More than 90% of LTE users in China have been allocated IPv6 addresses - <AUTHOR> https://blog.apnic.net/2020/02/06/more-than-90-of-lte-users-in-china-have-been-allocated-ipv6-addresses/ <comment><USER2> These "50%" and "90%" claims are significantly higher than the measurements indicate:

[https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6](https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6) says 16%.

[https://www.facebook.com/ipv6/?tab=ipv6_country](https://www.facebook.com/ipv6/?tab=ipv6_country) says 6%.

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...](https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per- country-ipv6-adoption) says 0.5%.</comment>


The evolution of Risk (the board game) - <AUTHOR> http://defectiveyeti.com/2012/01/25/risk-legacy/

<comment><USER2> This looks like a pretty interesting change. I agree with the author in that the long game play of the original version can be a detraction. (As I get older with family commitments etc, finding 4 hours to sit down for a game of risk becomes harder and harder).

I have also noticed the style of game play of me and my friends has become more risk-averse. No body wants to make the first major attack as it's better to sit and wait and beat on a weakened enemy. This leads to _everyone_ sitting and waiting for someone else to make the first move which can make for even long game play!

I'm not sure about the value of a $NZ100 game that needs to be turfed after 15 games, but as one of the comments said, if you amortize that out over 15 games and 5 players, it's pretty cheap entertainment.</comment>


For Journalists Who've Worked in China, New White House Tactics Seem Familiar - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/01/25/511460917/for-journalists-whove-worked-in-china-new-white-house-tactics-seem-familiar <comment><USER2> Feudalism is the new black.

<comment><USER3> I don't get the analogy - as I understand it, Feudalism is about subletting military/political power because the central government is too weak to control things directly, which doesn't seem to have much in common with the allegations of media abuse in the article

<comment><USER2> If we're getting into the things textbooks tell us, our government serves by the will of the people. Top-down media control doesn't really jive with this.

If we go by the Bloch definition of the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry bound by manorialism, swap each out with a modern-day group (military-industrial complex [of which SV is an offshoot], clergy, media/entertainment, and the general public), and you can still make out the same old constellation.</comment></comment></comment>


A learning technology that enables robots to imagine the future of their actions - <AUTHOR> http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/12/04/robots-see-into-their-future/ <comment><USER2> Extremely interesting.

Some AI literature is of the belief that consciousness emerges from imagining hypotheticals. You could probably describe a few key milestones.

1 - Imagine your hypothetical actions, interacting with objects.

..

.. - Imagine the actions of other 'entities' capable of imagining actions, who are also interacting with objects.

..

.. - Imagine your 'self' in relation to these other entities, all capable of imagining each other's actions.

</comment><comment><USER3> This future brought to you by a cost reducing AI across all imagined futures.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is cool research, but it should be noted that it's a pretty basic extension of prior work on video prediction:

"the robots can predict what their cameras will see if they perform a particular sequence of movements. These robotic imaginations are still relatively simple for now – predictions made only several seconds into the future – but they are enough for the robot to figure out how to move objects around on a table without disturbing obstacles"

There is no effort at all at modeling the world at a more abstract conceptual level, so pretty fundamental ideas/changes will be needed in order to do 'long-horizon' planning/imagination.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess they wanted to make robots less scary by rooting the story in the idea of babies. But it doesn't really achieve its purpose since there's still the obvious narrative of "oh, so what happends when the baby robots grows up into scary adult robots with all the greed and hate that that can be associated to". I think Googles Waymo took a better approach to framing the narrative PR around AI, namely making the robot feel like a toy or animation character instead.

<comment><USER6> Not it at all. I saw this paper presented at CoRL last month. It, and a lot of other papers on the topic of unsupervised learning in robotics, draw on ways humans develop cognition, specifically, during early childhood. In projecting the scene forward in the visual spatial domain, the robot plans it's actions and learns from the corresponding results in a way that parallels what a young child would do to learn about the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Finally! Common sense is being able to predict the consequences of your actions. I've wanted to do that for years, but I was thinking in terms of planning and trial and error against low-resolution physics models of the world. Sort of like A* on steroids. This has limited applicability, although some video games try to do something like that. The new approach here is more promising, because it needs less of a world model.

Getting through the next few seconds without a major screwup is the big problem in unstructured robotics. This approach may not be the right answer, but it's addressing the right question.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of this Slate Star Codex post[0] on the book "Surfing Uncertainty"[1].

Also it looks like the relevant paper is here[3] and a video example is here[4].

[0]: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing- unc...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/)

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190217014/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190217014/)

[3]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.00696](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.00696)

[4]: [https://sites.google.com/site/robotforesight/](https://sites.google.com/site/robotforesight/)

</comment><comment> trey-jones I know lots of people who can't imagine the future of their actions, so I don't feel like this is a prerequisite for artificial intelligence.

<comment><USER9> Eh, huge difference between "can't" and "won't". I feel confident in assuring you that they likely _can_ imagine such futures, and likely do but with perhaps with extremely limited scope. The machinery is all there, and is probably working, even if they don't recognize it as such.

Also, like decision making in general, it's a skill that requires practice to improve.</comment></comment>


Facebook blocked us and there's nothing we can do? - <AUTHOR>

The content you're trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe:
mosrri.com
Please remove this link to continue. If you think you're seeing this by mistake, please let us know.
We have no further information about what might be offending facebook. Our site is pure organic user generated content. We don't do any special SEO tricks.
I got alot of users and they all cant share and do nothing on my website.
Hope someone could help me fix this, i reported many time and nothing, i also when trying to debug the issue via the facebook debugger gets error too.
Waiting for an answer. <comment><USER2> If I had to guess it's that the purpose of your site is to link to copies of films. I'm guessing that this is copyright infringement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Come on. Your website links to dozens of shady hosting websites. You link to illegal copies of movies which are currently in cinema and present those on your homepage.

"Pure organic user generated content" doesn't protect you if your website's purpose is to distribute movies illegally.

Edit: most content was created by username 'admin' so I call bullshit on 'user generated'.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> and if it is copyright why should it get blocked to facebook, when site is clean and no trojans or spam.</comment>


Using CSS to Fix Anything: 20+ Common Bugs and Fixes - <AUTHOR> http://www.noupe.com/css/using-css-to-fix-anything-20-common-bugs-and-fixes.html <comment><USER2> Just wanted to add here something said many times in the comments on that page. Whenever possible avoid the usage of CSS hacks or browser specific CSS. If a design is making you pull your hair out, start fresh and see if you can come up with another way to contain your content while maintaining your target design. More often than not you will be able to make clean standard CSS code that is hack free and more maintainable moving forward.</comment>


SelfRestraint - control your Internet addiction - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ParkerK/selfrestraint/

<comment><USER2> Nice.I was thinking about something similar for a while. I like that it works for all browsers. Is there any way to avoid retyping list of sites to block after running it again?</comment>


Bowkett: This Is Why You Should Pay For Advice - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-is-why-you-should-pay-for-advice.html <comment><USER3> That affiliate link just kinda kills it for me.

And no, you often do not get what you pay for. A lot of ebook peddlers will take your money and give you some really crappy stuff. I've never bought them, but I've taken them off bittorrent and been glad I didn't buy them.

He's making money off the guys system - he has no incentive to tell us the negative stuff. The positie stuff may be true, but what has he not said because he knows it will lose him money?

<comment><USER4> Does anyone make significant money from affiliate links? We tried a ton of different things for making money at jtv about a year ago when we were just getting started with generating revenue, and amazon links were close to the worst performers of the bunch for us. At one point we went as far as scraping amazon's entire product catalog and building our own ad-server from it, so we did try this route quite seriously!

<comment><USER5> When people claim to be making big money from affiliate links, it's rarely Amazon links (or, rather, Amazon doesn't make up the lion's share of the income). It's affiliate links to products on Clickbank, joint venture promotions (e.g. all the JV partners who helped sell Frank Kern's Mass Control), or links to _other_ vendors or middlemen that pay better than Amazon (e.g. Chitika or Web hosts).

I know someone who - until Google really started clamping down on it - <USER2> about $10k a month as an affiliate for a major text link ads company merely by running ads on Google Adwords for them and getting a payout when they signed up.

Back around 2003-2004, I worked alongside an affiliate marketing department at a bargain basement Web hosting company that paid $100ish per referred signup (which was amazing since their account only cost about $100 for the year anyway). Some folks (often with "web hosting review" sites) were doing hundreds of referrals for them each month. It's a big business, but people don't tend to shout about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Read Seth Roberts to discover why practically _any_ sufficiently large dietary change will cause you to lose large amounts of weight... at first. Roughly, your brain learns a flavor-calorie association that tells it how much food is available, which determines your body's set-point weight. Any large dietary change will cause you to lose weight... until your body learns the new flavor- calorie association, and then it's back to hell again.

<comment><USER7> If you eat like Dr Furhman recommends, I guarantee you will lose weight and keep it off, assuming you stick to the plan. It's difficult to get enough calories eating only whole fruits and vegetables (vegetable oil and corn syrup aren't vegetables).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice affiliate link he's got at the bottom of the article.

I understand that we've all got to eat, but having an affiliate link in such a praiseful article kind of demolished one's credibility - even if your name is Giles Bowkett.

Considering the number of cranks and scams surrounding this topic, if you want people to take your advice on such matters seriously, at least post a plain link.

