Ask HN: QRganize - Your QR code library. - <AUTHOR>

Sign up page: http://qrganize.com
QRganize is an app for the iPhone that allows you to scan QR codes and organize them into categories of interest.
Tackling a problematic QR code user experience by enhancing productivity and convenience.
Any feedback is much appreciated! <comment><USER2> Change it to Show HN: QRganize - Your QR code library.

Clickable <http://qrganize.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it!</comment></comment>


IPhone 3GS has overheating problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25707066-5016092,00.html <comment><USER2> > Another person on Perenson's blog wrote: "I had my iPhone under my pillow > playing music through the headphones for a nap, I awoke with a sharp pain on > my left arm under the pillow. I had been burned from the iPhone getting so > hot."

This might be part of the problem. User behavior does matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a manufacturing (or sourced part) problem for a few of the phones. Not terribly surprising.

Somehow the issue gets amplified with the level of secrecy Apple maintains. Some are rather quick in assuming it's a cover-up of some sort.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ok, more info from my friend: the device is _very_ hot, the radio transimtter appears to be always on (if you bring the iPhone near to an FM radio you'll 'hear' the sound of the phone transmitting forever, even in standby). He can call but can't receive calls, sms, ... Very odd. I've an iPhone 3G and I didn't noticed any of this problems even after the 3.0 update indeed.

<comment><USER5> > He can call but can't receive calls, sms, ... Very odd

So, in essence, your friend has a malfunctioning phone.

How many iPhone 3GS devices are out there now? Over a million? Given that _some_ portion of the stock will be defective, let's say one in every few thousand, you're going to have hundreds or thousands of devices with major problems.

From the symptoms described above and in the article, it sounds like some combination of software and hardware is causing these phones to burn through battery power at an alarming rate. Ok, fine. So tell your friend to take it to a Genius Bar and let us know if Apple states that this overheating is _expected_ behavior.

Given all that Apple is stuffing into these devices, I'm surprised they work so well for the vast majority of users.

\- written from an iPhone 3GS

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> follow the money: Who stands to benefit from unconfirmed negative Apple rumors?

<comment><USER7> That's ridiculous. These are reports from users. True, they are purely anecdotal, but that doesn't mean it's some conspiracy perpetrated by a competitor.

Think logically about this. Apple is not infallible. They can and do make mistakes. Glitches are very common in new gadgets and overheating is always a problem when you're dealing with components that generate heat. It's only made more difficult when you're dealing with a small, enclosed device with components tightly packed together. This is a plausible and very familiar story. Could it be possible that some people are having real problems with overheating?

If the new iPhones are, in fact, overheating Apple should be called out and given an opportunity to respond. Automatically assuming that any criticism of Apple is a ruse designed to discredit them is not only foolish but counter- productive. How are they supposed to get better if their own supporters are willing to overlook and excuse their mistakes?

<comment><USER8> >These are reports from users<

Users, like blog authors, may or may not be independent. They can have agendas of their own or be hired/paid to say certain things.

Also, I sure hope it is not true (or at least not an inherent issue in the design). I have a 3GS on my birthday list and am really excited to upgrade from my iPhone EDGE.</comment></comment></comment>


Chromium: Secretly stores referer and url for downloaded files (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=883746 <comment><USER2> Here is the finest example of privacy derangement syndrome that we will ever see: an open-source program implements an open standard in a way that's completely above-board and it's described as a nefarious scheme.

<comment><USER3> If an open standard has features that violate user privacy and don't provide sufficient value in exchange to justify it, it's reasonable to discuss violating or reforming that standard for the sake of privacy. The existence of a standard doesn't make the privacy issue go away.

<comment><USER2> My beef is with the adverb "secretly".

<comment><USER4> Since the behavior is unexpected and very non-obvious for the average user, I don't see any issue with calling it "secretly".

<comment><USER2> You confused secrecy with ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As the "xdg" in the name suggests, this is a Freedesktop thing. Silly to blame Chrome for supporting the very extended attributes the premier Linux desktop project defined.

<comment><USER6> totally, IIRC curl does this too and it's extremely useful later on..

<comment><USER7> Bug report's comments says wget does too, and you can't turn it off.

<comment><USER8> It's an old report, they have changed it since:

[https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-20483](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-20483)

[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug- wget/2018-12/msg00034...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug- wget/2018-12/msg00034.html)

After @marcan42 noted this wasn't obvious for users: [https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1077676739877232640](https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1077676739877232640)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a standard feature of many browsers, including Safari.

E.g: On OSX you can download a .dmg file or .zip file, and when opening the OS will warn: "XYZ is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?". The information about the origin of the file comes from extended attributes.

See: [https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/04/20/fix-application- fro...](https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/04/20/fix-application-from- internet-gatekeeper/)

<comment><USER10> Windows has the functionality you describe too, but it works only by storing a flag specifying what kind of origin the file has, not specifically what the origin was. Your article seems to indicate that mac OS uses basically the same system as Windows.

EDIT: According to some other comments in this thread, I'm wrong. Mac OS does store the whole origin.

EDIT 2: Looks like I'm wrong about Windows too, which also stores the whole origin. This actually disagrees with what is written in the bug report, so perhaps it needs to be updated.

<comment><USER11> Windows doesn't just have a flag.

For example:

\- If I download this using Chrome: [https://aka.ms/getvsdbgps1](https://aka.ms/getvsdbgps1)

\- Open a command prompt, cd to my Downloads directory

\- Execute this:

        notepad GetVsDbg.ps1:Zone.Identifier

I get:

        [ZoneTransfer]
        ZoneId=3
        HostUrl=https://vsdebugger.blob.core.windows.net/vsdbg-16-0-11220-2/GetVsDbg.ps1

Some files I see also have a ReferrerUrl

<comment><USER12> I've always thought NTFS streams was a really cool idea- wish MS had kept them in ReFS

<comment><USER11> Apparently they added it back after the initial release.

Support for alternate data streams was initially not implemented in ReFS. In Windows 8.1 64-bit and Server 2012 R2 the file system reacquired support for alternate data streams, with lengths of up to 128K

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS#Removed_features](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS#Removed_features)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting that this is considered a bug by Linux users. On the OSX side, populating the file metadata with the URL source has always been looked upon as a feature.

<comment><USER14> I'm a Linux user and I don't see it as a bug. Rather, I wish I had that in Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was curious if Firefox supported this feature, and I found an unassigned issue from 8 years ago:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665531](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665531)

<comment><USER15> I hate how (in open-source projects in particular) anything even remotely associatable with security/privacy can be bike-shedded for almost a decade with _no actual work done what so ever_.

Talk about snailing your way to irrelevance. And I say that as a Firefox-user.

Sometimes I think Firefox would benefit from a more benevolent leader who just stomped down on issues like this and settled things properly without spending months or years doing so.

This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> Pah! A decade is nothing.

* [http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-srv-record-use-by-clients.html#HTTP...](http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-srv-record-use-by-clients.html#HTTPShame)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use Safari, which does the same thing, and I actually find it useful. It's nice to be able to go back and find where you downloaded something from.

IMO, complaining that this metadata violates the user's privacy is as silly as complaining that storing EXIF location metadata in JPGs violates privacy. They're both forms of metadata that can be useful in certain situations, and which many users are unaware of. Yeah, there is a technical difference in that EXIF data is stored within the file while this metadata is stored in the file attributes, but I think the analogy holds.

<comment><USER8> I agree that they are comparable; both can be violations of privacy. It should be clear to the user that such data is being recorded.

<comment><USER17> I concur, and there should also be a simple UI option to disable both features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find this super useful on a Mac and routinely would dump the urls with xattr. That is before I switched back to FF which runs better on older hardware .

<comment><USER19> Can you please explain it a little bit more? I am just curious.

<comment><USER20> Browsers on OS X store this information in extended file system attribtes (accessible via the xattr command). It's also how the OS knows to prompt you the first time you open an executable--"you downloaded this from googlechrome.com via Safari, are you sure you want to run this?".

Calling it "secret", as the article does, seems disingenous. (Further, even if somebody downloads an application in an incog window, it is probably better for the system's security posture to record these xattrs for such a "hey, is this what you actually meant to download and execute?" situation.)

<comment><USER21> So, if I send the file to someone else, (1) on Linux and (2) on Mac, does this URL metadata come along, or no? Sounds like no, and the issue is just your device being compromised.

<comment><USER8> They might if you package the file in some archive format that stores xattrs. For example, tar(1) can store them, although it doesn't by default (you must pass --xattrs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's not incredibly clear in the ticket, but the bug seems to be refering to Linux file system extended attributes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Apart from whether this is nefarious and/or intended behavior, it seems odd that the bug report specifically uses protection of illegal content as motivation.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, it's invisible, not secret. You can also recover deleted files from a hard drive, but that's not a secret. Both things need to be more widely known, but the fact that they exist is still useful (both for individuals _and_ law enforcement)

</comment><comment><USER16> For some perspective here:

Various WWW tools for OS/2 back in the 1990s also did this, putting the source URL into a .SUBJECT extended attribute. The OS/2 port of wget was also modified to do this.

It wasn't _in any way_ secret. The .SUBJECT of a file was visible in its Properties dialogue on the Worksplace Shell desktop. Which one could also use to edit it. People like me wrote other tools for manipulating and viewing these .SUBJECTs, which were also used for file descriptions by 4OS2 and various OS/2 file management and BBS softwares.

