Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/stop_tracking_increase_revenue_effectiveness/ <comment><USER3> This article discusses the Dutch national broadcaster NPO's switch from targeted ads to _contextual_ advertising, placing advertisements based on the content of the publisher site instead of user features of the person reading the page.

STER mentioned in the article is NPO's ad agency. The whitepaper is available on STER's site: [https://www.ster.nl/onderzoek/een-toekomst-zonder- advertenti...](https://www.ster.nl/onderzoek/een-toekomst-zonder- advertentiecookies-het-kan/)

I haven't read the whitepaper (waiting on the English language version.) Where the increased revenue is coming from isn't really clear. It seems really unlikely they're increasing revenue by charging more per impression.

Cutting out the ad network could make up for it, but then this seems like a case of STER setting itself up as supply platform. It works great for large publishers, but doesn't really scale.

Totally related: expect to see more if these articles. The demise of third- party cookies is coming and groups like W3C's Web Advertising Business Group [[https://www.w3.org/community/web-adv/](https://www.w3.org/community/web- adv/)] and efforts like Chromium's privacy sandbox [[https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy- sandb...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox)] are picking up steam.

<comment><USER4> I still struggle to understand why people seem surprised when contextual advertising works better than targeted.

Targeted works on social media because that's the context, the user is looking for a distraction and ads can be as effective a distraction as your aunt's cat. Showing me ads for a new car when I'm reading about a terrorist attack is just the stupidest thing I can imagine. There's no context, no intent.

If I'm on a car site reading about the best new hot hatches and you show me an ad for your new hot hatch, then that's a whole different scenario.

It doesn't "scale", but advertisers get higher intent traffic, publishers can charge a higher premium, and the ads feel native so the customers might actually appreciate them. The extra effort is worth it.

<comment><USER5> OOC, what does "Scale" even mean here? is the OP saying you cannot infinitely serve ads because a given piece of content only attracts a finite number of viewers? or that there are a finite number of subject for a piece of content that can have relevant ads served?

To borrow your terrorist example, presumably there are no advertisers (that we permit and condone) who would like to advertise terrorism related products?

Do we have any reasonable numbers for what portion of actual web traffic is related to either product/service research or future purchase plans? My impression of my own browsing traffic is that it is probably about 50% by number of page loads.

<comment><USER3> "what does "Scale" even mean here?"

I meant in context of the number of publishers that advertisers need to deal with to purchase impressions.

Cutting out the ad networks probably makes sense for Ster and NPO. I know nothing about Dutch media, but I'm guessing they're big enough to court large brands with big marketing budgets on their own.

[edit: The "Mass media in the Netherlands" Wikipedia page is bananas: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_the_Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_the_Netherlands). I'm gathering advertising on NPO is regulated by a public body; the STER from the article.]

<comment><USER6> NPO is the public broadcaster umbrella organization. It could very roughly be compared to e.g. BBC, with the big caveat that NPO itself does not create any content. Instead, its member broadcasters do. That's a relic of the Dutch pillarized system. NPO is funded both through taxes, and through advertisements. STER is the organization that handles the latter, and indeed it is a public body.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always thought that the "advanced tracking" touted by some in AdTech was:

1\. Generally not that advanced (yes I searched for hotels in Florida and so yes I'm probably taking a trip to Florida... don't need fancy ML to figure that out.)

2\. Not that smart. (Hey we actually got back from our Florida vacation two months ago... don't need to keep seeing hotel offers for Florida!)

It totally makes sense that just "dumb" targeting (show people adverts related to the content on the page they are currently looking at, which requires no tracking) might actually work better than all the black magic products companies promote.

<comment><USER8> My girlfriend is currently experiencing the dark side of smart tracking. Female who hit 30 and is in a stable relationship.

The ML just can't figure her out. One day every ad is for dating sites, the next day it's all babies and pregnancy, then engagement rings, wedding locations, more dating sites, a few days of houses to buy ... it's like the algorithms can't decide what life stage she's in.

<comment><USER9> > it's like the algorithms can't decide what life stage she's in

Or, it's working on figuring that out.

<comment><USER10> When my first kid was born, all the ads I got where either baby clothes, daipers etc., or Second Love. A clear separation between A and B

<comment><USER11> Makes me wonder if there are a lot of people who start cheating once they get a child. What exactly is that algorithm trained on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It actually makes a lot of sense when you think about. Sure, you may be interested in buying fishing gear, but not while reading an article about Tour De France.

One of the reasons Google have been able to make a ton of money on ads on google.com is because they are able to deliver contextual ads based on you search. Google isn't using targeted ads on google.com. Think about that for a second. The worlds most visited site and largest ad company is NOT displaying ads based on tracking users on their own main site. They are showing you contextual ads.

Search for "cement" on Google, you're not getting ads for the washing machine you looked at on another site yesterday. Google most likely have the data to target you and show you washing machine ads, but they choose to show you an ad relevant to your search.

Are we really surprised that contextual ads might generate more revenue?

<comment><USER13> > Google isn't using targeted ads on google.com.

They sure are targeted. The ads depends on your location, demographic, past browsing, past ad interaction, and many other things. [https://support.google.com/google- ads/answer/1704368?hl=en](https://support.google.com/google- ads/answer/1704368?hl=en)

They have more context of what you're after and what's more effective + the ad keywords limit the audience. But in your situation if there's any crossover between washing machines and cement that will bring clicks, you can be sure they know about it and will serve it.

<comment><USER12> That's a fair point, the ads are almost always localized at least. Still they're also not random, they are related to your search.

You don't really need much more that a GeoIP database to figure out where in the world you user is coming from, and that should be enough to deal with the location targeting. I'm not sure you'd need much more information about the users than that.

<comment><USER14> But they're still incredibly targeted. They're not just using info from your search, although that information is highly relevant in choosing what ad to display.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >STER says that non-personalised ads are "just as effective", measured by number of clicks an ad attracts, though the click-through is not a complete analysis of effectiveness.

The fight against Google and Facebook (and soon Amazon) is still strong in the trenches.

How to fight the massive data hoarders that have no competition, and have their data locked down so no publisher can access it? Well you try to dismiss the value of data.

Then they make the mistake of evaluating the effectiveness of ads by the number of clicks and CTR... yeah... big red flag there.

It's easy to see a publisher get more money out by cutting out players in the value chain, and probably dropping the bidding of their inventory (doesn't matter if it's on cpm or cpc).

The problem always ends up with the inventory left out to be monetized, greed is a hell of a thing...

<comment><USER16> >> data locked down so no publisher can access it?

Maybe I didn't understand but are you suggesting hoarded data shouldn't be locked down and any publisher should have access to it?

<comment><USER15> I'm saying that at some point in time, MAYBE, there was the discussion of large media groups to pressure policies to make that data available to them.

Thankfully it never happened, and things like GDPR came forward instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Presumably because the ads are already hyper targeted, because the site is written in Dutch! Now imagine you run an English ad for say, a local micro brewery in LA. It's totally obvious that you don't want to waste money on people who don't drink, don't live in America, or are 12 years old.

Clearly there's significant diminishing returns to how specifically you target, but it's completely ridiculous to claim that untargeted ads are even a fraction as good.

<comment><USER18> I think the implication is that using the context of the _page_ to serve ads to users (i.e. you're reading an article on beer, so I'm serving you an ad about beers) is better than using context _about the user_ to serve ads (i.e. you're reading an article about beers, and I'm serving you ads about that one item you've searched on Amazon last week).

<comment><USER19> > I think the implication is that using the context of the page... is better > than using context about the user

I think this is largely true. My favourite ad-supported site is The Online Photographer, a blog on photography which has ads about... camera equipment. No tracking or 3rd party script required.

[0]: [https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogr...](https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html)

<comment><USER15> Part of the problem os contextual ads is wastage.

One of the advantages of tracking users is to optimize your spend, taking into account your reach and the frequency a user see's your ad.

The result could be during one month you're seeing a Guitar Brand Ad in your favorite music blog, and you're a saxophone player. Yet the ad was shown to you 30+ times, when in reality it could have been capped to 10-12 times.

Some brands can afford this wastage, and factor in for it - hell some brands thrived with wastage (like those who grew in TV golden age, for example P&G) - but for a lot of them, this is too much.

<comment><USER20> Is it really wasted though? Back when I still bothered to watch TV with ads, I felt like seeing the same ad for the same product dozens of times per day had a brainwashing effect. It gets into your head.

At the very least it creates brand awareness and you're unlikely to forget about the company or the product. It also forms a strong association between the subject (in the parent's case, professional photography) and the brand/product.

Even if it doesn't result in a direct sale it might still be highly beneficial for the brand.

I mean if it wasn't, would we see so much product placement in movies and TV? Those are not proper ads, there's no call to action, the viewer has to go looking for the product if they like it. But it does wonder for brand recognition and prestige.

<comment><USER15> >Is it really wasted though? Back when I still bothered to watch TV with ads

The world was a very different place back then. Where the majority of "housewives" (as in the person who makes the decisions - and bought - <USER2> house purchases) were actually the wives, and ad jingles was part of the soundtrack of our existence. Attention was less split and focused mainly on TV, and fewer players had access to it.

And you're right, it did have a brainwashing effect, and I bet to this day you still know the lyrics or you can hum songs from jingles, or you know brand claims by heart. People underestimated that.

But still like you, hundreds of million of people never consumed, became customers, recommended or influenced any decision for a lot of those brands - but for those brands it was still worth it. It was part of their business model - mass media + a big share of shelf in large retailers. Coca Cola Company, P&G, Mars, and many other mammoths grew with this.

