Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2016/04/rd/gallium-nitride-disrupt-silicon-semiconductors <comment><USER2> All of three paragraphs long. Quotes a CEO talking his book.

If GaN were going to replace Si (it isn't), this isn't how you'd find out.

<comment><USER3>
       > If GaN were going to replace Si (it isn't), this
       > isn't how you'd find out.

I think the generalized form of this statement is under appreciated. In my experience it is common for company leaders to always position their company's products as the "next big thing" and it is never this sort of announcement that makes it the "next big thing" or even foretells the next big thing. So often the actual next big thing sort of "explodes" into your consciousness as "everything" is using/employing/copying it. And following back the bread crumbs to the first mentions, rarely include a lot of pre-press on how good its going to be.

That said, GaN power transistors are a thing. They were used in the winning inverter contest Google ran[1], I've played with some samples from Mouser [2] and they really are amazing. I thought IGBT transistors would replace power MOSFETs but now I'm pretty sure it will be these bad boys.

[1] [http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2016/02/and-winner- of-1-m...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2016/02/and-winner-of-1-million- little-box.html)

[2] [http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/FlyerSMDChopperBoardPGA26E19BA...](http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/FlyerSMDChopperBoardPGA26E19BASWEVB006.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > _And following back the bread crumbs to the first mentions, rarely include a > lot of pre-press on how good its going to be._

You'd find it of course, but you'll also find it for everything else that failed. Its predictive power is near to zero.

Also, Betteridge's Law applies here, as always.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With this article, you'd think they'd just discovered GaN.

It's been around for some time, about as long as there've been cheap blue and violet LED's and lasers (your Blu-ray player uses GaN).

Si may be an inferior semiconductor from certain performance perspectives, but it will just about always be cheaper.

Gallium is pretty rare as elements go, and many other industries (including solar) consume a fair amount of it. You'll run out before you get it past niche applications.

<comment><USER6> GaN has even existed in IC form for quite awhile now. Its pretty much limited to high end radio/sat parts though due to its cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are interested, read up on SiC, Silicon Carbide. It is better then Gallium Nitride and Silicon for high voltage power small electronics because it has higher thermal conductivity. I randomly learned about it when I was fixing my cars breaks, apparently that is the material that is used :)

<comment><USER8> It can also be quite pretty: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite)

<comment><USER9> Difficult to machine, though, I'd expect, being among the hardest of all known substances (the moissanite polymorph being just a bit softer than diamond, at a Mohs scale hardness of 9.5.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The list of application domains looks like a laundry list from an elevator pitch.

I'd be more interested in having an introduction of how it is used today, measurable aspects of how it compares to Silicon in application and manufacturing.

Before identifying futuristic technology, identify the pain points shared by aspects of futuristic technology then show how GaN can solve that. Provide a directed plan, not a dream.

<comment><USER11> Military radars and other high power electronics

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Gallium nitride would really replace silicon for computer chips and the chips are really better, this would be an _evolutionary step_ in the chip production, but not a disruption. A disruptive innovation (cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disruptive_innova...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disruptive_innovation&oldid=713356589)) is characterized to create "a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders and alliances.". This clearly isn't the case here.

TLDR: Dear tech journalists, stop putting bullshit words into headlines and articles if you don't know their meanings.

<comment><USER13> I think if you consider the many tens or even hundreds of $B currently invested in Si foundry tooling which could be obsoleted by this transition the word 'disruptive' is appropriate.

However, the semiconductor industry seems uniquely well suited to handle this as they seem to coordinate their already highly disruptive process steps across much of the industry. E.g. [https://www.bing.com/search?q=Intel%20Samsung%20TSMC%20reach...](https://www.bing.com/search?q=Intel%20Samsung%20TSMC%20reach%20agreement%20about%20450mm%20tech&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=intel%20samsung%20tsmc%20reach%20agreement%20about%20450mm%20tech)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER15> maybe it will disrupt maybe it won't, but will it make the world a better place?</comment>


Tell HN: SDHN mid-month (March 16th, 6PM  Lestat's) - <AUTHOR>

The mid-month meetup is upon us! It's being hosted at Lestat's on Adams at 6PM - I will have a sheet of paper that says "Meetup group" on it. I'm working on making an actual board or sign for next time.
If you haven't already, please join the meetup.com group to RSVP!! It also keeps you apprised of the other SDHN meetups that we do (end of month and dev house): http://www.meetup.com/sandiegohn/
My name is Parnell, btw. <comment><USER2> Lot's of fun. I will try to be there.</comment>


Fog Creek Is Now Glitch - <AUTHOR> https://glitch.com/about/fog-creek-is-now-glitch/ <comment><USER2> I suppose Fog Creek as a brand name was a bit weak, and that it makes sense to elevate an existing sub brand to parent brand instead of pouring millions into creating and marketing a new brand. Glitch also feels very innovative, fresh, quirky and progressive in a way that would be foolish to not utilize.

<comment><USER3> Really appreciate the kind words. And yeah, we definitely appreciate our history as Fog Creek, but when we made this change, it was for exactly those reasons.</comment></comment>


How to select a data science bootcamp? Tips? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking into data science bootcamps in NYC (or potentially online).  Any suggestions for identifying the better ones (assuming they exist)?  For example, I hear that bootcamp review sites lack objective reviews.<p>Also, do you know of anyone who has successfully full-time self-studied for a few months to obtain a entry-level position in the field (or a related title such as data analyst/ data engineer)?  If so, it would be great to hear about their approach. <comment><USER2> I work for online learning startup [1]. Here are some pointers: 1\. Lambda School has some great reviews, high % of students employed and great community. It's very intense though (9mo full-time or 18mo part-time). 2\. Try reading some of the reviews on review sites yourself and see if it sounds objective. I find major part of reviews to be helpful, so don't dismiss a big data source without validating its quality. 3\. Reddit Data Science communities have a lot of detailed reviews and advice on bootcamps. I recommend looking through some, although Reddit users are a bit biased towards heroic self-learning.

If you elaborate a bit why you want to go to DS bootcamp, I could give you a more specific recommendation :)

[1]: practicum.yandex.com

<comment><USER3> Hey, what are your thoughts on going through the DS track at Yandex with the goal of landing a data scientist position in a competitive job market like San Francisco? Is this a realistic goal?

I have a bachelor's degree in a non-quantitative study. I recognize that job descriptions for data science, more often than not, stress their minimum requirements to be a Master's degree (PhD preferred) in a quantitative discipline like physics, math, statistics, etc. I feel this to be much more strictly enforced than compared to software engineering positions where you're much more likely to come across self-taught devs. I work on the product side and the data scientist attached to my team holds her M.S. in Statistics so that seems to hold up from everything I've observed. Essentially, I don't want to rush into studying and learning statistics/data science if the effort is futile or just not likely from the beginning.

Also does the job guarantee apply to students in the US? Or is that for Russian students? Does your program have any US employers as hiring partners?</comment></comment>


Segway's newest self-balancing vehicle is an egg-shaped wheelchair - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/3/21047217/segway-s-pod-personal-vehicle-self-balancing-wheelchair-ces-2020 <comment><USER2> How do you turn it without the risk of running someone over, or getting into some other kind of accident? The headrest makes for one seriously huge blind spot.</comment>


Elon Musk Ahead of Pace for $1.6B Tesla Motors Payday - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-18/elon-musk-ahead-of-pace-for-1-6-billion-tesla-motors-payday <comment><USER2> That's great and all, but if he could push the battery technology forward, it would not only benefit his car company, but as well all the other industries that are relying heavily on batteries. I mean 200 miles range (last quote I heard) is nice. I however doubt the premium asked for this will warrant a purchase for most buyers in the market for new car (regardless of power source), specially in places where Tesla has no fast charging facilities and the other car manufacturers are still lagging behind in the infrastructures.

