Paul Buchheit on Lessons Learned from Investing in 200 Startups - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/paul-buchheit-on-lessons-learned-from-investing-in-200-startups/ <comment><USER2> Some genuinely encouraging thoughts here - very interesting to my relationship with Inventions vs. Long-Form Writing:

> _Paul : The biggest one is made-up ideas. The best startups come from > personal experience. It was something you or someone you know needed. > Occasionally, I'll ask a company, "Why do you think is a good idea?" And > they'll say, "Oh, I read an article in TechCrunch." You have to understand > it at a deep level. It can't just be something you read.

I also like people who get things done. If you've been working on your startup for two years and have nothing to show, that's a pretty bad sign. I've discovered that most people are really good at finding obstacles. I don't fund these people._

One thing I've learned, over five years plus of developing Inventions, Pitches, and the occasional Prototype, is that there's a really big realization that Angel Investors / PE-type Investors don't want small businesses to figure out:

If your idea is good, you can obtain a patent, and afford to take a loan <$50,000 to go from "Prototype-to-Trade Show Ready" then you don't need Investors. You don't need "wisdom and guidance" aiming for a quick ramp-up and exit. You don't need to think in Quarterly Capitalism terms. And, most importantly, you don't need to dilute your control whatsoever[1].

For a while I've caught some whiffs that the Investing Realm is quite a bit more "Me Too" risk averse than often portrayed. Very similar to the Music Industry. Labels don't want interesting life story pieces, they want bubblegum they can market to kids with some discretionary money to burn. Thus, I take a lot of the recent "Start Up" culture with a grain of salt, because the time, effort, and study it takes to create a genuinely valuable idea basically points to starting a "Traditional Small Business" moreso than any super-duper- evolution-in-funding-or-growth. YMMV of course.

[1] It does help to study both success stories, failures, and Public Slap Fights (Cruise, Otto); while I've solicited in the past, I've cooled to the idea and instead plan to go my own Patent-Prototype-Promote business model.

<comment><USER3> I disagree about the amount of money needed to bootstrap (for the kind of ideas VCs invest on, not for niche products or lifestyle businesses I mean).

Patents aren't worth the paper they're printed on unless you have money to defend them, and are very likely to be overturned in court without that (OTOH there are some ridiculous patents that the patent-holders have enough money to make them stick).

Going with your hypothetical model, once you've burned out your 50.000 ramp, then what?

I'm trying to build my own product, and without outside investment it's freaking hard.

<comment><USER4> > Patents aren't worth the paper they're printed on unless you have money to > defend them

Exactly. This is something I think most don't understand. Patents give you the right to sue. That's it. They don't provide any "protection" beyond that.

It's like freedom of speech. You have the freedom to say whatever you want but the first amendment does not offer any protection from the consequences of your speech. In other words, say the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place and you might just get beaten into a pulp. You had the absolute right to say whatever you wanted but no protections beyond that.

<comment><USER5> >Exactly. This is something I think most don't understand. Patents give you the right to sue. That's it. They don't provide any "protection" beyond that.

They give you the ability to credibly threaten to sue as well and reach a big settlement without a lot of expenditure. You can also sell a patent to a competitor who needs it.

<comment><USER4> I have a feeling you've never spent a significant amount of time dealing with IP and patent attorneys.

You can't threaten to sue. That can backfire in a major way, having lawsuits filed against you.

The idea of reaching big settlements with minimal expenditure's does not align with reality. This simply don't work that way, particularly if you are up against a large or well-funded company.

The first thing an attorney is going to ask for is a retainer somewhere in the range of $100K to $250K to get started. Whatever they ask for, they are likely to tell you they will not move forward unless you can commit to $250K at a minimum to pursue a case.

They don't do this because they are greedy, they do it because this is expensive and they don't want you to burn through $100K and then discover you'll need more, don't have it and you got nothing for your $100K.

Selling IP is an entirely different conversation. Yes, patents can be worth millions, tens of millions, even without a real product behind them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > For example, Facebook had an offer from Yahoo for a billion dollars, which > everyone told Zuck to take. Fortunately, he said no. Had he said yes, it > would have been another failed Yahoo acquisition and Facebook would not have > nearly as much impact.

It seems to me that the world would be overall a better place if FB had sold to Yahoo. Yahoo would have screwed it up (like AOL with Myspace) and there would be more competition in the space all around. Monopolies are good for the investors, not for the customers.

<comment><USER7> Zuck dropped the offer because Yahoo lower the price to ~$700 million. He has famously said he would have sold FB if yahoo kept the $1 billion tag.

Buying companies for billions and billions of dollars is a skill in itself and requires a vision also which is not very common. I mean to say only people like Zuck can do it

Edit - Added some more meat

<comment><USER8> I heard Zuck give a talk where this came up. If I remember correctly, his board said he should take the money. He replied that all he'd want to do after selling FB would be to start another social network, so why not just keep working on the one he'd already got?

It wasn't amount the money.

<comment><USER9> Would the contract not define a non-compete clause, though? I mean, much less reason to buy it if the ones buying it from just do the same thing again, under a new name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PB was the first investor in 7 Cups. I'm thankful for all of the ways that he helped us. He is very good at motivating founders. I can't all the way understand how he does it, but it is remarkable. I think a big part of it is helping people face reality directly. i.e., he alludes to this in the interview when he says most people are good at finding obstacles (i.e., excuses) and that he doesn't fund them. He is good at keeping you honest so that you do not delude yourself into making fake progress or going down wrong turns. Another way of saying this is that he helps you minimize denial. Quick story:

I had been working on 7 Cups for about a month prior to getting to YC. I had a home page up, which I was pretty excited about. The core idea of the chat/voice support wasn't yet live. I showed him the website and wanted to show him some of the segments we wanted to focus on (parents of children with disabilities, veterans etc.). He quickly asked - have you got the actual product in front of users yet? I tried to dodge the question, talk more about the site etc. He repeated the question. I had to honestly answer that no we hadn't yet released it. He was like, okay go do that and report back next week. I was stalling because, on some level, I was afraid that it wouldn't work as well as I hoped. We pushed through, launched it, and learned a ton in that next week. For example, we learned that voice was too intimate and people preferred messaging.

And that basic cycle happened over and over again. Like there might be things that sound right or are even partially right, but if they are not the most direct thing that is going to help you learn and make a product people want, then it is probably not a good use of your time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Love this:

 _> >Larry Page assigned the project to me. He said, "Build some kind of email something" and chose me because I had an interest in email._

This is how you know you've found an awesome developer - someone who only needs to be given only a high-level vision of what is needed, and who can then run with it, fill in the details, and deliver something more awesome than you thought possible.

Reminds me of the famous "Message to Garcia" essay from way back in 1899: ([http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/m...](http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/message%20to%20garcia.pdf))

Or, a more current parable found in a post by Benjamin Hardy(1):

 _A certain farmer had become old and ready to pass his farm down to one of his two sons. When he brought his sons together to speak about it, he told them: The farm will go to the younger son.

The older son was furious! "What are you talking about?!" he fumed.

The father sat patiently, thinking.

"Okay," the father said, "I need you to do something for me. We need more stocks. Will you go to Cibi's farm and see if he has any cows for sale?"

The older son shortly returned and reported, "Father, Cibi has 6 cows for sale."

The father graciously thanked the older son for his work. He then turned to the younger son and said, "I need you to do something for me. We need more stocks. Will you go to Cibi's farm and see if he has any cows for sale?"

The younger son did as he was asked. A short while later, he returned and reported, "Father, Cibi has 6 cows for sale. Each cow will cost 2,000 rupees. If we are thinking about buying more than 6 cows, Cibi said he would be willing to reduce the price 100 rupees. Cibi also said they are getting special jersey cows next week if we aren't in a hurry, it may be good to wait. However, if we need the cows urgently, Cibi said he could deliver the cows tomorrow."