<comment><USER9> Don't forget all of the ads he's pasted up on the right hand side, too. If you follow your argument to it's logical conclusion, you can't trust anyone with affilate links, ads, or any other way of making money from their readers.

The main difference here (from watching the video) is that the service he's promoting is from a medical doctor and based on results published in medical journals. That's a pretty high bar of evidence, and I doubt that it would be anywhere close to a "scam".

<comment><USER10> I do lose at least a bit of trust in anyone with affiliate links or ads, at least as far as their opinion of those products/companies are concerned. Who wants reviews of anything when the review is clouded by money? I'd much rather pay directly for the information.

So many forms of reviews are completely worthless because this system has got out of hand. Amateur video game reviewers get the games for free, but if they really rip a game, the publisher cuts them off in the future. Wonder why almost no game gets rated less than 70%? And on, and on, and on. If you want the worst of it, the incestuous world of affiliate marketing is where to look. Say you want to buy a program to learn how to start... ok, you heard of one, now you look it up on google to see if it's legit. EVERY SINGLE RESULT FOR 100 PAGES will be some guy pretending to review it, but really just promoting it. They even use titles like this "Affiliate marketing scam," and the article says, "Is it a scam? Let's investigate... no. Sign up here <aff link>" Basically, within that world, it is impossible for a beginner to separate the wheat from the chaff. Outside of AM, it's not as bad, but it's getting there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To whoever wrote this post: you should realize, by now, after so much dieting, that diets are a strawman's game. Congratulations on losing 75 lbs - I'm glad paying for advice provided you with enough incentive to lose the weight. That does not make your way the only way.

I lost 80 lbs by following free, useful advice found on the internet. That does not give me any more credibility than you, nor anymore credibility than me.

And if anyone wants to know how I did it, I'll tell them for the low, low price of $19.99! ....just kidding.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's this guy's beef with HN? He harps against it repeatedly in various posts.

<comment><USER13> I get the impression he has a chip on his shoulder in general. My first and only interaction with him was on a Reddit thread: some folks, including myself, disgreed with one of his blog posts. He replied to the comments that disagreed with him insultingly, calling people names and such. Then, after a day or so, he deleted his comments after the fact to protect his rep.

<comment><USER14> not to protect my rep, to avoid a personal problem I have, which is an overwhelming compulsion to have the last word in every discussion. I can get just about anybody to agree with me if I spend enough time to find out what mistake they made when they misinterpreted my words, and I have a really hard time accepting that people are going to say things about me which are inaccurate or illogical. so I end up wasting a lot of time arguing with people who never bothered to read what I was saying carefully in the first place.

I created this account so I could come on here and correct these comments. I had to create a new account because I threw out my HN password about a week or two ago in hopes of staying out of these kinds of discussions. I don't know which specific incident on Reddit of deleting my comments and/or my account you're referring to, because I've done that many times, but it probably involved wasted time or inadequate explanation on my part and poor logic on the part of several other people.

it's basically a failure of discipline and priority-setting on my part. I'm getting better at it, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Almost any diet can work if you have been eating standard American fare. You can do a lot better then brain-washed vegetarians like Furhman, though.

Here is an example of the kind of thinking you get from him: [http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-do- primitive...](http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-do-primitive- peoples-really-live-longer.html)

He makes a sweeping conclusion using 2 ridiculous citations. One of is some random website, the other is off-topic (about modernized eskimos, not primitives).

</comment><comment><USER13> Summary: Bowkett gives free advice on why you shouldn't accept free advice.

</comment><comment><USER16> The financial incentives for downloading Joel Fuhrman's book from btjunkie are great!

<comment><USER10> But if you pay $30 for it, you'll follow it... right? Since EVERYONE who has paid for diet books, camps, seminars, etc is skinny, right?</comment></comment>


FastMall iphone app turn by turn directions @ malls, shake iphone 4 bathroom? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastmall.com

<comment><USER2> That web site needs some work. It's way too loud. I really don't want to download any movies to see it in action how about some simple screen shots? They may be there but I could quick locate them. And how about a quick mall search?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also here is the mall search. As for the site i think its bright and to the point. No flash, fun, makes sense.

<http://www.fastmall.com/malls.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> good point town drunk, for free tho its a pretty amazing application. take some time to learn about it, this is one of the few thats really worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone say value prop!</comment>


Pando: We Sold Pando - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold-pando/ <comment><AUTHOR> "As a founder, I have a personal goal that's just as important and just as core to our culture: I do not want to sell this company. I have opened nearly every meeting by telling potential investors and potential employees this, so I guess readers should know it from the beginning as well."

[https://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started- pandodaily/](https://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/)

<comment><USER2> From the tone of the announcement of the sale, it's clear that Sarah Lacy did not _want_ to sell Pando.</comment></comment>


What the new video compression strategy from Netflix means for Apple and Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://donmelton.com/2015/12/21/what-the-new-video-compression-strategy-from-netflix-means-for-apple-and-amazon/ <comment><USER2> I wonder at his premise that consumers are choosing things based on wanting larger file sizes and higher bit rates. Most of my friends literally could not tell you anything about their mp3 or movie collection in terms of bit rate. Half of them you'd need to explain what "bit rate" means, before even asking the question. I only think about it for my DJ music collection (and VBR is fine in that context, I'm just ruling out CBR stuff below ~192kpbs, because sometimes it sounds a little harsh on the high end over the big speakers); never worry about it for video or music streaming. If it's HD and looks/sounds OK, I don't think about it at all. Netflix and Amazon both have acceptable quality, so I don't think about it, I just consume it.

I think the success of Spotify and Pandora and Rhapsody are proof that consumers don't care about quality. I don't know exactly what bit rate they're streaming at, but, it sounds pretty bad on mobile, so I assume it's something quite low. But, even though I recognize the crappiness of it, sometimes I listen to them in the car (my truck has a crap stereo, anyway, so no big deal there).

In short: Cool article, but the suggestion that consumers will stop it because they want bigger files seems weird.

<comment><USER3> I think you're missing the point. Consumers don't care, until some listicle website or advertising firm points out that Amazon/Apple short you on your mp3s by not even offering 128kbps all the way through.

Or imagine Amazon goes with pure VBR, then Apple makes an ad claiming their sound quality is "better" because their bitrate never dips below 128kbps. It's bullshit, but how is an average consumer suppose to figure this out? They'll probably err on the side of caution and buy the CBR version since, "it can't be any worse than the VBR one, but I don't lose bits and it's the same price!"

The whole article was talking about streaming vs. downloading. Streaming is _fine_ and Netflix will probably get away with their compression, but will Amazon/Apple be able to do that with downloads? He doesn't think so. People are fine with Spotify/Pandora because there is no perceived ownership of the songs they're streaming. People who actually buy and download audio or video, they have money in the game so they want "the best" and any loss of that is viewed as Amazon/Apple screwing them over.

<comment><USER2> Has that ever happened? I mean, have there been consumer revolts over bit rate that have cost Apple or Amazon customers? Pono and Tidal don't seem to be killing the existing players, but perhaps I'm just not up to speed on the state of the industry.

<comment><USER3> There is no actual "revolt" because both Apple and Amazon make sure it doesn't happen by using CBR. You're right in that consumers don't care about it all that much.

But let's say Amazon decides to go with VBR to save space and download speed, now there's an easy way for Apple to attack Amazon. "We never dip below a certain quality. Amazon does. We care. Amazon doesn't"

Maybe that ad/slogan works, or maybe it doesn't. But if you're Amazon would you be willing to risk some weird consumer backlash over it? And if you're Apple it is an easy point to attack, and if it doesn't work, no harm no foul (and then secretly also switch to VBR and announce it at the next Apple conference!)

<comment><USER2> So...um...Apple and Amazon have been shipping VBR files for _years_.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure if there's confusion or what but this is literally discussed in the article. So I am not sure what you're arguing exactly. The article discusses how the VBR files have been encoded with minimum bitrate constraints in the fear that someone will make a big deal out of it if it dips "too low"

<comment><USER2> VBR with a mininum bit rate != CBR.

And, to be clear, the article is making a guess that Amazon or Apple are imposing a minimum bit rate to insure some lower bound on file size. I don't think there is really any solid evidence that Amazon or Apple are making decisions based on trying to make file sizes bigger to convince consumers they're getting "more value". I took exception to the premise, which is why I commented above. I don't believe Apple and Amazon are making decisions based on trying to increase file sizes, and I find it weird that the article suggest they are. I believe they are trying to maximize audio quality at smaller file sizes. Evidence seems to indicate that is what is happening.

And, we've come full circle to the point of my initial comment. I don't think the argument he's making about maintaining large file sizes is backed by evidence or a particularly good understanding of consumer behavior/preference. I do think his guesses about the Netflix algorithm are interesting, but his digression into consumer behavior is less so, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm waiting for something like Daala + Opus starting being used by huge services like Netflix. Youtube already uses Opus.

Apple? It will take them another 50 years to start using free codecs.

UPDATE: A post on IETF blog about standardized free video codec effort: [https://www.ietf.org/blog/2015/09/aiming-for-a- standardized-...](https://www.ietf.org/blog/2015/09/aiming-for-a-standardized- high-quality-royalty-free-video-codec-to-remove-friction-for-video-over-the- internet/)

<comment><USER5> I'm somewhat confused, is this a different effort than the royalty free codec which is being developed by Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel under the name 'Alliance for Open Media' ?