>I mean if it wasn't, would we see so much product placement in movies and TV?

The problem is that TV is different from the Internet, still to this day. Just because they share the same type of media (video), it's different how you watch and how you manage your attention.

A banner in a website is very different from a spot in break on a TV show. Even a preroll on youtube is different from a tv spot - because if you're not watching the tv spot and you're fiddling with your phone, the sound is there, and it grabs your attention for a fraction of time.

I'm not saying that high frequency doesn't work - it does work very well! Does wonders! But wastage makes it expensive, and it works differently depending on the media..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd really need to see actual numbers for this, especially as this is kind of contrary to the yearly report Ster released two weeks ago. In this they stated that while the first couple months of 2020 were more or less in line with their budget, they dropped to below budget after corona. I have some trouble believing they made a budget based on a 60% increase from the preceding year.

[https://www.ster.nl/media/2ssmp5p5/ster- jaarverslag_2019.pdf](https://www.ster.nl/media/2ssmp5p5/ster- jaarverslag_2019.pdf)

<comment><USER22> Also noteworthy is that the Dutch government has decided to seriously limit the amount of ads on NPO TV channels and websites. No ads before 8 PM on TV, no ads at all on the websites.

<comment><USER23> I don't think they implemented the `no ads before 8PM on tv` yet. I'm actually surprised about how open they are about advertising costs per second for each block on the npo1 channel [1].

[1] [https://www.ster.nl/media/rrifn3t0/npo-1-juni-2020-gewijzigd...](https://www.ster.nl/media/rrifn3t0/npo-1-juni-2020-gewijzigd- op-22-juni.pdf)

<comment><USER24> I don't speak dutch, but does this mean that cost on average 1000 euros for a 30 second ad? Or is it per minute? (it as 30" on top not sure if it is minimum block you need or per 30 seconds)

I would expect a lot more to be honest! (I know it changes and I bet those values around some specific events to be bigger, but still)

<comment><USER25> The price list is indeed for a 30-second television ad. However, it seems like you can't just buy one slot, you need to spend >€30k before they start to do business with you.

[in Dutch] [https://www.ster.nl/hoe-werkt-het/tv-reclame-bij- ster/](https://www.ster.nl/hoe-werkt-het/tv-reclame-bij-ster/)

<comment><USER24> Cool! Thank you for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In essence they cut out adtech middlemen who rake up to 70% of the ad revenue for themselves to run the real-time bidding which underpins tracking-based ads, and sold less effective content based ads but, by taking the revenue all for themselves, ended up way ahead.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd need to see the site before and after to confirm but maybe it is due to the faster page load speed? Tracking scripts these days are quite heavy and really affect loading times (especially on mobile)

<comment><USER28> If tracking scripts are correctly set up they're asynchronous and don't affect load times.

<comment><USER29> They load over the wire quickly though the rendering of them and the jitter they can cause on the page gives the impression the page hasn't loaded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't get why people are viewing user-based and content-based signals as two totally separate things.

Aren't most ad providers using both to serve ads? Some people here are saying _of course_ basing ads on the page will work better, and hence tracking cookies (or for some, even ML/AI) are useless... if that was the case, why are all these different players building all this infrastructure and developing these complex models? Just for fun?

Clearly, knowing that this is an article about pets helps. But knowing that you've been specifically reading articles about dog food gives you that extra information to serve particularly relevant ads (rather than say, display hamster cages).

</comment><comment><USER31> Why does the NPO, the Dutch equivalent to the PBS, even run commercial advertisements? Aren't they funded by the people's taxes?

<comment><USER32> because otherwise we'd pay ourselves blue.

<comment><USER31> With 17 million citizens I think that's unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Everybody knows that bad targeting and bad ad quality results in a _temporary_ bump in revenue. This is because there are short-term quality assumptions baked into the advertisers' bids. Eventually the bad quality cycles back through the market and prices fall.

Within Google I saw several post-mortem reports where the "impact" was extra revenue, not lost revenue. As in, due to an outage of the xyz subsystem, we booked an extra $$/minute of ads revenue. Everyone knows this is bad, not good.

</comment><comment><USER34> My favorite Dutch blog, tweakers.net, also does personal ads. I never ever clicked on them, I don't know what they are smoking to conclude that I'm interested in what they offer. They also have a "pricewatch" section, and boy have I clicked on their recommendations often. They are usually spot on! Of course they are contextual and geared to what I want to buy and searched for. If only they'd do the same with their news articles.

</comment><comment><USER35> > RTB "is a cancer eating the heart of legitimate media, and a business model > for the bottom of the web."

RTB is actually a huge waste of power too.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand what is going on with the graph they present at all. What is the cyan line? What are the bubbles with percentage changes in them? Why is there a "+18%" bubble right after the huge dip in the cyan line past the "Covid market shock" label?

I _think_ the bubbles are maybe "revenue increase per month" but what the hell is the cyan line?

LABEL YOUR GRAPHS PEOPLE

</comment><comment><USER37> As an old time adsense publisher I remember when they made the switch. Everyone revenue/click rate dropped. I thought perhaps in time this would improve but it kept dropping. I guess google believed they could sell more to ad buyers with an ml approach regardless of the results.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Targeted ads" \- hmm. Real galaxy brain stuff.

Not me but read a few days ago, someone (male) did a search for pages on the Battle Of Quatre Bras (part of the Battle Of Waterloo).

You guessed it, now he is seeing ads for brassieres all the time and someone is paying for those ads to appear.

</comment><comment><USER39> If this were true, why would anyone choose the option that generates lower revenues?

<comment><USER40> hype and a huge amount of fancy jobs at stake who know how to keep themselves employed. Take another example, Cambridge Analytica's "psychographic targeting". There's no solid scientific evidence that it actually works. Yet the media and press, as well as CA themselves have somehow convinced themselves that they're the real world version of James Bond's spectre</comment></comment>


Using Predictive Algorithms to Track Real Time Health Trends - <AUTHOR> http://blog.algorithmia.com/predictive-algorithms-track-real-time-health-trends/ <comment><USER2> Eventually it's about"forecast" by algorithmia [https://algorithmia.com/algorithms/TimeSeries/Forecast](https://algorithmia.com/algorithms/TimeSeries/Forecast)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am confused. Isn't there supposed to be some test set result which verify the performance of the model?

Things like Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Absolute Error, Relative Absolute Error, Coefficient of Determination etc.

<comment><USER4> Generally yes, but it's not really important in this case. All they're doing here is using it to smooth a graph for display</comment></comment>


A Question for Google's CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/a-question-for-google-ceo-sundar-pichai/536535/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Is there a distinct swing towards more stories that are less critical of the "screed" now? Or just that more are making it onto the front page here?

It feels like there was an initial almost universal condemnation in the press, followed by a shift as the days passed. Not a complete shift, but more stories that were either less critical, neutral, or slightly supportive.

<comment><USER3> Prior to having read what was written, or seen the company fire him, people generally towed the line of "pro-diversity". Once it was publicly available, and after he was fired as a direct result of it, people took a step back and thought about it. We have more information now, so the tone now is more likely to be accurate.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can one do early to prevent a bad Covid-19 infection? - <AUTHOR> What should people do to prepare for potentially being infected to lead to a speedy recovery and avoid burdening the health care system? Cardio? Diet? Or we don't know? <comment><USER2> Well we don't really know other than the obvious.

Don't smoke, eat healthy, take some supplements because they can't hurt (C,D,Zinc) have been shown to strengthen the immune system and most folks are deficient anyway. Get your affairs in order so if you become ill you don't have to pay bills or run errands (getting medication, etc), have some extra things that might come in handy like disinfectants (lysol, etc), food, etc, make sure all your chores are done so you don't have to deal with an illness and a mess at the same time. If you live with someone have a plan like a spare bedroom or something to quarantine in. Most importantly have someone you can speak with everyday so they can monitor your condition. If you become very ill and can't help yourself, you would want someone to be able to call the authorities to alert them to your emergency.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those sound like long-term interventions. The main thing you can do to help the health care system is to act as if you are infected _right now_ , even if you feel fine, and stay home to avoid potentially infecting others.

You could also order a quality thermometer, to help test yourself and anyone you live with, although it won't give results early enough to be reliable for avoiding contagion.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ah, perfect timing:

[https://twitter.com/judegomila/status/1239030650499248130](https://twitter.com/judegomila/status/1239030650499248130)</comment>


Metallic by BluFlame, Evoke 2015 4KB compo winner - <AUTHOR> http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66062

<comment><USER2> Beautiful. Amazing to think 4 kB executable file can do all that.</comment>


Ask HN: 'What do you want to be?' How to explain you want to start startups? - <AUTHOR>

(for the teenagers like myself) <comment><USER2> It's just because your are a teenager that you have issues with getting people to understand wanting to start on your own. Just tell hem what you want to do and if they don't get it well, even my mom thinks I'm nuts. She keeps telling me how she doesn't understand that I have a degree and know a lot about computers but I make way less then her friends working as a tech support guy for a large corp with a 2 year associates degree.

All I can do is hope she will understand one day when it works. If it doesn't well, can't win all the battles.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just like to build new things, like creating your own art, something to call your own. Sometimes it solves a real problem, sometimes it is just something you feel the world needs. I like the challenge of trying to sell it. The money that may come with it is great and it is a way to keep score. Some like the fame and attention it brings but others just prefer to be known quietly and proudly as the creator. Whatever it is, it is probably one of the coolest thing you will ever do.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to be a teenager not to long ago. (Im 21 now) But I started just like you did.

