Iran to Replace "The Internet" with "Halal Intranet" - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513604577142713916386248.html <comment><USER2> There has been an ongoing and pervasive systematic increase in stories portraying a negative light on Iran and Iranian society. This, along with obvious current affair issues, leads me to believe that a 'propaganda war' much akin to the one we saw before Iraq and Afghanistan is slowly coming to life.

The fact of the matter is that amongst all the countries in the Middle East, Iran is the one that most Americans and Europeans would probably find most similarities with. It's incredibly youthful, energetic, entreprenuriel and when it comes to the younger generation, liberal. While I don't doubt that the political establishment might be attempting to curtail free access to the internet I question why It's of concern to us when America is trying to ram SOPA and other bills down our throats and when our "allies" in the mid-east region already have complex and functioning systems in place to regulate and censore access to foreign websites.

I've spent many years living in the mid east and I just can't shake off the unmistaken feeling of an attempt to sway the public into thinking Iran is a monolithic demonic institute.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

>> A conservative cleric blogger based in the holy Shiite city of Qum, Ahmad Najimi, said in his blog last week that the government was paying hackers hired in the network known as the "Cyber Army" the equivalent of $7 per hour to swarm the Web with positive comments about the Islamic Republic and post negative comments against dissidents.

So we ask ourselves, are comments here that are mitigating Iran's actions here - or ones that divert the conversation to say SOPA - getting paid by the hour?

but wait - if we assume _all_ positive comments are paid for, then we're denying those that are unpaid to voice valid counter arguments.

Oh my head, my poor head....

<comment><USER4> That happens in China, too. When there's a new policy or law, they pay thousands of people to write positive comments about it.

<comment><USER5> I love China. I think they have the best human rights record in the world!

<comment><USER6> They pay for positive comments, not sarcastic ones. Don't expect a check in the mail... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has nothing to do with "Halal". NOTHING about Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh) makes a mention of anything but edibles when it comes to Halal. If you hear some autocratic douchebag call something Halal or Haram when speaking of non- food items, you know you're being bullshat.

This is nothing but good ole consolidation of power. Iranians call it Halal, Americans call it counter-terrorism and intellectual property, others call it enforcement of rightous morals, upright character, national concensus, surprise non-consensual posterior-sex or whatever label one assigns to power- grab. This is it.

Fuck the ruling Mulahs and fuck the business, political and military- industrial engines that are conspiring against the People everywhere on earth.

<comment><USER8> Muslim's here, Halal as in حلال and Haram as in حَرَام do not limit themselves to stuff related to food. Really it's not. I am not implying that Internet can be haram or halal, but there are things besides food that are considered either halal or haram. For example, sexual intercourse without nikah is considered haram, and the opposite is considered halal.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for correcting the mistake in the parent comment. For the uninitiated: as a simplification things you can do fall into three categories: halal (you can do it and it's a good thing), makruh (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makruh>, مكروه) (smt that's not a clear sin but should best be avoided), and haram (you shouldn't do it, it's sin), these all have subclasses and it's complicated, so this is a rough guide. The non-Muslim population generally encounters only the food aspect of this distinction, due to notices on restaurants and food items.

Now, many (orthodox) Muslims would consider lusting after women who are not your wife (or wives where that applies) as haram, and see the Internet as a thing that facilitates this. This is not a new thing, e.g. the Internet is heavily filtered in Saudi Arabia. You can't subscribe to, say, _Playboy_ from that country or have it sent to you, because they check the mail items.

Now, whether all this makes sense in year 2012 is another question.

<comment><USER10> Non-Muslim, Christian countries have banned Playboy, under 'obscenity' rules aswell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, there is no government with the moral credibility to speak up.

Iran's censorship is direct, autocratic and politically motivated

US' censorship is indirect, 'democratic' and commercially motivated.

Dear US goverment, please rethink your decision. Your might and support in the world comes not from your military strength but your perceived moral credibility and being seen as the standard. The right standard.

Do not change it.

PS: Has WSJ written anything against SOPA?

<comment><USER4> I'm starting to think the indirect, commercial approach is actually worse, because it's so misleading ("we'll save millions of jobs!"). The US Government couldn't have convinced so many countries to start restricting their Internet. It's "thanks" to MPAA and RIAA that they are doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "start collecting detailed personal information on customers" This has been the norm in Iran for a while. I visited there for three months in 2008 and was always asked for my name and passport number when going to internet cafes. But usually they were relaxed about it so did not have to show my passport so I usually wrote "George Bush", "Johnny Cash" or other fake names. The staff would also usually help me with finding a proxy as Facebook and some email services were blocked. There were not a central filter but filtering was done individually by the ISPs. For example Facebook was blocked in Tehran but not in the rest of the country.

Edit: By the way, you should all visit Iran. It is a safe country with interesting architecture, culture, history and very friendly people.

<comment><USER13> Sounds good, you want to go hiking when we get there? On second thought, maybe we should stay home.

<comment><USER12> I went hiking there. And I went snowboarding in the mountains. Was fantastic. But if you plan to cross the border from a country occupied by the same state that enforces sanctions on Iran then I would advise against that, in the same way as I would advise against crossing the border from Mexico to the US while hiking without any proper entering visa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The video surveillance brings Iran further into the vanguard of nations that have sought to keep tabs on Internet use. Libya under Moammar Gadhafi ran extensive web-monitoring operations. China has sophisticated website filtering and an army of censors patrolling chat rooms. China and Cuba require Internet- cafe users to present identification."

Sweden is filtering and web-monitoring, it is very easy for the state to know exactly who does what. NSA is not behind in this technology. USA has sock puppet software, they dont need armies of censors.

The internet is dead.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship>

I'm a little shocked about Sweden's "web monitoring". From wikipedia it looks like they're just blocking some porn sites... Could you elaborate more?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country#.C2.A0Sweden)

<comment><USER14> A few years ago a law was passed that permitted the FRA (Försvarets Radio Anstalt) (Defense Radio Establishment) to spy on all the traffic that passes through swedish borders, the FRA had been doing so illegaly for the past ten years and that was a scandal too. What constitutes border, in the internet the FRA is monitoring, is not defined.

Swedens #1 ISP, TeliaSonera is on the list of CIA/USA as strategic foreign resource to protect in case of major war due to them being able to spy on much of communications going to russia/east, the list was leaked by wikileaks if I remember correctly.

More: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is like deja vu:

\- Belarus March 2011 - national currency drops by more than 50% to USD due government failure.

\- Since you can not get together more than 3 persons in public places (it will be illegal meeting/petitioning), people used social networks (twitter, vkontakte.ru) to get together every Wednesday's evening at some announced location and just stay there (no talking, no doing anything illegal, not causing any trouble for anybody). Occasionally - clap in hands. So it is like flashmob, just scheduled :)

\- After second such event - access to twitter.com, facebook.com, vkontakte.ru, etc sites was blocked nationally each Wednesday. Organizer's account in vkontakte.ru was hacked somehow by Belarus police/KGB (probably, not hacked, but "enforced" - it is easier for them just to call to organization and request information instead)

\- After 3 months our government tried to pass updates to a law about public meetings trying to make "public not-doing" illegal (this is what these people were "doing" each Wednesday). Thanks god, this did not pass through 'cos it is insane.

\- Next - the law discussed there - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3415897> \- was introduced and quickly after that was approved :)

Belarus currency to USD exchange rate, January 2011 - 3200 brb for 1 USD Belarus currency to USD exchange rate, December 2011 - 8500 brb for 1 USD

</comment><comment><USER16> I would like to do something so that Iranians can continue accessing the Internet. I'm thinking contributing money or time to hardware related projects via which Iranians can totally circumvent the Iranian Internet infrastructure completely.

Any ideas, HN?

<comment><USER17> You might want to get involved with Telecomix, they've done just that. See <http://telecomix.org> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecomix>

<comment><USER18> Yep. Telecomix is the perfect place to start if you want to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are many intelligent people in Iran, and they have the privelege to see this unrolling in front of their eyes. Wake up, before you become North Korea.

<comment><USER4> I could say the same thing about US. The unfortunate truth is that most people don't care enough until it's really too late to change anything. And if they do want to change it, then they will need overwhelming numbers to change the policy, and possibly even violence to remove the Government.

But I do think things are starting to change a bit. As the society moves away from the "read-only" type of media, where they only get to think about the "choices" they are presented with, which has led to a lot of people, especially young people, to not even care about voting anymore, because they realized their vote won't change anything when the vast majority of the population could still get mass-manipulated, to a society that is more "read/write" thanks to the Internet, and where they are much more engaged in political issues, and don't want to sit idle on the side. This should ultimately lead to healthier democracies.

