Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/dented-reality-magic-leap-sees-slow-sales-steep-losses?pu=hackernewsfh62oc&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock <comment><USER2> The thing that got me about the Magic Leap is I couldn't find a reliable video of _what it looked like through the lenses._ Everything was clearly a CGI overlay or recreation. Reviewers claimed they were prohibited from showing video through the lenses.[0]

I can understand not wanting their product misrepresented, but all the secrecy and censorship about it makes me believe it is bad, and I'm not going to spend money on something I believe is bad.

0\. [https://youtu.be/TfzlU7nW23Y?t=34](https://youtu.be/TfzlU7nW23Y?t=34)

<comment><USER3> There was a twitter video that comically showed their marketing demo of the whale and then the real life example of the product (with related music).

It appears to have been scrubbed from the internet though because I was trying to find it a while back to show someone and I searched for a while, but couldn't find anything.

Magic Leap seems like a case study of how not to release a product, but maybe they were more focused on raising money?

Either work on your thing in public, shipping units (Oculus/FB) or work on it entirely in secret (Apple), but don't loudly and continuously talk vaguely about how amazing your thing is with no real public examples for years. This plus all the fake marketing video demos - if you're going to do this you better be as good as you're pretending to be.

Someone that good probably wouldn't need to show marketing videos, they'd just show the product itself.

I finally did get to play with one (friend who personally knows an investor had one) and it was pretty disappointing. AR seems likely to be the next computing platform, but the hardware is not ready yet.

Magic Leap reminds me a lot of the General Magic documentary - crazy hype, right general idea, but too early and bad product.

I'm not sure if they have the same talent General Magic had though.

<comment><USER4> Yet everyone was so optimistic and believed the hype. And it happens again and again! Whenever some early stage company/product gets some traction on HN that looks like hype-ware, the default reaction always seems to be excitement and optimism, rather than doubt and skepticism. Nobody's learned from Theranos. It's like we all adhere to that X-files poster "I WANT TO BELIEVE" over and over.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this was ever the case for Magic Leap. All threads were always full of 'I think this is waaaay too much funding for something we haven't even seem yet'.

I'm just confused how the press and investors were misled in such a miraculous way.

<comment><USER6> The most convincing "argument" for them was "well, they fooled Google into giving them a half a billion dollars, so they must have something there."

<comment><AUTHOR> My understanding is that sergey wanted to do it and he can effectively write checks right off the balance sheet. Google Ventures passed, as folks were always eager to tell me.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like that's the same way Google Glass got funded, too. I wonder what Sergey Brin thought of the nepotism at Magic Leap that he funded, documented in the sexual discrimination lawsuit?

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/meet-the-google-founders- mistres...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/meet-the-google-founders- mistress-1219044247)

>Since Google Glass launched to our awe and horror, the company's co-founder, Sergey Brin, hasn't been spotted without a pair. He's placed himself atop the privacy-eroding project, publicly, and inside Google's secret labs. Maybe it's because he's fucking the Glass marketing manager, Amanda Rosenberg.

>According to a startling report by AllThingsD's Liz Gannes and Kara Swisher, Brin and his wife of six years, Anne Wojcicki, are no more, now that he's found himself a PR girlfriend at Google. AllThingsD also reported this girlfriend was recently attached to another (totally coincidentally departing) top Googler, Hugo Barra, to make Brin's relationship with the recent San Francisco transplant behind the backs of his wife and children all that much worse.

[https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex- discriminat...](https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex- discrimination.pdf)

>"Eric Akerman, vice president of IT, is a high school buddy of Abovitz. He is a loud and outspoken and several misogynistic comments have emanated from his department and from him."

>"Vice president of IT Akerman, on Nov. 8, 2016, told a large group of people who asked why he voted for Trump that it was 'because Melania is hot.'"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Magic Leap One has been for sale for 6 months. At $2.6B in total funding, thats $433,333 per unit for 6,000 units. The sticker price is $2300 per unit.

By comparison the Nintendo VirtualBoy was for sale for one year at $180(in 1995/$300 in 2018) and sold 770,000 units[1].

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

<comment><USER8> > _6,000 units_

This number gets more mind-blowing the more you think about it.

It's small enough that one needs to start considering the units bought by management, employees, investors, suppliers, competitors, _et cetera_ to say nothing of their friends and families.

<comment><USER9> A friend worked for them and (if I recall correctly) employees got a free unit. Not sure if that's included in this number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let this be a lesson:

Working prototypes trump all theory.

I heard all silicon valley gurus stating they were "bearish on VR, bullish on "AR". This proliferated as a mantra throughout the industry. I thought they were wrong then, and believed the opposite - because I had a working VR headset that was awesome, but had only heard somewhat meh things about existing AR prototypes.

Until great AR hardware comes out, I'm still sticking with the same opinion.

<comment><USER11> It depends on your definitions. You don't _need_ a headset for pretty interesting AR. If I could just point a phone at things and get genuinely useful information as an overlay, I'd consider that a pretty decent AR application. Sure, the same thing in a pair of stylish glasses might be even better but it's not strictly necessary.

<comment><USER12> I see phone AR as a pointless gimmick. Like comparing a 1970s video game to PS4 video game. Yes both can be fun but pong is not really comparable to GTA5. Phone AR is so far off from Black Mirror AR. I can imagine every teenage girl spending all their time playing with their friends in AR, having their friends appear in their bedroom instead of just on Facetime. With AR glasses, some future version where they are no more intrusive than normal reading glasses, I can't imagine them not doing it. I can imagine all the youtube AR cooking classes will just project directly on your kitchen counter where you can either stand directly beside the chef or cover the same space, have your friends appear on the sofa next to you for facetime, etc... When it actually gets there it will be compelling in the extreme and non-geeks will flock to it like they did to iPhone. Until then it will stay in the realm of Apple Newton.

<comment><USER13> Why girls?

<comment><USER12> I wasn't trying to single out girls, only that it's an observed pattern that young girls (teens) talk to their friends constantly. It used to be with a phone, now it's probably via multiple ways. AFAIK the same pattern does not exist with young men to the same level. I have no idea why. I only know that it's an observed pattern than fits enough that it's a stereotype.

It's old but it was one of the first hits

[https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2010/04/20/chapter- two-...](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2010/04/20/chapter-two-how- phones-are-used-with-friends-what-they-can-do-and-how-teens-use-them/)

How teens communicate might have changed but I'm guessing the relative amounts show girls still use it more.

I firmly believe that at some point those same people will embrace full eye AR (not phone AR) as a preferred or common way to communicate over all current methods. Further, I believe that once it's possible for them to do it easily without cumbersome equipment that AR will become mainstream.

It's clearly years out but the fact that I can carry a tiny and relatively light computer on my wrist with display (a smart watch) suggests it might not be that far off to have stylish glasses with similar tech at a price people will pay for once the applications make it clear they want it.

If you asked in 2007 how many non-techies wanted a PDA the answer would likely have been close to 0. Now the answer is close to 100% of them carrying one at all times. I think AR will be no different. What has to happen is they need to go from the bulky Apple Newton level tech of today to something light and useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I bought one second-hand a couple months ago. It's neat and all, but between the poor software and the severe extent to which it darkens the rest of the world, it's a pretty resounding 'meh'. I still have hopes for using it for productivity, but it honestly doesn't hold a candle to the original Hololens. (Can't speak to the Hololens 2 yet; going to get one in a little while though, hopefully!)

<comment><USER15> I haven't gotten a chance to try Magic Leap myself, but if you think that Magic Leap doesn't hold a candle to the original Hololens, then in it is dead in the water imo. I was somewhat annoyed with how small the field of view was on Hololens, and overall it was a pretty janky experience that I wouldn't recommend to anyone except those who just want to try the first "real" AR headset product out here and attempt writing code for it.

Hololens 2 is already publicly available, and I had a chance to play with it for a bit. All I am going to say is, if you thought the original Hololens was decent enough, you will be blown away by Hololens 2. It is leaps ahead of the first version, both in terms of the UX and the tech. Even everything auxiliary about it just feels "right", stuff like the flippable visor, easier head mount, etc. It is the kind of a device that I would legitimately consider using occasionally at home to read news and do other stuff while lazying around doing other things.

It isn't at the original iPhone levels of "whoa, we are entering a new era of how people use their personal computing devices" yet, but the overall experience is such a large step up from the original Hololens, it is clear as day to me that AR is quickly getting closer to the point where it will be dominating personal computing niche currently occupied by smartphones.

<comment><USER14> How was the comfort level on the HL2? That and the low FOV were what killed the original for me, as my use case is replacing my screens. I'm actually getting ready to commit to working 100% through VR -- Quest -- and AR -- currently ML1, but seriously considering the HL2...

If I didn't have a toddler to watch while I work much of the time, I'd probably just go all-in on VR (I'm currently working 30-50% through the Quest), but being able to see the world is kind of essential for those times haha.