<comment><USER4> Regarding the video codec, it's the same thing, except one in IETF is the actual engineering group, and that AOM is more of an administrative one that synchronizes all the bureaucratic stuff probably (legal as well I guess).

UPDATE: See here: [http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/67752.html](http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/67752.html)

<comment><USER5> Ah, thanks, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "But I suspect that was a problem.

You see, it would probably be difficult to sell those VBR files — some of which were quite a bit lower than 256 Kbps and a few even lower than 128 Kbps — because customers might perceive a loss of value."

The vast majority of customers do not care about the actual Kbps, as long as the sound quality remains above certain standards. Just market the different quality levels at different prices and most people would never think twice about it (and most would choose the cheapest version).

<comment><USER7> If enough "audiophiles" repeat the claim that Apple or Amazon has worse audio quality, it could seriously hurt their brand's reputation.

<comment><USER8> Isn't Apple + Beats enough to convince people that Apple is not about audio quality?

<comment><USER9> Isn't the popularity of Beats (not to mention default iPhone headphones) proof that Good Enough is fine for most people

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Major question about this comment.

> They all have the same server farms. Owned by Amazon, no doubt. And there > aren't any technical hurdles. It's just more computation.

Does Apple use Amazon's servers? I thought Apple ran its own hardware/data centers. I've definitely heard war stories of Apple towing trucks full of racks into the desert so they could bump their capacity for cheap.

<comment><USER11> Apple's contemplating building a server farm not terribly far from where I live, so no, I don't think they're using Amazon. I think that comment is supposed to mean that they all have access to big clusters, not that it's the same clusters.

<comment><USER12> All they need is a half dozen powermac supercomputers.

But seriously, could they not be using Amazon until they finish building out their own farm?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There used to be a group of people who cared about bitrate. They wanted 64kbps Audio that sounded better then MP3 128Kbps, which till today still isn't possible. Be it AAC, HE-AAC, Vobris, or the new Opus. Despite the hype every time a new codec arrived.

There used to be a group of people who wanted codec that is the same quality as Lossless at 256Kbps to 320Kbps. Personally I think MPC ( Musepack ) accomplished it. And it is patentless as well since it is based on MP2. But the codec never caught on in Hardware world. Meanwhile AAC does about just as well @256kbps despite being more complex.

That was in the Naspter -> iTunes download era, Then time flies, both group of people lost interest. Mainly for the same reason. Both group wanted to store as many music downloads as possible. 1st group dont mind a little quality loss, 2nd group wanted near perfect quality @256Kbps, however HDD prices dropped to a point where 1st group dont mind storing them in ~256kbps and 2nd group will simply store them as lossless FLAC.

Then we come to the age of Streaming, that doesn't necessarily means only Apple Music or Spotify and the like, the largest music streaming is properly Youtube. People dont download anymore, They just click and play on Youtube.

It tuns out, I think we have reached the stage of "good enough". Whether it is audio, or video. With Video, we can get huge improvement if we smooth out the noise / grain details. Our broadband speeds continues to improve, we will have G.Fast & VDSL2, the next generation of DSL broadband tech. Most kids or youngster of this generation dont care about Audio / Video quality as much, they would rather want instant and ease of access.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ok everyone is stuck on the bitrate argument and consumer choice. However I'm more focused on if this plan is even possible.

Could Netflix really want to throw so much money at transcoding so many ways? Are there various tricks to do this at a reasonable cost? Like grab random 10 seconds across 15 points in a movie and try just that? Work with top n most popular first? Sort by existing biggest movies?

<comment><USER15> Doing the transcodes is pretty much a drop in the bucket for NetFlix. Even transcoding the same movie 1000x at full length is pretty meaningless to them since it is a fixed cost against their library size.

What they really care about is things that are multiplied by the number of users they have. Saving 5% of bandwidth on 100k users is very meaningful to them. So doing extra transcodes to figure out what to send is very valuable.

They've come and given talks at Cloud dev meetups and just an unexpected bump in bandwidth or delay in server response time causing traffic to back up is enough to knock over their servers and they do things no one else would even think of, like having their clients upload code to their servers to batch requests together in the optimal format for the clients, just to reduce bandwidth and load on their network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16>
      I would bet money that Amazon ran into this same
      conundrum with the unconstrained VBR mode of the
      LAME MP3 encoder which they use.

Lame has always had a way to set minimum and maximum bounds on the VBR bit rates. I would bet that Amazon has at least one employee who knows this. I used to use this a lot with a hardware player that couldn't handle VBR above 224 kbps.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why would apple et al follow?

Unless there is any noticeable affect on quality/streaming ease then consumers won't care.

You have to remember that most people can't/won't tell the difference between blueray and DVD, let alone bitrate change. More importantly they have lots of silly TV effects that actively fuck with the picture (Sharpening, Aspect ratio stretching, over saturation, active motion, and other horrid "enhancements")

The only reason netflix et al is a thing is because of the content, not the platform. (just look at how shit iTunes is to use) You can make the most wonderful interface in the world, but if there is no content, there is no point.

Streaming does cost money, but that's not the main cost of business. Most cost comes from licensing the content in the first place. (Then paying all your staff to do fancy things)

Seriously bandwidth is pretty cheap, compared the the cost of buy the license to broadcast a top rated movie. (a high ranking movie is easily a few $million. custom TV series is anywhere between 1 and 30+ million for a season.)

<comment><USER18> The article seems to focus too much on the consumer side of the bandwidth equation. I think the real win for Netflix is the aggregate egress bandwidth savings from their DCs. If Netflix can halve their bandwidth (as the article seems to claim) without any appreciable loss in quality, they've just saved substantially in the infrastructure and peering contracts needed to deliver their content. I have no idea how much money Netflix currently spends on bandwidth/CDN, but I'd guess it's certainly in the 100s of millions. I can imagine that Amazon and Apple would be very interested in emulating those savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's completely normal for Netflix to work on that and end-consumers wont see a difference.

That's exactly what's been done by illegal release groups (pirated content) which are very picky when it comes to time to release (encoding/sharing) and do their best to encode fast enough while having a good viewable quality.

When it comes to encoding, even for a large library like Netflix's, time to encode is always lesser than time/bandwith saved while sharing/streaming.

As of now, Netflix 1080p raw content (not transcoded) is delivered at a bitrate of 5200kbps/5900kbps with no differences between the content (animated or live action - here I compared BoJack Horseman to The Ridiculous 6). While many (or even all) high quality release groups encode animated bluray at around 3000Kbps (1080p) (around 5500kbps for very high quality) while live action is encoded at around 11.0Mbps. The same difference is applied when the content is capped from TV and then encoded.

<comment><USER20> This also varies by the target audience.

Stuff that is released via publically-tracked torrent (i.e. for mass-market audiences) often targets around 1.5-2 GB for a feature-length movie in 1080p. In contrast, releases aimed at Usenet (the technical crowd) are often 6-7 GB and sometimes as large as 11-13 GB for the same movie.

On the other hand the situation is much more equitable for audio. Lossless audio torrents are pretty common even in the torrent world, and due to the typically greater number of torrents available the overall selection of lossless files is probably at least as large as on Usenet.

I would assume that private trackers tend towards higher-quality releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As more video moves to higher resolutions (such as 4K) the amount of bandwidth wasted by inefficient encoding increases exponentially.

While consumers only care if the quality is "acceptable", it's pretty easy to tell the difference between a crisp 4K picture and a 1080p picture, and also easier to see encoding or bitrate artifacts.

So I think this is probably an attempt to improve the margins a bit on content delivery costs without sacrificing quality.

Netflix has also embraced 4K content with its original series, so it is in a unique position to leverage the shift to higher resolution content for maximum profitability.

<comment><USER22> I see it more as an attempt to offer better quality to people with crappy ISPs as they expand to more countries. Previously, they would have seen a low-res Bojack, but now that Netflix can decide that a full HD encode of Bojack can fit in a smaller bitrate, those people will see a high-res Bojack. It might even be related to the T-Mobile announcement that allows people to watch Netflix without eating into their data caps as long as the bitrate is capped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> People get really excited about this revolutionary "quality based" encoding and to me it just sounds like -crf in x264. For trying to hit a constant bitrate, I've heard of people performing a -crf pass, then taking the average bitrate of the result and using that for a constant quality encode.

With this method, you let the encoder figure out the bitrate for the quality target you want to hit, then you can use that bitrate in a constant quality encode if you like.

</comment><comment><USER24> author's point is weak. users of netflix is not concerned with knowing what bitrate the video is. It just needs to have an acceptable quality.

<comment><USER25> > users of netflix is not concerned with knowing what bitrate the video is

That's part of the author's point: if netflix can halve their bandwidth without users noticing, they will earn massive savings. Apple & Amazon will also want in on the savings (being competitors and all)

<comment><USER24> that must have been a nuanced point. He had much more emphasize on the strategy of differentiation via bitrate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Consumers don't understand bitrate for videos. They only care if they can watch 1080p on their 1080p TV. It doesn't occur to them that resolution is only a minor player in digital quality.

</comment><comment><USER26> Let's assume that consumers even know about or care about bit rate. Apple and Amazon could offer two downloads, VBR and CBR.

