Postgres Notify for cache busting and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/postgres_external_triggers.html

<comment><USER2> A couple of notes: First, be mindful that postgres connections are comparably expensive memory-wise and a connection where you use LISTEN on can't be used for anything else. This might or might not be a problem for you (it won't if you have exactly one job using LISTEN, it will if every one of your frontend connection uses LISTEN).

Second, it's my experience that you will never be able to correctly deal with caches if you are trying to clean them. The reason is that when you rely on cleaning out caches, then, whenever you do a write to your database, you have to think what caches might be depending on your write and you'll have to remember to fire events accordingly.

It's much easier if you generate some kind of key or tag based on the information you want to cache and then just look up the value based on the key - like what you'd do with memcache. If your dependencies change, your cache key will change and you will fetch the data again.

This of course has the tendency of being more expensive when reading (because you have to calculate the cache key), but it also has the tendency of being correct with a much greater likelyhood - at least that's the experience I made so far. Of course, YMMV and the increased cost might deter you from going this way.

<comment><USER3> Why can't you use a connection that has issued LISTEN for anything else? In fact, I'm fairly sure you _can_ use it normally.

We're using NOTIFY to broadcast database changes to services that should react to them and it's quite a nice way to separate concerns: process A just writes to the database, a trigger issues a NOTIFY, process B checks and notices there's been a change.

Edit: I see, the code in the post suggests that the connection needs to be stuck in a select() (I should know, I contributed a largre chunk of psycopg2's async code handling). You just need to use an asynchronous driver and you can happily LISTEN and do queries at the same time (of course you won't get notifies while a query is processing - the Postgres protocol has no concept of multiplexing).

We're using Twisted and happily mixing queries and NOTIFY.

<comment><USER2> It looks like you're right. This was/is a limitation of the node.js postgres adapter I was using.

<comment><USER4> We use node-postgres and this is not the case. I think node-postgres has one of the cleanest implementations of LISTEN due to nodejs event callbacks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of .NET's SqlCacheDependency - very useful for cache invalidation, it's been around for while.

See [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms178604.ASPX](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms178604.ASPX) for details if you are interested.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I saw that and got a good laugh because SQL Server has done that for nearly a decade.

<comment><USER7> listen/notify was available in postgres 7.1 (and may well have predated it): [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.1/static/sql- listen.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.1/static/sql-listen.html)

7.1 was released in 2001.

edit: digging further, I found this:

        Bug fixes:
            [...]
            * the LISTEN/NOTIFY asynchronous notification mechanism now work

that's in the change list for Postgres95 Beta 0.03, released in July 1995: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/release-0-03.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/release-0-03.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This approach works well when you want to cache data from an existing integration database and don't have the luxury of rearchitecting the whole thing.

At my previous job, we had a bunch of systems talking to a single database. Some were rails, some were not. We wanted to add memcached to the rails apps via cache-money[1]. That'll handle read-through/write-through caching for vanilla rails stuff, but we had to somehow invalidate the cache for updates that happen outside of ActiveRecord::Base#save (e.g. update_all, or a write from a non-rails system). In the end, we settled upon the same approach[2] as in the article.

The trigger-backed cache invalidator was also written in ruby, and knew from rails/cache-money what key(s) needed to be invalidated when it got a notification. IIRC you didn't need to do anything special when you added a new cache key (e.g. cache user lookups by username), since the invalidator would just know what to do.

[1] [https://github.com/nkallen/cache-money](https://github.com/nkallen/cache- money)

[2] This was actually on 8.4, so unfortunately there was no NOTIFY. Instead, a plpython trigger would send a message to invalidator (persistent tcp conn per pg process), but this had the unfortunate consequences of 1. firing before the commit and 2. firing even in the event of a rollback

<comment><USER7> > This was actually on 8.4, so unfortunately there was no NOTIFY.

There was actually, listen/notify was available back in 7.1[0][1], maybe earlier.

No payload until 9.0 though, that would usually be done by storing the payload in a dedicated table and querying that when receiving a notification.

[0] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.1/static/sql- listen.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.1/static/sql-listen.html)

[1] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.1/static/sql- notify.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.1/static/sql-notify.html)

edit: found the 6.4 docs, it's there: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/6.4/static/sql- listen.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/6.4/static/sql-listen.html)

edit 2: digging in the release notes, LISTEN/NOTIFY was made to work in Postgres95 Beta 0.03: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/6.4/static/release13262.htm](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/6.4/static/release13262.htm) (and was apparently present in a non-working state in previous versions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        while (true) {
            Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
            ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT 1");
            rs.close();
            stmt.close();
            org.postgresql.PGNotification notifications[] = pgconn.getNotifications();
            handleNotifications(notifications);
            Thread.sleep(100);
        }

The problem with this approach[1] is there's a 100ms of latency between polling attempts (the sleep call).

LISTEN/NOTIFY is very useful, particularly the transactional nature and not requiring any additional tech stack (e.g. no need for a separate MQ server), but for frequent/high-value/lower latency signalling you're better off using something that doesn't require sleeping/polling.

[1]: That and the lack of exception handling or resource cleanup.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately it isn't correct that you don't need a separate MQ. Postgres DB connections are not cheap - the best way to use this pattern is to have a single server listening to PG notifications and publish them to a real MQ.

Also the 100ms of latency is a limitation of JDBC, not of using Postgres. Note the complete lack of sleeping in the python sample code.

<comment><USER9> > Unfortunately it isn't correct that you don't need a separate MQ. Postgres > DB connections are not cheap

That depends on your app size. If you're building something relatively small then having a few additional DB connections vs a dedicated MQ server can be worth it (it's really just extra shared memory for the connection). I do agree though that most folks are better off just using a real MQ server. For anything larger (both app size and app scale) it ends up being much better.

> ... the best way to use this pattern is to have a single server listening to > PG notifications and publish them to a real MQ.

Another approach I've been looking at is creating a writable FDW[1] that bridges to an MQ system. That combined with a PG background worker[2] to listen for notifications gives you a transactional system that starts/stop with your database.

[1]: [http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Foreign_data_wrappers](http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Foreign_data_wrappers)

[2]: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/bgworker.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/bgworker.html)

<comment><USER11> that sounds great. be sure to write about it when you (or someone else) implements it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "What happens in this case is that the cache is not invalidated. Because the > transaction had not yet committed, the old version of object 12345 was > loaded. The cache will now remain out of date until the TTL (if any) has > passed."

This seems contrived, does anybody actually do this ?

Why wouldn't the app layer re-warm the cache itself, seeing as how it has the object already in hand ?

Even if the app layer populates the cache, it shouldn't do so before the transaction is committed.

<comment><USER11> that might not be so easy. not every cache is something like memcached or redis. a caching web proxy (like varnish) can't be warmed that easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> SQLAlchemy allows use of post-commit hooks, which achieves pretty much the same effect, save for the race conditions.

<comment><USER14> It is protected from the same race conditions that this apparently protects you from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What with the silly CSS that won't let me browse the site in landscape mode on my phone? Sigh. Web designers.

</comment><comment><USER16> FTA:

>I recommend RabbitMQ

I recommend anything but.

<comment><USER17> Explain, please. I'm considering using it.

<comment><USER16> Operations and configuration-wise, it is _bonkers_, and massively overengineered.

<comment><USER17> Would you agree that there's a demand for a simple and reliable MQ? Possibly one that just supports Stomp, possibly written in Golang? That just works and does nothing fancy?

<comment><USER16> I've actually been using redis pubsub, which is fine for my needs and dead simple.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Game Theory – Prison Breakthrough - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/economics-brief/21705308-fifth-our-series-seminal-economic-ideas-looks-nash-equilibrium-prison <comment><USER2> This article presents the reflections of Game Theorist, Ariel Rubenstien, about the practical uses of his discipline.

[http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/game- theory-h...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/game-theory-how- game-theory-will-solve-the-problems-of-the-euro-bloc-and-stop-iranian- nukes-12130407.html)

It's worth reading the whole article, but he cautious about the predictive power of many of Game-theory's most elegant models:

"In my view, game theory is a collection of fables and proverbs. Implementing a model from game theory is just as likely as implementing a fable. A good fable enables us to see a situation in life from a new angle and perhaps influence our action or judgment one day. But it would be absurd to say that "The Emperor's New Clothes" predicts the path of Berlusconi"

To give some context, he is one the 100 most cited economists in the world, coauthor of the most popular graduate Game Theory textbook and has a reasonable chance of winning a Nobel over the next couple of decades for his work on game-theoretic bargaining models.