The father graciously thanked the younger son for his work. He then turned to the older son and said, "That's why your younger brother is getting the farm."_

1 [https://benjaminhardy.com/one-behavior-separates- successful-...](https://benjaminhardy.com/one-behavior-separates-successful- average/)

<comment><USER12> The "Message to Garcia" is great, thank you for that. I love that while it was written in 1899 it still seems to be true; will likely be still true in 100 years I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > My favorite anti-portfolio example is Airbnb. Michael Siebel (Y Combinator > Core CEO) emailed me their deck before they joined Y Combinator and I > couldn't help but think "Wow, air mattress rental? That's a terrible idea!"

I've heard this sentiment repeated a lot ("Everyone thought AirBnB was a horrible idea"), but I honestly can't imagine why, and it makes me think AirBnB must have just had a bad initial pitch deck. At the time AirBnB was founded, Couchsurfing was already really popular, and HomeAway had received some gargantuan investment rounds. Is it really that much of a stretch to say people would want a safe, secure way to rent out private accommodations?

<comment><USER14> The reason AirBnB was so tough to fund, at least from Fred's post, is because it represented a change in cultural norms. Investors are very resistant to ideas that change people's behavior - particularly if the investor can't picture making that change in their own lives.

<comment><USER15> Also the website back then was airbedandbreakfast.com, way too long and complex of a domain. Couchsurfing was huge, and I guess investors didn't think a paid version of it would take off if a free version existed. At least that's how I thought about it when I rejected Joe's offer to work on the site in 2008.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jasper : Sam Altman has said that the only criterion Y Combinator uses to evaluate applying companies is, "Can this be a $10 billion plus company?" like Airbnb and Dropbox. While this model works great for a fund, there is an Early Exits movement that suggests individual entrepreneurs have a much higher likelihood of success when they raise less capital and target exits in the $20 million range. What do you think this view?

Paul : The math does not support this strategy but if other investors want to try it that's fine. Also, it is not just returns we are looking for but really impactful companies. When you sell too early you don't realize the full potential.

<comment><USER13> > The math does not support this strategy but if other investors want to try > it that's fine.

I think Jasper and Paul are talking past each other here. The math doesn't support the strategy of small exits _if you are an investor in a large fund_. If you are an individual starting a company, though, I've seen a lot of math that says you have a much better chance at success if you swing for a "$20 million niche" than a $10 billion company.

<comment><USER17> Does it really make financial sense though? If there are two founders, some outside equity and a few employees I'm not sure $20 million is better than working in a big company and the risk is surely larger. It might be a lot more fun though, and you will learn a lot so if they payoff is comparable I would say go for the startup if you can afford it.

<comment><USER18> $20 million is $5 million if you just own 25%. thats almost 40 years of working at a dayjob.

<comment><USER19> Except after taxes and expenses you're lucky if you're saving $1000/month at that day job. After 40 years, assuming 5% annual compounding on your investment, which requires to be almost entirely in risky investments like stocks, you could end up with 1.5 million. On the other hand, 3 million after taxes out of the initial windfall of 5 million, at 5% return would let you pay the exact same expenses while still growing by over $5000/month. You'd end up with $30 million at the end of 40 years. Huge difference.

<comment><USER20> Your numbers are way off.

In the US a young, single developer who follows a budget should be able to save at least $2k/month.

$80k/year income less 25% for payroll & income taxes leaves $60k/year. $1.5k/month in housing & $1.5k/month in food/utilities/cell phone/clothes/etc. is $36k/year in spending, leaving $24k for savings. (This also ignores the tax advantages of retirement accounts, which allow for more room to save or spend)

The average nominal returns of the stock market are over 10% per year: a very simple & conservative investment portfolio of 60% S&P 500 index fund & 40% US Treasury bonds yields about 8.7%/year. If we assume 2.7% inflation we get 6% real return/year.

<comment><USER21> add a few kids and you'll end up with debt instead of savings...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paul's thoughts after his first three years angel investing (2011): [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel-investing- my-...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel-investing-my-first- three-years.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER23> Great way of putting things: "I've discovered that most people are really good at finding obstacles."

</comment><comment><USER24> > I wrote the first version of Gmail in a day!

I hadn't heard that before; does anyone know of sources with more on this story?

<comment><USER25> From the man himself - [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating- with-...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating-with- code.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Was Google cooperating with the Chinese government that controversial? Cooperating with the NSA seemed to make bigger waves.

<comment><USER27> Yeah it was widely discussed at the time, what with Google censoring results and whatnot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _Paul: The best startups come from personal experience. It was something you > or someone you know needed._

I've seen this comment before. It emphasizes the need for more founders with diverse backgrounds. More types of problems solved and more opportunities to reach new markets.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great advice:

"If you've been working on your startup for two years and have nothing to show, that's a pretty bad sign."

"Just get started and deliver now. You should have a long term vision but must also act right now, have near term deliverables and be in contact with the customer."

</comment><comment><USER30> _> For example, Facebook had an offer from Yahoo for a billion dollars, which everyone told Zuck to take. Fortunately, he said no. Had he said yes, it would have been another failed Yahoo acquisition and Facebook would not have nearly as much impact._

Really? How can you know what the path of Facebook would have been with a yahoo acquisition? That's like predicting the future.

Besides, what is the real "impact" of Facebook? Which impact are we talking about? To the shareholder? To society? If he refers to the latter, I can think of no way to measure the "impact".

<comment><USER31> Yahoo screwed up literally every acquisition in the social space that they made.

After Google spanked them in search, generally they had ideas of somehow pivoting to social media, but they never executed. They had all the good fledgling social products, but wanted them to operate like media aggregation portals (the strategy that had always worked for them). Some people within Yahoo did see the shift that was coming, but their plans all got lost in corporate politics and architecture astronautery.

Source: worked for acquired social startups within Yahoo around the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I truly believe in small life style business is much better than "pie in the sky" 10B startup that will happened once every 10 years and 99% will fail hurting employees, owners and small investors...

</comment><comment><USER32> Best quote:

> Just get started and deliver now. [...] Don't disappear for years working on > this thing, completely disconnected from the world. An extreme example of > this is, I wrote the the first version of Gmail in a day!

</comment><comment><USER33> Paul has some good observations, but IMHO what he has so far has just been lucky due to the general potential of Moore's law and the Internet. IMHO, with the astoundingly high growth rates of Moore's law and the Internet over, his ideas won't work now.

E.g., he wrote the first version of G-mail in a day. Okay. We can't expect more Googles from such efforts.

Paul, YC, and Silicon Valley have been taken in from their successes, their Sand Hill Road echo chamber, and their own Kool-Aid.

Instead of such influences, we have some much better examples of doing big things from the all-time, unique, world-class, grand champion of really big successes from really big technology, the US DoD, with high irony, what got Silicon Valley going, along with Dean Terman. For runner up, we have Bell Labs with the transistor, solid state lasers, and optical fibers. These successes were not done in a day. And with high irony, they were not risky, that is, the batting average was really high, much higher than VCs in Silicon Valley.

Paul is making another big, fundamental mistake, really implicit in the subject and title of the interview, what can be learned from 200 investments: He does have some good lessons, but broadly what he explains is very much the wrong approach.

Why? Because for his $20 billion criterion, necessarily he is looking for really exceptional, rare events. There's no hope at good lessons for such successes, such rare events, except just to count on luck, when looking at 200 projects where all or nearly all were just mediocre.

Yes, these events are so rare and difficult to do that maybe most of them, that is, the Googles, Facebooks, etc., were more likely from luck, Moore's law, and the Internet than sufficiently good work with little or no good luck. He's just not looking at approaches that are good at detecting the desired rare events.