<comment><USER15> Imo you are in for a treat, because FOV and comfort are the two biggest improvement areas with HL2, along with redesigned software/UX. Still no "killer app" third party software yet, or much third party software at all, but your biggest comfort and FOV complaints are all addressed extremely well.

As it goes with those kinds of things, you should definitely try the device out before making a conclusion, but given what you said earlier, I feel like you will like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Information has been unlocking the occasional article for HN users for a while now. I asked if they'd do that for this one and they agreed. Thanks!

(The submitted URL was [https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/06/report-magic-leaps- early-d...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/06/report-magic-leaps-early-device- sales-arent-looking-good/), which made sense while the original source was behind a hard paywall. Changed now.)

<comment><USER17> That's nice! I noticed a modal but I closed before reading it. I could parse (not in time to avoid closing) that it was welcoming HN users.

I am curious now what it was saying.

EDIT: Got it again, it says:

 _" Welcome Hacker News Readers_

 _Before you quickly exit out of this popup, consider subscribing for $10 /month for your first 3 months"_

I was quicker than they expected lol

<comment><USER18> Welp, at least my copy was on point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think all of these things are true:

AR is really hard and anything that does it at all is impressive and could, believably, be the precursor to a revolutionary product.

All current AR tech is more expensive than seems sustainable for a consumer product. It's also difficult to develop for and has few (if any) compelling experiences. These things are endemic to early stage products, but it is also possible that they will endure long enough to cripple AR as a product in the foreseeable future.

Everyone in the AR industry is guilty of overhype. Moreso than early tech start ups in general. That said, Magic Leap seems to have behaved significantly worse than its peers.

Part of the effect of the hype machine is that it's hard to get any depiction of what it looks like _to look through the lenses of the products_. This comes, as far as I can tell, from the likely true idea that the experiential qualities of AR cannot be captured through 2D video and such video would be somewhat deceptive. To me, it seems like the practice of releasing visualization videos is more deceptive but reasonable people can disagree.

\-----

It feels to me like a lot of AR discussion comes down to people asserting that one of these genres of view is true in response to someone else expressing a different one of these views.

To me, it feels like it's hard to talk usefully about the current state of the industry. The promise is very cool, the products are early stage. So many factors legitimately excuse current failings. Do people feel like we the tech is public or mature enough that we can talk about the real limits or likely arc of the tech at all, or are we trapped between hype and development?

<comment><USER20> On the other hand the more modest AR in Pokemon Go has been a huge hit.

<comment><USER6> Is pretending to be something that you're not really "modest"?

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure how they are pretending? The AR bit seems to work pretty well to me.

<comment><USER21> Everybody I know who plays Pokémon Go turns off the AR features, because they don't care about them. They would rather use their smartphone normally than pointlessly aiming the camera at the sidewalk.

<comment><USER20> The AR is not very good for actual gameplay but was kind of fun, partly for sending pictures in the early days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Karl Guttag estimated in the same range last month: [https://www.kguttag.com/2019/11/10/all-magic-leap-patents- ha...](https://www.kguttag.com/2019/11/10/all-magic-leap-patents-have- apparently-been-assigned-to-j-p-chase-morgan-as-collateral/)

His whole blog is a pretty compelling read on the current and near future state of AR.

<comment><USER23> He's underestimating (though not by a whole lot probably). The 6k numbers from the above article refer to the first 6 months sale. Guttag is talking about the last 18 months. Also doesn't account for the headsets that have been seeded to devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Haven't they learned from General Magic [1]?

>"Magic's just science that we don't understand yet." [2]

If you call your company magic then the product most likely is not just at the brink of your understanding but so far out that it is impossible to close the gap by hard work alone.

Steve Jobs mentioned in a very early interview somewhere that he wants to build a computer for everybody. He waited years and decades patiently until every duck was in line and he could launch the iPhone.

This thought doesn't lead to a meaningful point. I am just wondering why he and Apple (e.g. the A7[3]) got the timing right several times but many others push too soon or wait too long.

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

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/547452-magic-s-just- science...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/547452-magic-s-just-science-that- we-don-t-understand-yet)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704954)

<comment><USER22> On Apple (as opposed to Magic Leap), I believe a lot of it is figuring out a customer need and audience that can be satisfied by a set of technologies that are just at the edge of mature, and then not shipping the product until it actually satisfies those needs. This means not shipping a technology as a product just because it may be useful in the future, and it means resetting a products at the prototype stage often.

Both are hard for startups to take on. The former because many of the founders are heavily focused on a technology they came up with and attempt to shoehorn it into products that don't quite make sense. The latter because it requires either very patient investors or a big bank account.

Both are also hard for established, mature companies to take on. The former because they seem to believe that innovation for innovations sake is a useful thing to do, and for whatever reason the tech press seems to encourage them. The latter because they are focused on delivering quarterly results over building long term platform and ecosystem value, and because politically a cancelled project can be career ending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't even know they had gotten beyond vaporware!

Why would someone spend $2,300 on this equipment other than as a developer kit? I assume there is virtually no compelling content or services available to make a consumer interested in shelling out that amount of money, or even 1/10th that amount of money.

<comment><USER26> The tech they were hyping (FSD) never materialized and is very much vaporware. Every one following got disappointed when they pivoted to hololens-like stuff...

<comment><USER27> Fiber scan display in hi res would've required moving at 14× speed of sound: [https://www.kguttag.com/2018/01/06/magic-leap-fiber- scanning...](https://www.kguttag.com/2018/01/06/magic-leap-fiber-scanning- display-fsd-the-big-con-at-the-core/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's a lot of discussion here of how this was predictable given the absence of a visible prototype for so long, and the over-the-top secrecy of the project. However, for me this was a predetermined failure when I first read an interview with the founder. Classic Super-Visionary snake-oil salesman. He could say nothing about the product, except for how it would change the world more than the world had ever been changed in the history of world changes. Sure, ok. I don't remember Larry and Sergey being like that (because they had a real product). Or Bezos, etc.

Frankly, I'm shocked at how the investors couldn't see past this CEO.

<comment><USER29> I think it's pretty common for investors to see someone as a Snakeoil-salesman but still invest. It only matters if they think they'll get a return.

<comment><USER28> Well, I don't have all the data points, but it seems to me that snakeoiler should stand out as an anti-pattern. Maybe VCs see it differently. Maybe they'd inform me that the snakeoil CEOs are _sometimes_ frauds, but the non- snakeoil CEOs _always_ fail (not enough energy, not charismatic enough to attract talent, etc).

("Huckster"... that's the word I was looking for)

<comment><USER30> Seems to me one person's snake oil has often been another person's cannabis oil, in oil terms I guess where neither type of oil may actually be useful to a particular consumer.

But if you've got a truly persuasive and aggressive salesman who can really get things done and actually sell virtual snake oil like few others, especially for much more than it's worth if genuine to buyers who don't actually need the product or as much as he is selling them; well that salesman needs to be incentivized with excess genuine product to sell, and appropriate adult supervision and probably legal counsel and you can reach goals more impressive than most top salesmen who are themselves very productive.

IOW with that kind of salesman you don't need functional product anyway since you'll do quite well selling the sizzle alone, but if you do actually throw in a real steak it can indeed be relatively non-slimy.

So a product company might be able to slide more product out through a slick pipeline, but when you're delivering something of value you're still a product company.

The problem is a salesman like this who gets too close to executive rank can overcome the supervision and turn it into a snake oil company, and it can ruin everything.

Or with the right connections, found a new high-tech snake oil company where the most important consideration was not a product of value anyway. Unless dreams came true of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was very skeptical about this company, but I actually got to demo the technology a few nights ago, and I have to say my mind was blown. There are definitely a lot of kinks to work out, but I would say that the experience was not too far off from the whale video they used to have on their homepage, probably better. In the demo I saw, you are immersed in a sort of coral reef, but it's all within the confines of your living room. It basically looks like you're living room has turned into a fish tank. It feels real enough that I wanted to reach out and touch the fish swimming around in front of me. Yes, it wasn't perfect at mapping the room, but the technology was much more impressive than I imagined. And the fact that it is augmented reality rather than virtual reality made things much more interesting, because you're interacting with the real world and the virtual world at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER32> This 2015 story did already sent the wrong message, blatantly ripping off other people in the industry.

Magic Leap Ripped Off Those Awesome UI Concepts [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8974976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8974976)

<comment><USER6> And as if blatantly ripping off other people in the industry wasn't enough, then there was also the sexist company culture and blatant nepotism of Abovitz hiring his old high school buddy Eric Akerman as vice president of IT, who is but one of the many people they have to thank for the lawsuit about the hostile sexist work environment, and the fact that their leadership, design team, marketing material, and target demographic excluded and insulted women:

[https://www.vrandfun.com/magic-leap-settling-sex- discriminat...](https://www.vrandfun.com/magic-leap-settling-sex- discrimination-lawsuit-with-former-employee/)

>Magic Leap Settling Sex Discrimination Lawsuit with Former Employee (vrandfun.com)

>[...] It's quite alarming to see Magic Leap make headlines for sex discrimination lawsuits rather than innovation and technology.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310144)

[https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex- discriminat...](https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex- discrimination.pdf)

>This is an action for hostile environment sex discrimination and retaliation brought by Tannen Campbell ("Campbell" or "plaintiff"), former Head of Strategic Marketing and Brand Identity and, later, Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Brand Identity, against her former employer, Magic Leap, Inc. ("Magic Leap" or "defendant").

