Google confirms next Android won't implement Oracle's proprietary Java APIs - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/29/google-confirms-next-android-version-wont-use-oracles-proprietary-java-apis/ <comment><USER2> What does this mean for OpenJDK? Will Google now be working on it and improving it?

From what I gathered in the previous discussion, it's not a drop-in replacement - they made several changes to OpenJDK already.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Google's statement in the article suggests Google will be working on OpenJDK, at least more than they already have been.

<comment><USER4> So, what's the most evil Oracle can be against future versions of Android given this?

And who actually guides the Java roadmap? The OpenJDK trademark grant ([http://openjdk.java.net/legal/openjdk-trademark- notice.html](http://openjdk.java.net/legal/openjdk-trademark-notice.html)) seems to spin on whether or not _" the Software is a substantially complete implementation of the OpenJDK development kit or runtime environment source code retrieved from a single Website, and the vast majority of the Software code is identical to that upstream Original Software"_?

What's to stop Oracle from deciding that future Java roadmaps are going to exclude Android-specific commits? Neither IBM nor Apple's interests seem particularly aligned with Google here (I'm assuming they throw some kind of weight in the OpenJDK politics).

<comment><USER5> Time and time again we see such short term thinking does not pay off. It wouldn't be evil on Oracle's part to do that, it would be just plain stupid. The resurgence of Microsoft shows that being open and transparent is the actual winning strategy. Goodwill among developers is not a quantifiable thing but it makes a huge difference.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but this is _Oracle_ we're talking about. They do evil and stupid before breakfast and short-term thinking for the rest of the day.

<comment><USER7> Let's be grown ups here. Oracle isn't evil by any normal definition of the word.

And you sure as hell don't get to $10 billion a year in profits by being stupid.

<comment><USER8> All the responses to this thread on Quora (many of whom are ex Oracle employees) seem to suggest that they are disliked:

[https://www.quora.com/Whats-so-bad-about-Oracle](https://www.quora.com/Whats- so-bad-about-Oracle)

<comment><USER9> Disliked isn't evil. People should stop throwing around that word so easily though.

<comment><USER10> What they did to Peoplesoft was evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >When we asked Google why now, the company pointed to to the release of Java 8 last year and the introduction of new language features such as lambdas. As such, Google wants to put more resources into OpenJDK where the team can have a bigger impact on new features and improvements. That's the developer story Google is pitching in any case, but there's a massive legal narrative here that can't be forgotten.

Yes, the legal narrative is _certainly_ key here, but as a dev I'm all for a move that brings Java 8 to Android instead of just Java 6. It's about time!

<comment><USER12> You wanna know what I did?

        1. Use RetroLambda
        2. Write your own implementation of Streams and Optionals, compatible with RxJava and Guava
        3. Use in your project
        4. Profit

<comment><USER13> well that doesn't really scale at all though

<comment><USER14> Ok, in what way does it not "scale"?

<comment><USER15> I do this, you do this. We try to use each other's code. Now there's two competing implementations that are probably incompatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a Java dev but what are these proprietary Java APIs? doesn't oracle jdk and openjdk share the same APIs?

<comment><USER17> So far APIs cannot be copyrighted. There have been lawsuits over APIs but no decision that protects APIs from being used by other people and companies.

GNU/Linux for example uses Unix APIs and Mac OSX uses Unix APIs, so if APIs are copyrighted then they would be sued for using the Unix APIs without permission. Then they would have to remove Unix APIs and lose Unix compatibility.

Sun went after Microsoft and others over Java IP before Oracle bought them out. Sun used a lot of money on lawsuits and ended up losing money to the point that Oracle bought them out. This is the same as when SCO was suing over GNU/Linux using Unix source code. It usually doesn't work and costs more in court costs than any settlement or rewards.

<comment><USER18> > So far APIs cannot be copyrighted. There have been lawsuits over APIs but no > decision that protects APIs from being used by other people and companies.

What about the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc.? [1]

[1] [http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/content/oracle-america-inc-v- go...](http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/content/oracle-america-inc-v-google-inc- opinion)

<comment><USER19> IANAL. Was that a decision that APIs _were_ copyrightable, or that the trial judge couldn't definitively rule that they _weren 't_?

[Edit: Ah, I see that this was answered by phonon in a post parallel to the parent. The appeals court ruled that they were. Note, however, that the Supreme Court declined to listen to an appeal by Google at this time. The Supreme Court did _not_ rule that the Appeals Court was correct. Therein lies some hope...]

<comment><USER20> As I understand it, that's not how it works. When the Federal Circuit issued its decision saying APIs are copyright eligible, Google appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming the decision was incorrect. The Supreme Court, however, declined to hear the case, strongly implying (or maybe directly indicating?) that it thought the decision _was_ correct. As such, there is no hope, at least as far as this case is concerned.

<comment><USER21> >The Supreme Court, however, declined to hear the case, strongly implying (or maybe directly indicating?) that it thought the decision was correct.

As the court emphasized in Missouri v Jenkins (1995), "[t]he denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case" ([https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1823.ZO.html](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1823.ZO.html))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the HN speculation yesterday that there's been a settlement is wrong. This is Google moving to protect itself going forward after it lost the case in the Federal Circuit. That case was sent back down to the lower court only for ruling if Google's use of Oracle's now apparently copyrighted APIs consists of "Fair Use". Since APIs are now copyrightable I don't see how copying thousands of APIs could possibly consist of "Fair Use" so it's looking like Oracle is going to get paid, big time. And Oracle will probably demand a royalty for every phone sold. So in order for Google to avoid paying that royalty going forward they need to move to OpenJDK quickly with their next release, with the belief that using Oracle's GPL JDK implementation also gives them a license to the API. Problem for Google is that OEM and user adoption of new Android versions is slow, it takes several years for phones with old versions to stop selling, and Oracle will get a cut of each sale.

In any case, I think this is a healthy development for Java developers and the Java ecosystem. Java has been effectively forked between Android and other uses and this will unify the language again. And it will bring the cool new Java 8 features to Android.

<comment><USER23> The answer is, it's fair use if you are trying to be compatible - DR-DOS could be considered a fair use copy of the MS-DOS APIs, because that's the only way to run DOS programs. But ordinary Java programs don't run on Android and Android programs don't run on the JVM. So Google lacks a fair use defense as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER14> I am sorry to see your comment was downvoted, as it is quite correct: if you read the actual court documents, this is the argument that was made surrounding fair use, and despite their attempts to lie and say they were, Google could not be shown to be trying to build a compatible product (as it is pretty obvious even to non-technical people that they aren't and never intended to even try). Back when this was first being published I wrote a much longer comment pointing out all of the intricacies and quoting the court opinion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723853)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google not buying sun was huge mistake.at least they could sell it after keeping java.something like what they did with Motorola. They kept all patent's. They could have done the same with java.

<comment><USER25> Consider Google bought Motorola for $12.5B[1] and Oracle bought Sun for $5.6 billion[2], I would think Google buying Sun would have been a better deal than buying Motorola.

1) [http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-motorola-sale-interview- len...](http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-motorola-sale-interview-lenovo/)

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

<comment><USER26> Perhaps, but it's not like Google lost much by buying Motorola.

"I think the Motorola transaction has been a success for us. Financially, we bought the asset for $12.5 billion. It had $3 billion in cash; we were able to sell the Home division for $2.5 billion; we ended selling the handset division for $3 billion. There were some other tax assets as well. When you work through the math, you realize we spent between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion for the patent assets. At the time, the nearest comparable transaction was the Nortel patent auction where Microsoft and Apple teamed up to buy that asset for $4.5 billion. And there's a good argument that the Motorola patent portfolio is a better portfolio."

<comment><USER27> Nice informative quote is missing an attribution. Google finds it in an interview in Forbes with Dan Harrison, Google's head of M&A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Title is confusing, OpenJDK does belong to Oracle and Google is going to use it. It's just that the OpenJDK is GPL.

<comment><USER19> And the GPL will make it really hard for Oracle to prevent Google from using it in Android.

<comment><USER29> also, it comes with a patent grant

<comment><USER30> Thank you for this.. that was my question, in a different comment. I was curious how using OpenJDK would prevent a similar lawsuit... Also, does this mean that Dalvik will be enhanced to support Java's compiled modules directly, or are they outright replacing Dalvik?

TFA doesn't make much of this all that clear to me. Though I admit I only skimmed it.

<comment><USER31> Dalvik is already retired and replaced by ART.

Judging from the commits on AOSP, ART is still being worked on and has been adapted to openjdk.

It looks like it is here to stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's also interesting to note that this is essentially the outcome advocated by the FSF in its amicus brief to the federal circuit. [https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v-google](https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle- v-google)

</comment><comment><USER32> Question: why didn't Android use OpenJDK in the first place?

<comment><USER33> GPLphobia.

This is a good study in why that's irrational.

<comment><USER34> No, OpenJDK didn't exist when Android was in development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish they could get away from java. I like the language and the platform, but maybe something like go would be better.

<comment><USER36> Completely subjective here but no Go would not be better. Java has generics. Java has more support, more tooling and Android's existing eco system is fully mature. If they started out from scratch it would result in worse language with less tooling and a smaller ecosystem.

<comment><USER35> Well, I did say I wish they "could".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is a huge win for open source if Google is going to build on OpenJDK. The implicit patent grants are huge! They can even pour resources into building a better GPL'd run time. So much of Google's internals are written in Java that they would certainly benefit from this.