Instead, it really is possible to conceive of, plan, and execute really big, earth changing work, with quite high reliability. E.g., did I mention the US DoD and Bell Labs? Uh, there's no way to see from Paul's lessons from the 200 startups just how the US DoD and Bell Labs were so successful. E.g., those organizations didn't need 200 rolls of the dice to get the Manhattan Project, GPS, stealth and the F-117, the SR-71, Keyhole (the DoD's Hubble, aimed at the earth instead of space), the transistor, solid state lasers, or optical fibers. And now we can include RSA, WMAP, LIGO, LHC, etc. -- no 199 failures to get one big success. Indeed, in all that work, nearly no failures. Also include the Human Genome project and the work of Craig Venter -- worked great, right away.

But the conception, planning, and execution of such low risk, high payoff projects are not illustrated by Paul's, YC's, or Silicon Valley's investment or project evaluation approaches.

Uh, hint: What Paul is describing is available to middle school students. So, we can set aside all education and research past middle school?

SMTP, HotMail, Gmail -- those were simple projects, flashes in the pan from luck and the rapid growth of Moore's law and the Internet, and do not illustrate the approach to $20 billion for the future.

Uh, early in e-mail, the software I had put one icon on my desktop for each e-mail message sent or received. I could wait for minutes for a single e-mail message to appear on my desktop. Total brain dead bummer. So, I got out the SMTP RFCs, read a little, use the interpretive language Rexx that had the TCP/IP calls, to write my own e-mail. For reading, writing e-mail, I used just my still favorite text editor -- KEdit. For converting to/from base 64 for the MIME attachments, I wrote some code in Rexx. My e-mail had a file that permitted nicknames and groups. It worked great. It put all the e-mail I sent/received, just as it was sent/received, exactly, in a file -- appended to the file with a delimiter line after each e-mail message. When the file got over 10 MB, I started another one. I still have all the files, and finding messages in the files is easy. I wrote all of it in just one afternoon except did the base 64 stuff in another afternoon. My e-mail set up was good enough that I had a cute feature: In files of other work, I'd put just the date line from an e-mail message as a link to that message, and one keystroke in KEdit would cause KEdit to get and display that e-mail message. Sure, the date lines do not have to be distinct, but I never found a duplicate! I was not lucky enough to get rich from it, but I used it for about 10 years, until I got a copy of Outlook 2003. I still wish I knew the syntax of the Outlook PST files or whatever they are called so that I could implement links to those. So, really in some ways, my little one afternoon project remains better than Outlook 2003. Writing basic client side e-mail is dirt simple and no big accomplishment in any sense.

We don't want to be duped into believing that the last $100 million lottery winner has some really great ideas!

In comparison with the DoD, etc. work, the work of Paul, YC, SV, etc. is, really, brain-dead. For more, Paul's approaches are not what got us to 14 nm and won't get us to 10 or 7 nm.

Uh, NASA and, IIRC, JPL, launched some equipment into space and eventually sent back some astounding pictures of -- sit down for this one -- Pluto. Up close. First time. No 200 failures for the one success.

But, wait, there's more: With the current power and prices of computing and the Internet, there is a very special case of information technology. There we take in bits, manipulate them, and put out bits. The goal is to have the output bits be darned valuable, well over the $20 billion criterion.

Then, what is the key to evaluating such work? The team? Personal need? The attitude? The determination? Their desire to get the main work done in a day? Their grit? Their novelty? Their interview impression? Other imponderables and tea-leaf reading? Hand shake style? Eye contact? "Taking the measure" of the person? And may I have the envelope please? [Drum roll}. And the winner is ....

I'll keep that a secret (hint: None of the above.).

<comment><USER34> Also those big projects might not have made billions for those who invented it, but it did enable many others make billions standing on shoulder of those giants. They created trillion dollar computing and associated software market.

<comment><USER33> Yes, the Bell Labs transistors gave us cheap digital computing, and the Bell Labs work on solid state lasers to light optical fibers gave us cheap data communications of the Internet. I'm still not fully clear on what gave us the much higher disk recording densities, but IBM's _giant magneto-resistive_ disk heads may be all or nearly all of it.

But, now, with cheap, powerful digital hardware, lots of powerful software, from BIOS booting to operating systems, relational database and much more, e.g., mobile, the cloud, maybe IOT, there should be some really good opportunities for solid, low risk, high value projects from small teams, even solo, sole founder-developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _> I was interested in making [Gmail] freely available and came up with the ads system._

This decision set a terrible precedent.

It made it acceptable for a company to deliver "tailored advertising" by reading all your emails.

But I guess there are few alternatives to the ad-supported business model on the web facilitated by the vast collection of personal data.

Still kind of sucks, though.

<comment><USER36> I don't see how you avoid some company reading your email and still have automatically indexed, infinitely scalable email in-boxes. Gmail is still the best game in town for this reason. The AI features are getting increasingly good--Gmail automatically creates calendar entries based on email content which is a pretty nice feature.

More generally most cloud services are going to have the same properties. It would be more useful to define clear bounds of what companies can _do_ with your data and back them up with workable legal protections.

<comment><USER37> I welcome our new robot overlords.

The data mining and the ads are the price I pay for such incredibly _useful_ services, that don't cost me anything but a small bit of attention. And even the ads are good, because they're so nicely targeted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great insights, better said than most, but nothing new here. Definitely not unique insights from investing in 200+ startups vs 20 or 2.

</comment><comment><USER38> PB says the math doesnt support the early exit strategy. What math? Not trolling just would love to see more details.

<comment><USER39> For him as an investor it doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> >> My favorite anti-portfolio example is Airbnb. Michael Siebel (Y Combinator Core CEO) emailed me their deck before they joined Y Combinator and I couldn't help but think "Wow, air mattress rental? That's a terrible idea!"

What's baffling is how people who can come up with such a silly idea can also come up with such a great idea as AirBnb. Without the immense help from YC, I'm sure they wouldn't have gone anywhere.

<comment><USER41> Renting out your own apartments to strangers was arguably a "worse" idea than some airbed concept. The whole point is you never know, no one knows what catches until it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > The biggest one is made-up ideas. The best startups come from personal > experience. It was something you or someone you know needed.

My cofounder and I chose our idea as a result of reading research papers. We were so prescient with our analysis that we found many people within our circles who needed what we built. I became a user myself -- it ended up saving me!

Guess I'll have to pass on getting funding from pb. :-)

</comment><comment><USER43> I wrote the first version of Gmail in a day!! #damn

</comment><comment><USER44> AMP is pretty evil.</comment>


Should you Develop a Native or Web Application? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sourcebits.com/native-or-web-application

<comment><USER2> "User Experience design – native apps are traditionally superior in terms of performance and the only means to access device attributes such as geolocation API, camera, address book, and accelerometer."

Just flat out not true.

</comment><comment><USER3> Native for sure. It's too hard to make a web app, let alone a GOOD web app.</comment>


SpaceX Grasshopper - latest test, 325m - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/v/eGimzB5QM1M

<comment><USER2> Nicely done. Now find a way to get this thing to Mars, Mercury or just the Moon, preferably with Astronauts on board.</comment>


Graphene as an Open-Source Material - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/13/graphene-as-an-open-source-material/ <comment> gene-h I don't exactly understand what the author means by open sourcing graphene. If they mean putting the methods used to produce and do things with graphene out there in the open, scientific journals are for the most part already doing this(although not all journals are open access). One can also copy whatever is in a patent as long as one doesn't attempt to sell it.

If the author is suggesting that amateurs do interesting work with graphene we run into a couple problems. It's difficult for amateurs to obtain even basic chemical reagents and labware. Most chemical suppliers won't even sell to amateurs. Not to mention that some of these chemicals involved can be pretty nasty. There's also the issue of all the equipment needed to evaluate stuff made with graphene. Microscopes and mechanical testers can be pretty expensive.

That being said graphene suffers from similar problems to other nanomaterials. While we can obtain high strength, we can only do so with close to atomically perfect sheets. We still don't have a good way to make large atomically perfect materials, so we can only achieve these high strengths with microscopic flakes of graphene. In addition, the roll to roll process they mentioned is still going to be pretty expensive. It's slow and energy intensive making it difficult to produce by the kilogram, much less the ton. It's also been noted that graphene really doesn't have much of a killer app[0], with most graphene applications being only marginally better than alternatives.

