$149 Chromebooks - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/03/more-chromebooks-for-everyone.html <comment><USER2> This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google.

Look at the brand names. TRUE, XOLO, Nexian. Recognise them? Consumers in Thailand, India and Indonesia do - they are local smartphone brands. Look at the promo video. Notice how many Asian faces there are?

This isn't about cheap Chromebooks, it's about a major strategic effort to court the global middle class. As with the Android One initiative, Google are seeking to establish an affordable but capable gateway to their services for middle-income consumers. They're working with local companies to leverage local marketing and distribution resources. In these markets, the Chromebook isn't being pitched as a cheap substitute for a 'real' laptop, but as an upgrade from a smartphone or tablet.

If their strategy for Chrome OS works half as well as their Android strategy, then the industry is going to be unrecognisably transformed over the next few years. A whole generation of consumers could come to see the Chrome OS pseudo- thin-client model as the norm, with full-fat operating systems being a niche curio.

<comment><USER3> > This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google.

Is it that or is it just an effort to stay relevant? If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does and has a full OS for a few bucks more, would you do it? There are tons of tablets from HP/Dell that cost 100-200$ and run full windows OS and have comparable specs to the Chromebooks. As far as I know they are selling quite well. I am wondering if this is Google responding to that pressure.

<comment><USER4> It's sad to see folks celebrating computing devices that are more extremely locked down than even the iDevices. A Windows PC/laptop is much more open than a Chromebook.

Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS? Only Google can make system and native apps, unlike the iDevices where you can access most of the native functionality even if you have to go through Apple's approval and you're not forced to upload all your information into Google's cloud with paltry local storage like 64GB on even a 1500 dollar machine where the information is mined by Google and is accessible to various parties like the Government. They now even track which retail stores people visit using their Android phones or iPhones. [http://digiday.com/platforms/google- tracking/](http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/)

Looks like user and developer freedom are a big concern only when Apple or Microsoft infringe it(even though Win32 is much more open than ChromeOS, after all Google exploited it with the Chrome browser and bundling it with Flash and Java updates), but Google gets a free pass to lock everything down and still call itself open.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I upvoted this, but on reflection I think this is wrong. Here's why:

\- Most Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked, allowing any operating system to be loaded on them.

\- ChromeOS follows the same open source model as Chrome—Most core features open, with things like Flash/Wildvine/API keys held secret.

\- There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its "Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS" and "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chromebooks". Both of these statements are absolutely true.

So I fail to see how Chromebooks are "more extremely locked down" than iDevices.

<comment><USER6> > There are no native apps on ChromeOS

This is not correct, you can run native apps for Chrome OS via Native Client (NaCL) or App Runtime for Chrome (ARC).

VLC, a poster child for native apps, will be released for Chrome OS in a few months using ARC.

Anandtech has already tested a beta version: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9082/the-chromebook- pixel-2015...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9082/the-chromebook- pixel-2015-review/5)

<comment><USER7> Hmm... If you can port VLC to Chrome OS with ARC, I wonder what happens if you try to shove Firefox for Android into it. Are there fundamental roadblocks that would prevent it from working, or would you just end up with a slow and buggy waltzing bear?

<comment><USER8> I suspect their sandbox doesn't allow code generation since they statically verify you aren't using instructions they can't protect against and that would break it. That means that while you could probably get a Firefox running, it'd be with a Javascript interpreter, not a JIT.

<comment><USER9> While I don't work on any of the related pieces, it should be noted that NaCL has dynamic "check this code" support precisely so you can JIT-compile code and execute it safely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where is the $149 Windows-Based laptop with SSD, 2-4GB RAM, and moderate graphics, that can run your usual Office to Minecraft software? The Chromebook-killer from Microsoft should be here, but all I hear about are the Surfaces.