<comment><USER3> Nissan already knows what they have to do to catch up: simply provide proper temperature management formtheir batteries to extend battery life.

The next advances that Tesla is pursuing will be tested in a few years, at which point they will be two steps ahead of the rest of the market.</comment></comment>


Steve Blank: Intel chips could let US spies inside - <AUTHOR> http://www.afr.com/p/technology/intel_chips_could_be_nsa_key_to_ymrhS1HS1633gCWKt5tFtI

<comment><USER2> There's nothing in this but speculation.</comment>


Savedroid Says 'Exit Scam' Stunt is Lesson to Crypto Community - <AUTHOR> https://www.ccn.com/gotcha-savedroid-says-exit-scam-intended-to-teach-community-a-lesson/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps this was a real scam initially, then he decided to pretend it wasn't, after-the-fact, to save his skin? It seems to me that leaving a shadow of a doubt as to his trustworthiness was a big, big mistake. Couldn't he have just presented the hypothetical to the community openly if that were his true goal?

<comment><USER3> Maybe he woke up when he realized he will be killed by the mob of vigilantes that will stop at nothing until he is found. Your life perspective might change when you suddenly have 10,000 people out to kill you.

<comment><USER4> While that would be a nice movie it will not actually happen ever in reality.

I think this a trope people like to believe, vigilante justice. But let's be honest, its not happening by some crypto currency investors.

<comment><USER5> Ummm, what about last December:

[https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/crypto-exchange- kidnap.htm...](https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/crypto-exchange- kidnap.html?m=1)

<comment><USER6> Why would the kidnappers be cryptoinvestors? Most likely they are a regular gang that happens to know what Bitcoins are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am eagerly awaiting the third act in this saga, where it is revealed that the whole exit scam/"PR stunt" was a misdirection and the real scam is uncovered.

<comment><USER8> Now they can ride the "if we were not legit we would have actually done the scam thing but we didn't so we are legit" wave for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's possible to be both factually correct ("it would have been really easy to scam you people!") and also an asshole simultaneously. The two are not guaranteed mutually exclusive.

</comment><comment><USER10> FYI: I've put together a little summary with commentary in the Get Rich Quick "Business Blockchain" Bible (Free Online) - The Secrets of Free Easy Money with a Fast Exit Case Study thanks to Savedroid - [https://github.com/openblockchains/get-rich-quick- bible](https://github.com/openblockchains/get-rich-quick-bible) Buyer Beware.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _even we as a highly-regulated German stock corporation_

What is this drivel?

</comment><comment><USER12> Fraud: "wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain."

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you can pretend to commit a crime without consequence. If he does generate publicity, it could be considered financial or personal gain. And the deception does seem wrongful, even if it was for a day. Also, there are laws against this kind of thing to prevent people from attempting a crime and then saying "I was just kidding. I wanted to make it look real so you'd know what it felt like if I actually did it."

In the US, suing for emotional distress in this scenario would be a slam dunk I'd imagine.

More than that though, who wants to work or do business with someone who thinks this is a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't be the only one expecting to read a story about crypto (you know, encryption etc) rather another boing bitcoin story. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER14> Was this shitcoin on exchanges aleady? If so, maybe the shitcoin headmaster in this case decided to change his plans from full on exit scam to massive dump and pump.</comment>


Uber Bonds Term Sheet Reveals $470M in Operating Losses - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-30/uber-bonds-term-sheet-reveals-470-million-in-operating-losses <comment><USER2> There was a comment thread earlier today about whether Uber is solving rich- people problems or common-people problems. I wonder the extent to which Uber's pricing is sustainable -- are they subsidizing uberX and uberPOOL pricing out of money they're raising, or are the debts just in the pursuit of growth to new cities? Or put another way, if they ceased all growth, froze prices, and laid off all engineering and marketing staff except for one person to keep up with mobile OS updates (but kept the staff to recruit drivers, deal with legal issues, etc.), would the company be profitable, or would it go bankrupt?

I certainly don't complain when I get subsidized lunches delivered to me on VC money, but when existing Uber cities are debating regularizing Uber's legal status or just fixing the inefficiencies / problems with the taxi industry that Uber capitalized on, I want to know if Uber's going to be around for the people of that city, at the same effective prices, in 20 years.

<comment><USER3> Maybe their plan is just to subsidise drivers until self-driving cars arrive, by which time they will have brand dominance and can carry on merrily.

<comment><USER4> I don't know why people think self-driving cards benefit Uber uniquely. Everyone else would get to use them too, after all, so Lyft's costs also go down.

It's like saying, "whoa, tomato prices have skyrocketed -- I bet grocery stores are making record profits!"

To be sure, there might be _some_ differential advantage, but not enough to justify subsidizing everyone in the hopes they won't jump ship after competition comes in from other brands without these "legacy costs".

<comment><USER2> Well, to the argument I was trying to set up (whether cities should regularize Uber or fix taxis), one important change is that Uber now has the capital to make self-driving cars happen, and will continue to have the capital to make them continue to improve, and the taxi industry and transportation agencies don't. That is, I'm not drawing a huge distinction between Uber and Lyft, since both are questionably legal, but between Uber/Lyft/etc. and taxis. You could argue that letting Uber run self-driving cars is better than trying to have government-run self-driving cars.

Depends a lot on whether Uber themselves are making this happen, or we're looking to Tesla, Google, etc. If self-driving cars are going to happen anyway, then there's an argument from the other direction that permitting Uber has no long-term benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really interesting. I believe this might be attribute to all the Uber promotions in Asia. I have heard from all my friends in India/China that Uber rides are actually free for around 10-15 rides. Also, they are giving tons of money to Drivers to promote Uber in India.

An average Uber driver in Bangalore earns 110000 INR per month where as an entry level software engineer in GOOG/AMZN in India earns 80000 INR/month.

I was shocked that one of my friends who drove Uber in Bangalore told me that he made 180000 INR two months back.

It would be interesting to know Uber's customer acquistion cost and driver acquisition cost.

<comment><USER6> I'm still surprised that Uber is entering such competitive markets. I mean, in much of the western world, they're using a mobile app to side step cab hailing laws and break long standing taxi oligopolies. Does anyone know what market flaws they're solving in India and Asia?

<comment><USER7> I don't like how uber flaunts the law in so many places, but their competitive advantage doesn't come from non-compliance.

The service is plainly better. The cars are better, the drivers are rated, payment is easier, hailing is easier, knowing where your cab is and how long it will be and how much is will cost before you start your ride ... is better.

I live in the Twin Cities ... not a place where cabs are dense enough to just hail one walking down the street (unless it's in a prime drinking/sporting hour & location).

Uber, Lyft, and the city of Minneapolis worked together to make uber-like services legal while giving concessions to the local traditional taxi drivers without compromising appropriate regulations. Everyone behaved reasonably which is sadly extremely rare everywhere else.

The running theory is that unreasonable people either leave Minnesota or are found only after the snow thaws (please don't take this too seriously :) )

<comment><USER8> If flaunting the law results in an all round better service perhaps the laws don't do what they're supposed to.

<comment><USER7> There is a difference between trying to behave reasonably outside the law starting up while trying fix regulations fairly and in good faith when you get enough attention ... and ostentatious defiance, which is how many would describe Uber's behavior in many circumstances.

'flaunting' was a carefully chosen word.

<comment><USER8> There is no behaving 'reasonably' outside the law. It's clear that if they had not won over the consumers, the people who the law is supposed to help, Uber would not exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tangential to OP: How does HN feel about the "evilness" of Uber?

