaginatively calls it a "pointing stick" :> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick)

<comment><USER40> I've never found it convenient to use. Touchpad with multi-touch (for scrolling) is much better and for any serious work not going to switch from a dedicated mouse (anywhere mx/mx2).I am not sure what people's issues are with such input. Disclaimer: I am software developer

<comment><USER39> As I said above, for me, touchpad is slower and less precise (note that the blue/middle button is set for scrolling on trackpoint by default and works great).

I'm willing to admit that it's largely due to whatever a person is accustomed to.

However, I still have to see somebody use Touchpad in a way that doesn't make me cringe as to how long anything takes... maybe I need to find a more proficient friend :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The thing about alternative keyboard layouts is that I can type on QWERTY at 138 words per minute and use both vim and emacs fluently. I recognize that QWERTY is a bad keyboard layout, but switching to anything else would incur a productivity loss that'd last for years.</comment>


Paperclip optimizer - <AUTHOR> http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ <comment><USER2> It took me hours to beat that game, I often had to leave it running while I got on with other tasks, but I enjoyed it greatly, though I didn't have the appetite to play through the next universe.

The way it leads you in with a simple "Make paperclip" button and, through consistently surprising twists, leads you to the task of exploring the entire universe (albeit in decision making form) is extremely well done.

I was particularly charmed when the musical lament began for the drones I'd lost in battle.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only way I can stop enjoying these games is by cheating, so here you go: for (i = 0; i < 1000; i++) { document.getElementById("btnMakePaperclip").click() }

</comment><comment><USER4>
       . All of the resources of Earth are now available for clip production
       . Full autonomy attained in 1 hour 3 minutes 50 seconds

What a great game but it lacks a proper end (bugs arise all over the screen).

<comment><USER5> That is nowhere near the end of the game...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      There was an AI made of dust
      Whose poetry gained it man's trust.
      If is follows ought,
      It'll do what they thought;
      In the end we all do what we must.

(from the game)

</comment><comment><USER7> 10/10, would eat the universe and turn myself into paperclips again.

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't invest in quantum 'revert back to beginning'.......... i thought this would be like adventure capitalist where you keep all your technology. i was wrong. it restarted me back to the beginning with nothing. FCUKKKKK

</comment><comment><USER9> Great game! Still playing.

Something I've noticed is that my inventory runs out with the production per second being higher than the clips sold per second.

</comment><comment><USER10> You should be able to save it somehow.

<comment><USER11> save() and load() in the console

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A little confused on why, to start off, I can make a paperclip with 0 funds.

<comment><USER13> You make the paperclips with wire (and your own labor, to start). You start off with 1,000 inches of wire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I "won"! I now feel very very sad.

</comment><comment><USER15> Took over the universe with no cheats. Great game!</comment>