<comment><USER3> Though now that he points it out, it seems like the path of Berlusconi is rather well explained by the "Emperor's New Clothes".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article describes _interpersonal_ Prisoner's Dilemmas, where if every person optimizes for themselves, the final result will be worse for each and every person (than if they had all shown restraint). As the article points out, this may explain pollution and overfishing.

There are also _intertemporal_ Prisoner's Dilemmas, where each if person-at- time-T optimizes for their immediate goals, the final result will be worse for each and every moment in that person's life. This may explain why we overeat: any given moment is made better with a Big Mac, but if you ate a Big Mac all the time every moment your life would be made much worse than if you led a restrained, healthy life.

<comment><USER5> If only there was some way for versions of yourself at different times to coordinate. Oh, right...

<comment><USER6> It seems the act of coordination itself can be modeled similarly to not eating a big mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I came here thinking this was a recent breakthrough, but this appears to just be an overview of the 1948 Prisoners Dillemma and an update from 1994...

</comment><comment><USER8> For another view on how the Prisoner's Dilemma should affect your worldview beyond academia, see this recent article by Tim Gowers on the Brexit: [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/6172/](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/6172/)

<comment><USER9> I skimmed the article and I have to say, I am not convinced at all. Decentralization can be achieved without causing situations like prisoner's dilemma. Look at Torrent for example, it works without a central authority enforcing things. While total decentralization is ineffective, centralization is authoritarian and destructive. We have to construct a system where it pays off to be honest and fair, such that force and subjugation is not necessary. This is the only way forward. And frankly, I do not see the EU play a positive role in any of this.

<comment><USER10> centralization also results in severely less optimal results because the information and experience available to central planners is substantially less then information available to individual actors.

Not only is the information of poorer quality prior to making the decisions the quality of feedback is poor. It becomes very difficult to understand the consequences of decisions when you have nothing to compare it to.

In a decentralized system the individual actors can see the results of decisions made by other actors and change accordingly. In a centralized system there is no other 'center' to compare it against. They could be making good decisions or they could possibly be not.

In the real-world the amount of unknown variables is so high that even decisions made with the best intentions, most rational approach, and most perfect knowledge possible can fail miserably. It wouldn't be the fault of the central planners, per say, but it will still be a negative outcome.

Also a decentralized system the consequences to negative decisions is dampened. Even if the bad decision was done out of perfect rationality there is enough irrational actors that somebody else will likely stumble across a superior decision and thus guide a more positive outcome. A bad decision by a individual actor will potentially be devastating to that actor, but the effects of that decision will be limited to that actor and those around him that may be negatively impacted.. it won't impact the entire group and his example will lead to better decision making in the near future.

With centralized planning the bad decisions affect the entire group and it can take much much longer for the bad decision to be recognized as bad and even longer to change. By that time you can fix the problem have the group adjusted to work around the bad decisions and undoing the bad will just create new issues.

<comment><USER8> > Also a decentralized system the consequences to negative decisions is > dampened. Even if the bad decision was done out of perfect rationality there > is enough irrational actors that somebody else will likely stumble across a > superior decision and thus guide a more positive outcome.

Or, alternatively, it will be a race to the bottom until the housing market crashes.

> A bad decision by a individual actor will potentially be devastating to that > actor, but the effects of that decision will be limited to that actor and > those around him that may be negatively impacted

Unless that actor has nuclear weapons, poisons a water supply, destroys the source of some resource the rest of the world depends on...

<comment><USER10> > Or, alternatively, it will be a race to the bottom until the housing market > crashes.

The housing market crash was due to central planning. Hardly a counter point.

> Unless that actor has nuclear weapons, poisons a water supply, destroys the > source of some resource the rest of the world depends on...

Central planners are humans.

When comparing human systems of central vs decentralized management you have to understand that the central planners are just as prone to irrationality as individual actors.

Pointing out that individual choices can lead to bad outcomes does not mean that central planning choices will not lead to bad outcomes.

The problem is one of dealing with complex mulch-facteded world were historical information will very often lead to poor decision making in the face of change.

The lack of good information, lack of good feedback mechanisms, and inability to gain enough experience are all severely limiting to the chances of quality outcomes as a result of central planning.

<comment><USER11> >The housing market crash was due to central planning. Hardly a counter point.

Citation needed on how central planning led to MBS and CDS exploding.

<comment><USER12> Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac)

Admittedly not the only factor but a huge contributor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Their graphic and dilemma are nonstandard and do not match, for anyone confused by the graphic. The normal formulation of the problem is:

\- If A and B each betray ('snitch' in the article) the other, each of them serves 10 years in prison.

\- If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve life in prison (and vice versa).

\- If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge).

In the article, the prisoners are given three choices: Silence, Betrayal, and Confession, which confuses the issue, and the graphic provides only Silence and Confession, which further produces confusion.

Perhaps the modern formulation is too indoctrinated with plea bargaining?

<comment><USER14> There is no third choice. They're using both 'confess' and 'snitch' as meaning 'telling the truth about what happened'. The description in the article may be confusing, but it does match the diagram and it's fundamentally the same as yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those of you thinking this is at all related to the recent de- privitization movenent in the US prison system, it is not. This is more of a breif history and overview.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the "breakthrough" in the title was very misleading. It should be renamed to something like "the [early] history of the Prisoner's Dilemma".

<comment><USER17> Agreed. After reading the article and related comment threads, my perception is one that aligns with this view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The prisoners dillema fails to take into account that both prisoners know each other, and one of the prisoners may not make a rational decision. Say there is prisoner a and b. Prisoner a is a drooling moron who will act again his self interest. Prisoner b knows this. Prisoner b will do the thing that will make him get out of jail for good. Essentially I'm not playing along with this "riddle" because its flawed in the first place because it fails to understand elementary consciousness.

<comment><USER19> A friend working with inmates says that they laugh at the idea of the prisoner dilemma. They say there is no dilemma: everybody knows that one must never confess or there will be consequences.

These are not occasional criminals but people for which crime is a career path, exactly the mobsters of the example in the article. They have rules to follow which affect all their professional life in the same way we have contracts with our customers.</comment></comment>


If Google bows to China's censorship, it will put tech giant on a slippery slope - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/google-china-censorship.php <comment><USER2> What's the slippery slope here? According to the article:

> if [Google] accedes to the Chinese government's demands, it will make it > easier for others to do so, and will also embolden other totalitarian states > to ask for their own custom censorship services from Google and other tech > giants.

I think this is all premised on the belief that American corporations somehow have the moral obligation (and right) to change the way things in a different country work.

China has its own functioning tech ecosystem, so entrant companies need to play by its rules if they want to make a profit there. Period.

Even if I appreciate Western morality, I don't see reasons for outrage or bemoaning slippery slopes.

<comment><USER3> > _I think this is all premised on the belief that American corporations > somehow have the moral obligation (and right) to change the way things in a > different country work._

> _China has its own functioning tech ecosystem, so entrant companies need to > play by its rules if they want to make a profit there. Period._

Nazi Germany also had "its own functioning tech ecosystem". So did Stalin and Mao's even more murderous regimes.

Moral obligations don't stop at borders.

<comment><USER2> Straight to Godwin's law (in this case, I think it's germane).

My argument is about American corporations imposing morality (or thinking they can). Corporations' main motivation is profit, not improving human rights. Google doesn't go to China with the primary intention of improving human rights, rather to make a profit from Chinese citizens.

Google would have to pay Chinese taxes to operate there, their presence puts money into the hands of the CCP, an entity the author of the article doesn't approve of. Google has no leverage: China has its own perfectly capable search engine[s].

So as I see it, the options are:

1\. American corporation enters China, plays by rules, causes no political change.

2\. American corporation doesn't enter China. Local Chinese companies fill the void, causing no political change.

In neither case is any political change effected. If the bemoaning comes from the point of view of "well Google _could_ have changed something," I think that's naïve and I'd like to see evidence of this happening successfully

If it comes from the perspective of "Google is capitulating or funding a government that I as the author/Westerners don't support in general", then that's an argument involving moral absolutism, which is a longer debate.

If you have time, I'd like to hear your thoughts on what you think Google should be doing.

<comment><USER4> But by entering the Chinese market, Google allows itself to be influenced by the requirements of The Party. At this point the main motivation of profit can be turned into whatever The Party wants outside China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you do business you have to cooperate with the government and the law of that land. It is up to the people of that country to change their laws and government.

I would be much more concerned if google gets an exception. In the west bigcorp gets their lobbyist army (google is #1) to get past laws and the people's will. I hope China won't bow down to Google. America is operated by corporations, some countries are not.