Democracies turn rotten when the people don't care about what happens at the top, which tends to encourage politicians to do whatever they want when they are there and seek more power ever faster.

<comment><USER20> > Democracies turn rotten when the people don't care about what happens at the > top

Exactly. Plus it seems there is a global movement of some sort in this direction even in countries with a history that would make you expect the opposite (stable democracy after a long history of military coups). Spain has approved SOPA-like laws. Argentina just passed a "counter-terrorism" law that has nothing to do with our country's reality. And so far we've managed to stop the few attempts by the music industry to lobby for restrictive laws, but they will try again.

<comment><USER21> In the UK it is commonly said "you don't vote people in, you vote them out".

It would be nice if we could be more pro active and avoid some of this nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looking at the context in the article, it seems that the government is running scared of dissent, and is now cracking down further and further.

The citizens they talked to seem to be dismissive of the attempts, and one wonders if the government is going to squeeze too hard and cause a backlash.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have five tor exit nodes running at the moment... after reading this I'm doubling it to ten!

<comment><USER24> Where are those nodes? I know that in the US running a Tor exit node may be a safe thing [1], but I wonder about the legality of them in the rest of the word, the EU especially.

The problem is not whether you end up guilty or innocent after a trial; the problem is the trial itself. Who can afford the time (years) and money (~10k €) needed for a penal process? And I can imaging you being pictured by the press covering the trial as a dangerous hacker helping terrorists and similar things.

[1] <https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Run Tor exit nodes (or donate to someone who will).

[https://blog.torproject.org/blog/support-tor-network- donate-...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/support-tor-network-donate-exit- node-providers)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe the MPAA boss will propose the same thing next to stop piracy, especially if SOPA passes and still fails to stop piracy.

</comment><comment><USER26> USA to replace the internet with SOPA intranet

</comment><comment><USER27> I know a little about Iran (I have friends living there and my father was working there), and it seems like the _only_ reason why mulas are in power is America (there is joke that FoxNews is Iranian TV network).

Also, Iran's government is very corrupted (even ridiculously obvious) and in many many cases decisions are based on economical interests told with verses from Kuran.

Of course, there are some people who genuinely believe in ideas of Iran's revolutions but they are already old senile and mainly used as tokens.

In short, the second Iranian revolution will come soon.

</comment><comment><USER28> So, Iran is doing the same as SOPA wants to, and China is doing with filtering the internet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Halal, is it .me you're looking for...

</comment><comment><USER30> This isn't an Onion story?</comment>


American Experience: Silicon Valley (PBS Documentary) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

<comment><AUTHOR> This documentary seems to largely follow "The Man Behind The Microchip," a biography of Robert Noyce. Noyce and his work at Fairchild really set the tone for entrepreneurship in modern Silicon Valley -- a lovely piece of history to know.</comment>


E-Books Destroying Traditional Publishing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/12/27/168068655/e-books-destroying-traditional-publishing-the-storys-not-that-simple

<comment><USER2> I know exaggeration is the game sometimes, but really they're _changing_ traditional publishing, not destroying. Hugh MacLeod says it better than I can in 'Print is the new Artisanal': <http://gapingvoid.com/2012/12/13/artisnal/> (features a great comment from Kathy Sierra too.)

A case in point that I read in the _Sunday Times_ a few days ago is Igloo Books - <http://igloobooks.com/> \- their revenue is climbing rapidly (>$30m last year) and they focus on print (I believe they were only founded in 2003). They're thriving _because_ the lower quality end of the market is hurting. Fiction is rapidly moving to digital but for both high quality and art-rich publications, there's now _more space_ available to them in retail. Igloo, for example, now has excellent placement in retail in a way they couldn't have achieved 10 years ago. Like Igloo, there are many "traditional" publishers that are really anything but.. but they're still print oriented and doing well for it.

In the magazine scene, at least here in Europe, a common vibe right now is that digital distribution will perhaps wipe out 90% of the print run but that the remaining 10% will be a thriving higher quality industry that's _different_ but not _destroyed._

Here in the UK, frequent visitors to newsagents and stores like Tesco may have also noticed a trend on the newsstand of _children's_ magazines and periodicals taking over an increasingly larger space. This is no accident. With the ability to offer small toys on the cover, stickers inside, and with a very art-driven aesthetic, print really suits these publications and the childrens' magazine scene is blowing up, in a good way (some easy citations: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/16/moshi- monsters-s...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/16/moshi-monsters- sales-rise-magazine-abc-roundup) [http://babbleabout.co.uk/2012/04/23/childrens-magazines- gett...](http://babbleabout.co.uk/2012/04/23/childrens-magazines-getting-past- the-buy-one-magazine-get-five-tacky-two-minute-wonder-toys-for-free-to- something-educational-and-beautiful/) [http://www.fipp.com/news/PPA-says-UK- ABC-figures-show-sustai...](http://www.fipp.com/news/PPA-says-UK-ABC-figures- show-sustained-demand-for-print)).

Fewer TV guides, less fiction, less crap.. and more stuff that _deserves_ to be in print. It's still happening.

(Added: Magazine addict Jean Snow seems to have some similar thoughts - <http://themagaziner.com/2013/01/magazines-in-2013/>)

</comment><comment><USER3> > In the middle of November, Little, Brown dropped the price from $9.99 to > $2.99 for 24 hours — the digital equivalent of a one-day-only sale. "That > sparks sales; it gets people talking about it," says Terry Adams, a > publisher with Little, Brown. "You've just expanded the market."

Very similar to what Valve is doing.

Now that books are more flexible in their distribution channels like software, what other things could publishers do? Downloadable content for books in the form of new chapters? Embedded animated diagrams or quizes? Interactive content, like a printed version of Sleep No More (<http://sleepnomorenyc.com/tickets.htm>) ? Code environment simulators like we so often nowadays on websites that teach you how to program? DIY-Language books that harass you to read them if you slack off in reading them enough?

</comment><comment><USER4> E-books revived my inner bookworm, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Traditional publishers who snub the e-book market are throwing money away.

<comment><USER5> Traditional publishers are worthless when it comes to e-books that the author can market himself. Distribution is taken care of so only marketing/advertising is left and that can also be taken care of by a competent author.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

<comment><USER6> I'm really, really interested in the future of content publishing and how things will look fifty years from now. There's a trend across almost all forms of media towards easier, faster, wider and less expensive production and distribution. This is a Good Thing, but it introduces some interesting problems.

One of the main roles of traditional publishing is content curation. This seemed less important in the past when it simply seemed a byproduct of media products (books, tv shows, films etc.) being expensive to produce and distribute. But now, it's becoming clearer that curation is going to become a difficult problem to solve when it's trivial for people to publish their own product on the same platform as internationally successful content authors.

Sturgeon's law applies. In fact, it applies more now than ever because the minimum bar of quality has been lowered. How are we going to navigate something like the Kindle store as vastly increasing proportions of it become saturated with garbage?

I know curation is kind of a buzzword in startup circles at the moment, but it's vastly, vastly important. As a trivial aside, in another tab I'm reading a thread where people recommend the best little-known free software they use. Most of the top replies recommend a single software, most of which I then took a look at. One of them is a list of perhaps 20 softwares; my eyes glazed over and I moved on to the next reply.

<comment><USER5> You bring up a good point. Curation (filtering) has been quite a huge problem for quite some time. While I do think that traditional publishing houses provided this, they did so at the expense of great writing. So it was far from a perfect system. A lot of crap got and still gets published and a lot of good content doesn't.

I wish I had an answer for it. I tend to look at the music scene, specifically electronic, for a relatively successful model: the DJ as filter (curator). I'm not sure that such an equivalent can be achieved with movies let alone books.

I do think a lot of it will have to come from self promotion and word of mouth (whether by actual mouth or electronic) will become more and more important. It's already almost impossible to navigate the Kindle store if you don't know what you're looking for and that goes for other similar services (Amazon Prime Streaming, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). For example, Netflix ratings in my experience are pretty decent indicators of the quality of most movies, so for some crowdsourcing the value of media may work. (You need a good algorithm and a large enough data set of rated movies.) Others may choose to go more with suggestions from readers whose taste they trust.

What I'd like to see is literary reviews that are accessible to the common reader and that do not assume that you've read the book. This is similar to a lot of the book/movie criticism out there, except for the last clause which is imperative for finding a good book rather than analyzing an already read one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ebooks are helping to rip apart traditional publishing, but the biggest thing tearing publishing apart is the disintermediation of their traditional Brick and Mortar channel partners by online bookselling. Further exasperating things one retailer, Amazon, has captured the majority of the online book business.

Publishing companies are all B2B companies with most publisher brands meaning very little to readers, but a lot to their retailer partners. Unlike most consumer goods, books are returnable to the publishers for a full refund if not sold which has been the glue keeping publishers and booksellers workign together since the 1930's.