At my school the general feel is that Uber is pretty evil, notably for its attitudes towards its drivers as well as towards Lyft.

<comment><USER10> Having worked for financial traders I won't call them the very worst company in the world. But if my choices were working for them or quitting the industry, I wouldn't blink.

For me it's more the accumulation of awfulness. They started out as a scheme to time-share limos among young entitled dudebros. They entered the market with the black cars, exploiting a status-good dynamic. They've shifted all of the capital cost and risk of the taxi business to drivers, surely screwing many of them in the process. Their "we're too important to comply with mere laws" routine strikes me as arrogant horseshit. They've had assorted scandals, including inviting a bunch of journalists to an off-the-record dinner and then "joking" about plans to spend lots of money to destroy the career of a prominent journalist they didn't like. I've lost count of how many places have arrested or issued arrest warrants for their people.

Throughout all of this, they sing a song of "entrepreneurship" and "worker independence" while providing low-quality, low-stability jobs and making long- term plans to put every one of their drivers out of work. They couldn't give a shit about their workers, and are even willing to threaten their jobs (which aren't jobs, of course, but independent contractor positions) if they are politically active.

On top of all of that, I believe they're a great example of the shift back to a new gilded age, where the main function of the poor is to directly serve the wealthy. But instead of a Victorian model where employees are part of the household, in the Uber model we'll get paid only during the instants we are directly useful to somebody with money.

That's just some highlights off the top of my head; the list goes on. They may not be the _very_ worst, but they have an awful lot of people rooting for their fall. I expect they won't go totally bust. But I am looking forward to a Groupon-style outcome once their investor-fueled growth becomes untenable.

<comment><USER11> 'In the Uber model we'll get paid only during the instants we are directly useful to somebody with money.'

I'm sorry, but that sounds more like the efficiency that capitalism optimizes towards.

<comment><USER12> My problem with that statement is that it describes every single job you could possibly have, even the very well paying ones. You are always trading your labor to somebody with money, whether it's an Uber driver or the CEO of a major corporation. It's not the "Uber model", it's the money represents an agreed upon denomination to trade goods and services with model.

<comment><USER13> The important part of wpietri's critique is "during the _instants_ we are directly useful".

The CEO doesn't stop being paid when she walks to the bathroom, and a cashier doesn't stop being paid when he's waiting for a customer to show up. wpietri is talking about a shift in the granularity of trading your labor for money, so that you aren't paid for a day or an hour of work, but for the exact number of minutes you performed _useful_ work.

The shift is away from paying an employee for 8 hours of work--knowing that he will only be performing useful work for some fraction of that time--towards paying the same employee only for the time spent being productive.

Since most people aren't able to work productively for an entire 8 hour shift, this change probably means a net decrease in wages.

We've already started to see this with computer scheduling in retail. Assigning split shifts, irregular shifts, and scheduling the bare minimum number of employees required to minimize employee downtime.

<comment><USER14> But Uber doesn't represent that shift, since taxi drivers were already considered contractors and paid by the ride.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been pondering how you'd break the uber lock on the market. I mean, I use Uber and not Lyft 'cause there are more Uber drivers, so on average, the car is gonna be there faster if I use Uber.

However, if I had an app on my phone to check the nearest uber and the nearest lyft and the nearest whatever else? that would remove the barrier to entry that Uber has set up. in that case (at least when lyft had a nearby car) I'd be happy to take lyft or the local cab company, if they had a similar app.

Of course, you'd end up with an arms race with uber, or whoever the dominant player was, with them trying to break your app.

Interestingly, I bet that the second and third tier ride-sharing companies would cooperate, so if there were enough of them in the area, the idea would work fine even when uber was winning the arms race.

<comment><USER16> You could break the Uber lock on the market if supply and demand are not sufficiently random to require Uber's marketplace to coordinate.

That is, if it is usually convenient for Joe to depart from work at a certain hour and this is a time when Maureen typically likes to drive, both Joe and Maureen could potentially disintermediate Uber and split the marginal gain. This solution could look like a simple payments app, ride scheduler, and a local 'I'm here' function.

Another option could be to structure the market to enable 'teams' of drivers (ie like a taxi company brand). Allow these teams to find further operational gains through pooling resources and greater coordination. This solution would re-imagine the Uber market and driver tools for full-time workers.

<comment><USER15> Eh, I think the "one big marketplace" model is best. I... honestly, I don't _want_ another relationship I have to worry about. I know it sounds terrible, but I just want to get to work every now and again, and I don't want to have to plan it ahead.

My point is that you don't have to run the cars to run a marketplace, though the money is being thrown at doing both at once in an effort to lock the running of the cars into the monopoly.

Running the marketplace is the only real natural monopoly here, though; If you can decouple the marketplace from the running of the cars, you could potentially become a lot more efficient, by allowing smaller players to run the cars.

<comment><USER16> Hm, I think 'one big marketplace' is how people originally thought about messaging online. I don't need WhatsApp, I have SMS. I don't need Snapchat I have WhatsApp. I don't need Facebook, I have Twitter.' However, horizontal differentiation in messaging and social has allowed people to use different tools depending on context. In fact, it's currently a bit silly to think you'd spam all your message or social apps at once using a single app or service.

I don't really feel there is a natural monopoly with today's tech when it comes to carsharing. This goes back to my first couple of points where ultimate coordination and reduction of friction may be better served by local/human players to some extent.

<comment><USER15> I... honestly I have no idea why there are players other than IRC and email, with sufficiently fancy clients.

Either it's primarily a marketing game, and the people willing to invest in marketing want their own network so that they have more control/can extract more value, or I just don't understand the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the bubble burst now, Uber will be the poster child of what's wrong with start ups.

I would probably be happy if they were to fail, for their past actions toward their competitor and their CEO's comments on the drivers were disgusting.

With the back lash with California's ruling and France, I think the laws are catching up to the new tech service and it doesn't look good currently for Uber. While people may argue that it's just California, California has a big population and a big market.

But a silver lining would be Telsa look like it were doom until Model S and they survived. I personally thought they were going to make it.

</comment><comment><USER18> This just shows that there is not much margin in this industry. They are essentially buying market share. However, as soon as Uber try to squeeze out some profit, they'll be undercut by the competitors.

<comment><USER11> Competitors lowering their pricing is not going to magically cause an exodus of customers who are attached to using Uber. Price change would be gradual, if done correctly, imperceptible. Plus, those competitors are being squeezed right now, who knows if they will be around once Uber decides to raise pricing to move towards profit. As they say on Wall Street, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. No doubt this saying is apt for this present circumstance, especially since Wall Street is involved.

Uber is in the service industry, and winning in the service is not always on price.

<comment><USER19> Let's assume their strategy works and they win an effective monopoly. What's stopping a "new Uber" coming along, funded by a couple of billion in VC money, to attack Uber's monopoly position by offering the same service cheaper. If winning a market can be done by subsidising your offering with VC cash then someone else will come along and do it as soon as Uber push for higher prices.

While there's huge amounts of private equity money available Uber will never be able to raise prices, especially considering there are plenty of investors around who are unhappy about missing Uber's first few rounds.

<comment><USER20> Reality is the opposite. Uber is building a commanding, monopoly-like position whereby it can raise and lower prices as necessary. Not only does winning a market require way more than subsidies but Uber is also in the best position to subsidize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So they operate illegally, pay no taxes and still make no money. I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER22> We're losing a dollar on every unit, but we'll make it up in volume!

</comment><comment><USER23> The concept of Uber (i.e., being able to reliably call a taxi from the phone) has a lot of value but there are significant competitive advantages of being the first to a customer's phone or by being the cheaper option to get adoption.