Looks like another LibreOffice/OpenOffice Jenkins/Hudson split in the making. You'd think Oracle would have learned by now.

I wonder if they'll fork the Java language standard? That would seriously damage Oracle if it got traction. They couldn't use Oracle's trademarks but people are familiar enough now with Dalvik that they could just introduce Dalvik Server Edition and people would lap it up.

<comment><USER38> OpenJDK is under GPLv2. There are no patent grants.

<comment><USER39> Your statement is confusing (and possibly wrong depending on how it's read).

There are no patent grants _in_ GPLv2. However, OpenJDK carries an automatic patent grant (outside of GPLv2).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It makes sense. It future-proofs androids ongoing legal viability. If they haven't yet settled with Oracle then it also strengthens their negotiating position on the issue of damages for copying API signatures. Thanks Appeals court!

It also makes sense in light of Google's recent announcement that they are going to be shipping a desktop android os with chrome on it soon.

Unlike in 2008, Google no longer has to worry if phone vendors care about whether the runtime is GPL+classpath, which was probably the original motivation for an apache licensed runtime.

There is still however, the mystery of why the commit is missing the openjdk LICENSE file, or any mention of Oracle at all.

</comment><comment><USER26> I thought this was rather interesting:

OCTLA Signatories List

The following organizations and individuals have signed the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement (OCTLA) and been granted access to the JCK.

      Signatories for Java SE 6
      Azul Systems, Inc.
      CACAO - Christian Thalinger
      Cambridge Software Labs - Edward Nevill
      Canonical - Matthias Klose
      Google
      Red Hat
      Stratus Technologies
      tarent
      Yozosoft

[http://openjdk.java.net/groups/conformance/JckAccess/jck- acc...](http://openjdk.java.net/groups/conformance/JckAccess/jck-access.html)

<comment><USER41> Google has been an OpenJDK contributor for server-side stuff for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am kinda surprised they have not proposed a language (new or existing non- Java) yet for their phones. I thought this would at least be in the plans so they do not have to rely on Java alone. A big task for sure.

Perhaps they are waiting for Web Assembly to become mainstream. Then do a side-by-side:

1) Web Assembly -> new VM

2) Existing Java Apps -> Dalvik

With 2) eventually being phased out.

Edit: As pointed out below it is no longer Dalvik, but ART.

<comment><USER43> Seems like it would be massively messy to move to anything but another JVM language, considering the long history of Java-based Android. Matter of fact, I'm having trouble thinking of an example of any major platform making such a fundamental change and surviving. Maybe Apple switching from OS9 to OSX/Cocoa. They started building the Carbon compatibility layer, what, 2-3 years ahead of the switch, and IIRC the API is still available today, though considered deprecated. And no version of MacOS had anywhere near the adoption level or number of third-party apps as Android does.

<comment><USER44> Before that Apple had to move from Motorola 68K ISA to PPC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So does this mean that Android will be licensed under the GPL going forward?

<comment><USER46> If you distribute OpenJDK, then only the modules that are "derived from or based on" OpenJDK are required to be GPLv2[+CE] (the Classpath Exception allows you to link the library with an independent closed-source library). So I think it would only require platform/libcore itself to be released under GPLv2+CE. Probably manufacturers don't need to modify platform/libcore too much anyway.

GPLv2+CE: [http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html](http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html)

Again, the commit in question: [https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/51b1...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/51b1b6997fd3f980076b8081f7f1165ccc2a4008)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'd like to see Google pouring vast resources into OpenJDK development and making Oracle Java obsolete. That's the karma they should get for being Oracle.

<comment><USER48> Oracle Java is based on OpenJDK and certified by Oracle. So I don't see how pouring vast resources into OpenJDK would make "Oracle Java" obsolete.

<comment><USER47> > Oracle Java is based on OpenJDK

I don't think that's exactly the case. Oracle Java has some features that OpenJDK doesn't have. What if Google accelerated development of Open JDK beyond what Oracle is brewing so far that at some point Oracle will have a choice of just taking OpenJDK and stamping their brand on it (probably illegal) or being forgotten Java-wise?

<comment><USER41> Oracle _runs_ OpenJDK. They aren't separate projects.

<comment><USER49> Google would only need to fork and rename though, then Oracle wouldn't be running it. If using the fork were a requirement to running on Android, that's a _big_ draw.

I'm not sure Google is really interested in that though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This battle is very important: two questions it will answer are these:

1\. Are APIs copyrightable?

2\. If APIs are copyrightable, does providing an alternative implementation of someone else's API (the way Android provided an alternative implementation for some of the standard Java APIs) constitute a fair use [1]?

Google and Oracle settling this out of court would be very bad news: it would leave the above issues in limbo. That is a lot of legal uncertainty for any project that may wish to provide an alternative implementation of someone else's API.

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

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER51> >So the only reason why you may object is that my lisp.a has an INTERFACE that allows it to be linked to libreadline.a . As far as I know, only the readline CODE is copyrighted, not its INTERFACE. (Would you object because my libnoreadline.a has a similar interface?)

[http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-...](http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why- CLISP-is-under-GPL)

<comment><USER50> This is very interesting and highly relevant! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'd love to see a bigger push for golang support for Android.

</comment><comment><USER53> Good news AFAICT! Hopefully Android:

1) Gets an updated kernel 2) Can run standard JVM bytecode 3) Switches to CGroups 4) Allows for interop with desktop/server JVM

On a side note, I wish WebAssembly would just be JVM byte codes instead of this huge NIH syndrome. No need for the importing the Java SDK, broken sandbox mode, and all the other crap that made Applets fail... just the JVM itself.

<comment><USER54> It is unlikely that Android will run Java bytecode. The Dalvik runtime was aimed at keeping bytcode compact and interpreting faster than a JVM. ART is a pre-compiling (Dalvik bytecode to native) runtime. Using Java bytecode in the runtime on the Android device would open a whole big can of worms again. With open source APIs and no actual Java(tm) technology in an apk or on a device once code is translated from Java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode, Android stays clear of Oracle copyright claims.

<comment><USER34> You can actually load Java bytecode on Android (since 1.x!) by manually using a separate classloader at runtime[1]. There are even J2ME runners that have been doing that since Android's early days[2].

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60764/how-should-i- load-j...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60764/how-should-i-load-jars- dynamically-at-runtime) [2] [http://www.netmite.com/android/faq.html](http://www.netmite.com/android/faq.html)

<comment><USER54> Those approaches "dex" the Java bytecode and run Dalvik bytecode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I couldn't figure out exactly which version of OpenJDK code they imported, but it's certainly less than 1.8.

<comment><USER48> 1.7: as java.util.Objects is present ( [https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/mast...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/master/ojluni/src/main/java/java/util/Objects.java) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Sounds good. I hope that OpenJDK improves, because it's been sluggish and buggy in my experience. What Google should do is to move to something like Kotlin, which might make the whole programming environment less tedious than Java.

</comment><comment><USER30> How does this obviate the patent issues? Or is there patent indemnification from Oracle(or formerly with Sun) with the OpenJDK license?

</comment><comment><USER57> Is this really Google's best move to protect itself from Oracle? How safe is OpenJDK from Oracle?

<comment><USER58> OpenJDK is licensed under the GPL. So as long as Google doesn't violate the terms of the GPL it's quite safe to use it. In addition, the GPL provides an implicit patent grant to the code: [https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive- gpl-guidech7.html](https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Will this introduce multiple version issues into JVM ecosystem like Python 2 vs Python 3?

</comment><comment><USER24> I am so sorry, i was going to upvote you.but because of my small touch screen i down voted you.i am really sorry.

BTW i have exact same question.

<comment><USER60> I have upvoted to counteract your downvote. Order is now restored in the universe.

<comment><USER61> I have also upvoted in case you wanted to upvote yourself. How's the balance now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Relevant HN discussion, so we go full circle: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803775)

<comment><USER63> Crazy... here we have a Hacker News comment on a Venture Beat article about a Hacker News post about a Google code commit.

<comment><USER2> So full circle would actually be referencing this discussion in an android commit. :)

<comment><USER4> Don't forget creating a wikipedia article referencing both this discussion and the commit as sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I wish they had an agreement with Apple for the next 10 years for the use of Swift so we could write our apps once and run everywhere.

But we all know the NIH syndrome, which is a shame since everybody is adopting Google's web extensions standards and they should adopt whatever is best for all in other technologies too.

<comment><USER65> Swift? As an Android Developer I think it would not be a great idea. C# maybe a better language(wasn't that open sourced?). It much closer to java than swift is and would allow people like me to move cover over faster.

I started off as a C# developer and had not done any real work in java before. I was able to move my C# code(couple thousand lines of code) over to Java in a matter of hours.

Anyway I do not wish or hope for a language change period.

<comment><USER66> Given that you know C# and Java, you should not have a great deal of trouble learning other C-family languages, including Swift.

Objective-C was/is a bit of an exception to this, as it's "funky" syntax could be a bit intimidating to developers coming from other languages - one of the motivations for Apple's switch to Swift was to address this.</comment></comment></comment>


One of Amazon's first employees says the company should be broken up - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/20/21031694/amazon-employee-break-up-paul-barton-davis-marketplace-sellers <comment><USER2> Amazon should be broken up when OPEC's oil monopoly is broken and chinese monopolies over steel industries and counterfeit CDs are divided in the name of equality.

Oh wait. I forgot. Only american buiness should be divided and broken as the real goal is to kill the united states economy. Equality was never a motive behind it.</comment>


Why HN has less info/less posts these days - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> i agree, Hn used to have a community feel, now I feel it is more an advertising platform.