I wouldnt worry about how to tell that you wanna start a startup. Just start it. This is the only way they will understand or maybe accept that THAT is what you want to do with the rest of your life.

</comment><comment><USER5> You say 'I want to run my own software business.' Be warned, this will annoy some people.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tell people you have a bold vision of the future. And that you're planning the launch of a company to make it happen.

(btw, if you don't have a bold vision of the future start thinking harder)

<comment><USER7> I'd say the harder you think, the harder it gets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Say "I want to be an entrepreneur".

</comment><comment><USER9> Passionate, excited, committed and successful.</comment>


Top 20 most promising startups (Reuters) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2010/03/31/top-20-most-promising-startups/

<comment><USER2> bit.ly as one of the 20 most promising startups? really?

<comment><USER3> fair, but I do think there is some really interesting stuff they can do with mass aggregate data about what people are sharing at any given moment - particularly rich content - video, documents, etc.

<comment><USER2> certainly, but I can throw 20 off the top of my head who are way more important.

<comment><USER3> true story

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't see the entire list without registering onto vcj, anyone have the list somewhere else?

<comment><USER5> The list is shown on the page as an embedded Scribd document so enable flash and you should see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> some good ones, but crazy boring list generally.</comment>


Winky-face emoticons: German use different than USA? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/3lzhiq/winkyface_emoticons_german_use_different_than_usa/ <comment><USER2> First, this is from two years ago, so it probably needs that info in the title.

Second, the presumption that "winky-face" is flirtatious is unfounded:

          (in electronic communication) an emoticon, emoji,
          or other image representing a face with one eye
          closed in a wink, typically used to express humour
          or sarcasm.
          "I was being flippant, hence the winky face at the
          end of my post"

which is exactly how I have been using it for more than twenty years now.</comment>


Machine learning researcher Yann LeCun is doing an AMA on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/25lnbt/ama_yann_lecun/

<comment><USER2> I liked this phrase: "It's important to keep mind that the arrival of AI will not be any more or any less disruptive than the arrival of indoor plumbing, vaccines, the car, air travel, the television, the computer, the internet, etc." [http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/25lnbt/ama_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/25lnbt/ama_yann_lecun/chifet0)</comment>


Scientist who won Nobel Prize for discovering HIV says SARS COV2 created in lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.pourquoidocteur.fr/Articles/Question-d-actu/32184-EXCLUSIF-Pour-Pr-Montagnier-SARS-CoV-2-serait-virus-manipule-Chinois-l-ADN-de-VIH-podcast <comment><USER2> It's amusing how some people are like "trust the science" and tout the knowledge and authority of experts but then scientists like this get flagged because their findings don't align with their beliefs. There seems to be a mixed signal here. Should we trust experts or not?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was shocked today to see how almost any submission offering any alternative viewpoint on Covid-19 is flagged. Sad.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL:DR

He is an expert in the HIV genome.

Agrees with Indian scientists that the very specific sequences from HIV that are newly present in SARS Cov2 could only be inserted in a lab and would not occur naturally.

He points out that the Wuhan lab was studying SARS Corona viruses as a potential vector for an AIDS vaccine.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Claim that coronavirus came from a lab in China completely unfounded, scientists say."

[https://www.newsweek.com/claim-that-coronavirus-came-lab- chi...](https://www.newsweek.com/claim-that-coronavirus-came-lab-china- completely-unfounded-scientists-say-1498308)

<comment><USER4> So if the lab theory lacks evidence - where's the evidence that it came from a wet market? I've seen a Lancet paper that there were cases outside of the market that couldn't be traced to the market either - so it can be inferred that it didn't start there.

<comment><USER5> The lab theory rests in part on the proximity of the lab to the wet market. If the evidence for the outbreak starting near the wet market gets weaker, so does the evidence for the lab theory.

The SARS outbreak was first discovered in Guangdong province, but afterwards traced to bats in a cave in Yunnan province, which doesn't even share a border with Guangdong. So it's entirely possible that the virus was carried into Wuhan from somewhere far away and only started spreading there due to the higher population density.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this is the new reality of the world we live in, what do you think will be the new protocols for international travel? I imagine a standardized heath test without which you can't board a flight?

</comment><comment><USER7> There are many hypotheses floating around.

(a) China created this virus and released that as a bioweapon.

(b) Wuhan lab does research on bat viruses, trying to find a vaccine for HIV using modified coronaviruses. Somehow, this virus got accidentally leaked out of that lab.

(c) Wuhan wet markets, virus jumping from bats to pangolins to humans

(d) CIA created it in order to bring back the manufacturing to USA: [https://cryptome.org/2020/02/CIA- biovirus-2019.pdf](https://cryptome.org/2020/02/CIA-biovirus-2019.pdf)

Which hypothesis is better? Which hypothesis can explain more facts than others? Which hypothesis has more evidence?

I am not a virologist. Hypotheses (a) and (d) depend on political facts, along with evidence from virology. (b) and (c) just depend on evidence from virology. So, either of them is possible at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dupe.

If you google Luc Montagnier he defends ideas of the like of homeopathy, water memory and DNA comunicating with water via electromagnetism...

<comment><AUTHOR> But also an expert in virology, HIV, and a Nobel prize winner.</comment></comment>


OpenLava under IBM attack - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openlava-users/z4V4oF1tfdY <comment><USER2> I dunno. I've known IBM's primary copyright counsel (Terry Ilardi) for many years, and he's very friendly to open source (and very smart).

I suspect there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Reading the reddit, etc, it's really unclear what the history is. I read the DMCA request, which seems straightfoward, and the counternotice, which reads like someone who probably shoudl have consulted a lawyer (it makes legal claims about their non-disclosure/etc obligations) :P

Even looking at wikipedia, it looks ... complicated [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_LSF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_LSF))

Given a counternotice was filed, it's also not clear what is getting shutdown and why (IE lack of details), etc.

Lot of panic, little details.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't square with Shawn Starr's statement. He worked at Platform Computing before the IBM acquisition. Part of their code was packaged for Linux and relicensed as GPLv2 in partnership with RedHat. All OpenLava work as been based on that GPL'd code and developed in the open.

Unless you're claiming the Platform Computing partnership with RedHat was unauthorized and somehow concluded without management approval it would appear IBM doesn't have a leg to stand on. The history of OpenLAVA used to be available for everyone to see, though thanks to Ilardi's team that is no longer true.

<comment><USER2> "That doesn't square with Shawn Starr's statement." It actually does, because there is nothing anywhere, that gives enough detail to say anything really.

There are a lot of claims, but not a lot of facts. Shawn says he was authorized to package something under the GPLv2. The rest is just opinion. For example, you have no idea what any of the IP agreements involved said.

Seriously. IBM is generally too meticulous, and not stupid enough, to be in a situation where they have no leg to stand on.

They were the ones who went through _hundreds of thousands of pages of documents_ to prove SCO didn't own the copyright.

I think it's a bit naive to, based on a statement from one guy who did some packaging work, that IBM has no leg to stand on.

In fact, a bit of Googling turns up a counterpoint: [http://www.law360.com/articles/850910/ibm-sues-startup- for-a...](http://www.law360.com/articles/850910/ibm-sues-startup-for- allegedly-stealing-software-code)

Note: IBM claims some IBMers stole code when they left IBM, and then illegally incorporated it later into the open source project. Not that the original code was not GPLv2'd validly.

Note also: David, the person making the claim here, works/worked (it's a bit hard to tell if he is still employed there) for the company IBM is suing.

<comment><USER4> This is also consistent with the reddit comment here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5j3mn2/ibm_is_trying...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5j3mn2/ibm_is_trying_to_bully_the_openlava_project_a/dbdgaul/)

<comment><USER2> That's because i wrote that comment :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was the most interesting comment on that thread

       I need to step in here,

       Considering *I* was the one who packaged Lava, the original sources are here:

[https://spstarr.fedorapeople.org/ocs- rhhpc/trunk/src/kits/la...](https://spstarr.fedorapeople.org/ocs- rhhpc/trunk/src/kits/lava/)

       IBM has no right to claim nor any DMCA claim that can revoke this as we released this long before IBM bought the company and they bought the company afterf I had left Platform Computing.

       IBM has no standing to DMCA this source code if you forked it from my original RPMs we released.

       Thanks,

       Shawn

<comment><USER6> > What I also want to say is, if code added to OpenLava was proprietary from > LSF then IBM has every right to sue. We only released authorized GPLv2 code > and IBM from what the lawsuit says acknowledges this part. This code in > question is legal and free to fork use and develop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The court case documents are worth looking at before forming any opinions: [https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/463894/](https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/463894/) (specifically [https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/463894/1-0.h...](https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/463894/1-0.html)) -- it alleges that former LSF engineers joined teraproc after leaving IBM and took source code with them, as well as claiming teraproc went after IBM clients offering their managed cluster software for less money than LSF.

David Bigagli also says in the first post in that thread:

      IBM does not have a technical answer to OpenLava and to the benefit its users have.
      They cannot articulate why their software is better than OpenLava for the money they charge for it.
      IBM fears OpenLava because is does provide a better functionality than their own software and
      that's why it can only reply with a lawsuit by hiring:
      Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

Sounds like there might be slightly more to this than is outlined in comments.

</comment><comment> shawn-butler From the timeline, I think Github is in breach of DMCA provisions. The project seemed to provide a proper, valid counter-notice[0].

