How the Powerball rules were tweaked to make the game an even bigger ripoff - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-powerball-rules-were-tweaked-20160112-column.html <comment><USER2> I found this statistic to be the most interesting: "In 1999, researchers at Duke University reported that American households spent an average of $162 per year on lottery tickets, but low-income households spent $289 and those with less than $10,000 in income spent $597. Higher lottery purchases also were associated with lower educational attainment and ethnic minorities."

I didn't find the fact that poorer people were more likely to play surprising but just how much more. Nor would I have guessed that the overall average was anywhere near $162 a year. I don't think I've spend that much on the lottery in my 20+ years of being old enough to play the lottery.

<comment><USER3> Part of it could be explained by how the lotteries are marketed. For example, in the south side of Chicago (not exactly known for its manicured lawns and gated communities) there was a billboard advertising the lottery: "Your ticket to easy street." As more anecdotal data, it has been my observation (without actually recording my finds in an organized manner) that one will see considerably more lottery advertisements in low-income neighborhoods than in more wealthy neighborhoods.

I'm not saying that advertising is _the_ explanation, but I'd be surprised to find that it had no bearing at all. I also kind of wish that state governments would, well, cut it out.

<comment><USER4> I think that advertising is more likely an effect rather than a cause. The lottery knows their market.

<comment><USER5> It's probably a symbiotic relationship to some degree.

<comment><USER6> To a degree. But it would be silly to think Lotto would avoid marketing to a higher income demographic if they thought there was a chance they could get the same return from it. (Especially since the higher income demographic would have more money to spend).

<comment><USER7> But marketing to a higher income demographic is considerably more expensive (per eyeball/impression). High income demographics are targeted with ads for high-margin goods (cars, vacations, fashion goods), which have 3- to 5- digit margins that can be used to advertise them, so there is more competition to target ads towards wealthier people.

<comment><USER8> The higher income demo would rather gamble on Wall St, where the odds are much better.

Sometimes they fund startups and hunt for unicorns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it puzzling that the reaction to the lottery here on HN and among many tech people I know is very different to say... fantasy sports betting.

With sports betting, not only do you have the prospect of wasting lots of time, but you end up getting hooked to obsessive watching of ESPN and tracking player stats, wasting lots of time. With lotto, I drop $2 and I'm done.

Yet the consensus seems to be the the millions of people buying lotto tickets are all rubes, but the folks flouting the law and running bookmaking operations on the internet are disrupting staid government regulation?

<comment><USER10> With the lottery, you are expected to lose. I would the lottery in the same box as slots, blackjack, and other games where you play against the house. The house will always win. They spend a lot of money making sure the odds are in their favor.

Fantasy sports is more like poker. Yes, it is a game of chance, but it is primarily a game of skill. Maybe most people don't have enough skill to make a difference, but given enough time, it can be acquired and you can have +EV.

Also, in poker and fantasy sports, you don't play against the house. They just take their cut, and you play against other people.

Note, I'm excluding blackjack from skill-based mainly because you are playing against the house, so its by their rules, and if you start winning, they'll kick you out.

<comment><USER11> Recent article posted here in HN shows that fantasy sports are _not_ a game of skill, since a very few people win all the money (millions) and everybody else loses. Because those few have written software to game the leagues. So essentially just a money pit.

<comment><USER10> What?

If very few people win all the money, it is most definitely a game of skill and not a game of chance,

<comment><USER9> It's a zero sum game, so the applicability of your skill is relative to the other players. The average bettor understands the mechanics of the bet and has an intuitive understanding of what he is betting on. The 25th percentile bettor is clueless or worse (I like green, go Jets!) and is operating a reverse ATM.

Look at horse racing. At an off-season harness track where the purse is low and horses all suck, the professional handicapper loses a lot of his edge, as you never know when one horse is going to have a great day.

At the Belmont/Preakness/Travers/Kentucky Derby, a pro has a huge edge, as they generally can call the winner with precision -- the pros are betting on the finishing order via exacta bets. The crowd tries to picks the winning horse, and in the event of a win, makes a lousy $0.50 on a $2 bet :)

<comment><USER12> It's negative-sum, because of the rake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> (all of this is based on an idea from another poster in a different thread, which I cannot find at the moment)

odds of winning: 1 in 292,200,000 (approx)

miles between LA and NYC: 2,800 (approx)

feet in a mile: 5,280

inches in a foot: 12

US dimes in an inch: 1.4 (approx)

2800 miles * 5280 feet * 12 inches * 1.4 dimes = 248,371,200 "dimes" between LA and NYC

Summary:

Assume that someone drove from LA to NYC at stopped at any point of their choosing along the way and threw a dime onto the ground. Starting from LA you drive the same route, you have better odds of stopping your car at the exact spot that that person dropped their dime than you do of winning this Jackpot.

With all the usual caveats about not being evenly distributed. I find this a little easier to explain to people, such that they can reasonably understand that it's not just "unlikely". Stuff like 10 times as likely to be hit by a meteorite or other super rare events just doesn't seem to get the point across as well. It's also easier to break it down into smaller pieces (throw dimes on the ground and have people try to pick the right one, guess a mile marker just in Colorado, etc)

<comment><USER14> People go to casino's every day and for every winner there is a looser, and in the middle the house takes a cut. The Lottery is no different except that the pot is a little larger as in the case of Powerball. It is entertainment pure and simple, so if someone spends $200 per year entertaining themselves, I can't see a problem with it. The -odds- are that someone is going to win, and if you don't play at all, it is impossible to win.

<comment><USER13> I'm all for people having fun. I'm also all for people really understanding their odds. In my experience, 'pick a dime' works better than 'struck by a meteorite' in the limited time I've used the example. It seems that people around me have a harder time grasping the wide gulf between abstract stuff like "struck by lightning" vs "10 times as likely to be struck by a meteorite", and something they can measure/visualize and break down in to pieces.

The driving example is exactly the same as saying "put 250M dimes in a big pot, then pick the exact one randomly". However, restating the problem, in a way that breaks down naturally into individual units that people can grasp, can help prevent it from becoming too abstract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For the curious, at the current jackpot level, with a cash lump sum payout of $930 million, the expected average return on a $2 ticket is $3.50.

Unfortunately, that's before tax. After tax (45% for estimation purposes, this will vary by state) it's $1.93. After taxes, the lump sum payout would need to be around $970 million for it to average a $2 payout on a $2 ticket.

This doesn't include the possibility of you splitting the money with another winner, but it also doesn't include the additional value of the money if you invested it wisely, etc.

<comment><USER16> According to [1] the expected average return on a $2 ticket is $1.34. That's accounting for the almost certain chance you'll have to share the prize, the lump sum payout and taxes.

1: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/billion-dollar- powerball...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/billion-dollar-powerball- lottery/)

<comment><USER17> > the almost certain chance you'll have to share the prize

What are you basing that on? I don't know what you mean by "almost certain", but to me that phrase means at least 90%, and the chance of two people hitting the powerball jackpot are substantially less.

<comment><USER18> During the last drawing they estimate that 75% of all possible numbers were chosen. This time there will be even more tickets sold and the possibility of doubling up is probably going to be higher than ever.

<comment><USER19> Currently, they're projecting 85% of all combinations will have been purchased for this upcoming drawing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Saying the game is a bigger ripoff after odds change without discussing changes to expected values and then going on to say:

> people don't understand odds

Is quite ironic.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a kid in the 80s I wrote a program in Basic to randomly pick lottery numbers and print them as fast as it could and stop when it matched a predefined number.

Watching the program spin for hours disabused me of any notion that the lottery could be won. It was a good way to get a feel for the ridiculous odds involved and to this day I've never felt tempted to play the lottery.

<comment><USER22> I also like comparisons to the chances of other things happening as a way to get a feel for the odds, for example you're (apparently) more likely to be killed by a vending machine (1 in 112,000,000), become US president (1 in 10,000,000), or become an astronaut (1 in 12,000,000), than win the powerball.

Of course, just because your program never found the right numbers, doesn't mean it couldn't. People do win...

<comment><USER23> I'm curious about some of those numbers. In particular, it seems unlikely that one is more likely to become US President than an astronaut given that we have an order of magnitude more astronauts than presidents. Are the populations different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Dec. 23, 2015: A prominent lottery official who has run the Powerball game since its inception was quietly removed from his 28-year post leading the Multi-State Lottery Association after a jackpot-fixing scandal inside his organization had spread, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press."

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/63f14f1932164832a7f571d0c1b4e...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/63f14f1932164832a7f571d0c1b4e967/apnewsbreak- key-lottery-leader-out-amid-jackpot-fixing-case)

Certainly interesting timing.

<comment><USER11> Wow - they're handling this with kid gloves. No FBI escorting him handcuffed from the building. Just an exit interview about "how they could improve security". He stole millions!

<comment><USER25> That's because the person fired has not been charged with a crime. Nor does it seem anyone even suspects him of a crime. Strutt, who this article is about, was the executive director of the lottery. Tipton, the security director, has been _convicted_ of fraud. Tipton stole millions. There seems to be no evidence that Strutt stole anything. (If there was, I assume they would have also charged him.)