<comment><USER3> Advertising for what?

<comment><USER2> As a self advertising and affiliate link platform.</comment></comment></comment>


Spanner: Becoming a SQL System [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://dl.acm.org/authorize?N37621 <comment><AUTHOR> This "modern" Spanner feels very different from the one we saw in 2012 [1]. Some interesting takeaways:

* There is a native SQL interface in Spanner, rather than relying on a separate upper-layer SQL layer, a la F1 [2]

* Spanner is no longer on top of Bigtable! Instead, the storage engine seems to be a heavily modified Bigtable with a column-oriented file format

* Data is resharded frequently and concurrently with other operations -- the shard layout is abstracted away from the query plan using the "distributed union" operator

* Possible explanation for why Spanner doesn't support SQL DML writes: writes are required to be the last step of a transaction, and there is currently no support for reading uncommitted writes (this is in contrast to F1, which _does_ support DML)

* Spanner supports full-text search (!)

[1] [https://research.google.com/archive/spanner.html](https://research.google.com/archive/spanner.html)

[2] [https://research.google.com/pubs/pub41344.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub41344.html)

<comment><USER2> Did not digest the paper yet. Does it provide nested transactions?

My understanding from 2012 paper was that it doesn't support nested transactions, even at the storage layer.

Can anybody provide insider-knowledge if it was even a requested feature from Google devs internally?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since writes are required to be the last step of a transaction, I suspect there wouldn't be much of a point in having nested transactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tangential.

For me the fascinating thing is looking at the list of authors to recognize so many from the 2005-2012 Microsoft SQL Server team. Folk I know personally as exceptional performers. Same when I look at Aurora papers. I see this as the result of Ballmer's famous HR initiatives and the massive brain drain that occurred at Microsoft around 2010-ish.

<comment><USER4> Can you tell some more about the HR initiatives? (I would just google it, but a bit unclear what I should be looking for.)

<comment><USER3> You can point back to the 2004 benefits overhaul [0], the famous Towels story [1], low compensation rates compared to Google, Amazon and Facebook [2]. Just go over minimsft.blogspot.com posts at the time.

Add to this the lack of vision and direction, catastrophic acquisitions, dismal flagship product releases. At the time there were running jokes about the Inbox filling up with "After 15 years, is time to send that email" subject lines...

      [0] http://old.seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2001938654_microsoft26.html
      [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-brings-back-the-towels-5000148135/
      [2] http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/internal-microsoft-compensation.html

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was at the Google Cloud conference a few months ago and spoke to a few engineers there about Spanner. When I asked them about how it would affect their other storage options (e.g., datastore, cloud sql, etc.), they said that over time, all of their internal storage systems would be moved over to Spanner. His words were "you'll be using Spanner whether you know it or not."

This engineer was clearly a cheerleader for the product, so I'm dubious as to whether that will actually happen, but it's clear that they have quite a bit of confidence in it.

<comment><USER6> That sounds a lot like the announcement of Azure Cosmos DB: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos- db/introductio...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos- db/introduction)

> we made the service available externally to all Azure Developers in the form > of Azure DocumentDB. Azure Cosmos DB is the next big leap in the evolution > of DocumentDB and we are now making it available for you to use. As a part > of this release of Azure Cosmos DB, DocumentDB customers (with their data) > are automatically Azure Cosmos DB customers.

From my understanding, DocumentDB ≈ Dynamo, while Cosmos DB would be closer to Cloud Spanner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is anyone outside of Google or msft using these proprietary k/v/sql/Json databases?

As a developer I can't bring myself to code against something I can't install on my laptop. And as enterprises would go, they won't use any data store that can't run their financials/hr/ldap/sharepoint thing.

So, who uses them and for what?

<comment><USER8> Your viewpoint is shared by many, but there are lots of enterprises using proprietary cloud features. They either use an abstraction layer for running on a laptop, or otherwise a CI process that kicks off dev instances and test cases on demand, forcing you to be online when you check things in. That's not terribly new. Teams have had to find solutions/standins for things like AWS load balancers, lambdas, certificate servers, etc.

Cloud spanner, being fairly new and unusual (SQL, but no INSERT/UPDATE), though, doesn't yet have a big name customer. Jda.com and quizlet.com were their reference customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is Spanner free/open source software? Can we look at the code?

<comment><USER10> This is part of a worrying new trend. Increasingly you can't buy software anymore, only rent.

Innovation is being kept from scrutiny hidden behind closed doors. The kind of thing patents were meant to prevent back when the system wasn't broken.

Google is one of the better players in this regard, at least telling the world what they're up to. Try to figure out how something like Amazon's systems work and you'll run into a deafening wall of silence.

Funny that we're so willing to trust these "clouds" when we know next to nothing about their internal workings. I don't think the honeymoon will last forever. Somebody will eventually abuse their position and within a few years everyone will be "on prem" again.

<comment><USER11> > _This is part of a worrying new trend. Increasingly you can 't buy software > anymore, only rent._

More or less agreed, but you'd probably have to concede that the existence of papers like this one and some of Google's other Spanner publications are admirable; they're being more open about the system's design than they have to be.

Of course Google knows that the system's secret sauce is not the concept itself, but the cost of its implementation, the infrastructural harness to support it, and the resources to reliably operate it. Even with a rough understanding on how Spanner works, it's still going to be difficult to ever migrate off it for practical reasons alone — who else is going to be able to build and run an alternative?

I have huge respect for what the Spanner team is doing, but this is a reason that Citus [1] is also very interesting to me right now. You could conceivably start out with nothing but Postgres and migrate into a Citus cluster when (and _if_ ) you need to.

If a point comes where you realize that you need out, you could either (1) see if you can scale back down to simple Postgres, (2) host your own cluster on your own infrastructure with the Citus source code, or (3) migrate onto your own Postgres sharding scheme à la Instagram. At no point do you lock yourself into custom GRPC APIs which are going to be ~impossible to get off of.

GCP and AWS provide hugely useful foundational IaaS, but they're incentivized to move beyond that layer and provide more custom solutions that (1) provide better margins, and (2) lock you into their services. As people and companies building on top of these clouds, we should be looking for whatever opportunities we can to keep our stacks generic so that AWS <-> GCP <-> Azure migrations are possible, even if a last resort.

[1] [https://www.citusdata.com/product/cloud](https://www.citusdata.com/product/cloud)

<comment><USER10> Does this feel like rent seeking to you? The internet is not young anymore. It feels like cloud hosting is little more than the giants allowing controlled competition as long as you rent their servers. The platforms are just extensions of the massively powerful systems they use internally.

I wonder what would happen if the open source community built a viable alternative to the cloud IaaS. Like OpenStack but not a failure :). OpenFlow has shown promise and could form the core for an open IaaS. Network virtualization is the hardest part.

<comment><USER5> > I wonder what would happen if the open source community built a viable > alternative to the cloud IaaS. ... Network virtualization is the hardest > part.

I would think that the hardware itself is the hardest part. Companies move to the cloud because it reduces their internal OPs team, and you can scale up and down hardware extremely easily.

<comment><USER10> I respectfully disagree. Every company I've been part of moving to the cloud already had plenty of hardware. It was ease of provisioning VM's, backups, deployment, and networking that really convinced them.

VMWare comes close to offering the same thing on premesis but Oracle is too obsessed with wringing money from it to let it reach it's full potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did they just write it during CockroachDB's release?

So sketchy.</comment>


The Haves and Have-Nots: The True Story of a Reader Suddenly De-Invited from TED - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/27/the-haves-and-have-nots-the-true-story-of-a-reader-suddenly-de-invited-from-ted/ <comment><USER2> The whole affair is reminding me of how Ivy League colleges (and Oxbridge) work. They used to be places where the privileged, moneyed elite could educate themselves in relative privacy, save for a few exceptional commoners allowed in on scholarship.

Nowadays, the proportion of talented commoners to moneyed elite is considerably greater than it was even 100 years ago, but the basic principle remains: foster connections among the elites, and give them first crack at any emerging talent. This way anyone with a potentially destabilizing talent becomes attached to the existing power structure at an impressionable age. Better to invite them in and dilute the pool a bit than risk them draining it later.

Any commoners who don't work out, they will drop without hesitation.

I'm not saying this is evil. If you were among the elite, you'd probably do the same thing. And I also don't propose that this was all cooked in a room full of cackling conspirators rubbing their hands together. It's just the way a power structure works. From their point of view, I'm quite sure they see this as noblesse oblige: they're just reaching out, "giving back" and trying to help useful and interesting people succeed. But it nevertheless has embedded in it the idea that the most important part of success is meeting people who already have power.

And as the complainant in the letter writes, it sounds like all the hoi polloi ("Group B") at TED actually buy into this as well. Maybe he should be working on something amazing instead of hoping Bill or Steve or Sergey notices him.

<comment><USER3> I'm the son of an immigrant, went to Harvard and have no idea what you're talking about concerning the Ivy League. Would you (or anyone who upvoted) care to explain?

<comment><USER4> Yes, the collective behavior of very complex game theoretic systems, where individuals act to maximize their own benefit, can sometimes seem to be controlled by a central decision structure, even where none exists.

Or-- people have a bias towards seeing massive, planned conspiracies.

<comment><USER5> I, for one, believe in conspiracies...

... but I also believe in class conflict, which I see as different things. Our economic system is predicated on the existence of both a working class and an owning class -- it's no fun to be a general if you don't have a bunch a bunch of enlisted to boss around. And in the US, the myth is that the enlisted commoners deserve their lot from lack of smarts and ambition.