Unless Github has been served with an an actual judicial injunction, then they should have restored the content after 10 days[1].

[0]: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2016/2016-11-07-I...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2016/2016-11-07-IBM- counternotice.md)

[1]: [https://help.github.com/articles/guide-to-submitting-a- dmca-...](https://help.github.com/articles/guide-to-submitting-a-dmca-counter- notice/)

<comment><USER8> They _can_ restore the content, the provider is not obligated to.

<comment><USER9> Eagerly awaiting a response from the GH team. Assuming all the DMCA stuff was handled correctly they need to restore ASAP. How they handle this is (or should imo) be a very good yardstick for deciding if you want to host your FLOSS project with them, apart from the technical reasons.

<comment><USER10> _Assuming all the DMCA stuff was handled correctly they need to restore ASAP._

They need to restore, but not ASAP, they must wait _at least_ ten days, according to 17 U.S. Code § 512 (g) (2) (C): [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Background on this : [https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/06/05/an-old-platform- find...](https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/06/05/an-old-platform-finds-new- life-outside-ibm-walls/)

<comment><USER2> Here's where IBM sued Teraproc for what they claim is incorporating stolen code into OpenLava; [http://www.law360.com/articles/850910/ibm-sues-startup- for-a...](http://www.law360.com/articles/850910/ibm-sues-startup-for- allegedly-stealing-software-code)

(AFAICT, they make no claim that openlava was not GPLv2'd validly, only that people later illegally put stolen IBM-owned code into it)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5j3mn2/ibm_is_trying...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5j3mn2/ibm_is_trying_to_bully_the_openlava_project_a/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Never heard about OpenLava. But among the bad things, the good thing is that project just get promotion for free.

</comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't find a link to the actual repo, here's the DMCA takedown [https://github.com/openlava/openlava](https://github.com/openlava/openlava)

</comment><comment><USER14> The thing that worries me the most is that there is no public mirror of (important) OSS Github projects outside of the US, is there? It is all centralized in one place under one jurisdiction.

<comment><USER4> I'm not too concerned about that since git is intrinsically a decentralized model.

Even if github is gone, your local repos are still there and there's very little friction to migrate or push source code to other github alternatives.

<comment><USER15> Only if you use github just as a host for your repository. If you use all the other features it provides, migrating is much more difficult.

<comment><USER4> I have no experience in this but a quick Google search suggests that it is trivial to migrate GitHub issues to GitLab or JIRA:

[https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_project...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_projects_from_github.html)

[https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importin...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importing- data-from-github-802592903.html)

<comment><USER16> I rely right now on GitLab for political reasons.

How much in US jurisdiction are they? I do not live in USA and don't want to have anything with that country, specially don't want its long arm of IP law anywhere near me.

<comment><USER17> GitLab Inc is a US corporation: [https://about.gitlab.com/2015/07/01/Operating-as-GitLab- Inc/](https://about.gitlab.com/2015/07/01/Operating-as-GitLab-Inc/)

You might consider installing your own instance of GitLab hosted in a country that you prefer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This stands out:

> IBM does not have a technical answer to OpenLava and to the benefit its > users have.

> They cannot articulate why their software is better than OpenLava for the > money they

> charge for it. IBM fears OpenLava because is does provide a better > functionality than

> their own software and that's why it can only reply with a lawsuit by > hiring:

> Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

As an emotional, rather than logical appeal. It doesn't matter how great OpenLava is if they have violated IBM's copyrights.

</comment><comment><USER19> Naive question. The platform computing acquisition was fairly large IIRC. I keep seeing workload scheduling pop up in different places. Is this really a large market? I thought scheduling made sense in grid computing/HPC systems. Having trouble seeing the economic value here. Any comments on the market/business side would help this old hacker.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can we get this changed to a less salacious title? The original thread is called "OpenLava under IBM attack".

<comment><USER13> I don't like either the current title "trying to bully". Is IBM bullying or not ?

<comment><USER21> Based on the little that is known, no.

There is an ongoing lawsuit over whether some commits to the project contained proprietary IBM code. IBM's claim is plausible, and the counterclaim seems awfully vague.

For example, from the founder:

> I have developed most of the OpenLava code and I have reviewed all > contributions. All this development was done without access to any IBM code. > All IBM claims regarding the source code are false and fabricated.

If you didn't author every line of code, but in at least some cases only reviewed the contributions, then you have no way of knowing whether IBM's claims are false or fabricated; the only way he'd be able to recognise IBM code is if he had access to that code to cross-check, which he also claims not to have.

It's not a very...convincing denial, is it?

<comment><USER22> if IBM can statically analyze the OSS software, why the hell the OSS side can't statically analyze the proprietary software to check the claims? (despite the difficulty to reverse engineer the code, if its binary)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We've built an artificially intelligent news app. Thoughts and Suggestions? - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/pipes-news-technology-business/id1026902178?mt=8 <comment><USER2> Don't call it AI news app. It gives an impression that this news app doesn't do anything at all and is just a marketing gimmick. Differentiate your app based on what it actually does and I am sure "being intelligent" in not what it does.</comment>


Secret Service Issues Guide to Help Prevent School Shootings - happy-go-lucky https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/us/politics/secret-service-report-school-shootings.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is easy. Don't live in America

UK's last school shooting was 1996.

UK's first school shooting was 1996.

On December 14, 2012, in the US 26 people were killed by a shooter in a school in the US. 2 were injured.

On December 14, 2012, in China 0 people were killed by a stabber in China. 24 were injured.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome Extension that finds direct download links from FTP servers - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fearch/kalmlbhhgndofalfencmggfncedfajgj <comment><AUTHOR> This small project was made back in my 2nd year (weekend project stopped working on it), but now is maintained as a part of my college opensource organisation. So I thought it would be great to get it up and running. This is the github link for the project -

[https://github.com/NIT-dgp/chrome-search-extension](https://github.com/NIT- dgp/chrome-search-extension)

Though the code base is very small, but the extension is very useful.</comment>


Optimizing performance on low-end Android devices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.echolocker.com/performance

<comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that some of the recommendations here - particularly around reusing objects - are going to be out of date, and potentially deoptimizations, when Android gets smarter GC.

There's a tension in platform optimization. Whether it's CPUs or runtimes, people who make platforms tend to look at where they can get the biggest wins for existing apps. So if you bend over backwards to do weird things that get you performance, that weirdness will be exactly what prevents you from getting as big a potential win from future platform optimizations.

With GC in particular, that usually means avoiding the creation of objects that die in middle age. Most GCs are optimized for objects that are ephemeral or long-lived. Ephemeral objects have too few references and not long enough of a lifetime to survive multiple GCs. Long-lived objects live too long to be worth collecting for most GCs. Generational GC uses this to split memory into at least 3 logical buckets (survived 0 GCs, survived at least 1 GC, and long- lived).

Working hard to reuse objects means those objects will become part of the long-lived heap. But reusing them means updating their fields, including their references to other objects, which means they still need to be scanned. So they'll increase the cost of what ought to be cheap GCs of the ephemeral objects; writes to them needs to be accounted, and they need to be included as roots.

The situation becomes even worse if you reuse an object for some time, but eventually find some of them surplus to requirements (the middle age problem).

The costs of designing an application to reuse objects are not to be sniffed at either. It's a reinvention of a typed memory allocator, with all the benefits and drawbacks of manual allocation. Best kept to the implementation- side of properly scoped modules. Don't let the approach pervasively infect the entire app.

<comment><USER3> Reusing objects will always going to be faster. If memory is not being allocated, GC never runs.

Look what happened to Minecraft when they stopped caring about allocations: [http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/optifine-modder-rips-the- minec...](http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/optifine-modder-rips-the-minecraft- devs-for-the-code-in-the-newest-version/4235) It's allocating 150 MB/second. It's now much slower than it was before.

<comment><USER4> With new allocations you can have better cache consistency, so reusing objects is not always faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it ironic seeing all those Google developer guidelines on how to be responsible with leaving Services running, but they leave their own crap running 24/7 while you don't even need to run the app.

[http://pastebin.com/AdUsUaG6](http://pastebin.com/AdUsUaG6)

Not to mention their last Google Play Services update that gets forced to all users automatically is causing wakelocks wanting to update the system, which wrecks havoc on custom ROMs : [http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/91021/](http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/91021/)

Google Android, thank you, not anymore.

<comment><USER6> Cyanogenmod is disabling parts of the Google Play Services APK and then acting surprised when that introduces bugs. I don't have a ton of sympathy towards that.

<comment><USER5> Great choice of cherry picking a comment, disregarding the shit Google does before this. But OK, let me reply to your statement.

Before Google Play Services existed, there was already a mechanism in place that checked for OTA updates. It was in AOSP and could be easily disabled for custom ROMs. Remember those custom ROMs Google was so proud of when they advertised "open source" and how Android was dedicated to it ?

Then in a full "bait and switch" manner they placed everything in the Google Play Services. AOSP doesn't matter anymore, but the proprietary code no one has control of, except the Mountainview mothership. If CyanogenMod didn't disable those services, they would constantly download OTA package to /cache wasting user bandwidth and resources as in wakelocking the device causing battery drain. Is this "responsible programming" ?