Honestly, the only reason my kids don't have Chromebooks is because they don't easily run Minecraft or downloadable games. Sure they can do their school work on them, but they also like to play, and we've already tried messing with Linux on some older desktops.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-Laptop-Personal- Horizon/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-Laptop-Personal- Horizon/dp/B00NSHLUBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427824278&sr=8-1&keywords=hp+stream+11) HP Stream 11 is likely the closest to what you're looking for $199 so slightly more expensive, but a year of Office365 included...

<comment><USER12> Is it possible to install Linux on the HP Stream ?

<comment><USER13> Almost certainly so. It's got a real bios, so you should be able to change how it boots.

<comment><USER14> If it's anything like the other devices in that series it will be 32 bit UEFI, which not many distros have out of the box. You can certainly build 32 bit GRUB. [http://askubuntu.com/questions/392719/32-bit-uefi-boot- suppo...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/392719/32-bit-uefi-boot-support)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the bigger news here is the Chromebit. A $100 device that turns any monitor into a computer? Fascinating.

<comment><USER16> More details on Cnet - [http://www.cnet.com/uk/products/asus- chromebit/](http://www.cnet.com/uk/products/asus-chromebit/)

Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11AC, USB 2.0 for accessories, 2GB of RAM and 16GB SSD

<comment><USER17> Wow. AC wireless in a $100 device. Now I'm interested.

What does it do for power? Through the USB port like most other similar devices I'm assuming?

<comment><USER18> It apparently has a full-size USB and microUSB port for power purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Over the last month, I've moved many of our 25 customer service team from crappy, ~$200 Dell laptops to Asus Chromeboxes ($160 with 2 GB of RAM). The feedback has been universally positive, because the Chromeboxes are so much more responsive than Chrome on a low-end Windows machine.

A few caveats:

\+ We've found Chrome more responsive with 4 GB of RAM, especially when you keep open many tabs, such as large spreadsheets in Google Docs. We didn't see any improvement moving to 8 GB.

\+ We have struggled with editing PDFs. Dochub has the rotate and delete page functions we need, but can't save in place to Google Drive (it only edits). NoteablePDF is supposed to add rotate and delete soon.

\+ We had to buy a new scanner that can save directly to Google Drive. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EKW6JZ4](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EKW6JZ4) worked well, after the Epson required being tethered to a PC.

\+ We found Google Cloud Print to be unreliable, so we bought a hardware print server that works great: [http://www.amazon.com/Lantronix- XPS1002CP-01-S-xPrintServer-...](http://www.amazon.com/Lantronix- XPS1002CP-01-S-xPrintServer-Cloud-Print/dp/B00HSMK58A)

We're not the market for $149 Chromebooks, but I'm glad to see Google investing to expand the market for ChromeOS.

</comment><comment> not-much-io I own a Acer c720p Chromebook and I have to say it is a wonderful machine. I now only use my main PC for programming, and I even do that sometimes by SSH from my chromebook.

Main point: * Great battery life * Lightning fast * Small/Thin

For me it is a perfect cheap laptop to use as a goto for all my less resource intensive activities. (reading, youtube, chat etc.) I might get a bigger 15 inch one so I am happy to see Chromebooks developing. I am having a hard time figuring out who would use a chromebit though..

<comment><USER20> I use an Acer C720P as well, for everything _including_ programming, via Cloud9 ([https://c9.io/](https://c9.io/)). Cloud9 has been almost exclusively the platform for all my development since 2013. Having my entire workspace state synchronized across machines, saved whenever I'm not using it to be resumed precisely as it was, sandboxed from causing or falling victim to issues with my desktop, is invaluable.

I switch off between my desktop and my Chromebook whenever I go out, or even just when I want to lie down instead of hunching over at my desk. I experience no disruptions from doing so.

The only _real_ complaint that I have is that ChromeOS's use of alt+arrows to emulate Page Up/Down keys interferes with a few important default C9 key combinations (alt+shift+down to copy a line getting converted to shift+pagedn).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most important thing of these Chromebooks, at least for me, is the quality of the touchpad and keyboard, as if I ever get one they will be used mainly for typing stuff/chatting. There is a reason why I still us an almost decade- old Lenovo Thinkpad R61 as a reserve machine and something that I can use outside/on the go. Granted it is a big heavy but for me, it's worth it.