Now much of the hype around graphene came from it's electronic properties. The big attraction was that one could do many of the things we wanted to do with carbon nanotubes, that is making smaller faster transistors, using standard CMOS processing equipment[1]. The problem is that its still difficult to make graphene exhibit a band gap, which is important for making computer chips so that we can make transistors which actually turn off.

[0] [https://www.nature.com/news/graphene-booms-in-factories- but-...](https://www.nature.com/news/graphene-booms-in-factories-but-lacks-a- killer-app-1.17771) [1] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.4685.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.4685.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> I experimented with Graphene as part of my engineering thesis at uni back in 2010. I was trying to synthesize anode materials for Li-Ion battery applications. The idea being graphene would better accommodate volume expansion during intercalation leading to better cycling performance of the battery.

I don't think there is any particular "secret sauce" in the technique I was using to make the graphene - I was using Modified Hummer's method (MH method) to make graphene-oxide and then reductive precipitation (RP) - it's well covered by the literature. There is even a wikipedia article on it.([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummers%27_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummers%27_method)). I don't think anything would really stop a dedicated amateur.

I agree with you a lot of the difficulty is sourcing the chemicals and especially the equipment (sonicator, centrifuge etc) which makes it much more suited for a laboratory than amateur experimentation. Also agree it's slow and time consuming to produce at least using method I was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I remember long ago hearing about a cool graphene application getting patented by some public university out east. It made me really upset. There's so many awesome ideas coming out of public universities that never go anywhere due to IP hoarding.

It takes a lot of different people and perspectives to make something happen at scale. Keep these important ideas flowing and open!

</comment><comment><USER3> The youtube channel of Robert-Murray Smith is a great resource for graphene experimentation, I recommend some of the older videos. He speaks in terms that a beginner chemist can understand.

Prompted me to buy some graphoil, sodium sulfate, and ultrasound sonication bath and follow along: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFUOsZ0LSkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFUOsZ0LSkQ)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Natural reserves of graphene are few and far between

This seems to imply that graphene does occasionally occur in nature? Does anyone know under what situations this happens?

<comment><USER5> Graphite is stacked and fragmented layers of graphene (search "graphene scotch tape"). It occurs naturally when carbon deposits are subjected to the right temperature and pressure. Meteorites, igneous, and metamorphic rock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to connect with Don (author) - appreciate an intro if anyone has a good link.

<comment><USER7> I don't know him but his contact page lists a number of ways to get in touch: [https://donbasile.com/contact/](https://donbasile.com/contact/)</comment></comment>


Latency is Everywhere and it Costs You Sales - How to Crush it - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/latency-everywhere-and-it-costs-you-sales-how-crush-it <comment> patrickg-zill Actually the one thing that DOES reduce latency is never mentioned - <USER2> network you are connecting to.

Smaller players like Internap charge you more, in return they deliver the lowest-latency bandwidth possible. They do this by contiuously tuning their BGP (routing) setups and make sure to buy direct routes to most big suppliers, like Level3, ATT, NTT (Japan), Cogent, TeliaSonera etc. etc. Thus the mix you get, is a tuned mix of 5 to 7 other suppliers.

<comment><USER3> The difference you are speaking of is a small number of millaseconds. Maybe the difference between 50 and 80ms. this might make a difference if you are doing something like trading stocks... but for most webapps, your database is way slower than that. 20ms lag in loading a http page is not going to be noticed by anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bookmarked not only because its a nice article but because it has tons of interesting looking links.

</comment><comment><USER5> Spellcheck next time.</comment>


Munich Re buys IoT middleware startup, relayr, in deal worth $300M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/04/munich-re-buys-iot-middleware-startup-relayr-in-deal-worth-300m/ <comment><USER3> There is an interesting overlap in insurance and IoT: The big insurance companies like MunichRE are big in the business of insuring other companies against downtimes of their (industrial) machinery. If you equip machines with sensors, there is the chance of predicting downtimes (and unplanned maintenance) and preventing them. So the insurance can offer better pricing.

Overall, a lot of stuff in the insurance business depends on having the right data available. If you manage to collect the right(!) data using sensors, you can get an competitive edge.

Of course, a lot depends if you can crack the data analytics problems around predicting and preventing downtimes.

Disclaimer: Worked for Relayr

<comment><USER4> At some point, what are you insuring against, if you know which machines will fail? This reminds me of the pre-existing conditions debate in healthcare - <USER2> you only insure healthy machines, then what is the point of buying insurance? Sure, catastrophy insurance is good, but I wonder if better data may reduce the size of the insurance market. Not necessarily bad for those being insured, since they could do preventative maintenance, but I wonder if the insurers are at all concerned.

<comment><USER5> The insurance company wants to pay out less money, so they offer a reduction in premium cost for behaviors that they think are worth that differential.

Suppose you have a thousand doohickey machines that cost 10,000 each to replace in an emergency, of which 50% is the doohickey cost and 80% of the rest is the emergency labor cost ; a ten year lifespan, and an observed failure rate of 1% per year.

In a normal year, you need to replace 100 doohickeys at a cost of a million. Over ten years, you replace 1000 doohickeys at a cost of ten million. Your insurance company charges you 1.02 million a year whether they have to replace 900 or 1100 in that particular year. It costs you a little more on average, but it keeps you from experiencing a catastrophe.

Now the insurance company gathers data from your doohickeys that predicts with 90% reliability that a doohickey will fail within a month. If they can pay the 1000 non-emergency cost of the labor (plus the 5,000 part cost), then they go from a 10,000 outlay to a 6000 outlay. 4000 savings x 90% x 100 doohickeys needing replacement is 36000.

So the insurance company offers you a reduction from 1.02 million per year to 985,000 per year if you install the realtime doohickey monitoring system. That's a great savings for you, a good savings for the insurance company, and everybody is happy...

unless it turns out that the realtime doohickey monitors have lousy security and leak valuable personal information to anybody who guesses the password (which is password321).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kind of surprised by a sum that high.

From everything I've heard from people close to the company they've been struggling really hard to close big contracts (and spending a lot of time/money/effort on building prototypes for that), and they've been hemorrhaging employees the last year.

<comment><USER7> I can confirm this - I got similar information from several employees. The market is extremely hard and doesn't scale well. They did a great job solely by surviving and I'm really happy, that their hard work is rewarded now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty cool to see company I shared an accelerator and an office with being sold for this generous sum. I just don't see how a Berlin IOT startup and its culture is going to thrive under a Munich insurance company. Very curious how this pans out.

<comment><USER9> Are the cultures very different between Munich and Berlin? Your comment implies this and would be interested in hearing about this for those of us that have only infrequently visited other cities in Germany such as Frankfurt or Düsseldorf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Munich Re is in the (re)-reinsurance business, but they apparently own HSB which appears to be telecom-related so it could make sense to buy an IoT middleware startup. Can anyone explain the relationship between these Munich Re and HSB? They seem to be two different, non-complementary lines of business.

<comment><USER11> From my understanding, HSB is the industry arm of Munich Re. For insuring industrial facilities, expertise in auditing those is needed, and they also sell that expertise. IoT fits in there as a way of collecting more data, improving the quality of their risk assessment, selling monitoring equipment also means being able to avoid insurance cases, monitoring of SLAs that are insured, ...

<comment><USER10> Thank you for the explanation. Never thought of insurance companies having an interest in IoT.

<comment> jon-wood I work at Neos, where we're using IoT in the context of home insurance. Almost all our investors are insurance companies (including Munich Re who underwrite our policies).

Insurance is all over IoT, and indeed anything else with the chance of reducing risk - it's what they do.

<comment><USER10> Wow, good to know. I know.Progressive insurance used to have a.dongle to monitor driver behavior for a discount. It predated.the term Not and used.the 2g network.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-considering-pardon-chelsea-manning-2017-1 <comment><USER2> If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly mistreated by the prison system for it.