<comment><USER6> China is an authoritarian state. China isn't going to bow down to Google. The honorable, and the correct, thing for Google to do is not operate in China, but of course they aren't going to do that.

<comment><USER7> If Chinese people are fine with their government and great firewall, why should we or Google care.

<comment><USER8> Because China will have leverage over Google and it has used that leverage in the past to affect countries/people outside of China.

<comment><USER9> Ummm, is that not what another large powerful country does? Or going back to the Romans, did? Isn't that the whole point of being large and powerful?

<comment><USER10> So you're not a fan of laws then? Just might?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When will the lesson be learned?

When will the lesson be learned?

How many more dictators must be wooed, appeased - good God, given immense privileges - before we learn?

YOU CANNOT REASON WITH A TIGER WHEN YOUR HEAD IS IN ITS MOUTH.

<comment><USER12> But, but, but, the Silly Valley Boys are all geniuses. Surely the other side will appeal to logic. ;-)

<comment><USER13> Please stick to substantive posts here.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sadly, with what we know of ISPs and tech companies running fiber straight to Fort Meade, even giving them a room in the data center [1], I don't see this as surprising. Google might have been thinking of this when they altered their motto. [2]

1: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) 2: [https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of- do...](https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil- from-1826153393)

</comment><comment><USER15> But all the other major, and most minor companies have already acquiesced. That's how one's allowed to do business in China, and China is a market one cannot ignore.

</comment><comment><USER16> When google gets big enough in China they will be subject to blackmail by the chinese government when users (anywhere really) cause an upset for China's relations like a single user affirming the sovernty of Taiwan, or critisizing the mainland. They will chill free speech in this way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Apple readily hand over the keys to their datacenters, why can't Google bend as well?</comment>


World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806 <comment><USER2> Articles about Climate Change seem to get very few comments on Hacker News. I think nearly every other article on the home page right now has more comments including an articles about building a flying taxi (47 comments).

Honest Question: Why is there seemingly such little interest in what very well could be a huge threat to the survival of humanity?

I asked a similar question here - and it got 0 comments! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21027145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21027145)

<comment> the-dude Let's please remember you have asked for it.

I have lived through :

\- The end of the cold war, we were all going to die a horrible death, all at once.

\- Acid rain, all forests would die and consequently we would die too or have a terrible planet

\- The hole in the ozone layer, we would all get skin cancer ( I can't remember if we would die )

\- Tchernobyl with elevated radiation stretching into Europe. Could not eat apricot-jam and damn I love apricot-jam

Furthermore, I have studied Computer Science, which was basically 50% math. I have worked with people developing physical models, advanced computing and simulations are freaking hard.

In my time, the hockey-stick would be an indication there is something wrong with the model ( instability ). "Nature does not behave this way"

The earth is getting greener and yields are up, partly because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

It is completely unclear if "climate change" is either good or bad.

The sea level has been rising for thousands and thousand of years : about 6-8k years ago, I would be able to walk to the UK ( from NL ).

<comment><USER3> Just pick one of your points that seems misunderstood:

> In my time, the hockey-stick would be an indication there is something wrong > with the model ( instability ). "Nature does not behave this way"

But the popularly known "hockey stick" graph isn't a model prediction, it's a reconstruction of _past_ and _current_ temperatures. "Nature is currently behaving this way"... And as you point out, that's an indication that there's something wrong -- instability.

<comment><USER4> It's not actually a reconstruction of temperatures – it's cherry-picked data to support a per-determined conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy > lifestyle.

> Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven > by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term > sustainability of the biosphere.

> Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases > in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat > production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil > fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, carbon dioxide (CO2) > emissions, and per capita CO2 emissions since 2000

There's the rub. The vast majority of people in the developing world want the wealthy, Western lifestyle. People like eating meat. People like having technology and air conditioning and transportation and using airplanes to visit far off places.

No leader of a developing country is going to go to their people and say, "Sorry, for the sake of the planet we are going to remain poor." And no leader of developed country is going to go to their people and say, "Sorry, for the sake of the planet, we are going to have to give up our lifestyle, and curtail our economic growth."

> Exactly 40 years ago, scientists from 50 nations met at the First World > Climate Conference (in Geneva 1979) and agreed that alarming trends for > climate change made it urgently necessary to act.

My guess is that 40 years from now, this group of scientists will put out a paper talking about how they have been warning us for the last 80 years, and we still haven't done anything.

<comment><USER6> > No leader of a developing country is going to go to their people and say, > "Sorry, for the sake of the planet we are going to remain poor." And no > leader of developed country is going to go to their people and say, "Sorry, > for the sake of the planet, we are going to have to give up our lifestyle, > and curtail our economic growth."

Then we will all die, and will deserve it.

<comment><USER7> "We will all die" is such hyperbole. Billions of poor people? Sure. But in developed nation's, technology will keep us going for a long time.

<comment><USER5> If you want to save the lives of poor people from climate change, the number one thing you could do is help them develop as fast as possible. When the temperatures get high, having access to dependable electricity and air conditioning can mean the difference between life and depth. Having reliable road and rail networks means that if the crops fail, food from outside can easily be brought in to stave off starvation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps 30 years ago climate change could have been stopped or kept under control by a series of taxes and trading schemes. However, world governments have squandered that opportunity.

If climate change continues unfettered, millions of people living on coastlines will be displaced and agriculture will become difficult in many regions. This is likely to lead to political chaos and instability.

I think climate change should be the most important issue on in any election. We still have time to keep warming manageable, but it will mean halving the amount of greenhouse gas we produce. This is going to require fighting climate change on multiple fronts, including changes to almost every industry - energy, housing, transportation, commerce - and possibly even geoengineering as a last resort. But it can be done. The Green New Deal is the only family of solutions that can plausibly halt climate change. Anything less is incompatible with the science.

</comment><comment><USER9> I absolutely hate how such articles are designed to make most readers feel guilty, while not offering any realistic and quantifiable action plan. Nope, the average reader of this will not give up their plans on having a family, to delay the global warming for the less environmentally conscious part of humanity by a couple of milliseconds. They won't change their lifestyle from living in a house, traveling to events and eating tasty food to suddenly sitting in a 100 sqft box and eating sustainable pea soup every day. What those articles do is give more votes to the green politicians, whose platform often consists of taxing things people enjoy and spending that money to produce more fearmongering articles. So instead of a small shop owner flying with their family to a vacation in Hawaii, the same plane seat will be taken by a politician flying to a climate change conference where they will commit to spending more taxpayer money on creating committees, publishing papers and making sure as many people as possible vote green.

On the other hand, there are not many articles on addressing climate change from an engineering standpoint. How much of the CO2 emissions come from burning gasoline? How much of that CO2 could be trapped back by switching to biodiesel? What would be the CO2 output of producing the necessary fertilizers and compensating for the increased corrosiveness? Are there better ways of trapping atmospheric CO2 in something that can be easily loaded into a gas tank in 5 minutes? Can we compensate the greenhouse effect by emitting some reflective particles into the atmosphere?

There are plenty of quantifiable and constructive ways to to reduce the global warming that would actually require research and collaboration across the board, but somehow instead we are stuck in a loop of guilt and are fighting on who should get blamed and taxed for something we are not yet solving.

</comment><comment><USER10> > The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy > lifestyle.

My bullshit detector went off here. I don't known how any reputable scientist can claim that.

<comment><USER11> Well... in almost all cases, the wealthy lifestyle produces more carbon than a less-wealthy lifestyle in the same country.

The thing is, though, that the wealthy lifestyle isn't that common. Are we talking about the 1%? Well, only 1% of the people can live that lifestyle. Are they responsible for 2% of carbon emissions? 5%? 10%? That still leaves 90% of carbon emissions.

So, yeah. The quoted statement seems to be far more political than it is based on objective evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Relevant Posted today: The Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Portugal Space Agency (PT Space), European Space Agency (ESA) and Unbabel Labs open competition for a €500,000 award that will combine Artificial Intelligence and space technologies to solve major environmental issues. The winning team will present its solution at Web Summit 2020.

[https://unbabel.com/news/500k-ai-moonshot-challenge-will- com...](https://unbabel.com/news/500k-ai-moonshot-challenge-will-combine-ai- with-emerging-space-technologies-to-combat-climate-change/)

</comment><comment> the-dude Full of Y-axis manipulation. Alarmist language.

And what does this mean ? ( from the conclusions ) :

"Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans"

Did they get bonus points for the diversity angle?

<comment><USER13> Population control is often a dog whistle for ethnic cleansing. I think they are simply trying to be very clear that they aren't advocating for that.

<comment> the-dude The merely want to control the population?