Publishers were tied to their partners and couldn't walk away from them to go after new opportunities. Further, the "culture" of the industry is such that everyone leading it grew up in publishing so many players never even saw what was happening because they knew how the world worked.

<comment><USER8> It would be very interesting to see statistics about this based on location.

Traditional booksellers (and many other types of "small item" retailers) get a lot of casual drop-in business, and fare much better where there's heavy pedestrian traffic. Consequently, places like the U.S. where many people live in sparse suburbs that require them to drive to the store, should be experiencing a much great loss of drop-in businesses like bookstores tend to be.

[This certainly matches my impression; the area I live in, Tokyo, despite bookseller and publisher hardships (no place is _really_ safe), still has a _huge_ number of bookstores, with many to be found in any busy shopping area. The news stories I read about the U.S. on the other hand, make the situation there sound absolutely dire, with bookstores seemingly disappearing completely in some areas...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _For one thing, digital publishers have the same problem that record labels do: piracy_

This is not new and it existed before the e-book publishing started to grow. I remember reading a digital edition of the Lord of the Rings 15 years ago. Found it on the 'net. Somebody OCRed the paperback. This is still happening.

What helps the publishers is that with the new reading devices it's easier to buy an original e-book than pirate it. What doesn't help them is that many times the original e-book you buy is actually worse than the one OCRed by the fans. I saw original e-books that lack images or they offer only low-res versions, while the pirated one looks better and contains every image at high resolution.

</comment><comment><USER5> "We actually don't have a good gifting tradition yet for e-books," says Sourcebooks' Raccah. Despite all the advances in reading technology, physical books are still the best Christmas presents.

Yes, that is sad. Or even lending (looking at you Amazon!). Nevertheless, e-books have done to publishing what mp3s and online video has done to the record labels / movie studios.

It's basically killed them, yet they are still running around with zombies waiting for that headshot to put them down for good.

E-books are here to stay and publishers, just like record labels, are useless as one can now establish a firm and successful marketing campaign mostly through the web.

Self-publishing may not kill e-books by publishers but has killed not only their monopoly, but also their whole business model.

Welcome to 2013. Accept it or zombify. Or better yet,

die;

<comment><USER10> I don't see the problem here. If you want to give ebooks as a gift, give them a birthday/Christmas card with a unique short URL. The recipient types in the URL, gets a few seconds of a happy birthday song/Christmas carol, then they automatically download their gift.

The key here is to make obtaining the gift as frictionless as possible. The recipient shouldn't need to create an account, fill out a captcha, verify their email, re-log back into the website, upload their profile pic ("wait, are you sure that's you? We don't see a face here"), pick 5 of their favorite books then stand on their head and spit wooden nickels.

<comment><USER8> Of course the flipside of that is that an ebook seems sort of ... "cheap." Not literally cheap (the publishers will make sure of that ><), but ... the kind of thing you buy while checking facebook, 5 minutes before showing up to the party.

Oddly that sort of thing would make me rather prefer to give someone a physical book as a gift, _even if I know they'd kinda prefer an ebook_...</comment></comment></comment>


Top Ways to Kill Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://delphiinstitute.com/wp/?p=863 <comment><USER2> He's missing the top 2 historically: civil disorder, and excessively powerful central governments.

<comment><USER3> Excessively powerful, or excessively intrusive? A government can be very powerful, but choose not to use that power in wealth destroying ways (example: post-Deng China).

<comment><USER2> I can't think of a case where excessively powerful has not become excessively intrusive. Even if governments don't mean to interfere in the economy, they have to in order to protect their power, because money can be turned into political power.

You saw this particularly clearly with Putin. Anyone whose wealth was combined with any sort of political ambition got destroyed. He only had that problem because he inherited some rich and comparatively untamed people from the previous administration. You couldn't get rich in Russia today without already being a Putin loyalist. I suspect it is the same in China.

<comment><USER4> It goes beyond that you can't get rich in China without being a CCP loyalist, it's that you can't function as a Chinese citizen in China without being a CCP loyalist. The idea of an outspoken political antagonist of the CCP even making it through college is laughable. An absolute rule of life under the CCP is that you do not question the ultimate authority of the CCP to rule China.

As for as economic intrusion goes, China is really a unique case. They've invented a new form of capitalism that works very well -- the state government owns some companies, the state government owns shares in other publicly traded companies, local governments own some companies or shares in companies, and some companies have no government ownership. They all compete against each other in the marketplace. There are 3 or 4 different Chinese state construction companies and they competitively bid against each other for projects.

There is indeed a meme in academic literature on China saying that their lack of freedoms and institutions will hold back innovation. This meme never seems to be very well sourced. Tsinghua University graduates engineers as capable as anywhere else in Asia. So far, Chinese engineers have lacked innovation, but if any country can prove that totalitarian rule does not stifle innovation it will be China.

<comment><USER3> _It goes beyond that you can't get rich in China without being a CCP loyalist, it's that you can't function as a Chinese citizen in China without being a CCP loyalist. The idea of an outspoken political antagonist of the CCP even making it through college is laughable._

Every society has its heresies and enforced loyalties. We have a term in the U.S. for heresy - "politically incorrect". In the U.S. it's hard to imagine an outspoken proponent of human biodiversity making it very far in life. No CEO would dare speak in favor of HBD advocate, it would open up the entire company to lawsuits.

 _As for as economic intrusion goes, China is really a unique case. They've invented a new form of capitalism that works very well -- the state government owns some companies, the state government owns shares in other publicly traded companies, local governments own some companies or shares in companies, and some companies have no government ownership._

In the U.S. the government exacts dividends from corporations in the form of corporate taxes, and exercises management control via regulation (OSHA, civil right legislation, workplace rules, etc. etc.) The Chinese system of openly owning shares is similar, but perhaps more efficient.

<comment><USER5> Speaking of which: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834521></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Code Jam 2011 Language Popularity - <AUTHOR> http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages <comment><USER2> I was curious as to what proportion of each language achieved a perfect score. A quick script [1] sorted by Percent which reached perfect score and then by qualified resulted in the below - mean of advanced/lang is: ~90%, most (26) langs either achieved 100% entry or around 80% (14) ).

      [|("PostScript", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Brainfuck", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Golfscript", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("COBOL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Octave", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6666666667|]));
        ("Shell", (5, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6|]));
        ("dc", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|]));
        ("sed", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|]));
        ("R", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|]));
        ("OCaml", (21, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.380952381|]));
        ("F#", (17, [|1.0; 0.8235294118; 0.3529411765|]));
        ("D", (6, [|1.0; 0.5; 0.3333333333|]));
        ("Prolog", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.3333333333|]));
        ("J", (3, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.3333333333|]));
        ("Clojure", (17, [|1.0; 0.9411764706; 0.2941176471|]));
        ("Haskell", (118, [|1.0; 0.906779661; 0.2457627119|]));
        ("C++", (5700, [|1.0; 0.9080701754; 0.2022807018|]));
        ("ActionScript", (5, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.2|]));
        ("Lua", (12, [|1.0; 0.75; 0.1666666667|]));
        ("Pascal", (111, [|1.0; 0.8738738739; 0.1621621622|]));
        ("Python", (1658, [|1.0; 0.8805790109; 0.1447527141|]));
        ("Ruby", (259, [|1.0; 0.8918918919; 0.1351351351|]));
        ("Lisp", (26, [|1.0; 0.8076923077; 0.1153846154|]));
        ("C", (671, [|1.0; 0.8032786885; 0.1117734724|]));
        ("Java", (2652, [|1.0; 0.8465309201; 0.1052036199|]));
        ("C#", (710, [|1.0; 0.8309859155; 0.0985915493|]));
        ("Perl", (155, [|1.0; 0.8258064516; 0.09677419355|]));
        ("MATLAB", (11, [|1.0; 0.8181818182; 0.09090909091|]));
        ("Scala", (35, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.08571428571|]));
        ("Groovy", (13, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.07692307692|]));
        ("Javascript", (30, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.06666666667|]));
        ("GO", (16, [|1.0; 0.8125; 0.0625|]));
        ("PHP", (166, [|1.0; 0.765060241; 0.05421686747|]));
        ("Visual Basic", (32, [|1.0; 0.78125; 0.03125|]));
        ("Assembly", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("AWK", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("WRAPL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Standard ML", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Objective-C", (6, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("TCL", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Mercury", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Befunge", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Fortran", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Factor", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("CMake", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("LOLCODE", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("LOGO", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Boo", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|]));
        ("Erlang", (5, [|1.0; 0.8|]));
        ("Scheme", (7, [|1.0; 0.5714285714|]))|]