Hate to simplify it, but in many ways what we saw with Uber was similar to GroupOn. Uber will likely collapse, let's hope it does not take the tech market down with it. Although, I'm all for bubbles bursting and markets normalizing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Did anyone actually believe that Uber was making a profit?

Honestly the question should be: Can you have a $50 billion valuation, while losing money? I'm not saying the the valuation should be zero, because they do have assets, but $50 billion is a lot of money.

<comment><USER25> The answer to that question is: Amazon.

At various times they've managed around a $100 to $200 billion valuation while losing money. They're an extreme outlier of course.

Salesforce.com hit near a $50 billion market cap recently, and they've never once printed a positive net income result.

If the sales growth and market dominance is there, the valuation will float a lot longer than seems reasonable given the lack of profits. This is especially true in tech, as it's believed that market dominance in tech inevitably leads to later outsized profit. It also helps if the losses are brought under some control, such that they aren't threatening the survival of the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> These are old numbers. IIRC they're estimating 10bn gross this year, with 20-30% margins.

<comment><USER20> I think you mean "net revenue" (rider receipts less payments to drivers).

And if the $417m is from Q4 2014 (or even Q1 2015), 200% growth this year would surpass $3b (i.e., 30% of $10b).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Big surprise. But don't worry, they'll make it up in volume...</comment>


Warning Issued for Apple's 1.4B iPad and iPhone Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/08/10/apple-iphone-ipad-security-warning-ios-12-ios13-iphone-xs-max-xr/ <comment><USER2> Little bobby tables we call him.

[https://www.xkcd.com/327/](https://www.xkcd.com/327/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: SQL injection vulnerability in Contacts app.</comment>


Police say shooter's anger over YouTube policies 'appears to be the motive' - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/police-say-shooters-anger-over-youtube-policies-appears-to-be-the-motive/ <comment><USER2> As someone who follows digital advertising industry, I want to add some context to this discussion.

People tend to view youtube "de-monetization" act as something out of the blue. Story goes as "evil youtube cornered the market of online videos and now acting like a spoiled child, f--king with people who were making some small buck from their videos".

This is not the case. In fact, for last 2 years large advertisers were getting more and more unhappy and angry about digital advertising, citing the lack of transparency, fraud and lack of brand safety as their main concerns. It was brewing for a long time now.

P&G, the largest advertiser in the world, and trend-setter in general advertising, cut hundreds of millions from their digital budgets in 2017. [0]

Youtube, unlike google search engine, depends on large brands doing "brand advertising", as opposed to "performance advertising". You can't force 10000's of small businesses advertise on youtube, ROI is just not here. It's P&G, Ford, Unilever and others giants who keep the lights on in youtube offices, and giants were clearly revolting. And when they cut spend, they cut it not from youtube only, but from all digital, meaning that google mothership also hurt from their move.

So, youtube tried to save the situation, clumsily. Ads are now appearing in much smaller subset of videos, which are vettoed, and youtube jacked up the prices [1] of such inventory, to make up the lost revenue from long tail of videos.

Take into account the fact that youtube is rumored to be unprofitable or making very modest profit (due to enormous technical costs they have) and you see it more like move out of desperation than anything else.

[0] [http://www.adweek.com/digital/procter-gamble- cut-140-million...](http://www.adweek.com/digital/procter-gamble- cut-140-million-in-digital-ad-spending-because-of-brand-safety-concerns/)

[1] [https://marketingland.com/report-youtube-set-raise-ad- prices...](https://marketingland.com/report-youtube-set-raise-ad-prices- premium-ad-inventory-229814)

<comment><USER3> Yes. Fascinating to watch markets form and price discovery happen. For awhile they only cared about people providing free content that would bring in the eyeballs so they could sell those ads. When advertisers got demanding they had to do something.

But I only see a loose connection between that and what happened. This was a woman driven by likes or money (hard to tell which was more important), and attempted to kill because of this.

This is more like a machine shop owner laying off people because some jobs were moving to Asia and an ex-employee shooting up the offices the next day.

Macro- and micro- economics surely played a part, but the root of the problem was in her head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get Youtube policies. Why not let the advertisers decide which channels to advertise on? Why demonetize anything? This babysitting attitude makes so many creators unhappy.

If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?

<comment><USER5> Advertisers don't actually want to spend time picking YouTube channels individually. But they will complain if YouTube runs their ads against the wrong content. They have threatened to leave before. [1]

Picking channels that are good for advertising is a service that YouTube does for advertisers.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-advertisers-are- pulling-s...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-advertisers-are-pulling- spend-from-youtube-2017-3)

<comment><USER6> Just out of curiosity how much leverage do advertising companies actually have?

<comment><USER7> All of it. It's where nearly all their revenue comes from. There's no remaining business without the ad sales.

<comment><USER8> First of all, YouTube doesn't make money.

Secondly, there are two sides to this equation. The advertisers aren't paying for ads as charity to Google. They want the billions of views that YouTube gets every day. While I don't know the exact statistics, YouTube definitely seems to be growing in influence where people who are popular on the platform are legitimate celebrities. Advertisers would be foolish to not try to get in on some of the publicity. Now I'm a bit conspiracy theory-ish on this whole thing. I really think that between the advertisers and traditional media there wasn't necessarily a concerted effort where both of them planned to do something together, they were just both acting in their self interest. So when traditional media outlets started publishing the nature of the videos that some ads would play next to, the advertisers thought "Well, this is a great opportunity to strong arm them for some cheaper ads." Meanwhile the traditional media was simply attacking a competitor. It seems to me like there were also some useful idiots at YouTube who saw the so-called terrible things that ads were next to and over corrected. Instead of saying "Okay, well, good luck reaching how many people we do." to advertisers, they rolled over and capitulated. When in my opinion, they really didn't need to. Then again, they know more about the business than I do.

But really pulling ads from too many videos hurts the business too, if ads aren't playing on a video, they are hosting that video for free. It makes absolutely no sense. There is also no evidence of any kind of long term association between advertisements and content. You don't see a coke ad before an ISIS beheading video and think "Huh, Coke endorses ISIS".

<comment><USER9> I'd love to see where you got the idea that YouTube doesn't make any money. As far as I know they don't break out YouTube revenue in any of their filings.

In fact, in each of the filings for 2016 & 2017 the revenue they report is an amalgamation of products that consist of search, ads, commerce, maps, youtube, google cloud, android, chrome, and google play[1][2].

[1] => [https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20170331_alphabet_10Q.pdf](https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20170331_alphabet_10Q.pdf) pg 30

[2] => [https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20160331_alphabet_10Q.pdf](https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20160331_alphabet_10Q.pdf) pg 28

<comment><USER8> These are fairly old, but I've gathered they don't make a profit based on articles like the following.

[http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan- wojc...](http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan-wojcicki/)

[https://outline.com/7PG22L](https://outline.com/7PG22L)

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, neither of the links show a concrete indication of where YouTube profitability is right now.

It was approximated to be break even two years ago but doesn't have a growth factor as part of the number that is reported in the article, which is a key metric for determining revenue in the future. Revenue aside, profitability is extremely difficult to calculate as we don't know what the costs are as YouTube grows.

You would have made a better case here, but it's still far too old for any relevance in this discussion: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add- up-to-profit-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit- for-youtube-1424897967)

<comment><USER8> That was the second link I posted. Either way, YouTube's profitability has little bearing on the second part of my comment. Unfortunately people decided to ignore that and focus on YouTube's profitability for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Youtube videos are getting demonetized based on advertisers not wanting to be associated with certain things.