>"Eric Akerman, vice president of IT, is a high school buddy of Abovitz. He is a loud and outspoken and several misogynistic comments have emanated from his department and from him."

>"Vice president of IT Akerman, on Nov. 8, 2016, told a large group of people who asked why he voted for Trump that it was 'because Melania is hot.'"

>Campbell, one of whose responsibilities was to help Magic Leap with the "pink/blue problem," had to endure hostile environment sex discrimination while proposing ways, not only to make Magic Leap's product more woman friendly, but also to make the workplace more diverse and inclusive. Campbell was terminated after (and because) she, like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes" who blurted out that the Emperor was naked, challenged Magic Leap's CEO, Rony Abovitz, to acknowledge the depths of misogyny in Magic Leap's culture and take steps to correct an gender imbalance that negatively affects the company's core culture and renders it so dysfunctional it continues to delay the launch of a product that attracted billions of investment dollars. Campbell also raised concerns that what Magic Leap showed the public in marketing material was not what the product actually could do—admonitions ignored in favor of her male colleagues' assertions that the images and videos presented on Magic Leap's website and on YouTube were "aspirational," and not Magic Leap's version of "alternate facts."

>Campbell met September 28, 2016 with Magic Leap CFO Henry and Head of Operations Tina Tuli for a conference call with the CFO and leadership team at R/GA, an award-winning international advertising agency that was Magic Leap's advertising agency of record. During the call, Henry said of the product under development, "I'm sitting here between two beautiful ladies. They're not going to want to put a big ugly device over their pretty faces. And I have an office with glass doors, I don't want people to see me with these beautiful girls with ugly things on their faces." Later, one of the male R/GA executives on the call asked Campbell if Henry frequently made sexist comments like he had made. A female executive at R/GA also was offended by Henry's remarks.

>As an example of more egregious comments, Campbell told Abovitz of the "Three Os" incident and Vlietstra's lack of any meaningful discipline in response. As an example of unconscious bias, she told him of an IT employee who was helping Campbell a new logo into the email system. Cognizant that she was taking up a lot of the employee's time with minor changes to get the logo "perfect," Campbell apologized for taking up so much of the employee's time, to which he responded, "Oh, don't worry, I get it. You're a woman and you care that things look pretty. I'm a man. I just get the work done."

>Euen Thompson, an IT Support Lead, on November 16, 2016, gave a tutorial to a group of seven new hires, including two women, how to use Magic Leap's IT equipment and resources. One woman asked Thompson a question in front of the group and Thompson responded, "Yeah, women always have trouble with computers." The women in the group, in apparent disbelief, asked Thompson to repeat what he said and Thompson replied, "In IT we have a saying; stay away from the Three Os: Orientals, Old People and Ovaries."

> During Campbell's last four months at Magic Leap, Abovitz—who always had > been pouty and prone to temper-tantrums, began to dig his heels in even more > in the face of dissenting ideas and to explode ever more frequently into > child-like fits of rage, threatening retribution when he didn't get his way, > felt betrayed or was portrayed publically in an unfavorable light.

>[...] the "Wizards Wanted" section of its website. Indeed, given that a "wizard" generally is defined as "a man who has magical powers," and virtually without exception images of wizards are male, Magic Leap's recruiting verbiage contains a not-so-subtle "women-need-not-apply" message.

>Senior Engineer Eric Adams sent out an email December 4, 2015 through a company email list serv for social activities for Magic Leap employees and their families, which email bore the subject line, "Board (sic) Wives at home while you are loving it at the Leap," which stated:

\----

Hello Leapers:

My wife is starting a Google group outside of the Magic Leap locked domain.

It is called "Magic Leap spouses" and should be findable as such.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/magic-leap- spouses](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/magic-leap-spouses)

It is sort of a social meeting place for all the spouses that have been displaced, alone in the daytime and are new to the area, would like to have lunch with or just to have someone local to hang out with when their significant other is slaving away at work thru-out the 12-Hr day. Or are they just nagging you because you moved here?

Please forward this Email to your wife if she would like to get better acclimated to South Florida. The group is not public and is reasonably private (by email invite/accept) as to not accidentally disclose any Magic Leap secrets.

\----

>The gender-neutral reference to "spouses" notwithstanding, implicit in the subject line and the reference to "your wife" is the assumption — which is not too far from wrong — that all the employees were men with wives who didn't work outside the home and were "alone in the daytime."

>Sadly, because Magic Leap seldom hires and does not actively recruit female candidates, the company loses competitive advantage to products like Microsoft's Hololens. Microsoft, which employs far more females on its team, developed its similar product on a faster time line with more content that appeals to both genders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For as cool as this is, cost is the problem.

$2300 is an expensive experiment, one that might not be for me.

You want to get developers to bet on new tech, to innovate, then get the cost way down. Make me as an individual developer willing to take the risk that I might not have the time or the mindset to follow through.

I can't imagine that the cost of production is more than $500... start selling them at that price point.

<comment><USER34> >I can't imagine that the cost of production is more than $500... start selling them at that price point.

You can't imagine that the cost of custom bleeding-edge hardware produced in four-digit-volume runs is more than $500?

<comment> munk-a In theory a lot of this funding should've been spent securing sales so they wouldn't be producing the items on a bespoke scale but instead would've been able to get the cost per unit down. I'm sort of amazed at the funding this has received when it seems to be performing like an underwhelming kickstarter.

<comment><USER35> Securing sales for an alpha prototype?

<comment> munk-a Yea honestly - that's the only way to do it when you're going out on a limb like this. That's why business often prefer more conservative incremental changes. These folks took a giant risk making such a drastic tech leap and they just need to reap what they've sown. They're selling units to the public so we're out of alpha, they're trying to pawn off alpha units as a finished product, or they really don't know what they're doing. Either way signs aren't great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The very big disappointment comes from that they promised (kind of) that they would get Fiber Scanning Displays working. What I gather is they had a sort of, more or less working, giant machinery prototype (The Beast) that was very impressive for the few who got to try it. But they never actually managed to make the tech viable in a headset form factor. Also unclear if they had more than one color... Still very curious about what they managed to accomplish on that front but I now doubt we will ever know.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. We never got the Magic Leap. I remember reading that surgeons were already using the tech so it 100% existed and just needed to be productized. I figured google-ers had taken a close look and had a pretty good idea about how to productize it. Maybe it is worth a billion, I thought to myself. What we got was a Hololens clone. It should be called the Magic One because there's no technological Leap in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I shot a video with Tom Furness from the UW a few years ago. He was totally burned by the UW on the patents sold to magic leap and didn't get a dime. Then in the interview Tom called the product total BS because they will never never ship the true waveguide system.

The demo in lab was shown to the investors. They were sold a bill of goods because the technology simply does not scale down to a headset size with proper heat dissipation and power needs. Ever hear of Microvision?

The bottom line? Magic Leap was completely arrogant and gave Devs the run- around. Then they hyped up the market with the fail whale videos that we're all CGI and served no practical need showcasing the technology helping to save time or fix a problem.

The dev kits shipped did showcase a lot of hard problems that needed to be solved and integrated. A cool glimpse of the future. However the waveguide system that they hyped investors on was never shipped in the dev kits. They used smoke and mirrors to fool people.

Magic leap is really based off of old Microvision hype with the great backroom demo for investors that will not manifest into a real product anytime in the near future.

Microsoft's going to own the Enterprise in this space with integrated cloud scale systems powering the headset.

I've tried the Magic Leap, HoloLens, helped launch the Gear VR, and was early in the old Valve VR room. Remember kids, don't believe the hype.

<comment><USER37> > integrated cloud scale systems

a computer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is anything else expected out of it? I mean, the way the company has rolled on, starting with a lot of in fighting, then releasing a bunch CGI videos about experience and never actually releasing any real use cases. They ended up launching the product without really showing anyone what the experience will be. People want to see what it is before spending an obscene amount on it. I fully expected it to fail.

</comment><comment><USER39> How are we even surprised. They are the Theranos of AR. They pushed the 'fake it until you make it' mantra a bit far, and now reality is biting hard.

Hopefully they will still trigger a revolution of some sort... but this was predictable.

<comment><USER40> This is way overblown. They have at least a Hololens equivalent, and if you value occlusion, they're ahead. And that's without Microsoft's reach. Equating them to vaporware isn't fair at all.

<comment><USER41> Have you used one?

<comment><USER40> Both.

<comment><USER41> I can't see how you would really take their implementation of occlusion seriously, what's it useful for? it's so laggy that it's not even tech-demo worthy.