The owning class, and their educated lackeys like me, intuit that if we don't keep this division going, we lose our positions in the upper half of the pyramid, and adjust our day-to-day behavior accordingly without ever explicitly working it out in our minds. Also, we just plain feel more comfortable around people who share experience and cultural background.

These dynamics, plus a HUGE difference in access to educational know-how, are enough to sustain class divisions even while making it plausibly deniable that any systematic class oppression exists.

Also, there is a rhetorical technique called the "straw man" which the commenter is using: subtly re-characterize your opponents argument as something easily attacked, and then attack it. The commenter explicitly said there was no grand explicit conspiracy, but you attack him as if he did.

(One of the things I like about HN is that when issues like this come up there are smart people here on both sides -- libertarians and Marxists, united by a love of hacking!)

<comment> T-R I have a little trouble conceiving of a completely classless society - at some point you have to acknowledge that, for example, some programmers are better than others, and that that's a positive thing. That acknowledgement alone creates a class. The important thing is upward mobility - we shouldn't define "better" as "knows the other people who are 'better'".

<comment><USER6> This cannot be argued. But many people conflate worth of skills and accomplishments with worth as a person. They over reduce the dimensionality of a superiority vector. And worse, assume transitivity of the elements composing said vector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before I make this comment, please understand that I've never been to a TED conference and am unlikely to go in the reasonably near future. Having said that what rational being would pay $6,000 to attend an event where he's treated like a second class citizen(I especially liked the "back of the bus" reference) and then next year reregisters for the same event?

<comment><USER8> I read the article and was struck more by the difference between me and someone who would pay $6,000 to go to a conference than about the difference between Group A and Group B.

GIve me $6,000 and I'm off on a round-the-world trip. I might take a few TED videos to watch on the way, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meatless TC post.

TL;DR

      Redacted person invited to TED by donor.

      Whining.

      Next year, redacted kicked out of TED due to falling out with said donor.

      More whining.

<comment><USER10> If his story is true, he was sponsored by the donor the first time he attended. He applied to come back and was accepted on his own merits, and then he was blacklisted. I think it's newsworthy if TED, which is purportedly a forum for sharing ideas, lets donors blacklist attendees. The TED talks are just a highbrow facade for a get-together that is actually all about access. Access (and money) is how they lure the presenters that give some substance to the facade. Sarah Silverman showed that she did not understand the nature of the event; she did not appreciate the privilege of having access to rich and powerful people, and somebody took offense. Apparently this guy was also not sufficiently deferential to some powerful person, so he is not an appropriate attendee for an event that is all about being grateful for their presence.

 _Group A, (the people everyone would love to meet), and Group B (the people who want to meet those people.) The people in Group B spend the entire TED conference running around with business cards, hoping for, you know, five seconds of face time with Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Cameron Diaz, or the like._

This part makes Group B sound like a bunch of insufferable assholes (which may be partly true) but when you consider the nature of the event, Group A is almost literally asking for it.

<comment><USER11> _Apparently this guy was also not sufficiently deferential to some powerful person, so he is not an appropriate attendee for an event that is all about being grateful for their presence._

You don't know what his relationship is. Maybe this donor thinks this person molested his daughter, but doesn't have enough proof to get a conviction. At the end of the day a donor has just as much right to pull or use any influence they have as this _applicant_ has to attend a private conference.

I've quite possibly never seen a more worthless piece of writing or topic. Although I'd have to go through the TC archives to be sure.

<comment><USER10> And we have every right to draw conclusions about TED based on how they react to such pressure.

(On a meta note, rights are a pathetic red herring pulled out when people don't want to defend something on other grounds. Should we refrain from criticizing anything unless we want to ban it? Should we refrain from praising anything unless we want to make it compulsory? If you condemn all criticism as a slippery slope towards taking away people's rights, we don't have much left to talk about.)

<comment><USER11> There's a reason why people tend to discount anonymous sources, especially when there is no additional content or evidence.

In this case we have an anonymous source, giving one side of a story (this "reporter" doesn't even appear to attempt to validate this story with the "curator" or anyone else), and already comes from a publication that is generally known for sloppy work and biased reporting.

IOW, you have every right to draw conclusions even on the basis of zero information -- and that would be slightly better than what you've done here.

<comment><USER10> I acknowledged in my first post, which you replied to and therefore presumably read, that the story reported in the link may not be true. What's with the bitter tone?

<comment><USER11> The bitter tone? My apologies. It's just the writing from TC strikes a nerve in my at how bad and perverse it is. In any case I let that leak through in my response to you and others. Again, sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is completely based on hearsay. I'd like to have seen the actual emails from TED, rather than just the authors translation/understanding of the responses.

At the same time, I think the authors comments about Group A and Group B is a huge opportunity for another conference.

He seems to think that all these 'group B' people are people who don't have anything interesting to say. How many people get up on stage at TED and make amazing presentations, and all of a sudden are then part of group A.

The Group B's should be searching for other Group B's who have amazing stories and knowledge to share. That is why everybody is supposed to be at the conference.

I've got a few friends who have an incredible nack for meeting ANYBODY and finding out something amazing about that person which adds to their understanding and appreciation about life.

The Group A's are just Group B's that you already have some knowledge about.

</comment><comment><USER13> So I have no clue about being uninvited from TED, but if you want to sit up front, there's plenty of opportunity to do so. I'm hardly an 'A' lister and I had no problem joining the scrum (which is everyone) at the rope to trot to the front rows for those sessions that I wanted to see closer.

Mind you, I've only been to the one ted (2010) so maybe I'm not the big authority here, but I found 'A' people approachable and friendly and I'd say it was pretty great.

<comment><USER14> I've been to many TEDs and can confirm: To sit in the first very few (3?) rows you have to be a Patron or whatever, but if you want to be in row 5 or so, you simply have to get in line 20 minutes early. (Kind of like the old Southwest Airlines system.) So I don't know what all that back-of-the-bus stuff was about.

Oh wait...people who insist on typing on their computers during the talks _are_ relegated to the "blogger zone" in the balcony. Maybe that's it.

<comment><USER13> Was it like that last year ? I remember there were some speaker/reserved seats at stage right, but I wasn't actually aiming for the front row because that might introduce a crick in my neck :-) So I guess 'patron' rows would be possible.

The shunting of those who want to blog/surf to the balconies was pretty nice for those who don't want the typey typey glowing screen distraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's definitely a bit creepy. It also goes a ways towards explaining the overall trend of the conference. When I found it in 2006, I absolutely _loved_ TED. Nearly every talk was eye-opening and fascinating, from Ray Kurzweil to Juan Enriquez to Robert Wright to Hans Rosling, it was all awesome. Over time, I started seeing fewer eye-opening talks and more politically focused ones. Now, while I still regularly check TED, it's a very mixed bag.

For quite a while I had thought it was an issue of the low-hanging fruit already having been plucked, but recently I've become less sure. This piece only adds to those doubts. If donors are calling all the shots, no wonder it's become driven by populist political causes and steeped in PC overtones.

<comment><USER16> > Over time, I started seeing fewer eye-opening talks and more politically > focused ones. Now, while I still regularly check TED, it's a very mixed bag.

Is that because eye-opening ideas and correspondingly talks don't come out as often as TED conferences are scheduled? Also, a lot of amazing insights only become insights years after the ideas are proposed and collectively understood by society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think rich and powerful will always find subtle and less subtle ways to signal their status and power. Creating special clubs, with invite-only lists, and then exercise their power and influence in applying modifications to that list is one way to do it.

\- "Say John, how many people have you uninvited today?"

\- "Well, only 10. What about you?"

\- "Ha! I just booted 20 attendees whose haircuts I found deplorable. Then invited this one cousin of a friend who is a blogger and maybe he'll say something nice about me and TED to his online audience."

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain how TED conferences work. Who decides the locations, dates, and the speakers?

<comment><USER17> Apparently anyone who can spare $100K+/year ...

<comment><USER16> I was looking for something more specific. What is Chris Anderson's role as the 'curator'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I produced for-profit conferences for years, including executive-level events. It's an invitation-only event. They have every right to do this.

<comment><USER19> > If TED would just own up to being about making the wealthy, famous and > powerful feel comfortable–like other high level affairs like Sun Valley or > the World Economic Forum– I wouldn't have an issue with it. Business > conferences have good reasons to be elitist; deals are getting done and > high-level conversations need to be private sometimes.

> But when credentials are revoked at the last minute based purely on the whim > of a more important member of the TED community, the inner workings are just > too much like a country club for an organization whose stellar content is > all about pluralism and uplift.

<comment><USER18> I read this too, but I don't understand how anyone could mistake a $6,000 invitation-only event for anything other than incredibly exclusive. To me, the letter just reads like sour grapes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would really like to know what happened in the intervening year, but money does talk. It seems every group with any power has some perceptions that seem mean spirited or strange to the people they affect (ex. I got rejected from a summer internship because the high school I graduated from is in the same phone area code as the college I attended - like the rest of the state). Maybe the guy/girl did something wrong, or the patron thought they were acting out of their station by going without the patron's support.

Scoble had an article not too long back on how SXSW was too big and needed to be cut down. I presume to the point that he started showing up. I remember in my early days thinking Gen-Con was cool up until the damn card people started showing up :).