* [https://jdebp.eu./Softwares/os2/](https://jdebp.eu./Softwares/os2/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I reported this to chromium recently, but I wasn't the first, it was marked as a duplicate. I think it should be fixed in latest versions or a fix should come soon. wget had the exact same issue and they recently disabled the attribute storage by default.

See e.g. also

* [https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/01/01/1](https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/01/01/1)

* [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/2018-12/msg00034...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/2018-12/msg00034.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I wrote a small os X app based on this, that sorts your downloads in subfolders named like the domain you downloaded the file from (it's just a small shell script in a wrapper so it might run in Linux as well with some modifications): [https://github.com/grothkopp/sortDownloads.app](https://github.com/grothkopp/sortDownloads.app)

<comment><USER27> Very cool.

I wrote a similar script to copy the source URL to the file "comments" field so it's viewable/sortable in Finder.

How did you package your script as an .app like that? Platypus perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And so does wget if this report is correct! How can I verify this?

I've often wanted this information but without having to rely on external book-keeping.

<comment><USER28> On most Linux distros you can use the `getfattr` command from the `attr` package, but it's usually not installed by default. [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/getfattr.1.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/getfattr.1.html)

With Python 3.3+, which often is installed by default, you can use os.listxattr() and os.getxattr(). [https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#linux-extended- att...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#linux-extended-attributes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's missing a NSFW warning on that photo

<comment><USER30> If that is NSFW allow me to recommend you to go get a new job.</comment></comment>


The antitrust case against Google - <AUTHOR> https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-antitrust-case-against-google <comment><USER3> > You mentioned in the paper that Google is going to be blocking third-party > cookies in its Chrome browser, which is the biggest browser in the world. > This has been presented as a victory for privacy, but you suggest actually > it's another way for Google to shut out other people who want to do digital > advertising.

I find it interesting that the HN crowd loved that Apple was blocking 3rd party cookies in Safari but now that Chrome is about to do the same suddenly it's evil.

If it is evil then it was evil even when Apple started doing it. If it's good that Apple did it then it's good that Google is following.

The article basically argues it's evil and both Google and Apple should stop blocking 3rd party cookies because having 3rd party cookies provides opportunity for more competition

> We need to explain that the information about you can be passed among 25 > different ad tech companies or it can be passed among 25 parts of Google. > Which one of those is better or safer? That's hard to know. I know which one > of them is cheaper—the one where there's competition. And it's also better > for consumers in the sense of stimulating the content that they want to > consume on the internet.

<comment><USER4> > I find it interesting that the HN crowd loved that Apple was blocking 3rd > party cookies in Safari but now that Chrome is about to do the same suddenly > it's evil.

Apple isn't an advertising company. Google is. The label of 'evil' doesn't need to be part of a conversation about anti-trust and anti-competitive behavior.

<comment><USER5> [https://searchads.apple.com/](https://searchads.apple.com/) Apple is an advertising company.

Google sells android phones and gsuite, as well.

<comment><USER6> > Apple is an advertising company.

Primarily, it's a hardware company. Lots of companies have advertising services, this does not make them "advertising companies". If your advertising products disappear and the company would function more or less the same, that's not the primary product in your company's portfolio. Google would be crippled, as advertising is the primary product (fed by data from all the other services it offers, often at a loss). Similarly, most of apple software would be useless if they lost control of their hardware production/control.

<comment><USER5> Depends on your definition of advertising-company. If you sell eyeballs through ads that means you are an advertising company.

<comment><USER7> This is an article about monopolies - which are all about scale and market dominance.

Yet you've excluded both from your analysis. It doesn't seem to be a good faith argument.

<comment><USER5> Faith doesn't matter in an argument.

This is a purely logical discussion. If you sell ads, it means you are an ads company. The degree to which you sell ads doesn't factor in to that.

I can argue that apple monopolized ads on iOS devices by disabling cookies on safari and removing the targeting capabilities on ad-identifiers. Now the only way to have targeted ads is through the app store. Hope this satisfies your arbitrary 'it should be a monopoly before i discuss it' argument.

<comment><USER8> _Good faith (Latin: bona fides), in human interactions, is a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction._

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

OP wasn't discussing "faith".

> If you sell ads, it means you are an ads company.

Nope. An <x> company is a company that _primarily_ deals in x. Ford is a car company. Their cars contain computers. Doesn't make Ford a computer company. The cars also have tires. Doesn't make car a tire company. Some cars have leather seats. Doesn't make Ford a leather company, furniture company or upholstery company.

> The degree to which you sell ads doesn't factor in to that

Sure does. Particularly in the case of anti-trust, which is the topic here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused about what the remedy is supposed to be, or what outcome the AGs are seeking. Actually, it sounds like they haven't made up their mind yet either:

> And then the states are going to presumably file a complaint also at some > juncture, probably after that. So then we will see what those complaints > say, what kind of conduct they allege as being anti-competitive.

Is it normal for suits like this to be touted out in public for so long ahead of an actual complaint being filed? Seems like intimidation to me.

<comment><USER10> > I'm confused about what the remedy is supposed to be, or what outcome the > AGs are seeking.

Further down the article this is mentioned:

> If the federal government is in fact in the beginning stages of antitrust > action against Google, what should we expect to see publicly?

> They've said that they're going to file a complaint in the summer, which is > really quick. So that would be obviously something to watch. And then the > states are going to presumably file a complaint also at some juncture, > probably after that. So then we will see what those complaints say, what > kind of conduct they allege as being anti-competitive. Or perhaps the > federal government doesn't file a complaint, but they settle. They say, > "Well, here are the six things we didn't like, but you've changed your > behavior, and so therefore that's remedied the lost competition and we're > not going to bring a case."

The situation that they are trying to address is a novel one and will likely require a novel solution. The AG's are not business people; their interests are in protecting their constituents from harm caused by monopolistic players in the market. How that is to be done, remains unclear.

I imagine the prosecutors will learn more about Google during the course of this process and they will come up with a solution that would allay their concerns.

If it looks a bit like bullying, it kind of is. The Government is the other pillar of power and steps in occasionally when its interests (usually things relating to the betterment of society, not always) need to be protected. It has the power to control the destiny of corporations that grow too big and "abuse" their power (whatever that might mean). This is how society works; if corporations operated with unfettered control over everything, society would quickly degrade into a dystopian hellhole (this is unfortunately already happening in the US, see the freeze on minimum wages at the federal level).

<comment><USER11> > The AG's are not business people; their interests are in protecting their > constituents from harm caused by monopolistic players in the market. How > that is to be done, remains unclear.

Are we just assuming good faith on the part of government now?

I personally think Google should be an antitrust target, but I'm not placated by a "don't worry, the government has all of our best interests at hearts" argument.

If they want to release a "teaser" of their allegations I don't think we need to buy it at face value. Personally I'll reserve my judgement until they make real allegations.

<comment><USER10> The Government is elected and accountable to the public. Google? Only to it's shareholders. I think I know whose side to assume good faith on.

<comment><USER11> You can't think of a single elected official or government body that has acted in bad faith..?

<comment><USER10> I definitely can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is very well written.

If antitrust laws do not define google as a monopoly, it's obviously the antitrust laws that are wrong. Google is obviously a monopoly.

The 2018 case against Google in the EU (€1.5bn fine) made very similar points and won.

The real problem is what comes next. If recent history is a guide, it will be a cost-of-doing-business fine. This does nothing. At best, they'll adapt practices slightly. Maybe they've adapted enough post 2018 to make this case difficult.

We need a new approach. There is no way antitrust courts can act as regulators effectively. They find that a monopoly exists, but... the goal is not regulated monopolies.

The whole premise of antitrust is that monopolies are harmful in lots of _systemic_ ways. We must assume that most are unknown. A prosecutor & court can't track down every monopolistic mechanism or dynamic and fine google for it. We need to avoid and void monopolies. This is why there are mechanisms to void mergers.

Adwords could IPO independently. They'd be a great, profitable company. So would Google search, youtube, android... All these could be financially viable companies independently.

Total share price would be lower. This reflects the fact that monopolies are more profitable. OTOH, the Google monopoly is an easy one to solve. It's so profitable that financial viability is easily achieved.

<comment><USER13> There is no chance whatsoever that YouTube would be a profitable stand-alone business. The only reason it works at all is because it gets a free ride on the infrastructure that Google builds for serving products with better margins. Network transit alone would completely destroy YouTube, nevermind all the storage and compute they need for transcoding etc.

<comment><USER12> What makes you say that?

Google report Youtube's revenue as $15bn, and profits to be really high. Maybe they underaccount infrastructure costs, but it's definitely not billions.

Google could be broken up into _very_ logical units.

<comment><USER14> Google doesn't report anything but revenue on Youtube, so we don't know the margin. Most of the revenue is dispersed to content creators, and infrastructure costs must be _huge_ , so more likely than not it is a loss leader.

<comment><USER15> the purpose of a loss leader is to bring you into a store to buy other presumably more profitable stuff. what is youtube leading people into?