My personal experience with the new GPS 7.0 update woes doesn't even include a custom ROM. I had Googles Nexus 5 factory image of Kitkat 4.4.4 installed and blocked the GPS SystemUpdate receivers manually to avoid OTA updates to Lollipop 5.0 .Why ? Because I don't want an update that turns a well working OS to one which leaks memory and has to be rebooted every two days. It's my choice. Other vendors include an option, whether user wants update notifications or not. Not on Googles turf, they want to force you with their beta software, then turn the head away when there are issues without comments when they'll be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From another article on the site:

"Can you ask for too many permissions? Short answer is no ... Our personal experience and that of other startups we've chatted with suggest any effect is overplayed. Just by browsing the Play store, you can easily find popular apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Candy Crush, that ask for a lot of permissions. Most users scan the permission requests, and a list with 3 vs 5 permissions makes no difference."

Everything wrong with Android permissions in a single paragraph.

When security relies on users making good _secure_ decisions, you've failed. If Internet Explorer taught us anything it's that people will always click YES to punch the monkey, certificates/sandboxes/policies be damned.

<comment><USER8> The problem with other approaches is of course that you're relying on an American company to make security decisions based on what will get them sued and what is tailored for an average Joe. This usually results in any powerful functionality of those portable computers we have in our pockets being disabled.

And we already DO have OS that caters to that demographic - iOS. I'd like Android to move more in the direction of distinguishing itself apart from Apple way of doing things, not copying the same closed sandbox.</comment></comment>


Firefly Space Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.fireflyspace.com <comment><USER2> Good luck to 'em. But I don't know that I would have picked several never- flown techniques as the basis for my least-cost rocket. I count at least four: aerospike nozzle, methane fuel, autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean by that), and all-composite structure. That would seem to be a path to spending lots of time and money on research.

To be fair, composites and aerospikes are well-tested, and methane has some good qualities and no obvious problems as a rocket fuel. (I don't know what they intend for pressurization; perhaps they want to boil both fuel and oxidizer to create pressure? Seem like a non-standard technique anyway.) And it's not like you can buy rocket hardware OTS, so everything you do is a development project. But none has flown on a real vehicle. Picking one would be ambitious. Four just seems like compounded risk.

Scaled Composites has had plenty of trouble with their seemingly-simple hybrid engine. You may think a technology is researched enough or simple enough to use without much danger, but rocketry is an extreme environment and can hold lots of surprises at scale and in the margins.

SpaceX, on the other hand, has only done one really revolutionary thing: cost discipline. Mostly through simplicity. Which is a pretty important contribution to the world of rocketry. Much more important than any particular nozzle or engine improvement.

The Firefly Alpha should be a nifty rocket if they can get it flying without spending too much money--but the history of rocket development doesn't suggest that'll be easy.

<comment><USER3> > autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean by that)

From their Vehicle page:

"Firely's engines are actually self-pressurized (AKA autogenously pressurized), so that the fuel itself is used to provide the working pressure for the engine. This simplifies the design and saves weight."

<comment><USER2> Probably I'm hung up on "Firely's engines are actually self-pressurized". If they actually mean that, it's some sort of novel system. If they actually mean self-pressurizing tanks then that's a bit more normal--though I still would want to know if it's a blowdown system or if they are using some sort of gas generator (perhaps using heat from the cooling system) for regulated pressure. Either one requires a reasonably strong tank, but maybe that's not a problem for a small rocket due to minimum gauge issues.

It's a nice cheap way to go, but still somewhat unusual in launch systems. More common in upper stages and manuevering thrusters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm very skeptical of the market they're targeting. SpaceX used to cover that same payload capacity with the Falcon 1 [0] rocket, but discontinued it since no one bought any. Maybe things have changed in the past few years, but I seriously doubt it. The aerospike engine is interesting since none have been used commercially before, but if there isn't a market it might as well run on fairy dust.

Still, I wish them the best. We need more innovation in the space sector, and I would love to see those engines become more commonplace.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1)

<comment><USER5> The CEO is a former Space X employee, so I'm sure he's aware. Maybe there was some opportunity, but Space X wasn't interested in pursuing it.

<comment><USER4> Right now, SpaceX can (and does) have access to that limited market by selling off payload on current launches. It's cheaper to just bootstrap on to an existing flight than dedicating an entire rocket to a small mission. If and when the Falcon rockets become reusable, it's very difficult to imagine this series ever being competitive. SpaceX aims for launch costs of $5-7 million when they achieve reusability, putting the per-kilo cost somewhere between $540-700. At that price, these rockets will have to have a total cost of only $350k to match what SpaceX offers.

These people must either believe that SpaceX won't achieve reusability, or their rockets will. Maybe a combination of both?

<comment><USER6> What bout proving that your crazy ideas about methane were right and be aquihired by SpaceX to put 72 methane engines in a Falcon9Prime?

<comment><USER7> That would be fun to watch, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can't help but feel like we're on the cusp of a new age of mankind. How long will it be until space travel really takes off? I feel like we're getting closer and closer.

We're a part of history, we were the children of the dawn of the digital age, pushing mankind towards the stars. A hundred years from now, people will look back and read about us and think how primitive we were to be pushing for space but how almost nobody actually went to space.

<comment><USER9> I think the key missing element is a clear commercial driver.

Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil... then yeah that would lead to a radical revolution in human space exploration.

What we have now as far as i am aware is very little commercial incentive to really explore space, in this scenario space flight will probably advance very slowly.

<comment><USER10> I'd argue that commercial incentive is the biggest limiting factor of the human race. Yes, it costs money to do things but I'm really surprised that we don't aggressively pursue space travel just on the basis of knowing why we're here. There's more than enough wealth on the planet to do it, but we're too concentrated on politics/hoarding.

There's this strange fixation with the ground (I usually attribute this to fear masquerading as a budget) and what's happening _here_ , but I feel like there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking. The kind of stuff that would eliminate the need for commercial incentive that we can't necessarily see now.

<comment><USER11> _there 's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking_

Not within individual limits of time and scale. The Moon is a couple days away, but for all we've looked at it seems it's little more than a dead atmosphere-free rock. The next nearest place to walk is a couple _years_ away. Both will require hauling an oppressive amount of stuff along to stay there long enough to achieve anything resembling self-sufficiency. The sheer scale of time & effort - balanced against payoff of any kind - is vast beyond human comprehension. _" Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..."_ [Douglas Adams] Travel time gets a lot longer the farther the destination. Between Mars and the next place we have any hope of surviving on is a very, very long distance. I remember when Voyager I was launched: decades later, we're arguing over whether it actually left the solar system yet. Yeah there's interesting things out there...but don't underestimate how very, very, very, very, very far away they are.

Oh sure, look hard enough and we'll find "something interesting", and perhaps come to grok "why we're here" \- but at enormous cost to those who don't get to go. Sure you'll find a few people actually willing & capable to make the trip (stark raving boring as most of it will be, even with a Morale Officer), but those "orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude" more people needed to make it happen don't get enough out of their contribution to bother contributing, and ultimately it's their paychecks that will be "redistributed" to fund the effort. Firefly Alpha will cost (optimistically!) about US$10M to launch 1 ton into low orbit, with that cargo assured to return _at least_ $10M revenue; if not for that payoff, those involved have compelling reasons to elsewhere route money which provides a good life for some 400 people ... how much then the human cost of sending a handful of people on a trip which, beyond a couple nearby rocks, would take a lifetime or far more?

TL;DR - very little of space is close enough and interesting enough to get to before you're dead.

<comment><USER12> I don't agree with your line of reasoning.

There are a lot of not only interesting but also commercially viable things right here in our solar system. We have several huge balls of fuel, each of which has many orders of magnitude more energy that humanity has harnessed in our entire history.

There are planets that we can build on and adapt to, or potentially adapt to us.

There are millions of floating gold mines with more mineral riches than than exist in the entirety of earth.

Regarding the distances, I don't think they are as big as you are putting them out to be. If you look at the ratio of how far we need to travel to get somewhere interesting(moon, mars, comet, etc) over how fast we can travel( 36,000 MPH+) and compare that to the ratio of the European wind powered ships speed vs a trip to the new world, you'd see that the solar system is not at all outside of our reach and there are many precedents to speak to humanities willingness to make sure trips.

<comment><USER11> I was responding to a post explicitly discounting "commercially viable" motivations, contending that discovery alone was enough. So, I ignored the commercial aspects and observed the logical conclusions of "because it's there" motivations.

If you can make the trip financially profitable, go for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The world is going to change drastically in the next 10-20 years. Side discussion related to the article: what to focus on? Will web development still be a thing (I'm doubtful)? If so, what does web development look like in 2024? 2034?

It seems like a lot of engineering energy will go into the design and manufacturing of the systems that will manage human life in space.

Really curious. What do you see?

<comment><USER13> It would be really nice if we were about to get the future as seen from 1965 (space-wise), but I think that's still unlikely. Even if there are as many as TEN "low cost" orbital rocket companies doing launches by 2024[1], I'm skeptical that the US will have the legal and organizational flexibility to allow the level of launches that would make this non-niche. The main obstacles to the growth of space travel are not technical or economic, but governmental.

I suppose one odd result of 9/11, though, was showing everyone that the thousands of plane flights every day already have essentially the same potential issues as allowing unlimited orbital rocket launches.

[1] ...and right now there's, uh, one, doing a few launches per year, I think.

<comment><USER14> Two words only: asteroid mining. This will change the economic parameters of space travel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting. I had to surf up Wikipedia's page on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine) to learn more about that.