This is a typical "heads will roll" situation. Strutt was the leader, a serious crime happened during his watch, and he's being replaced because of it.

<comment><USER11> Ok I see that now. But I wouldn't be so sure _nobody_ suspects him of a crime. His good working buddy for years suddenly has millions of dollars, and he's clueless?

<comment><USER25> I have no idea what people suspect, but I'm confident in saying the prosecutors don't have enough _evidence_. I also don't know if Tipton is "his good working buddy for years". There are other possible narratives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Experts aren 't entirely sure why "those who can least afford it play the most," as German sociologists asked in a 2013 paper. The pessimistic, and perhaps condescending, view is that the poor and less-educated don't have the intellectual gifts to appraise the odds, but middle-class and rich people play the lottery too._

This perspective is deeply flawed. If humans obeyed a risk adjusted rate of return strategy and rationally discounted for the future, human behavior across the board would be profoundly different. The lottery is only one example of many.

Any portfolio of early stage startups is destined to perform worse than the S&P500, as is any portfolio of series A startups. As is any portfolio of lottery tickets... but there is always that winning ticket, that Facebook, that Google.

There have been very few big homerun startups. The rest would fail to lift the average above the S&P.

In an environment where the future seems fairly certain (poverty, affluence, whatever) there is lots to be gained by rolling the dice and experiencing a bit of risk. Lotto is less fun than a startup, but it scratches the same itch. It lets you ride the emotional roller coaster and imagine the greatness that will one day be yours.

Startups are a superior version of lotto because you get to be the CEO or the CTO and someone invests their money to help you build a team and get traction, etc. So your bet with destiny is being underwritten by others. You get advisors, board members, and metrics, and essentially spread the thrill of the tumbling balls across however long your runway lasts. The superiority of startups is why young affluent people do them, and why poor people play lotto.

The urge to take on risk is what got humans onto ships, rockets, and bathyspheres. It's the unique human ability to reason probabilistically and take a leap, to undertake a calculated risk, and to engage in an exciting dance with destiny.

For centuries and in pre-enlightenment times, people believed that all of life was fated and that one's lot was destined from birth.

When we appreciate the emotional thrill of risk we start to see that it's part of the glorious awakening of the human sprit birthed in the enlightenment. When a dejected person puts his last quarter into a slot machine, we are not seeing hopelessness, we are seeing hope in its most unfettered form. Even if he loses that person will pick himself up and dust off and be ready to try again, for fate is on his side. This stands in stark contrast with the previous worldview in which the quarter would be saved and a prayer offered up, which has far smaller odds of success than the slot machine.

<comment><USER27> I think it's more that if your life really sucks you are a lot more likely to try to escape from it (even if the odds of it happening are pretty low), if you have a comfortable middle class lifestyle you can debate pros/cons and odds.

If you are on fire and there are a bunch of extinguishers for sale but only one of them works, you are not going to debate the price/odds, you are going to buy as many as you can afford to

<comment><USER18> I think the cause and effect are reversed. Having destructive financial habits are going to cause you to have "life that sucks." Whether it's buying too many lotto tickets, smoking, driving buzzed drunk on a regular basis, ect.

I grew up in low class area/family and saw that there is a pretty clear difference between a lower class and middle class mindset.

<comment><USER28> I think it's reasonable to argue that it's less of an either/or and more of a self-defeating cycle.

Lower class life -> desire to escape -> worse habits -> lower class life

and so on.

<comment><USER29> I think it has more to do with society being class segregated, and the habits that could raise your class (or raise your chances of getting out anyways) are not the social norms in the lower classes.

Then desire to escape step isn't even necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Counterpoint: The true value of a lotto ticket is dreaming about hitting the jackpot. Bigger, less winnable jackpots increase the dream-value of the tickets.

<comment><USER31> This is true, for many people playing the lottery is a means to attach a nonzero probability (no matter how small) to a fantasy.

For myself, I'm uncertain how much of a fantasy it would really be to suddenly hold ~$1B (though I obviously wouldn't hesitate to try..). But have you ever played a video game, then discover an exploit or cheat code to give you everything you want, then realize how boring and pointless it became relatively soon afterwards?

Part of me wonders if shuffling all the way across Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the real world would have the same psychological effect. I think we crave a certain comfortable level of struggle.

<comment><USER32> There is some research on this. Assuming you make ~75+k winning the lottery would probably have minimal impact on your long term happiness. Sure, work is a non issue, but you get a whole new set of concerns.

<comment><USER33> I think that's probably true for most people, but not a given.

`Mo Money Mo Problems` is true if you use your money to buy things, celebrity, social/political status. It's not true if you start an incubator with no expected returns, start a charity, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Never tell me the odds!" -Han Solo

<comment><USER35> Odds are you're about 10x more likely to die while driving to buy the ticket than you are of picking a winning one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> They did this so that the lottery overall was less of a regressive tax on the poor. It's not a rip-off at all, it's actually much fairer. We desperately need something similar with our tax code as a whole.

<comment><USER37> What do you mean?

<comment><USER38> My guess is that as the pot increases people of a higher income get interested. I can see an argument that if the pot increases from $1M to $10M in likelihood of someone that makes $100k/y buys a ticket will increase by more than 10 times while someone that makes $10k/y wont. Part of it is the hype and part the impact to your life being large enough to override reason.

It would be interesting to see if there are any studies that show that trend and where it cuts off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How on earth have they arrived at odds which aren't an integer result for a lottery? [http://www.trbimg.com/img-56954025/turbine/la-fi-mh- powerbal...](http://www.trbimg.com/img-56954025/turbine/la-fi-mh-powerball- rules-were-tweaked-20160112-002/750/750x422)

<comment><USER40> Not only do you have match n numbers, you must also not match n+1, n+2, etc., otherwise you win a different prize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > _Experts aren 't entirely sure why "those who can least afford it play the > most,_

Is this that irrational?

With 1000 trials, probability of winning at least one time is 3*10^-6 which is low.

But what are the odds of becoming a billionaire given that your annual income is below $10,000?

<comment><USER42> Assuming that one's goal is to become a billionaire, _maybe_ Powerball is rational for people with low incomes. But is that a rational goal to have? Wouldn't a person be better off prioritizing more modest improvements to one's finances through other strategies with a high probability of success?

That being said, not everything in life must be rational. If there are people out there who get a lot out of dreaming of becoming a billionaire and playing Powerball, I have no problem with it.

But I _do_ have a problem with governments praying on these aspirations to raise money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> By the way, as of Wednesday morning, Powerball reports "only" 85% of all number combinations have been sold.

So still a 15% chance no-one wins.

</comment><comment><USER44> I spent almost 300k in that simulator and only won ~7k. I thought I'd hit big. I still put up 2 bucks for tonight though :(

Anyway, the cheeky FAQ on the PowerBall site is worth money down the drain [http://www.powerball.com/pb_contact.asp#odds](http://www.powerball.com/pb_contact.asp#odds)

</comment><comment><USER45> Off-topic question:

Here's a past (yesterday's) submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10891465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10891465)

Linked URLs are identical, so how did it pass the 'previously submitted' filter?

</comment><comment><USER46> This is interesting because the UK lottery made a very similar change, with the same effect - higher odds of winning any prize, lower odds of winning. They also doubled the entry price to £2.

They changed the numbers to choose from 1-49 to 1-59, and added a prize for matching any 2 (apparently 1 in 10.3 odds) of a free lucky dip (ie another play).

It'd be interesting to know the distribution of people's picks now - I know that my parents use the same numbers they always have, all in the 1-49 range. Obviously lucky dips are more fair, I'm not sure which is more common though.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's mentioned that some states were looking at dropping Powerball because the jackpots were won _too_ often and didn't grow big enough to generate excitement. Maybe this points to the fact that people are playing -- and paying -- for the excitement? After all, if your goal was to actually win the jackpot, it seems like you'd be one of the ones playing every week. But there obviously weren't enough of those people to keep the game going.

</comment><comment><USER48> There will likely be a winner, or multiple winners today. If not, it'll be +EV to play in the next drawing, and might be already.

It's $2 * 292M, $584M minimum payout, for the odds to be in your favor. Expected payout is now up to $930 * (1 - 0.395), so $562M after federal taxes. Depends on state taxes, and if the estimate is a little low, only about $20M short this morning.

<comment><USER49> It's never positive EV, once you account for taxes and the odds of multiple winners.

It may, of course, have positive utility.

<comment><USER48> Ah, the split. Yeah. seems like the jackpot went up $400M, so i'll guess around that many tickets sold. each number has been sold around 1.4 times, blowing the odds.

<comment><USER50> The ticket price is $2, so there's more room than you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If someone finally wins, the best part will be a temporary moratorium on people who think themselves clever telling me how I won't win. Yes, the odds are clearly published and I can do basic math, but I bought a few tickets anyway. Now shut up about it. Even NPR isn't immune, as evidenced while I listened on the ride to work yesterday. YES, I KNOW!