<comment><USER14> YouTube is mainly a 3-way market; the content producer, the content consumer and the ad seller. All of which benefit from network effects. In addition to that, a high 7 day active user count is a very attractive goal in itself as you can upsell them almost anything adjacent. Eg. Premium subscription, music service, movies, tv channels...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's even the point of adding a bunch of rules to break up a player with less than a third of the market and already in decline? It seems pretty clear that competitors have stepped it up. Meanwhile in Mobile ma bell has reassembled itself and in cable we're stuck with regional monopolies; in healthcare we're happy with the same or greater dominance by total monopolies like for insulin or glasses amongst other goods; likewise in payments with Visa and Mastercard.

Smells like political rent seeking to me.

<comment><USER17> I think it's pretty clear what the motivation is if you look at who's pushing for this.

      - Large publishers and news agencies who have seen declining revenues due to increased competition for ads.
      - Left-leaning people who believe large companies are inherently bad for society.
      - Right-leaning people who believe "big tech" is biased against them.

Its also worth noting who's not pushing for this.

      - Advertisers.
      - General consumers.

<comment><USER18> Why should anyone care about general consumers? They're just fine being sheep as long as they're comfortable.

<comment><USER17> Protecting consumers is the entire basis of anti-trust law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem with US antitrust laws is that they ignore global competition.

Breaking up a Facebook or Google does not provide for more competition, it actually will provide less competition as another large global competitor with get even bigger by swallowing up their users.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't make any sense.

Any company trying to build a US social network or social engine through acquiring Facebook or Google would need US advertisers. Otherwise what is the point of having these users.

And if you have US advertisers you will need to have an official US presence. This in turns means you are subject to US law including antitrust. Also a deal of that size would need the US government to sign off on it.

<comment><USER21> > _Any company trying to build a US social network or social engine through > acquiring Facebook or Google would need US advertisers. Otherwise what is > the point of having these users._

The point would be collecting data on them and spreading propaganda.

Not every country operates using quarterly profits as their one and true God.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > We need to explain that the information about you can be passed among 25 > different ad tech companies or it can be passed among 25 parts of Google. > Which one of those is better or safer? That's hard to know.

Really? Neither option is great but if you absolutely have to choose the lesser of two evils it seems obvious that Google is going to be a better steward of your data than 25 random ad companies. At least Google isn't going to sell your data. Those 25 other ad companies are going to turn into 2500 real fast.

</comment><comment><USER23> I look forward to Microsoft passionately coming to Google's defense in order to protect the "freedom to innovate".

[https://news.microsoft.com/1998/04/09/microsoft- advertisemen...](https://news.microsoft.com/1998/04/09/microsoft- advertisements-promote-freedom-to-innovate-in-the-software-industry/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Do antitrust cases normally result in a breakup or sanctions? or Both? I was not around for the Microsoft one, did it have any real impact?

<comment><USER25> In the EU we got a pop-up letting us choose a different browser.

Beyond that it didn't have much effect directly but it also stopped Microsoft been so hilariously agressive in other ways (though that's a harder effect to pin down, 2000-era Microsoft was a shark with bloodlust).

<comment><USER26> > In the EU we got a pop-up letting us choose a different browser

Wonder what it'll take for this to come to all of the other OSes with default browsers

<comment><USER27> Those OSes would have to have monopoly market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> With Google taking 32%-49% of ad spends [1], and perhaps even more as AdMob appears to be undisclosed (although let's assume in this range), if competition could cut this take in half while maintaining equal targeting efficiency, we might see an explosion in growth of niche businesses. If the cost reduction resulted in a 50-50 split between higher publisher revenue and decreased ad costs, then that ~12-24% higher revenue plus 9-16% advertising cost reduction would make a ton of businesses with LTV:CAC ratios on the margins vastly more profitable. Even more importantly, they would be able to reinvest earnings on a far tighter cycle back into their businesses.

The vast, vast majority of young businesses do not have access to institutional capital, fueling their growth through positive unit economics. Relatively small changes in costs and revenue relative to margins can have huge effects. For example, an ad-based business with $1 CAC and $2 LTV, where 50% of the LTV is earned over the first 12 months, 25% in the first 3 months, takes a year to see it's ad spend returned and break even, at which point it can reinvest that dollar for new customers and start the cycle again.

With 15% lower ad costs and 20% higher revenue, the LTV:CAC becomes $0.85:$2.40, and assuming the same earnings-curve, at three months in $0.60 has been earned, and $0.85 in under five months. That means this business, and those like it, are suddenly able to grow at over 2x the rate as they could prior to such a breakup.

As much as many people hate advertising, it is still one of the primary channels for people's wants/needs (often unknown) to get matched to supply, and thus removing a monopoly and increasing the efficiency of this matchmaking could stimulate explosive growth in new and existing products and services that can't currently cost-effectively reach their customers. Ultimately, this would be a great benefit to everyone.

As a final note, this is relatively loose thinking and doesn't account for second-order effects like increased ad spend competition with increased revenue, but I think still an interesting thought to get out there, as I think the gist of it still holds.

[1] [https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER29> Google is definitely exhibiting anti-competitive behavior and they should be broken up.

What kind of company can get away with a critical product, such as advertising platform, email services, etc and provide ZERO SUPPORT. Literally they have no customer support that you can contact. This is the behavior of a monopoly.

If they were in a competition, they would invest more and more into things like customer support. But they save billions by not investing In customer service and having no way of contacting them. This is monopolistic behavior, because that's how they squeeze more and more money out of their customers.

Instead of raising prices like traditional monopolies, they do it in other ways like having a product that is easy and cheap for them to maintain but hellish for their customers who are dependent on it. They hide behind algorithms to detect fraud, they close accounts immediately based on bad information and there is no recourse. If they were in a competition they would have customer support but since they don't have competition, they eliminated it entirely with impunity.

Google should be broken up or forced to spend a certain percentage of their revenue to customer support the way any other company would be forced to in a regularly competitive environment.

<comment><USER30> >What kind of company can get away with a critical product, such as advertising platform, email services, etc and provide ZERO SUPPORT. Literally they have no customer support that you can contact. This is the behavior of a monopoly.

They're giving away a product to you literally for free, and you're complaining about a lack of support? Do you expect any company to offer you support for free? People have other choices; there are plenty of paid email services, but people pick GMail anyway because it's free. Clearly these people would rather have a free unsupported service than pay for a supported one, who are you to take that choice away from them?

If somebody leaves an old piece of furniture out on the curb for anybody to pick up, do you think the person who takes that furniture home is owed support by the original owner? Free is free; what kind of a sense of entitlement does it take for somebody to expect support for something they're not paying for?

They do actually offer support for their paid services.

<comment><USER31> "They're giving away a product to you literally for free, and you're complaining about a lack of support?"

I think he/she is saying that isn't how they should do business. Maybe they should charge.

From an antitrust perspective, giving away something for free isn't generally seen as benevolent, it is often seen as predatory. Microsoft got in a lot of trouble for giving away IE "for free." They did it to kill Netscape's business model.

Are you suggesting Google is doing it out of the kindness of their heart?

A healthy market isn't one company giving things away for free, making their money indirectly, and squashing all competitors.

<comment><USER30> >From an antitrust perspective, giving away something for free isn't generally seen as benevolent, it is often seen as predatory. Microsoft got in a lot of trouble for giving away IE "for free." They did it to kill Netscape's business model.

It's predatory (dumping) if they lower prices to kill off competitors and then raise prices later. I don't see them doing that, at least with GMail; can't imagine them charging for it.

>A healthy market isn't one company giving things away for free, making their money indirectly, and squashing all competitors.

A healthy market is one that generates the most value for consumers. I don't see how consumers win if the government kills off all free email providers and forces people to pay for what they were previous getting for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love the cover art on the paper. Sums up the issue perfectly. For those who will not read the PDF:

Google completed a series of transactions that allowed it to participate in every level of the ad stack. (#1)

Google leveraged its power in search advertising, in which it holds monopoly power to coerce advertisers to use Google products to access the display market as well. (#2)

Google advantaged itself through arbitrage and cross-subsidization opportunities made possible by the fact that it, and it alone, operates at all levels of the value chain. (#3)

Google withheld interoperability in order to disadvantage, foreclose, and punish its ad stack rivals. (#6)

Google designed auction processes that cement its own market power and raise rivals costs. (#10)

Google kept key market information hidden to shield itself from scrutiny from publishers, advertisers, and potential new entrants, suppressing otherwise natural competitive forces. (#14)

Google leveraged its control over the ad tech stack and Google Analytics to weaken rival sources of display supply. (#18)

1\. Acquiring Independent Companies To Cement Its Role Across the Ad Stack

2\. Leveraging Market Power in General Search into Display

3\. Designing Auctions That Facilitate Arbitrage and Rent Seeking

4\. Cross-Subsidizing Competitive Functions of the Ad Tech Stack with Monopolized Functions In Order to Rise Rivals' Costs and Foreclose

5\. Deceptive Gathering and Integration of Data

6\. Strategic Disabling of Interoperability To Disadvantage Rivals

7\. Withholding Interoperability to Steer Demand and Supply Through Its Own Exchange

8\. Providing Exclusive Programmatic Access to YouTube Though Google's DSP

9\. Retiring the Third-Party Cookie

10\. Disadvantaging Rival Exchanges by Google s Publisher Ad Server

11\. Undermining Header Bidding Through the Development of So-Called Open Bidding

12\. Undermining Header Bidding Through Exclusionary Features of AMP

13\. Designing Analytics to Steer Market Participants to Google Products and Prevent Entry

14\. Resisting Transparency at All Levels of Ad Tech Stack

15\. Obscuring Fees So That Competitors Cannot Enter and Compete Effectively

16\. Using Privacy Laws as an Excuse to Hide Performance Data

17\. Thwarting Publisher Efforts to Understand Source of Payments

18\. Designing Attribution to Favor Search and Disadvantage Publishers

19\. Raising Rivals Costs and Foreclosure of Existing and Potential Horizontal Competitors

20\. Capturing Publisher Data in Order to Monetize Their Audiences

They are not looking at Facebook, Amazon, or other walled gardens as viable alternatives for those who want to place ads on the open web. There is only one "choice". "All roads lead through Google".