<comment><USER40> It seemed fine for static object geometry. Throw a virtual ball behind a couch and its gone. AR toys can fall behind tables. It does add to the experience. I don't have the most up to date view but has the Hololens significantly improved over that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> AR is a somewhat difficult sell, particularly with limited software available for it. Just imagine playing the interactive games they promoted in their demo videos, it would cost $10,000 in gear alone to get a 4 player game going.

To me, AR sounds great when you are mobile and apps can supplement reality with useful information. Playing Minecraft or some kind of space invaders game in my kitchen isn't that much more appealing than playing a game in a full virtual environment.

<comment><USER43> AR for games is an even harder sell IMHO because it's very hard for the game developer to make use of your space in a compelling way since they have no idea what it might look like, at least for home use.

I could see it as a carnival or arcade attraction where the AR application is tightly coupled with the space it is in, but this is a niche application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> >Employees started receiving free headsets earlier this year, with some managers telling staffers it was because the company couldn't sell enough and had extra inventory, said multiple people.

I applied for their developer grant program, and got offered a consolation prize of a free headset - that they wanted to send me a 1099 for the full price! Would have had to pay $600-1000 in taxes on it, so had to reject. Nice tax write-off opportunity with a bonus of good PR!

</comment><comment><USER45> Well, the crazy thing is, the underlying technology that ML was originally based on (i.e. U. Of Wahington's HIT lab VRD), is absolutely a leading approach in the path to AR. I personally think it's what will ultimately make AR the medium for applications people actually want (dare I say, need) to use every day. Ronny got that part right. Where he failed was in not investing that $2B+ fully into the glasses development and solving hard AR software problems like real time occlusion. Instead, this guy hired "story tellers" to design content for a technology that he didn't have yet.

For the second mistake, let me say only that people in AR marketing demos should not be smiling. If they are, you're introducing the wrong product.

The core idea was on the right track, but the conductor let the train derail very early on.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is an early beta product for wealthy tech-savvy trend-following early- adopting VR-wanting consumers. That's a tiny market.

Classic case of a company having no idea what they're selling and who they're selling it to but expecting billions just for existing.

<comment><USER47> Isn't it more a classic case of a company underestimating the challenges of bringing a prototype to market? Didn't magic leap's tech demo work on like a supercomputer strapped to the user's back?

<comment><USER46> Yes, but I argue that's the same thing. The end user defines the product. They could've developed and sold the original technology is a different way (stationary entertainment, movies, etc) and be far more successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's expensive, and it's incredibly difficult to convey in video what it's like to wear one.

If you get a chance to try one, I HIGHLY recommend it. It's an incredible experience. Even just the demos.

</comment><comment><USER49> I won a unit from Twilio conference. I haven't touched it in a year but I often think about turning it back on. I really hope they get more content for it.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's too expensive.

<comment><USER51> $2300? Yikes.

Curious if the quoted 100k-unit estimate was for the so-called "Creator Edition" (clearly targeted at devs and early adopters), or if it was supposed to include a more mass-market unit that hasn't shipped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The main problem with ML is that they don't have enough apps, that could practically be usable with AR technology. They marketed with Whale and GoT app, which is nothing compared to the spatial awareness and real world tracking they could have presented.

</comment><comment><USER53> They need to start advertising like Occulus is doing, buying up literally _all_ the ad slots on Youtube.

By comparison, I haven't seen a single ad for Magic Leap anywhere on the internet. People aren't buying it b/c they've never heard of it.

<comment><USER54> Imo, they are not really trying for the Consumer market right now, and these units are aimed at Developers, who are needed to create content for the platform. Kinda big point that was skipped over in the article, but it still paints ML into a corner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Am I going to drop $2300 sight unseen? No. I'd be willing to go to a Microsoft store or Apple store to try one out. The technology might be great, but they need to work on their marketing.

</comment><comment><USER56> >He then told employees to "stay the course" and "protect the company" by keeping confidential information "under lock and key."

Classic. Instruction to team to not leak info get leaked.

</comment><comment><USER57> Ok I knew it was bad, I didn't know it was that bad.

Lesson for the day, these guys have an excellent team when you need to fundraise, not so much when it comes to execution.

</comment><comment><USER58> Magic Leap is proof that first mover advantage is fictional (or at least it's not an iron law that guarantees success). They spent large sums of money to put out the least half-baked AR product on the market. They would be in better shape now if they hadn't grown so fast.

That being said, AR truly is the future. In a few years there will be multiple digital universes overlaid onto our world. Magic Leap should be commended for their technical accomplishments, but can they stay solvent until their dream of the future is realized? I honestly hope they pull through.

<comment><USER59> > In a few years there will be multiple digital universes overlaid onto our > world.

I think applications like HUD displays on car windshields is an obvious place where it will be big for regular consumers. There are a bunch of interesting applications for commercial use too. Other than that, I have a hard time seeing much interest in regular people until they can eliminate the need for glasses or goggles.

<comment><USER58> There are many applications that, together, may make it worthwhile to wear AR glasses:

\- Laptop monitor replacement or augmentation

\- Indoor and outdoor navigation

\- Identifying an available self-driving cab and dropping a waypoint for it to navigate to

\- Immediate POV recording + sharing of ephemeral events (many people will like this, even if the HN crowd won't)

\- Shared viewing of footage, large 3D graphics, or news items with your friends no matter where you are

\- "Digitalized" brick and mortar fashion stores where you can easily identify clothes that fit you or that are in your price point. An enhanced view would show additional information, such as online reviews of each item.

\- All the filtering features of the digital world can be brought into real life, including filtering out of advertisements

\- Games games games. It sounds comical to say, but Pokemon will become real. People will run around with poke balls that release increasingly intelligent digital creatures. In Harry Potter AR, people will be able to cast digital spells by waving their wand in a certain way and saying the right thing. WOW or Runescape players could dawn their achievement capes irl

\- Aesthetic landscape transformation. I imagine there will be a "default view," "modified view," and "off view" of the world. If you go to Times Square and enable the default view, you would be immersed in a digital world curated by the brands that advertise there. If you use a modified view, you can see whatever you want, whether that's anarchist graffiti or cyberpunk renderings. In the off view, all advertisements and all screens would be rendered invisible

\- Usable IKEA instructions

\- Non-boring meetings at work with interactive holographic renderings of enterprise projects

\- Remote guidance and instruction (enabling emergency plant maintenance by people who have no clue how to repair a broken pipe)

\- Digitally enhanced classrooms. Imagine a physics lab with a 3D rocket or roller coaster sim overlaid with force diagrams.

\- Multilingual digital tour guide bots that can explain every nook and cranny of a city for free

\- Guided construction of elaborate, ML-generated Lego structures

That's just the beginning. There are probably use cases we couldn't even imagine yet, kind of like how some technologies that are out today seemed like science fiction 10 years ago.

<comment><USER59> Education and games seem sensible and I already said there may be some commercial uses (although I can't imagine them ever being good enough to want to use for 8 hours a day). Nothing else you listed there offers enough of an improvement over current phone and watch based alternatives.

Outside of education, games, and commercial uses, I don't think they will be able to overcome the glasshole factor.

It's going to be a big market, but I don't think it will ever be as big as cell phones are today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Occlusion is cool and all but Microsoft ate their lunch.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm actually surprised they've sold any. Are there any practical uses/games/anything useful or enjoyable you can do with them?

</comment><comment><USER61> All these talks on AR VR and I still haven't seen a single killer app that would make me want to buy it.

<comment><USER62> I work at a 3d company that's starting to land some contracts for AR. I don't think you're going to see consumer reasons for a while; instead look to colleges and other training platforms. AR and VR are gonna be huge in the medical fields - learning from a 3d model is so much easier than a textbook image.

<comment><USER61> I hope so, medical field is in a major need for innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> >He still personally signs off on new hires, who are told that it's harder to get a job at Magic Leap than it is to be accepted into Harvard

I doubt that. South Florida isn't crawling with engineering talent, we all left. Having known, studied, and worked with several people who work(ed) there, I sincerely doubt they can claim to have such a deep bench of talent.

<comment><USER15> South Florida doesn't need to have all that talent. Pretty much none of the people I know who were considering offers from Magic Leap, with some eventually accepting them, were from Florida at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Lol at "Dented Reality". I would prefer "Demented Reality" though.

</comment><comment><USER65> It will likely become the next WeWork

</comment><comment><USER66> I kind of called it 3 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13972212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13972212)

</comment><comment><USER67> I saw this coming long ago. I wrote this on June 7th 2018: [https://arccompute.com/blog/why-augmented-reality-is-not- rea...](https://arccompute.com/blog/why-augmented-reality-is-not-ready/)

</comment><comment><USER68> AR fundamentally can't work.

To work, it has to understand the world around us. It needs to be full AI.

There's also no reason why we would want it. Nothing. As we develop ways to augment our world a simple phone can deliver the info.

VR has a use case for entertainment. It has no business or education case.