So, is there a chromebook, that can offer me a good quality of keyboard/touchpad?

Sadly I don't think there is one with a trackpoint, which would pretty much make these the perfect notebook for my use-case.

<comment><USER22> The touchpad on the Chromebook Pixel (the annoyingly expensive one) is high end. Large glass multitouch touchpad. I doubt you'd be satisfied with the keyboard though.

So I think the answer is probably "No." The most expensive one available doesn't have a good keyboard by 60-series era Thinkpad standards, so I would be surprised if any do.

<comment><USER23> The most expensive Chromebook doesn't cater to Thinkpad users. The Lenovo Chromebook might.

<comment><USER22> I seriously doubt it. I have never seen a non-Thinkpad branded Lenovo laptop that would satisfy somebody who liked the R60's keyboard.

<comment><USER23> Looking at [http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/11e-series/11e...](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/11e-series/11e-chrome/), the keyboard looks "too chiclet" to be what Thinkpad users expect, despite the name. Right? (I'm not a fan of those laptops, so can't tell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd definitely consider using a Chromebook if the offline functionality works. My understanding from people I know working at Google is that the offline Docs and Gmail experience is pretty sub-par at the moment.

I guess if you pop out their SSD for a larger one it'd make a decent BSD netbook. Bitrig[0] is slowly but surely getting better.

[0] [https://www.bitrig.org/](https://www.bitrig.org/)

<comment><USER25> I bought a Chromebook Pixel 2015. The first thing it asks, when you turn it on, is for an Internet connection. You cannot go past the first-boot panel until you give it internet access, then agree to Google's ToS which says you'll let them auto-install updates at anytime, and then let it try to download updates from Google. Then you must log in to a Google account.

I didn't bother with ChromeOS enough to see how well offline apps work. The laptop does not have any screws, and I'm told the SSD is soldered on even if I knew how to take the laptop apart without breaking it.

That being said, there are magical keystrokes you can use to bypass even the intro "first boot" panels to switch the laptop into "developer mode" which you can use to wipe ChromeOS and install a real Linux. Much of the hardware isn't supported by mainline kernels, but Google has a lot of that sourcecode online, so I'm trying to compile my own module to get the touchpad to work in Debian.

That's all experirence with a different product than what we're talking about here, but my anecdotal observations are that ChromeOS fundamentally expects internet access, and it might not be possible to upgrade the hardware and get a comfortable setup with a real Linux or BSD.

<comment><USER26> I don't know about modern chromebooks, but I have an Acer C7 that I spent $199 on and then added another $240 for it to have a 128GB SSD, 16GB RAM, a working bluetooth module, and an upgraded battery. $440 total and it's been a solid dev machine running first chrubuntu and now crouton. I've mentioned before that the only issue I've had with it is lack of CPU horsepower for clojure- based work to get into the REPL, which as I understand, is slightly fixed on later iterations (or other models). All of my hardware (AFAICT) works under Linux, and I use Google Hangouts, Skype, Steam (for TFC), and vim/tmux on it routinely.

<comment><USER27> $440? You could get a Lenovo T440 for a few bucks more in the Lenovo outlet

<comment><USER28> It could end up being better in terms of battery life and portability if OP had bought a C720.

<comment><USER26> My battery lasts about 9 hours on a charge with normal usage (testing/developing in vim with Python (using python-mode+jedi) and Clojure (using vim-fireplace and nrepl-middleware) against Postgres, Mongo, Elasticsearch, Redis, and Storm. The original battery was somewhere in the 4-5 hour range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can one wipe out a Chromebook and install Linux?

<comment><USER30> Yes you can but it's not a straightforward process. I did it for my chromebox which follows the same procedure as doing it for a chromebook. Basically you have to open the machine and remove a screw to enable write access to the bios. After that you have to replace the coreboot bios that came with the computer with a newer coreboot version and install SeaBios (old bios emulation on top of coreboot) as a payload. You could also have a linux kernel as a payload but this was more complex and I didn't need faster boot times.