However, watching online and TV coverage of the shooting where people were actually severely injured and someone died, there didn't seem to be a dearth of advertising. If advertisers don't mind being associated with death and destruction, I think that when push comes to shove advertisers care more about reaching people with ads than the content they are associated with.

<comment><USER11> Advertisers don't mind having their ads shown next to all violent content, only to some violent (and some "controversial" content).

Most advertisers won't mind being shown next to a major news channel, but they might mind being shown next to a gore channel, or a channel run by some more radical news organizations.

It isn't the content, it's the message. And that's a hard problem.

There's one episode of Mad Man that addresses the same problem. An employee of the ad agency ends up having to read the scripts of all TV shows in advance to select the ones that a certain advertiser wouldn't want to be associated with, for example, those referencing abortion.

<comment><USER12> I think we need to acknowledge that Nasim's content wasn't "gore" and wasn't even "obscene." At BEST it was just "bizarre" and yet I doubt similar content like Tim and Eric would get demonetized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This incident has certainly turned out to be a Rorschach test of mass shootings: Whatever you feel like complaining about, tack it on. "This does highlight X, caused by people like Y, and we need to address this with Z."

</comment><comment><USER14> If the unfairness over YouTube's policies resulted in this kind of outcome, I wonder what the majority of people will do once they realize[0] that the world is stacked against them. Tax breaks for the rich, "too big to fail" organizations, with tax payers footing the bill, etc.

I won't say the "end is nigh", but if there were a "Revolution Clock", akin to the Doomsday Clock, I think it's slowly nearing midnight.

I've read some stuff that also says that inequality and perceived unfairness also can hinder your mental health, which no doubt also contributed here.

[0] When I say realize, I mean _realize_. The gap between the poor and the rich, and the middle-class and the rich is far larger than most realize.

[1] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british- journal-...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of- psychiatry/article/inequality-an-underacknowledged-source-of-mental-illness- and-distress/985DE9F19CEA4165BE1E85A022BEFDFB)

EDIT:

I should add that I don't think the world is turning to garbage. Rather, said Revolution Clock simply is getting closer to midnight, as opposed to away from it. I'd say we're like at maybe 10:00pm.

<comment><USER15> There is some research that says the traditional tipping point for revolution is hunger. It seems people put up with a lot of shit, perhaps with misplaced optimism, until their stomach is affected.

Maybe there's an analog to other tipping points, like price of internet service, but food seems pretty emotional and primal.

[https://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/real_life_hunger_games_soar...](https://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/real_life_hunger_games_soaring_food_prices_trigger_unrest_across_the_globe_partner/)

<comment><USER16> I'm sure there's nothing that can go wrong with a population that has three hundred million guns getting short of food with an ideology that says they have a right to overthrow the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Beyond the censorship issues & lawsuits, Google regularly gets a pass when their crummy policies negatively impact people. While it is horrible that some were hurt in the process, I wonder if this will make Google start approaching their huge amounts of power with some civility.

<comment><USER18> While this was flagged to hell, probably due to insensitivity, this will become a point of discussion going forward.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris, follow up articles appeared on HN discussing the situation of poor communities on the outskirts of Paris. Although being sensitive is important and just plain human courtesy, and we should be civil, it is important for discourse to discuss the situations and circumstance surrounding such incidents.

Incidentally, today is MLK's death anniversary. After race riots in the 60's, he famously condemned them, but then said in his "The Other America" speech:

>But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

We need to have the intellectual courage to tolerate this discussion about the situations surrounding it. While one shouldn't martyrize the shooter here, we need to be aware of the circumstances that precipitated it.

EDIT: thanks for the vital correction!

<comment><USER19> >Incidentally, today is MLK's birthday.

Death anniversary, not birthday. His (and my!) birthday is 1/15 which is why we celebrate MLK day on the most convenient Monday near that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yet another licensed and legal weapon.

<comment><USER21> 99.9% of people obtaining a weapon legally don't use it to commit atrocities, but for entertainment. Why should the majority suffer the consequences from the tiny minority of unstable individuals?

<comment><USER22> Not just for entertainment, but a great many for legitimate self-defense. Why should those rationally feeling need to prepare protection be denied by laws which ultimately do not stop the unstable deliberately acting to harm?

<comment><USER23> I recommend looking at the data on this before leaping to the conclusion that guns are effective at protecting their owners from lethal injury.

In a Philadelphia-based study, "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession" and that grew to 5.45 times more likely if the assault victim had a chance to resist. [1]

Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule: guns escalate conflict, especially when both parties have them.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/)

<comment><USER22> I've reviewed many relevant stats. Even the CDC concluded guns save far more lives than they take.

Remember: "defensive use" includes simply raising doubt that an attacker will survive, deterring even the consideration of assault. Home invasions just don't happen in my area, because assailants are likely shot and their demise celebrated on the news (further deterrence).

<comment><USER23> I would like to see your sources.

<comment><USER24> The CDC itself.

[https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1](https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1)

"Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008."

It was also discovered that when guns are used in self-defense the victims consistently have lower injury rates than those who are unarmed, even compared with those who used other forms of self-defense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "We know that she was upset with YouTube; whether that rises to the level of terrorism will hopefully be determined in the coming weeks."

I was really shocked that she is not labeled terrorist yet! and here it is!

<comment><USER26> With her being from Iran, I'm also surprised the right hasn't already spun it that way, as a distraction from the gun control questions.

Not saying she should though obv, she was angry at YouTube for demonetizing her videos. That's regular YouTube drama taken to the extreme by a crazy person, not someone part of a group waging jihad on the infidels.

<comment><USER21> There's no "gun control" question, she was already in the most restrictive anti gun state.

<comment><USER26> the fact that she can get a gun from any other state makes it a question. gun control laws work when you can't just super easily go to another state to get a gun, the proof being in the much lower number if gun crimes in every other industrialized country where the gun laws are tight in the whole country. That's pretty much every single other industrialized country.

<comment><USER22> Interesting that those low-restriction states have such low violent crime. In fact, those US counties with zero murders (about half) have the most lax gun control laws.

Were the premise of your comment true, those other states should be the ones with outlandish murder rates. We have guns, we don't abuse guns; what's up with the high-gun-control areas being so prone to such violence that when guns are available they're so readily abused?

<comment><USER27> > what's up with the high-gun-control areas being so prone to such violence > that when guns are available they're so readily abused?

Your reasoning doesn't add up because the factor you are using (lax gun laws vs strict between states) is far too coarse to make any reasonable inference from.

California has tight gun restrictions. But high income cities, counties, and neighborhoods in California (i.e. Palo Alto, Marin, Pacific Heights) with intact community structures have very low gun violence rates by US standards.

Low income areas with a significant illicit drug trade, high rates of intra- community trauma, historical abuse by police, and a frayed community structure, have high rates of gun violence.

The availability of guns, purchased legally or illegally, has a more pronounced impact on the latter sort of area than the former because the latter type is more likely to produce interpersonal conflicts which escalate to the use of guns, because other means of dealing with the conflicts (police, the court system, community structures) are often less effective or available for them.

<comment><USER22> There's plenty of low-income areas in flyover country, with high gun ownership - used fairly for defense & provisions. That they can own guns at high rates responsibly points to cultural choices; don't punish them for bad behavior of strangers far away. STOP SHOOTING PEOPLE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> While what this lady did was atrocious, it does highlight a big problem inside Youtube. That their completely biased, unfair demonetization system is costing people enough money in ad revenue to ruin online careers. Smaller channels and politically incorrect channels get flagged pretty much every video, while bigger, white listed channels that post clear ToS breaking content are still allowed to rake in ad money. This woman didn't have that many followers in the respect to what others do, she wasn't making millions of dollars. Here's someone who was making a few dollars here and there, trying to act like it was her livelihood that was at stake, like most medium sized content creators with no real world skills do.