<comment><USER8> No. As the report itself says, stabilizing the population (or slightly shrinking it) will help fight climate change, but that can be done very easily without "population control".

"make family-planning services available to all people, remove barriers to their access and achieve full gender equity, including primary and secondary education as a global norm for all, especially girls and young women [1]

Which makes sense! Rather than some sort of authoritarian China-esque policy of limiting children, just spread access to goods (like education, contraception and abortion) which allow people to control how many children they have.

[1] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6403/650](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6403/650)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 11,000 scientists, in fact.

<comment><USER15> Are these the hallowed 99%?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a solution for rapid change from the private sector? I don't believe the current US policy makers will act on climate change.

<comment><USER17> The one solution I see is replacing traditional meat (especially beef) by alternatives like Beyond Meat or processed insects.

I believe that we can see a huge shift once meat alternatives become a viable alternative, not only for the sake of direct methane/CO2 consumption but also in terms of rain forest preservation (iirc, around 77% of the total soy production go into mass breeding).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> it says worldwide, but we all know who this is aimed at. Global North countries with excess consumption are distinctly to blame. Why then, the emphasis on coordinated global action? Broad demands, like moving away from GDP and doing nice sustainable things instead are not productive. But when these kinds of alliances insist on ignoring the overwhelming burden of the US and friends on the climate crisis, instead asking for aid in moving developing countries and their minuscule footprint away from fossil fuels, its the only way to go about it. We need to understand that, as the developing world, this is not "our" fault. It is -their- fault. That's why this will fizzle out like all the agreements before it. If these thousands of scientists want to make a change, they need to throw their weight behind specific policy proposals in specific guilty countries and get political, using their numbers as focused power and not as vague alarmism calling for impossible policy.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I say climate, you say emergency!

Climate

</comment><comment><USER19> Well worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER20> Climate Change is an existential threat. Period.

<comment><USER21> not even the most pessimistic IPCC projections describe it as an existential threat. youre buying into hype instead of science.

<comment><USER20> That is debatable, and is being debated. There remains a lot of unknowns, a lot of them having to do with the northern permafrosts that have been increasingly releasing methane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yawn ...

<comment><USER23> So says the collective consciousness...</comment></comment>


Atlassian Takes the Gay Marriage Ruling Too Far - <AUTHOR> I just pushed a bunch of my code to Bitbucket and my console printed out a huge rainbow Atlassian logo. I understand that many people are excited and happy about today's ruling, but I find it highly distasteful for a company to throw it in the face of many of their customers who are not happy with the ruling. Atlassian, show some respect and sensitivity. <comment><USER2> I suggest you don't go to Stack Overflow for the next few days then. I have no issue with comapnies showing their support in this way, but I can understand why others don't agree. Both the argument for and against companies showing their support for gay marriage have valid points, and I don't think I have much more to add than what has already been said at [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/297859/can-stack- ove...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/297859/can-stack-overflow-and- metas-logos-be-changed-temporarily-to-the-loveoverflow)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://mattmulcahey.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/robocop- uni...](https://mattmulcahey.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/robocop- unicorn-4.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe they issue "Wrong Side of History" refunds? Vote with your wallet.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would also be pissed off and I fully support the ruling. I don't think that my political and work life should interfere with each other.

It is very unprofessional with no good reason - also Atlassian are Australians IIRC and they have no skin in that game.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd freakin' love it if HN implemented a gradient for the top border.

</comment><comment><USER7> Use another hosted git service or roll your own.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, what an extremely violent, discriminatory and anachronistic imposition! While banning gay marriage and refusing a basic right to people that just love each other was perfectly fine, right?

</comment><comment><USER9> Ha! Respect and sensitivity - like all those bigots showed gays for the last century? Respect like that?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a happy day for a lot of happy couples. This is something that many have waited for--don't begrudge their fun.

Besides, given their pricing models, can you blame Atlassian for supporting sodomy?</comment>


Slack outage: Connectivity issues - <AUTHOR> https://status.slack.com/2017-10/99f36bf8f86f6375 <comment><USER2> If only we had distributed realtime communication tech. Walled gardens FTW!

<comment><USER3> Does a non-Slack IRC channel go down less frequently?

<comment><USER4> IRC networks are distributed, so when one server dies you can connect to another.

So yes, IRC channels have better availability than Slack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597431)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597387)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597382)

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15597382) looks like the original, but it's flagged, I guess?

What does that mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slack's status page seems to have been in and out whilst this has been happening too (and sometimes the page loads but assets fail):

[https://tkcs.in/461W2z0c1M3z](https://tkcs.in/461W2z0c1M3z)

It's concerning/odd for their status page to be affected by whatever infrastructure issue they're having.

<comment><USER7> It might be on different infrastructure - just not stuff prepared for the onslaught of it being checked when there's a global issue.

<comment><USER8> The errors have been 500 responses, returned quickly. That _suggests_ something other than high load (though it doesn't guarantee it by any means).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh good. I was going nuts trying to figure out why I suddenly couldn't communicate with my coworkers and Slack kept saying I didn't have internet when I clearly had internet.

Ah, the downside of relying on a third party for critical communication infrastructure when you're a full remote company...

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess people will actually have to get some work done

<comment><USER11> Collaboration with your co-workers is work.

<comment><USER12> Lol keep telling yourself that.

<comment><USER11> As a professional you can't just go off in a corner and produce something (no matter how fun it is). I learned this the hard way as a software engineer. In fact the hardest part of software engineering is collaborating with humans and integrating their ideas and requirements into what you're building.

<comment><USER13> It's important, but IMO it isn't the hardest part. Most people can do the collaboration and communication, but can't write code.

<comment><USER14> True, if you are talking about general population. But among those who can code in my experience the biggest obstacle at work is being able to communicate and collaborate efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Slacks status page also returns unminified css and four trackers (including twitter advertising).

<comment><USER14> > unminified css

Curious: does that even matter, assuming response body is gzipped?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Posts about slack seem to keep getting flagged away :/

<comment><USER17> We need at most one story about this outage on the front page at a time. Dupes _should_ be flagged.

<comment><USER4> There wouldn't be dupes if the first submission hadn't been flagged away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sigh... 10 minutes of cursing trying to troubleshoot the LTE connection on my phone. Sadly Slack has become a fairly critical part of our communication.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been having degraded services all morning, guess it finally kicked the can and went out.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's been over 30 minutes - how does a chat app go down for this long?

<comment><USER21> It's built on human-constructed infrastructure or automated infrastructure designed by humans

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well it's up again.

</comment><comment><USER23> part of the screenhero rollout perhaps?

<comment><USER24> I just quit a call where we were using screen hero. It worked great. Then I noticed my status said I was still on a call so I thought I'd restart slack. It didn't really want to quit, so I killed it. Sorry everyone.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Automatically mount Android devices over adb - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zach-klippenstein/adbfs <comment><USER2> This library uses Go-Fuse for the fuse filesystem. Is anybody familiar with both Go-Fuse[0] and Bazil Fuse[1] and can give a run-down as to use one or the other?

[0]: [https://github.com/hanwen/go-fuse](https://github.com/hanwen/go-fuse)

[1]: [https://github.com/bazil/fuse](https://github.com/bazil/fuse)</comment>


Xen SMEP (and SMAP) bypass - <AUTHOR> https://www.nccgroup.trust/en/blog/2015/04/xen-smep-and-smap-bypass/

<comment><USER2> please don't tell me this means a fresh round of scheduled maintenance reboots!</comment>


Single Page Apps Access Handling With AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://theosom.com/p/tZvl

<comment><USER2> Nifty....would be nice to see something similar built into Angular as standard....however there is an argument for not performing access handling in the frontend, and even if done - for responsiveness reasons - should still be implemented in the backend

<comment><AUTHOR> well it is implemented on the backend anyways, but you still need to handle the restrictions on the front-end somehow as well, right? coz backend API and the front-end are not always a 1 to 1 match of resources</comment></comment>


'Police. Step Away From the Chess Table' - <AUTHOR> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/police-step-away-from-the-chess-table/?src=twr <comment><USER2> > The tables are behind the gates of the park's Emerson Playground, which the > signs in question state is off limits to adults unaccompanied by minors.

I keep rolling this around in my mind. It makes sense but at the some time it doesn't make sense at all. I'm sure it's intended to keep people from kidnapping kids or adults from destroying equipment but I fail to see how it would even be remotely effective at that.

<comment><USER3> Should we really be encouraging children to play chess?

Not only is it terribly violent it is rather anti-american. The monarchy, church and knights all in charge capturing and crushing the pawns to gain territory, not to mention that it pitches black against white.