Quite a cool design, if I understood it correctly it switches the big classical cone-shaped nozzle into a lot of small nozzles nestled against a central spike, with the surrounding air forming the other half of the (now virtual) nozzle. Weird and almost magical, what's not to like? :)

<comment><USER16> Yup, pretty much. The traditional engine nozzle can only be optimized for maximum thrust at one altitude, while the aerospike maintains thrust efficiency at many altitudes, using as much as 30% less fuel at lower altitudes. Also, for the aerospike design, it doesn't have to be a series of small nozzles. The combustion gases can escape the combustion chamber via a ring. It's more difficult to cool this type of system and adds some weight, but it is an efficient alternative to the traditional engine nozzle for SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) vehicles.

<comment><USER17> IIRC, the VentureStar was going to use a linear aerospike. With at least one combustion chamber on each side, it seems an easier design than a ring.

Their design seem to indicate they may want to pump air through the spike body to either cool it or as to use it as "bypass" volume in an inverted turbofan- like design. It's intriguing.

<comment><USER18> My understanding is that linear aerospikes require relatively long lines to average out the inefficiency of the ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Note that this is a 400 kg class launch vehicle, so much smaller than a 10 tonne level Falcon 9. Even smaller than a Falcon 1.

Beal Aerospace also tried to bring pressure fed composite launchers in the nineties, though he used hydrogen peroxide and kerosene: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace)

While methane has the advantage of self-pressurization, it is also about half the density of kerosene, meaning there will be double the volume for the same mass, and the pressure vessel will be double the mass. Pressure vessel mass is proportional to volume and pressure. That's why Beal used very dense fuels, even when they have less exhaust velocity.

The heavy tank is a worse problem for sea-level launched rockets that need high engine pressures to reach passable engine exhaust velocities.

The rocket equation shows that exhaust velocity is important to reach high rocket velocities: delta v = v_exhaust * ln(m_full / m_empty)

In a pressure fed rocket the engine pressure is the tank pressure (minus some pressure loss in the injector). If you air launched, it might be a bit easier, since ambient pressure is only a quarter of sea level at 10 km. Airlaunch LLC tried to use these synergistic technologies some years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirLaunch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirLaunch)

Basically in the atmosphere you exhaust at ambient pressure (or not very far from it). If your chamber pressure is low, then you can't expand much before you're at ambient at sea level. Thus the nozzle can't produce much thrust for the propellant flow. The upshot is that low pressure rockets suck at low altitudes.

But for relatively small rockets it might work well: apparently because of some minimum-gauge issues, they need to have pretty thick walls anyway so going to pressure fed is not such a huge overhead. Also equipment like turbopumps does not scale well at the low end. (I haven't studies this in detail though.)

Armadillo Aerospace has tested oxygen-methane self pressurized rockets years ago and they are simple and work well. They can also be controlled precisely. NASA bought one from them and flies it occasionally. I think it is a blow down pressurized version though (helium is filled directly to the main propellant tank head spaces for pressurization): [http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/](http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/)

So auto-pressurization is nothing fancy, in fact it can be seen as a simpler version of blowdown pressurization, which is simpler than regulated pressurization.

If I had to create an orbital launcher with minimum capital, this is a reasonable design, though I'm skeptical about the aerospike.

To convince me, they need to first fly some sounding rockets.

There's been many rocket startups in the recent decades, with little flying hardware, and even that has been no guarantee of going further.

<comment><USER20> Maybe the choice of methane is because it's renewable? They might be betting on that to keep the costs low in the long-term.

<comment><USER19> The propellants are such a small part of launch costs that they can practically be ignored.

Helium probably costs more than all the other stuff combined, and they might be able to forgo that here though, or at least significantly limit usage if they only use it for pressurizing the oxygen tank.

<comment><USER21> What is the biggest cost of a launch then?

I am genuinely curious. I would've have thought that the amount of special- purpose propellant would be the biggest factor.

<comment><USER22> Propellant, in the form of liquid oxygen and kerosene, is about as expensive as milk. For a vehicle with 2% mass fraction, and assuming that the entire vehicle is fuel in order to place an upper bound on fuel costs, that's 49 parts fuel to 1 part payload, by mass. If fuel and oxidizer are roughly the density of water, then each gallon weighs less than 8 lbs. (Closer to 5 or 6 for kerosene, and about 9 or 10 for oxygen.) This gives us about 6 gallons of propellant for each pound of mass, for a cost of about $22.

The fuel cost to launch something into orbit is about $22/lb. The rest of the $1e3 to $1e4 per pound is engineering and paperwork. A typical aerospace part that has, for example, $700-$800 worth of actual materials and labor will have a verification and paper trail that costs about $30e3 to produce, due to the mission-critical nature of all the highly stressed and low-factor-of-safety parts. (Car parts have an FS in excess of 2.5, for example, and aerospace parts are typically 1.1-1.2.)

<comment><USER23> That would seem to imply that mass production could reduce costs dramatically.

<comment><USER24> Many people have suggested as much. The issue then is finding a large enough volume of customers / missions to make use of frequent flights. I've also heard (tho I don't have a link ready) that past 50 - 100 flights per year on a given vehicle, some more exotic methods of flight into orbit (that have been impractical to date) become cost effective compared to expendables. Not a few studies have suggested reusable chemical rockets are cheaper than expendables, if you can fit at least 50 flights a year on them. I once read that number as around 70 a year for the Shuttle (possibly from Antonio Elias, maybe someone else). If you can manage hundreds, some of the really nifty / whacky launch concepts might become viable, like cannon launch, laser launch etc. etc.

[http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html](http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html)

(I think Antonio Elias, on NSF made the argument that Kistler's now defunct K1 (COTS contract, along side SpaceX) rocket would have been viable at nearly the lowest possible launch rate for a reuseable, far sooner than the Shuttle.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why not use the ISRO PSLV: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle) for doing this? It is a proven launch vehicle and would in the end be cheaper than anything that can be built in the US.

<comment><USER26> I don't think the PSLV actually falls in their market. It has a payload almost 10x what the Firefly alpha would offer, and it has a $15 million price tag. Frankly, if the Firefly alpha is offered at anything other than single digit millions of dollars per launch it will not be commercially viable. I think the company is aware of that and that has driven the design of the rocket. The Firefly alpha is an enormously simple rocket, and is theoretically designed for ease of manufacture. It also uses incredibly inexpensive fuels which are easy to store.

<comment><USER27> ISRO was/is developing a smaller variant of PSLV called PSLV-3S. It is a three stage variant of the regular four stage PSLV (they removed 2nd stage, and strap-on boosters). PSLV-3S payload capacity is 550KG to LEO. However, I don't know about latest developments on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My first thought was to enumerate the red flags I see (since there have been a fair number of investor-bait non-serious "space startups"):

The team comprises CEO, CFO, COO, and VP-BizDev…no engineers, at least in the leadership. To be fair, the COO does have a BS in Physics and almost got a PhD in AE.

No photographs of any facilities, testing equipment, or anything short of 3D mockups. The name is based on a sci-fi TV show and the splash page is also a sci-fi quote.

Looking deeper, however, it looks like they've recently hired their 25th employee (a Systems Engineer) and are building out their engineering team aggressively. Recently funded in January. So perhaps they are legitimately worth keeping an eye on.

<comment><USER29> > The team comprises CEO, CFO, COO, and VP-BizDev…no engineers, at least in > the leadership.

Huh? The CEO has a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace engineering from Princeton and was a Principle Propulsion Engineer at SpaceX, Senior Systems Engineer at Blue Origin, and the VP of Propulsion at Virgin Galactic. Put another way, he's been a key engineer at all the major private space companies...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So what is the market for small satellites? Is it just the companies that have existing (big) satellites needing to replace them? And now with miniaturization, it's possible to replace them with smaller, cheaper-to-launch versions?

Or is this meant to provide alternatives for other sectors? If I wanted to build a new cell phone network, would it be potentially cheaper to launch a bunch of small satellites than build out the ground infrastructure (towers)? Even though a satellite in LEO is significantly farther away than the average cellphone tower, would it work because line-of-sight is improved?

<comment><USER31> Last time I checked (5 years ago), small satellites were a _booming_ industry, but also a very amateur / research oriented one. While a professional military or communications organization may launch a number of small satellites, they tend to go through the same process as when they're building a large one. As such, most of the small sat world is focused on amateurs launching small satellites of their own design, student organizations and startups launching 1U type boxes, and research efforts for which a tiny box is sufficient.

As for your second question, a few points:

1) yes, it is massively cheaper to give your nation cell coverage via satellite as opposed to via tower. There have been a number of success stories in Africa where a local government / business managed to put together the funds to buy a communications satellite, and overnight, the entire country has cell phones.

2) No, you wouldn't do this via a small sat, you'd need a real deal communications satellite to achieve this. One of the key features of small sats is that they are small enough that if you beg and plead enough to the powers that be, you might find room on a launch vehicle to launch your tiny satellite in some spare room. If this service can open that up to people who don't have governmental / educational connections, all the better.

3) There is research on creating swarms of small satellites that can communicate and act like one giant one. That's pretty cool. I worked with these guys [http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?page_id=260](http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?page_id=260) for a time, and they were working on setting up satellites that were so small, they couldn't even fit a real antenna on them, but figuring out basically a radio based encoding pattern so that you could pull their signal out from beneath the noise floor anyway.

That all said, the industry is dominated that way because of the difficulty of launching a satellite to begin with. If you can make it easier to launch sats of any type, then people will start building those too. Build it, and they will come.

<comment><USER32> > There have been a number of success stories in Africa where a local > government / business managed to put together the funds to buy a > communications satellite, and overnight, the entire country has cell phones.