I think the really interesting thing is how to build a conference with better talks than TED, but not keep all the "commoners" out. Remember, Bill Gates wasn't "cool" many years ago. In a cynical moment, I wonder if it is possible to hold a conference that might inspire the next, unknown individuals or is it always going to slip into an "old boys" club patting themselves on the back.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't get it. The post seems to imply that donor X banned person Y from TED, but didn't donor X put person Y in TED _in the first place_? He just withdrew his invitation, no?

<comment><USER15> I don't get why people are upvoting this. Didn't anybody read the article? It clearly says that the donor made a call and requested that person Y be uninvited. It's also very clear that the donor was not involved in inviting the person to the 2011 conference.

 _I sent a personal email to Chris Anderson, TED's 'curator,' asking for an explanation. I got it. Here it is: I was uninvited to this year's TED conference because the major TED donor I've referenced above and with whom, for reasons unknown, I have now not spoken to for more than two years (TED's leadership tells me that this is because this person and I have had a 'falling out' of some kind) had seen my picture in the TED 2011 'Facebook.' This person had called the conference organizers to express that my presence at the conference might result in this person feeling some 'stress' and – perhaps – not enjoying the conference as much as this person otherwise might.._

Edit: No, it clearly wasn't just a matter of withdrawing sponsorship. It's right there two paragraphs further down the article. Please, just RTFA!

 _The point is that TED's leadership was unwilling to run the risk of one of their biggest donors feeling 'stressed' at TED_

<comment><USER21> Yes, but the author is making it into an issue about censorship, i.e. any TED donor can ban anyone they like. As I understand it, the donor _sent_ the author to TED in his place, and now he withdrew that offer, so it's a non- issue.

It's as if the TC author didn't even read the letter (or, gasp, has an agenda).

<comment><USER22> The email's author was sponsored the first time; the second time, it was accepted without a sponsorship (before being banned).

<comment><USER21> Ah, now it makes sense, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> do we know this story is true?, seems to be just a letter with no proof. or are there more people with similar experience?

</comment><comment><USER24> Just a rant, nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER25> tl;dr TED donor doesn't like man; man has his registration to TED conference cancelled.

Meh..

<comment><USER26> Skipping over the part about the segregation, priority seating, etc.

<comment><USER27> Iirc only the front row or two are reserved, and it's for speakers and the major contributors. Everything else is random seating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The fact that TED uninvited Sarah Lacey gives them a tad more credibility in my eyes.

<comment><USER22> Sarah Lacey wrote the article. The person who was uninvited is unknown, as its name was redacted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am so happy that I have helped make this post leave the front page.</comment>


MMOG written in Stackless Python supports ~52k concurrent players - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_online#Demographics

<comment><USER2> Note that many servers are required to support 52K players; a single server can handle ~1400 players. This page with a few technical details is probably more interesting than the Wikipedia entry:

[http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=584](http://myeve.eve- online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=584)</comment>


Microsoft is doing a better Apple impression than Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13451832/microsoft-apple-hardware-videos-comparison <comment><USER3> I for one am bemused to see both Apple and Microsoft's 2016 offerings - <USER2> with a non-touch screen but a seemingly ergonomic touch bar, and the other with a beautiful touch screen.

My money is on virtual/augmented reality as being the next frontier for development tools, where we will move away from flat screens into more intuitive three dimensional realms.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is funny that similar approach like in the newest MacBook Pros was presented in 2007 by Art Lebedev ([http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/maximus/](http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/maximus/)). It is keyboard, but the idea of using context-specific control surface is similar.</comment>


How Uber Went from Just Another Startup to a Big #*$&ing Deal - <AUTHOR> http://onboardly.com/startup-pr/how-uber-went-from-just-another-startup-to-a-big-ing-deal/#.UgjuXGS2PrR

<comment><USER2> Who doesn't like to drive around in an uber? The premium aspect of this really sets it apart. Cabs are easier to come by, however for those special occasions where you want to show up in something a little fancier - an uber is definitely a requirement.

</comment><comment><USER3> This wasn't particularly insightful. "solve a real problem", "listen to customers", and "be accessible to your market" you could replace Uber with Company X. A more specific analysis would have been interesting.

<comment><USER2> Agreed - but up until now what has been able to compete with cab companies - and many people who don't live in a metropolitan area have yet to hear about uber or what makes them different from just a cab - or them thinking that it's someone's own private vehicle.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I tell someone who isn't from an Uber-city about Uber - they lose their minds by how awesome is seems.

My experience has always been at least a 9/10 with them.</comment></comment></comment>


Food Ideas for Startup Guys - <AUTHOR> Share your food hax.
Stay happier programming by eating good.  When you're not in the mood for Cup Ramen and the Dollar Menu at MickyD's.
My favorite relaxer when under stress is Basil Tomato Soup.  It really helps me clear my head for more programming.  Takes 5-10 minutes to prepare and put in pot.  Then forget about it for 40 minutes while it cooks (don't even have to stir).
When I only have 1 minute to microwave something, I make a 1337 Haxor Boca (my own concoqtion).  Recipes below.
1) 1337 Haxor Boca
Buy Spicy Chicken Boca Burger at Safeway, some Spicy Hummus, and Pita Bread.  Microwave the spicey chicken boca burger for 1 minute.  Toast the pita bread if u want to.  Cut the pita in half.  Cut the boca in half. Put one half of the boca into each pita half.  Use a knife and wedge some Spicy Hummus in.  Done.  Tastes great.  Fills you up for 6 hrs.  Nothing to clean.
Needs: Box of Spicy Chicken Boca Burger, Pita Bread, Hummus, Microwave
2) Basil Tomato Soup (is this a tuscan thing?):
(Best when you have stale hard bread laying around that you don't want to waste)
Chop 4 garlic cloves into chunks (like the size of rice or bigger).  In a saucepot, heat 2 tbsp olive oil on medium.  Throw in the garlic.  Put a layer of the stale (hopefully not moldy) bread on the bottom.  Toast the bread a little in the pot. If you don't have stale bread, throw a handful of rice in instead (abt 2 tbsp). Then put 1 can of whole tomatoes in ($1 from safeway).  Canned tomatoes are better than produce section tomatoes because they are easier to use and canned when they're the freshest (food hack!).  Put half a can of water in.  When it boils.  Turn the heat to the low setting.  Chop a handful of basil.  Throw it in.  Come back in 40 minutes for something great.  Add salt to taste.
Needs: Can of whole tomatoes, Basil, Garlic, Stale Bread, Olive Oil, a Stove. <comment><USER2> Rtm and I lived on this during Viaweb:

Rice and Beans

     olive oil or butter
     n yellow onions
     3n cloves garlic
     n 12-oz cans Goya white beans
     n cubes Knorr beef bouillon
     n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
     3n teaspoons cumin
     n cups rice, preferably sushi rice

Put rice in rice cooker. Add water as specified on rice package. (Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice.) Turn on rice cooker and forget about it.

Chop onions and fry in oil, over fairly low heat, till glassy. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and a little more fat, and stir. Keep heat low. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then add beans (don't drain the beans), and stir. Throw in the bouillon cube(s), cover, and cook on lowish heat for at least 10 minutes more. Stir vigilantly to avoid sticking.

If I were making it now I'd probably add a little curry powder, include some more vegetables (e.g. chopped peppers), and use brown rice. But that was the original recipe.

The rice cooker is not optional. If you're going to eat a lot of rice and beans, you need a rice cooker.

<comment><USER3> Rice cooker IS optional if you have a microwave. Take a glass bowl - a largish one. Make sure that it has 3n the volume of the rice and water that you put in. Rice will expand 2n. Just to be safe have a 3n bowl. Add water like you regularly add. Put it in the microwave for 25-30 minutes depending on your rice. I live on rice and beans and this is how I make mine. This is a lot less messier than a rice cooker. But I am not sure about the energy considerations. How long on a rice cooker ?

<comment><USER3> Did I say something wrong/unacceptable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at the Frugal Cuisine Blog: <http://frugalcuisine.blogspot.com/>

Here's a quote from its author:

 _Frugal Cuisine began when I was out of work briefly, earlier this year. The basic background strategy is to buy just what I need of the best values in my local grocery stores and markets. I often find creative ways to prepare them on recipe websites and food blogs. Though no longer out of work, I continue to cook frugally since the budget makes me focus on getting healthy things, using what I have on hand, and minimizing waste._

</comment><comment><USER5> All you need to know is right here:

NY Times 101 Simple Meals ready in 10 minutes or Less

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1&ei=5087%0A&em=&en=5516fa355dacec3d&ex=1185336000&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1190321630-+s8XNdon7nG1dKr4Fb4Fmw)

</comment><comment><USER6> Spaghetti all'Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino:

1) Make spaghetti (don't overcook them like lots of americans do)

2) You can use the same pot you cooked them in, once you've dumped them out (less stuff to wash): put some olive oil in it - not much, maybe enough to cover the bottom, but just barely. Be sure to use extra vergine - life's too short for anything else.

3) Crush a clove of garlic with a garlic crusher, or cut it up finely, add in some red pepper (not too much though - it should be spicy, not hot).

4) Mix the spaghetti into the whole thing, until the garlic and peperonci and oil are evenly distributed.

Serve hot, and grate some Parmesan cheese on top. If your startup is successful, buy some real Reggiano Parmeggiano - otherwise, it's going to be too expensive, most likely.

Very quick, simple, and filling, and it tastes pretty good. It's a real recipe from Italy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Despite all the questionable spaghetti we've all whipped up in college, well made spaghetti and meatballs is a true dish.