I should follow this up by saying I believe Youtube careers are pathetic, and shouldn't exist. Just as with Twitch, Youtube has become nothing more than a money making opportunity that is getting flooded with people who would rather deceive people than get a real job. Just people who want an easy ride begging for money. However, for those who do decide to take that route, the way Youtube flags videos absolutely impacts them. If I were making money, and my income were to be suddenly cut due to something that was entirely out of my hands yet fixable, I imagine I would be pretty jaded as well. Losing a few dollars is no reason to shoot people, this woman was just psycho. You can tell from one look at her on her site, she has the look of one.

<comment><USER29> Bold talk from anonymous coward

Unless you've cured cancer or unlocked new physics, odds are you're just peddling skills millions of others have and are not contributing anything terribly unique.

Just looking to get the right people on your side to scrape together a living in a different context

<comment><USER30> What does 'anonymous coward' mean in this case? We aren't on El Reg.</comment></comment></comment>


RTL version of DevOops bootstrap admin tempelate - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maysamsh/devoops

<comment><USER2> We invite you to devoops.me You can post link to RTL version on 'handmade' section.

-Flotsam</comment>


Does Microsoft need a turnaround expert? - <AUTHOR> http://tracks.ranea.org/post/66199126166/does-microsoft-need-a-turnaround-expert <comment><USER2> No. They are doing fine. My employer pays me a MSDN subscription, and I see a lot of great software there - it's just that tech media aren't writing much about it.

They made some mistakes, yes, for example removing the start button from Windows 8 (best Windows so far), or they came somewhat late with Windows Phone platform. Overall, they don't need to turn somewhere else, nor around.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find there's quite the echo chamber of doom in certain circles about Microsoft. But this one takes the cake to ask the question "Does Microsoft need a turnaround expert?" while at the same time:

[http://origin- www.livemint.com/Companies/tfliUBJb2Tjf3SapxQT...](http://origin- www.livemint.com/Companies/tfliUBJb2Tjf3SapxQTvkK/Microsoft-quarterly-profit- and-revenue-beat-forecasts.html)

 _Microsoft posts a 17% increase in quarterly profit to $5.2 billion; revenue rises 16% to $18.5 billion_

The company made $5.2 billion profit in 3 months. Over 90% of computers are running their operating system. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)). Their office productivity suite has over 95% of the market. Visual Studio, Azure, Xbox, all immensely popular. What exactly are people thinking they need to "turn around"?

<comment><USER4> The fact that computing is trending towards mobile and Microsoft's actions in this space have been a disaster. So big deal if Microsoft is still making money. So was Blackberry the day the iPhone was announced. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't be asking serious questions about its long term viability.

As for the specific products you mentioned Visual Studio and Azure piggyback on the strength of the overall Windows ecosystem. If that suffers then everything suffers. And Xbox is facing a resurgent Sony in the next round of console wars.

<comment><USER3> _The fact that computing is trending towards mobile and Microsoft 's actions in this space have been a disaster_

Computing consumption is trending toward mobile. Computing production will always likely be on notebook/desktop computers.

Regarding Microsoft's mobile offering - they've almost doubled their market share in the last 3 months in most countries including in the U.S. In Italy, they are ahead of iPhone.

[http://i0.wp.com/allthingsd.com/files/2013/11/Kantar_smartph...](http://i0.wp.com/allthingsd.com/files/2013/11/Kantar_smartphone_sept2013.jpg)

Many people (such as myself) owned a string of iPhones, then got fed up with the stagnation and either moved to Android or Windows Phone.

<comment><USER5> What's interesting is the sales only count till the end of September and thus miss most of the 5s sales and that kantar handle Microsoft's online ad sales.

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/05/apple-kantar- windows-...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/05/apple-kantar-windows- italy/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I should post a very informative article from 1996 here.

"Goliath at Bay: Microsoft suddenly sees itself beset by broadband rebels and its own middle age" [http://www.discovery.org/a/24](http://www.discovery.org/a/24)

MS was facing broadened challenges to its baseline and the author's writing bring it all together nicely. I see similarities to that today, let's see how MS respond to present challenges.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hear fairly solid rumors that MS is going to scrap the forced curve in their review system. Apparently new hires are starting to ask questions about it (and so they should).

Beyond that, they have serious problems with Windows and its never-shrinking accumulation of legacy. Apple did a great job on iOS (certainly compared to any embedded Windows offering). If Microsoft really is serious about their concentration on devices, they're going to have to lose a ton of fat and get a good understanding of what it means to ship consumer level embedded products. (The Xbox group has a good handle on this, though they had to do a bunch of work to make Win8 be reliable and predictably performant enough for a console -- I understand that the Windows group is unhappy with this. Not surprising, it's a threat!)

Maybe an outside expert will break up the internal politics enough that they can make good inroads. A strong CEO who had a clue here would do the job, too.

<comment><USER8> > Apparently new hires are starting to ask questions about it

Stack/Rank is the #1 reason why I don't return calls from Microsoft recruiters.

<comment><USER8> Update: Microsoft is now removing stack/rank from employee evaluations (as of 12 November), and looks to be valuing collaborative effort and teamwork more.

If any MSFT recruiters are reading this, I'm now available for your consideration. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are two types of turnarounds:

1) The place is burning to the ground, and if we don't fix it we'll run out of money.

2) We are wasting money and losing our value* at an unacceptable rate.

Each of these requires someone different. The first requires someone decisive more than anything else. The second requires a combination of strategic thinking and discipline. The irony is Ballmer probably could have done the first type of turnaround well. Of the names frequently mentioned, some seem to be good at technology strategy, some seem to be good at discipline. I don't know of any who are good at both.

IBM was in situation #1 when Gerstner took over, so his primary value was decisiveness. Over time he was able to switch to strategic vision and discipline.

* - I am purposefully vague on value. It could mean shareholder value, it could mean intangible brand value, it could mean market strength, it could mean value to employees...

<comment><USER8> Someone like Winston Wolfe [1] would be a good choice for #1. "I solve problems"

Alan Mulally of Ford would be a good choice for type 2. He's a strategic thinker, works within the system, and has done a great job at Ford getting them to build good cars again. He had the luxury of time to make his changes work, something that Microsoft, with it's cash hoard, does as well.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPsHKpti48](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPsHKpti48)

<comment><USER9> Would Mulally be able to make the technical decisions required? Could he point the company in the right way?

Gerstner was able to get away with being a non-technical CEO because job one was being decisive. When he moved strategically, it was to become a services company. He didn't need vision on the industry.

Mulally is also 68. How long would he stick around?

By all means I think Alan Mulally is one of the world's top CEOs. But is the right CEO for Microsoft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They make 2 Billion a year on Android royalties doing nothing, they don't need experts whilst they keep hoarding more patents.

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's face it, unresponsive customer support and releasing unusable garbage like Windows 8 hurts Microsoft the most.

Also, the fact that they _enthusiastically_ helped the NSA subvert their own users scared me right off their entire ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> _unusable garbage like Windows 8_

That's funny. I managed to use my Windows 8 computer to not only read your comment, but respond to it. I was planning on using it to get some work done later today but I guess that's out of the question now that I know how unusable it is.

My complete computer illiterate and borderline luddite wife has no trouble using Windows 8. I wonder why you're having trouble?

<comment><AUTHOR> If its usable why did they bring back the start button again after initially removing it?

<comment><USER12> Because people whined about it. It was usable, you just had to get used to it.

People hate change. My mom is a prime example - she found Chrome to be unusable because it wasn't 100% exactly the same as IE...