</comment><comment><USER27> Really neat stuff. Can't wait to see it in FOSS software so we can save some space in our video collections. :)

<comment><USER28> OSS encoders (x264, Theora, VP9, Daala, Vorbis) already tend to have a constant quality rate control mode that they'd very much prefer you use unless you have an actual reason to need a specific bitrate. I'm always surprised at how many people try to reinvent it via abr...

Netflix (and streaming services in general) on the other hand needs known bitrates with known constraints so their bandwidth estimation can work correctly without hiccups. Your personal video collection does not.

<comment><USER27> So, it only affects bandwidth and not storage space?

<comment><USER28> No - the point is that true constant quality has (almost) no constraints on local bitrate, so one section of a movie might be twenty times the bitrate of another section. Online streaming services continually estimate the current available bandwidth, then choose from a selection of pre-encoded streams to download. For this to work well, the selection must know the maximum local bitrate of each stream to match the estimation. If this local maximum isn't known or constrained, you get buffering because you're attempting to download a stream that's actually currently twenty times more than the available bandwidth.

Whereas your personal video collection probably isn't being streamed over any link slower than several hundred MBit/s, which is more than enough for anything short of intermediate codec bitrates, plus significant buffering doesn't count against any data caps.

<comment><USER27> Makes sense. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Love the closing sentence from this article:

 _I don't know. It's hard to predict because consumers… well… we're fucking stupid._

</comment><comment><USER30> Are they just using H265 HEVC?</comment>


Arduino MKR Vidor 4000 – Arduino, Cyclone 10 FPGA, MiniPCI Express, MicroHDMI - <AUTHOR> https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/MKRVidor4000 <comment><USER2> The $75 price point is okay.

Not sure what this is trying to be other than an eval board for 'also rans' in the FPGA and Cortex-M space. One of the reasons I like the Lattice FPGA boards like the Icebreaker[1] is that there is a complete open source tool chain for them. Seems like adding a processor to something like that might be an interesting place.

[1] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker- fpga](https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker-fpga)

<comment><USER3> Cyclone outclasses any ICE40 out there. If you need the logic capacity or peripherals your options become constrained. The sad thing is that we _had_ cheap Spartan-3's and Spartan-6's with impressive resources but the vendors didn't want to keep making devices with that sort of bang for the buck.

<comment><USER4> You can still buy Spartan 3 and 6 devices - last I checked they're even still being manufactured.

<comment><USER3> The tooling is not supported with bug fixes.

<comment><USER5> Another strike for Xilinx tooling then. Open source tooling can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER6> Same open source discussion again. I'll try to explain short why it will never happen. Since FPGAs have applications outside hobbyist domain, things are getting complicated. There are lawyers involved, support contracts signed and vendors are liable for their silicon. Now imagine some open source toolchain is used and some problems occur. Who's liable? No single vendor will invest a penny into something maintained by somebody else. No single manager on this world will allow me to use 3rd party tools without vendor's support for €1M FPGA design. There is no business case for silicon vendor to open source anything. Maybe brave hackers will reverse engineer bitstream generation, but this knowledge will be used only among hackers and their friends. Personally I don't see any advantage using these tools and writing this in my resume, because nobody will use them in industry anyway.

<comment><USER7> > Maybe brave hackers will reverse engineer bitstream generation

As far as I know, the bitstream for 15K/35K/50K Artix-7 is pretty much done, with Kintex-7 and Zynq devices being WIP [1]. I think there are gaps in support for the various hard blocks and PAR at higher layers of the toolchain, but the bitstream reverse engineering _per se_ isn't a maybe-in-the-future thing.

[1] [https://github.com/SymbiFlow/prjxray](https://github.com/SymbiFlow/prjxray)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That thing came out over a year ago, and the page hasn't been updated in nearly as long. From what I've understood you don't get direct access to the FPGA, rather they've made a few basic peripherals like SPI, UART etc that you can enable.

So it is more like a configurable microcontroller, rather than a fully programmable FPGA, at least that's my understanding.

Which I guess makes sense, given that FPGA programming isn't exactly n00b friendly from what I've gathered.

<comment><USER9> Seeing as there's a SystemVerilog tutorial on the Arduino website, I'm hopeful for more.

<comment><USER10> Here you go. I have followed this guide to program the fpga from the Intel Quartus IDE [http://smartaleks.io/?p=260](http://smartaleks.io/?p=260)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shameless self-plug for something similar in the market: WebFPGA ([https://webfpga.io/kickstarter](https://webfpga.io/kickstarter)). This service actually exposes the full FPGA and allows you to synthesize Verilog remotely (or offline).

<comment><AUTHOR> Love your project!

Now it has its own article on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057511)

Remember to upvote!

(Oh, and "You're welcome!" :-) <g>)

<comment><USER11> Great! Thank you! I definitely see a lot of room for improvement in this field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Question for experts in the field: are there any reasonable FPGA options capable of hosting a small (~2MiB) quantized deep learning model for which there's any sort of a viable, open toolchain?

I've looked into some of Lattice's stuff, and some of their chips seem pretty capable for this, but as with all the other FPGA manufacturers, the toolchain is crazy proprietary. I'm not a huge fan of sinking my time into tooling I have no control over.

<comment><USER4> There is an open source syntheses and bitstream generation for some lattice devices.

It has inferior QoR compared to the closed toolchain.

<comment><USER5> I think in one of the CCCamp19 talks, the ECP5 routing with the OpenSource tooling blew the Lattice tooling out of the water.

FPGA manufacturers have pretty perverse incentives when it comes to filling your FPGA devices up with useless junk.

<comment><USER4> Link to talk? My Google Fu fails me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is the VHDL or Verilog code for MicroHDMI and CSI-2 interfaces available somewhere?

Not sure if this board will be wild success. Diligent has better boards with Xilinx Artix-7 for this price. Arrow MAX1000 is even more affordable. Intel MAX10 is a great device! Learning FPGA means always learning quirks of vendor's IDE.

</comment><comment><USER13> Title is slightly misleading, it isss the mini-pci express connector but the FPGA itself can't talk pci-express as it lacks the necessary transceivers

</comment><comment><USER14> Link to the actual board: [https://store.arduino.cc/mkr- vidor-4000](https://store.arduino.cc/mkr-vidor-4000)

€62.90

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone try Clifford Wolf's tiny risc-v on this fpga?

I'm mainly interested in size and speed for this specific chip and speed grade.</comment>


Upbound Cloud Community Preview - <AUTHOR> https://blog.upbound.io/announcing-upbound-cloud-community-preview/ <comment><USER2> excited to see Crossplane being donated to the CNCF as well: [https://blog.upbound.io/upbound-and-leaders-from-the- cloud-n...](https://blog.upbound.io/upbound-and-leaders-from-the-cloud-native- community-advance-a-new-approach-to-application-and-infrastructure-management- with-crossplane/)

<comment><USER3> Upbound seems to still steering the project for the coming years. In fact, I can even say that it's not really open source so long its direction is set by a commercial entity. It's just that the code is open.

I know that it's important that Upbound makes some money so that it can keep maintaining Crossplane (see poor Docker) but it's just we should be careful about what we call things so that the words don't get meaningless..

<comment><USER4> Crossplane is open-source. You're moving the goal posts on what is "real open- source" in a way that is not reasonable.

Do you also consider Gitlab or Red Hat products to be "not real open-source"? Because they are also controlled by a single commercial entity, yet nobody seems to question their open-source credentials.

> _I know that it 's important that Upbound makes some money so that it can > keep maintaining Crossplane (see poor Docker) but ..._

This is exactly why it's hard for companies like Docker to make money. Giving away a free product is not enough. Open-sourcing all of it is not enough. No, you have to create a bullshit "neutral" governance that ensures small companies like Upbound and Docker are kept in check by Google, Microsoft, IBM, and other giant corporations that can afford to pack committees, hire more contributors, and spend more marketing dollars to associate themselves with the brand.

Those foundations are not about making the projects more open at all. They have become a form of "protection money". Give your project away to a big foundation, indirectly controlled by large corporate sponsors who happen to be your competitors - or see your project sabotaged by people like you calling it "not really open", "evil" and "controlled by the VCs".

<comment><USER3> What I'm saying here is that if one commercial entity controls a project, then it can't ensure that others can trust that one day the feature their product depends on will be gone or changed.

> Do you also consider Gitlab or Red Hat products to be "not real open- > source"?

Would you trust Gitlab so much that you'd build your own business on top of its open code and compete with Gitlab? I'd use Gitlab in my company but I wouldn't build on top of its code and hope that the future releases won't break my product.

> This is exactly why it's hard for companies like Docker to make money.

I agree with you on how hard it is for these companies to make money but then don't make money this way, what can I say? I'm just saying that what we call open-source needs to be neutral and that doesn't necessarily mean Google, Microsoft etc. will crush the company. Not a single open source project is crushed by those if they didn't allow it. It's all about competition and they're making a choice. Some say if you can't compete then collaborate (hand off some parts), some just keep working without them; maybe fail and no one hears about them even if it was a great idea or it was too good for those companies to be destroyed.