Really? That doesn't seem likely at all. You can either put the satellites in LEO and you need a hugely expensive constellation, or in GEO and you need a dish not a mobile phone. The best use case for satellite is probably backhaul, rather than cell tower replacement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I sincerely hope these folks get customers & funding to pursue this as it will only help grow the nascent industry.

I'm perplexed by the economics, however. A Falcon 9 v1.1 can do 13K kilos to LEO for $56MM. A Firefly Alpha can do 400 kilos to LEO for $9MM.

That's $5,000/kilo to LEO for SpaceX and $22,000/kilo for Firefly.

Also worth noting SpaceX tried for a small launcher first (Falcon 1) but moved on to larger payloads due to the lack of a market for small payload launches.

<comment><USER34> That seems to match intuition - that there are large fixed costs involved in making a rocket of any size that can reach LEO, and that scaling up the payload wouldn't necessarily increase the R&D and other fixed costs proportionally.

Then again, with increased size potentially comes nonlinearly increasing complexity requirements - multiple stages, more exotic fuels/engines, more parts to coordinate, etc. But I'm guessing LEO with these sorts of payload sizes isn't demanding enough to cause the complexity to overwhelm the fixed costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Their logo looks awkwardly similar to that of the fictional insurgent group in the game Last of Us: [http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825005729/thelastofu...](http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825005729/thelastofus/images/f/f7/Firefly_logo.png)

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't think it is accurate to suggest that this company is competing with SpaceX. It is accurate that SpaceX is trying to provide lower-cost launch capability and it is accurate that SpaceX is trying to make parts of its launch vehicles and spacecraft reusable.

With that said, the addressable markets for the two companies are vastly different. Firefly is targeting the <1000kg payload market, with the hypothetical initial launch vehicle targeting <400kg. The Falcon 9 is designed for an order of magnitude more payload, with upcoming vehicles targeting an even greater capability.

So, at this stage there may be a small amount of talent competition (at ~25 employees) and hypothetically it could provide competition for secondary payload capabilities in the future if things work out.

<comment><USER2> Or they could scale up once they prove their ability to fly... just like SpaceX did with the Falcon 1. Which, granted, had more payload capacity that the Firefly Alpha is designed for. But they could follow a similar plan.

There may be some money in the small launch market. But physics is not kind to small rockets.

<comment><USER37> Not sure if I understand you correctly, but:

 _> But physics is not kind to small rockets._

Why start with a small rocket, then?

<comment><USER2> Because limited funding is not kind to large rockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If their Aerospike engine is anything like the one in Kerbal Space Program, this should be good.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's great that this may help lower costs for putting smaller/personal satellites up, but I also worry that this will only exacerbate our current space debris problem =[

</comment><comment><USER40> My first major was aerospace, then I switched. Starting to wonder if I made a mistake.

I was told back then (late 90s) that there were no jobs doing anything non- military, and that the only thing I could possibly do if I wanted to work on anything cutting-edge was to work on weapons systems.

</comment><comment><USER41> They need to change their highlight color. It is impossible to read text that is highlighted.

</comment><comment><USER42> I hope the roadmap for these guys includes controlled descent and landing for the rockets - otherwise they haven't got a snowballs chance against SpaceX. The aerospike dependence on aerodynamics implies it will be much less effective when running in reverse for the landing phase - better have a way around this. When you look at the breakdown of fuel cost vs vehicle cost, it's obvious that reusable rockets will win so resoundingly that everything else will probably fall by the wayside.

<comment><USER24> I'm not so sure the economics works so well for reusables. Flying a reuseable LV requires (as far as anybody's managed, we'll see with SpaceX) far more work than just fuel & go. Typically you'd need a lot of maintenance work and repairs between each flight, not to mention the added complexity to the vehicle required for recovery. That's largely why the Shuttle wound up pushing a billion per launch, instead of the $10 million initially targeted, or the $110 million marginal cost of a launch.

<comment><USER42> It depends heavily on the level of refurbishment required between flights; agreed. I don't think there's enough examples to say "typically". The shuttle didn't come close to targets, but SpaceX seem to be progressing pretty well.

At the very least, a new orbital launch venture which is existentially dependent on SpaceX _failing_ to achieve something that they're very well on track to achieving seems pretty commercially risky... and that's in the already highly commercially risky domain of space launch in general :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nice idea and good luck to them, but all we really have is a video and a notion.

</comment><comment><USER44> Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64 --- Firefly.

Just had to.

</comment><comment><USER45> More power to Firefly and more power to private space exploration!

</comment><comment><USER46> It looks like they've completely ripped off the Tesla Motors logo.

<comment><USER47> It's not a complete rip-off, but does have a similar shape:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/Tesla_Mo...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/Tesla_Motors_logo.svg/346px- Tesla_Motors_logo.svg.png)

<comment><USER46> I was actually referring to the font, but now that you mention it, the graphic is very similar too.

<comment><USER47> You're right, when you combine the two the criticism is valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The choose a bad name, as the /r/firefly is already taken ;)

</comment><comment><USER49> If they don't have a vehicle named "Serenity" at some point we are going to have a serious problem.

<comment><USER50> I'm shocked that their lawyers even let them call their space company "Firefly". It's probably a sufficiently different field that they could win a trademark case at trial, but I'm not sure it's 100% cut-and-dry. I think naming a ship "Serenity" without securing some sort of licensing rights might be inviting trouble.

<comment><USER51> You shouldn't be. There are 185 trademarks for "Firefly" in the USPTO database [1]. Fox don't own any of them, but even if they did it would only apply to specific goods or services such as publishing fiction and merchandise, not launching rockets.

That said, I doubt one could call such a company "Harry Potter's Wizardly Rockets" without receiving a lawsuit, but I suspect such claims would be based on copyright.

1\. [http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804%3A4...](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804%3A4yw70q.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=live&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=Firefly&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query)

<comment><USER50> Obviously. My point was that a show about a spaceship and a company that launches spaceships are close enough that you could imagine it was some kind of marketing tie-in. It's just plausible enough that it wouldn't necessarily be thrown out as absurd, and that's usually enough to scare off most startups (since going to court over it would be much more detrimental to the small startup than to 20th Century Fox).

I can imagine they'd want to tread lightly and not name one of their _spaceships_ after a _spaceship_ on the show Firefly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Works Records System – A multi-user online programmable spreadsheet in 1974 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Records_System <comment><USER2> I would only object to that part of the article, as over-inflated:

 _The 3270 hardware also came equipped, as standard, with the ability to "physically" update a small section of the remote screen buffer (including its text colour, background, input behaviour and other attributes) using a "Write" (modified) command, instead of needing to retransmit the entire screen buffer on every change (anticipating Ajax software technology that re-emerged some 22 years later for web 2.0 based applications and now utilized for online spreadsheets and most other recent applications for similar reasons)._

Claiming that the 3270 anticipated Ajax is really, shall I say, "interesting".

I implemented a multi-user chat (similar to Linux talk) on a 3270, so I do appreciate the addressable location feature.

<comment><USER3> Right. ncurses, too, implements the same kind of lazy redrawing of screen contents, and probably all graphics systems do this as well. The technique is fairy old.

<comment><USER4> Forms in the 3270 protocol go a bit beyond lazy redrawing; AJAX _is_ a (semi-)valid comparison. Effectively, when you "submit" a screen on a 3270, what you're sending back over the connection (before any optimizations) is the same block of characters you were originally sent to render the screen—but with your modifications, appearing exactly in the places you made them. The "addressable locations" allow for both reading and writing—as in, both sending updates from the server to the client (ncurses-like), and the client to the server (AJAX-like "onblur" submission of individual form fields.)

Effectively, the client and server are both keeping a representation of the same terminal character-bufer (like screen(1) or VNC), but instead of sending updates whenever either side changes, updates are explicit. And so most 3270 server software uses the "the client synchronized the buffer to the server" event as the trigger for parsing, validating and persisting the data out of the buffer.

When put that way, it's more like some kind of... REpresentational State Transfer, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is currently up for deletion, because it has _nearly nothing_ in the way of good sources. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Works_Records_System)

If this is significant, then the way to help it along is to dig out Wikipedia- quality sources for this software. Someone must have something ...

<comment><USER6> [edit: I see a comment attributes creation to Ken Dakin instead of Dr. Robert Mais. I've made some adjustments as a result.]

Sometimes I cannot fathom the logic of Wikipedia, especially wanting to delete this article. From my understanding of the discussion, this is because the entry was made by one of the development team of WRS.

That's the same logic that would have articles created by Albert Einstein deleted because he was documenting his own work and that alone is sufficient reason to discard it, regardless of the actual content or how noteworthy it is/was.

I find the logic perverse as it actively discriminates against potentially valuable information being documented and detailed by original creators; the WRS gives good prior art on some uses of spreadsheet concepts (especially across time dimensions). You don't need to think too much to understand the value in documenting such a concept, especially by the creator/first implementor (which in normal mortal circles would be considered a coup).

While the intention is to stop any random person filling wikipedia with their random nonsense thoughts, it seems quite evident from a quick review of the article that it has merit on a number of levels.

I wonder what Ken Dakin did to upset the Wiki-Overlords?