<comment><USER13> Couldn't agree more. Perfect modern example is when Facebook changes ... well just about anything. Users revolt, protest polls are held, and plugins are written to bring back the "old Facebook".

However like always, users get over the change and their uproar and continue to use the product, eventually unaware that it was ever any different.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why do 'mild' Covid-19 cases sometimes linger for months? - <AUTHOR> https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/07/27/long-term-covid <comment><AUTHOR> My household got presumed coronavirus in March. I say presumed as no test available.

First the nanny, then my wife, then me. I'm male, late thirties, workout daily (or used to anyway). I got it worst and spent weeks 2 and 3 in bed struggling to breathe. But we mostly recovered.

Two months later in May, the symptoms came back, but milder. Again, my wife first, then me the next week. I only spent 3 days in bed. Again no test (we're in the UK).

Well two more months have passed, and guess what happened last week? Again my wife first, now my turn. I write this from bed waiting for a doctor callback. Maybe I'll get a test this time, but I expect it would be negative.

There is a lot of focus on the binary nature of living or dying from coronavirus. I hear many in the tech community wish they could just get it and be done with it. But there is a very large grey area between full recovery and dying. Even if you are young and healthy, you don't want this.

<comment><USER2> The other option is it's new cases each time, and your wife just really needs to start wearing a mask, and better had washing.

<comment><USER3> It is highly unlikely as the reports of "reinfections" only are by PCR- positive test (not stating the quantity of viral RNA found, either). But it could be as well that the immune system found and cleared the virus.

One would need to see if there's infectious virus in the throat before calling a "reinfection".

P.S. for the GP: you might have got repeated infections of different viruses which causes similar symptoms, because something like that was found for "reinfected" cases in South Korea. Asking for a proper test and a serological test (so you know if one of the past events was indeed due to a SARS-CoV-2 infection) as well would help.</comment></comment></comment>


Semantics-Aware Bert for Language Understanding - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.02209 <comment><USER2> Nice paper! I will never forget my surprise earlier this year about how well BERT handled coreference (anaphoric resolution) tasks. Adding structured context data sounds good, but I need to figure out from the paper how it works.</comment>


Qi (lisp dialect preceding Shen) being deleted from wikipedia  - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Qi_%28programming_language%29_%282nd_nomination%29

<comment><USER2> Reading this, I realized that the Wikipediia crew don't know the difference between notable and noted.</comment>


Obama: "We Need More Robots" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/us/politics/25obama.html

<comment><USER2> Strange because only a few weeks ago he said that ATMs were killing jobs. Hmmm, maybe he just tells each audience what they want to hear.

<comment> mkr-hn That's not what he said. I can't find a full quote buried under all the editorializing, but it was a lot more nuanced than the lazy exaggeration of "ATMs are killing jobs" you'll see in all the search results.

edit: Here it is: "the other thing that happened, though, and this goes to the point you were just making, is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM; you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes in the economy, and what we have to do now -- and that's what this job council is all about -- is identifying where the jobs for the future are going to be; how do we make sure that there's a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist; how do we make sure that capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity. We are on the right track. The key is figuring out how do we accelerate it"

More "machines are taking over jobs and we're failing to retrain the people who lost them" than "ATMs are killing jobs."</comment></comment>


Full Hacker News database for download (posts, comments, points, date, username) - <AUTHOR> http://api.ihackernews.com/?db <comment><USER2> Am I really the only person who has dubious feelings about this? I contribute my words to HN, where they can be seen in context and where they are viewed by the same community that I am interacting with. I don't contribute them for arbitrary other uses off the site.

Unless I have missed something, posters who submit their comments here do not automatically release them into the public domain. In fact, I have seen no legal statement anywhere about transfer of copyright as a condition of posting, so it's not clear that posters give anyone any rights at all, other than probably the operators of HN an implicit licence to publish them on the site and visitors to HN an implicit right to read them while browsing the site in the normal way. That would make downloading and sharing the entire HN database in this way an obvious infringement of the copyright of every poster here.

Sorry if this seems a bit OTT, but some of us watched many comments we contributed to the community in the Usenet days being appropriated by long- term Usenet archives that then republished them out of context, covered in advertising, with comments/ratings attached to them that aren't open to the rest of the Usenet community, etc. That is basically profit-making on the back of others' work without their knowledge or consent, and potentially at the expense of the community the poster originally wished to support, and I have a problem with that.

<comment><USER3> There's not much point lamenting about how your words could be appropriated in ways that you don't like.

If you are worried about that then your only option is to refrain from participating in public forums.

Otherwise the golden rule of the internet applies: When it's out on the internet then it's out on the internet - and there's no taking back.

<comment><USER4> > Otherwise the golden rule of the internet applies: When it's out on the > internet then it's out on the internet - and there's no taking back.

That sounds suspiciously like the "The web is considered 'public domain'" argument:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1868736>

<comment><USER5> The "The web is considered 'public domain'" argument seems to be said by people who have personal interest in that statement being true.

The "When it's out on the internet..." is more a statement of inevitability. The person making the statement may not participate in taking the content, they are just pointing out that it's inevitable that other people will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool. Now in XX years time, after all my expressed opinions are proven to be correct, I can fire up an intelligent program to try to track down everyone who's ever dis-agreed with me and say 'I told you so'.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks! This opens up a number of really interesting possibilities when mixed with people's expertise in search and machine learning / natural language processing.

A long time ago I got hold of a large chunk of Slashdot's stories and comments. The text and karma ratings for each post lead me to try some fun experiments automatically extracting the community's sentiment towards certain topics or trying to mine Slashdot memes.

I've wanted to play around with the comments of Hacker News for some time due to the wealth of knowledge most comments hold but felt that crawling would be a bad idea as I certainly didn't want to cause PG's bandwidth cost/server load to increase.

Think about it - HN's a community full of people like me and if we all crawled HN to get that data it would be somewhat ugly, so thanks for sharing your data ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait to see what everyone does with this data, there could be lots of interesting insights gleaned from this.

For example, a more comprehensive list of top domains, domains with most upvotes, domains with most unique people submitting, etc.

<comment><USER9> SearchYC has some of these already; <http://top.searchyc.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the problems with hacker news is that while there is great discussion whether it is one a short lived story or evergreen advice it pretty much fades into obscurity a couple of days after it is posted.

There have been curation efforts in the past and collections like this make it even more accessible and feasible the someone will apply some good NLP to organise the data in such a way to provide the benefit of the older content which is still relevant.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks!

I have actually been crawling HN restricted by PG's "a couple of pages per minute" limitation for the past three weeks. This is far more convenient.

<comment><USER12> For this simple query, these links usually suffice:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg>

<comment><USER11> I meant, PG's restriction of spidering HN at the rate of a few pages per minute, not posts limited to PG as the user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now this is neat. I spent a bit of today reverse engineering the Better HN chrome extension to see how it looked up url's on HN (<http://json- automatic.searchyc.com/domains/find?url=%s>, for anybody who wondered, I can't find this API documented anywhere). Now, if this API holds up, it seems like there might be a more sustainable way of doing what I was planning.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is a pity that the API does not have a way of getting what appears on the front page. I was planing to soon create a script that scanned the front page, and then applied pg's algorithm from "a plan for spam" to remove links that I think are off topic. Actually turning that into a desktop client would be rather cool, or maybe a Firefox extension as that is more my kind of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does: <http://api.ihackernews.com/page>

<comment><USER14> Reminder to self, don't multi-task and half read stuff before posting comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks great but it appears to be down? Every request of the form

<http://api.ihackernews.com/profile/pg>

answers

{"username":null,"createdAgo":null,"karma":0,"about":null,"version":"1.0","cachedOnUTC":"\/Date(-62135575200000)\/"}

and this page

<http://api.ihackernews.com/page>

says this

Server Error in '/' Application.