<comment><USER4> > _Would you trust Gitlab so much that you 'd build your own business on top > of its open code and compete with Gitlab? I'd use Gitlab in my company but I > wouldn't build on top of its code and hope that the future releases won't > break my product._

That's a legitimate concern. But it has nothing to do with whether or not they are "real" open-source.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Axon [formerly TASER] Offers Free Body Cameras for Every Police Officer in U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/axon-offers-free-body-cameras-for-every-police-officer-in-the-us-300435012.html <comment><USER2> Two important devils in the details:

1) As I understand it, this isn't anything like a charitable act. The cameras are free; they sell the cloud storage and other services. Which is great! A fine strategy. But let's not mistake it for public service.

2) (more importantly) the specific features and details of police cameras are probably more important than those of any other piece of police equipment. If individual officers can turn them off at a crucial moment, then all cops will be _pressured to do so_ in order to cover up perjury by the bad cops. This is how bad apples spoil the bunch.

If, on the other hand, the cameras cannot be turned off at that crucial moment, and the data cannot be hidden from public view via a simple FOIA/FOIL or similar request, this will hugely _empower_ the good and honest cops who can now say, "Sorry bud, I can't turn my camera off and I can't hide the data. You're going to have to own up to what you did."

That small detail can be the difference between a functional, mature civil society and a dystopia.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was curious what they normally charge for the device/service; according to a price list[0] I found from last year, the body cams are $399, the docking stations are $249, and the Evidence.com license is $948/yr (though I'm not familiar with the industry, so I have no idea if anyone actually pays the list prices).

[0] [http://www.nationalipa.org/Contracts/151089/Pricing_2016.pdf](http://www.nationalipa.org/Contracts/151089/Pricing_2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure I like sharing my last name with the company formally known as TASER :/

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems like Taser's response after being massively underbid in NYC.</comment>


Microsoft refuses to comment as .NET developers fret about Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/4443-microsoft-refuses-to-comment-as-net-developers-fret-about-windows-8.html <comment><USER3> I don't know. From that demo, I really doubt that the tiled interface will ever provide enough functionality for these apps to be really useful or as full-featured as their real desktop counterparts.

I see this tile-thingy more as an additional overview-shell, but the real work will remain to be done in the classic apps. This is more comparable to the Mac Dashboard widgets than to a complete UI redesign.

As such, I see no problem in doing these widgets in HTML/JS which is what we have used ever since. The "real" applications will still be done in whatever technology is available under windows.

Of course, everything is just speculation. I just know that I'm sure as hell never going to use a touch interface on my desktop PC nor drag around tiles with the mouse trying to fake enough inertia to get the scrolling to go.

<comment><USER4> I think you are onto something here. I think the tiled interface will be very similar to the Windows Media Center shell. It's a specialized interface for touch, just like WMC is a specialized interface for couch surfing.

In the end it's not going to be very useful for end users unless Microsoft really bites the bullet and forces developers to migrate to the tiled interface, en mass. Apple did that with iOS, basically forcing developers to create entirely new apps, because the input method of touch was so drastically different that apps requiring mouse-level precision would never work. Microsoft will never do that, so instead they need to fragment their OS into two interfaces, touch and classic.

I fear a Windows 8 tablet will be the worst of both worlds. It will need enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings, yet most tablet users are just doing simple media consumption so they can stay in tiled mode most of the time. In the end you bring a product to market that costs $1500, has a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, and gets 4 hours of battery life - not to mention it weighs 3 pounds. Basically you end up with the current crop of Windows tablets. A stylus will probably be included just to make classic mode usable.

I'm not saying there isn't a market for a powerful tablet that can run Windows 8 in classic mode, but those tablets have been around for years and they haven't gotten mass market traction for a reason.

<comment><USER5> Actually MS directly addressed the horsepower aspect. Remember they're going to have this running on ARM. I've used Win7 for consumption scenarios on a $250 netbook - worked like a champ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft's biggest problem is how fractured this new consumer-centric approach is inevitably going to feel for everyone, though devs are probably going to be hit the most, and that spells trouble.

The problem is that Windows has a slew of legacy API's, languages, and frameworks that you can't get rid of without undermining the existing application ecosystem that made it popular. And it seems like they're not willing to get rid of any of that for the new world of web/mobile apps, like Apple did with flying colors. Instead they're shoehorning yet another framework onto an already bloated platform.

So in the end they're trying to apply a lesson from Apple (touch, interactivity) with total disregard for why it worked (simplicity, seamlessness, usability). A recipe for failure if I ever saw one. Ballmer still doesn't get why iPhone won the mobile wars.

<comment><USER7> The iPhone hardly won the mobile wars with Android gaining that much market share (and even in some measurements, exceeding it) - it is a little like saying that the British have won the war of independence because they have the rebels holed up in a fort.

<comment><USER6> By iPhone, I mean the concept, not the brand. And iPhone clearly paved the way for Android.

<comment><USER7> Okay, that I will buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
         *We put up with Windows so we can use C#,
          F# and VS2010*

It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into the equation, so I don't understand what this "fret" is about.

This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises, instead of focusing on getting the job done with minimal friction.

Of course Microsoft was going to let go of the .NET "vision" at some point, as .NET is not applicable to everything. If you believed that by learning .NET you are going to have a unified platform to be able to use it for everything, that's your problem.

It's like believing .NET's CLR is a general-purpose VM. Well, it ain't. Yes it provides some flexibility, but you'll never have Haskell on it. Or a reasonable LUA implementation for that matter.

And in my view, basing this new UI on IE9 and Javascript/HTML is a move in the right direction for Microsoft, one of the few I've seen in years - I mean, why reinvent the wheel instead of leveraging the knowledge of lots of outside developers? Last time I checked, even Adobe AIR had better penetration than Silverlight (total, not counting the number of out-of-browser Silverlight apps or people that use such apps).

<comment><USER9> > I don't understand what this "fret" is about.

My perception is that they are worried that their existing knowledge (in .NET or any other MS dev tech) will not allow them to create applications for this new touch interface. Instead, they will be forced to use a new technology if they want to create an app for the new Windows 8 interface.

<comment><USER10> I get the impression some developers really dislike learning new things.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's learning new things per se. The main thing is they don't like the technology stack and the dev tools.

<comment><USER10> Most of the time, the criticism comes before the first contact with the technology being criticized. For instance, most of the people who criticize Smalltalk's "alien" syntax never finished a single tutorial.

<comment><USER5> I think that does often happen the way you described, but not in this case.

First, to be a dev using the MSFT stack, as I'm sure you know, you learn a new technology every week -- so they're not against learning new things :-)

But more importantly, most of them complaining have used HTML/JS, and many use it regularly for the web side of the house. It's not an obscure language/Fx that people haven't touched before. They maybe haven't written Angry Bird with it (which BTW, their JS looks like it was machine generated -- anyone know how it was done?), but most know the technology decent enough to comment about it.

<comment><USER10> > most of them complaining have used HTML/JS

Using HTML/JS in Internet Explorer is _very_ different from developing on a platform where HTML/JS application development is fully supported. I have been playing for some time with WebOS development and I am quite happy with it.

Anyway, I seriously doubt .NET will be deprecated anytime soon.

<comment><USER5> _Using HTML/JS in Internet Explorer is very different from developing on a platform where HTML/JS application development is fully supported. I have been playing for some time with WebOS development and I am quite happy with it._

This is probably true. But the tooling still leaves a bit to be desired.

I was really excited about WebOS when it first came out, but they just took too long to get the SDK out. I eventually just moved on and haven't gone back. Although I do think the new stuff they're doing looks quite nice.

<comment><USER10> Are you confusing an SDK with an IDE? IIRC, the Palm launched an SDK early on, with a full device emulator. I don't see why an IDE is a basic requirement. I've been on and off IDEs for the past 2000 and, quite frankly, I am perfectly happy with Emacs.

<comment><USER5> No, I was given a Palm Pre (post-release), but didn't have access to the SDK. Here's an article:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134650/Palm_expects_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134650/Palm_expects_wide_availability_of_SDK_for_Pre_this_summer?source=rss_news)

If you were approved you got access, but most didn't. I think jwz ranted about this too. There were all these devs who wanted to write for it, but weren't given access. Eventually I gave the phone back.

General rule, your SDK needs to be done a month before product launch -- unless you're Apple.

<comment><USER10> Odd. I remember getting the SDK _very_ early. Maybe the fact I was a PalmOS developer since ever did play in my favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a .NET developer, I'm not in any way worried that they're going to replace the .NET framework as their primary enterprise platform, with javascript.

For this tile UI, I'm a little surprised - if only because it's quite different from how WinPhone7 works (isn't it?).

<comment><USER12> Let's face it. Thinking that WPF/C# can be replaced by HTML/JS is foolish at best.

The html apps will be the widgetty type applications, while the real working computing applications will be written in solid .NET.

My only concern is this integration of one into the other that they show. It looks like slapping a pig on top of a cow and asking for babies.

<comment><USER11> I would have preferred if they had somehow integrated/replaced the system tray functionality with that of the tiling interface... as my understanding the tiles can mimic most of this functionality, if not do a little more.

I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the __primary __mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses. Think "Windows SideShow".

Of course, this all depends on what MS are planning on doing - and I think they've made yet another PR misstep (even if it's only to developers) in that they've simply not released enough information. I can't decide if they're teasing deliberately in an attempt to drum up interest (working, but I would argue that it's more worry than interest to their target demographic) or whether they actually don't have much more than this demo and that they don't know what their long term plans are (even more worrying?)