</comment><comment><USER51> So why didn't they decrease the odds even further? The change of a factor of two or so doesn't seem like much and I don't see a real downside until it actually gets to the point where everyone 'knows' that winning is actually impossible since no one does it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Larger jackpots will sell more tickets. When half the country is buying tickets for a historic jackpot, Powerball (and therefore the States) will take in much more money than if this same jackpot was split over several drawings.

</comment><comment><USER53> Personally, I see the lottery as an opt-in tax on hope geared towards the poor.

<comment><USER54> I've always thought of it as a tax on people who are bad at math.</comment></comment>


New Tesla battery could power your home, and maybe the electric grid too - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/12/this-new-tesla-battery-will-power-your-home-and-maybe-the-electric-grid-too/ <comment><USER2> I have been speaking with Solar City's commercial division about doing large grid-tied solar projects with Tesla batteries in one of USA largest cities and have $100M in projects under development.

These batteries aren't going to power your home at night, nor should they as electricity rates at night are dirt cheap (comparatively) when people aren't at work, in factories and in bed sleeping.

These batteries are going to be performing grid marketplace arbitrage and some governments and utilities are providing amazing incentives to do so. (Currently the incentives require the batteries to be tied to solar.)

There are two pieces of your electricity bill (I'm simplifying here) 1) the electricity charge (EC) and 2) the transmission charge (TC). The EC is calculated by how many kWh you use during each (peak/off-peak) period of the day and the TC is calculated by your max grid demand during your largest 15 minutes for the month.

Tesla Batteries are not just about the batteries, the system calculates how to remove kWh demand from peak hours by pulling power from batteries and then recharging during off-peak hours. This covers the EC cost reduction.

To reduce TC costs the system calculates your peak load over the given month and tries to turn it from a "mountain range" (with many peaks) to a "platou". You pay your TC for the tallest mountain for the month. At first the system doesn't know that much about your usage profile and will just focus on the largest peak demand 15 minute intervals. Then over time it will learn more about your usage patterns and slowly platou your grid demand.

At the end of the day it is going to be much more cost effective and efficient to have a distributed grid with thousands of solar arrays and batteries than build out large billion dollar gas fired turbines or even wind turbines.

<comment><USER3> >> should they as electricity rates at night are dirt cheap

I dont know where you are but my electric rate is the same night or not... I pay the exact same rate 24/7

I do not have demand based pricing which is reserved for business customers or persons consuming a crap load more power than I.

>>At the end of the day

the Power Companies are doing their level best to penalize home use Solar, they want to charge home owners through the nose if they "sell" power back to the grid eliminating any costs savings and in come cases making a roof top solar project more expensive than just buy power from the mafia err power companies.

Distributed non-grid power should be the goal, Grid power needs to be phased out.

<comment><USER4> A lot of UK homes have storage heaters that are powered at a cheaper rate at night on an off-peak circuit.

<comment><USER5> I never got the point of storage heaters. They're completely useless in the evening when you want heating. Much of the heat escapes when they're on overnight (while in bed so little need for it) and the rest during the day while you're at work.

<comment><USER6> The secret is good insulation and thermal design.

If the house temperature doesn't fluctuate wildly day to night, your scenario doesn't apply.

Plus you need a lot less heating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea of having solar cells that charge up a bank of batteries that could power my house at night. I was recently talking to a Solar City rep and they are thinking along those lines.

I wonder if this would be a good time to define a standard low voltage plug for house hold use. An awful lot of modern electrical devices don't need 110VAC and end up wasting a lot of power converting AC to DC. I've seen replacements for wall sockets that combine a single AC socket with a few USB power ports. That's convenient, but USB wasn't designed as a power plug, it's just been co-opted for it. A well designed system of 24VDC or 48VDC would be a nice thing to have. Bonus points if it's a world standard. I'd also like a pony.

<comment><USER8> Curious... I live in suburbia where putting solar panels on one's domicile would most likely be met with an order to remove or fines.

I had an experimental panel in my backyard to provide power to a work shop shed. The shed was there when I purchased the property & house. About 6 months after planting a pole in the ground, behind the shed, but in view to my neighbors garnered a letter from the township where I live that basically said to remove it for being an eye sore.

Has anyone else ran into this problem?

<comment><USER9> >Has anyone else ran into this problem?

So many people did that this very practice is now banned in the state of California.

<comment><USER10> Florida as well. Their state law specifically prohibits HOAs from disallowing solar panel installation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are already widespread programs where utilities pay customers a rebate in exchange for remotely turning off their A/C compressors at the peak of a heat wave in order to chop the top off consumption spikes. Paying high- consumption commercial customers to turn off entirely for a few hours to avoid spinning up another generation plant happens too.

It's not too far-fetched to imagine a rebate program on home battery systems if the utility got the same remote control power to disconnect homes from the grid when needed, or even have their batteries dump power back onto it at those times. Essentially, individual homes become part of "smart grid" management systems.

<comment><USER12> Beyond that, you can opt into paying a real-time price for electricity (like the utility does) instead of a flat rate. You're at the mercy of the market but can save a significant amount if you voluntarily turn off high consumption devices during peak periods and schedule other loads for overnight or slack periods.

What really gets interesting are the times (especially during early summer mornings) where there's too much supply on the grid and the price drops into negative territory (i.e. they'll pay you to shed load off the network). _That 's_ when you need the storage system charging up as fast as it can. I've been working on a personal system that watches the price and other factors (weather forecasts, family schedule) and cycles the A/C as deep as possible during those times.

What might really suck though is if everyone has one of these in their homes, then the price advantage will go away. Not a _bad_ problem to have, but it means we'll have to shift our supply to other places like personal solar panels (hmm, does Musk sell those?)

<comment><USER13> Could you mine bitcoins during those negative times?

<comment><USER12> Theoretically? Sure. Practically, when compared to underground Chinese mines full of equipment? No.

The negative price situation only happens maybe 0.5% of the year. Your expensive equipment will sit idle the rest of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whenever Solar/Battery power comes up I like to link back to this [0]. There was a HN discussion about it [1] when the article in question [3] referenced that PDF.

My favorite quote is probably:

> To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that > traditional wire line telephone customers could economically "cut the cord?"

[0] Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business ([http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivecha...](http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf))

[1] Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities ([http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s- util...](http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities- according-to-u-s-utilities/))

[2] HN Discussion 261 points, 670 days ago, 139 comments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603))

<comment><USER15> Solar panels would only affect the revenue of coupled utilities. Depending on the regulatory framework of the state, Decoupled utilities [0] would be unaffected by solar (and may even benefit if they supply the capital investment to install the solar)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulation%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This would be great for the situation were having in South Africa; were experiencing daily loadshedding at the moment as our only power utility basically, cannot meet demand.

The situation is set to continue for at least a year while the new coal power plant "Medupi" is being constructed - its more than 4 years behind schedule.

A battery that could be charged and then used to power your home during loadshedding could be a breakthrough solution as the costs for generators and solar are quite expensive. That being said not sure how much the Telsa "Home Battery" would be.

Any event, if its feasible it could really be a good solution. Im sure in the long run countries experiencing similar a situation could use this.

<comment><USER17> Brazil likely would also benefit. Our electricity production and grid are precarious at times and there are occasional rolling blackouts when things are mismanaged. A distributed great would help there.

<comment><USER17> s/great/grid/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The real blocker of going electric on everything is the capacity of rechargeable technologies and their lifetime, not some global conspiracy. Even the high price of batteries/capacitors might not be a problem if lifetime and capacity would be great. In that sense Musk might be onto something, but I think it takes a lot more than 20% improvement over current technologies for batteries to become feasible for storing electricity on large scale. If a smartphone could be done with a battery, that lasts a week and is not dead within a year in winter conditions, it probably would have been done allready.

<comment><USER19> A smartphone with a week of battery life is likely to be possible now. Just do this:

1) use the latest most efficient panel technology - let's say the latest Super AMOLED from Samsung

2) Use a very lower resolution such as 480x320 (also the initial resolution of the iPhone, which many thought looked "great" a few years ago)

3) Put a screen that's as small as possible on it - let's say 3.5" (you now...the "ideal" size that the iPhone used to have?)

4) Put the lowest power chip you can find in it (even if that means lowest performance - although a single-core 1 Ghz Cortex A7 should do the trick).

5) Put a relatively powerful (enough to handle that resolution easily), but very efficient GPU in it

6) Use other components that are also cutting edge in terms of power efficiency.

7) Put a 3,000-3,500mAh battery in it, even if it makes the phone 10-12mm thick (so like the Nokia Lumia 900 that many liked at the time for its "design", despite its thickness).

I would be surprised if all of this didn't lead to a week of battery life for the phone. The "problem" is this phone will be quite expensive unlocked (probably close to $300) due to its cutting edge/more efficient components, yet at the same time it will look like a $100 cheap phone in terms of "specs".

So where I'm going with this is that the _market_ doesn't want such a phone even if it has a "1 week battery life". The market wants "PC-like performance", 2k resolutions and 5.5" screens more than they want "1 week battery life". And the other problem is that they want those specs to keep going _up_ , and as long as those go up, battery life can't go up much either.