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow, this is very poorly written. Even ignoring the fact that they appear to have just sourced all their info from the CMA(note below), they really need to tighten this up considerably. In particular, you cannot mix conclusions and introduction/background into the same section (when this happens, it is usually because someone is writing to a conclusion). Also, the overuse of lawerly adjectives (i.e. hyperbolic) and catch phrases really shouldn't fly.

Either way, I don't think the case is made particularly well.

Anytime you talk about prices, you are on very shaky ground indeed. If advertisers can't make money at a certain price, they don't buy it. Equally, Google's marginal cost is zero so they have every incentive to move inventory. Equally, publishers make money when Google does so the gross price is roughly correct (in other words, focus on fees...that is where the issues are).

There is conspiracy theory stuff here - Google are fiddling attribution measurement to favour search ads, they are hiding prices (no, publishers say this but advertisers are very aware of what they are paying...it is leaving their account), arbitrage... _clutch pearls_. There is inaccurate stuff here - imposing rigid market definitions (for example, the difference between exchange and Adsense is the publisher...most small publishers want a simple product like Adsense). There is directly contradictory stuff here - <USER2> uses data to steal from publishers...but taking away third-party cookies will lower prices and publishers won't be able to bid efficiently...okay, which is it?

I think there is quite a clear case, it isn't made here. It needs to be far more concise. Google shouldn't operate exchanges and publish, it shouldn't operate exchanges and advertise, the exchange should be transparent. The core business here isn't complicated: I have something to sell, I need a venue to create a clearing price, there are other people who need to buy it. There is a long history of people creating venues that aren't fair, the solution is: create a fair venue.

All the stuff about trying to prove harm and say that Google is a bad actor who is doing all these secret, ultra illegal things (that no-one has any proof for) is, quite frankly, nonsense. It doesn't matter if Google is doing bad things or not. The point is that their market position gives them that opportunity, and most humans are greedy. Watching a lawyer try to moralise is an unedifying sight (this paper comes from a billionaire's think tank, watching someone try to moralise about other people's behaviour with their pockets weighed down with gold is...really not a great sight, particularly as this content is just copied from the work done by the govt in another country...a charmed life indeed).

CMA Note - I am from the UK and the CMA are terrible...mainly very well- connected Brits who either worked in business and ran their company into the ground or people who can't get a job in business at all. In particular, relying on CMA's market definition is perilous. Their logic is usually: what definition do we need to get the right decision? It is bafflingly inconsistent.

</comment><comment><USER34> At this stage in human history, Google search is so engrained into the web that surely the only moral action is for Google to calve off the free part of their business and place it in public trust.

The upside would be they would have more time to focus on their premium paid- for services like G Suite, Google Cloud Print, and Cobra Kai.

</comment><comment><USER35> This antitrust case seems very beneficial to Amazon's ad tech platform. Very suspicious

<comment><USER36> One of the more... interesting... conspiracy theories about this is that Donald Trump is trying to punish Google for being insufficiently supportive and helping the business of his noted political ally... Jeff Bezos?

<comment><USER35> I don't think Bezos is Trump's political ally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Here is an example of the type of anti trust stuff Google does

One of the industries we work in is a classic New Startups Vs Established Silicon Valley Company/Companies type of industry

In this case the Established companies are Google and a few others

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Here are some of the things Google does

A) Whenever any company grows beyond a certain threshold, it drops that company drastically in organic search

The #1 and #2 companies are at #41 and #42 in search results

B) IN parallel, fills up organic search with every possible negative result they can find about these companies

C) Adwords RoI drops from 1:4 to 1:8 range to 1:1 range

D) Click Fraud increases + some of the click fraud is from Google Cloud and Google servers

Either -> Google can't stop click fraud from ITS OWN SERVERS, or it is doing it itself

E) One of the startups was growing very fast in Android - App STore - 1,500 people a day (pretty fast for our industry)

Within ONE WEEK of this information becoming public, each and every app from every company in this space got kicked out of Android store

F) Drops email open rate by putting emails in Social Folder, Newsletter Folder, Junk Folder

Of course, they are so blatant about it they did it to all the companies in the space in the same week and dropped it by the almost exact same amount

So everyone's Gmail open rates fell from 11% roughly to 5%. In the SAME WEEK

G) YouTube comments are hidden

All the positive comments on YouTube videos get hidden and can only be seen by finding the option to show all comments (which 99% of people don't even know)

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

A lot of people are making arguments without actually being the target of the antitrust

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Keep in mind this (Google) is a company that has

The largest browser share

The largest search engine share

The largest OS share

The largest video platform share

and many other advantages

They also are a trillion dollar company

HOWEVER, they play very dirty

If you are in an area where you are competing against them they will use EACH AND EVERY of their levers and they will go all out and do straight up illegal stuff

Things like dropping the two largest companies in a space to FOURTH PAGE of search results

</comment><comment><USER38> After Google got caught compensating scholars for friendly content, people should be extremely skeptical of anything read until the case the formally revealed. Regardless of how critical or supportive it is of Google.

<comment><USER39> Remember the owner of WSJ, Rupert Murdoch, is vehemently anti-Google:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=rupert+murdoch+google&rlz=1C...](https://www.google.com/search?q=rupert+murdoch+google&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS845US846&oq=rupert+murdoch+google&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5j46j0.3325j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><USER40> Only in the same way that The Doctor of Thuganomics is vehemently anti- Undertaker.

<comment><USER39> Do you have evidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Google is just that big bullying gang on the school yard. We all know what we need to do

<comment><USER42> Get straight As, go to a better school, and eventually become its boss?

<comment><USER24> The bully can shut down your better school and hide you're report card. Doesn't track.</comment></comment></comment>


Infographs are Ruining the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://b.lesseverything.com/2011/2/1/infographs-are-ruining-the-internet

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. Is a collection of made-up facts supposed to constitute satire or something?

> Infographs are usually very pretty, but it's really a gimmick, they're not > useful content, it's link bait to get traffic to a blog.

Why so cynical? God forbid somebody represent data in an aesthetically pleasing manner. If infographics are a gimmick, then so is anything anybody ever does to make their creations interesting to read/view/use.

<comment><USER3> The problem is not that infographics are aesthetically pleasing. The term "infographic" has come to be represented with low-content, high-flashiness presentations of data. (There are many good graphics that also convey information. "Infographics" generally do a bad job of the latter.)

Since they're pretty and usually not _completely_ content-less (bad infographics are a great way to spread very few facts over a very large area), they often get a lot of hits on social news sites like Reddit, Digg, and even, sometimes, HN. Because of this, they've become a favorite tool of people trying to do SEO to take advantage of that traffic.

<comment><USER4> My opinion is a bit more dire. Infographics are on a strange side of the line between statistic and art. While they're clearly meant to be flashy and emotive, they also tend to quite numbers and display data in a way evocative of authority. It feels a lot to me like being a brand parasite, or displaying a police seal in a not-completely-obviously-satirical way and then trying to cover your steps when the police arrest you for impersonation.

I think overall it's a good thing, really, though. I'm not sure there exists a strong brand for "sensational but detailed information that you probably shouldn't trust but instead just think about" but infographics (both the bad _and_ the good, which are still often very pale demonstrations of interesting data) are filling that hole. What I hope is that they eventually teach people to be more skeptical and questioning of information presented to them, regardless of how statistical it seems.

The unfortunate transitory period is a flock of the confidently misled, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meh. It's satire, and it does have somewhat of a point, but I feel like it's even more shallow than what it's parodying. It captures the feel of a bad infographic post well, but it does it to the point where I feel like it undermines their own purpose.

With apologies to Bill Hicks: Ahh, I see what they're doing there. They're going for the shallow infographic satirizing shallow infographics market. Big market there.

</comment><comment><USER6> Previously ruined: USA Today

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder for how long derri_hasmi pondered if he should take the $150 at the risk of getting less work in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think our little blog will stop anyone from making infographs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Poor spelling doesn't help much either.

<comment><USER9> I will never understand how someone can spend hours on a piece like this without reading it once to check for basic grammatical errors.

<comment><USER10> The point of the piece doesn't seem to be to add anything of value to a debate, rather than to grab some easy traffic and make a joke. Whether it succeeds at the latter is up for debate, of course, but given the aims, who cares about the grammar?