<comment><USER7> While I would identify as Wikipedia inclusionist [1], I find this article quite problematic. It is (quite) impossible for a reader to verify any of the claims made in the article. Five years ago, someone (probably Ken Dakin) wrote this article and no other person on the whole planet earth has apparently been able or willing to add information or support the claims of the article. For all that we know, the WRS might just be an elaborate hoax [2] or part of a plot by someone who hates VisiCalc. (A quick Google search turned up some further sources that suggest that at least someone calling himself Ken Dakin actually exists and claims to have worked on WRS [3].)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXA_kwrkxA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXA_kwrkxA0)

<comment><USER8> I find myself thinking that there could be a middle ground.

Keep the article but slap a border or something on it to indicate that it is no a proper wikipedia article.

I can't think an article like this takes up much storage capacity on their servers.

<comment><USER9> The issue is not storage space.

Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopaedia, if you want to publish original research, put it on your blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone had perhaps set up a place for reminiscences and descriptions of ur- systems such as this as Wikipedia seem to want to have pages with independent verification. We don't want ephemera lost as people retire/die and Web sites suffer bitrot.

It did strike me that the author (one of the developers of the system) was - perhaps implicitly - claiming quite a lot of influence for his work.

PS: We had a school trip to ICI Runcorn in around 1975 or so. Alas, I don't remember any dumb terminals (we were in labs and a hall that could cope with 20 schoolboys). We were there to see a demonstration of fluorine chemistry - which _definitely_ made an impression, as did the practical session on fitting and testing gas cylinders (we had nitrogen ones to fit, they weren't daft).</comment>


I Cut My Hair with a Vacuum Cleaner and Oh Man, I Think I - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-my-hair-with-a-vacuum-cleaner-and-oh-man-i-think-1843204420 <comment><AUTHOR> All I can think about is the _Suck Kut._

[https://youtu.be/7LrJDt-fPQI](https://youtu.be/7LrJDt-fPQI)

Here's another video about the _Flowbee_ that mentions the _Suck Kut_ too. [https://youtu.be/VyZgZDhsOz4](https://youtu.be/VyZgZDhsOz4)</comment>


Fantasy mass transit maps for Detroit - <AUTHOR> http://detroitography.com/tag/fantasy/

<comment><AUTHOR> Detroit has wanted mass transit for a very long time. My dad fondly remembers the start of a subway in 1928, they got two stations built before the project was shut down by the start of the great depression.

Detroit had a great streetcar network that went everywhere in the city. They even had what were called interurbans that went out to the suburbs. The interurbans were killed by the automobile but the street cars were going strong until the mid fifties when the city was persuaded to sell the network and the company purchasing it mysteriously shut it down. My dad always believed that GM was responsible, I thought it was a big conspiracy but fifty years later evidence surfaced that my dad might have been right all along.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

Interesting fact: Some of the Detroit streetcars were sold to San Francisco and I'm told if you know where to look some of the cars still say Detroit. Can anyone confirm this for me?

I don't think Detroit can ever become a true world class city without mass transit. While there has been a little progress with the elevated people mover that runs along the waterfront and the under construction m-1 partially funded by Detroit's billionaires that runs up Woodward to no where interest remains very strong.

I think the m-1 needs to go out to the edge of the suburbs and that there needs to be a spur out to the airport. Detroit has a really good airport except there is no way to leave it without a car.</comment>


The Cheap Ticket into the Elite Class - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/05/16/the-cheap-ticket-into-the-elite-class/ <comment><USER2> I find his preaching on the _one true way to success_ just as frustrating as a pushy parent who insists their child do all of the extra curricular activities, is so _gifted_ , and so on and so forth.

I get that we all draw from personal experience when defining our world view - but I'm reluctant to make blanket statements about anything. As for the idea that this one short list of rules will guarantee your children are "successful"? I just don't buy into it. At all.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, it's annoying and frustrating. If you read the "Start Here" section, the author talks about the secret to financial success is to not have an "overpriced phone" and to "not drive a car". Yeah, those are realistic for most people.

<comment><USER4> You don't need an iPhone. Live close to work if you can, or remote. If you cannot, buy a reliable used car.

He's preaching simple financial common sense that far too many folks lack. Live below your means, save a significant portion of your income into investments. This is not rocket science.

Protip: You cannot achieve financial independence living in the Bay Area unless you strike the options lottery; the cost of living is simply too high to save the amount of income necessary to do so (can't live below your means when ~50% of your income goes to rent).

<comment><USER2> I spend just under 50% of my income on rent. I save around 20% per month.

This is London, not the Bay, but I'm reasonably sure it's possible to accumulate savings even there - it just depends what you choose to spend money on.

Guy I work with spends less than half what I do on rent (he shares a room with his gf in a larger house and lives further out), but spends a fortune on things I'd never countenance. A vive, a £400 graphics card etc.

Clothes? Alcohol? Expensive meals? Coffees? Phones? Computer games? Peripherals? All choices that we make, all costs we can avoid/minimise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He is right, but ... he means something different by "elite." Knowing technology will get you a good job and benefit you in other ways, it is not the fastest and surest path to social prestige.

Attending a top university is the fastest and surest path (though, like everything in life, not guaranteed) to that tiny class that rules the world.

Whether you want to play that game, or whether you prefer to win that game the hard way, is another question.

<comment><USER6> I'd argue that being skilled in your own right is a surer path than riding coattails. Granted, most of us would like the latter method to be even less reliable, but in most lines of work it's hard to turn down who's hard working and very good at what they do.</comment></comment>


Uber's use of fewer safety sensors prompts questions after Arizona crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving-sensors-insight/ubers-use-of-fewer-safety-sensors-prompts-questions-after-arizona-crash-idUSKBN1H337Q <comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of attention to the sleek outward appearance the lower profile single lidar cars have. I wonder why this is such a concern. Is the public afraid to travel in cars that look too robotic? Seems like a distant second what compared to safety IMHO.</comment>


A git plugin for Sublime Text 2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kemayo/sublime-text-2-git/wiki

<comment><USER2> Awesome. SublimeText2 users should also check out:

<https://github.com/SublimeText>

<https://github.com/Kronuz/SublimeCodeIntel>

<https://github.com/Kronuz/SublimeLinter>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for these po. Sublime Text is kicking major ass these days.

<comment><USER4> I just switched to it yesterday and I'm loving it. These plugins are just making it better and better!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's limited by my own preferences for how to interact with git, admittedly. I like going back down to the command line to actually commit things, so this is just handy shortcuts to common actions like log and diff viewing.

That said, if anyone feels like submitting a patch to add commands I've neglected, feel free.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've gone ahead and added a "quick commit" command, which just lets you add and commit the current file.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...and status.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The ecosystem of Sublime Text 2 is fantastic, new plugins are popping out at an impressive rate. I am switching from Textmate to ST2 and very happy with it.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. This package manager has proven very useful <http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks great. If I had the time/ability, I'd love to fork it and see commit and branching command support. Being able to commit straight from ST2 would be fantastic in terms of workflow.

Commit after each new function, perhaps even with a way to pull the text of the line you have selected into the commit automatically. Would be useful for pulling the function name into the commit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not sure if it relates, but another git integration plugin for Sublime: <https://github.com/notanumber/gitst2>

<comment><AUTHOR> I turned it up when I was looking for a git plugin, but decided that I didn't quite like its design decisions. In Sublime it feels like doing as much as possible to take advantage of the command palette and fuzzy search is the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat related, I recently checked out the 'console' of the online editor, Cloud9 (<http://c9.io/>), and was amazed at the in-editor git functionality (mostly I was amazed that it worked in such an early version of the product).

I can pull/push from my repos at both Github and Heroku from within my project on c9.

</comment><comment><USER10> For Windows 7 users, the path to install it to is C:\Users\\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Sublime Text 2\Packages

(Presumably, for Windows XP users, it would then be "C:\Documents and Settings\\[user]\Application Data\Sublime Text 2\Packages" but I can't double- check that at the moment.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I added checkout command last night. I also prefer to jump on console to do my git commands, but it's really nice that you can use Sublime's quick menu to quickly see the diff or checkout changes you've done. Well done David.

</comment><comment><USER12> There is also a plugin for Mercurial which you can grab from <https://github.com/SublimeText/SublimeHg> or via Package Control.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still going to be mostly using git from the command line, but this is wonderful for looking at diffs and logs.</comment>


A Cold Take on IBM, Red Hat and Their Hybrid Cloud Hyperbole - <AUTHOR> http://www.platformonomics.com/2019/07/a-very-cold-take-on-ibm-red-hat-and-their-hybrid-cloud-hyperbole/ <comment><USER2> Full disclosure , I work at Red Hat, but IBM buying red hat is a big deal. Just go back 40 years and IBM vs Microsoft. Microsoft bought QDos (which became windows). Now IBM bought red hat, which has openshift and is the leading cloud OS

<comment><USER3> Why is it a big deal? (beyond the debt IBM incurred) How is RHEL the "leading cloud OS" when the big clouds don't use it? Why does the OS matter at all in the cloud? Are you actually arguing that the Microsoft OS history will somehow repeat with IBM-Red Hat?

<comment><USER2> Yes, exactly that. IBM has the chance now to repeat history with the tables turned in IBMs favor

<comment><USER3> How does that happen being "assume a miracle"?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to drop 10M packets per second on a single CPU core - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-to-drop-10-million-packets/ <comment><USER2> XDP is some neat stuff.. it's #1 on my list of things to play around with.

suricata has some features that use xdp but I want to see if I can rip them out and turn it into a more generic reusable C library.</comment>


Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Immediate Mode GUI for C++ with minimal dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ocornut/imgui <comment><USER2> This is very useful if you want to cook up quick GUIs for tools. Used it in a few projects now, and I've been very satisfied every time.</comment>