They optimize for performance and high specs rather than battery life. So if an OEM can choose between a 1080p panel with 30 percent less power consumption and a 2k panel with the _same_ power consumption, they go for the 2k. And that's how our phones get stuck forever in the ~1 day battery life.

<comment><USER20> You're forgetting the power draw of the radio. To actually last a week on 3,000mAh you'd probably be stuck with EDGE at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions.

Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines)._

[http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could- destroy-u...](http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s- utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/)

<comment><USER22> I guess we should feel sorry for Comcast as well. Damn this Silicon Valley, always innovating, breaking things down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Related economist article:

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes- elec...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-electricity- providers-face-existential-threat-how-lose-half-trillion-euros)

Who's building the "I have a 10kW load, I'm in zip code XXXXX, when is the cheapest/best time to turn this on" API?

</comment><comment><USER13> But if the Tesla car battery can only handle 1000 charge/discharge cycles, how is a home battery viable? Wouldn't it only last for three years or so?

(Maybe I'm wrong about the number of cycles?)

<comment><USER24> Some companies have battery technology they believe is good for 10,000 [1] or even 16,000 [2] cycles until it reaches 80% of its initial capacity.

On the other hand, some batteries on the market show substantial capacity loss after just 300 cycles [3].

Needless to say, the product that lasts 50 times longer costs quite a bit more - and they're bigger and heavier to boot. For stationary power storage, you don't care if they're big and heavy, but for transport applications you do.

[1] [https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage...](https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage_Solutions_with_SCiB.pdf) [2] [http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah- Da...](http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah- DataSheet.pdf) [3] [http://industrial.panasonic.com/www- data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA400...](http://industrial.panasonic.com/www- data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA4000CE240.pdf)

<comment><USER13> So you think they'll build these to have more cycles?

<comment><USER24> I think they'll build them so they make economic sense to customers. I think that would probably mean having more than 1000 cycles, but it could mean being really cheap, or some sort of lease/periodic replacement deal, or something like that.

<comment><USER25> If you magically made the Tesla S battery last 1000 cycles, it could make $12 per cycle, grossing you $12,000 over its life.

The replacement cost of a Tesla S battery is $30,000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I suspect this market will be captured by folks not in homes, but in neighborhoods buying things like Sadoway's liquid metal batteries* and either participating in the bulk electricity market directly (fun fact: the markets run by New England ISO and NYISO are run as linear programming problems to minimize total cost over a bunch of supply curves bid in by suppliers and nuclear plants usually bid negative cost to make sure they get scheduled) or providing reliability-boosting service to utilities.

* [http://www.ambri.com/technology/](http://www.ambri.com/technology/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product, as if a car weren't stationary most of its life. (but I suppose that changes in a future of sharing economies and self-driving cars)

<comment><USER11> The cars are mostly stationary, but they're stationary in the wrong place during peak consumption hours: a workplace parking lot, not a garage connected to the grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love it. The elephant in the room with electric cars has always been the power grid. It is simply not capable of sustaining the energy equal to the amount of gasoline distributed to gas stations. The last rough measure I've seen was the grid is about 1/4 what it needs to be to sustain electric cars.

Having batteries as energy cache spread out around the network is a great idea and will offset the need to build out more power lines.

<comment><USER29> I think you're complicating things. You don't need the car and the battery. Enough cars can act as a distributed power cache.

<comment><USER30> Indeed. Power use problems with electric cars are somewhat self-solving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For anyone interested in this issue, I recommend the two reports from Citi and UBS described in these articles:

[http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery- stor...](http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery-storage- socket-parity-in-years-57151)

[http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the- solar-e...](http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-ev- storage-revolution-27742)

It all really comes down to battery cost. If Tesla's gigafactory does what it says it will do, in seriously reducing cost per kwh, then a huge home storage market will open up naturally.

The projections do seem a bit heroic, though. People seem to have been predicting cost reductions in batteries for the last 15 years, but they don't seem to have come to fruition.

</comment><comment><USER17> This makes the name of his company interesting homage to Nicola. Nicola competed with Edison and Edison eventually won out.

While Musk's plans aren't the same as Tesla's, the idea that an important part of the new structure of the modern electric grid bears his name is great.

<comment><USER32> How did Edison win out? Our electric grids are AC, right?

<comment><USER33> Edison won in business, becoming rich and famous, rather than dying poor and alone like Tesla did.

<comment><USER34> Tesla made many people rich however. And was wealthy himself from time to time. He spent it all on more basic research and development. A true citizen of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Please correct me if I am wrong in any of this, as I have a rudimentary knowledge of battery/capacitor/flywheel/Cox's timepiece tech at best. Li-ion make sense for supplying power for things which need Ah/kg high, but if you are not limited by mass, wouldn't maximizing aH/$ be the driving factor? Tesla has been making a massive push into li-ion fabrication and, as far as I can tell, not pursuing other energy storage mediums. Totally speculating here, but I would imagine a fly wheel, or even banks of lead-acid batteries, way out performing li-ion on total lifetime costs to the energy stored and discharged.

</comment><comment><USER36> The original inventors of such technology are AC Propulsion [1] (coincidentally, the same company that Tesla licensed the early drivetrain for the roadster from). They referred to it as "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) technology. Some interesting history in this idea - it's taken somebody like Elon Musk and a company like Tesla to start looking at implementing this technology in production/commodity markets.

[1] [https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html](https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> This potentially sounds like a good alternative to a diesel generator.

<comment><USER38> Only for short periods of time. If you live in an area subject to natural disasters, you'd still want a generator (either diesel, propane, or natural gas) to get you enough power during extended outages to run a refrigerator, a TV, a few lights, and charge a phone or laptop. I was without power during Hurricane Hugo for almost 10 days. Cold showers suck, but what sucked more was not getting any news.

<comment><USER39> You can get a hand crank emergency radio/light/phone charger for roughly $25-$30. Example: [http://www.amazon.com/Epica-Emergency-Digital-Flashlight- Cer...](http://www.amazon.com/Epica-Emergency-Digital-Flashlight- Certified/dp/B00CZDT30S/)

The refrigerator bit is a bit harder...

<comment><USER40> It is the furnace blower fan that is the essential thing to power. (assuming a natural gas/propane furnace) With that you can heat your house. If you can heat your house you can have running water. Without heat you will need to shut off the water and drain the pipes so they do not burst. At that point you have no heat and no water and you probably need to just leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they should also market this to the whole house backup generator market? Those run 2,000-4,000 $ at least, I think.

I'd imagine a lot of houses would pay $1500 for a battery to operate their whole house during an outage.

Another product I'd like to see is a plug in battery to operate the sump pump for a few hours during an outage? Apparently a UPS can't handle the high load, and the battery backup ones you make require an expensive plumbing visit to install the special DC powered pump.

<comment><USER41> How long will that $1,500 battery power my house? It's still not possible to beat hydrocarbons in terms of energy density, and if you are looking to weather a multi-day outage, it's energy density you care about...

<comment><USER25> Using a Tesla S battery as a baseline, it gives you 85KWh at $30,000, or 2.83KWh per $1000.

$1500 would give you 4.25KWh. The average home averages 1KW, so you'll have 4.25 hours.

Obviously you could get more efficiency with a stationary battery.

<comment><USER42> Further, when the power goes out you limit your consumption. With a connected home, running on battery power could widen the acceptable temperature range, run only one bulb in a multi-bulb array, or even disconnect certain outlets in a home.

Even cutting to 80%, you get an extra hour. 50%, and you've got 4. I am having a hard time finding refrigerator specifics, but around 1000KWh annually seems to be on the high side. This gives you 1.5 days on the 4.25KWh battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This sure looks like pure PR to deflect from the bad earnings announcement yesterday.

I'm sure they'll build it some day, but call me when you can buy it.

<comment><USER44> it cannot help that GM has announced they will built the Chevrolet Bolt, a 200 mile range EV. Combined with other articles this car will start building in mid to late 2016.

[http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail...](http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2015/feb/chicago/0212-bolt- ev.html)

<comment><USER45> A Bolt and a Volt? Someone flunked high-school Spanish.

<comment><USER46> What has Spanish to do with this?

<comment><USER45> In Spanish, these are homonyms.

<comment><USER46> In Spanish, these are 'voltio' and 'rayo'. The words you mention are not Spanish words.

However, it is true than in Latin American Spanish we do not perceive the difference between V and B. I guess the Aztecs and Incas did not have that in their own languages.

In Spain they do.

And in portuguese (the most similar language to Spanish) the difference is important as well.

<comment><USER45> Y'know I would have said 'tornillo' :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Cool idea, but I think this is just a fallback plan or hedge for the new gigafactory. If oil prices stay low, it hurts the demand for electric cars. If we get driverless cars and more efficient ride sharing, people will be less inclined to own a car. But I'm sure musk has ideas to directly address those threats. He just doesn't want a $5b battery plant to be underutilized.

</comment><comment><USER44> I am not all that sure I want it IN my house, and the garage for many homes is in the house. Yeah I know, people garage their cars but this is wholly different. Maybe outside the back in a small enclosed space, similar to an AC unit

I will be curious as to regulations for ventilation, wiring, and similar, are.