<comment><USER4> Which part of that is anti-american?

<comment><USER5> *sweeps palm over head

Whoooosh

<comment><USER6> I think he meant it was very american ;p

<comment><USER3> I think there is an american version where a beige democrat side face a grey republican side and they both discuss the issues sensibly before devolving all power to the individual pawns

<comment><USER7> _Mutters to self: I can't believe I'm explaining jokes on the Internet.. sigh_

Unless ojbyrne was being ironing, as in, what about dictatorial rule is un- American?

<comment><USER4> ironing? Yes, that was it, I was ironing. For, like, the first time in 15 years.

<comment><USER7> ... I'm going to go ahead and pretend that was intentional... yeah I totally meant to write ironing, not ironic...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If there is a park for 'children and their guardians' only, where is the park for 'single adults only'? I'm only half joking, but seriously what if a single adult wants to go play on a swing set to regain his youth - isn't he being discriminated against?

Obviously this was just a good excuse to kick the 'creepy looking' people out of the park. I'll bet $100 that none of the people they tried to kick out were clean cut businessmen wearing a suit and tie.

</comment><comment><USER3> They should think themselves lucky - in the UK they would now have a lifetime on the sex offenders register.

Being in a playground while adult and male!

<comment><USER9> I honestly don't think this law is related to sex offenses. I think it's related to the fact that adults can easily push children away, and then the taxpayer's money is not being used for the intended purpose. Adults have plenty of places they can go. Kids, not so much.

(Similarly, if you're 40 years old, you can't go to the public kindergarten. It's because the program is designed to educate 5-year-olds, not 40-year-olds. Nothing to do with sex, it's merely practicality.)

<comment><USER10> Playgrounds shouldn't have chessboards if they also have rules prohibiting adults without kids. Stupid planning is responsible for this ridiculous outcome.

<comment><USER11> Not to out myself as a nerd, but if my history is any indication, some kids play chess. And even checkers.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but how is that relevant for my argument? Kids and adults enjoy chess and checkers, both should have access to public chessboards, slides and swings are for the most part only enjoyed by and only safe for kids.

<comment><USER12> There are lots of chess boards outside of playgrounds. They are generally occupied by adults. I think the point of putting the table inside the playground was specifically to enable kids to use it.

Amending the sign to read something like "no adults, unless playing or watching chess, but not if a child has been waiting to play, except ..." would get complicated fast. Just go to a different park already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a novel idea: Instead of a summons, how about the police calmly but firmly explain the law to them and ask them to leave? If they won't leave, THEN issue them a summons.

<comment><USER14> The police in NYC have illegal quotas on summonses and tickets. They were a sort of quasi-secret until very recently. Perhaps these cops needed to meet theirs?

<comment><USER15> I'm certain that people will demand a citation for a claim like that. Therefore, I will provide a citation of that fact for you:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/nyregion/10quotas.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "And a police spokesman said that the summonses were part of a larger campaign to clean up the park, driven by complaints from residents about crime. "There's been an effort over time to address these concerns, and a lot of it begins with very simple innocuous violations such as this," the spokesman said."

Why couldn't this effort instead begin with addressing the crimes that residents were complaining about? If they're complaining about, say, drug dealing in this playground, why not deal with that first and leave the chess players until after the real problems have been fixed (or try removing the chessboards...).

<comment><USER17> Or they could find some way to legalize the chess-playing so that it's no longer an infraction, no longer a broken window, hence no longer a prelude to more crime. They could redefine the "kid's park" to exclude the chess tables, for instance, so the rule did not apply there.

But honestly, I think the "broken window" reasoning has nothing to do with them breaking the rules and more to do with class. A lot of the chess players are poor, some of them are street people, and a lot of the ones who aren't poor look and dress like the ones who are. The parents look at them with a certain prejudiced eye and think, "These people are not a wholesome element, they are of the street." And the parents fear that criminals and junkies might look at the chess players with the same prejudiced eye and think, "These guys are of the street; they're poor and low-class like me. If they're welcome here, then me and my criminal behavior are welcome here too." So the theory is that parents will stop bringing their kids, and low-grade criminals will start hanging out. Because of the perception of the chess players as a "street" element, basically a conflation of class with criminality, their presence can turn a park sleazy through no fault of theirs, just through the prejudice of other people. And some instinctive, gut-feeling version of that theory is what resulted in the police being tasked to "clean up" the park by evicting the chess players.

That's unfair. Innocent people shouldn't be punished because of how they're perceived by other people, even if that perception is causing real harm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, not trying to say what is right or wrong here, but the article describes a 40-year old homeless spending time at this playground. Sure, playing chess is harmless, but do you think it would intimidate 5-10 year old kids into not going to that playground? What if a larger group of homeless moved in?

Either the sign is legal, in which case it's good to enforce it (a warning I'm sure is enough for a first "offense"), or fight the legality of the sign.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wonder if there will be an underground chess playing movement, similar to street countdown - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R90QyIBJqrg>

</comment><comment><USER20> people, unfortunately even in the US, give pretty unlimited power to the governments at all levels. The lower level of government, ie. the less visible they are, the more moronic laws they are coming with. Police is supposedly just enforcing the laws, whatever it be (of course there is a lot of discretion in the enforcement and prosecution, yet it would be a separate matter)

</comment><comment><USER21> Sad story</comment>


Introducing the Unicorndog - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-unicorns-ones-started-out-underdogs-adarsh-pallian?trk=pulse_spock-articles <comment><USER2> You have to ask yourself, does a piece like this genuinely add anything to the conversation?</comment>


The New York Times Ends Apple News Partnership and Pulls All Articles - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/29/new-york-times-ends-apple-news-partnership/ <comment><USER2> I don't know where this is going but my uninformed hunch is going it alone is not going to save them. They need a savior like Bezos who will squander money if necessary to keep it afloat.

But who knows maybe they have an ace up their sleeve.

<comment><USER3> Save the New York Times? They're profitable and growing, with 5m digital subscribers.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new- york-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-times- earnings-subscriptions-coronavirus.html) [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/new- york-times-ad-revenue-to...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/new-york-times- ad-revenue-to-fall-at-least-50percent-in-the-second-quarter.html)

Ads revenue is obviously going to be hurt with COVID-19, but they have a brand that is better placed to withstand the shift to digital than most.</comment></comment>


Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/science/amazon-project-kuiper.html <comment><USER2> It's a little baffling how monstrously big Amazon has become over the years. Pretty soon there won't be an industry left untouched by Amazon's tentacles. Hard to see how they can continue down this path without getting broken up.

On the bright side: each new satellite launch should lower the barrier to entry for the next satellite launch. This combined with growing competition in the space industry could lead the way to commercially viable spaceflight. There's so much opportunity for off-planet industry, it'll be pretty exciting to see where all of this leads.

<comment><USER3> It's regrettable and bitterly discouraging that the more Amazon works toward improving mine and millions of others daily lives, the closer they get to being broken up.

At least, that's the way I see it. They've added new competition in so many areas. They've saved the consumer so much money that the federal reserve literally blamed them for lowering inflation, but instead, the federal government as painfully ironic as it is, views Amazon as the bloated overreaching organization.

<comment><USER4> > Amazon works toward improving mine and millions of others daily lives

... thousands of small businesses and millions of retail workers are so thankful for this "improvement". The day is nigh where you and I will also get "improved", hopefully!

<comment><USER5> Occupations are always made obsolete when society advances as a whole and better solutions become available. We would not have progress otherwise.

<comment><USER4> And one day we'll all be obsolete, implying we won't be able to show our value through our work.

Brave New World. Ideal for a certain social class: the alphas.

<comment><USER6> Food, material goods, and services are cheaper and more plentiful than they have ever been in human history. Add to that: jobs are easier to discover, self-teach, and contact than they have ever been in human history. For the poor as well as the rich.

The main thing people get unhappy about is wealth disparity ie., how much MORE the rich have than the poor. That even today's poor have a rectangle that's effectively a magic portal to the entire world's knowledge and population is not satisfying to you when you read headlines about Bezos' mansions, right? Allow me to humbly suggest to you that if the dominant emotion of your worldview is envy, you would not have been any happier in decades past.

<comment><USER4> Nice narrative. Yes, poors are better in a materialistic way. Now, what about their freedom? Is that also getting better? You might recall the magic rectangle from Farenheit 451...

<comment><USER6> Don't strain your back moving those goal posts. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is behind a paywall so I don't know how much is FUD and fear- mongering. These are real concerns but SpaceX has already addressed them.