[1]

      str |> Array.map (fun s -> let spl = s.Split('\t')
                                 (spl.[0] , let scspl = spl.[spl.Length - 1].Split('/') in
                                            scspl.[0], scspl |> Array.map (fun sc -> float sc / float scspl.[0] )))
          |> Array.sortBy(fun (_,(_,sc)) -> if sc.Length = 3 then -sc.[2] else 1./sc.[1])

<comment> T-R Reformatted:

        PostScript      1    1.0   1.0            1.0
        Brainfuck       2    1.0   1.0            1.0
        Golfscript      2    1.0   1.0            1.0
        COBOL           1    1.0   1.0            1.0
        Octave          3    1.0   1.0            0.6666666667
        Shell           5    1.0   1.0            0.6
        dc              2    1.0   1.0            0.5
        sed             2    1.0   1.0            0.5
        R               2    1.0   1.0            0.5
        OCaml          21    1.0   1.0            0.380952381
        F#             17    1.0   0.8235294118   0.3529411765
        D               6    1.0   0.5            0.3333333333
        Prolog          3    1.0   1.0            0.3333333333
        J               3    1.0   0.6666666667   0.3333333333
        Clojure        17    1.0   0.9411764706   0.2941176471
        Haskell       118    1.0   0.906779661    0.2457627119
        C++          5700    1.0   0.9080701754   0.2022807018
        ActionScript    5    1.0   0.8            0.2
        Lua            12    1.0   0.75           0.1666666667
        Pascal        111    1.0   0.8738738739   0.1621621622
        Python       1658    1.0   0.8805790109   0.1447527141
        Ruby          259    1.0   0.8918918919   0.1351351351
        Lisp           26    1.0   0.8076923077   0.1153846154
        C             671    1.0   0.8032786885   0.1117734724
        Java         2652    1.0   0.8465309201   0.1052036199
        C#            710    1.0   0.8309859155   0.0985915493
        Perl          155    1.0   0.8258064516   0.09677419355
        MATLAB         11    1.0   0.8181818182   0.09090909091
        Scala          35    1.0   0.8            0.08571428571
        Groovy         13    1.0   1.0            0.07692307692
        Javascript     30    1.0   0.6666666667   0.06666666667
        GO             16    1.0   0.8125         0.0625
        PHP           166    1.0   0.765060241    0.05421686747
        Visual Basic   32    1.0   0.78125        0.03125
        Assembly        1    1.0   1.0
        AWK             3    1.0   1.0
        WRAPL           1    1.0   1.0
        Standard ML     2    1.0   1.0
        Objective-C     6    1.0   1.0
        TCL             3    1.0   1.0
        Mercury         1    1.0   1.0
        Befunge         1    1.0   1.0
        Fortran         2    1.0   1.0
        Factor          2    1.0   1.0
        CMake           1    1.0   1.0
        LOLCODE         1    1.0   1.0
        LOGO            1    1.0   1.0
        Boo             1    1.0   1.0
        Erlang          5    1.0   0.8
        Scheme          7    1.0   0.5714285714

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think its surprising to see such little growth in number of users using python from last year. <http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages> vs <http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0>

I answered all the questions using python and was surprised to see the majority of the top coders (you know, the guys who solved everything in ~30 minutes) use C++ and Java. I had the impression that the difference in python's runtime would be made up for how much more succinctly you can code in it and by all the syntactic sugar... but I guess not. In fact, I noticed some of the top guys have various built in libraries to help them reduce their time spent on input handling and various solver interfaces. The auto generated code from those libraries dwarves the actual solution code in size.

<comment><USER4> Maybe that's because the verboseness of C++ or Java isn't really that much of a problem, since the experienced coders can usually type quickly, and moreover, most of the programming work is thinking, not typing.

<comment><USER5> Also, the experienced coders also already have template macros for frequently used code snippets, like loop, conditional statements, comparisions, sorting etc., making doing trivial things in C++/Java, as trivial as doing them in Python (or other high level language).

<comment><USER6> Yup. Some of the TopCoders have their own templates that include substituting "for" with "F" and the like.

They'd have solved these kinds of questions for years, and have ready templates for parsing the input and output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Look at this guy: <http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker>

Used Haskell, PostScript, Python, Prolog, Perl, J, Brainfuck, C, each once for one problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Basically, the 2 most hated languages on HN are the 2 most popular for the Google Code Jam?

<comment><USER6> Just like how McDonalds always does more business than FreshGreens(Or whatever that is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perfect score with brainfuck, that's pretty funny.

<comment><USER10> And...CMake? What?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The country distributions are interesting: Python was used much more frequently in the US, while India favors Java and China favors C++.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think its important to note that many coding competitions historically only allow C/C++/Java. There is advantage in that you can use many hacks in these languages to get around certain issues quickly if your an innovative person (which you have to be to do the contest questions).

</comment><comment><USER13> When I started, I was thinking about using JS both "for the lulz" and because I'm comfortable enough with it that it wouldn't be a hindrance, like LOLCODE or Befunge.

I went with python instead because I assumed I'd need to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of my programs.

For this round, these fears were completely unwarranted. All of the problems, except the second, were trivially O(n). (#2 wasn't worth optimizing, but it was possible)

Does anyone have experience with the next round? Is speed still not really an issue?

</comment><comment><USER14> I tried to use Haskell, and I think that choice bit me (not Haskell's fault, I hasten to add). I saw the correct solutions right away, but I was nowhere near good enough at recognizing the causes of type errors and I/O in general to produce them in the amount of time I had (I started late). C'est la vie. Learning experience.

</comment><comment><USER15> I just looked at the top scoring solution, written in C++, and a Java solution next to mine in the scoreboard, and I can only say that I am really happy with my choice of Ruby.

As for the top scorer, I can't help but wonder if that skill even translates well to the real world?

<comment><USER16> Hang out on the topcoder message boards and decide for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So did Google choose C++/Java/Python as their standard languages or are they just the natural standard languages of the industry? Was there any push by Google to those 3 languages aside from developers knowing that is what they use internally?

<comment><USER6> Google doesn't care what language you use, or in fact even if you compute it manually. All they need is a output file that confirms with their output. - You can provide, whatever the sources.

These are of course, the standard industry choices these days. Except there is a huge bias for C++, as for most competitors, that is a standard language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is my (succinct) solution for the Q1: <https://gist.github.com/960549>

<comment><USER18> Elegant code golf? :D <https://gist.github.com/961961>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I enjoy seeing a positive number in the column for number of contest entries written in brainfuck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems to indicate Haskell is 7 times as popular as Clojure.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why was C++ so popular?

<comment><USER21> C++ and java seems to be two languages allowed in all algorithmic competitions and people are used to it. I think reasons for which C++ is the dominant one are a bit historical - for example when I started participating in those contests, all my friends used C++ and recommended me to learn it too (though now I think I'd stick with java; and in gcj I used common lisp).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow - five coders use bash as their favorite language (including me :) ).</comment>


Human society is totally interdependent–that's a huge survival risk - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/960232/human-society-is-totally-interdependent-thats-a-huge-advantage-but-also-a-huge-survival-risk/ <comment><USER2> This is very reminiscent of Joseph tainter's collapse theory.</comment>


Mozilla is still screwing around with privacy in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://dustri.org/b/mozilla-is-still-screwing-around-with-privacy-in-firefox.html <comment><USER2> [https://telemetry.mozilla.org/](https://telemetry.mozilla.org/)

It's open; see what they are collecting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, what's your point?</comment></comment>


Cultural Course Correcting: Black Rock City 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://journal.burningman.org/2019/02/philosophical-center/tenprinciples/cultural-course-correcting/ <comment><USER2> A phenomenon like Burning Man needs to be somewhat inaccessible to actually work. If it's too easy, it fills up with people who aren't committed enough. In the beginning, that inaccessibility was provided by the sheer obscurity and a somewhat remote and hostile location. But now Burning Man is famous and some tourists are willing to make the effort. But tourists just aren't committed.

That means it's time to raise the stakes. Start holding the event in some even more remote and inaccessible place, like the top of Denali. Those who are willing to go that far will be a smaller but more committed group.

"That's the door. The only way in. Small and extremely uncomfortable. And anyone who wants to know us has to find out how to get through that door. Brother cardinals, we need to go back to being prohibited. Inaccessible and mysterious. That's the only way we can once again become desirable." \-- The Young Pope

<comment> xkcd-sucks Yeah the tricky part is figuring out a form of inaccessibility that isn't nullified by wealth

<comment><USER2> Mandatory nudity from ankles to eyebrows, sunrise to sunset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bulleted changes from the article:

\- The pre-sale, which is like the early-bird sale for tickets, will be moved until after the directed group sale, which is for burners who are "key contributors to Black Rock City (theme and mutant vehicle camps, art collectives, and core teams)."