<comment><USER13> I think operating temperature is important, so I'd imagine outside or garage is a no go? (My garage gets down to 40F at night, not sure if that's typical).

But maybe with enough insulation you could put it anywhere?

<comment><USER48> Well, depends on location ... I think mine was down around -10F last night and I don't have room for one in a heated space.

I suspect it will be a while longer before battery technology is as useful above the 49th parallel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> My main hope for vastly improved batteries (desperately needed) is that it'll be possible to combine a bunch of them and store the power for a small community (however it may be generated) thus decentralizing power supply. A localized grid would have major benefits imo

</comment><comment><USER50> From the headline I thought it would be about using your electric car as a gigantic powerbank for the house.

...which is not such a bad idea (e.g. power outages), until you realise that you might need that power for driving too.

<comment><USER11> I think people under-estimate the capacity of car batteries, or over-estimate their home power usage. I used about 300 kWh last month, or about 10 kWh per day. A Model S has an 85 kWh battery. I could run my entire house on it for 4 days and still have 150 miles of driving range.

<comment><USER25> People are really shocked when I tell them a car in motion uses 10 times the power of a house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I have one of these on order. They are in the process of securing the permission of PG&E to install it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I read somewhere that solar installations in Japan have about a two-day battery capacity.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is it possible for there to be any push back on this from electric utility providers?

<comment><USER54> Utilities should be happy about this. One of their biggest problems is uneven load on the grid - low at night, too high during a heatwave - and this has the potential to make that problem a lot easier.

<comment><USER55> They should be, but they won't be. Because it makes people less dependent upon them.

If you bought one of these and enough solar panels you could go completely off-grid. Which the power companies desperately don't want. It's to the point where they're charging people for being hooked up at all, lest everyone think about putting in solar and only buying power when the sun isn't shining.

The utilities would be happy about this if they controlled it, but they won't because the capital expense would be way too high. They'll only be happy about it if they somehow are the only ones who have control and get to use it for free. Somehow I doubt that'll happen.

<comment><USER34> Hey, utilities are often run by public-spirited folk with no greedy agenda. They make decisions that are aimed to balance the needs of the many, which can appear to be against the wants of the few.

<comment><USER55> You're absolutely right! Some are. But some aren't, and some power companies are very scared and lashing out. There was an attempt in Arizona to get monthly connection fees of up to $100/mo if you have solar at all. Hawaii has blocked people from getting solar hooked up to the grid.

[http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/07/19/solar-energy- ariz...](http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/07/19/solar-energy-arizona-net- metering)

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so- su...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so-successfull- its-been-halted/)

The problem is obvious, of course. At some point the only people left paying any kind of substantial monthly fees are those who can't afford solar, and those are likely the poorest. And then what happens is that there's a regressive tax. I get that you can't have that kind of bad outcome.

But at the same time, grid maintenance is fairly cheap and peak power generation is very expensive, which is why utilities will pay people to be able to turn off their A/C at peak times. This is quite literally where solar shines: the more A/C load there is the more likely you're getting good power out of solar.

If the utilities need to prevent a regressive tax situation then they need to change incentives to be more transparent rather than just flailing about. If peak power is expensive, make it easier for people to put solar up and get paid for it. If nighttime power is cheap, make it cheaper on the bill.

Power companies are basically complaining that arbitrage is hard. They're the ones who are in charge of their own business models, though, not me. So if they fail to adapt to the world as it stands, you'll forgive me for not feeling sympathy.

<comment><USER34> For the most part, 'they' is 'us'. We have to live with the results. My power company is the REC, and I could run for the board but I don't. Anyway its my neighbors trying their best to keep the power on for everybody.

You didn't mention issues of connecting to the local grid. There may be issues adding solar to your house, relative to the transformer and neighborhood substation. That $100 may be what it cost them to adapt. Likely its a tiny fraction of the cost of dealing with customers with unusual requirements.

<comment><USER55> > There may be issues adding solar to your house, relative to the transformer > and neighborhood substation. That $100 may be what it cost them to adapt.

Almost assuredly no. There are laws in place and inspections which get done that prohibit anyone's inverters from being on when the power is off, this is to protect workers from getting shocked when a line SHOULD be down, but isn't. The inspection is simple and it's been done for many years for people who choose to install backup generators. Obviously those don't feed power back, but that leads into my next point.

If they can run 100 or 200 amp service to my house, surely they can afford a few dozen amps of power in the other direction. 100 amps * 220V = 22kW Many houses are wired for 200 amps so that's 44kW of power. Who is putting in 20kW to 40kW solar plants on their roof? A normal panel is between 200 and 400 watts. Which houses have 100 solar panels on them?

Further $100/mo times forever isn't reasonable if they only have a fixed capital cost to adapt. Again, they almost certainly don't unless everyone in the neighborhood is developing truly commercial amounts of solar and wind power. And if someone is breaking that threshold, fine I have no problems with them having to jump through hoops. They can afford it.

> For the most part, 'they' is 'us'.

It GREATLY depends on where you live. In rural areas it's a power co-op or whatever and I'm inclined to agree with just about everything you've said. But there are a lot of places where it's not a co-op and it's about someone turning a profit; for shareholders and everything.

<comment><USER34> ... and those inspections aren't free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> OT: For electric cars to succeed someone really needs to step-up and standardise the plug. It's ridiculous to have charging stations that are tied to a particular brand of cars.

<comment><USER57> SAE J1772 is a North American standard for electrical connectors for electric vehicles maintained by the Society of Automotive Engineers and has the formal title "SAE Surface Vehicle Recommended Practice J1772, SAE Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler".[1] It covers the general physical, electrical, communication protocol, and performance requirements for the electric vehicle conductive charge system and coupler. The intent is to define a common electric vehicle conductive charging system architecture including operational requirements and the functional and dimensional requirements for the vehicle inlet and mating connector.(1)

The SAE J1772-2009 connector specification has been added to the international IEC 62196-2 standard (1)

The SAE J1772-2009 was adopted by the car manufacturers of post-2000 electric vehicles like the third generation of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf as the early models. The connector became standard equipment on the US-market due to the availability of charging stations with that plug type in the nation's electric vehicle network (with the help of funding such as ChargePoint America program drawing grants from provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).(1)

(1) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772)

<comment><USER56> Thanks, I just found that Tesla has an adapter for it's cars to connect to SAE J17772 plugs: [http://my.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile- con...](http://my.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-connector) . Too bad Tesla didn't standardise on that format so that other cars can benefit from their chargers.

<comment><USER58> Tesla didn't use that standard because it doesn't provide enough charging power due to being lower voltage.

The Tesla charger is actually better tech:

[https://transportevolved.com/2014/06/16/nissan-bmw-look- adop...](https://transportevolved.com/2014/06/16/nissan-bmw-look-adopt-teslas- charging-standard/)

I suspect the standard will go no where as Tesla also owns more charging stations than anyone else and is expanding them constantly:

[http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger](http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Musk seems to specialize in bringing innovation to slow-moving industries.

Tesla > Cars & Oil/Gas, SpaceX Rockets > Aerospace, SpaceX Satellites > Telecom, Solar City & Tesla > Utilities

Where is the Musk for Finance and Health Care?

<comment><USER60> Well, he already had PayPal...</comment></comment>


A Tandy Bear Christmas (1987 Demo) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPYmpf64OfA <comment><AUTHOR> It turns out I _didn 't_ imagine this. It's one of my earliest memories. I had an old Tandy 1000HX demo unit Radio Shack sold at a discount when it was time for new things.</comment>


Pretty amazing what can happen on a green screen.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k

<comment><USER2> The studio tends to have these removed from YouTube for copyright infringment. Here's a direct link.

<http://www.stargatestudios.net/></comment>


Show HN: A Simple LocalStorage Hook in React - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/local-storage-hook <comment><USER2> Mirroring other comments, this seems a bit trivial to be its own package and looking at the source, it seems to not cover cases where the local storage value can't be parsed.

[https://usehooks.com/useLocalStorage/](https://usehooks.com/useLocalStorage/) has a safer implementation and is free to copy (Unlicense).

<comment><USER3> It seems less trivial than PadLeft.

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/03/rage-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/03/rage-quit-coder-unpublished-17-lines-of-javascript-and- broke-the-internet/)

<comment><USER4> as a joke i got a shirt with left-pad's source printed on it.

#neverforget

<comment><USER5> I was playing with String.prototype.padLeft earlier and boy that has weird semantics. For the padding length, strings are parsed. NaN is 0, Infinity throws an error, negative Infinity is 0, true is 1. Good ol' JS!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is a difficult to recommend a small package that is GPLv3, since your entire app would have to be licensed appropriately (since it runs in the same process).

For projects like Blender, where development is a self-reinforcing ecosystem I appreciate what the GPL does, here not so much.

<comment><USER4> i suspect the choice of GPLv3 was not well informed, given the nature of the code in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have noticed that, in the wild, referencing window.localStorage at all will raise a security exception in some browsers. If this happens inside of a React hook, it will unmount everything up to the nearest componentDidCatch(). In practice, everything involving localStorage needs to make liberal use of try, catch blocks.