1: risk of collision. The main mitigation measure here is active collision detection. The second mitigation measure is that all of SpaceX's satellites will be in an incredibly low orbit that decays rapidly without active station keeping. If a satellite fails it will burn up in the atmosphere within a couple of years.

2: light pollution. The latest generation of SpaceX satellites with the visor are so dark that they are not visible to the naked eye. This is dark enough that blooming is not a concern. Of course they'll still be visible in telescopes but that doesn't ruin the shot the way blooming does.

I suppose it's possible that Amazon doesn't address concerns the way SpaceX does, but it seems unlikely now that SpaceX has proven it can be done.

</comment><comment><USER8> and this is just the second company. Others will jump in once shown that it works as a business model.

</comment><comment><USER9> Many people live in such dire conditions and under such stress, the idea of looking up and 'enjoying' the sky will be meaningless. The stars could be a curtain so far as most of humanity is concerned.

We will have to build observatories on the far side of the moon and at lagrange points and in orbit.

Between now and then there is and will be a struggle to get out of the planets gravity well and into space. There will be some detrimental effects, but the benefit of planetary connectivity via sat internet will help so many its hard to put a value on it. If capitalist competition is not desired then there must be a state designated max cap on sat numbers forcing them to iterate on the ground and possibly cooperate.

As someone who has been on the waiting list for an astrophysics scope for some 9 years (!) I can feel the light pollution trauma, though for normal people observing from the ground the albedo of these things will not approach city light pollution.

Disbarring space launches for this reason is similar in the notion to not landing on mars until decades or millenia of sterile robot landers have confirmed or otherwise the presence of life. Reality, waste decades doing this and find you contaminated it anyway with your robot, but it had no effect on life which is robust.

Lets just get out there finally and get stuff done. Most scope viewing is done on cameras anyway now and not by eyeballs.

The world is still a big place. The day you can be connected anywhere and take a vtol to tunguska is still some time distant. The sky of such a world will be congested but there may still be sky slices present.

</comment><comment><USER10> Most important point everyone forgets to mention: this is NOT about having the tech or not. We have artificial satellites for a very long time.

This is about spending a few dollars more to have them properly painted.

Think about this, Musk and Bezos are saving a few cents. In exchange of astronomy.

<comment><USER11> I don't think that's fair.

Other satellites are reflective, too. It's difficult to make a satellite _completely_ dark, in part because dark = absorbs heat and it's hard to dump heat in space.

The problem with these internet constellations is that, to work, they have to have _thousands_ of them in each constellation. SpaceX has permission for 12k and is seeking permission for 30k more ([https://spacenews.com/spacex-submits- paperwork-for-30000-mor...](https://spacenews.com/spacex-submits-paperwork- for-30000-more-starlink-satellites/)).

<comment><USER12> It's definitely fair. Per the article, there's currently ~2600 satellites in orbit; Amazon is looking to more than double that, and SpaceX is asking to add ~16x that number. I think we're well within our rights as society and as humans generally to put the onus on them not to fuck up astronomy for the next century.

And since when has "It's difficult" been a free pass? Both of those companies beat their chests about how neat their tech is, but when it comes to a genuinely hard problem - as in, how to launch this fleet without fucking up humankind's ability to gaze into the cosmos as we have for our entire history - you're going to let them duck it?

And, to head off the obvious objection: I really, genuinely, truly don't care how difficult it is, why the physics make it difficult, what a vacuum does for heat, etc. I know. It's a hard problem. Maybe you don't get to launch fifty thousand satellites into orbit without solving it.

<comment><USER13> Time to start building tools to jam the spectrum. Make these things useless.

<comment><USER14> So that we'll have the negative impact of the satelites, but no benefit? How is that supposed to solve anything?

<comment><USER15> Eventually they will deorbit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Astronomers should chill, it's not like they HAVE to watch the space from earth, they could also just send sattelites out there like idk hubble?

</comment><comment><USER17> The two problems pointed by the article - light pollution caused by high reflectivity and potential crashes appear to be difficult to solve because solving one makes the other worse.

If the satellites tried to become more difficult to detect, perhaps with light absorbent coating they would also become more difficult to detect by other satellites in orbit.

<comment><USER18> There already was this story of a $bn research satellite having to dodge a throwaway SoaceX satellite. Real issue is accountability and the difference in risk and cost - SpaceX should pay for the reduced lifetime of this satellite (as it costs fuel to change height).

[https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/ESA_spacecraft_dodges_la...](https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/ESA_spacecraft_dodges_large_constellation)

With many more satellites on the way there will be more such stories.

<comment><USER19> Collision avoidance is standard practice in the satellite industry.

Here is Iridium CEO: [https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753](https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753)

BTW - Satellite operators (including governments) are currently the only customers of SpaceX. Their interests are SpaceX interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Parisians hated the Eiffel tower when it went up, claimed it was an eyesore. Give it a few years, and these constellations will be something we look up at with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

<comment><USER21> It's not about aesthetics, if you keep adding satellites with extremely high density, at some point you run out of gaps in the sky, that are dark enough and unobstructed for long enough time to make any meaningful measurements of the observable universe.

<comment><USER22> This overstates the problem I think. It will be an issue for wide-field astronomy. On the other hand, even with tens of thousands of satellites, they will only be covering a tiny fraction of the sky. For narrow-field you should be unobstructed most of the time, and able to turn the sensor off momentarily when the odd satellite is going to obstruct you.

<comment><USER21> > This overstates the problem I think. It will be an issue for wide-field > astronomy.

I think you are downplaying the problem. They are already reporting issues with Starlinks and there are "only" a few hundred of them right now, Amazon wants to deploy 3k low orbiting satellites.

Look at this list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_observato...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_observatories)

The very large majority of the world's observatories are doing wide-field astronomy.

This is not scientific progress, this is just two billionaires trying to one up each other and muscling their way around the world to rub their egos.

<comment><USER23> > _This is not scientific progress, this is just two billionaires trying to > one up each other and muscling their way around the world to rub their > egos._

Starlink claims to have other objectives. Why do you think their stated objectives are dishonest?

<comment><USER21> Internet service is a solved problem, you have transoceanic cables and distribution networks which garantee reliable, high bandwith, internet service.

This is a gimmick to sell the imaginary joy that you can go anywhere remotely and enjoy the pleasures of the modern connected world. There are already niche providers for Satellite services that users can use, if they are truly isolated and are able to afford internet.

There is no sense in having all of this infrastructure duplicated and done via RF transmission over a low-orbiting constellation (with all the losses and realibility issues around it), if it can easily be achieved through expanding the existing infrastructure.

The only use-cases that this serves are high-income people that want to go off-grid but are unwilling to sacrifice high-bandwith, and military deployments (Which SpaceX does not hide as an objective).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this really a worry? Won't all the gear eventually be moved off Earth and into space making this argument pointless?

I'm guessing amateurs with a telescope in their backyard are the ones suffering?

<comment><USER25> This is really a worry.

* Many experiments and a lot of science cannot be done from space, even if delivery costs were much cheaper. E.g. LSST (0.5 billion in US funding alone, + lots of other funding sources), or wide-field astronomy important for near earth object detection and monitoring (e.g. ASASSN). These things are too complex and too large to realistically do in space.

* Ground-based astronomy is inherently cheaper (no space costs, no extra engineering effort, and importantly, the ability to fix things and upgrade equipment), and therefore has a much lower barrier to entry. You can do truly meaningful research from the ground for ~$1 mill + a team of 4 or 5 core people, whereas space requires 10-100x this + an entire fleet of people with all of the associated bureaucratic nightmares + extra time required and engineering challenges. Space offers some benefits, but often times the tradeoff is either not worth the cost, or the experiment is not feasible to do in space.

* Regardless of whether or not you care about the impact on astronomy research (hey, astronomers care about humanitarian stuff too), the way SpaceX bowled through and just started launching their Starlink constellation was irresponsible, reckless, and actually quite ignorant (e.g. they were _surprised_ by how bright their satellites were...this is basic stuff people). On the other hand, I'm not sure how much blame you can really place on a company being reckless when the law allows for such recklessness. There should absolutely be more regulation and oversight. It's in the governments' best interest because it's going to just destroy (needlessly) a lot of R&D already paid for.

Ninja edit: mentioned Space-X in here but this article is technically about Amazon's Kuiper constellation; however statement is the same (this isn't really a single company problem, this is a new-technology-without-appropriate- regulations-problem). Starlink is the largest constellation and the biggest problem (planned to have ~10x the satellites as the Kuiper constellation, they are lower orbit than anything else, and not sure how the albedo compares to Kuiper, but the brightness is > 99% of other satellites).