\- That directed group sale is also growing by 10 percent more tickets in an attempt to boost "meaningful participation."

\- The application-based Low Income Ticket Program will grow by 18 percent.

\- The organization is also reducing the number of high-priced tickets available by 30 percent: "Higher-priced tickets will now be limited to 2 per person instead of 4 per high-priced tier, and buyers in what was formerly the "Pre-Sale" will no longer be able to participate in subsequent public sales," Goodell wrote.

\- The limited sale will also be eliminated this year, which for the past two years allowed burners to purchase $1,200 tickets into July, according to the post.

It's interesting to me because most people who get tickets via the directed group sale contribute very little to the event beyond the camp dues they pay. Most full theme camps are planned and run by just a few people. I really think they should increase main sale tickets rather than directed group sale. Prioritize people who really are radically self-reliant and still want to contribute and aren't just paying dues to a camp and using their infrastructure.

Of course everyone will complain about the tickets no matter what they do though. Cool they are trying to improve.

<comment><USER4> Yes most full theme camps are planned and run by a few people, but they're generally inclined to only give tickets to those who are actively helping with the camp (and its the public sale people who tend to come in and contribute less). Having camp dues alone is a pretty solid indication that its enabling commoditization.

<comment><USER5> Camp dues cover the costs of the camp. Such as water and food, transporting said water and food, shelter, etc... You share those costs because you share the resources and also there is the benefit of economy of scale and less redundant effort per person. Honestly not sure how that demonstrates commoditization.

<comment><USER6> It's because the principles of Burning Man are inherently in contention with each other and equally unachievable. People who harp on the principles generally grossly violate them to some degree. It's a big party in the desert alongside the largest installation art festival in the world. If you think it's more than that, lay off the acid.

<comment><USER4> Thats an incredibly reductive way to think about it that comes from a really cynical position - I feel bad for you that thats how you think about it. Its opened a lot of different worlds of thought to me.

<comment><USER6> I'm really glad you enjoy acid and other psychedelics. I'm glad that you have the privilege to do that at Burning Man. I also enjoy both of those things.

If you've done any real volunteering with the org, you'd understand that it is a purely capitalistic endeavor that preys on people who think it's more than what it is. Realizing this has given me lots of opportunity to do great things with great people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They could fix the problem immediately by just banning RVs, private portas, and dismantling burner air (allowing special exceptions that must be approved by borg). This would keep many of the Instagram tourists out. If they were for real they would just do that. Also if they introduced snakes to deep playa.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some side-effects I predict these changes will have:

\- With reduced pre-sale tickets available, there will be increased pressure on main-sale tickets.

\- With increased pressure on main-sale tickets, the percentage on first time attendees will skew downward even more, I believe around 30-30% of attendees on avg within the last couple years are first timers.

\- There will be more pressure to form or join a theme camp, with more focus on DGS ticket sales, which are issues to theme camps in good standing, for the following year they attend.

\- With increased demand for theme camps, the average size of theme camps will probably increase as they compete against each other for more interactivity in order to get placement, and have more revenue to out produce other camps.

\- Open Camping(non-theme) will probably decrease in the amount of land available, as the Burning Man org tries to off set the demand.

\- Open Camping is still very important to the core culture and principle of radical expression and radical self-reliance.

I predict that BM org will lobby the Nevada government for more population count past the 70,000, AND change the layout to enable a larger density of theme camps.

<comment><USER9> > \- With reduced pre-sale tickets available, there will be increased pressure > on main-sale tickets.

pre-sale tickets were always a much smaller percentage than main sale though, and were always priced significantly higher. So, they were bringing in a more affluent populace than the average burner.

> \- With increased pressure on main-sale tickets, the percentage on first > time attendees will skew downward even more, I believe around 30-30% of > attendees on avg within the last couple years are first timers.

The pressure has been sky-high for years now. That's why main sale always sells out within an hour or less. That's also why so many theme camps had real issues in the last few years actually being able to get their core members in to make the camps even possible to run (and, I assume, that is the issue that DGS is meant to alleviate).

I honestly doubt that the theme camp participation is going to significantly change due to this. Open camping is still the vast, vast majority of the attendees. Running or participating in a theme camp is a ton of work that most people are not able or willing to do, and I'd be very surprised if that changed in any statistically significant way. But I guess we'll see!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The big thing that makes Burning Man what it is, is the attendees.

The work involved in preparing, travelling, and surviving on the Playa is a big part of attendee self-selection.

There is a tension between _radical inclusion_ and _radical self-reliance_. If you make BM too easy for people you end up with more tourists. Tourists and social media influencers do not positively contribute, IMO.

<comment><USER11> another problem is: if money is what enables attendance you'll end up with a bunch of jack dorseys running around.

<comment><USER12> Whatever issues I might have with some of Dorsey's policies, I expect he'd be a fine burner (if he did, or already has, attended).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If re-establishing the principle of decommoditization is the goal, then I think the solution is simply to ban phones and cameras. This is difficult to enforce, however. Ultimately the problem is similar to that of what happened to hippy counter culture. It becomes cool and those that seek to exploit it will do so. The tie-dye shirt had its day and the culture was offensively exploited by all kinds of entities that had no understanding of the culture nor interest in taking upon the values. Burning man has an advantage here because it is centered around a location, and a difficult one at that. I disagree with the notion of exclusion. Inclusion is a priority to spread the principles and values to those that would benefit, while making the exploitation by corporations and apathetic individuals very very difficult (or just not worth it).

<comment><USER14> > ban phones and cameras

Maybe this is just me being an "old timer", but one of my favorite aspects of burning man was getting away from connectivity and technology. There was no cell signal on the playa (or anywhere after Gerlach) and I could only send a text back from Center camp mid-week to let my SO know i made it. The harsh environs also made it so that I didn't want to take a smartphone out on the playa.

The last couple of times I went (and I haven't been in 2 years), I was shocked to see that there was full 4G/LTE connectivity on the playa and that hanging out at a camp bar or mutant vehicle, you're likely to see the same face buried in their phones experience that you'd see in the default world.

<comment><USER15> Same. My first year I brought my Rebel T2i to photo-document the trip, but the trying to "capture the moment" continually ruined "the moment" itself.

I decided living the experience was more important than documenting it and put the camera away on the first day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want the Burning Man experience of the early years, there's Wasteland Weekend.

Camp Humano will probably end up running their own festival on a private island or something.

</comment><comment><USER17> It takes effort to have values and stick to them.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a decent source but the original blog post would probably be better

[https://journal.burningman.org/2019/02/philosophical- center/...](https://journal.burningman.org/2019/02/philosophical- center/tenprinciples/cultural-course-correcting/)

<comment><USER19> The design of this paper (rgj.com) is filled with many either unintended bugs or serious anti-patterns. It's almost impossible to read.

<comment><USER20> There are many local (and at least one national) papers using this exact same site. Both the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press (my local papers) use it, along with USA Today. It's maddening.

<comment><USER21> I think its a gannet standard template

<comment><USER22> yep, there is a Phoenix newspaper like that too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ITUNES TERMS AND CONDITIONS: The Graphic Novel - chris-at http://itunestandc.tumblr.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It is being drawn page by page. The archive is here:

[http://itunestandc.tumblr.com/archive](http://itunestandc.tumblr.com/archive)

</comment><comment><USER2> Do the pictures have anything to do with the text? I'm not sure I'm getting what the point of it is (eg. [http://itunestandc.tumblr.com/post/131617412041/page-35-afte...](http://itunestandc.tumblr.com/post/131617412041/page-35-after- mort-walker))

<comment><USER3> I feel they are just styled after iconic strips by the mentioned artist</comment></comment>


We Now Live in a Driverless World - <AUTHOR> https://news.voyage.auto/we-now-live-in-a-driverless-world-cb07a01159c0 <comment><USER2> So far CA DMV publishes autonomous miles driven without incident etc. It would be interesting to see commercial numbers driven - ie someone paid for a ride.</comment>


Dice Become Ordered When Stirred, Not Shaken - <AUTHOR> https://physics.aps.org/articles/v10/130 <comment><USER2> More accurately, cubes pack more closely when agitated one way than another. The fact that they are dice is irrelevant (they don't become ordered with respect to the facing side). To be honest, this isn't particularly odd, as the experiment removed the component of the agitation that would tend to displace the cubes vertically, which is the only dimension with an asymmetric force that would tend to increase the packing factor if undisturbed (gravity).

<comment><USER3> Dice are not perfect cubes, since there edges and corners are rounded, so it would not make sense to generalize the results of dice as applying to perfect cubes.