<comment><USER8> Seconded. localStorage can bite in bad ways, and the unmounting concerns are valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> GPLV3 is an _interesting_ choice for a license for such a small amount of code (17 lines [0])

[0] [https://github.com/akash-joshi/local-storage- hook/blob/maste...](https://github.com/akash-joshi/local-storage- hook/blob/master/src/index.js)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the react hook code so complicated that when it totals up to 17 lines of code[1], it needs to become a npm package? The code it self looks neat and clean - even more reason to just write your own hook.

1: [https://github.com/akash-joshi/local-storage- hook/blob/7d593...](https://github.com/akash-joshi/local-storage- hook/blob/7d5933b8b06c965480ec3f2d2ccd911a595191a1/src/index.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, it can be treated as an example. It's an npm package so that I can reuse the code :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It has been a fun journey implementing hooks in React. Let me know your thoughts on the code :)

<comment><USER10> "Journey" is a bit of a stretch here, no? :)

This is a few lines of pretty trivial code

<comment><USER11> Can you please review the Show HN guidelines? I appreciate that you're not exactly flaming the OP here, but still, the idea is to respond more charitably to people's work. If you know more than others, find a constructive way to express that, such as by teaching them—and by extension, the rest of us—something related to what they've done so far.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER10> This is a great point, and on a second reading my comment did come off as a little insensitive -- will leave it up to give others context and make this a teachable moment for all of us to improve the level of discourse :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like the "it's a bit small for a package" comments have forgotten how js-land is going... For example, check out is-number: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-number](https://www.npmjs.com/package/is- number)

<comment><USER13> > I feel like the "it's a bit small for a package" comments have forgotten how > js-land is going... For example, check out is-number: > [https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-number](https://www.npmjs.com/package/is- > number)

"Two wrongs don't make a right"</comment></comment>


Is it time to stop writing headlines that end in question marks? - <AUTHOR> http://www.elezea.com/2012/05/clear-headlines/

<comment><USER2> I'm co-editor for a niche news site (<http://pokerfuse.com>) and we strictly do not write any headlines in the "is...?" format. It's a good check before publishing anything - if your headline naturally falls in to this format, it should be a signal that either (a) we shouldn't be writing this story, (b) we should stand by our convictions and write the headline in the affirmative, (c) the story needs more research before publishing. We pass up on some easy pageviews, but we see the upside in more loyal/repeat visitors.

edit:

NewsItem.objects.published().count()

>>> 648

NewsItem.objects.published().filter(title__istartswith='is', title__endswith='?').count()

>>> 2

(a couple of stories do have this format, but they seem like the rare appropriate cases)

<comment><USER3> why would you insist on starting with an "Is"? A proper yes or no question can start with "Is", "Are", "Does", "Do", "Have", "Has", "Were", "Did", etc etc. How many of your titles end with a question-mark? It's hard to think of how any of those can be false positives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I liked Jon Stewart's take on this question in his segment on the question mark. [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed- september-13-2006/the-...](http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed- september-13-2006/the-question-mark)

Cartman also uses the just asking questions tactic to antagonize Wendy in a South Park episode where he takes the job of school announcer. [http://www.southparkstudios.com/full- episodes/s13e13-dances-...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/full- episodes/s13e13-dances-with-smurfs)

<comment><USER5> There was a bit of a brouhaha about this a few years ago with TV pundit Glenn Beck as well. Beck has a certain style of saying he's "just investigating" questions, where he'll posit some extreme allegation, and wonder out loud why the target of the allegation won't go on record denying it and provide evidence. He'll insist he doesn't even necessarily think the allegation is true, but just wants the questions to be aired and discussed openly, and says refusal to do so is suspicious evasion.

In response, someone started a website wondering aloud why Glenn Beck won't deny allegations that he raped and killed a girl in 1990--- the website author, of course, claims he doesn't believe the allegations, but is just wondering why Beck won't address them publicly, and provide evidence of his whereabouts at the time of the alleged incident. Beck, of course, sued for libel in response...

[http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/10/beck_tries_to_kil...](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/10/beck_tries_to_kill_parody_webs.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whenever I encounter a rhetorical question in a headline or link, I assume the author is either going to reach some foregone and facile answer, or no answer at all.

In this sense, questions as headlines are not only linkbait; they're often the signs of worthless articles, usually consisting of regurgitated common sense, or else poorly distilled coverage of superior source material.

There are occasional exceptions, to be sure. But generally, if I can guess what answer an author is going to get to long before he gets there, he's wasting my time.

<comment><USER7> I often flag or downvote question-titles and "X ways you're..." self-helpy magazine headlines. As you say, it's an almost perfect indicator of bad writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit>

Related: George Orwell's Politics and the English language. Taught me how to write, and thus greatly influenced the way I program as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can't stop people writing them, but it's certainly time to stop _clicking on_ headlines that end in question marks...

<comment><USER10> Now if there were a way to automatically nuke any news item that ends in a qmark on major news sites ....

I RIP[1] a ton of shit out of sites already. That's one I'd like to add to the mix.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- Notes: 1\. Remove it Permanently Firefox plugin. No equivalent for Chrome AFAIK.

</comment><comment><USER11> No, if you are copywritng.

A question headline attracts the reader to read the sub-headline. And that is the purpose of headlines (and copy). To get people to read smoothly until they take out the CC and buy.

Problem is that if you overuse it in a blog (for example), then your writing style will end up souding like an infomercial. Mind you, if you see yourself using linkbait to gain eyeballs, then your blog is just not worth reading (or advertising in).

</comment><comment><USER12> it's a feature article/news article difference.

A feature isn't 100 percent news. It's interest as well, so a question can be fair game. if you're all feature articles though, you're a "soft" outlet.

there's a time and place for everything.

</comment><comment><USER13> Recently, I was in a group, and it came up that we don't know why people join the organization and what they want to get out of it. So I asked, why don't we know these things? This question was met with emotional violence. I suspect that the reaction to interesting questions is a litmus test of the intellectual health of an organization.

Arguably, a natural reaction to a question that evokes a strong feeling is to take that as an attack. (Example: If the world was created in 6000 years, how did these seashell fossils get inside mountaintop rock strata?) Often, this natural reaction cuts off an opportunity to learn something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are all rhetorical questions bad?

<comment><USER15> Is this a rhetorical question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any time I see a headline ending in a question mark, I always think of this SMBC comic - [http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075](http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075).

</comment><comment><USER17> These question marks are almost as annoying as the "self-interview" question marks made popular by former Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld.

What is a self-interview? Well, it's when you ask yourself a question then immediately answer it. Are they occurring more now than before? Listening to people on TV news shows and NPR seems to show that more are doing it now.

Why would people do this? Because it makes it sound as if they're answering a question that has been asked -- even if the answer they're giving wasn't actually in response to the actual interviewer.

Can we stop this now? I sure hope so.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't it be easier to give the reporter a list of suggested questions? I think it would.

Would some reporters object? Probably, but I sure you could find a friendly one, or let them ask some question not from the list.

Would this make reporting better? It would sound better, so that's something.

But does asking yourself a question and answering it do any harm? I don't think so - it's a pretty effective way of transmitting information. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> First time I've seen one of these headlines that is answered with a yes :)

</comment><comment><USER20> My pet peeve. This was closely watched at Techcrunch and we mocked other blogs (and our own bloggers) who fell back on it frequently (pronouncing titles with question marks with an inflection).

Using a question mark just means you aren't sure of your position or what you are trying to say. It makes it easier to sit on the fence and not really say anything, playing it safe.

I think most readers prefer a firm opinion or statement, regardless of if they agree with it or not.

<comment><USER13> Then how does one write about interesting open questions? If the implicit assumption that there aren't any interesting open questions, then I have doubts. Such a field should be a mature industry, and not a field for startups or serious research.

<comment><USER7> I question whether articles without conclusions are necessary at all, and the situation you describe is one of poor writing. Say something, then create a headline based on that. If you aren't saying anything, then a bad headline is all that's possible.

<comment><USER13> So you're saying it's never necessary to consider open questions at all? What if the question was written as a conjecture, then the name of the conjecture was used as the title, would that be somehow better? That makes no sense.

<comment><USER7> Kind of. Sturgeon's Law takes care of the rest.

<comment><USER13> Non sequitur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> British journalist & political columnist John Rentoul is writing a book on this: Questions To Which The Answer Is No.

Since 2009 he has curated examples at <http://blogs.independent.co.uk/tag/headline/>

</comment><comment><USER22> What's wrong with marketing an article? People respond well to questions, "Top 5...", and other tried and true methods of "baiting" someone into giving your post a chance.

I don't I would have read your post if it was titled like an academic paper.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you over-use it, it's not effective but for copywriting purposes, you'll get more clicks. Same with email: even if the subject is not a question, put a ? in it, and you'll get more clicks (it's been A/B tested by a few folks)

</comment><comment><USER24> If the primary motive for question-mark headlines is link-bait, surely this can be more easily solved by getting your headlines from a better source of news?