So: these constellations will multiply number of orbiting satellites by 10-100x, they are extremely bright (> 99% of all satellites), and they are very low orbit. So its a perfect storm of problems for astronomy.

final ninja edit: check out [https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~gbakos/satellites/](https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~gbakos/satellites/) to see one astronomer's page about this stuff, some actual images that illustrate how big the problem is with the _extremely limited_ amount of starlink satellites currently in orbit, and some other links. OK that's all

<comment><USER23> What do you mean by the "bowled through"? Didn't they go through the FCC (US) who took it to the ITU (UN) and get it all cleared? Looks like the international body in charge permitted it?

What does good behaviour look like?

<comment><USER25> You make a fair point -- I think maybe it is not totally fair to blame the companies here -- they are in a competitive environment and really the best we can expect is for them to follow the letter of the law, which it seems they mostly did. There is a suit against the FCC that argues they incorrectly claimed that their constellation would not have an "environmental impact" (which would have required an environmental impact study) but not sure how well that will hold up in court; it looks like that's best legal avenue we have at the moment to fight this.

The problem is really that there needs to be better oversight and more regulation. The laws as they stand do not address the problems that these constellations produce, because they were written in a time when starlink-like operations were scarcely imaginable. SpaceX and amazon, etc., should definitely be allowed to do cool and serious projects like this, but the oversight agencies basically saying "hey do whatever you want" is a recipe for serious accidents like collisions, as well as a needlessly enormous impact on astronomy research. If there were, say, albedo requirements or something, everyone would have to plan for that, but that is not in place today.

One part that irks me even in the absence of regulation is that SpaceX provided no forewarning of how bright their Starlink satellites would be, which astronomers were shocked by. Space-X claimed they were "surprised" by their brightness which is either a lie or belies serious incompetence.

<comment><USER23> Is it a cost thing or a capability thing? i.e. is it possible for Starlink to have what they want without interfering with terrestrial astronomy or are we really choosing one or the other? Quite sympathetic to astronomers if it is cost thing, but undecided (maybe slightly leaning Starlink) if it is capability thing.

Assuming that within 20 years we can have sufficiently cheap space launch systems that there are sufficient geosynchronous telescopes for amateur use would that solve this problem?

Genuine questions, not Socratic method.

<comment><USER25> > Is it a cost thing or a capability thing? i.e. is it possible for Starlink > to have what they want without interfering with terrestrial astronomy or are > we really choosing one or the other? Quite sympathetic to astronomers if it > is cost thing, but undecided (maybe slightly leaning Starlink) if it is > capability thing.

I think it's a bit of both; right now SpaceX is trying to get the brightness of their starlink sats down to ~7th mag (they're at 5th mag now, they have an experimental coating that should bring this down to ~6th mag), and it sounds like if they can do this the problems will be far more manageable (for LSST specifically this amounts to a few extra months of observing time, however the impact even with these mitigations is strongly dependent on the specific science case).

However, this work should be done before approval. What happens when SpaceX realizes that getting things down to 7th mag is too difficult and costly and time-intensive? Without regulations in place, I would expect they shrug their shoulders, do some PR to frame the problem as "us vs those pesky astronomers" and launch what they want to launch. We have virtually no leverage. But from the standpoint of people that operate in space pretty regularly, what we're asking is pretty basic. Astronomy of course isn't going to be thrilled with the amount of satellites growing by a factor of 10-100x, but we live in the real world. But something that monumental needs to be done thoughtfully and carefully and with respect to the billions of dollars of R&D already paid for that will be impacted.

> Assuming that within 20 years we can have sufficiently cheap space launch > systems that there are sufficient geosynchronous telescopes for amateur use > would that solve this problem?

Again, space delivery costs are only one factor. Not to say this wouldn't enable new kinds of instruments or make some new things possible, but it would not solve the problem, no. There are too many things that can't realistically be done from space.

<comment><USER23> Cool beans. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

<comment><USER25> Sure! I think your questions are very reasonable, we'll have to see how it all shakes out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple to answer netbook market with $500-$700 tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/21/apple_to_answer_netbook_market_with_500_700_tablet_report.html <comment><USER2> When was the last time one of these insiders was right about a product launch? They were blatantly wrong about the iPhone, Apple TV, the iPod, the iPod mini, the video iPod, and so on. The only leak I can recall was the unibody leak, and that was relatively minor. But people still quote these people, despite none of them doing any more than stating the obvious "Apple hasn't made a netbook or a tablet so maybe they're making one now".</comment>


Looking for Technical Co-Founder in San Francisco - <AUTHOR>

My name is Kyle Perricone and I am working to develop an iOS app - looking for a technical co-founder in San Francisco.
The app is called "Livit" and the goal is to help / encourage users to take advantage of their lives by maximizing the things they do outside of work. This will be achieved by combining four social functions into a single location. Please respond if interested!
Personally, I have extensive project management experience at a major medical device company in the Bay Area. I do not code, but I understand engineering workflows very well.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> What kind of business co-founder are you? Are you a hustler? Did you build a landing page and already collected 10,000 emails of interested potential users? If not, why not?

Any decent mobile developer is smart enough to have their own ideas and build them. Why would they build _your_ idea instead? What do you bring to the table? Money, connections, beta users... Just don't say "the idea".

Did you build a mockup of your app yet (check out app cooker for instance)? Did you show that playable mockup to 100 people in coffee shops, got their feedback and iterated?

If you have done all of this, then you are a business co-founder worth engaging with.

[0] source: I used to run the co-founders meetup of Silicon Valley, so I have had that exact same discussion with tens of business co-founder hopefuls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, this is going to sounds very snarky, and please understand this is mainly a joke, but maybe what the iOS app should do in order to help people "take advantage of their lives by maximizing the things they do outside of work" is to power down your phone, thus forcing you to interact with the people around you.</comment>


Videos from DreamIt Ventures' 2010 Kickoff - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shedd.us/dreamit-kickoff-videos/

<comment><USER2> Includes discussion from the founders of Notehall, Seatgeek, and FanGamb.</comment>


Show HN: Headless Chrome as-a-service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joelgriffith/browserless <comment><USER2> Hey, this is very impressive. In the past we've run full Chrome in Docker containers, and are now experimenting with running Chrome Headless in Lambda, for economic and concurrency reasons.

How do you stream the running Chrome to the iframe - that's very cool?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love to talk more about this if folks are curious and why I made the decisions I did, just drop a comment and I'll happily discuss.</comment>


Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/18/yahoo-misses-profit-expectations-in-what-could-be-its-last-ever-earnings-report/ <comment><USER2> Its taken them a while, all their peers except for Amazon have essential gone to the dust. If Geocities had been bought by say Google instead of Yahoo I could have easily flipped my options into my own startup. However dot bomb hit so hard instead of wealth I was left holding a huge capital gains tax bill that forced me into 10 solid years of hardcore poverty as most of my income was confiscated to pay off the debt. Not a nice outcome for companies bought by yahoo back in the 90s!

<comment><USER3> Have you written more about this? I would love to read more details.

<comment><USER4> One person who avoided this was Mark Cuban, who bought a bunch of Yahoo! put options when broadcast.com was acquired, hedging himself against the stock crash.

<comment><USER5> Nice strategy. I wonder why others didn't do it.

<comment><USER6> If you read Mark's story, it's clear that he was aware of what was happening at the time but didn't drink the kool-aid, while if you look at the other dot bombs, they definitely thought the world was changing and the rules had changed.

<comment><USER7> "Read his story" \--> Can you provide a link to this particular story? I would be interested to read it.

<comment><USER8> [http://investmentxyz.blogspot.ch/2006/05/cubans-collar- anato...](http://investmentxyz.blogspot.ch/2006/05/cubans-collar-anatomy-of- famous-trade.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat of a dark art. Web services are a dime a dozen, and Google or Facebook probably has a better one. Yahoo seemed like it failed to break into any enterprise offerings either.

Poor leadership, and failure to attract talent. They didn't have the same culture pull as Google/Facebook/Apple in the latest tech bubble. And why work for Yahoo if you could do the same thing with VCs funneling you money? I think one of the most telling things is the lack of OSS from Yahoo. Their top repo on github has been effectively dead for around a year [2]. Yahoo hasn't been a tech company is almost a decade, and it shows in their products. Not even their numerous acquihires have netted them anything.

EDIT: Looking at a timeline of Yahoo, they haven't launched a major product since 2006 (10 years). All new products have been bought [3]. Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and_services#Closed.2Fdefunct_services)

[2] [https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=user%3Ayahoo&ref=searchre...](https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=user%3Ayahoo&ref=searchresults&s=stars&type=Repositories&utf8=%E2%9C%93)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Yahoo!#2006](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Yahoo!#2006)

<comment><USER10> _> Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome._

Android, DoubleClick, Google Maps (Where 2, ZipDash), Google Earth (Keyhole), and Google Docs (Writely, 2Web, Tonic, DocVerse, Quickoffice) were built of acquisitions, not new Google products. Chrome, too, in a sense (WebKit).