Work is done by reducing dimensions and abstracting things not adding dimensions and unabstraction.

But at least entertainment will propel the VR industry forward so we can see if anything else pops out.

Magic Leap faked all use cases from day one. It was obvious on multiple levels it was vaporware

<comment><USER15> I have a feeling this comment will be linked on HN eventually (in about a decade) the same way people link that one infamous comment about Dropbox being an unnecessary thing that no one needs or wants. Or the same way people in 2019 mock those from a couple of decades ago who were saying that internet was "just a fad" that will go away sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER68> AR has been around since 1990. VR decades before so times ticking on what a fad is and you have to make a case why this decade AR will start?

Plus I did premise it on full AI to understand the world to augment. Technically we already augment with the 100 year old phone allowing us to talk to someone far away anywhere-ish.

Your case why in a decade we want AR which is a overlayed response and a camera that can analyse the world using real technology. What will it do? Sci Fiction movies struggle to come up with more than ads or more intrusive notifications ;) Magic Leap made beautiful whales that looked pretty, cost a fortune to produce and would have worked equally well in a movie which is how everyone viewed it, in a 2D advertisement. There was no reason to AR it even if you could afford to do it in the wild.

Most museums, a place of high structure and high value struggle to even create simple voice overlays of art work.

<comment><USER15> >AR has been around since 1990. VR decades before so times ticking on what a fad is and you have to make a case why this decade AR will start?

By that metric, we had smartphones at least since the early 90s. They didn't make any significant impact on the world at all until at least late 00s. And now, look at the world we live in these days.

>Your case why in a decade we want AR which is a overlayed response and a camera that can analyse the world using real technology. What will it do?

Everything a smartphone can do, but in a much more seamless, unobtrusive, and superior way, as well as many many other things that we cannot even think of now. If you think a tech that can completely supplant smartphones (as well as offer many more things that smartphones cannot do) isn't gonna be desired by people in the future, then I think there isn't much one can say to convince you otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SF YIMBY Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfyimby.org/platform/ <comment><USER2> Governor Brown is trying to move legislation that would allow developments that meet a minimum below-market allocation to bypass local approval completely.

If this becomes law, NIMBYs will become extinct quickly as developers will just bite the bullet and include a lower-cost component to get fast-track approval to build directly from the State. And they'll get it.

Personally I feel that we are really getting close to killing the golden goose. At some point, companies will leave or grow large satellite offices elsewhere if housing becomes unattainable even to well-paid employees. We need to _inform_ change, not fight it.

<comment><USER3> I support this change, but it applies to the zoning that exists. If it passes, NIMBY efforts will shift to down zoning. Down zoning has already happened in many cities (including San Francisco), but it could be taken further.

<comment><USER4> _> If it passes, NIMBY efforts will shift to down zoning._

For once, CEQA would actually _protect_ the environment: Nowadays, downzoning requires an impact study. There's no way any credible study could conclude that promoting sprawl is good for the planet.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, environmental review is often a vehicle for ensuring that people get as many chances to complain and obstruct as possible, even if the environmental impacts are minimal. An example of absurd objections in this vein can be found in the Virginia Avenue Tunnel replacement project, where residents objected because:

a) It would lower their home values (note that the railroad tunnel predates the houses by a few decades, and the railroad has talked about doing this project for 2 decades)

b) Extra train traffic means more pollution. Seems reasonable, until you realize that the tunnel is almost literally in the shadow (it's on the south side, not north, so not quite literally) of an interstate. Guess who's responsible for most of the air pollution.

c) The project calls for railroad to temporarily run in a exposed trench while building the tunnel. Residents are worried about what would happen if an oil tanker car caught fire. Unfortunately, a glance at the map indicates that this is not on the routes between oil supply centers and oil demand centers, and, as Baltimore found out (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Street_Tunnel_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Street_Tunnel_fire) ), fires in tunnels are much worse than fires in the open air.

<comment><USER6> > Unfortunately, environmental review is often a vehicle for ensuring that > people get as many chances to complain and obstruct as possible, even if the > environmental impacts are minimal

Yes, but this time instead of an _individual development_ being up for CEQA obstruction (which favors NIMBYs), _proposed rezoning_ would be subject to environmental review. This means pro-growth people could use the NIMBYs' own favorite tool against them, preventing down zoning. Poetic justice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The more supply is restricted, the higher property prices rise.

The higher property prices are, the more homeowners will do to protect their economic interests by voting to restrict supply.

It's a vicious cycle.

> therefore public policy should be based on viewing homes as places to live, > not as investments.

This sounds all well and good, but can you really expect people to support diluting their >$1mm property investment?

<comment><USER8> Naive question: how much would it distort the market if prices were allowed to rise on _undeveloped_ land, but there was a sort of "land-value control" equivalent to rent-control on _developed_ land, preventing its value from rising? (Maybe implemented in terms of a tax at time-of-sale that takes away however much profit was made due to property-price inflation and just hands it to the city instead.)

<comment><USER9> > Maybe implemented in terms of a tax at time-of-sale that takes away however > much profit was made due to property-price inflation and just hands it to > the city instead.

Apart from being unjust, that approach would completely break the market and put people out on the street. You buy a house for $200k; its value increases to $400k; you sell it, and the city takes $200k, leaving you with $200k. You now cannot afford any of the houses currently for sale for $400k, even though the additional $200k you don't have would just go to the city, and the seller just gets the $200k you actually have.

Typical price controls affect both sides of the transaction, so the house value can't increase, or doesn't increase faster than a certain limit. That at least doesn't directly prevent people from selling one house and buying another comparable house.

To answer your original question, though: to what extent do the areas in most dire need of housing have any undeveloped land? Those areas don't have much _undeveloped_ land; they have _underdeveloped_ land. If you had price controls on undeveloped land but not on developed land, at some point you'd end up with a price inversion where a given property with a house on it has less value than the same property without the house. At which point someone wanting to extract the increased value could demolish the house and then sell the land at market value.

<comment><USER8> > You now cannot afford any of the houses currently for sale for $400k

Why would the houses continue to be for sale for $400k? I can't see why people would bother to charge any more than the price they bought the house for, once they realized that the government would pocket any profit. If selling for either $400k or $200k gives you either way $200k, it's in your interest as a seller to sell for the lesser amount, because you get more buyers more quickly that way.

> At which point someone wanting to extract the increased value could demolish > the house and then sell the land at market value.

That was actually partly the point! It incentivizes property-management companies to try to lobby to remove the NIMBY barriers in the way of tearing down old buildings.

<comment><USER9> > Why would the houses continue to be for sale for $400k? I can't see why > people would bother to charge any more than the price they bought the house > for, once they realized that the government would pocket any profit. If > selling for $400k or $200k just gives you $200k, it's in your interest as a > seller to sell for $200k.

That sounds like a plausible (but not certain) outcome, assuming a 100% tax with no way around it. I wouldn't underestimate creative (legal) solutions, though. A structure like this creates major incentives for under-the-table sales, fees, or anything that doesn't qualify as "part of the sale price". For instance, it would create an incentive for "buyer pays" transactions, where the buyer directly pays for all associated services involved with a sale without paying the seller directly, including those costs typically paid by the seller or split between the two.

> That was actually partly the point! It incentivizes property-management > companies to try to lobby to remove the NIMBY barriers in the way of tearing > down old buildings.

Interesting notion. What stops them from tearing down those old buildings today, though? It seems like the bigger problem is that they can't build _new_ buildings that aren't just as sparse and under-developed as the old.

<comment><USER7> As an side note, this is almost the same as proposing price controls for the entire real estate market, since the price of land and housing are closely linked (at least in SF).

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

Let's say we implement full controls tomorrow in SF, where _all_ real estate appreciation is capped at, say, inflation.

As demand for housing continues to grow, you'll find that the government- mandated capped price will rapidly diverge from what the free market price is, e.g. someone is willing to pay $1mm for a house but it can only be sold for $600,000.

Since the seller is essentially being forced to take a bath, property owners will simply not sell. The market becomes extremely illiquid and everyone loses.

The key to understanding the seller's behavior, by the way, is because under price controls the market becomes extremely asymmetric. An excess of demand means that every potential seller has MANY potential buyers who are all willing to pay the asking price, so buying becomes a huge lottery. So if you own a property and you sell, there's very little chance you can change your mind later on and buy a different property, whereas in a normal market you just pay the normal transaction fees.

<comment><USER8> To go fully into la-la land here: what if, after imposing the price controls, you also imposed a slow-start exponential-growth land-value tax based on how long you've held a given piece of real estate—which would start sooner the higher-aggregate-worth of property you owned—such that it was then higher-ROI for property-management companies to flip properties before the tax started applying, but not generally higher-ROI for individual homeowners to flip their homes except perhaps after ~20 years?

(In other words: a roundabout mechanism to do to "land under your mattress" what inflation does to "cash under your mattress.")