Don't feed the trolls, and all that.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have to agree. Whilst "questions as headlines" don't mean the article is bull-hunky, I'm finding it's a very convenient rule of thumb.

</comment><comment><USER26> It is also time to stop writing headlines that start with "How".

</comment><comment><USER27> No. Wait... I see what you did there.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought you meant HN headlines :D

</comment><comment><USER29> Interesting points.. but I'm unsure if your use of a question mark in this HN post is a ironic or a coincidence?

<comment><USER3> (to me it's pretty obviously ironic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER30> No.</comment>


Punched Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/punched-cards/2 <comment><USER2> I am old (I have seen things). I still have my first program from college, in FORTRAN, on a card deck. I also worked as a "computer operator" (an extinct species) while going to college, putting card decks in the readers, running decks that were output from the punches through "interpreters" (which printed the characters across the top of cards), and remembering that you always (ALWAYS) drew a diagonal line across the top of a deck of cards with a pen, in case you dropped them (colloquially known as a "floor sort"). If you wanted to be really fancy, you'd use different colored cards for different sections of a program, but that was rarely worth the effort. Good times.

Besides card punches, readers and interpreters, other quaint machines I dealt with on a daily basis were chain printers (with carriage tapes - look it up), reel-to-reel tapes (which required cleaning the heads with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs once a shift), and the most evil of all, decollators (again, look it up). All controlled via consoles that didn't have cursor keys, so to this day I have the TERRIBLE habit of backspacing to nuke and fix typing mistakes rather than cursoring and surgically correcting them. I bet the Backspace key on my keyboard is probably in the top 10 keys in my usage profile. :)

<comment><USER3> I'm old, too. I learned to program on punched cards, and remember the move to high-speed paper tape. That was awesome!

One of my favorite stories is from those punched card days. I was a careless teen, and knocked one of the developer's card decks off of a desk, sending all the cards scattered widely across the floor.

The sysadmin made me gather them up and manually sort the several thousand cards into the proper order. It took a over a day. When I was done, he took them from me and dropped them into the hopper of a machine in the corner to "check my accuracy".

What he didn't say, and I didn't know until weeks later, was that the machine he used was a card sorter and could have put the entire deck into the correct order automatically. The dev made me sort the cards manually as punishment -- and it worked, as I was much more cautious from then on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who first started using computers in the 90s, I lacked the tactile experience with cards that the generation before mine had. I long suspected that I had missed something by not having used punched cards, little realizing just how much I had missed.

What was shocking to me about punched cards is the indelible mark that they left on modern day computing. Why do terminals default to 80 columns? That's the width of a punched card. Why do tabs have variable length? The key used to move to the next "field" on a punched card, by way of a physical tab stop. Why did FORTRAN reserve the first few columns to line numbers? So you could put your FORTRAN deck in a card sorter if you dropped it.

The link above seems to mirror the first part of the exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, which is well worth seeing in person.

Even better are the live demonstrations of the IBM 1401 that are also done at the Computer History Museum on Wednesday's and Saturday's: [http://ibm-1401.info/](http://ibm-1401.info/)

<comment><USER5> This is not quite accurate. The first few columns were reserved for an optional numeric statement label that could then be used as a target for an IF or GOTO statement (and we used lots of those!) Labels did not have to be in numerically increasing order.

On the other hand, the last few columns of the card were ignored by the compiler, and could indeed be used to hold numerical values. These could be used to sort the deck of cards if you dropped it. The choice of numerical values in this column was not trivial because of the way programs were edited to fix bugs: you manually removed some cards and inserted new ones into the deck. You never repunched the whole program.

<comment><USER6> But isn't the idea the same? If you have explicit line numbers then you can just load the cards in any order. No need to sort it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another important market for IBM punch card technology during the 40's [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers- willing-business-partners/303146/)

<comment><USER8> Mentioned on page 9 of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The layout for this page is so interesting and useful! Each section divided into little bookmarks, with each bookmark having its own bar denoting how much content is held in it. Never seen anything like it before, and it works great for this format.

<comment><USER10> I came to say the same thing. Very interesting design indeed.

The titles appear onmousover for the "bookmarks" \-- although I don't think the are bookmarks but stacks of punchcards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't the Lisp Machine have a graphical interactive punched card simulator?

<comment><USER12> [https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/](https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmm, no mention of edge-notched punched cards - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge- notched_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card)

</comment><comment><USER14> Punch cards were also quite durable, you could dump them in a punch in 'dup' mode to make a backup, and usually they had printed across their tops the text on them so it made reading them pretty simple.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh wow what a huge amount of content. This is fantastic. Really nailing the goal of being an online museum.

</comment><comment><USER16> The joy of reading your card deck, having it compile and produce the correct output, the very first time!</comment>


Math is why Elon Musk's companies keep doing what others don't think possible - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/972118/simple-math-is-why-elon-musks-companies-keep-doing-what-others-dont-even-consider-possible/ <comment><USER2> From the article:

> _According to Musk's calculations, he could undercut existing launch > companies by building a modest-sized rocket that would cater to a part of > the market that specialized in carrying smaller satellites and research > payloads to space._

I think this must be describing the Falcon 1, which was not an economically successful design, although it appears to have been an effective testbed for the the Merlin rocket engine. The Falcon 9 is in no way a modest-sized rocket by modern standards.

So anyway, I don't think the article is wrong exactly, but I think it may be overstating the case.</comment>


Marc Cuban: "The Internet's dead.. [it's] for old people." - <AUTHOR> http://www.multichannel.com/CA6463169.html WTF? <comment><USER2> I think that this fellow is only focusing on the Internet as an alternative entertainment medium. Video streaming does go slowly across the Internet and seeing that he made his fortune through video streaming it would make sense that he would take this view. However, the things that make the Internet popular are not it's ability to emulate television, but it's ability to do things that television cannot. It's strengths include a low barrier to entry for both application deliverers and users, and a world-wide audience. Neither of those are available with cable.

The former could change, but it seems unlikely with the current market, cable is too tightly controlled.

The latter couldn't, at least not through Mr. Cuban's scheme. Seriously, what good would an app like Digg/Reddit be if it were only available on an intranet? Who would write a weblog if he knew only Comcast users would be able to read it? Consumers would be divided based on the cable service for which they paid. This seems like it would totally miss the point of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The Internet has gone stagnant_

This guy's buying a baseball team? Baseball was stagnant at the moment of the second pitch.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha ha ha ha... This Marc Cuban dude is a funny guy.

Thanks for the laugh :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Disagreement Hierarchy minus 1 (DH-1). Flamebait.

<comment><USER6> Although, I did enjoy the reference to a slashdot meme.</comment></comment>


The Facts Behind the Code Indention Style War - <AUTHOR> http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/07/facts-behind-code-indention-style-war.html <comment><USER2> There don't seem to be any pertinent facts in that article, so it's a bit of a misnomer.

I'd be interested in seeing some actual research into the relative usability and other factors of the various approaches. Until such time as someone proves it objectively one way or the other I'll use what I'm familiar with (K&R) in private code and the house style in the day job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, we had a compilers class in college in which the professor told us to compulsorily use the K&R style or he would cut marks(!!). He even made his TA write a C code which would check whether we were following the code style. So mischievous as we were, my friend and I used yacc and flex and wrote something which would make code, written in any style, into the K&R style and sent it to all our friends, that was really fun :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Tabs vs. spaces would not be an issue if we let go of the stone-age practice of storing source code as text files.

Every moment you spend cleaning up Windows-style EOL characters or transforming tabs into spaces (or vice versa) - or programming your editor to do so - is a moment of your life that could have been put to a better use.

With a standardized S-expression format (it could even be human-readable, as for example, Lisp source is) all possible source files which result in the same syntax tree would have the same canonical (by definition) representation. Yes, this means that parsers will need to parse comments rather than toss them, but implementing this minor trick is not a challenge for anyone who has read a few chapters of the Dragon Book (or its imitators.)

Your editor can still show you exactly what you want to see. And other people will have the same ability.

If you are using Eclipse (or whatnot) to magically reformat source to your personal tastes every time you edit anything, you have already quit pretending that the original raw human-readable representation is worth much. All I'm suggesting is to take this process to its logical conclusion.

Storing source as ASTs instead of ASCII would, among other things, increase the usefulness of revision control systems. It would eliminate the need for programmers to agree on any formatting style at all.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting idea.

What about broken code, though, would I not be able to save that?

<comment><USER4> A block which fails to conform to the currently active syntax would get saved as a "text" expression, i.e. (STRING "....broken code...").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can't be too rich, too thin, or have too many lines of codes visible at _any_ resolution. Whatever indentation style puts the most readable code on my screen is my preference.

[FWIW, _both_ examples suck. Use a case or switch statement.]