<comment><USER3> I disagree, I think you can draw a straight line from him to the election of Donald Trump.

The one sided, anti-us nature of WikiLeaks, including perhaps incomplete content, hint at editorial digression with a clear motivation.

I can't come up with a single way this helped America, but it certainly hurt our prestige around the world.

<comment><USER4> There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in your claims.

America's prestige was destroyed by none other than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremmer, Rupert Murdoch, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and several others, for a number of reasons, but most of all the 2003 invasion of Iraq, from which you can draw a straight line to ISIS.

How you "connect the dots" and manage to wander your way from Manning and land on Trump is beyond me. How you digress from WikiLeaks to Trump is curious.

Political influence may have elected Trump, but cones of silence, echo chambers and hacker mudslinging isn't really what got Trump elected.

Republican incompetence permitted his candidacy in the first place. Republican spite invoking a broad mistrust among suburbanites and rural America put him in office. If the people who voted Trump, are so easily deceived by falsified evidence and dubious non-journalism, then they were stupid enough to be deceived by anything, but wanted to be spiteful and hate something, and would have found something dubious to latch onto and excuse their shitty vote anyway.

<comment><USER3> I agree with most of your post, certainly the ideological bankruptcy of the GOP left trump the best candidate, and no doubt America's "good guy" image was harmed by Bush. Although as satire of the time ("Team America: World Police"), the USA was certainly not seen as impotent. Just dumb, maybe evil.

>>How you digress from WikiLeaks to Trump is curious.

I think Wikileaks has become the avenue for unilateral anti-US sentiment. For example,. Recent leaks like the DNC emails reinforced a sense of political disenfranchisement that leading to shockingly poor voter turnout. Perhaps most misleading was that the DNC emails were selective, possibly edited for maximum impact. For a similar opinion see Edward Snowden's(!) comments:

[http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the- radar/2016/07/edward...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the- radar/2016/07/edward-snowden-wikileaks-dnc-226386)

There is an information/spin war going on, with the military agencies of countries such as Russia directly participating. Wikileaks was the first shot at the USA, and Manning was a traitor who gave the ammo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best use of pardons would be to release thousands of people that have been convicted under the three strikes and your out schemes. Not all will deserve to be released, but someone that used up there last strike with shop lifting or stealing a car does not deserve to be put away for the rest of their life.

</comment><comment><USER6> Presidential pardons are corrupt by definition. They transgress the rule of law and equality before it. If you think someone needs a presidential pardon, just back up and think "which law is horrible and unjust and must be reformed." If not the law maybe the courts. Pardon at best is a fig leaf over a gaping wound. At worst, well pick them out yourself - the best you can say about it is that it looks really, really bad.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> The presidential pardon is defined by the constitution, therefore it can't be "corrupt by definition".

<comment><USER6> Your understanding of what corruption is and mine are different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chelsea Manning is a trans woman, please don't misgender her.

<comment><USER8> Chelsea Manning isn't reading the HN thread, so why does it matter what gender you use? It's like telling someone to use Kolkata instead of Calcutta.

<comment><USER9> Rude.

A trans person other than Chelsea could be reading this right now. If you do not respect her identity then it could be (and should be imo) interpreted as disregard for trans people in general

<comment><USER8> It's possible to support transpeople without having to change the English language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, just after he closes Gitmo, like he promised _before_ getting elected.

<comment><USER11> You do realize that Obama has tried to find several ways to do this, and has been shut down by the Republicans every time?

Congress ultimately decided to keep Guantanamo, and left zero room to find a single solution; Obama had no choice but to negotiate transfers with other countries (a long and problematic process) while at the same time let the court system handle the remaining cases. Obama could perhaps have tried harder, but he has had a _lot_ of resistance on many fronts from the GOP.

He has almost succeeded at this point, anyway; there are only about 40 prisoners left. [1]

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/with-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/with-final-detainee-transfer-obamas-guantanamo-policy-takes-its-last- breath/2016/12/28/dfdf8cb2-cd0f-11e6-a747-d03044780a02_story.html)</comment></comment>


Here's what 9,000 years of breeding has done to corn, peaches, and other crops - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6982053/selective-breeding-farming-evolution-corn-watermelon-peaches <comment><AUTHOR> The most intriguing question is... Given the exponential improvement in gene editing, what will our crops look like 30 years from now?</comment>


Yes, Razer is going to make a toaster now - <AUTHOR> https://www.techradar.com/news/yes-razer-is-actually-going-to-make-a-toaster-now <comment><USER2> Maybe they can use this design (made of modern parts, of course): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y)</comment>


Scale of Universe - <AUTHOR> http://scaleofuniverse.com/

<comment><USER2> "We're probably not in the center of the universe"

The way I understood things, there is no center of the universe. Or equivalently, all points in the universe have a view such that it appears that you are in the center of the universe. The universe is spacetime itself, and the idea of a center requires an idea of space outside of spacetime, no?

<comment><USER3> Nobody knows what the topology of the universe is, nor, contrary to this animation, does anyone have a reliable estimate for the size of the universe (as opposed to just the observable universe). It might be infinite, or it might be just slightly larger than the observable universe.

But yes, all current models of the universe are homogeneous; no point is more central than any other point. It doesn't have to be this way, but it's the simplest assumption.

<comment><USER4> "Yes and no". The universe is not homogeneous on a large scale, there are filaments of galaxies and everything but yes the idea of the center of the universe does not correspond to anything. The Big Bang from current models happened everywhere and the expansions comes from the fact that the very "fabric" of the universe expands.

But there are some awesome implications of an infinite universe, take a look here if you are interested:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_I:_Beyond_our_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_I:_Beyond_our_cosmological_horizon)

<comment><USER3> In the sense of matter distribution, the universe isn't homogeneous on small scales either. But that's not what is meant in the context of a cosmological model. The global spacetime is modeled with a FLRW metric, whose key property is homogeneity and isotropy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scale of Universe Enhanced is the sequel and even better: [http://images.4channel.org/f/src/589217_scale_of_universe_en...](http://images.4channel.org/f/src/589217_scale_of_universe_enhanced.swf)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I was surprised to see the old one posted here when this new fancy version has recently been made. It has at least twice as many things, and lots of educational text when you click them (although I think he got bored writing them after a point.) The science is more on point than the old one too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Posted here many many times already:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953919>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261816>

<comment><USER8> It happens with many stories. I wish those who submit articles would take the time to check their article/page hasn't been submitted yet.

<comment><USER9> What is the best way to do this ?

<comment><USER10> try [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/njdndkhkelkeepcnmo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/njdndkhkelkeepcnmookckfhleebcokl)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to see a case study or profile of the creation of this. Over the last 10 years and in multiple communities, I've seen the underlying Flash animation to this appear and do well every single time. It must be one of the most seen Flash animations ever, yet it continues to do well every time despite being very simply produced.

</comment><comment><USER12> On topic of scales. [http://blog.visual.ly/12-visualizations-that-will-change- the...](http://blog.visual.ly/12-visualizations-that-will-change-the-way-you- view-scale-in-your-world/)

<comment><USER13> It's 4:15am here, and I am manically laughing in my bedroom while watching these. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sadly their MySQL server went down, and no one took the time to configure PHP correctly :(

> Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Lost connection to MySQL > server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111 in > /home/primax/public_html/dbcon.php on line 14 Could not connect database

<comment><USER15> Scale of universe meets scalability of MySQL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Main link is broken right now. Alt link that I think is the same thing (based on comments) <http://www.scaleoftheuniverse.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> This really needs forward and reverse play buttons to allow you just sit and try and comprehend what is zooming before your eyes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, I saw this over 2 years ago. Whoever made this site took the original SWF and put it on this domain behind ads to make money.

Anyway, its still very cool at any rate. I wish someone created a CGI version of this thats more realistic

</comment><comment><USER19> Great piece - just wish I could control the audio volume.