Once all this is done, the laptop behaves much like any other laptop except you have an open source bios. You can then install linux on it from a USB key like you would on any other device. I imagine the quality of the drivers depends on which chromebook you use. I hear the chromebook pixel has excellent support and that's no surprise as that's what Linus uses (or used to, I'm not sure if he changed).

<comment><USER31> These are ARM Chromebooks though so there is no conventional bios to flash.

They have u-boot with support for booting external media turned off so all you need to do is turn that on and make bootable media.

[http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung- chro...](http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung-chromebook-2)

<comment><USER23> Recent ARM Chromebooks also come with coreboot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The Chromebit is probably the most exciting thing in that post for me. I wonder if it'll be this time that a company gets the plug-n-play PC right. I remember the big promises Ubuntu Phone, for example, made in this department.

</comment><comment><USER33> 16GB storage is pathetic. I think of these as terminals connected to the giant Google mainframe in the sky. The System Administrator will be monitoring your activities.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow. The OLPC XO-1 launched for $188 in 2006. Now we have relatively mainstream retail laptops selling for less than that.

<comment><USER35> I completely forgot about that computer and the organization behind it. Looking at their site I guess they eventually moved on to a tablet in addition to a version of the computer; I wonder if they can even make them cheaper than these big companies anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've had sub $200 chromebooks before. And upgraded to the Toshiba with intel processor and nice screen.

On the sub $200 model video ran like crap, couldn't cast tabs to chromecast, and more than half dozen or so tabs killed it. Other than that is was great.

<comment> 0x5f3759df-i I bought my Acer C720 for $160 and it has been the best preforming chromebook until a couple months ago.

You can still get good performance in a cheap chromebook if you do a little research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can you run those things as a pure Linux system, without any tie to Google? I have an application where I run a Python program that needs WiFi and a USB port, but nothing else. I'm using old EEEpc 2G Surfs now, but they're getting old.

<comment><USER38> You can in most cases but you wouldn't need to. Most people install Linux using a project called Crouton which creates a chroot running parallel to ChromeOs. The Crouton chroot can see a USB device and of course has network access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> the said ..

> More Chromebooks, for _everyone_

but ..

> The Google Store isn't available here yet.

> We're working to bring it to more countries as soon as possible.

:(

<comment><USER40> I don't think these Chromebooks are sold in Google Store in any country.

(Google Store selection varies by country, anyway. Where I live, they don't sell any Chromebooks; I might have considered the new Pixel if it weren't for the hassle.)

<comment><USER41> FWIW, [https://store.google.com/category/chromebooks](https://store.google.com/category/chromebooks) lists bunch of chromebooks for sale in the US, including the new Pixel.

<comment><USER42> The list of chromebooks here in the UK is just one: the new Pixel.

Despite all of the pictures showing Acers etc. you can only actually buy one from Google. It's silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There will be chrome-almost-tablets. I am waiting for Chrometabs and Chromephones (I know there is Android, but well). I am not joking really.

I expect that, Chromephones would undermine Android, but Chrometabs could be good idea.

Chromebit is great idea! I am in process of searching what to buy for my father. His computer is broken down Athlon machine with Linux (I maintain it). I don't have time to properly maintain it (I don't have time and energy even to do it for my own computers). I am from Poland, so these prices have for me 4x multiplier attached to them. I now consider buying used workstation and try to maintain system myself. Or buy some Chromegadget and call it a day. My father can't put more than 100 USD on this and even 100 USD is stretching a bit. I will probably add few tens of dollars to this sum and maybe buy something like Chromebit or used Chromebook.

I want to buy Chromebook for myself also. I am thinking about used Pixel or Toshiba Chromebook 2. Or I will wait a bit longer for new greatness. My requirements: max 500 USD, 12-14", at least 1920p. I am not sure what I value more: performance (Pixel) or quietness and lightness (Toshiba).