<comment><USER4> Casino dice are actually cubes, at least as close as manufacturing tolerances of 0.0001 inch can make them. For example:

[https://www.casinosupply.com/collections/casino- dice/product...](https://www.casinosupply.com/collections/casino- dice/products/new-casino-dice-serialized-3-4-inch-set-of-6)

This is to help make it easier to spot alterations or flaws which could affect their randomness; shaved corners become very easy to spot, when packing them together it's easy to spot ones with height differences, etc.

<comment><USER3> Tolerance you're referencing relates to the distance of one side to another, not the shape of the corners; the dice you linked to have their corners rounded (aka shaved) if you look at the image.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. I think anyone who has done some work with a milling machine will know firsthand that a freshly cut 90 degree edge that has not yet been rounded over is sharp like a blade.

If casinos actually did use dice that were extremely cubic, the dice would be cutting patrons' fingers and wrecking the felted surface of the craps table.

<comment><USER6> Funnily enough, the website the parent linked actually calls them " Transparent with razor sharp edges" so I guess they are pretty sharp.

<comment><USER5> I may have been wrong in my previous post. Apparently "razor" is one of several styles of dice edge and is intended to prevent excess tumbling, so a craps throw doesn't take too long to come to rest. I'm tempted to buy some new razor dice to see for myself.

I can't find measurements for the radius of curvature on razor dice edges, but I'd be surprised if they're truly as sharp as claimed. Without even considering the liability aspect, it seems inconvenient for a casino to pause the game because someone is bleeding on the table or dice.

I also wasn't able to learn how often the felt of a craps table is changed, though I came across something that said the felt's useful lifetime is prolonged by a foam rubber underlayer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I'm measuring my food, I like to shake it, so I can fit more in the measuring cup without increasing the calorie count. ;) Oatmeal will pack down quite a bit with some shaking.

The title is funny. I realize it's sometimes hard to translate and summarize scientific results for the layperson, but the paper wasn't comparing stirring or shaking. They compared rotating the container to tapping the container. Rotating is, ironically, a type of shaking, and closer to shaking than tapping. I would expect a good deal of dice packing in this experiment using vertical shaking, as opposed to lateral tapping.

<comment><USER8> That's why you always use a weighing scale :)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but then I wouldn't get to cheat. :P

<comment><USER9> Try putting your thumb on the scale when you turn it on. ;-)

<comment><USER10> "Honey, why are your hundred grams of oatmeal taking up 5 bowls?"

"I'm not sure! It must be exceptionally light."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think their definition of "ordered" is different from most people's when it comes to something like dice. Cool effect, but it makes for a pretty misleading headline.

<comment><USER12> You have to apply the context before you call the (correct) headline misleading. This is a physical sciences context so this is the correct use of "ordered" \-- as in "order and disorder", i.e. symmetry and correlation. You're talking about "ordered" as in "ordinal", meaning "related to position in a series", which makes more sense in a computer science context (and we are on HN), but still -- it is your job to apply the context to the situation, not anyone else's.

<comment><USER13> If it's all about bloodless scientific rigor, why'd they choose to highlight "Dice" in the headline when it is probably a property of "cubes" in general?

I'm imagining some biologists studying how human cells have some unique negative reactions to C3H8O, and then they title the a report "Humans just can't resist alcohol."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A very well-known parlour trick with dice is called "dice stacking" \- here is a nice youtube video showing how to do this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLtOVFE3mYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLtOVFE3mYc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Paper is titled, "Experimental Study of Ordering of Hard Cubes by Shearing" - does anyone have a link to the paper as a PDF?

<comment><USER15> Doesn't seem to be on arxiv but here's a conference abstract - ignore the certificate warning

[https://fises17.gefenol.es/media/contribution/abs- fises17-as...](https://fises17.gefenol.es/media/contribution/abs- fises17-asencio.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was blown away until I realized that they did not mean that all the face- values of the dice become aligned.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ordering alignment of rectangular prisms under simple shear is well established by now.

As is the variable effects of shaking - can increase or decrease packing fraction and order depending on magnitude.

In addition ordering in packings of rectangular prisms extend up to 8 particle lengths from the side walls - and are variable with time and history. This experiment's results could be partly due to edge effects.

</comment><comment><USER18> any youtube mirrors? videos don't work.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if there's any insight here that could be applied to optimization via simulated annealing.

</comment><comment><USER20> It took .5g to get the effect. But the dice in the center never aligned. Probably because, so near the axis, they never experience anywhere near .5g.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's kind of applying the Bogosort method in the physical world, with the exception the physical world favors it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I suspect this phenomenon is already in use in material science and manufacturing.

<comment><USER23> That's what I was thinking. Vibratory sorting/feeding machines are common and a lot of engineering effort has gone into optimizing them. I'd be very surprised if rotary oscillation had not been tried, and probably used, on many occasions.

<comment><USER24> I have a friend who's got a doctorate in CS. He always adamantly insists his work was utterly pointless as any company interested in solving the problems he solved would simply throw people at it and solve it independently in a couple of months, they'd never find his work.

<comment><USER25> Sounds like a search problem. I wonder why sharing knowledge works so well when using Stack Overflow but not for his research results?

<comment><USER26> Because the purpose of research is to produce papers, not disseminate information or help others.

See how many CS papers talk about various algorithms without also providing the source code of said implementation.

<comment><USER25> OK, but for any individual researcher (such as the original poster's friend) what if they want to try harder?

<comment><USER26> Add a github repo with a permissible license, write a blog post, add a stack overflow answer to some relevant questions.

<comment><USER19> To be fair there aren't many questions on stack overflow about, "How can I design my hyperblock selection algorithm for improved performance on a block- structured data flow processor?"

<comment><USER27> There might be if you first go out of your way to answer questions about dataflow throughput by pointing people toward block-structuring and mention keywords like "hyperblocks" there. People already do this; I've noticed a good few times now that I've done a number of increasingly-specific searches as I understand a problem better, and each time the answer that actually guides me to the next step comes from the same person/place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Click bait

</comment><comment><USER29> Imagine that. Centrifugal force will actually pull the cubes to the side of the container in an ordered fashion... What a miracle!

</comment><comment><USER30> Has nobody else noticed the James Bond pun?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred)

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't there also a probabilistic angle? On the second video, on the outer circle I see that same sides repeat at most 3 times. Can this be a true random number generator?

Here are the numbers:

1-2-6-4-6-6-6-4-5-3-6-1-2-6-1-2-6-4-6-3-1-1-6-4-3-6-3-2-3-1-3-1-6-3-4-1-4-6-4-3-2-2-4-1-6-1-2-3-4-4-5-5-5-4-1-1-5-4-5-2-6-5-1-1-1-5-4-4-1-1-3-6-6-4-1-4-1-2-4-1-4-6-5-2-1-4-5-1-1-4-1-2-5-3-6-6-3-6-2-5-5-2-3

And here is the distribution:

1 --> 24

2 --> 13

3 --> 13

4 --> 20

5 --> 13

6 --> 20

<comment><USER32> By "Ordered" they don't actually mean anything to do with the numbers. It's unfortunate terminology clashing.</comment></comment>


How I Used and Abused My Tesla – What a Tesla Looks Like After 100,000 Miles - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@SteveSasman/how-i-used-abused-my-tesla-what-a-tesla-looks-like-after-100-000-miles-a-48-state-road-trip-6b6ae66b3c10#.mgqlymg7c <comment><USER2> > However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can > earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car > to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep

Long before that is the case, there'd be no incentive for the manufacturer to sell the car at all; they'd make more money just pushing the button themselves the minute the car rolled off the assembly line.

<comment><USER3> >Long before that is the case, there'd be no incentive for the manufacturer to sell the car at all; they'd make more money just pushing the button themselves the minute the car rolled off the assembly line.

If they sold a car, they get profit immediately. If they kept the car for their own fleet, it would take longer to earn the same profit and then add additional overhead of maintaining the fleet, the reservation system, refunds, additional litigation, etc. Also, if the market is super saturated, they can sell cars to companies unable to make a profit. The manufacturer still gets the sale even thought the car doesn't realize a profit through a fleet.

The smart move would be to sell cars and also keep a fleet. It really depends on how well they could manage the fleet being a car manufacturer. They are quite different businesses and you don't get much overlap, other than the vehicle at cost and perhaps maintenance parts.

The even smarter move would be to franchise the fleet so you push off the management and operating costs but increase your sales and take part of the profit for branding, advertising, etc. The fleet would of course cross brand the vehicles.

<comment><USER4> >If they sold a car, they get profit immediately. If they kept the car for their own fleet, it would take longer to earn the same profit and then add additional overhead of maintaining the fleet, the reservation system, refunds, additional litigation, etc.