Curious if HTML5 can do this yet...

<comment><USER20> Well, HTML5 can't _reliably_ do audio yet. :) But nothing in this animation looks hard at all to recreate in JavaScript / HTML5. The most annoying bit would be to convert the art pieces (which I assume are swf vector art) to a format that you can render with HTML5. In Canvas, png sucks for magnification and I'm not aware of any functional swf exporter + vector canvas renderer library. If you go the DOM route with transforms, SVG may do the trick and there should be vector tools that can import swf and export SVG.

In summary, HTML5 can definitely do it, but for now it's much easier in Flash.</comment></comment>


The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/ <comment><USER2> Despite all the press around the specifics of MCAS and the 737 MAX, the broken relationship between Boeing and the FAA, and the poor state of Boeing pilot training in many developing countries, this article reads as the single most damning piece about Boeing. The implication is that there isn't a simple policy or process fix to get Boeing back on track, but that the company culture and leadership model is fundamentally broken and has been for the last 20 years. That is a slow and painful thing to recover from, and not many companies have done it successfully (though Microsoft and IBM come to mind as ones who made it through to the other side).

<comment><USER3> > and the poor state of Boeing pilot training in many developing countries,

IHTPO that the 737 Max's that crashed were the newest planes operated by companies with advanced training.

It's no question that random airlines flying clapped-out planes in remote corners of the earth can be quite scary* (some of the smaller operators in the OECD countries too) but that isn't really a factor in the two crashes that grounded the aircraft.

* On two occasions in my life I have been frightened enough not to get on a scheduled flight (I didn't hear that either crashed). These were entirely been due to the physical state of the aircraft.

<comment><USER4> I would not characterize Lion Air as well trained. [https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/10/25/lion-air-737-max- crash-i...](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/10/25/lion-air-737-max-crash- indonesia-recommends-redesign-better-training.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It always amazes me that culture fit is always applied to the lowly grunt but not the top exec.

Here we have Boeing, a company built by engineers with the engineering ethos, and MBA types were given the helm of the company. Why didn't the culture fit apply to new leadership?

<comment><USER6> That's a double standard I haven't considered before. If it has been shown to work on a lower level to the point where companies implement culture fitting, then why isn't being implemented on all levels?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The financialization of Boeing was a "success".

Boeing's stock rose. Executives made their money and cashed out. Somebody else was left holding the bag.

This is the behavior the current market rules incentivize.

<comment><USER8> > This is the behavior the current market rules incentivize.

What changed in the "market rules" between then and now? How do you make a causation from that diff plausible?

Another alternative: A once great company fell apart due the usual factors: greed, incompetency, entropy, failed succession plans, great people being unusual, ethically minded technical founders being replaced by MBAs - who then turn out creating larger profits in the shorter term, etc.

It's highly unusual for great companies to remain great companies over a long period of time.

Edit: I mean, I agree that it seems like the behavior of large companies has changed quite a lot; from say 1980 to 2010. But how much of that is cultural, and how much is legislation? What has driven this change? (Are we talking about the same thing, using different terminology?)

<comment><USER9> The stock exchanges also changed quite a lot from 1980 to 2010. That's what brought new rules to the companies.

A great question is why did the stock exchanges changed? I can't find any single answer, but I think operations optimization and the consequent low transaction costs played a large part.

<comment><USER8> Sure, yeah, the democratization of stock exchange "betting" via the internet may have been a factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Assuming the conclusions of the article are correct, Boeing is yet another company driven to disaster by the desire to put someone in charge who isn't an expert on the product the company sells.

Let's discuss. When does it makes sense to put a non-product-person in charge? Why, beyond the old stock price pump-n-dump? Any counterexamples where it worked for a while and then the wheels came off?

</comment><comment><USER11> I've quite enjoyed the Atlantic's coverage of Boeing and the 737MAX issues.

And by enjoyed I mean "been fascinated by". It's never a nice thing to read.

</comment><comment><USER12> > "When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so > that it's run like a business rather than a great engineering firm."

Wow, why would anyone think this is an okay viewpoint to have? Because capitalism? When I'm flying I don't care that the aircraft I'm in was made I by a company that was run like a business. I want to be in an aircraft that is safe. And the only thing that can make them safe is great engineering.

Clearly this comment was directed at investors and not customers. A business's goal is to please investors. If that happens to be what's best for customers, it's just a side-effect. An engineer on the other hand cares about the actual product they are working on. And it order for that to be successful, customers have to be satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER13> This case is a good illustration to an earlier discussion in HN on how and why company values and culture actually matter.

</comment><comment><USER14> > That, in turn, contributed to the company's extraordinary decision to move > its headquarters to Chicago, where it strangely remains—in the historical > capital of printing, Pullman cars, and meatpacking—to this day.

Yes, yery "strange" for an airplane manufacture to remain headquartered the same place as the HQ and/or major hub of its largest customer airlines.

<comment><USER15> Boeing expected to get a lot more defense work. Having headquarters in a major urban location gave it an additional 2 senators and a couple more reps in the house that could then champion those sales.

While final 737 assembly was done in Renton, the fuselages were made in Wichita. Which was also the site of a booming business in remanufacturing Boeing aircraft for both the civilian and military market. Making it out like there's no good reason to have a more central HQ doesn't ring true.

Finally, it's not like Boeing didn't have issues before the merger. They had to take a billion (with a 'B') charge on engineering issues with the 737NG tail section. A lot of heads rolled for that. I left before DCAC/MRM finished but I'd find it hard to believe that didn't go over budget by a similar amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sort of surprised they haven't spun off the defence and space divisions as separate companies yet.

</comment><comment><USER17> When you measure everything by the value of the dollar it is no surprise that ephemera such as quality and pride evaporate.</comment>


What tools do employers want data scientists to know? - <AUTHOR> http://www.getadatasciencejob.com/advice/what-tools-do-employers-want-data-scientists-to-know <comment><USER2> One reason there's such a plethora of tools a data scientist supposedly should master is a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of companies regarding what a data scientist actually does. I recommend reading "Analysing the analysers" which discusses the different kinds of data scientist and the relevant skillsets. It also touches on the employer ignorance aspect. [http://www.oreilly.com/data/free/files/analyzing-the- analyze...](http://www.oreilly.com/data/free/files/analyzing-the- analyzers.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's pretty obvious from that list ( tools and the number of times they show up) that no, employers do not expect data scientists to know every tools, unless of course there were actually only a few data scientist jobs with such frequent tools as R or python mentioned multiple times in some of them.</comment>


Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2016/06/headphone_jacks_are_the_new_floppy_drives <comment><USER2> There's a _major_ difference between the two. Floppy drives were of seriously limited utility by 1998 and it was only getting worse. 1.44MB was starting to be a pretty painful limit. Software was starting to come on CDs instead of floppies. Documents were starting to need Zip disks, USB drives, CD-Rs, or networks.

Can you imagine using floppies today? You wouldn't be able to fit anything on them. A single smartphone photo would already be too big. They were already doomed, Apple just happened to be the first one to stop shipping them.

Contrast this to the ubiquitous headphone jack. It still works great. It does exactly what we need it to. It does its job as well in 2016 as it did when it was created in 1964.

With floppies, Apple saw the writing on the wall and moved faster than other companies were willing to. If they kill the headphone jack, they will be trying to _force_ a switch that otherwise wouldn't happen. Data keeps on growing seemingly without limit, but audio hasn't changed in decades.

<comment><USER3> Ok, but apple didn't just get rid of the floppy disk. At a time when everyone was getting ready to go from DVDs to either Blu-ray or HD-DVD Apple got rid of optical disks entirely in all of their machines and everyone gave them shit for it the same way. But in the end they were right. The battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray was won by downloads and streaming, and optical disks have gone the way of the floppy disk even though they worked perfectly fine.

Analog audio jacks are going in the same direction. Bluetooth audio works perfectly fine, and it's how I play music on my headphones, in my car and at home. The analog jack is a convenient fallback but it will definitely go away at some point.