<comment><USER44> The flip model has a touch screen, though it's probably not multipoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I bought an Asus chromebook for my grandmother a few months ago for $159 (via Amazon), though a few days later it jumped to $199. It was a pretty great deal.

I love ChromeOS... it's grandma/mom safe, and works very well. The only limitations I've really struggled with in my own use, is VPN to work, and the lack of an IMAP mail client. Other than that, it's worked great for everyone I've given one to.

</comment><comment><USER46> I really enjoy my Samsung Chromebook 2. The only thing I wish it had more of is computing power, RAM and screen space. Too bad there aren't very many 15" 8GB RAM Chromebooks on the market which makes the Chromebook Pixel 2 all the more painful to lust after, despite it not being 15".

TL;DR. Crouton + Chromebook FTnearW! (Would still like to keep the secure boot, though.)

<comment><USER47> I do well with the Toshiba Chromebook 2.

Intel Celeron N2840 Gorgeous IPS 1920x1080 screen.

It is a lovely machine.

<comment><USER46> I've been thinking about that myself - the IPS screen is certainly more appealing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> So there are two models available at $149:

Haier - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V3DYVLM](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V3DYVLM)

Hisense - [http://www.walmart.com/ip/44389793#about](http://www.walmart.com/ip/44389793#about)

Which looks better?

<comment><USER49> I personally like the Haier's appearance more than the Hisense's. I dig the whole carbon-fiber aesthetic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This thread is being totally astroturfed by Googlers, or people actually like the specs of that thing? I don't get it. People, you can buy machines that have a proper os AND a browser ... but you're ready to spend money on a glorified browser?

<comment><USER51> So where's this proper machine of yours that sells for $150?

<comment><USER50> Go to amazon,plenty of products for a reasonable price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Cell phones could only be afforded by the wealthy in the 80s. Now the cell phone market in developing countries is burgeoning. Soon, there will be a substantial laptop market in most developing countries as well as prices continue to decline.

</comment><comment><USER53> I think this product will do well especially for students, start-up businesses, or even for leisure use. Google's goal is to be able to address the affordability and at the same time not sacrificing quality. It definitely isn't the best machine out there but it is sufficient for daily use of middle- income consumers and students. On their video ad, it's obvious that they are also focusing on an international market where it's not focused on first-world countries only. I think it's a great step for Google to create something very affordable that has a good quality for their product to reach all facets of the world.

<comment><USER50> > Google's goal is to be able to address the affordability and at the same > time not sacrificing quality.

Google's goal is to sell its cloud services, not the hardware here. The specs are crappy and that laptop is basically useless if you are doing anything else than internet. Sure it cost 150$, but that's an expensive surfing machine. And Google is off course selling internet services...

> I think this product will do well especially for students, start-up > businesses, or even for leisure use.

You know, the exact same arguments were used to sell netbooks(students,leisure), which were an horrible failure,and you're still falling for that? at least most netbooks ran on windows... You don't even get that with Chrome OS.

People are not idiots, especially those who have a tight budget, they'll be even more vocal about crappy cheap products because it represents a larger share of their income. That thing with these specs... I bet most people are ready to invest $100 more to have at least a proper notebook. You can get a 11 inches Acer laptop for 50 dollars more. With a browser AND windows,with a proper Hard drive.Why would people want to pay JUST for a fucking browser? they wouldn't unless they have so much spare money they don't care.

<comment><USER54> > Why would people want to pay JUST for a fucking browser?

Because there's a lot you can do with a browser these days. You can even run offline apps and native code (Emscripten, NaCl, PNaCl).

Also, if you turn on developer mode, you can access all the Gentoo bits that hide underneath the Chrome bits.

Consider common use cases - word processing, social media, organising photos, communication - all can be done with a stock Chromebook. Once developers realise the full potential, you'll see bigger, better games that run on Chrome (check out Bastion and From Dust on the Chrome web store - pretty impressive already).