If any of you Silicon Valley guys have time, try a little joint called Emmy's Spaghetti Shack in SF Mission. It's on Virginia Ave. Eat there all the time, Spaghetti and Meatballs is killer.

<http://sanfrancisco.citysearch.com/profile/11572574/>

<comment><USER7> Emmy's is awesome. If you have more time/money, you should check out their other spot, The Front Porch, which is nearby.

The cornbread is awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Stir fry meat: Cut and Marinade meat (chicken, beef, pork) in soy sauce, corn starch, pepper for about 10 minutes. Add meat into a hot (8-9) wok, and start stirring. Add onions, pepper, mushrooms or any other supporting vegetable for enhanced flavor. Continue stirring over a 8-9 flame for about 10 minutes. Turn everything off, and dump your concoction over rice.

Grilled Chicken: Add spice to both sides of a chicken breast. Different spices I've used are Old Bay, salt & pepper, soy sauce, Spike. Put the meat into a Foreman grill, and cook for about 7 minutes, depending on the thickness of the chicken breast. Serve with noodles or rice.

Stir fry vegetables: Clean and Chop said vegetable. This works for napa, spinach, celery, string beans, zucchini, snap peas, etc. Cook on 6-7 flame. Add salt, oil, chopped garlic, dried shrimp to the wok. Add vegetables. Stir occasionally, and add a bit of water in the beginning to make sure the vegetables do not burn.

If you have two woks, or one wok and one grill, you can cook the meat and vegetables at the same time, and be done and eating in about 20 minutes.

<comment><USER9> For those who are unfamiliar with cooking, you have to use oil when cooking in a wok. Peanut or vegetable oil are best -- they have high smoke points and won't burn in the temperatures required to properly cook in a wok. Start off with a tablespoon or so, and add more as necessary to prevent food from sticking.

Edit: And don't buy a nonstick wok, get one made from carbon steel. It's a bad idea to cook at high temperatures with a nonstick coating, and it won't give you the savory flavor that woks are known for.

<comment><USER8> I use a cast iron wok, and for oils, i use peanut, corn, vegetable in that order of preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "How to Cook Everything" is the best resource for not only recipies but literally how to cook. It starts off with how to make popcorn and each section always includes information on how to buy and cook the ingredients in the recipies. Think of it as learning a programming language you will use for the next 100 years.

[http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/06/03/a-guide-to- eating-...](http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/06/03/a-guide-to-eating-well- without-spending-a-fortune/)

Since we are sharring recpies here is a simple staple I enjoy:

-pasta

-olive oil

-onion

-garlic

-canned diced tomatores

-whatever spices you like

Fry the onion with garlic and some spices, then add the tomatoes and simmer until you want to eat. Meanwhile cook the pasta. Simple, yummy and countless variations with whatever you happen to have around.

</comment><comment><USER11> A good place to start is "The ArsTechnica Cookbook of Bachelor Chow" released a few years ago. Recipes submitted by forum members.

<http://ars.flyingember.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Great Side Dish: Spicy asparagus

1 Pack Asparagus Crushed Cayenne Pepper Salt Pepper EVOO

1) Throw some olive oil on the asparagus 2) Add salt,pepper,and pepper 3) Throw in a frying pan preheated on medium heat 4) Cook until the cayenne starts burning your throat (you'll know what I mean)

I was working on a blog (graduatedTaste.com) for a while until I became swept up in a project. I also found a site that does the same thing (cheapeats.com)

Along these lines, you also have cookingforengineers.com

<comment><AUTHOR> this sounds pretty tasty! thanks for the recipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> o Man. I love this place. I really do. This is a one stop shop to Learn, Teach, Laugh, Cry and more important a place to Fight. Now I am learning how to cook on the budget. Did I say I love you guys? All of you.

</comment><comment><USER14> You get either food or success. Forget about food.

<comment><AUTHOR> gonna frame that and put it on our empty fridge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Val's Chicken Legs:

This tastes great, takes little interactive time to prepare, and stores for at least a week. A cheap and tasty way to cover much of your protein intake or a week.

Ingredients: 4lb chicken thighs or legs, 1 14.5 oz can chicken stock, 4tsp kosher salt, black pepper.

Preheat oven to 375F. Throw chicken in to the baking pan, skin side up. Rub skin with salt and pepper. Pour chicken stock in (should half-cover chicken). Tightly cover the pan with aluminum foil. Back for 1 hour 25 minutes. Remove, put chicken into tupperware, defat the stock and put it together with the chicken. Refrigerate (but serve hot). The dish will remain at prime quality for at least a week in refrigerator.

Total interactive cooking time: 15 mins, no cleanup if you line the pan with foil.

Preferred ingredients: Whole Foods Rosie organic chicken thighs, Shelton's Chicken Broth With Salt and Spices, Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, freshly ground Penzeys Whole Special Extra Bold Indian Black Peppercorns.

</comment><comment><USER16> Visit your local farmer's market. Buy more fruits and vegetables than you think you could ever eat. During the day, when hungry, ingest fruit and / or vegetable as needed to extinguish hunger.

For dinner, reward yourself with whatever other garbage you would have had instead.

<comment><USER9> Terrible advice.

You're not going to get enough fats or protein with a diet like that, and you'll have way too much sugar from all of the fruit.

<comment><USER16> Obviously, hence the "whatever crap" comment. Most of the things we eat in a hurry have plenty of fat, protein and calories, but not nearly enough of the things we ought to be getting from fruits and vegetables.

I'm not suggesting that somebody try to survive _only_ by eating fruits and vegetables. I was suggesting eating them during the day when people would otherwise be eating potato chips and soda.

Speaking of ... as far as sugar overload is concerned, you'd have to eat three or four apples to match the sugar in a single can of cola, which has basically no nutritional value whatsoever.

In the spirit of this thread, they have zero preparation time, are easily accessible (keep them in a desk drawer, or on the desk), and have a lot of nutrients our bodies need. If you get high quality produce, it's also quite delicious.

<comment><USER9> Okay, fruit and veggies for snacking. That's good advice -- I thought you were suggesting that someone should eat that instead of daytime meals. Clearly I was mistaken. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> i just have my mom cook

<comment><USER18> Awesome! There is nothing like mom's cooking. I just wish I had my mom around :(

<comment><USER17> she wanted 10% equity to stick around. i talked her down to 5 though.

<comment><USER19> Smart mom!!! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tuna Ramen

Just make the ramen and add a can of tuna. You can also add a mix of frozen vegetables. (peas, carrots, etc.)

<comment><USER21> Go easy on the tuna; it's high on mercury.

<comment><USER9> Unless you have some sort of preexisting condition, are a newborn, or sickly, there's no reason to concern yourself over the amount of mercury in fish.

<comment><USER16> According to the online calculator, I was in the "acceptable" zone even when I ate a can of tuna virtually every weekday. There are higher levels of mercury in albacore tuna, but generally speaking most people are going to be just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had a lot of hamburger vegetable soup for a while.

Start with hamburger, onions, potatoes, and two or three bay leaves in a crock pot the night before. In the morning, add canned tomatoes, corn, green beans, carrots, and peas. Eat at lunch. If you like, keep refilling with vegetables each night (and hamburger every other night) and you can keep it going for a week or so. (My father apparently would keep it going for months, but I don't know if I'd trust that. :)

Crock Pots are a quick meal's best friend!

</comment><comment><USER23> Cornell Bread:

<http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1538361>

"It was claimed at one time, that, with a multivitamin daily, you could live on it. Try it and you'll seriously contemplate doing so."

Don't believe the hype, but this is delicious bread.

</comment><comment><USER24> Another one would be beans on toast.

Not the hienz variety. Buy nice beans cannelloni, broad or borlotti in a can (look for the one stored in water)

a clove of garlic chopped, some parsley

with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan on medium heat

add the beans, just enough to warm.

Toast 1-2 slices of bread.

(if you want rub some raw garlic on the toast)

serve.

Less than 5 minutes.

Probably cost less than 2 dollar.

</comment><comment><USER25> Celery and pepper sauce taste quite a bit like chicken wings. I'm guessing that a good mix of meat stock and MSG would make them indistinguishable. Marketed correctly to the weight-conscious...

</comment><comment><USER26> Nile spice soup cups: <http://www.nilespice.com/>

These things cost $1 each, taste good and require no preparation - just add hot water.

</comment><comment><USER27> PB & J is ultimate

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh, how I wish someone would make _real_ Bachelor Chow.

</comment><comment><USER29> rock & roll stew

(makes enough for 10-12, you scale it down)

10 packs ramen 2 cans peas 2 cans corn 1/2 small bottle hot sauce

heat, mix, eat. rock & roll.

</comment><comment><USER30> Rockin Soup: 3 cups of water one chopped onion 1tblspn garlic powder 1 stick of pepperoni 1 large rock

boil, eat

</comment><comment><USER31> Kurzweil Shakes. Not kidding. They taste like crap, and they're awesome.

</comment><comment><USER32> Crock pot + tortellini + spaghetti sauce + meat

</comment><comment><USER33> Do they make high calorie nutritious paste yet?

<comment><USER9> You could always buy some Compleat or other tube feeding formula. I can't imagine it would taste good, but it is what you asked for.

[http://www.novartisnutrition.com/us/productDetail?id=91&...](http://www.novartisnutrition.com/us/productDetail?id=91&source=summary)

<comment><USER33> Not bad, but I've learned that when they don't list the price you usually can't afford it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> those recipes sounds great!

and makes me remember some cooking recipes of World of Warcraft! lol</comment>


Detroit fears of losing carmaking to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/09/21/detroit-silicon-valley-auto-industry/16001191/ <comment><USER3> Wow, it is "scary stuff"!