<comment><USER5> _I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the primary mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses._

I think their intent is that this new UI is the Windows UI. I think they're going to push devs to use this new UI for all apps unless they need to go to the old UI. Recall that native apps will not be cross platform, so there's motivation for devs to target this new UI to run on x86 and all the ARM variants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All this fear is coming from weak-knee programmers and people who love to bask in FUD.

You don't build applications with logic and complicated function out of HTML and JS. Not today, not tomorrow.

My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS.

Sure, there is GMail and Node.JS as examples. But thats kind of a niche compared to everything else.

HTML and JS are just going to be another way do to UI, and nothing else. You'll still need to write the C# app and use .NET to do the backend.

HTML/JS will be another option right along with XAML/WPF and SilverLight.

<comment><USER14> "My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS."

I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not already been disproven. Javascript isn't the greatest language out there but it's gain functionality that is removing the limitations that uses to plague it compared to other languages. Slow VM is not longer true, no multithreading is not longer true. Webworkes are a little odd for sure, but they still make it possible to build multithreaded applications. WebGL/Canvas allow for some very advanced graphical applications. You can now access local storage, a database (and in node, other databases), new ArrayBuffers and such. It's a different environment now.

<comment><USER13> > I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not > already been disproven.

Please show me examples of these 50k+ line JS applications that have no backend, or run JS on the backend, that are not a mess.

...That you can develop, debug, and tie in with the rest of the system with the same ease (or even 10% of ease) as you can with native .NET apps.

<comment><USER15> Why do you judge sophistication in code by number of lines?

<comment><USER16> I think he's talking about the maintainability of such an app in the hands of your average joe programmer, not the sophistication of the language. Also, static typing does have it's advantages, particularly in that it's easier to write tools for developing and debugging those languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a .NET dev, I'm not worried, MS has invested really heavily into .NET, it's everywhere in their eco-system now. Even if the preferred way to build _some_ desktop apps was HTML/JS, .NET is still going to be in use in many other places.

Even if they did ditch .NET (which I don't think they will), it would take years to do; plenty of time to move to something else ;)

<comment><USER10> Keep in mind those HTML/JS apps will probably have hooks into .NET libraries installed on the system. And I bet that HTML will still be compatible with ActiveX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem with WPF/Silverlight is that Microsoft never managed to make it feel fast enough to compete with native code. The Windows Phone 7 UI is praised because of its excellent performance. Now imagine that Microsoft would have used WPF instead. Because of the Silverlight requirement it's impossible for third party app developers to reach same level of performance as build-in services.

I would like to see a new UI framework that everyone inside Microsoft feels is good enough to use. And give third parties equal access.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. Visual Studio 2010 is testament to your comment.

<comment><USER12> I've got a i7 8gig of ram and SSD and VS2010 runs like a complete pig on a year old project. It's unbelievably bad.

Each time I report problems, they close them saying 'cannot reproduce'. So if that's the case, why do people upvote my issues?

<comment><USER20> There is definitely something weird with the performance of VS 2010 - <USER2> it side by side on two identical laptops on the same project one was unusable and the other was perfectly OK.

<comment><USER19> That might be the graphics card. We purchased ATI FireGL cards to speed up VS performance and it worked!

<comment><USER21> I will concur. Aside from a memory hog, VS2010 performance has been ok on my dev box which has an NVidia Quadro card in it. However, there are still some quirks in the environment that I attribute to WPF bugs. I have frequent redraw issues even after applying SP1. I also noticed that my installation has a whole lot of trouble with datasets and pulling up the designer file. TFS 2010 issues have been the most frustrating thus far though. They are better with SP1, but still exist.

<comment><USER19> I have frequent redraw issues as well with Quadro cards. Particularly when moving VS between screens (we have dual monitor setups). It sometimes whites out portions of it. Occasionally as well it just goes batshit and goes white and flickers as well. Oh and the performance sucks on low end Quadro cards. We upped them to ATI FireGL and they seem ok now. Still not happy about the situation.

<comment><USER22> Have you tried disabling the use of hardware acceleration? WPF seems to have some issues with some graphics cards, or more accurately some graphics cards have some buggy hardware acceleration. Another thing I have noticed is that use over remote desktop and on VMs (specifically VMWare) can have quirks, then again I thought I read somewhere that WPF has to use bitmap remoting instead of primimtive remoting because Windows doesn't offer them any way to take advantage of primitive remoting because they aren't Win32 based (except their root visual which is an HWND, but everything else uses DirectX surfaces), which is a great example of Microsoft teams having pissing contests that just hurts users.

<comment><USER19> Yeah tried that. Didn't make much difference. I think the main issue with the Quadro's was the poor quality of drivers more than anything else. Even the WHQL ones are junk.

VMware - forget it - unusable. All our infrastructure is VMware based and we have to do remote debugging on VM's via RDP. Yuck. I think when RDP is used it falls back to a GDI+ backend as HW accelerated primitives cannot be thrown down an RDP link and then uses tiles (as you state).

This is all down to the fact that RDP came before DWM. If it was the other way around we'd be throwing surfaces down the wire which would be nice.

<comment><USER23> >> This is all down to the fact that RDP came before DWM. If it was the other way around we'd be throwing surfaces down the wire which would be nice.

The joke here is that on Vista to Vista RDP connections (.NET 3.0), WPF was properly remoted over the wire and rendered on the client machine instead of bitmaps being sent. This was removed in .NET 3.5. (<http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=216>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone who has worked enterprise in the eastern half of the U.S. knows better than to be worried by this. There are so many mission-critical business applications written in C#, and even VB.net, that the idea of .NET jobs going away in the next 15 years, even if MS were to abandon the product today, is nil.

Where I live I would guess that at least 90% of job postings for programmers are .NET.

<comment><USER24> How many of these mission critical business systems are written with WPF or Silverlight for the native front-end? I don't know the numbers, but my guess is that the bulk would still be Winforms.

I think a lot of people who develop desktop front ends for .NET (and want to develop on new projects) would have put effort into learning Silverlight and/or WPF and are afraid that the effort is going to be wasted, as they need to learn another technology.

<comment><USER15> What exactly does learning Silverlight entail that differs from learning any other .NET environment? XAML is just an xml markup. I only used it on a WP7 app and it took me a couple of hours to get the gist of how it works.

<comment><USER25> Not much really, especially if you limit the XAML to basic layouts. If you do everything in C#, it's not too much different from something like, say, WinForms. Which is why people like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Last time Silverlight was in the headlines it was because, surprise, MS was pushing HTML5/JS over it. Same deal here, I can't say I'm too shocked this time.

Although now their API situation is more of a mess, with normal native APIs plus HTML5 for Windows now, then there's Silverlight for Windows Phone 7. Makes you wonder if they didn't have any foresight about this decision when choosing WP7's set of APIs.

</comment><comment><USER27> The idea that Microsoft is going to go the IOS route is so completely contrary to the interests of their primary customer bases - business and enterprise - that it is only the constant call of the techpress for Microsoft to be more like Google or Apple which gives the idea credence.

Windows has had HTML and script based Apps in the form of HTA's for a long time (i.e. IE5). So in many ways the buzz seems more of a marketing coup than a revolutionary new approach (aimed at getting consumers to enable scripting on desktop installations). I suspect Silverlight to be deprecated as a web technology because it has many of the same issues as Flash (for which it was always intended as an alternative/replacement), but .NET is here to stay. It is .NET that facilitates the expanding ability of Windows to run on diverse architectures - since Windows Vista the Windows OS is essentially .NET for many purposes and Windows 8 and WP7 are extensions of that roadmap. A roadmap which, again, is business focused and tailored to provide stability.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%2...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application>

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200874>

<comment><USER28> Windows had never made it into "essentially .NET". Longhorn was going to be the first one, but it was scraped and Vista is essentially Win32/Win64 APIs with pre-installed .NET framework. I doubt there's anything in Windows client that is written in .NET - server is a different story though.

<comment><USER5> Windows Media Center is written in .NET.

<comment><USER28> Which, BTW, uses its own proprietary UI framework, not even XAML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms. Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true.

There's something to be said about breadth versus depth.

<comment><USER24> _Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms. Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true._

This is an unfortunate, and valid criticism. I've worked with senior C# and VB developers who hadn't encountered the concept of an (OO) interface, but they got along just fine with their day-to-day jobs, copy-pasting. However, I do feel sympathy for them - they were so insulated from the wider programming and CS communities, that they didn't even realize there were other things happening in the wider dev world. Their fault was one of ignorance, not arrogance (and of believing everything Microsoft told them at the developer events they attended).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the bigger issue here is how Microsoft is handling the dissemination of coming changes. Why on earth say nothing except 'please wait until september'. Between now and September I could learn object-c and move to another platform. Just a really unwise approach. At the minimum they should be saying, '...your investment in the Microsoft stack will not be lost, C#, F# and VisualStudio are important technologies that we are committed too...'.

So here we are left to speculate as to what happens next. I can't believe they would simply toss all the technology out - what's the alternative for true native apps, pure C++?