<comment><USER50> > Because there's a lot you can do with a browser these days. You can even run > offline apps and native code (Emscripten, NaCl, PNaCl).

Sure it's true for hipsters, but we are not talking about them right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Wow that's ugly, all the bad memories of the netbook era just came flooding back....

<comment><USER42> But even worse, these devices have practically NO local storage. At least netbooks came with 120GB hard disks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> That Chromebook Flip is an awesome answer to the overpriced surface tablets. I'm amazed at the variety of chromebooks out there. Chromebooks might still be the biggest sellers again this christmas season.

</comment><comment><USER57> The ChromeBit looks pretty cool though. Entire computer in a flash drive.

<comment><USER36> You can buy the chromebox which is somewhat similar but not as compacy as a chromebit

[http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS- Desktop/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS- Desktop/dp/B00IT1WJZQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1427826639&sr=1-1&keywords=chromebox)

<comment><USER42> Still has a dependency on an external mainframe though; better to buy an Intel NUC perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Just not the greatest for programmers... But cool for everyone else!

<comment><USER20> I disagree. If you're not doing hardware-level hacking, a cloud IDE like Cloud9 ([https://c9.io](https://c9.io)) beats any fragile client-side workspace I've ever used.

<comment><USER58> It doesn't just have to be hardware level hacking. c9 is great but, anywhere that you want a decent amount of control over web server(apache, tomcat) configs, graphics acceleration for games, or storage of large local files, you're going to need something more. I'd take Ubuntu any day. Given the choice, what are some reasons to actually choose Chrome OS over Ubuntu?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> If they support it like my Nexus 7 (2012), thanks, but no thanks. Cheap != Good. I think we've still got a few more years to go before the price/quality ratio is right.

</comment><comment><USER60> And when they are sold in Australia, they will cost over $350.

</comment><comment><USER61> I picked up a refurb C720 a while back for $119. I've been very impressed with it at that price point. It's currently my backup laptop.

</comment><comment><USER62> Wow, does someone know if I can wipe the hard drive, install linux on it (Arch or Debian) and use it for light development (Python with Emacs)?

<comment><USER30> You should be able to. See my previous post with more details as to how I installed linux (arch) on my chromebox. It might be as straightforward for this version since it has an ARM processor instead of the x86 processor found in my setup. For instance, normal archlinux doesn't support non x86/x86-64 architectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The Chromebit is actually the part that caught my eye. If the USB 2.0 hub can connect to high-capacity external hard-drives rather than just thumb-drives, I might be looking at my new Kodi/XBMC machine. The RPi is getting a little long in the tooth.

I'm also curious if the Chromebit will include Chromecast-like functionality as far as screencasting goes.

</comment><comment><USER64> The Haier 11.6"'s SoC seems pretty cool _for a phone_. Then again, phones are ridiculously overpowered these days. It supports 4K. [http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockchip_RK3288](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockchip_RK3288)

</comment><comment><USER65> >And a lot of people love them—Chromebooks were the best selling laptops on Amazon last holiday season, and teachers and students made them the #1 device in schools last year.

What does this even mean? Does it mean on Amazon all Chromebooks combined sold more than any other laptop categories, Windows or MacBook?

</comment><comment><USER66> It's a shame they didn't put USB 3.0 slots on these chromebooks. Pretty useless with 2.0 for any external hard drive activity.

<comment><USER67> True, but chromebooks aren't really designed to deal with lots of local storage. What do you think that AC wireless is for - they want you to stream all day long!

</comment></comment><comment><USER68>
        > TRUE, XOLO, Nexian. Recognise them? Consumers in
        > Thailand ... do

I've never seen any of them.

</comment><comment><USER69> I wonder if there's the possibility of using a phone as the input device for the Chromebit.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's netbooks all over again.

<comment><USER71> Many netbooks were under spec'd machines (typically 500mb to 1gb ram) running Windows on a small 10 inch screen and a low power single core CPU. They failed in my opinion due to running Windows which killed performance. Runing Linux on those machines generally improved the experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> "ARM wrestler" haha

</comment><comment><USER73> It's a shame that all Google services blocked by China gov.