<comment><USER7> > you also imposed a slow-start exponential-growth land-value tax based on how > long you've held a given piece of real estate

Since the growth is exponential, if the pain becomes too great after N years, then everyone is forced to sell after N years. Looks suspiciously like a fixed-term lease, no?

So instead of price controls on real estate, now we've gotten rid of real estate altogether and just have price controls on rental rates.

This is one reason why mixing a command economy with markets is tricky, btw. Once you start down the rabbit hole of using coercion instead of price signals to get people to do things, you'll find you need to use more and more coercion (whether strange taxes or more draconian measures) to make things work.

<comment><USER8> I do agree with everything you're saying here. It just seems to me that "people holding onto things that are serving them no use, making a market illiquid" is exactly the sort of thing a government would want to disincentivize, and taxes are how governments disincentivize things. (Sometimes without thinking about that consequence, like with income tax, but I digress.)

The interesting thing here, to me, is that the government wouldn't want to control allocation as in a command economy; instead, they merely want to punish people for _making the market inefficient_. They want the market to clear, so that they don't _have_ to figure out how to centrally allocate anything. We already have a lot of government regulations with this explicit goal. I'd be shocked if we couldn't work one out for real estate.

<comment><USER7> I think it's wise to distinguish between _efficiency_ and _fairness_.

The SF real estate market right now is quite efficient; houses and condos sell quickly at the going market rate, but you might find the effect on the allocation of housing to be very unfair in that some people have much easier access to housing than others.

Price controls favor fairness over efficiency; e.g. selling bread below market price means everyone waits in line, which is by definition inefficient. It is _fair_ , however, in that both rich and poor wait equally.

> They want the market to clear

That's what I mean by compulsion begetting compulsion -- the market clears just fine _right now_ , but price and/or rent controls will probably make it not clear, at which point you need to add other taxes to force it to clear again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you live in the Bay Area and you'd like to get a voter guide emailed to you right before the election detailing which candidates and propositions are best for increasing the housing supply, you can sign up here: [http://www.sfbarf.org/pages/vote.html](http://www.sfbarf.org/pages/vote.html)

<comment><USER10> Wary of non-https page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does pressing Escape on this page cause it to switch to a Squarespace login page?

<comment><USER12> It's a feature[0] of Squarespace

[0] [https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en- us/articles/205815858-...](https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en- us/articles/205815858-Disabling-the-Escape-key-login)

<comment><USER11> Wow, that's kinda stupid. Aren't there better ways to make login available but out of the way?

<comment><USER12> I only know about it because some podcast I was listening to included a rant on the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this the same group that was going to call themselves BARF (Bay Area Renters' Federation)? Seems good. This is probably a better name and more generalizable to all the other cities that need it.

<comment><USER4> SF YIMBY is an umbrella group that includes BARF and several other similar organizations from around the Bay Area.

<comment><USER14> Yep! [http://www.sfyimby.org/members/](http://www.sfyimby.org/members/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any insights into what the YIMBY position is on rent-control? They don't even mention it in their platform, which seems like a big omission (and obviously not accidental).

While I fully support this movement, I do believe rent control has been an effective way of slowing down gentrification and forcing residents out of the area (although there are exceptions to this, of course). As an engineer who should not have rent control but still does I do recognize the system does have its limitations.

</comment><comment><USER16> this is such an important subject and I'm happy it's finally getting attention in larger tech community. while housing is a regional issue, it also all starts at home with each city committing to housing policy changes. in Palo Alto Adrian Fine is leading that change - he works for nextdoor.com, he was born and raised in Palo Alto, he is a young, urban planner, govtechy and cyclist. let's start paying attention and start small - if you live in Palo Alto or know someone who does - check out www.votefine.com and support him any way. housing is a social equality issue

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how many new houses would need to be built to reduce prices to what I would consider affordable.

I wonder why developers would want to sell houses at that rate when new townhomes in Dublin are going for 700k and your looking at 1m+ for a new home.

I wonder how people with high home values, especially those who bought in high, will feel about losing so much of their home's value.

I suspect homes in SF won't become "affordable" again until another economic crash of some sort.

<comment><USER18> Prices won't lower at all. This is a movement by large SF landowners to raise the worth of the land they already own, using credulous tech kids as patsies. They will use new units as tax writeoffs and collateral for loans to scarf up land in gentrifying neighborhoods in other cities and other countries, so they'd rather let them sit vacant than let rents or prices drop by a penny.

This is the same as when pharmaceutical companies set up and fund patient advocacy organizations.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure I'm that much of a conspiracy theorist, but I definitely don't buy what's being sold; making housing affordable. Affordable to me doesn't mean you can physically locate yourself in SF, it means you can own a home while growing your wealth and saving for retirement. The old wisdom was 1/3 your take home for housing, max.

If people really want to talk about making housing affordable lets here what affordable means to them and how many new homes at what price would be required to get us there. Yes, I KNOW if you build enough homes prices will drop. Tell me what the target is and how many homes are enough. Otherwise, yeah, it smells like people with some sorta ulterior motive selling snake oil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The largest distortion to the housing market in California is Prop 13, and its effect is statewide not just confined to SF. This is a large reason why escaping SF's rules by going to bordering/nearby cities doesn't result in significantly lower housing costs.

More new supply is great, but doubt it would be enough to significantly offset the much larger effect of Prop 13.

</comment><comment><USER20> Remember that a lot of the issue isn't zoning, it's parking minimums. Forcing every studio apartment to have at least two parking spots is an effective (albeit horrific) way to force low density.

<comment><USER19> Your example is theoretical, this particular constraint does not appear in San Francisco. New buildings (even huge ones) are being built with little to no parking.

<comment><USER20> Fair point. I actually was thinking more of the bay as a whole (its own basket case with regards to getting housing built) than SF, which was an error considering that the article is focused on SF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Saying "more homes", "more zoning control", and "stop treating homes as investments" are all crazily opposite ideals from my perspective.

These demands are not very well scoped.

<comment><USER22> Not to take a stance one way or the other, but I can provide background on why (in SF at least) these aren't mutually exclusive.

More homes means either building on new land or adding density to existing land. There isn't much "new" land available in SF, but knocking down existing buildings is still very risky. Even if your proposed development meets every existing zoning regulation, it can be shot down.

So "more zoning control" here means putting more control in the actual zoning regulations, as opposed to allowing anyone to try and stop the process via ballot measure or legal challenge.

Increasing supply (building more or denser housing) will naturally decrease prices, which is where the investment bit comes in.

<comment><USER9> > So "more zoning control" here means putting more control in the actual > zoning regulations, as opposed to allowing anyone to try and stop the > process via ballot measure or legal challenge.

The phrase "more zoning control" sounds like increasing the amount and complexity of zoning regulations, rather than, as you suggest, removing unwritten rules.

<comment><USER8> It sort of does increase the amount and complexity of the (explicit) regulations, though; it's forcing unwritten rules to be written down. (At which point we would then have _control_ over keeping or removing them.)

"Make the re-zoning process more predictable" would maybe be a better slogan.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Math.mk - GNUmake eval gone wild - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adam-f/math.make/blob/master/math.mk

<comment><USER2> If you like that sort of thing you might like my "GNU Make Standard Library" which provides all sorts of additional functionality all written in native GNU Make: <http://gmsl.sourceforge.net/>.

Also there's my interactive GNU Make Debugger (all written in GNU Make syntax): <http://gmd.sourceforge.net/>

Or even my book: "GNU Make Unleashed": [http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make- unleashed/293...](http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make- unleashed/2937580)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes, the WTFPL is the appropriate license. Fun project.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just did it because I was working on a horrifically complicated gyp/make build system for work and I came up with enough infrastructure that I realized I could do something like this. (for work I was computing relative and inverse paths, among other things).

@jgrahamc I'll check out your projects. and @msgilligan, thanks for registering just so you could upvote me =)</comment>


Do you thread comments on your startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.spoiledtechie.com/post/To-Thread-or-Not-Thread-Comments.aspx

<comment><USER2> My start-up is all about comments. I've spent months thinking about how to go about commenting... and I still haven't cracked it yet, but let me just spill my thoughts on the matter.

Threaded/Linear have their pros and cons.

To have threaded comments, it means you are limiting the user to explicitly reply to one comment. As an aside, it's possible to make one comment be a reply to many, and then creating some really neat conversation graph out of it, but that's just so complicated. I think we can all agree that threading is the ability to reply to one comment, and create a tree structure of comments.

Threaded comments create a tree of conversation; it's highly structured. Nearly as important as your post is where in the thread it goes. You lose the option to post something more general, or something that references several other posts. The importance in threaded conversations is the structure and not chronology.

Linear comments is all about chronology. The conversation evolves over time, and you lose the structure. It's flat. If you want to reply to someone, you're just quoting then. By the way, a linear commenting system without quoting, in my opinion, is the lowest form of commenting. It almost angers me to see it being used, anywhere.

Nearly all forums use non-threaded, and it seems to work out great! It's more of a community builder -- let's all join this conversation as it passes through time.