A car company can raise capital and manage fleets much better than individuals can.

<comment><USER3> A car rental company could do that even better than a car manufacturer.

<comment><USER4> I imagine if a car company really did invent an autonomous car that works almost 100% of the time, they'd do a joint venture with a car rental place.

But the car company has a competitive advantage in that it could choose not to sell to anyone while they build out a fleet maintenance operation.

But if multiple companies solve the problem at the same time, maybe Hertz has the advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        "Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the Drive Train & Battery. This was great, as I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles."

You can read this as:

        "Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the engine and fuel tank. This was great, as I did have the engine replaced at about 65,000 miles and the fuel tank replaced at about 76,000 miles."

That just makes it that much crazier. The most important and expensive components of this car actually do break down fairly quickly, but the manufacturer just covers them under a lifetime warranty!

<comment><USER6> The fact that the entire drivetrain was replaced sounds bad, unless you understand the unique way that Tesla handles service. Their cars are actually designed so the drivetrain can very easily be removed and replaced, so when there's any kind of problem, they just go ahead and replace the whole thing for the sake of expediency. Then they can refurbish the damaged drive unit on their own schedule and use it to repair the next car that comes in with drivetrain problems.

Because of this, they'll sometimes replace the whole drivetrain for something as minor as an odd sound. A drivetrain replacement doesn't mean the same thing that it does with your typical gas car.

Similar deal with the battery pack. It just drops right out of the bottom of the car, so it makes for a better service experience if they can just replace it and give the car straight back rather than leaving the owner without a car while they embark on a potentially lengthy repair process.

<comment><USER7> Swapping out the drivetrain for minor issues is great when the car is under warranty. But what about when the warranty is up? What is the bill going to look like to replace all that?

When they start putting in, as you say, refurbed parts that already had 70,000 miles on them, will they really be as good as new?

<comment><USER8> Tesla knows that fucking people is bad for business. Even when you're #1, it's how you quickly not be #1. Even when you collude with your "competitors" in the #2 and #3 spots to make sure #4 is always very far away, #4 eventually becomes #1 after enough tries (and, usually, after enough #4s).

Tesla most likely will charge something that makes Detroit look bad. A Tesla drivetrain has a fraction of the complexity and parts a gas or diesel vehicle has.

Also, the Model S drivetrain is somewhat the first of it's kind. There have been single speed transmissions made before in cars (in and out of electric vehicles), there have been high torque transmissions made (for vehicles much larger than a Model S), but nothing quite like the unique problem the Model S presents.

The oldest Model Ses are now on their 4th year of warranty. Presumably, most failures so far have been in the first production revision of the product, and given the highly iterative nature of Tesla's product workflow, they have improved the product based on real world feedback.

I don't want to know what the first generation drivetrain failure rate is, as they will be covered under the 8 year/unlimited miles warranty, and replaced with the newest revisions. I want to know what today's drivetrains will look like in 4 to 8 years.

Also, in comparison, most vehicles _don 't last longer than 8 years_. Most people will have put over 100 thousand miles on their vehicle at that point, most vehicles start falling apart just over the 125 thousand miles line, unless you've been very meticulous about babying your vehicle.

Tesla's bet is that massively reducing the number of parts and complexity of said parts will dramatically cut down on failure. This is a long term bet, and early analysis of the first generation of Model Ses only paints half the picture. The whole picture seems to illustrate that Tesla is very good at iterative design, something Detroit does not value as a skill.

Edit: As a side note, I live in Maine. Maybe we're just especially hard on vehicles up here.

<comment><USER9> > Also, in comparison, most vehicles don't last longer than 8 years. Most > people will have put over 100 thousand miles on their vehicle at that point, > most vehicles start falling apart just over the 125 thousand miles line, > unless you've been very meticulous about babying your vehicle.

That's sounds crazy. Where I live (Europe), a car with 100k miles is maybe at 40% of it's lifetime. My car has almost 100k in it, and it is completely fine (it's a French (!) car), it has two small scratches on it and everything works as expected (no, it's not babied if you don't consider a 2 yo baby sitting in it).

This is anecdata of course, but really, 100k miles is nothing. My father drives a Skoda with 420k miles in it at the moment -- it definitely doesn't look like new but it works.

<comment><USER10> _> > Also, in comparison, most vehicles don't last longer than 8 years. Most people will have put over 100 thousand miles on their vehicle at that point, most vehicles start falling apart just over the 125 thousand miles line, unless you've been very meticulous about babying your vehicle._

 _> That's sounds crazy._

That is crazy. Unless you like having car payments, or that "new car" smell, you can get 200k miles from most cars without a lot of "babying". This means regular oil changes and such. And you need to pay attention. Noises, loss of oil, and such indicate problems that don't just fix themselves.

What really harms a car's lifetime is the willingness of the owner to take care of it. And rust (at least in the parts of the world that get snow).

<comment><USER11> In the northeast US almost every car I've owned has ultimately been retired predominantly due to rust. The car I now own with 160K miles I haven't driven in the winter for a number of years and the mechanics at the dealer are always surprised that I have this model (which I bought in its final model year) on the road and that it hasn't rusted out.

It is 20 years old and things are still improving but rust as a limiting factor on lifetimes in the winter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep — it's game over.

That is not happening in the near future. At least not in a meaningful scale.

<comment><USER13> And if it does happen, you will not be the one owning and profiting from those cars...

<comment><USER14> Well, you could do it to defray some of the cost of the car by making use of its idle hours, but it probably wouldn't make sense to buy a car _just_ (or even _mostly_ ) to rent it out, for much the same reason that individuals don't do it today.

Plus, when Teslas are usable as self-driving cars, the value of the rides provided will drop precipitously -- that figure would be more like $5000, and you'd have to lock up usable hours for it and perhaps pay some penalty to renege on specific hours.

<comment><USER15> Those two effects are mutually opposing forces - are car owners willing to take the risk of someone contaminating their car by smoking, spilling, eating, puking or having sex to earn a pretty penny?

<comment><USER16> I think all robotaxis will have inward facing dashcams that transmits into a vault in the cloud in near real time. If the car comes back undamaged, the video is deleted.

People who hire robotaxis might need to have money in escrow if they don't have enough reputation.

<comment> vertex-four Escrow really doesn't exist on a personal level today - why would people suddenly go from the current situation to being perfectly find putting hundreds/thousands of dollars in an escrow account in the future? What do we do about people who can't afford that?

<comment><USER17> We have the equivalent for car and room rentals. The escrow is just a hidden feature of our credit cards.

If you try to rent a car without a credit card, you are usually required to put down a deposit.

<comment> vertex-four Note that in my country, it's rare for hotel rooms to require credit cards or deposits. (Debit cards are required so they can charge you later if necessary, but they don't put a hold on them.) There's certain chains that do, but it's mostly an American thing.

Renting a car requires one, but there's also more generally a high barrier to renting a car - plenty of forms, showing your license, booking in advance, etc etc. There's also no choice. The same is not true for getting in a taxi. Why would I put down a deposit to ride in an automated car, really?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one who feels like depreciation should of been taken into consideration when he was calculating how much it cost?

<comment><USER19> I think deprecation should only be taken into consideration if one is planning on selling the car in the future, and I get the feeling that he is planning on driving that car into the ground.

<comment><USER20> In which case the value will reach $0. That's called depreciation...

<comment><USER21> I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth?

As in, I'm not going to factor my child's value into my assets since I'm not going to sell it. Or in the OP's case, since his car will never be sold, it's not relevant how much value he's losing by keeping it for x years. Not that the car's value doesn't depreciate, just that the value of the car isn't ever important after the initial cost.

<comment><USER4> Even if you plant to drive it into the ground, you have to spread the cost of the car over the lifetime of it's use. If the Telsa only lasts 9 years, that's is going to add cost to his usage. If it lasts 30 years, that's going to reduce the cost of usage.

Otherwise any sort of calculation of expenses is missing one of the biggest components, the cost of the car.

<comment><USER21> > Otherwise any sort of calculation of expenses is missing one of the biggest > components, the cost of the car.

They include the cost of the car as the first calculation...

> Total Cost of Ownership:

>> Cost of Tesla: $79,000 used with 35,000 miles

Is that not enough? Do you need to calculate the potential earnings every day that you decide not to sell the car over it's lifetime?

Also, perhaps this is tangential, but the author was calculating how much they had lost or saved over the course of ownership up to that point. I feel like the OP in this subthread didn't actually read the article and just commented after skimming over the cost breakdown thinking it was supposed to be something it wasn't (i.e., a cost/benefit analysis for the car's lifetime).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ok, but what are the costs beyond $100k? Even the worst cars as far as maintenance (BMWs and such) can make it to $100k fairly reasonably. This is even more important in the Tesla apparently because after 8 years you're shit out of luck on the powertrain apparently, at least according to another post here, and that's where the actual expensive parts lie. If this guy comes back in a few years (after the warranty expires) with this same Tesla at 200k still going strong and still having spent only a couple thousand max on repairs, that'll be a real achievement. As it stands, this simply shows the Tesla is not a total lemon, incredibly useful information, but expected.