They had the opportunity to help Tesla(or be Tesla), and they made everything on their power to destroy it, remember the GM first electric car. Now it is scary because it survived and it is the future, not them.

This people is frightened by the future so they try to delay it as much as they can.

They are worried about themselves, rent seekers trying not to lose what they have instead of caring about their customers.

In business you have to care(genuinely)for your customers or you are dead. Like dinosaurs.

<comment><USER4> This part:

>Now we have Silicon Valley challenging Detroit's leadership in the auto industry's most promising growth areas — autonomous cars, connected vehicles, eco-friendly powertrains

made me snigger. "Detroit's leadership" \- and this applies to many of the overseas subsidiaries of Detroit's companies also - has been mainly in rent- seeking behaviour for years. Since 1970's the only trend they have kept up with is the move to SUVs, missing just about everything else: downsized engines, turbocharging, diesel, reliability engineering, interior design and of course the electric car.

I had a little glimpse through my job at the inside workings of one of the "Big Three" US carmakers. I got the impression that far too few people working there actually, you know, _liked cars_. The employees were generic dispassionate corporate managers, engineers, accountants etc. They really needed an injection of car enthusiasts.

<comment><USER5> > I got the impression that far too few people working there actually, you > know, liked cars.

These aren't startups. Are most IBM or HP employees so passionate about information technology?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While other cities and regions may poach auto manufacturing jobs and plants from Detroit, the idea that any significant amount of manufacturing will be done in the SV is unlikely, based on real estate prices alone. Not to say that a large part of research and innovation cannot be done here rather than in Detroit.

<comment><USER7> If the Silicon Valley mindset wins, cars will be made by contract manufacturers, not by vertically integrated manufacturers. As others have pointed out, there is a lot of expertise in Detroit. That expertise will have to go obsolete. Self-driving "cars" could mark their obsolesce. A self-driving "car" is going to be nothing like current cars, and 100 new business models will bloom alongside their new forms.

<comment><USER8> Nothing like current cars. Except they'll have wheels, suspensions, door, bodies, propulsion systems, etc. Don't believe that a self driving car changes much beyond who is driving the car

<comment><USER7> So do buses. Busses differ from cars by all these components being significantly different. Self-driving cars will be at least as different.

> _Don 't believe that a self driving car changes much beyond who is driving > the car_

Except everything. Current cars have one occupant a high percentage of the time. That occupant drives the car. Change that and every design parameter changes.

<comment><USER9> > _" Current cars have one occupant a high percentage of the time. That > occupant drives the car. Change that and every design parameter changes."_

I doubt this. The American car (distinct from cars in general) is not only a utilitarian tool but a cultural artifact. For huge portions of the country it is the manifestation of freedom - especially now that we've demolished all of our urban areas in favor of freeways and strip malls. Look at American culture and you'll see that personal car ownership is intrinsically associated with freedom, coming-of-age, and a huge host of cultural values that Americans take very seriously.

If you think making driverless cars is going to suddenly tilt us away from single-occupant SUVs and into little self-driving pods (Minority Report style), IMO you're sorely mistaken. At best we're going to get SUVs without a steering wheel. Cars will not get substantially smaller without regulatory intervention, people will continue to own personal automobiles, and they will still have more seats than are needed 99% of the time.

Driverless cars will be great, but I think you're severely overestimating their impact on car design/ownership/usage patterns. I know it's popular to imagine a society where people stopped owning cars, where cars are always right-sized for the situation, where cars show up on demand and parking lots made obsolete, etc etc, but that's a 1950s Popular Mechanics style of sci-fi pipe dream.

<comment><USER10> It's wrong to talk about "American culture" as though it is a monolithic thing.

For example, more than 50% of NY households don't own a car[1]. It's easy to argue that NY is a special case, but with 8 million people it's a very large special case. The thing is, there are a lot of special cases[2] that aren't as extreme as NY but in aggregate add up.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_New_York_City...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_New_York_City#Mass_transit_use_and_car_ownership)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_h...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Detroit already lost carmaking - manufacturing was outsourced outside the city long ago. Now all that is left are a bunch of offices. So yeah, they are at risk, especially so because they have failed to innovate from their offices.

<comment><USER5> > Detroit already lost carmaking - manufacturing was outsourced outside the > city long ago. Now all that is left are a bunch of offices. So yeah, they > are at risk, especially so because they have failed to innovate from their > offices.

Detroit may not be as dominant as it once was, but it is the center of the American car industry. There are many manufacturing plants for cars as well as for components, as well as major R&D facilities, etc. Also, there are the world headquarters of GM, Ford, Chrysler (now a Fiat division, but I think still hq'd in Detroit), major suppliers (which are Fortune 500 companies themselves, I believe), as well as the US headquarters of some foreign manufacturers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> this article is dumb, but what do you expect from usa today? i work and live in the detroit area, and have lived here most of my life (also lived in silicon valley, fwiw). there's no doubt there's some great innovation being done on the west coast, and these local guys could use a kick in the pants - <USER2> literal kick in the pants (i mean i would love to kick some of them...i worked for some of these pricks). but it takes a good deal more than some infotainment radios, and interesting r&d project to displace a major sector of the economy. it's much harder than you think. as the article already points out -- manufacturing is long gone. competition is good -- viva competition.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes. It's that "Polaroid in 1998" moment for them.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd rather they lose it to Silicon Valley than Shanghai or Tokyo.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with the people in those places?

<comment><USER16> I would also rather those jobs, companies, and opportunities stay in America and benefit the American economy, the one that I also contribute to and benefit from. Is it wrong to want that? I don't think so.

<comment><USER17> I think it mis-understands money. When you buy something, it's like taking a drop of ink and putting it in a swimming pool - the money diffuses completely.

You can look only as far as stockholders to see how diverse a corporation's ownership is, or you can take the next step and see how it changes hands at three or four levels. You'd be surprised.

<comment><USER14> There are a LOT of middle-class jobs that go along with a company the size of an auto manufacturer. From middle management to accounting to HR. I'd rather those jobs be in the US than somewhere else, given they're the lifeblood of almost all economies.

The money dispersal you speak of goes to things like parts - most of which don't originate from the US. Which is EXACTLY why we need corporate headquarters here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "The future of the car is in Silicon Valley," a vice president of the San > Francisco-based Bay Area Council Economic Institute boldly predicted

I think I'll go ahead and challenge the boldness of making that prediction when that's your job title. He might end up being wrong, but even if, for instance, California law prohibits all automobiles or pictures of automobiles within 100 miles of SF for any use, no one would really blame him (and I think it's almost certain he won't be _that_ wrong).

</comment><comment><USER19> People have been pitching electric cars in Detroit for a long time. The Big Three aborted every opportunity.

<comment><USER20> Huh? Ever hear of the Chevy Volt?

<comment><USER19> Yes. It was introduced in 2010, also the popular EV1 from the 1990's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guess they forgot about Tennessee.

It's really anywhere that's better than Detroit.

I vaguely remember reading that $3000 of the cost or producing a car in Detroit went to the union (pensions I believe) due to agreements made in the 60's to keep salaries down. That's a huge competitive disadvantage.

<comment><USER5> > I vaguely remember reading that $3000 of the cost or producing a car in > Detroit went to the union (pensions I believe) due to agreements made in the > 60's to keep salaries down. That's a huge competitive disadvantage.

It's a point that is often made, but a few considerations:

1) How much do labor costs impact overall profitability?

2) There may be advantages to paying workers well in salary and benefits.

3) You weren't addressing this aspect, but certainly there are advantages to the workers, who I have no reason to be less sympathetic with than management, and in some ways to society.

<comment><USER21> > 1) How much do labor costs impact overall profitability?

Well in this case a lot. Competitors were able to produce better quality cars at the same price point, since they didn't have approximately $3000 in extra overhead.

> 2) There may be advantages to paying workers well in salary and benefits.

There are advantages and there are good examples for this, but it depends on the industry, the culture, the location as well and a lot of other factors.

> 3) You weren't addressing this aspect, but certainly there are advantages to > the workers, who I have no reason to be less sympathetic with than > management, and in some ways to society.

Then why did Detroit fail?

<comment><USER5> >> 1) How much do labor costs impact overall profitability?

> Well in this case a lot. Competitors were able to produce better quality > cars at the same price point, since they didn't have approximately $3000 in > extra overhead.

Many factors determine quality and costs. Nothing you say indicates that labor was a decisive or major factor. For example, people assume much manufacturing is in China due to labor costs, but many businesses will tell you it's because of manufacturing capabilities and resources, and labor costs are a minor factor.

>> 3) You weren't addressing this aspect, but certainly there are advantages to the workers, who I have no reason to be less sympathetic with than management, and in some ways to society.

> Then why did Detroit fail?

I don't know what exactly you mean by 'fail', or if you mean the city or the car industry. As far as the city 'failing', structural racism played a big role as did the related flight of the tax base to the suburbs, which are doing well. A race to the bottom for workers' welfare didn't help, as factories moved to non-union locations.

For the industry, from what I know bad management was a major contributor, as well as poor engineering. I think labor was too.

<comment><USER21> > Many factors determine quality and costs. Nothing you say indicates that > labor was a decisive or major factor.

When labor costs adds an extra $3000 to your own costs that your competitors don't have to deal with, how is this not a major factor in both quality and costs (either lower quality to meet price points, raise the price, or a mix of both)?