<comment><AUTHOR> We should certainly proof the article better, but it was an experiment. We paid $150 for the graphic, it was done and an overseas fellow in a couple of weeks. I sent him three emails so the overall work was about 15 minutes and cost 150 dollars.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough - I clearly missed the point. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are also ruining our youth! Infographs encourage our lazy society to become even more dependent on graphical stimulation and less competent in reading the printed word. I believe the first infographic was developed in Nazi Germany and illustrated SS soldiers goose stepping.

</comment><comment><USER12> A bad (IMHO) example of infographic:

[http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/Typefaces-of-the- world_...](http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/Typefaces-of-the- world_new_large.jpg)

Stylish, but hardly readable and not very informative.

</comment><comment><USER13> WOW! I found only one error. How many were there?</comment>


The trouble with Android, cont'd - <AUTHOR> http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/10/trouble-with-android-contd.html <comment><USER2> The trouble is only for developers of native Android app. Not intended, but arguably Google may benefit even more with mess of compatibility problem because eventually only mobile web works across Android phones.</comment>


Ask HN: How to promote a good site without 1+MM budget? - <AUTHOR>

whenever I release a site the biggest challenge is to find a way to promote it so that other people notice it. the product is excellent focused to help make other peoples' lives easier but without a $1+MM budget it is nearly impossible to get it of the ground. what to do? <comment><USER2> 0\. Guest blogging.

1\. Create an infographic and promote it. Not the spammy kind.

2\. Link from Wikipedia if it's very relevant to some article there. If the Wiki authors find it not relevant they will remove it and you should then move on.

3\. Promote it here. You could have gotten few visits just now had you mentioned this website which apparently "help make other peoples' lives easier".

4\. Contact the bloggers to write about it. If it's "really useful" they will write about it.

5\. Do some active promotion on twitter, facebook and stumbleupon. That's no brainer.

6\. Make sure your site is coded well, good tags and all that jazz. It helps in SEO.

Just few of the ways you can start promoting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I just did not want to sound like i am using my original question to promote the site. But you are write, here is the link

<http://www.spotli.com>

And just to let you know that posting the site on sites like Twitter, FB, etc.. only gets you a few users the first day the post is up and then everything dies out. No disrespect, but this does not seem like a strategy to popularity.

<comment><USER2> Those were just few suggestions. Of course it all ultimately depends on the kind of site you have.

I just checked the site and I think it's a cool idea. It makes money once you can engage the users which I'm afraid it probably is not doing in its current form. Also the kind of site you have is more likely to be bookmarked and used than being talked about in blogs which is actually not that bad.

First of all the home page only gives the impression that this is some kind of product directory. What you can do to fix this is by showing some products on front page. It could be hot-sellers or anything you fancy. Don't put the user go through the trouble of typing it. Tease them with few products and then they will search on their own.

The priority right now should be to engage the users. If they are not spending more than 4-5 minutes on your site then it means you need to try new landing pages.

You can also increase the size of thumbnails that one gets on product category pages. It looks too congested right now.

In a nutshell, you Sir need a better optimized homepage more than anything else right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, i really appreciate your suggestions. i definitely agree with showing some 'hot seller' products on the home page and will get right on it.

thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quantum gold rush: private funding pouring into quantum startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02935-4 <comment><USER2> There seems to be some disenchantment about quantum computing in the comments already, but I'll add my take:

This sounds similar to the AI craze that took off in the 80s (or was it the 70s?) where we were making such great progress that general AI was just around the corner. Tons of people got on the hype train and then we just never delivered. Investment dollars fell off, and we got the "AI winter." But then a few advances were made such as deep learning, and another craze has taken off with AI (now called machine learning) with slightly different expectations.

It sounds like quantum computing promises a lot, and we have mathematical proofs that show that a proper quantum computer could do great things. Right now we are making tons of progress, and money is flowing in. But eventually I think that progress will slow down considerably before we reach the level of every corporation having a general quantum computer in their server room, and investment dollars will fall off. Then a decade or two later another breakthrough will happen and the hype train will start rolling again.

Edit: I guess what I wanted to get at is that you probably shouldn't call people stupid for investing in promising technologies. The bubble will _probably_ burst, but a venture capitalist probably shouldn't hold back their investment money because they think the "real" breakthrough will happen next decade. If real breakthrough is happening now, but the VC waits, they may have missed out on one of the most profitable opportunities of their lifetime.

<comment><USER3> Quantum computing may someday be amazing, but at the current rate of progress, in 5 years it'll still probably be a side show. There's a small-but-reasonable chance of some sort of massive breakthrough that will make them suddenly jump in power, but I wouldn't call it a good bet from a financial perspective. (Bear in mind, for instance, that while Google may have demonstrated a 53-qubit machine, it's still deeply limited and they had to _construct_ a problem for it to demonstrate quantum supremacy on. It isn't even an arbitrary 53-qubit machine yet.)

At the moment, I see no clear path towards monetization for these startups yet, in any time scale that makes sense for a startup. AIUI it's not like there's even a ton of algorithms that you'd want to run on a quantum computer yet that are known to be clear quantum wins. For instance, breaking encryption requires a qubit per bit of encryption, IIRC; it's not just that "quantum computers break encryption" but "4096-arbitrary-qubit computers break 4096-bit encryption". 4096-qubit machines seem a long shot on the 5-year time frame, even interpreting current progress as exponential, let alone a 4096-qubit machine that can actually run Shor's algorithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The interesting and missing thing from a lot of discussions is what the investment bet is (beyond flipping before the musical chairs ends.)

AFAICT, _assuming things keep progressing_ :

\-- General purpose quantum computing is easily 8-10 years out: [https://twitter.com/lmeyerov/status/1177632571636584448](https://twitter.com/lmeyerov/status/1177632571636584448) . HW vendors might become lucrative around then, and soon after, SW. As a language & framework tool designer, I'll probably poke my head out again in a few years again.

\-- Niche stuff, especially military, can be done over the next few years, with subsequent ROI in the 5-10 year range. Need funny secure radar tech with lossy analog circuits? Go for it!

\-- Medium term: There may be some wins around say HFT doing probabilistic optimization algorithms on super lossy/unreliable quantum circuits, and maybe national label + pharma stuff for the same. This might be interesting for a larger-than-expected audience (breakthrough events for synthetic bio, genomics?), and as a tool designer, blaze the path to general SW, which is also interesting..

<comment><USER5> At this point in time there is no indication that quantum computers will ever solve a useful problem. Even if there is one it's not likely to be profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a bloody shame they're squishing in nonsense startups on quantum computing with useful imaging and cryptography startups. The latter are places where investment dollars are actually going to pay off.

Also kind of shocking how nature has devolved into a sort of science tabloid format. I suppose that happened a while back, but I remember when being published there in any format meant something.

<comment><USER7> This is a nature news feature, not a scientific publication. The later still "means something" if you care about that sort of thing.

<comment><USER8> Nature News is published as a column in the physical printed version of the Nature journal, no? So it's true it's not a Nature journal research article, but I think that's what scottloclin meant when he wrote "...published there in any format...".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Soon to be followed a few years later with the same money pouring in to PR/consultancy report hype for quantum tech soon to be followed by a a predictable death for anyone dumb enough to have fallen for it whilst the startup investors divested long before.

<comment><USER10> I do not think historically this is what happened to the same type of hype for transitors/integrated-circuit startups a few decades ago (some of them failed, some of them reshaped both the technology and economy landscapes).

Certainly, the amount of hype and __uninformed __investing are damaging to the field, but coherent control of quantum states (whether for computing or not) is a "very big deal", that would create amazing technologies from sensing and metrology to (hopefully) computing.

<comment><USER9> You misunderstand.

The same type of history had been identified as a way to get things sold.

You can buy the pr for any mediocre technology and it's success is irrelevant.

<comment><USER10> My point is that this particular technology is very much worthwhile, even if some of the startups are making annoying and misleading claims (DWave for instance, which indeed sells expensive devices that are not quantum computers and do not seem to be that useful). As the technology is developed, the misleading claims will simply fall behind and be forgotten.

<comment><USER9> The lie is it will fundamentally and universally replace everything we have in now. That's the sale.

Nope.

<comment><USER11> No one has said anything like that. Not even the more "media-savy" startups. Everyone is talking about how on very specific problems you will get some sort of time or energy advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Gold rush" is a nice way to say "bubble".

It's just another field with some interesting (modest) applications but where 99% of startups are likely either knowingly peddling snake-oil or are total moonshots that have no chance of succeeding.

EDIT: Just to be clear: there are likely some interesting applications and some companies pursuing them might end up making it big, but the "gold rush" very much is mostly companies trying to ride on the hype until they crash and burn predictably.

<comment><USER13> I see universities trying to bolster interest in quantum computing by putting out open source projects to simulate programming for one. I suppose their hoping some kid will create their industry by giving them a cool idea.

I genuinely cant wait to see what will come of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're expecting quantum snapchat or quantum youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> HN commenters seems to have the amazing ability to predict the future with incredible precision. Why we need quantum computers if we have HN commenters?

</comment><comment><USER15> Street cred: Steve Jurvetson has been investing in quantum startups since the early 2000s. It is discussed at the very beginning of his Tim Ferris interview: [https://tim.blog/2018/05/31/steve- jurvetson/](https://tim.blog/2018/05/31/steve-jurvetson/). Highly recommended.