Thought experiment: what if Yahoo _!_ , not Google, had acquired all those companies instead?

<comment><USER11> They _did_ buy Tumblr and all you ever read about that is Yahoo writing off more of the Tumblr value.

How are their other acquisitions doing?

<comment><USER12> [http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa- may...](http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-mayers-yahoo- acqu-1781980352)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Being first to market is rarely a long term advantage, it's more like a shot of adrenaline. Over time you build up technical, and structural debt. As the front runner you have to make all the mistakes, after you've made them a competitor can swoop in, avoid your mistakes, and outperform. You may not pivot because hey what you're doing seems to work, or you may avoid a pivot because you have too much technical debt. But it seems to prove itself over and over again to be a very weak advantage.

Yahoo finance sucks compared to google finance, yahoo search sucks to google search, yahoo content sucks. Yahoo mail sucks, yahoo shopping sucks. Everything they do is not as good, but they were one of the first to do it all.

</comment><comment><USER14> Has the valley ever seen a more hyped, yet disappointing hire than Mayer?

<comment><USER15> Theranos.

The valley is very sensitive towards women running companies with large valuations, that company's woes would otherwise have flown completely under the radar. The next one on the "overhyped but disappointing and in the valley list" would be Clinkle and its now 24 year old CEO. No women there but as you will see the valuations drop off a cliff pretty quickly in this list.

<comment><USER16> Why is the primary factor behind Theranos's bubble the fact that its founder was a woman? That is a notable aspect but Elizabeth Holmes also leveraged powerful connections and a TED-friendly dream to get that hype. There are plenty of female-led startups that did not reach any notable status despite having a woman at the helm.

<comment><USER17> I'd like to see a woman hired as CEO for whom the principle talking point _isn 't_ that she's female.

I don't fucking care.

Be competent. Be a decent person.

Meg Whitman is a horrible person from everything I've seen. She's managed _not_ to kill what's left with HP after Carly Fiorina drove it into the ground.

I meant to search for "most notable (female|woman) tech ceo", but left out the gender qualification.

A top 10 list fails to include any women:

[http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/top-tech- ceos/#WNfESM0rbqqN](http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/top-tech- ceos/#WNfESM0rbqqN)

A list of 13 likewise:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech- company-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company- ceos-2014-10?op=1)

A slideshow item I refuse to link on principle lists Alibaba, HP, Oracle (co- CEO), IBM, Xerox, Yahoo, YouTube, and ... um, one other I've now forgotten, fuck the slideshow very much. Oh, AMD. None of which are startups.

Women hold 23 CEO positions (4.3%) of the S&P 500, four of which I've already mentioned:

[http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos- sp-500](http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-sp-500)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech- company-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company- ceos-2014-10?op=1)

<comment><USER16> I think we'd all love to see the day when a woman reaching the position of Fortune 500 isn't news. As much as we might argue how much of Mayer's meteoric rise was because of her being a woman, I think it's outweighed by the fact that when she fucks up, she has to bear the burden of being the latest face of female inferiority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yahoo's problem was that it was masquerading as a tech company when the only valuable asset it had in its books was its media side of the business. Yahoo had many media agreements, and it had developed much negotiating strength in that business.

Unfortunately, Yahoo also had these random properties like mail and games that made it difficult to forge one path.

Further, Mayer was someone who had reputation as a tech leader. She saw everything from a tech angle which made it difficult for her to direct the company in another direction apart from tech. This was the reason why Flickr and Delicious were being shutdown.

</comment><comment><USER19> When reading the article I was remembering the words of Dominique Vidal, former Yahoo MD Europe, quoted by Criteo's cofounder Rudelle in his book: "Yahoo had everything to be Google. But when we reached a peak of users, we stopped investing in R&D to focus on other expenses. That is the most terrible mistake we did". When you look at Google or Facebook and their R&D investments in non core-business projects, I am definitely thinking that someone got Yahoo's lessons right

</comment><comment><USER20> Poor execution, lack of innovation. At least Mayer can run for public office now...

<comment><USER21> We have no idea what happened at Yahoo. They may have failed two years earlier without Mayer, for all we know.

<comment><USER22> I thought she was the most qualified CEO they had in a very long time.

Yahoo Mail has been a huge driver of their user retention, webmail usage has almost fully shifted to mobile. Facebook has gobbled up a big chunk of display ad revenue along with Youtube and video ads in general. Pretty much everything they can't control sucks for Yahoo.

<comment><USER11> I don't see how she was qualified at all.

She had one job. And that was in the company she was with from the beginning.

So she had zero experience working anyplace that is not Google, and zero experience as a CEO.

So she is not qualified and it shows.

Example 2: Robert Nardelli. He was such a great leader at GE. Then went to Home Depot as a superstar and managed to fuck everything up. He also never had a job outside GE, the place where he became superstar.

Anyways why anyone thinks that hiring a CEO that had a total of one jobs, is a good idea, I just can't figure out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I still remember when some were attempting to portray Mayers' demotion from the exec ranks at Google as sexism. In reality, Google had probably already recognized certain issues in her managerial style.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. If Mayer was awesome, she would have been CEO of Google, infact she was best positioned to be one at some point. All the people she hired were getting promoted over her. She was pissed, obviously could never show it. Bided time and took up the CEO position at Yahoo. Anyone with big ego would. I wouldn't blame her. She did what is best for her. Just like any other economic actor. What I really felt bad for - Yahoo's employees and customers. Only qualified person who was willing to take up the job was Marissa. Rest were no- name hacks who had no idea how to build products. Board had no choice but to hire her. Hailing her as Obama with Obama change posters, I felt was a little over the top. Yahoo's employees were desperate. She improved morale initially. Had she shown results, she would have won huge loyalty from employees and board. She tried. Made some bold moves and failed. Not bad in my opinion. I wonder, if any other CEO would have made such bold product moves. Acquisitions - lots of them, mail, home page improvements, new redesigned apps, attempting to build an internal product for search. She at least tried. RIP yahoo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Whatever the price will be, it won't be the $44.6 billion MS offered back in the days. Shareholders are probably furious at Yang for turning that offer down.

<comment><USER26> That would have been another shit move by Ballmer. He already destroyed Nokia and cost MS a fortune.

Let's hope LinkedIn brings value with a deeper integration in office.

<comment><USER25> From where I'm standing it looks more like a shit move by Ballmer for making the offer _and_ a clusterfuck move by Yang for refusing it. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Yahoo"... The brand is the problem. It sounds like a good name for a personal website in 1998 (with 85 gifs and a turquoise background).

<comment><USER28> With the right products, I'm of the opinion that you can name your company just about anything and be successful. I mean is Google's name any better if you don't keep their products in mind?

Let's also not forget about GoDaddy, which for a time was successful with that name and hobbles along (operating at a loss) even today.

<comment><USER27> I don't think there is a major problem with Yahoo products. I tried Yahoo mail yesterday and the signup process was nice. It looks like a viable alternative to gmail.

Google is a nicer name, it comes from googol which gives it some math meaning beyond the sound. Yahoo is only an onomatopoeia that sounds dumb to me (I am not a native English speaker though). Also, if you look in the dictionnary ([http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo)):

        yahoo:

        a rude, loud, unpleasant person, especially one who has little education

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I still don't see why Yahoo didn't stick to their original purpose of human powered search instead of buying up random companies to try anything.

All they had to do was work out how to outsource the work to users. Why did they not buy StumbleUpon or PearlTrees, which few have heard of?

That and email would have given them a lot of data on their user base.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is probably a really dumb question - but I have 17 years worth of Yahoo email. Most of it is for nostalgia, but how likely is it that this would be wiped away if/when Yahoo goes under?

<comment><USER31> If you care about it, keep your own backups. This applies to all cloud services at all times.

The fact that you ask yourself this question now implies that you should really start preparing.

<comment><USER30> You're right. I'm completely liable here if it does go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sigh... "To keep reading, please enter your email address".

Welp.

<comment><USER33> You should be able to press and hold the back arrow, click on the story directly and quickly press escape to stop the javascript that does that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A bit dramatic of a title, no?

<comment><USER35> How so? They put themselves up for sale and the deadline for final bids was today. They also missed profit and revenue forecasts, it was another ugly quarter for a quickly shrinking company.</comment></comment>