As far as the HTML5/Javascript thing goes - hell yeah, I switched to using html(4/5)/javascript and css(2/3) for my front-end code over a year ago. I think this is actually a pretty shrewd move and likely will be more a focus for the tablet and phone developer side allowing easier porting across all the emerging platforms. The fact that I may be able to use that same tech for Windows desktop apps is nice bonus, but like we all saw on iOS - nothing beats native for the best client experience, at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER31> What's to stop you from putting a Silverlight APP in the tiled interface? Silverlight runs OK now in HTML pages so in theory it should work in the HTML + JS Win8 box as well :)

<comment><USER32> I think what is more troubling is that Microsoft has apparently signaled a major shift in the preferred way to develop programs for the Windows platform _and_ simultaneously refused to address the implications for developers, asking them to wait for further announcements in September.

That's a recipe for fear, uncertainty and doubt within the tribe itself.

Put another way: it's hard to reconcile _"Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"_ with _"We're changing things radically concerning the way you develop, but we won't tell you how-- hold tight until September, 'mmm-kay?"_

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER33> There's a huge number of business developers this won't affect. .NET and "normal" desktop, web and server apps are still the bread and butter for these folks. Not everyone is on the bleeding edge.

<comment><USER34> There is a turf war at the moment between MS, Apple and Goog. Developers take time to tool up and skill up, and amidst all the gunsmoke and fog of war, we all have to decide who to pledge our allegiance to. By not mentioning Silverlight or WPF, MS is effectively switching sides from developers who have invested in exclusively MS tech to those who are far less partisan, and it hurts.

<comment><USER24> _MS is effectively switching sides from developers who have invested in exclusively MS tech to those who are far less partisan, and it hurts._

Microsoft does seem to be inching away from its traditional developer base to broaden its appeal.

Lightswitch seems to be another example. I doubt that it will be as empowering for non-developers as the marketing suggests, but it should reduce the effort/expertise required in creating well-architected CRUD apps, making in- house development easier and exerting downward pressure on project costs. This will hurt some consulting shops.

But Microsoft's duty isn't to look after its loyal developers, it is to maximize shareholder value.

<comment><USER34> Lightswitch is Silverlight wrapped in a good practice framework, just like Wavemaker generates code on Spring.

I had a play with Lightswitch and I liked it. It is like MS Access. I'm surprised they positioned this at the developers rather than power users though. Perhaps there is a wall between the tools division and the Office division.

On the topic of loyalty, platform companies are like the Mafioso. Loyalty or the lack of it cuts both ways. MS tech is not the easiest to learn. The reason MS got away with it for years is because Sun was even worse.

<comment><USER24> _I had a play with Lightswitch and I liked it. It is like MS Access. I'm surprised they positioned this at the developers rather than power users though._

They _are_ positioning at power users, but it does seem like more of a developer tool. I think it will appeal to less-skilled or time constrained developers more than to power users. I've turned down side projects, where Lightswitch would have been extremely helpful because of time constraints.

I have worked in consulting places where income is generated, especially during lulls, with the sort of apps that Lightswitch is supposed to generate. I expect, if Lightswitch works as advertised, to see less of those projects.

 _MS tech is not the easiest to learn. The reason MS got away with it for years is because Sun was even worse._

My personal hope is that Microsoft feels threatened enough to produce some silver bullets for business application development, or at least to try.

<comment><USER35> I dunno - .NET has long felt like that silver bullet to me. It's rare for me to enthuse over a programming language, but C# is fantastic and F# great in its own niche, and .NET tends to have all the bells, whistles, and gongs that I feel benefit me as a developer.

<comment><USER36> That _is_ the problem. The system is very complicated and verbose to use.

Lets say you want to write a program that extracts all links from a web page. How would you go about this? First, you look up in the documentation how to load a web page over http. This requires several lines of code, and it's complicated enough that you don't know it by heart after the first time you've done it. From there on it gets easier: you get a library and read the documentation to parse HTML and use an xpath or css selector to load all the links and then read of the href attribute. All of this probably requires around 15 lines of code, with various method calls that you have to look up.

In Ruby, I do this:

        doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open('http://google.com'))
        urls = doc.css('a').map{|link| link[:href]}

I know how to do this by heart because there are just a couple of things to remember. Not having to look at any documentation to do simple stuff like this saves a lot of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love the first comment in the original thread, specifically:

>"Microsoft has first class cross-platform application framework called Silverlight and they want us to right freaking javascript."

Yeh, because js isn't a first class, cross platform language...

<comment><USER38> To be fair, it should be _a lot_ less expansive to get a complex UI running for 90% of a typical user base with silverlight, provided that your business model allows you to ignore the fsf crowd. In the context of those touchy-feely applications for windows 8, it is a hysterically stupid move to force developers into the web stack, and then tell them to go fuck themselves and port the whole shit to Silverlight for WP7 devices. It is really less "cross platform", considered what platforms those devs care about.

I can think of very few reasons for this idiocy besides relations between OS and devtools devision having quietly deteriorated from post WWII style peace to nuclear war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a market strategy. Microsoft knows desktop apps, WPF, Silverlight are losing the battle against HTML5/CSS/JS based apps, the most obvious movement Microsoft could have done is create a 2 minute video of their next OS and say "hey Web Developers, you can use your web skills here too".

Also, this video says nothing about the architecture behind this "Launcher"(because that what it looks like), there are a lot of possibilities. May be IE10 has some kind of <protected-frame> element so you can specify certain permissions like network access, file system access and stuff, maybe it requires a manifest in which you can specify what "DOM manipulation technology" do you want to use, the most obvious options are:

\- A Javascript (IE9 code-name "Chakra" engine) based file. \- A JScript.NET file. \- Any DLR based language file. \- Any .NET assembly decorated with some fashion attributes like <Windows8Launcher.TileDomBehindAttribute(typeof(MyTileHandler))> or something which you can easily compile with any .NET compiler like C#, VB.NET, C++ CLI, etc.

May be developing in HTML is completely optional and each Tile can be developed using Silverlight or Windows Presentation Foundation technologies... we don't know.

We know that Microsoft is a legacy company, they will not abandon .NET anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER40> .NET is not going away anytime soon. If anything I feel this further deprecates silverlight. There is no way that MS expects the majority of apps to be written in HTML+JS, it's just an option to make it easy for those used to HTML+JS to write apps on the platform, in the same vein as writing an HTML+JS app for iPhone. Most serious Windows applications are written in C++ for Win32 anyway, VS which is becoming more and more .NET everyday still has heavy roots in COM/Win32. Office integration is still best done in C++. No these apps aren't whats fueling the consumer web but they make big bucks for the vendors who write them, and ensure platform lockin to Windows as MS tries to transition away from their desktop monopoly.

MS is not stupid enough to pull another Vista and make apps that used to work not work. Even if MS were very serious about transitioning everything to HTML+JS you'd be looking at a 10-15 year timeline. The day you see Office written in HTML+JS is the day to start worrying if you're a Win32 / .NET app developer.

</comment><comment><USER41> .NET bleh. HTML5 is the future, cross platform. JavaScript will be made into a robust language in the coming years, with classes, etc.

The crappy DOM will probably change for the better, HTML5 apps will run as local apps and tap into the native APIs of the system.

Client = HTML5 + JS , yes we dont need .NET here, where .NET/C/C# and others will be used, will be in the backend, frontend/client can be perfectly made with HTML5 + JS.

The only exception is perhaps games and apps such as Photoshop, but 90% of enterprise stuff that is simply thin clients speaking to a big backend database+etc can be perfectly made with HTML5.

HTML5 is here to stay, .NET will be the exception. (Games/Heavy backend/3D apps/Photoshop) sort of things... nothing more.

Or who knows, maybe in the future with WebGL and what not even some more complicated games can be made just with HTML5.

<comment><USER42> I agree with all of this. BUT it'll take a while to get there. .NET will be around for a long time in the backend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It seems kind of odd that Microsoft would be all in with Azure and then drop the .Net framework.

</comment><comment><USER44> This does remind me of the "no-native-.NET-support" Windows Sidebar attempt. It failed in the end, but even there one of the first things we did was find a way to host .NET elements in the sidebar (and it was possible, but you had to jump through many hoops). We will have to wait and see, but I can't imagine there will not be a way to host Silverlight in one of the tiles.

Also this whole "every app is going to be html + javascript" does remind me of the earlies Apple IPhone developer offerings.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can only imagine the turf wars raging right now about this apparent dichotomy between classic and tiled. I assume my friends there are not having a very happy day.

</comment><comment><USER45> We should have something like GWT that compiles .NET to whatever Microsoft thinks developers should use.

<comment><USER46> For HTML5, we already have one: <http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html>

<comment><USER47> That's not exactly a fully supported toolset. There is another C# to js compiler <http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp> which is AFAICT another side project.

If one of these were to stick - it would first need to be supported be a somewhat larger organization (ala apache foundation for java components, or google for GWT/Closure).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The web-based API looks like the Active Channels 2ND attempt, there's nothing like history to get a glimpse of the future. [1]

[1]: <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768176.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER49> Microsoft seems to have lost all sense of direction. I just see them launching a bunch of superficially considered me-too initiatives instead of anything meaty. They still are the gorilla, but it almost looks like they've given up. Is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER50> fwiw, there are apparently a fair number of newly added .NET-related dlls and stuff in the leaked Win8 alpha builds.

</comment><comment><USER51> you should be able to get all of the .net specific stuff you want via jscript what is the big deal here?

</comment><comment><USER52> That shows the risks of vendor lock in. Although I don't believe MS will replace .NET with html5/js in any regard it shows pretty good why you shouldn't commit too much to vendor specific/centric technologies.