<comment><AUTHOR> My IP addresses have been blocked.

<comment><USER15> Oh, ok, thanks for the info. But did it send a request to HN with every request it received? It could have answered with the data it had...?

Now everything is a 404, did you take the service down completely?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I took it all down. I need to rethink this. Clearly some folks aren't happy with it at all. Not that intentions really matter, but my intentions were only to help all of the people who are making HN apps. I figured we could reduce the need to scrape HN if we just distributed the data.

<comment><USER12> As an API, it was rather unknown. Guess what really ticked people off was the redistribution of the complete data. There are several custom private APIs that scrape HN already (see backtype for instance <http://www.backtype.com/page/paulgraham.com%2Ffounders.html> and [http://www.backtype.com/url/news.ycombinator.com%252fuser%3F...](http://www.backtype.com/url/news.ycombinator.com%252fuser%3Fid%3Dpg) and <http://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/y-combinator-scraper/>), and people don't seem to care the slightest.

Not to mention there are open source tools to scrape HN by yourself: <https://github.com/JackDanger/hacker_news>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Direct torrent link: [http://api.ihackernews.com/torrents/hn_full_11-07-2010.zip.t...](http://api.ihackernews.com/torrents/hn_full_11-07-2010.zip.torrent)

</comment><comment><USER17> Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER18> Based on the front page example, it looks like the database doesn't contain the comment structure (ie, what comments go with what article, and which comments parent others)

Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, top level posts don't have a parent. When that's null, it's excluded from the XML. Comments all have a ParentID. I just added ParentID to the example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cue dozens of made-for-adsense sites based on this in 3,2,1...

</comment><comment><USER20> I was hoping for a dump of the _actual_ database...

<comment><USER20> I meant the actual YC/PG Hacker News database, not one reverse engineered from the HTML output.

<comment><USER16> What's the difference? Other than parsing issues?

<comment><USER20> Take a look at the example in the page:

        <HackerNews>
        <row>
            <ID>1</ID>
            <Url>http://ycombinator.com</Url>
            <Title>Y Combinator</Title>
            <Text />
            <Username>pg</Username>
            <Points>39</Points>
            <Type>1</Type>
            <Timestamp>2006-10-09T20:33:12.700</Timestamp>
            <CommentCount>15</CommentCount>
        </row>
        </HackerNews>

If you really want to understand the HN community (or online communities in general) this data doesn't tell you much. There are many interesting questions this data _cannot_ answer.

When was each of those 39 points gained?

Who upvoted?

How many points did the submission have when each comment was posted?

How does the number of points affect the number of comments?

Are there cascades of votes (several users voting in quick succession)?

For each of the comments, who voted up and who voted down?

<comment><USER21> I don't think the actual HN "database" has that much info. You would need to reconstruct this from the complete server logs, along with application logs for PG's direct updates (assuming he doesn't use the web interface)

<comment><USER22> I imagine it does... It has to at least know who upvoted, to prevent revotes. The timestamp is frequently stored as well.

<comment><USER23> Maybe they use a bloom filter to store who voted per comment, that would be an efficient way to prevent upvotes without needing to store much data.

<comment><USER24> I don't think this would work well. The occasional false-positives would look like annoying glitches, every now and then making it look like your account had been hijacked by hiding the buttons as if you had already 'voted'. Although maybe I'm not getting the math right?

Also, the existence of the 'saved stories' link from the user page would seem to indicate that for stories at least a full list is being stored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> its taken down</comment>


LightSwitch: A lightweight HTML5 single-page website with jQuery templating - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kateklemp/lightswitch <comment><USER2> May want to consider a rename. I don't know if MS does this or you are already aware but I figure it can't hurt to post this here: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff851953.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff851953.aspx)

TL;DR MS already has a project called LightSwitch

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. Not sure there's a risk for market overlap in this case.

Initial thoughts were "hummingbird" which has 312 results on Github ([https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=hummingbird](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=hummingbird)) including a node.js analytics repo with 2,868 stars and 333 forks, and magpie, which has 325 results on Github ([https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=magpie&type=Repos...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=magpie&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults)) including a Python Evernote replacement with 633 stars and 52 forks.

By contrast, "lightswitch" ([https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=lightswitch&type=...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=lightswitch&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults)) turns up 189 repos and the most starred result is flextrick/lightswitch - "Android application with ugly code to control my lights and other stuff (via ssh)" with 6 stars.

Most pithy names are probably taken/overused by now. I'm not expecting this to get a ton of traction in any major market - really just a good place for newbies to start.

What process do you use for picking app names? I'd be interested to find out if there's something else I should have done.

<comment><USER2> Sorry--missed your response and maybe you'll never see this but I typically look for a word that matches what I am trying to do with my project and then use a thesaurus.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought "lightweight" "template fragment switcher" and got "lightswitch". Not so thesaurus-able. :( And I did search Github for repos as shown above; trying not to clash with other open-source projects. After some reflection, I'm thinking these market circles don't overlap at all - lots of devs might know of the other LightSwitch, but the newbies I'm trying to cater to probably don't. ( Also, I didn't. XD ) But thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This can't be good for people that have JavaScript disabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's not good for non-JS users.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple React State Management - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/solkimicreb/react-easy-state <comment><USER2> Can you compare this with redux with respect to complexity and performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perf benchmark is here: [https://github.com/solkimicreb/react-easy- state#performance](https://github.com/solkimicreb/react-easy- state#performance) You can compare it with vanilla React, Redux and MobX. It is between Redux and MobX, but honestly all of them are pretty performant.

Complexity wise it is much simpler than Redux in my opinion, but its like apple to oranges. It is closer to MobX in philosophy and it is simpler, in exchange of narrower platform support.

Ultimately, just give it a try and judge for yourself (: [https://github.com/solkimicreb/react-easy- state#installation](https://github.com/solkimicreb/react-easy- state#installation). It takes away 10 minutes of your life at worst case.</comment></comment>


Will cheaper health insurance raise wages? The evidence is thin - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/11/2/9634504/health-premium-wages-evidence <comment><USER2> Right now salary is taxed but health insurance is not. Given that it seems pretty obvious that employees are getting more health insurance and less salary than they would prefer. Fixing this seems like a pretty good idea.

<comment><USER3> if you work for a large company it isn't taxed. if you work for a small company that doesn't provide insurance it is taxed.

lowering insurance and payroll taxes won't increase wages but it will help keep jobs in the US since it will lower cost of employment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, basically, because we've never seen premium spending go down we don't have examples of how premium reductions affect total compensation. Despite the implicit suggestion of the title, reducing premiums seems like something we should try as a society.

<comment><USER5> And the best way to reduce premiums is by encouraging more people to get Cadillac policies.

Which is the opposite of what they are doing.

Those Cadillac policies subsidize all the other premiums both directly at the insurer, and indirectly at the hospital which can then afford to receive below market rates for everyone else.

For example when the Check 21 Act passed banks responded by eliminating free checking accounts, making things worse for exactly those people the law was supposed to help.

<comment><USER6> > And the best way to reduce premiums is by encouraging more people to get > Cadillac policies.

What do you base that on?

<comment><USER5> > What do you base that on?

I explained that in the rest of my post. Did you have a specific question about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> the basic take away from all of this: economics is not a science.</comment>


Docker for Processwire - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/livebytes/docker-processwire I made a Dockerfile for installing Processwire (www.processwire.com), hope you all like it! <comment><USER2> These guys need to change their admin theme. It appears to be a ripoff of the ExpressionEngine control panel theme. I'm surprised they are still using it.</comment>