Threaded conversations have the problem of becoming highly specific very quickly. But, they allow the structure to be clearly visible. Also, threaded conversations don't allow you to dig for what you want as easily. You'll never be able to order a tree-like structure in any meaningful way unless you flatten it.

The conclusion I ultimately reached was always use threaded, because if you're smart about it, threaded implies linear as well. You can always flatten a tree -- the data is there. But it's much harder to take a linear set of comments and imply which is a child of which based on quoted text. In short, you can go from threaded to non-threaded, but not vice versa.

So, I allow my users to view the conversation as a thread, with very smooth features, like instantly sorting children of any post by Date, Username, or Score. And, coming soon, I'm going to allow a non-threaded view. It will just flatten the tree and show posts, in any order they choose, date, score, username, etc. If the post is a "reply" then I just annote: "In reply to [link]summary of replied post[/link]"

One major issue with threading is scalability. What happens when you have 500 comments in one giant tree? Which do you show? How do you prune the tree? Do you show that gem of a comment that has a depth of 8? Do you hide it's siblings or parents? It really becomes a lot of trouble... and the solution seems to be: "ajax it in."

-sam

</comment><comment><USER3> Threaded comments scale the conversation better. Linear stay more focused.

<comment><USER4> Concise and precise analysis. Most sites don't have the comment volume to merit threads, and a threaded discussion is not truly a "conversation" as the author wants to paint it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Threading is a great idea because you can easily follow a discussion, and it takes up much less space than quoting. The disadvantage is that often there is a lot of scrolling to be done when you're not interested in a particular subtopic.

I've been experimenting with a tree-like layout which doesn't have that problem (although it may have other problems). It's no where near completion, but here's an example with data pulled from a reddit thread:

<http://api.webnodes.org/>

Source: <http://code.google.com/p/webnodes/>

</comment><comment><USER6> my startup will have threaded comments. I started making my own comments engine, but realized I'd just be making Disqus (YC startup).

Disqus is very easy to integrate with your design, has a fantastic feature set, Facebook connect and great development team.

Some issues are that it won't integrate with your accounts (obviously) and it can be quite slow sometimes.

<comment><USER4> The big downside is what happens when they go belly-up?

<comment><USER7> They have an API that lets you access all your data. You can back it up nightly as XML files and just port it into something else if you ever want or need to.

<comment><USER4> My comment was a little harsh. It's great that they offer that, and I'm probably rushing to judgement. But honestly the idea that at some point in the future when my site is humming along and I'm not thinking about it I'm going to have to drop everything and port the comments to a new system to avoid losing them makes me want to just implement my own comment system and be done with it.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it was harsh, I think it's a good point. Like you said, you have to balance the convenience vs. the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If there are comments, you should thread them. Not Lifehacker-style, though.

<comment><USER9> I disagree: I don't thread them. Reason being, it kills linear conversation, and that's something I _don't_ want. Linear conversation helps keep a strong conversation going.

So on the site, there are two "commentesque" systems. There's one for the general critiques (the focus of my site), which don't get threaded because they're grouped by the user that made them. There's no discussion in those comments, or there's not much. The focus is on constructive, objective feedback.

For the forum, we decided to go almost entirely minimal. A screenshot from the alpha can be found here: [http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5](http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5)

The idea is that we wanted to focus on back-and-forth talk. The three of us in that thread all knew each other on an older site of mine, so that's already established, but we want a feel of _community_. As in, instead of lurkers and posters, you've got a place where if you're new, you can talk to older users and become sort-of welcomed into things. You lose that with threads, because suddenly it's all-too-easy for a user to get completely ignored if they don't join one of the bigger threads.

<comment><USER8> Well, I like your point. The only problem I see with linear conversations is when the comments are too many to follow responses easily, things get really messy at that point and the very best one can do is jump around following links and trying to understand the dialog.

And, you're right, if you don't join a popular thread in a threaded comment system, you will probably be ignored. But you won't if you're one of the first to post in that page, thus somehow making the oldest more relevant, and if you get lots of replies your comment will be seen by more people, which makes sense to me since it would be a hot topic.

There is no perfect commenting system, I guess, but the big flaw in linear conversations is that replies are not emphasized and the relations between comments is easily lost. It would be useful when time is relevant.

I would prefer a threaded system, sorted by rating as well, kind of what Reddit or HN has: the hottest, top-rated, most recent comments on the top; the oldest, lowest-rated, not-replied-to ones more likely to be ignored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it implied that a startup has to have comments?

<comment><USER11> It was implied:

"The current standard for any interaction is the comments section of the sites. The comment section is the talk back, the conversation to the site. It is what allows for user participation and what most people would declare what Web 2.0 really is."

This kind of status-quo talk makes me simultaneously angry and sleepy.</comment></comment>


Efficiency, Imported From Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/automobiles/efficiency-imported-from-europe.html?ref=automobiles&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I always wonder why these big V6 engines are still so common in the US. I'm driving a 2 liter diesel in a BMW X3 (a heavy car, 4wd, automatic) and still get 34 mpg. The 2 liter engine is plenty powerful for this big car. Too powerful maybe, looking at the speeding tickets I got with this car since I have it.

A modern 3 liter TDI is crazy powerful. I really see no practical use case for those engines, other than engaging in speeding contests between Audi's, BMW's and Mercedeses in the leftmost lane of the autobahn. And since there is no autobahn in the US, why do they buy them? I think for normal cars, 1.6 - 2.0 liter 4 cylinder is enough.

<comment><USER3> V6 engines are typically smoother and produce more torque down low in the powerband, which is the range most people drive. So even though the peak capabilities are overkill, basically, an engine capable of 160mph is nicer to drive at 65mph than an engine capable of 85mph. As a result, they are desirable to many consumers. Tiny 4 cylinders are catching up, but that's the thing- it has _always_ been a game of catchup for the 4 cylinder.

Oh, and further in defense of the V6- remember not everyone has the same needs as you. I have recently come to own a 4.0L V6. Ridiculous, right? Twice as many liters and twice as many cylinders as I ought to need. Except, at 12,000ft you've suddenly got a lot less engine. My old 2.2L H4 at-speed required pedal-to-the-metal to gain speed, and 4k+ RPM just to maintain speed.

<comment><USER2> Diesel engines have lots of torque, at low rpm. My 2.0d has 280 lb-ft, the same as a 3.7 V6 mustang, at half the rpm.

<comment><USER3> Certainly! But for better or worse, America's cars are still mostly gasoline- powered. Diesel isn't just a simple add-on like satellite radio, it is a paradigm shift.

Also remember that the V6 is a compromise of many factors. Besting a V6 in one specific regard doesn't mean much, because a V6's strength is that it achieves many different goals, all at the same time- even if it isn't the best at any one thing.

I don't mean to say a gasoline-powered V6 will always be the only option, or anything like that. But it is interesting to learn the various reasons they are as popular as they are, and it is instructive in how the auto industry operates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The government is not subsidizing diesels because it's yet another combustion engine. Other than the quoted "industry representatives" want you to believe, diesels produce plenty of carcinogenic, extremely difficult to filter particles. If anything, the government should be taxing these cars 10+ grand for the extra costs they will incur in the health system down the road.

<comment><USER3> Diesel is also in no conceivable way a new technology, and from what I know it's rare established hundred-year-old technologies that have been used in consumer products for at least fifty years are given generous subsidies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Diesel used to be significantly cheaper than gasoline. I believe the price has gone up due to increased demand or less supply. Diesel is less refined than gasoline, and I believe the refineries in the USA are optimized for producing more gasoline than diesel and to change this is not a small or cheap task. There would be pressure from the transport industry, eg trucking, shipping, rail, to keep the price of diesel as low as possible, and restricting demand by restricting the availability of diesel vehicles would be one way.

I would love to get a small pick up truck with a diesel engine - you can't buy one in North America today.

I had several 1980 era Toyota Land Cruisers, a 2500 kg 4WD vehicle, and they got 30 MPG. I literally drove from regina to calgary, 800km, on one tank, which was 84 litres.

<comment><USER6> That mileage doesn't seem that good to me. I've got a petrol honda accord, it's a 2.2 L and I can drive auckland to wellington (just over 650 km) on a 55L tank. My friends with diesel golf's can do Auckland to Wellington and nearly halfway back on one tank though.

<comment><USER7> So the diesel mileage isn't that good, except for the part where it's significantly better? Thanks for explaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Roger. My TDI Golf regularly gets more than 50 MPG on highway trips and averages 36 in our driving which is almost exclusively urban, easily more than the sluggish Honda Fit it replaced.

Unfortunately the VW and Audi still suffer from reliability problems. Two friends both with TDI VW cars suffered (Bosch) fuel pump failure that destroyed their engines to a large degree and cost about $6000 to repair.

<comment><USER9> I'm in the UK and I've have a couple of vehicles, both European and both diesel. Not VW! They are great. I wouldn't buy anything else. Fuel here is expensive so it's a good idea to keep it simple.