<comment><USER17> Based on that logic no one should be building iPhone or iPad apps. You have to commit to something at some point. The odds of a company ditching a product they have invested hugely into is probably the same as the odds of an open technology or framework simply becoming unpopular.

<comment><USER53> You can commit to something, for a time, without pushing everything else out of your brain. I spent quite some time doing iOS development, and it would certainly not be the end of the world if the entire toolchain changed tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't see what the problem is. It's a logical step and it's better for the mind than filling it up with .Net APIs.

I think the most vitriolic responses have been from people who have either been brainwashed by WebForms or never had to do anything on the web before.

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't feel sorry for anybody who invests everything in a single platform. That is a simple recipe for quickly becoming obsolete.</comment>


Ask HN: NY lottery  $500 Million - Why do people insist on buying tickets? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Probably have a better chance hitting the lottery than striking gold creating a startup.

<comment><USER3> Don't spoil the fun!!!

<comment><USER4> I don't see how GP post spoils the fun of playing lottery.

<comment><USER3> the fun of becoming millionaire with your startup...

<comment><USER2> good luck :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's rational. Sometimes. If the expected value is more than a dollar, and the ticket costs a dollar, you should buy a ticket : See: [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2001/08/is_po...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2001/08/is_powerball_a_mugs_game.html)

If you limit it to about two dollars a year it's also a cheap entertainment to fantasize about hitting the numbers.

Otherwise it's a tax on people who can't do math.

</comment><comment><USER6> The math is quite simple:

The probability of winning millions from a lottery is greater than the probability of making millions from working (for most people).

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not the NY lottery, but a multistate lottery called "MegaMillions". And people buy tickets for many reasons. Neverminding "being rich seems awesome," I imagine the two chief reasons are:

-They can afford to throw away a few bucks every now and then.

-They know they have no opportunity to be so wealthy otherwise.</comment>


Comcast switches on the first public gigabit cable modem - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/27/comcast-intros-first-gigabit-cable-modem/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic!! Now their customers can exceed their data cap in 42 mins.

</comment><comment><USER3> The real story here is that they activated someone's Internet without putting them on hold for hours.

P.S.A. - Don't forget to message @ComcastCares on Twitter if you need customer service from Comcast. They actually help you if you tweet them.</comment>


Redbus-world's largest bus booking platform moved from full .net to .net core - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/redbus-in/how-redbus-moved-its-desktop-web-to-dot-net-core-insights-2c966023bb2e <comment><USER2> As an enthusiast about Linux and C# it's great to see .NET Core growing in use.</comment>


Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/will-cloud-computing-make-everything-and-everyone-work-harder <comment><USER2> A lot of things which we think are laws of nature, such as "people need to have A Job", are in fact just effects of a peculiar-to-one-time-in-history economic phenomena, like "transaction costs and overhead in arranging employment so dominate returns to labor that it is more efficient to maintain simultaneous overstaffing and underutilization of almost the entire professional work force than it is to fill orders for work like we fulfill orders for pizzas."

Tech has a wee bit of an effect in changing these economic underpinnings of how the culture works. So do economic arrangements, social pressures, the health of the alternative models, etc. (For a few decades there it was more economical in Japan to buy/sell labor in fifty year blocks than it was to buy it in two week chunks, like it is bought in America. That system is no longer healthy, which makes the two week chunk option more appealing.)

Anyhow, it is by no means a given that the net result of increasing efficiency is working harder. The Internet makes it really efficient for me to negotiate I've-got-brains-you've-got-money-lets-trade relative to the traditional employment system in this neck of the woods. This caused my economic output to go waaaay the heck up and my hours worked to _crater_.

<comment><USER3> If think Society is changing and we have to change radicaly to not end up in big social troubles (class wars ...).

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

(Im talk about a system for Switzerland)

I propose a "basic income" no strings attached (Everybody gets X$ per month and all wages are reduced by X$ is the short version of how it works) with this we replace all the diffrent social systems we have nowdays (money for kids, unemployment, AHV (money for the retired ...).

This will liberate people in the sence that they don't have to hang on to there jobs even if they are badly treated, they wont be social outcasts if they dont have a job.

instead give them insentives to improve there education (and thereby you could then get a job in a high tec economy), to be more entrepreneurial (find out what people really need and trie to provid it).

A more importend example for the people here is app marked development. App marked made it possible to start a project in a small team and make money relativly fast. The insentive to trie something like this is much greater and you can't fall that far.

It may not be the best model in pure economic groth terms but I hope it is a good model for a sustainable healthy society in a world where it is very hard to have full employment (because the economy changes to fast).

<comment><USER4> Most people, given a no-strings-attached basic income, will NOT use it as an opportunity to educate themselves and become entrepreneurial; instead, they get LAZY and fiercely protective of that state.

Not having a job isn't about being a social outcast, it's about not producing enough value/wealth to exchange for the cost of continuing existence. As an old book famously observed, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat"; that's not punitive, that's the economics of biology.

<comment><USER5> What happens if you make the stipend contingent on educating yourself somehow?

<comment><USER6> Education is a symptom of value creation, not the cause of it.

In other words, education alone brings no value to society. If there is no incentive to create value, because you are already given an income with no strings attached, that education will not be put to any meaningful use.

It seems to me that the stipend would need to be based on a plan to create value for society. If some level of education is required in order to proceed with that plan, it could be granted as part of the implementation.

This reasonably mirrors the way entrepreneurs operate, which is essentially what we want to duplicate. The dream always comes before the education. The education is only a means to an end.

<comment><USER3> Well education by itself creats value for you and the people you talk.

It not socialism, when you acctully learn something/do something you will be able to get more.

<comment><USER4> You have to want to create value. As a teacher, I am amazed at how many students lack the will to create, to do the work - and they fail at great cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The issue I have with this type of question is that it assumes the transaction costs to switch between tasks is 0 or minimal. If so, then yes, huge efficiencies can be gained by figuring out where people are underutilized when and making use of that capacity. If the tasks are all similar and easy to switch contexts (i.e. the call centre in the article is probably a good example?), then OK, makes sense.

But for a lot of things, switching contexts is expensive. Productivity drops, and any cost savings can be easily nullified. One may argue that the capacity wasn't going to be used anyway, so it's a waste if not used. But I find the calculations used to estimate capacity assume that transaction costs for switching contexts is 0 instead of some large number. Thus, they actually overestimate capacity, thereby causing not only lowering productivity because they jam too many contexts into the space that still need to be handled on time, but also lower job dissatisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the article is about squeezing out inefficiencies all over through centralized IT systems, but only if you see our free time as "inefficient" would you extend this idea to our personal lives.

The problem is that in a global economy one could argue that American workers are competing with Chinese workers that do work 7 days a week and have no free time.

Personally I think that there are plenty of places where the effect the article documents could be productively put to use for the benefit of everyone. e.g. most commuter cars have one person each. A giant centralized database of everyones commutes could make carpooling as easy as pushing a button on your phone over breakfast and seeing "be outside in 3 minutes" in response.

That's just one example. I'm sure there are others, "think smarter not harder" should be the idea in general.

</comment><comment><USER9> To answer the question posed by the article's title: No.

It will provide people with the opportunity to work harder if that's their preference.

As for downward pressure on wages. That's only a bad thing if there is no proportionately downward pressure on prices. Many of these services make markets more competitive (LiveOps versus traditional call centers, AirBnB versus traditional accommodations). So prices will probably drop more than wages.

This also benefits people in economically weak areas. Not just globally but also in the US, e.g. Deep South, Rust Belt, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> _This kind of machine-made urgency to utilize everything, creating lower prices (and for many, lower wages)_

Lower Prices = good for the common person.

I don't think this would cause lower wages per se, if more people are doing less work (and getting less total pay), then this will lower the average wage. However that's not too important. More people have more money! yay!

<comment><USER11> What it will properly do is to make it so that the same person gets different wages based on which part of the job he is doing.

For example as a software developer you may make $50/hr at your main job but at your weekend call center spare time thing you only make $10/hr. This will not drive your wage down but it will drive your _average_ wage down.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about this myself: people become more machine-like, being more fully utilized.

The article resonates with me because I work from home for several customers and I always have work tasks queued up. It takes some discipline to take time off.

</comment><comment><USER12> The average wage on Mechanical Turk is $1.40/hour.

If we delete the "cloud computing" buzzword and instead insert "crowdsourcing labor to the lowest cost source worldwide", and for "everyone" we substitute "U.S. workers", then yes, it's clear that over time this will accelerate the wage depression in the United States which has already been occurring.

</comment><comment><USER13> this is the most flagrant abuse of the word "cloud" i've seen yet.</comment>


Francis Cricks 1953 letter to his 12 year old son Michael - <AUTHOR> http://blog.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Crick-letter-to-Michael1.pdf "After scientist Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, he penned a letter to his 12-year-old son describing what he and James Watson found."<p>From auction site: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/in-other-words-we-think-we-have-5665783-details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5665783&sid=9629156b-4f2a-4708-8910-4526efc6a4de <comment><AUTHOR> Sold for 5.3 million at christies: URL -> [http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/in-other-words-we- thi...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/in-other-words-we-think-we- have-5665783-details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5665783&sid=9629156b-4f2a-4708-8910-4526efc6a4de)</comment>