<comment><USER16> Did he say whether any paid off?</comment></comment>


The evolution of transportation-as-a-service - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2016/google-uber-and-the-evolution-of-transportation-as-a-service/ <comment><USER2> One guess: the routing problem(the vehicle routing problem) is a core computer science problem, for decades. Tons of research have been done about it. I don't expect Google or Uber to have any breakthroughs there, because it's pure luck. But maybe they will, or maybe they'll will ackuire someone. Let's put it down to pure luck.

But assuming no brekathrough happens: one company that has tons of experience in that field is UPS, they are just finishing building a new system for running their vehicle-routing for 50K routes in the US daily, ~120 points per route, i.e. 600K customers daily. They invested ~$300 million in that system(and they employe hundreds of phd's) and they say it will give them a savings of less than 1% of revenue - just to get a sense how mature those systems are.

On the other hand, it seems that have larger access to customers could enable much more ideal routes, both in cost, customer time and maybe social factor(if social matches will be part of ride sharing). So i believe that to be key to winning.

And i don't think anybody can beat Google in marketing to android users, and even in the US, with iPhone's 40% share(but more wealthy users) - that's avery big advantage for Google.

On the other hand, i think Google prefer not to start a huge service that employs many people, and than have self-driving cars make them unemployed and suffer the huge reputational damage. So they won't go into true shared taxis like ridewithvia.com seems to be doing very sucsessfuly, and instead stick with wazer-rider , enabling drivers to give a lift to poeple for some very modest fee.

So to a certain extent, the winner in that battle would be determined by which approach of those two will win.

<comment><USER3> For this problem, they don't need to find the optimal routes, just reasonable routes. Individual routes have only four stops at a time. No breakthroughs required.

<comment><USER2> Not choosing optimal routes would lead to a more expensive service, which is critical for a commodity.

As for routes only having 4 stops - sure, but that's after you chosen which users will drive in the same car/trip, which is hard in itself.

BTW the dial-a-ride problem is quite similar to the ridesharing problem, and the complexity there is O(number_of_pickup_and_drop_points^2 ) [1]

[1][https://www.itu.dk/people/pagh/CAOS/DARP.pdf](https://www.itu.dk/people/pagh/CAOS/DARP.pdf) \- altough it's a bit old, so maybe results have improved since.

<comment><USER3> If you compute routes that are close enough to optimal, it doesn't matter. If you compute good enough routes quickly, that will likely reduce costs more than computing the best routes slowly. There are enough other areas of optimization that will give a better return on investment that it doesn't necessarily make sense to invest in finding the actual best routes.

Also, this particular problem is much easier than you surmise. The problem statement isn't a set of millions of cars sitting in particular locations with a set of millions of riders with particular sources and destinations and matching them and ordering routes to minimize fuel usage or median rider travel time. The problem is of hundreds of nearby cars traveling existing routes and matching a single new rider with a particular source and destination to one of those cars. There is a secondary problem of where to send empty cars that is more interesting.

<comment><USER2> I agree. But that's true for current Uber .

But once we start talking about UberPool and via its pretty close for the problem I describe, especially if we're talking about the commute , with a possibility of people preordering rides sometime in advance(or even some prediction abilities about that).

As for the other option, carpooling ,it depends how far will people be willing to drive out of their way for that extra income. But being conservative and I they won't go out of their way , the problem becomes assigning riders to a million bus routes with small capacity, which seems to naturally break this problem into many ,largely independent problems , and may prevent any big exponential complexity.

Don't you agree ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Uber actually transports people.

Ford actually builds cars.

Google... likes letting smart people do smart things.

While Ford may be the underdog in the race, I like its chances. It has the operational experience to take a "works-in-concept" to "works-in-reality". The software part, while difficult, is not the hardest part of "TaaS". The systems part is.

<comment><USER5> I agree the systems part is the hard part. The software to monitor and control thousands to millions of automated cars.

Ford has a large learning curve in order to figure out how to do that. It will take a very different workforce to build and manage a software system of that scale.

Google and Uber have been managing a system like that from the beginning, it is in their DNA.

I could see Ford providing the hardware, while a different company deploys and manages the customer facing operation. Demoting Ford to a vendor doesn't sound like such a good thing for Ford though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The takeaway I get is that Uber has an edge on Google in the race for a fully automated taxi service, because the have had more time to work on a more sophisticated routing algorithm.

I am skeptical. As the article points out, it will take a considerable amount of time to deploy any service, once the automated driving is good enough. If Google gets to commercially viable automated driving sooner, it will have plenty of time to refine their own routing algorithms during the rollout.

<comment><USER6> An interesting HN comment on vehicle routing from yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12400611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12400611)

My sense is that this problem is solved to a much greater extent than automated driving is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hasn't transportation been a service you can buy for ages?

<comment><USER8> Yes— but it hasn't been cost-competitive with a driver-owned car for daily drivers (given free/subsidized parking and roadway space, as we have in the US).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would be surprised if the planning part is the most difficult part of autonomous cars. Embodied intelligence is really nowhere yet. I've seen Google using particle filters to represent other cars.

AI is just not advanced enough to cope with leaves on the road, a pedestrian who wants to cross or not, a broken traffic light, a criminal who want to steal your car, etc.

And everything as a service... Really, if we would have something that awesome as an autonomous car, wouldn't we want to own it!?

I would! I want to talk to it. And I would like to have a bed and a bath in it and have it go on a road trip with awesome beaches, castles, and sunsets.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > Really, if we would have something that awesome as an autonomous car, > wouldn't we want to own it!?

Because money. Let's say the first autonomous car is a Ford Fusion or similar, normal cost $30k, autonomous cost $130k (for the sake of argument; we know autonomous tech will be very expensive at least at first.)

Would a normal person buy the autonomous one? Not by a long shot.

But for a taxi company, saving as much as $100k/year on payroll expenses per car (assuming shared between drivers), the $130k car is very attractive.

<comment><USER9> If it will be successful, many will be sold and the price will come down quickly.

I don't know why AI should stay expensive.

<comment> semi-extrinsic iPhones are successful, many have been sold, yet the price has not gone down quickly.

For autonomous cars, the best-case component price estimates I've seen for solid-state LIDARs, assuming mass production, is $1000. I believe you need four of those, and then you need ultrasound, radar and super-hi-res cameras. And a big honking computer to process all that data. It's probably at least a $10k premium over the normal car just in additional hardware costs, and that's assuming mass production.

Then there's the cost of all that software development that companies will want to recoup, plus the cost of collecting and live-updating a vast data set of roads, pedestrian paths, local wildlife/other hazards, roadworks, local laws and regulations etc. in every big city and small town in all the world, to assist and confirm the information gathered by sensors in the car.

<comment><USER9> Solid state should be cheap.

The real problem is that LIDAR instead of better "stereo camera data processing" is development in hardware rather than brainware (AI).

There is indeed a lot that needs to be developed w.r.t. brainware. However, I'm pretty sure it doesn't need to be recouped through selling cars. Brainware is valuable in many more applications.

1\. Accessing the internet through Google vs Viv. 2. Household robots vs cars. 3. Agriculture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> About the only modification I would add to TaaS is making ride-sharing optional -- a personal preference of mine, that might prove worthy of a premium. If I liked sharing space with others, I would take a bus to work.</comment>


The smoke of tens of human-caused fires in the Amazon forest seen from the ISS - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/astro_luca/status/1165960101359960064 <comment><USER2> Can't view the post, it says I'm rate limited (I'm not logged in and I haven't clicked visited twitter yet today (fresh IP every night because Germany)).</comment>


Startups in Japan (Tokyo)? - <AUTHOR> I'm in Tokyo until the 15th, and I've been looking around trying to see if there are any interesting startups here. I've managed to find one or two really small stealth ones (and it's entirely possible that I'm an idiot and just missing these companies completely).<p>Figured I'd ask and see if anyone here knows what's in Tokyo. Not necessarily expecting it to be the same count as the US, mind you. <comment><USER2> You're in luck. There's a tech event happening tomorrow: <http://tokyobiggesttechpartyever.com/2010/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh nice! My Japanese is pretty weak, but I'm definitely interested (nothing ventured nothing gained, right?).

If any HN alumni are going, wanna meet up?

<comment><USER3> My company makes Doorkeeper (<http://doorkeeper.jp/>), which is being used by the event. I'll probably be helping out at the front, at least towards the beginning. This event is more international in focus, so it will be made up of mostly non-Japanese and Japanese who can speak English.

<comment><USER4> The page says registration is closed, but I'm welcome at the door. Does this mean I'll be able to get in?

<comment><USER5> Yes, you'll be able to get in. But it'll be ¥3,000 and you'll get two drink tickets instead of the buffet ticket. Check the event description on <http://tbtpe.doorkeeper.jp/> for all the details. Anyway, hope to see you there. I'll be helping out at the door as well...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tonchidot is in Tokyo: <http://www.tonchidot.com/en/contact/> Also Mobile Monday is going to be on tomorrow: <http://www.mobilemonday.jp/> And maybe it would be a good idea to subscribe to the Tokyo list of StartupDigest: <http://startupdigest.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Jason and Paul from Make Leaps (<http://www.makeleaps.com/>) have been organizing the previous HN meetups, so you could try and get in touch with them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Asiajin (<http://asiajin.com/>) is covering Japanese startups (among other stuff)

</comment><comment><USER7> My partner and I have been based in Chicago, and we've recently started activity in Japan. I'm bilingual so if anyone needs help mingling I'd be happy to be part of the conversation.