</comment><comment><USER74> Nice to see that, still can't afford my food tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER75> Wow it's kind of like, the network is the computer...

<comment><USER76> Really makes me which that Google would have bought Sun instead of Oracle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Wow! That's cheap for a "Notebook".

</comment><comment><USER78> I was hearing about $100 laptops from the time, I joined college. Finally, I see it happen.

Every developing nation should award highest civilian honour to Sundar Pichai for making this happen. Thanks Google for making this happen.

<comment><USER79> also thank the component manufacturers for finally selling their chips super cheap!

<comment><USER80> Yeah, I think this is more because of Rockchip than because of Google. Rockchip manages to make a potent processor for very little, which is what is powering these. Google's volumes help as well but I would give more props to Rockchip

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> I'm interested to see more about the build quality and durability of these machines. Typically chromebooks have delivered an above average experience for the price.

</comment><comment><USER82> Can I install gentoo on this?

</comment><comment><USER83> could you run Pycharms on this?

or install ubuntu instead of chromeOS?

<comment><USER84> Yes - [https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton)

Personally I develop on a Chromebook by SSH-ing into a Digital Ocean server direct from Chrome OS. I don't use it full-time as a dev box though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> it would be nice if apple does same...but then Mac is great for its UX which will be affected here.</comment>


Ruby isn't Enterprise-Ready[tm] and using dynamic typing is like going back to CGI programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.jroller.com/nivanov/entry/why_ruby_and_ror_are <comment><AUTHOR> The author of this article sounds like a caricature -- it's hard to believe that he's serious, but he is!

</comment><comment><USER2> If not for Mongrel, he might be right. If you needed a separate copy of Apache running for each instance of your Rails app, I would agree that you would have trouble. :) I am interested in how painful it is to scale Rails. Twitter is by far the largest deployment and we all know they had some growing pains. I'm a big fan of Ruby, and I'm using it in a side project that I hope to turn into a startup, but I'm concerned that I might run into trouble in the long-term. (I'm a .NET developer by day, but I'm not willing to commit to Windows hosting, and I'm not too confident in mod_mono either...)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what this guy is talking about, and I don't think he is either</comment>


What I learned today: It's not worth it. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/8ad916ae2da9 Don't push yourself to your limits. <comment><USER2> I am really sorry that you are having vision problems. Frankly I can't really understand it. But I have one main thing to say: don't believe doctors. They aren't the final answer on, really, anything. I come from a family of doctors and I have learned also through my life that doctors are usually just guessing, and going by what they have learned and what our current understanding of humans has taught us. If they say that "there is nothing wrong with you" what they mean is that there is nothing that you have that they can diagnose and treat. That doesn't mean that there isn't something wrong. Please don't do what I do, and what pretty much everyone does when there is no identifiable illness to blame: blame yourself. Actually, it sounds like the doctor helped you along with that by saying that it was your fault. That's perfect. My doctor did the same thing when she couldn't find a reason for why i was in agony every night and was taking like 30 Immodium a day to quell my stomach pains. If gastroenterologists don't find something to pin it on, then "there is nothing wrong with you". So they turn it on you. There is clearly something wrong with you, whether a doctor has a name for it or not. And it is not your fault. If the identification of a problem in your health makes you slow down and smell the roses, or the carnations, or whatever is in your vicinity that you haven't been smelling enough of, then great. But DO NOT blame yourself for your current problem. It is likely not a result of any action of yours. It is just something that happened. It might be a rare disorder that hasn't yet been identified or that only a small group of specialists knows about. Have you researched it online? Of course you have. You might look around for researchers into things like this. There is probably some small group somewhere which is looking into this very disorder, which is rare, and is usually attributed to overwork, or too much reading. peace and best wishes.