</comment><comment><USER23> A contrary article to this piece, is this submission, _Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898)

Their main point is not that Tesla cars are badly manufactured. But that they don't make repair manuals available, they don't sell replacement parts, they lock down access to the car's systems, don't give salvage titles, and that these cars will be very difficult and expensive to repair in the future.

<comment><USER24> Yeah but Tesla. Tech startup. Wooo disruptive and wonderful.

If ford tried it people would complain, but Tesla locking things down is just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Flagstaff, AZ gets electricity from the Cholla Power Plant in Northern Arizona. The plant burns coal and is considered one of the dirtiest power stations in the nation.

Just consider that owning a Tesla or any plug-in electric in Flagstaff is completely backwards.

<comment><USER26> Correct me if I'm wrong, but quick calculation indicates that Tesla using only energy from Cholla (one of the dirtiest plants in the US) would produce about the same amount of CO2 (13.6kg per 100km) as 5L/100km car (Ford Fiesta) would produce (12kg per 100km).

As you can probably improve your electricity mix quite easily, it sounds like that from fuel CO2 emission perspective, electric car is always at least as good choice as gasoline car.

<comment><USER27> Once you factor in the environmental cost associated with production, I'm not sure it's as clear cut. Batteries are nasty.

<comment><USER28> They can also be recycled almost indefinitely.

<comment><USER29> I'm not aware that lithium batteries can be recycled at all?

<comment><USER28> Lithium ion batteries have been recyclable for a while now-- Best Buy has receptacles for used ones. It's been slow to get off the ground because virgin production is still rather cheap.

<comment><USER29> Hm. This article seems to say that no process is available yet. Perhaps they're not being 'recycled' but re-used? [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037)

<comment><USER28> There is no process for recycling /automotive/ lithium ion batteries, but that's because their use is so recent--the first commercially available lithium ion EV (Tesla Roadster) wasn't released until 2008. However, EV batteries are essentially the same as commodity lithium ion batteries (e.g. stacks of 18650 cells that you can buy on Amazon), and those have been recycled for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30>
        As this was the first really expensive car I've owned, I needed to find a way to help pay for the car. Naturally, Uber came to mind

The subprime lending crisis in a nutshell

<comment><USER31> Interesting take. There is already a subprime lending crisis in the automotive loan market, along with a glut of used cars that somehow arent depreciating. I wonder if people start deciding that they want to overspend on a car they want and decide to "uber" their way into affording it...

<comment><USER32> Quickly followed by articles blaming Uber for it.

<comment><USER31> Agreed and that was not a shot at uber it was more just remarking on the nature of bubbles

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles"

Is that a regular occurrence?

<comment><USER7> I sure hope not. Many gas cars don't even go in for their first service until 100,000 miles. 300,000 is not even difficult to hit on any car built in the last 30 years.

<comment><USER33> It undermines the whole article, seeing as the tone is 'wow my car made it to 100k'

I'd be interested to hear the reasons so much needed to be replaced, instead of just a passing mention that a large amount of repairs were done

<comment><USER34> > I'd be interested to hear the reasons so much needed to be replaced

Seems like a large-scale manufacturing defect affecting 2013 and 2014 Tesla Model S.

[http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability- doesnt...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt-match- its-high-performance/)

> The main problem areas involved the drivetrain, power equipment, charging > equipment, giant iPad-like center console, and body and sunroof squeaks, > rattles, and leaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Everything about cars is changing fast. I was a skeptic, now I'm sold (not just owing to this article, but this is a great example).

<comment><USER36> Together with electric cars, autonomous driving, and ride-brokering services like Uber and Lyft, we really are in a primordial soup phase of transportation. There's going to be some rapid changes even in the next 5 or 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How on earth did it cost $1000 to get a door handle repaired?!

<comment><USER38> They aren't like a doorknob.

I had to replace an interior door handle on a '99 Miata (interior is far easier than an exterior; exterior means pulling the door skin off for access and having to deal with paint matching), and a Miata is real straightforward repair job. But I still took a photo of each and every little piece I pulled off not knowing when one would break or be deformed before or after this process. (And having to locate a dealership to order the part shipped while showing him a handful of broken parts and a complete photo of "this doohickey".)

$1000 would be steep price to pay for a Corrolla but not outlandish. I would bet the cost of replacing one on a BMW 3 series would be more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder when the free charging is over. That energy still has to be produced somehow somewhere.

<comment><USER40> I suspect all of tesla's high end cars will always have it- their lower grade cars are probably going to have a subscription of some kind.

Also, consider that tesla essentially owns the largest amount of electric stops in the US. They've got their foot in the door, no other manufacturer is going to come close. When electric cars really kick into gear, tesla controls the gas pumps, and can charge everyone else, while still giving free to their own cars, which is a pretty good incentive.

<comment><USER15> Model 3 will offer supercharger access as a subscription, not a free bundle included with the purchase price [http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/06/no-free- superchargers-fo...](http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/06/no-free- superchargers-for-teslas-model-3-h2-stations-grow-in-ca/)

<comment><USER41> Correction: Model 3 will offer supercharger access as a subscription _in addition to_ a [paid up front] bundle included with the purchase price.

(it's never been "free", just added on to the purchase price as an option, and later as a standard feature)

Ignore the editorialized headline. The actual quote is:

>The obvious thing to do is decouple the Supercharger Network from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap—and far cheaper than gasoline—to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life _unless you've purchased that package._ \-- Elon Musk [http://www.plugincars.com/model-3-owners-will-pay-access- tes...](http://www.plugincars.com/model-3-owners-will-pay-access-tesla- superchargers-131764.html)

<comment><USER15> Right, Tesla is not forthcoming on the details, so this is all pure speculation. If I _had to_ guess, most Model 3 buyers would balk at paying for the Supercharger option at purchase time, as it increases the cost of the vehicle significantly (even at $3,000 that would be a 10% markup to the total price of the vehicle), with most surmising they could probably get by with free charging available at supermarkets, malls, office complexes, public spots or parking garages.

Tesla has the technical capability though to sell Supercharger access in time- limited slots (unlimited Supercharger access for the next 7 days, good for that coast-to-coast trip one is planning), on per-kWh basis (plug in, have your credit card on file with Tesla app, start charging), as well as introduce variable pricing (more expensive kWh during periods of heavy use and long lines at Superchargers, cheaper and/or free access during periods of low activity). Historically they've been very driver-friendly, so if I had to guess, they might make all of those options available, as they each cover a specific use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Here is another positive testimonial[1] of Tesla Model S's long term reliability. Great reliability, simpler design (than conventional ICE cars), unlimited mileage warranty and cheaper per-mile operating cost make Tesla Model S a terrific choice for taxis.

[1] [http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up- after-100...](http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up- after-100-000-miles-1785360286)

<comment><USER24> Did that one require a drivetrain replacement too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'll be impressed if that was 100k of "taking corners in a spirited manner on potholed" roads, something every car sold to an auto enthusiast in a state with a real winter is subject to. That's where I draw the line for "hard miles". Putting around the southwest in a manner that doesn't scare customers isn't hard miles. "Abused" is a misleading title.

</comment><comment><USER44> biggest story on here is 500 uber rides only made $6000 dollars

<comment><USER45> And that's probably before taxes :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Now that's epic.

> Tesla Road Trip Savings: My 27,615 mile (the circumference of the Earth is > 24,901 miles) 48 State plus Canada road trip cost $8.37. I had to pay for > electricity 2 times, the rest was FREE thanks to the Tesla SuperCharger > network. There were about 180 SuperChargers when I started the trip. There > are now almost 300 in the USA. Gas savings assuming a 25 MPG car using a > national average of $2.75 a gallon = $3037.

</comment><comment><USER46> If a Tesla is this cheap to drive, and self-driving cars cut out the labor costs of transportation services, then it becomes cheaper to just use Uber et al than own your own car. At that point the ICE auto industry will be really screwed, and the switch to all EV cars could come about a lot faster than has been predicted.

</comment><comment><USER47> I really want to buy a Tesla. Like really bad.

Out of curiosity I had a look at the current pricing of a Tesla in Australia. My jaw just about dropped when I found that a new P90D costs $255,000 AUD. That is a difference of $50,000 if you convert the US price to Australian. Ouch.

</comment><comment><USER48> Also see previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304241)</comment>