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9864323...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98643230)

[http://archive.fortune.com/2007/01/26/news/companies/plugged...](http://archive.fortune.com/2007/01/26/news/companies/pluggedin_taylor_ford.fortune/index.htm)

Since we're on the subject, you haven't provided much meat to your argument either: being that labor was a major factor in US car companies' competitive disadvantage.

> For example, people assume much manufacturing is in China due to labor costs

Low cost, skilled labor was initially one of the major reasons how Chinese manufacturing became dominant.

> but many businesses will tell you it's because of manufacturing capabilities > and resources

It's only recently that Chinese manufacturing capabilities got better and it was due to rising labor costs.

As for natural resources, it is not a Chinese competitive advantage. That's why they're very keen on striking a lot of agreements with foreign countries for access to natural resources.

> I don't know what exactly you mean by 'fail', or if you mean the city or the > car industry.

I meant the car industry.

> For the industry, from what I know bad management was a major contributor, > as well as poor engineering.

Yes to be specific for bad management, it was short sightedness that led management to offer rich pensions in return for lower salaries in 60's. This in turn led to bad quality. How? When you have an extra $3000 of extra costs from pensions for a product that your Japanese competitors don't have, what does management do when they want to be competitive price wise? They lower quality of parts and materials, which led to poorer overall reliability and quality of the entire vehicle. Detroit engineering was not 'poor'; they just had to work at a disadvantage. (A lot of those engineers now work for Telsa and other non-Detroit companies.)

> I think labor was too.

I'm confused. I thought your main argument was that labor wasn't a factor?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple Budgeting - <AUTHOR> https://putz.io <comment><USER2> A little off-topic, but really wondering; am i the only one annoyed by the fact that 9 out of 10 apps these days are:

1\. cloud based/harvesting as much data as possible and/or 2\. subscriptions

I prefer apps like for example Omnifocus [1], that give you:

1\. the ability to client-side encrypt your data so your data won't be sold/misused, and 2\. instead of making profit of selling your data, simply let you pay a larger amount upfront for it instead. Thus, you also know exactly what features you're paying for - as opposed to subscriptions...

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnifocus-3/id1346190318?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnifocus-3/id1346190318?mt=8)

<comment><USER3> Nobody wants to pay upfront. This is antithetical to what customers prefer.

<comment><USER4> You also pay upfront for subscriptions, although there's usually a trial _which is also a thing with non-subscription apps_.

<comment><USER5> You often pay much less upfront for a subscription than you do e.g. purchasing an app "full price".

You might pay more over the lifetime of your subscription than you would paying full price for something, but in terms of your parent's comment, that is why a subscription is seen as preferred over paying for something upfront.

For example, $7/mo is a lot more palatable than buying some software for $80, especially when you're in the stage of "I don't know if I'll use this or not".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really cool! I'm also big into playing around with budget apps and seeing what works.

Few suggestions I have from playing around with it:

1\. It's not clear when I click the "add a budget" what it's for. There's the top-level "November 1-15" type of budget and then those budgets have categories, but the terminology could maybe use some work here. The term "budget" to me is usually synonymous with how you're using "categories" \- e.g. we have a grocery budget.

2\. I wasn't really expecting the ellipsis button to be a delete. I usually expect it to be like a context menu. In general it seems like the ellipsis button does different things in different locations, which is a bit of a bad pattern IMO.

3\. There's a few spelling errors, e.g. "ammount" in the "add a budget" overlay

4\. It's a bit weird that when you start a new budget it's immediately in the red (color-wise, at least). I feel like $0.00 left to spend should still be in the black.

5\. "Track Spending" is only available for the first budget, but you can imagine that I might make next week's budget before this week is over, so it's a bit annoying that there's no "Track Spending" button on the previous budgets. I realize you can still click into the old budget, but still.

6\. There's no way to edit expenses in the budget if I mistakenly add a wrong number, or if there is it's very unclear to me.

7\. Negative numbers aren't allowed but you can imagine that this would be pretty useful for things like rebates or if I get a refund on something (though this is pretty related to the last item).

Anyway, love the idea for sure! Short-term budgets are pretty helpful and not something that Mint really provides, so excellent idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> wgerard, you rule, Thanks for the detailed feedback! I fixed a few things this morning, mainly being able to delete expenses and typos for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing.

The homepage doesn't provide enough information to convince the user to register.

I saw a registration form without knowing anything about the service/app/features/prices/benefits.

<comment><USER8> Same here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems great, but growing up among Yiddish speakers, this word has a very different connotation. Just worth being aware of.

<comment><USER10> Not just yiddish, it's also common slang in many parts of the US to mean a very stupid or incompetent person. So yeah, terrible branding IMHO

<comment><USER11> It's a common swear word in Brazil too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Suggestions:

\- a default set of categories would be useful

\- I don't always add expenses immediately, so being able to change the date would useful.

\- the ... in the overview window prompts you to delete a budget! seems dangerous

\- ditto on another comment, there's no way to edit an expense.

\- It might be interesting to setup Income and then allocate budgets based on % of income to automatically calculate budget targets.

Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER13> What percentage of people have the discipline to use this app, but lack financial discipline?

Website: "You want new clothes, an iced coffee, but does it fit your budget?"

Oh the irony if the user were to get ads for new clothes and iced coffee...

<comment><USER14> Extra points if you spill that coffee on your new clothes

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have an addiction to trying out budgeting apps the moment I find a new one. It's like the search for the Holy Grail or something. I know that an app by itself isn't going to magically make budgeting a success, instead I see these them as sort of a financial sidekick, something that helps me out get out of my own way just enough so we can save the day (literally ).

The description is accurate. Putz is the simplest of budget trackers. Categories / Expenses and a progress bar. Nice. Fun to play with but won't unseat my current toolset.

<comment><USER16> What's your current toolset?

<comment><USER15> Combination spreadsheet and YNAB.

<comment><USER14> > Combination spreadsheet

I'm curious about that, never heard of it. Can you elaborate or if you have a spreadsheet to share, my address is email@example.com (yes, I'm working on a household budget app)

How do you measure "success" in your budgeting? Is it a short-term monthly basis or a longer one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A simple Privacy Policy would be appreciated, since this counts as a financial application for many.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've gone through a few applications/services like this - YNAB, Mint, and a handful of Mac App Store applications that tried to accomplish more or less the same thing. They all requested some sort of subscription or hit me with ads every chance they got. Auto-import features usually end up being lack- luster for me as well, forcing me to log in every time or something along those lines.

I've come to realize that for the gainfully employed, above-average computer user, Excel/Numbers/LibreOffce (but mostly Excel because of PivotTables) is probably the way to go for a few reasons:

\- You're looking for a post-mortem/retrospective on your spending as a way to adjust habits accordingly, not a way to pay off huge debts (YNAB is actually quite good for this latter part, but that's not what I'm looking to do)

\- You don't want some program's buggy workflows getting in your way when the data is /right there/ and basically just a table of CSV values

\- You want custom reports, charts, and other things

\- It's just really not that hard. Any bank will allow you to export financial data in CSV or a similar format.

I just export my data every month and do a post-mortem. Easy enough. No extra cost.

<comment><USER19> Are you the primary spender in your household or is it a team effort? I've found that what helps me may not help her due to different upbringings and mindsets about money.

I agree with you that the CSV the primary valuable artifact. Most of the pie charts and such don't add any value. The real opportunity to improve lies in the thought process I face at each individual spending decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let me be frank here: The app is too simple, unpolished and I don't think you've used it for yourself long enough. Here's my list of complaints, please know that I'm working on a similar app with a lot more features:

* no way to copy a budget (it's the same categories every month!) * colour scheme isn't that great (lack of contrast, but that might be me) * only $, no € or ¥. currency is a text-field! * no date on the stuff I spent, sure I could use the Note field but it's cool enough * can't "end" a budget prematurely. sure, there's "custom" but no big phat arrow pointing me at the same default which is "1st of this month to the end of this month". * can't do negative amounts. yes, I'd like to do that * having upcoming or past budgets feels weird, the blue (why blue?) "Track spending" button only shows for the oldest one. * no reports at all

</comment><comment><USER20> Expense tracking seems to be a trend recently! I myself use HelloExpense [1] (just a happy user) and I recently developed a small tool to analyse my expenses. It handles a simple csv format (from the hello expense export, but could be generalised). I thought I might share it in this thread. If people are interested, I put a demo at [https://expenses- analysis.herokuapp.com/](https://expenses-analysis.herokuapp.com/)

About your website: I would have liked to get info without registering. The explanation is short, and the only links are to sign up or sign in.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloexpen...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloexpense&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of [https://www.simple.com/features/expenses](https://www.simple.com/features/expenses)

<comment><USER22> I recently started using this and love it. It may sound silly, but I've found that the most effective way to stick to my budget is using a checking account for expenses that is separate from my direct-deposit account. Simple tells you how much money you have left (that isn't earmarked for something else), and that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good job on shipping something but I have to say that this space is soon going to be owned by the banking services who have the data on the category of your spending. And most importantly, requires no data input from myself.

Revolut already does it, so does my bank.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great name.</comment>


How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611806/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/ <comment><USER2> This is a great piece of writing, I'm still digesting it!</comment>


Reliance Jio Plans changed Check how much it will cost you - <AUTHOR> https://www.emitpost.com/tech/reliance-jio-plans-changed-check-how-much-it-will-cost-you-8562.html <comment><USER2> Ya i think its good</comment>