Sure, it feels like it's a bit premature, but that's how it always feels when Apple does something like get rid of optical drives, or get rid of removable batteries, etc. Eventually everyone follows them. Someone needs to blaze the trail and Apple is one of the few major companies that is not afraid to do it even if it pisses off some people along the way.

<comment><USER4> When Apple dropped the optical drive, the internet was eating everything. The internet is a massive, global infrastructure project that was clearly not going to slow down. People were already downloading software, movies and music, and loved the ease of that experience. The writing was on the wall, they just jumped earlier.

So what's the up and coming thing that's just about to take over audio transmission, the "internet" that ate physical disk distribution? Is it Bluetooth?

> Bluetooth audio works perfectly fine, and it's how I play music on my > headphones...

sample size of one. I can match that. I never use bluetooth and actively avoid it due to it's poor quality, connection fragility, and the time it takes to set up (repeatedly). Basically, the UX of bluetooth is terrible. The UX of a simple, universal, cheap, dependable, quick, robust and high fidelity cable and connector is great.

Whatever tech that will eventually replace the 3.5mm jack isn't here yet.

<comment><USER3> Yes, in hindsight both of the changes were inevitable. But plenty of people still complained about it. I see the dropping of the analog headphone jack the same way. The move to wireless is inevitable even if a few people still have problems with it it today. The adoption of Bluetooth music streaming in vehicles shows that Bluetooth audio can work perfectly fine. If you had connection and quality issues at some point, I urge you to try again with newer hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> the analogy is baloney. floppy drives didn't get removed from hardware just because they were "old" or "made the computer fat," ... floppy drives were removed from computers because their entire raison d'etre was becoming more rare - the _Floppy Disk_. It was actively being replaced by CDs because it wasn't sufficient as a storage medium any more.

So for the analogy to make sense, 3.5mm _plugs_ would have to be dying, actively and ubiquitously being replaced by ... whatever. Lightning? USB-C? But they're not. The 3.5mm jack and headphones in particular are probably more common now than ever before.

I personally would love to see the headphone jack become more useful in lots of different ways. Square managed to make a CC reader that plugged into the 3.5mm jack. Impressive, using it as a data port for simple data. Can we do more of that? What if a 3.5mm cable was a way for your phone to connect to various IoT devices to pass the basic setup data like your wifi SSID and password instead of this goofy process of broadcasting it's own wifi network that you have to connect to. Any app can push signals out the headphone port, and it works the same across iOS and Android. Maybe I'm an idiot and that'd never work but the point is: 3.5mm isn't dead. It's very much alive and kicking.

<comment><USER5> > What if a 3.5mm cable was a way for your phone to connect to various IoT > devices to pass the basic setup data like your wifi SSID and password > instead of this goofy process of broadcasting it's own wifi network that you > have to connect to.

For what it's worth, the latest Canary ([https://canary.is/](https://canary.is/)) is configured via a 3.5mm cable connected to your phone, and the configuration process is relatively smooth compared to the goofy ad-hoc WiFi network approach.

<comment><USER4> Well hey, I guess I'm not crazy after all. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have less of an issue with the analog headphone port being gone and more with it being replaced by a proprietary/closed format that nobody else but Apple uses.

<comment><USER7> Apple's intention is to go all wireless, audio included. The lightning connector earbud is a stop gap between now and the future when wireless audio is decent. John Gruber actually mentions that.

<comment><USER2> Where? The only mention of "wireless" is a brief acknowledgement that wireless audio sucks and Apple will ship wired headphones.

<comment><USER7> "Wireless sucks" \- That's the hint. And once the 3.5mm jack is removed, you think Apple would reintroduce it again?

<comment><USER2> How does any of that imply that lightning earbuds are just a stopgap?

<comment><USER7> The answer is only a google search away - I follow quite a few Apple news sites. All these news tidbits in the past few months are increasingly clear once you connect all the dots. So no, I don't have a quote for you if you that's what you are looking for. The statement was my original idea crystalized from all the sources.

PS: you were the one who down voted me right?

<comment><USER2> You said that Gruber mentioned it. If this is your own conclusion based on other materials then fine, but that's a different thing.

As for downvoting, no, I only downvote people who are blatantly awful (insulting, sexist, whatever), and in any case HN doesn't let you downvote replies to your own comments.

<comment><USER7> Ok good to know! The "mentioned" was really referring to the "Wireless audio currently sucks" sentiment. But it will get better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A false analogy - we weren't using floppies with multiple different kinds of devices. If non-standard headphone connections were clearly better, we'd already have lots of them in the wild, and you could neglect that old- fashioned 3.5mm hole in your smartphone. But consumers aren't clamoring for that, as they'd like to be able to use the headphones they already have with their phones, laptops, and other audio devices.

<comment><USER9> > A false analogy - we weren't using floppies with multiple different kinds of > devices.

General purpose computers, digital cameras, electronic (musical) keyboards and other instruments, ...

<comment><USER8> Fair, though most of "us" weren't, honestly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coincidentally, the headphone jack on my Lenovo laptop just broke last week, and it's been a huge pain. I didn't realize how much I depended on it. I wear ear buds to listen to music during work. I have bluetooth earbuds, but they are bulky and it's a pain to have to re-pair them, re-charge them, etc., and bluetooth even stopped working on my laptop once until I rebooted. I have a USB headset I usually just use for videoconferencing or recording videos, but it's even bulkier and awkward to wear for a long time.

So I got a USB to stereo adapter for a few bucks, but I find that the audio levels are not as smooth as with the regular headphone jack. The sound goes from a little too loud to virtually silent with just one tick of the volume control.

I've already been researching new laptops even though I wasn't expecting to get a new one until later this year, all because of a simple little headphone jack breaking. The only other alternative I guess is to use my phone for listening to music instead.

<comment><USER11> Is this a post about the merits of the 3.5 mm audio jack and the pitfalls of a digital audio jack or vice versa? It kind of seems like you're saying "technology sucks when it breaks and nothing works perfectly" (bluetooth failed, USB audio is choppy, 3.5 mm jack is susceptible to breaking and there is only the 1 on your laptop.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So now audio will be controlled by a company or copyrighted/patented protocol. This is really what they are after. If they could charge for the light streaming from your screen, they would. I can see Apple offering a dongle to let you plug in a normal headset and charging $30 for it. More crap to carry, more refuse in the landfills. If Apple really cared about the environment they would keep the audio jack in place. It's allows something with an earphone with 3 wires to plug in that gives awesome sound quality out (usually). How can you get more simple and elegant than that?

<comment><USER13> Practically no one will buy such a dongle out of belief that the audio quality of Lightning port earbuds is so vastly superior. Such is the Apple loyalist (once upon a time I was one of them). ;-)

<comment><USER2> Do Apple fans actually believe that Apple earbuds are high quality? I recall even a top Apple exec once admitted at a public event that the best thing they could say about their earbuds was that they were the highest quality ones in the iPhone box.

<comment><USER13> No, you are correct, I think it's accepted in general that earbuds are a compromise. Still, IMHO, customers will assume the audio quality from the lightning port is superior to the old analog jack.

<comment><USER2> I see, and I totally agree with that. I'm sure that "better audio quality" will be a selling point if they do this, and most people will believe it. It might even be true, to a small extent, although the connector is clearly not the limiting factor for Apple earbud quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What annoys me about this is that now one won't be able to have headphones AND a portable battery plugged in. With a macbook and USB-C you might carry a small USB hub with you, but you won't use a USB hub on a phone so you have have headphones and a battery. Unless the headphone battery has two genders and lets you daisy chain...

<comment><USER15> Isn't USB-C daisy-chainable? Seems like the onus is on the portable battery to have a USB-C port itself for this.