</comment><comment><USER7> I always used to use K&R style and I think it teaches bad habits: I used to obsess about compressing code. I remember when I started trying to help people with learning Python. A friend, and arguably better (python) programmer, commented:

 _Go Tom, great stuff. Now all we've got to do convince is teach you to space it all out so I can read it_

I switched to Allman after that: much to the relief of many people ;)

<comment><USER8> This is about bracing styles and your comment is about Python. That is almost a non sequitur ;)

<comment><USER7> not really - I used K&R in PHP which got me in the poor habit of compressing _any_ code. :)

<comment><USER9> I don't know if compressing code is a bad habit. Generally the more code I can see on a screen the faster I can understand what is happening. A good way to add visual space is to supplement the extra lines Allman style would add with comments. I hate scrolling up and down constantly to see what a simple class is trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "In my opinion, the Allman brace style is easier to read because..." (blablabla)

bottomline: because he is used to them. I feel the K&R style is easier to read because that is what I am used to.

<comment><USER9> Well put. Personally, I get distracted when reading Allman style. When I start scrolling, I start daydreaming about all of the wasted space and how that programmer must have met his/her line quota for the day. Most editors have a brace matching feature that helps.

<comment><USER10> Yeah while I was reading that article it occurred to me that Allman is a good way to increase LoC count ;-)

<comment><USER11> You'll also notice that in his example of the Allman style, each code block starts with a comment. In my experience as an Allman formatter, I feel pretty much compelled to comment even the simplest code blocks, just so that it doesn't look stupid, thus increasing the number of lines of code even further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use K&R style for control structures (loops, if/else), but function braces get their own line. Braces for classes, structs and namespaces go on the same line.

I'm not worried about obsessing about compact code; this style just looks best to me. I'm consistent with my formatting, so I can glance at my code and know what I'm looking at. Actually, I can literally unfocus my eyes and I still know if I'm looking at a function, control structure within a function, or a class definition.

The important part, where taste comes in, is where code gets separated by empty lines. I consider code separated by empty lines akin to paragraphs.

For the reocrd, my indent settings:

      -br -brs -nbfda -npsl -npcs

</comment><comment><USER13> I used to use K&R, but then I discovered a useful fact that in Allman, you can comment out blocks very easily. This lets you play around with control flow in a simpler way than is possible in K&R et al.

</comment><comment><USER14> I used to have big problems with bracing styles, but for me modern text editors have basically solved them. I can match braces and colorize code, so pretty much anything is readable.

And ultimately, consistency is most important. Your "style" only matters when you're starting your own project; I really hate it when people let their personal disagreements chop up a source file.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm a braces-stand-alone person.

I've seen code that got confusing with K&R, especially when the programmer forgot to indent the next lines. And I really like the ability to adjust control flow with block commenting you have with braces-stand-alone.

I'm not looking to compress code. My goal is to make code as readable as possible. Anything I can do to make it explicitly clear what's going on I'm going to do. Code should not read like a mystery novel.

<comment><USER10> Well I feel the block kind of belongs to the function definition/for loop/whatever, so it seems illogical to me to artificially separate them. I'd like to see what belongs together at a glance.

A single bracket on an otherwise empty line carries very little information, so why not reduce the strain on the eyes.

<comment><USER15> Because there's two types of information: control information and process information.

When I'm scanning code, lots of time I don't care about the control, I'm looking for what process takes place. Likewise, sometimes I'm just interested in control and could care less about process.

Braces-stand-alone lets me focus on each of these at a time. Especially if you get into an unusual control situation, perhaps with nested conditions, braces- stand-alone lets you isolate various control paths and change and test them.

It's not the end of the world or anything. As long as you understand the superiority of my position, of course (grin)

<comment><USER10> I must admit I don't understand how the "isolate various control paths" thing works. The other stuff I guess really depends on what you are used to. Probably I look more for indentation than for braces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use Allman exactly because it's more spacious. But I adapt, at work for instance.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always liked putting the closing brace at the same indentation level as the code on its own separate line, but using K&R style for the leading brace.

That way I can just look at the indentation to see where blocks start and end.

</comment><comment><USER18> did anyone else notice the problem with this:

      if(condition_variable==condition2)
      /*{
         //Block temporarily commented out.
         condition_variable=condition1;
      }*/

</comment><comment><USER19> if language == python:

        self.smile()

</comment><comment><USER20> Sorry, was there a war? I must have missed it.</comment>


Show HN: Autodrome – Framework for Development of Self-Driving Cars - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vojtamolda/autodrome/ <comment><USER2> This is super cool, especially how it is done as a side project. It's resourceful using a game as the physics simulator. I wonder how it compares to Microsoft's [1] and Udacity's [2] implementation.

[1][https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim](https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim) [2] [https://github.com/udacity/self-driving-car- sim](https://github.com/udacity/self-driving-car-sim)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think a fair comparison would be to AirSim [1] and Carla [3]. These are much more mature projects and are similar to Autodrome in a lot of ways. As far as I know Udacity's simulator is done their class and it's not being actively developed.

\+ Both [1] and [3] have much fewer assets (like 3D models of houses, factories, bridges, cars, trucks, and so on) you'd have to buy them on the Unreal/Unity model marketplace and it still wouldn't be enough. Autodrome can take advantage of almost entire Europe and a third of USA at 1:20 scale.

\+ Autodrome has a sparse map representation that is really easy to randomly fuzz. I.e. it's easy to shift a segment of the road a little bit and see how the algorithm would react to the fuzzed scenario. I believe this is only way how to achieve robust agents and effectively prevent testing on the training set.

\- Biggest disadvantage of Autodrome is a lack of access to in-game dynamic NPCs (like other trucks, cars or pedestrians). As far as I know there's no API for this. Without help (or a lot of very fragile memory hacking) from the developers of the game this feature is very hard to achieve and both [1] and [3] already have it.

[3] [http://carla.org](http://carla.org)

PS: Keep in mind that I'm the developer of Autodrome so I my objectivity is very questionable.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the detailed response! Is there any thoughts on ground truth segmantic segmentation camera view? Simulated lidar data would be super awesome too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both are also not easy like the dynamic NPCs. I think Carla [3] supports both raytraced lidar and segmented rendering now so this is another minus "-" point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love how this is based on a game. One might argue that software development was really accelerated by games just as the hardware development was accelerated by the military (by hardware I mean physical stuff, like materials etc.).

<comment><USER4> Hardware development was accelerated by games, too.

<comment><USER5> And software accelerated by the military (tcp/ip).

<comment><USER6> With a pathetic ROI: Had these trillions been invested in academia or startups, the world would surely be much further.

<comment><USER2> Not sure if I entirely agree with this. A lot of the luxuries we have now were enhanced for the military. For instance, airplanes (aileron and jet turbine development), internet, semiconductor, and even PCBs (or mores specifically, the predecessor Hybrids ICs). A good amount of grants actually come from the Navy and Army for research grants in the academia. Though I did go to grad school for Mech Eng so we probably saw more grants from the military because of that.

<comment><USER7> That is a logical fallacy. Sure a lot of things happened because of the military, but what didn't happen because we were busy on the military things. There is no way to know.

If we had spent as much on genetic research as we did on the moon landing we could have had fire breathing dragons. Think of all the spin offs from that that we are just starting to see now, we could have had them sooner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice project! I will keep following your progress.

Would you mind if at some point I share your project at [https://weeklyrobotics.com](https://weeklyrobotics.com) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice! This looks really cool. Look forward to see how this develops.

</comment><comment><USER10> (Can we call them "auto-autos"? Please?)</comment>


Judge: Apple Must Help Us Hack San Bernardino Killer's Phone - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_SHOOTINGS?SITE=AP <comment><USER2> "cripple a security encryption feature that erases data after too many unsuccessful unlocking attempts."

Basically a brute force attack.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about we get help hacking Bush, Rumsfeld, Kissenger, , Rove, Cheney etc... to see what the fuck those guys did?

Hack hillary's "cloth server" and see what the fuck they were hiding....

The whole thing is a cancer - I do not support any of it.</comment>


Ask HN:  How to get rid of 'submitting too fast'? - <AUTHOR> Whenever I try to submit anything, at anytime, regardless of my last post date and time, I am getting the submitting too fast message:  You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.<p>Anything I can do to fix this, and am I on some list? <comment><USER2> From [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

        In Submissions

        Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something
        (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to
        ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say
        something to us, please send it to firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not asking YC anything. I'm asking the community of users.

Edit: Thanks for the info though ;p

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you behind a forced proxy? Carrier NAT?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but good questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- Im getting the same problem.</comment>


More renewable energy for our data centers - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/more-renewable-energy-for-our-data.html <comment><USER2> I'm still excited about their old idea of floating data centers that uses ocean water to lose exess heat.

<comment><USER3> Won't that cause hurricanes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They say they are using 260 MW from renewable energy, so far. I wonder how much they need to meet their carbon neutrality goal.

<comment><USER4> Here we go: "We're currently using renewable energy to power over 30% of our operations..."

So they need ~867 MW to be neutral, depending on how outdated this page is: <http://www.google.com/green/energy/>.

I commend their efforts.

<comment><USER5> At least didn't just resort to buying offshore offset credits right?

<comment><USER3> They do buy offsets, which are reputed to be higher quality than the BS you can add to your Dell shopping cart or whatever.</comment></comment></comment></comment>