I had a 2006 Citroen C3 diesel. Even with the air con on full whack, I could get 64mpg out of it on an average ~60mph journey. In London traffic, I got 52mpg out of it.

I now have a 2006 Fiat Doblo 1.3 diesel van/people carrier. This is a much larger vehicle but it's genuinely hard not to get at least 46mpg out of it with 5 people and a load of crap in it. On my own, 58mpg.

The latter had a timing chain replaced for around £500 but apart from consumables, no problems in several years.

I really don't get it when I see someone in a Dodge Ram (suddenly become popular in the UK?!?) hammering it up the motorways with no load or passengers.

<comment><USER10> FIAT, fix it again tomorrow. Fiats have a lousy reputation and this is deserved in my experience. Also Puntos are the car I see most often abandoned by the roadside

<comment><USER11> Fiat produces quite reliable engines. Their multijet engines are unbeatable in the small gasoline engine class (1-1.2l). The JTD engines, while not Mercedes- quality, fare better than VW's TDIs.

Now, if you are talking about electrical wiring problems in their cars, I'll have to concede. It's the XXI century, and they still can't get wiring right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While diesel high MPG cars are not new in Europe, with for instance the VW Bluemotion [1] , it is not necessarily better than unleaded gasoline.

It's true diesel rejects less CO2 than unleaded gasoline cars but it also rejects more NO2 and has some unhealthy particles [2].

So diesel is good for people who drive hundreds of miles in big landscapes, but in cities and suburb, investing in better unleaded/hybrid cars seems wiser.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueMotion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueMotion)

[2] [http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health- organization-...](http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization- says-diesel-exhaust-causes-cancer)

<comment><USER13> I have a diesel VW Golf BlueMotion 1.6 from 2011. Sticking to the motorway at 70mph (which is what I originally bought it for) it really burns less than 72mpg, it's fantastic; in the more prosaic stop/start city commute, it averages out around 50mpg. Still, I spend less than £1k in fuel per year, and it's quite a win.

I really, really wanted a hybrid, back then; but the price of a Prius in the UK was ridiculously high (haven't checked recently), and on long motorway trips it likely wouldn't have paid off.

<comment><USER14> It's a win in fuel costs, yes, but you need to compare total motoring costs when choosing petrol vs diesel.

£1k/year means you do about 10,000 miles a year? That's typically not enough to justify diesels with a DPF. (Short journeys are not sufficient to clean the DPF)

<comment><USER13> I do infrequent but very long trips, so that shouldn't be a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google to Take a Hefty Cut on Android App Sales - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/02/google-takes-he.html <comment><USER2> The title (which is the original title), is extremely misleading. The article itself states - "Google says the company "does not make money" from its application store." and "the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees".

Google takes $0. Directly, i.e.</comment>


Chicken grows face of dinosaur - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150512-bird-grows-face-of-dinosaur <comment><USER2> 5 MB and 16 seconds to load this rather small article. When did the BBC jump on the bloat bandwagon?</comment>


Your Post Box Is Too Small - <AUTHOR> http://trenchant.org/daily/2009/9/8/ <comment><USER2> That goes for HN as well. After a first 'add comment' you get a second chance in a larger textarea though.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is up with the tiny icons littering the bottom of that post?

I enjoyed the article, but it feels weird to get design advice from a page with such a deficient menu.</comment>


Even Faster Mobile GPU Inference with OpenCL – The TensorFlow Blog - <AUTHOR> https://blog.tensorflow.org/2020/08/faster-mobile-gpu-inference-with-opencl.html?m=1&linkId=97371455 <comment><USER2> It would be nice to have a goof working Tensorflow (non-mobile) version which would support Intel HD and Ryzen integrated videos . So much of untapped power...

</comment><comment><USER3> See also the older blog post about the OpenGL/Metal backend at [https://blog.tensorflow.org/2019/01/tensorflow-lite-now- fast...](https://blog.tensorflow.org/2019/01/tensorflow-lite-now-faster-with- mobile.html)

Would be interesting to see updated graphs about iOS vs Android that the OpenGL post had.</comment>


Putin's Internet Adviser owns a torrent tracker - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rbc.ru%2Ftechnology_and_media%2F18%2F01%2F2016%2F569d33579a7947a5cb0d8aec&edit-text=&act=url <comment><AUTHOR> He was also mentioned on Torrent Freak recently condoning strong anti-piracy measures. [https://torrentfreak.com/dont-terrorize-the-public-over- pira...](https://torrentfreak.com/dont-terrorize-the-public-over-piracy- putins-adviser-says-160116/)</comment>


Bisection Bandwidth - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisection_bandwidth <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

Significance of bisection bandwidth

"Theoretical support for the importance of this measure of network performance was developed in the PhD research of Clark Thomborson (formerly Clark Thompson).[3] Thomborson proved that _important algorithms for sorting, Fast Fourier transformation, and matrix-matrix multiplication become communication- limited—as opposed to CPU-limited or memory-limited—on computers with insufficient bisection width._ "

Opinion: That's probably the tip of the iceberg with respect to many algorithms, not just those mentioned above, and their scalability relationship with bisection bandwidth...

Also note that bisection bandwidth -- differs with different network topologies...</comment>


Ask HN: Is Yahoo Relevant? - <AUTHOR>

I just visited the Yahoo site after about 2 years, just to see what they're about.  What I found was a bunch of aggregated "popular" news, none of which I would ever read.  I tried there search engine and the results were reasonable but not superior to Google. Every one seems to be touting Marissa Mayer as saving Yahoo.  What am I not seeing here? <comment><USER2> I just visited Walmart after about 2 years, just to see what they're all about. What I found was a bunch of cheap stuff, none of which I would ever buy. I tried their fountain drinks and the results were reasonable, but not superior to Target. They also had lots of rack space devoted to tampons and other "feminine hygiene" products, which being a man, I never use. What am I not seeing here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Your analogy comparing Walmart to Yahoo is weak: 1\. Walmart hasn't make any acquisitions that are out of line with there fundamental business which they later shut down.

2\. People go to Walmart and Target to buy similar things, relevance doesn't factor into the discussion.

3\. I doubt many people here know who the CEO of Walmart is, whereas we are inundated with news about Marissa Mayer in Tech and Non-Tech news.

Pehaps I have to use smaller words xrange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> According to QuantCast ([https://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com?country=US](https://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com?country=US)), Yahoo still has 74 million users monthly. That's a pretty big number and puts them in the top 10 of US Internet Traffic. People still use them for news, search, and other web properties such as Flickr. Rest assured, there is money to be made from this kind of traffic, and Marissa Mayer is "trimming the fat", aka reducing costs, which generates more profits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Dennis. I see that the quantcast graph shows a downward slope and a loss of about 8 million users per month for the last month. Extrapolating based on this trend doesn't look very good. Are they doing anything to fix this? Does anyone on HN use Yahoo regularly?

<comment><USER3> They've done a lot, like rolling out new updates to Yahoo Mail (where they can serve ads like Gmail) and other monetization things like offering prints for Flickr. Only time will tell if it will be successful. There are rumors that Safari on iOS will default to Yahoo, and that may help turn the numbers around a bit.

<comment><USER4> I would like to see Yahoo on iOS (even tho I don't use it), because I want to see Google to have a competitor. And in the last few years Google is getting stronger and stronger. I hope Yahoo gets a chance.

Where are this rumors from?

<comment><USER3> [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/11/report-microsoft-and- ya...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/11/report-microsoft-and-yahoo-vie-to- become-safaris-default-search-option/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it relevant to me? No, not really. But then again, neither is Snapchat or Facebook. So, what do I know?

Wall Street seems to think Marissa Mayer's doing something right. (Their stock is up over 300% over the last 3 years). I haven't looked over their recent quarterly reports, maybe those would hold some key info: [https://investor.yahoo.net/results.cfm](https://investor.yahoo.net/results.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER6> I personally don't like what they've been doing to their web portals (massive graphics, tabloid-style coverage, etc.) but that stuff isn't that important in the long run. They've been doing a lot of right things in mobile with a great weather app and news digest app that I use daily and have been reviewed very well by users. If you told me two years ago I would be spending time with Yahoo-powered apps on my phone multiple times I day I would have laughed.

<comment><USER7> What do you think are some of the best desktop apps they provide?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> About two years ago, I was working as the part time CTO for a blog where the owners would write stories for Yahoo Sports that were featured on the Yahoo homepage. The stories contained links to related stories on his blog. Those links would routinely drive 250,000 unique pageviews in under two hours.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yahoo News is very popular here in the Philippines. Most Filipinos use Yahoo Mail. Yahoo Auction and Yahoo Search(powered by Google, not Bing) are very popular websites in Japan. These are just examples of why Yahoo is still relevant.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it really depends on how you use it.

I have a Yahoo mail account but I rarely login to it on the website. Instead I use their IMAP server with a desktop app.

</comment><comment><USER10> YaWho?</comment>