And if anyone is interested in meeting up somewhere, I'm interested in doing that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be down to meet up before the 15th, if you're game.

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I'm going to be at the biggest tech party ever.. the plancast page is at <http://plancast.com/p/2v19>

</comment><comment><USER8> Look up patio11 here on HN. He runs bingocardcreator in Tokyo.

<comment><USER9> I live in Ogaki, which is in the general vicinity of Nagoya. You'd need about three hours to get from Tokyo to me, most of it on the bullet train. But if anyone ever is in the vicinity of Nagoya or Ogaki, I'd be happy to have coffee or something.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Tok...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Tokyo,+Japan&daddr=Ogaki,+Gifu+Prefecture,+Japan&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=35.689488,139.691706&sspn=0.753989,1.674042&g=Tokyo,+Japan&ie=UTF8&ll=36.075742,139.647217&spn=6.001308,13.392334&z=7&start=0)

<comment><USER7> I'm going back to Kobe on Tuesday and briefly stopping by at Nagoya, if you have some free time I would love to meet you over coffee.

My email is firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> smart.fm / Cerego is in Tokyo: <http://blog.smart.fm/en/about/></comment>


Why a career in computer programming sucks (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20070314160651/http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html <comment><USER2> This is hilarious. I'd love to find out who wrote this brilliant post and where they are now.</comment>


Why are Google's new ads so compelling? - <AUTHOR> http://feefighters.com/blog/3-reasons-why-googles-ads-are-so-compelling/

<comment><USER2> Great article. I gotta say, I hadn't personally seen those ads (I don't watch TV). But they were worth the time.

Why are Microsoft ads so...strange sometimes? Did anyone see the Windows 7 ad with someone throwing up? Microsoft had decades on Google in acquiring advertising experience. It could learn to be a little more sentimental and compelling

</comment><comment><USER3> If you cannot load the site, here's an instapaper link to the article: <http://www.instapaper.com/go/159728600/text>

</comment><comment><USER4> >> Why are Google's new ads so compelling?

Gonna guess here: Motivational psychiatrist(s) on staff?

<comment><USER4> Interesting that that gets down voted. Do you really suppose large companies don't invest in understanding what motivates consumers before trying sell to them?

Clearly, the ads are trying to associate with a circumstance that people aspire to - basking in the love of family or whatever. It's all about finding levers to pull in your head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their error page includes a _telephone_ number. That's pretty awesome – shows respect for the customer by not hiding behind cryptic errors or elaborate, shrugging downtime notices.

<comment><USER6> Sorry you can't get to our content! And we are working on it. Thanks for letting us know, peeps!

PHP + Wordpress diagnosing is not our strength, sadly. Strangely it is working intermittently. Please let us know if you can help.

<comment><USER4> page loaded for me, links off it failed.

Props for your error page including contact info.</comment></comment></comment>


Kicksat burned up, including Sprites - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space/posts/843807 <comment><USER2> Unfortunate turn of events - the on-board computer reset after launch (probably due to radiation) and with it the timer for releasing the sprite femtosatellites, and the radio receiver didn't work due to insufficient supply voltage, so the sprites couldn't be released manually either.

<comment><USER3> Were the components radiation-hardened, or did they just wing it?

<comment><USER4> Aerospace grade radiation hardened computers start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU and with a cost equal to or greater (usually the latter) than the launch cost, they just aren't worth it for CubeSats that aren't carrying critical payloads (piggy back launches are $200-500k depending on institution affiliation).

A little shielding is enough to protect the CPU from permanent damage for a while and error correction circuits using 3-7 or more CPUs running in parallel is way cheaper, even including engineering costs, than a single CPU.

Even with the troubles, one hell of a success for $70,000.

<comment><USER5> _start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU_

Not really, depending on the performance you want:

[http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh- environm...](http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh- environment/harsh-environment/microprocessors-and-peripherals/CDP1802A.html)

It's a little over $100, which isn't all that much when you consider that this is a CPU that has been used successfully in space before by NASA.

(I remember a short while ago on an electronics forum there was a discussion about either this or a similar project - can't remember - where someone bet that they were certainly going to fail because they weren't using rad-hard parts. This data point certainly supports that.)

<comment><USER4> Yes, that chip was used on the Galileo satellite but the Silicon-on-Sapphire version that NASA used for that mission is significantly more expensive. The $100 version has error correction built in but it's only rad hardening is any packaging and specs (low power + slow clock speed). A current generation rad hardened CPU comparable to the SOS version in the Galileo would be the RAD750 [1]. Several Arduinos in a lead box would be roughly equivalent to the consumer RCA 1802 chips.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750)

<comment><USER6> I wonder how much of that is inherent manufacturing cost vs. low volumes recovering R&D.

Also, any compliance issues around rad hard components (they're also used in nuclear weapons, and fairly restricted as a result)

<comment><USER4> I don't have exact numbers but from my limited experience I would say about 30% of the price is the cost of setup and production (human labor, materials, capital depreciation) and the rest of the price minus profit is administrative, sales, and regulatory cost. Silicon design is getting cheaper, especially with FPGAs, and the designs are relatively flexible while the sheer amount of time required to set up a manufacturing line to produce even a single processor is very expensive. Like the RCA 1802 linked above, a single silicon design can be used for decades in mission critical applications as the revenue piles up and the costs to tweak the design fall. When you're the only one buying a setup for a rad hardened manufacturing process and producing only a dozen chips for your client, slipping in several experimental revisions on the mask can sometimes be almost free.

Most compliance issues are barriers to entry but are largely overblown. In fields like aerospace and nuclear weapons the most critical requirement is abundant reliability and lifetime data which is why, regulation or no, you will never put something like an Intel 60nm or lower processor into a critical $100 million satellite.

<comment><USER6> I'm mostly wondering if there could be a business case (or hobby project) to make medium volumes of non custom rad hard chips for cost constrained aerospace projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One backer paid $10,000 to be the person who hit the big red button that would launch all the 'sprites' into space... damn.

<comment><USER8> They can still hit a big red button, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It really is rocket science. Putting stuff into space is always hard.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wait, wait ... So they were asking for 30K, got 70K and that let them hitch a ride on a NASA rocket and have a satellite deployed. This seems oddly affordable. What am I missing?

<comment><USER11> The KickSat was very small, about half the size of a desktop computer.

There are satellites that are bus-sized and have antennas as large as a football field (5-6 tons and 350 foot antennas) floating around up there, those are the billion dollar ones. Their computer components are hundreds and thousands of times what consumer grade components cost, plus the satellites sometimes have stealth technologies, boosters, and extremely expensive cameras and other sensors.

The KickSat hardware was consumer grade, which was most of the reason for the low cost, the lack of sufficiently radiation hardened components also was the reason it malfunctioned according to their update.

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

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-32b_ULA_21NOV201...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-32b_ULA_21NOV2010.jpg) carrying one large satellite

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome project. I think it is pretty imaginative. What about the idea that sending a bunch of rocket payloads up there would add to the space debris already up there though?

<comment><USER13> "Up there" often doesn't mean a stable orbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ooops. I'm happy PhoneSat worked.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've not followed this at all but the ARRL was launching satellites decades ago when I was a ham. Whatever happened to all that? (Yeah, I guess I should be Googling.)

<comment><USER16> There are actually a bunch up there:

[http://oscar.dcarr.org](http://oscar.dcarr.org)</comment></comment>


Denying Genetics Isn't Shutting Down Racism, It's Fueling It - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/denying-genetics-isnt-shutting-down-racism-its-fueling-it.html <comment><USER2> The article feels like a corner case in social sciences. It's addressing the race as a social construct issue in the USA not a global question. It doesn't manage to address the issues (in my opinion) around when policy base on genetics might be good (rarely, again in my opinion) or not (overwhelmingly mostly, in my opinion)

It felt like the context was to discuss IQ. I find this chilling. I rarely see a role for discussion of IQ as a determinant.

When a geneticist says detectable DNA level differences exist I fail to see how or why that should inform anything of merit in selection criteria for governments or governing bodies. Other tests feel like a better basis. (Btw I refuse to do IQ tests and have no assigned score and have no interest in being ranked or understanding my rank, I am reasonably confident I am median score. I don't care if above or below the rough middle. I'd be as distressed as anyone to be found significantly below average and its false to argue there is a dichotomy here. Nobody wants to lag behind even if they espouse the norm as a statistical thing)

It might inform health issues in as much as testing drugs on white men is bad to decide how to treat asian women but then testing drugs on men is bad to decide how to treat women and children. And vice versa. Is genetics the main problem here for all drug testing? Or are basic drug test regimes possibly at fault? This to me epitomizes the problem. What do you want to do with this knowledge DNA can show we are sub species? Where is this going?

The article read like it was about the 'they are in denial' story and was left bashing. I think an underlying problem remains which is that racism is a cancer on society and feeding it with implied middle ground views ignores the toxicity of the problem. Society is about so many poles of difference, our racial identity feels like the least relevant. Do the police do DNA tests before shooting young black men?