<comment><USER14> In theory, all USB is daisy-chainable. The practice is where the theory crashes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Floppies lost to USB flash for the same reasons core memory lost to hard drives, new better, widely adopted, denser storage. No such relationship exists between current head phones and Lightning head phones. In fact, Lightning is not an industry standard, but analog cabling is. Lightning cables are less durable and not repairable. Analog cables do come in varying quality but can be repaired easily. One is patent encumbered and the other is not.

Why would I buy expensive Lightning noise cancelling headphone when I can only use it with one manufactures equipment? It really makes zero sense.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Should the analog headphone jack remain on our devices forever? If you think so, you can stop reading."

Better remove our legacy analog hearing while we're at it...

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a bit hard to have a reasonable discussion about this without knowing the features of what it's being replaced _with_. Lightning connector, sure, but what does that get me? Until we get an answer to that I don't really know what to be upset about.

<comment><USER19> For the sake of argument, maybe assume the best case scenario of analog output through a very simple Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter.

That would be annoying, but maybe not the dealbreaker it could be if Lightning is only capable of digital output.

<comment> semi-extrinsic My new laptop has, for no good reason other than thinness, decided to be without an Ethernet port. To compensate it came with a USB Type C Ethernet adapter, about the size of a zippo lighter.

In what world does it make sense to shave a millimeter off the device itself, but then require me to be dragging half a dozen adapters around?

I'm already packing AC adapter, HDMI->VGA adapter, USB hub and this new Ethernet adapter everywhere I go. I bet these are approachng the same volume as the laptop itself.

<comment><USER15> A world in which less than 1% of users will ever use that ethernet dongle. If you needed all of those ports, you bought the wrong laptop.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Well, it's a 15" Dell Precision. It's supposed to be a "mobile workstation". If it was a Macbook Air or something, I wouldn't be complaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've recently switched to bluetooth in ears (Jaybird Freedom) and it significantly improves my "user-experience" of listening to music on the go.

I don't have to carry my phone with me when I go jogging (smartwatch) and even if I did I could put it in any pocket without having to make sure that the cable is long enough.

Pulling the phone out and using it is also more pleasant without a cable. Another example is me being in the kitchen and listening to music with the phone lying around somewhere 5m away from me.

I know it is currently expensive (the Jaybird Freedom cost $200) but I believe that the general direction Apple is taking here is the right one. Prices for such headphones will go down and battery life will improve. (although battery life is already sufficient for me)

Once you can get something comparable for $50 I believe most people will switch.

<comment><USER2> I had a similar experience for a while, until I put my $100+ Bluetooth headset through the wash. I'll stick with cheap wired earbuds from now on, although I'm sure not everybody is sufficiently absent minded for that to be a risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just realized that if I have lightning-port headphones plugged in I can't be charging my iPhone at the same time. That's actually a very common use case for me, as I always plug it in to stay charged if I'm listening at my desk or in bed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, duh, we replaced the floppy drive because there was a many measurable magnitudes better in every dimension new invention.

It's hilarious how he writes this whole page and misses this crucial bit. He must not have been born when floppy was a thing.

In the meantime, the whole consumer audio space is just so totally and utterly solved. 16 bit, 44kHz (lossless if you must, but frankly MP3 is sufficient) analogue audio is just the ultimate in "good enough" solutions. People peddling 24 bit or 96kHz should be imprisoned for fraud.

<comment><USER23> > It's hilarious how he writes this whole page and misses this crucial bit.

Oh, no, he didn't miss that, but it is a fact that goes against his reasoning

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Shocking, Gruber trying to defend what Apple does.

Since a headphone needs a DAC to transform the digital audio to analog there is no reason to move that DAC from the one already present in the smartphone to the headphone.

And the floppy analogy doesn't hold water, there is no better alternative to the jack

</comment><comment><USER24> How could the creator of markdown be so... unreasonable!? ;_;

<comment><USER25> Read the rest of his blog, you'll be even more disappointed.</comment></comment>


Obama's data.gov CIO quits White House  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/16/vivek_kundra_quits_cio_job/

<comment><USER2> Don't want to publish information without unattributable sources, but -- the deal is in Washington that Obama gave his appointees until August 30th to decide whether or not they wanted to stay on through the remainder of his present term. Basically, while they're on their honor, the administration doesn't want appointees to drop out during election season. This is customary for administrations seeking reelection to do.

Vivek likely won't be the first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Vivek wasn't the CIO of data.gov as the headline implies. He was the CIO of the united states. IMO Its a real shame to see him go. Data.gov and other important projects like the federal it dashboard and his efforts to reduce wasteful spending on data centers seem destined for termination without him.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not looking good for the future of data.gov. I know funding was cut recently, but didn't realise until this article that funding was cut from $35m to $8m!

</comment><comment><USER5> like some other things with Obama's Presidency, data/gov projects haven't gone the way we all 'Hoped' they would when the ideals presented themselves at its start. <Sigh>

<comment> brown9-2 From the article: _As The Register has previously reported, Data.gov has been the subject of serious funding cuts in recent months. Its budget was dramatically reduced from $35m in 2010 to just $8m this year._

From [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datagov_et_al_budget_sl...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datagov_et_al_budget_slashed_by_75.php) : _Federal government transparency programs, including data resource directory Data.gov, face across-the-board budget cuts by 75% in the latest version of the federal budget to emerge from Congressional negotiations._

Congress slashed the budget, not the President.

<comment><USER6> True enough, but it was slashed in a Congressional budget that the Whitehouse agreed to.

Sunlight Foundation has extensive coverage & ways you can help: <http://sunlightfoundation.com/savethedata/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prediction: Eric Schmidt replaces him

<comment><USER8> Why the hell would Eric Schmidt want a job like that?

<comment><USER7> It was allegedly offered to him before: <http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10769458?nclick_check=1>

Of course, he was CEO of Google then. Now, not so much. I can see him wondering if a career in politics would work. I'm sure he's got enough cash not to care about the finical hit.

<comment> brown9-2 more recent speculation has Schmidt being named Commerce Secretary.

<comment><USER8> If I were Eric Schmidt, my plans would involve enjoying my many billions of dollars and private 767 and occasionally dropping into a Google board meeting to say "Good job Larry, keep it up".

They would _so_ not involve moving to dreary old Washington DC to take up a thankless bureaucratic job in an administration that is as likely as not to be over in eighteen months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A Senator should take the CIO job.

</comment><comment><USER10> Weren't they closing down data.gov anyway, to "save money" or something?

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else not trust the data on data.gov? I don't have any evidence to prove otherwise, but I have a feeling that the raw data is tampered with before release...

Perhaps its just the fact that the US government really goes out of its way to protect its data (remember how much the US government hates Wikileaks and how long it takes to de-classify documents). Why would they up and release data all of a sudden?

<comment><USER12> > _I don't have any evidence to prove otherwise, but I have a feeling that the > raw data is tampered with before release..._

Evidence is the currency by which one fulfills burden of proof.

> _Why would they up and release data all of a sudden?_

You just read an article listing several reasons. All government data is by default public unless related to national security and explicitly upgraded to a higher secrecy level. You could already request to view any of the information being released, but it's cheaper to start moving all public information to one location than to have every agency inconsistently implement its own information handling processes.

It's extremely unlikely the government is coordinating all of its workers to tamper with public disability claims, military recruitment trends, environmental reports, geological surveys, public housing inventories, etc. before posting it on the site.</comment></comment>


TechCrunch, Fusion Garage -- Tech blog, Singapore startup feud over tablet PC - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_TABLET_FEUD

<comment><AUTHOR> Arrington: [CruchPad] paying a lot of bills... $400,000...

Rathakrishnan: CrunchPad did not contribute code or funding... never agreement on terms of an acquisition... neither funding nor buyout were materializing...

Arrington, November 30, posted on TechCrunch that Fusion Garage and its investors had suddenly decided to dump the CrunchPad team... neither side owned rights to the product.

Rathakrishnan on Monday refuted Arrington story and introduced JooJoo.

Arrington filed suit to block sales of Fusion Garage JooJoo.</comment>