Does DNA show race exists? Maybe. Does it matter? Only if you describe a problem in narrow ways to demand its relevance. If you take a different view of 'what matters' the DNA component of the story is far smaller. For me, the overwhelmingly important stories don't demand recognition of underlying detectable DNA distinctions.

(Obviously written from a left perspective)

<comment><USER3> Heritability and genetics operate on probability and statistics in very similar ways that we measure information in regard to race and gender. As such, there is not very much difference between a policy based on genetics, race, or gender. Such policy is trying to catch a problem through the probability that a category of people will share a common trait.

In my opinion I agree that genetics is rarely a good idea to base a policy, but would your perspective agree to the same statement in regard to race and gender idenity?

I prefer a scientific approach. Take gender identity, genetics, race idenity, sexual preference, religions affiliation, nationality, or any other social identity and measure the "heritability" factor that a certain "trait" (ie data pattern) will happen. Treat it all as prediction models and create polices if and only if underlying detectable distinctions are meaningful and a general policy has been tested and found ineffective.

<comment><USER2> Well.. I posted a very reactive answer. We've had some issues in Australia with self identified indigenous and Tasmania, where the genocide removed all but perhaps three families so the DNA evidence of first ownership might actually be strong. This is a sore topic.

I'm more concerned about unregulated use of DNA by health and other insurance companies, or the hiring policies of Google and like who chase the top 5% and could argue in some dystopian HR for non intrusive DNA tests to confirm high mathematicial ability or something.

I really don't like identity politics much either but policies to confront gender and race bias takes you there.

I don't think I have the answer. I worry the debate is capable of being derailed rapidly but perhaps that's what I'm doing too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The trouble is PC has inserted itself into the undeniable fact that all mammals evolve to suit local circumstances. We were all black, when in Africa. When we went north, the lesser sunlight caused shortages of vitamin D (which humans can not make from their food - they use sunlight to make it) This cases many problems. [https://www.google.ca/search?q=shortages+of+vitamin+D&oq=sho...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=shortages+of+vitamin+D&oq=shortages+of+vitamin+D&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

African sun also cases skin cancer, so the melanin cells evolved to let the Vitamin D wavelengths through, but attenuate the cancer causing rays. Curly hair also acts as insulation to keep the brain cool.

As we moved North we lost those. Hair got straighter, and skin paler. When we moved back South we evolved darker skin, as in India and Asia. But the hair stayed straight. Apart from that, all the races are more or less the same.</comment>


From zero to Go: launching on the Google homepage in 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://blog.golang.org/2011/12/from-zero-to-go-launching-on-google.html

<comment><USER2> I'm curious to know how many instances were required and what the cost would have been had someone been billed for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really liked the turkey, and I thought the solution looked elegant, so I had a go at it in CoffeeScript and node-canvas: <https://gist.github.com/1475034>

All requests in less than 66 ms, mean less than 19 ms.

<comment><USER4> AppEngine instances, unless they're running in a special backend instance, exist in a special containerized machine. These machines are very slow and don't have much RAM - 600 MHz and 128 MB. Based on the source that was posted on the blog, this app was running on a normal instance, as the source did not contain a backends.yaml file.

So it makes sense that a Core 2 Duo running at 2.13 GHz and slow CoffeeScript would be ~2x as fast. My personal experience of running Go code locally (on a Core i5 2500K) versus on a normal AppEngine instance showed a slowdown of around 6x or more.

<comment><USER3> I can't argue with that, though I'm running this on just one core (single process).

If I was better with the v8 profiler I would check to see how much time it spends in JS land vs C, since node-canvas is all C, as well as the http parser.

<comment><USER4> Go runs on a single core unless you start using channels and/or threading libraries. So it should be apples-to-apples.

<comment><USER5> Go runs on a single core if you use channels anyway unless you specify an environment variable (something like GO_MAX_PROCS). Not sure about threading libraries since I haven't really considered using them in Go. I'm actually curious what people are using them for in Go - maybe games?

<comment><USER6> GOMAXPROCS it is :-).

It's a quick fixup, the runtime will eventually schedule on multiple threads without needing the user to specify anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was interesting because I've never seen Go used in production yet. However, the solution is not optimal for performance (as his benchmarking suggests is one of the goals).

If there is a finite number of possible images and each image takes CPU time to generate, then why not lazy cache the images in a CDN after generating them once?

<comment><AUTHOR> This works exactly as you describe - the app sets a cache header on the response and Google's geographically distributed front end servers will serve the cached response. You get all this for free by using App Engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is Go's websocket support?

I have been thinking Go might be a good choice for a websocket proxy, like node.js is used in Juggernaut (<http://flask.pocoo.org/snippets/80/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's great <http://golang.org/pkg/websocket/>

<comment><USER9> Do websockets work on AppEngine(Go)?

<comment><AUTHOR> No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is quite offtopic, but if even programmers are using jpeg when they should use png, what hope is there for anyone else?

The images this generates have mostly flat areas of all one color - it should have been a png.

<comment><USER11> Would the size of the png's be smaller?

<comment><AUTHOR> We chose JPEG because the files were smaller and the encoding faster. The images looked fine in either case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe its just me but all blogpost about go read like they where checked by a marketing guru after the have been written. The always enforce the same basic points, it always sound the same. If I somebody says "go" my mind alwasys jumps to "feels like a interpreted language".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I'm the guy who runs that particular blog, and I can tell you I'm no marketing guru. While Reinaldo and I edited the post together, I'm pretty sure that the line was in his original text. (Just checked: it was.)

Maybe people keep saying Go feels like an interpreted language because it feels like an interpreted language? :-)

<comment><USER13> I've done a fair bit of Go programming (<https://github.com/jbarham>), but have programmed professionally mostly in Python for the past 10 years, and for me Go does feel an interpreted language because it requires so few type declarations compared to mainstream statically typed languages like C++ or Java.

Checking the app source code for the article at [http://code.google.com/p/go- thanksgiving/source/browse/app/a...](http://code.google.com/p/go- thanksgiving/source/browse/app/app.go), the only type declaration I can see in the body of a function is in a type switch where it obviously makes sense. Otherwise the code uses the combined declaration and assignment := operator ([http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Short_variable_declaratio...](http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Short_variable_declarations)) which is type-safe because it infers the types from the value(s) on the right hand side. IMO this is even better than working w/ a dynamically typed language like Python because the required parameter type declarations in the function declaration tell you the types you're dealing with, but unlike C++ or Java you don't have to repeat that information back to the compiler.

<comment><USER14> C++11 has support for inferring types; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B11#Type_inference>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is Go's character type signed? If so, it's possible to make p negative, in which case this wouldn't apply:

            if p >= len(em) {
                panic(fmt.Sprintf("element index out of range %s: "+
                    "%d >= %d", t, p, len(em)))
            }

although Go would still do its own runtime check for the dereference.

<comment><USER16> The variable "p" is a rune. Although the rune type can have negative values, p will only have values >= 0 in this code.

<comment><USER15> How so? If the character is any value less than '0' (say, '!'), p will be set to a negative value.

<comment><USER16> '0' has the decimal value 48, not zero. '!' has the decimal value 33. Here's a demo program that you can run from your browser: <http://play.golang.org/p/qAKG9j5E4V>

All characters have values greater than or equal to zero.

<comment><USER17> comex said less than '0'. 33 minus 48 is negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't help but cringe whenever I read Go code because the following:

            paths, err := filepath.Glob(dir + "/*.png")
            if err != nil {
                panic(err)
            }

is repeated over and over again.

Didn't we learn in the 90's that exceptions are far, far superior to return codes?

<comment><USER19> Reading the same code I also cringed, but for a different reason: the validity of `paths` is tied to the validity of `err`; you should never look at at `paths` without first checking `err`. We can solve this much better using sum types (also known as discriminate unions):

        // Pseudo Go:
        maybe_paths := filepath.Glob(dir + "/*.png")
        case maybe_paths of {
          Some paths: {
            // Do things with paths
          }
          None: {
            // Handle error case
          }
        }

This makes it impossible to use `paths` if `Glob` returns an error, as `paths` won't be in scope!

Furthermore, not having sum types forces us to include a distinguish value `null` for reference (pointer) types, as a way to communicate "no value". This is bad as now we cannot distinguish references that should never be `null` from those than can be `null`.

<comment><AUTHOR> This kind of fussy type system is at odds with Go's design goals. It would make the language more abstracted from the underlying machine for little gain. I can't think of an instance of the issue you describe causing problems in real Go code.

<comment><USER20> > This kind of fussy type system is at odds with Go's design goals.

There is nothing fussy about it, and the only way in which it's at odds with Go's design goals is that Go's design goals include things like "fuck you, only core types get to be generic", "that these mistakes were resolved 20 years ago does not mean we're not going to re-introduce them" and "if we give it a different name it's not the same thing, nah nah nah".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The pirate easter egg [1] seems not to work [2].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3351407>

[2] <http://google-turkey.appspot.com/thumb/295552a0>

</comment><comment><USER22> the link is broken. something wrong with golang blog?

<comment><USER23> Great Firewall?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24>

<comment><USER25> Transistor density doesn't guarantee performance increase. Is AppEngine's ability to scale and maintain <60ms consistent with Moore?

<comment><USER26> The AppEngine is not about transistor density, it's about share-nothing and scaling by adding cpus.</comment></comment></comment>