</comment><comment><USER3> After similar symptoms and work ethic... I've been on sabatical for the last 5 months after almost passing out in a meeting, then half an hour thinking my heart was going to explode.

The doctor was actually pretty good and got it out of me that the job I was on more stressful than most, basically because of the "tech lead" walking ego fuckwit who would argue that the sky wasn't blue. 17 years in the contracting business eventually got to me - and it was a 'fuckwit' personality type I'd dealt with easily many times prior.

With hindsight, I actually got a little too emotionally involved with, for once, not accepting my time being wasted on another failed project due to idiots running the show...

It was government work, so that might explain it. Take care of yourself, I thought I was dead at 40.

Life is considerably more enjoyable now. Take better care of yourself, eat better, drink less alcohol(?) and avoid fuckwits at all costs :) You're a long time dead - take time to really smell the roses...</comment>


Theoretical Statistics – All Lectures (2018) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aditya/resources/FullNotes210BSpring2018.pdf <comment><USER2> On first glance, seems to be moderately advanced, somewhat unusual, at least fairly competent, maybe better than that.

Starts with a typo for expression (1); calls it (5) where it is only on page 5.

Starts with a _classification_ problem and seems to get some interesting and likely useful mathematical (probabilistic, statistical) results for what I've seen elsewhere only with heuristics.

Does prove the Lindeberg-Feller version of the central limit theorem.

I would have guessed that there would be some material on _exchangability_ and/or _resampling_ but didn't see anything.

Looks at the Breiman LASSO technique in regression.

He seems to do a lot with one of my favorite authors and papers:

Talagrand, M. (1996). A new look at independence. Annals of Probability 24, 1-34.

<comment><USER3> Bro watchu mean moderately advanced? Outside of your PhD dissertation where have you seen more rigorous treatments? I'm no stats schlep, but holy shit this is no walk in the park. Also, am glad you commented, only reason why I actually took a close look at it and it is quite good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't find the textbook this specific professor assigned but the assigned textbooks for this semester's section are:

Testing Statistical Hypotheses (Cl) by Lehmann

Theory Of Point Estimation by Lehmann

Theoretical Statistics by Keener

<comment><USER5> Interesting. The lecture notes don't look like point estimation and there's not much hypothesis testing. Course seems much more probability than statistics.

<comment><USER4> You're right, looking more closely this text seems to mirror the content of these lecture notes:

Weak Convergence and Empirical Processes by Vaart and Wellner

Additionally, this assigned book list from a past section: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/courses/210B-spring...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/courses/210B-spring17/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are there maybe also videos for this lecture?

<comment><USER7> There are many stats video courses on YouTube. I list a few here:

[https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/tree/master/s...](https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/tree/master/statistics)

Harvard 110 is a good beginner course. Someone did the lecture notes too:

[http://www.mxawng.com/stuff/notes/stat110.pdf](http://www.mxawng.com/stuff/notes/stat110.pdf)

And a 10 page cheatsheet:

[http://www.wzchen.com/probability- cheatsheet](http://www.wzchen.com/probability-cheatsheet)</comment></comment>


Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/health/singapore-sugar-drink-ads-intl-hnk-scli/index.html <comment><USER2> Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people.

I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use.

This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets.

BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If I were younger I might consider moving there for permanent work.

<comment><USER3> There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion:

As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices become an attack on society at large.

Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal freedom...

<comment><USER4> Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations.

The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society' first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an impact on the climate, and some studies say it can be bad for health. Sugar of course is bad for health in large quantities.

<comment><USER5> The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette ads are banned, in some places you're not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example, but we're seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.

<comment><USER4> >I think your concerns are unfounded.

> cigarette ads are banned, in some places you're not allowed to sell sugary > drinks that are too large

It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's not banned, but it is controlled already.

<comment><USER5> I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized healthcare? I'm simply saying that they're uncorrelated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In addition to an ad ban, the ministry announced that sugary drinks would also be required to display a color-coded, front-of-pack nutrition label to list nutritional quality and sugar content." I like Japanese/Taiwanese approach which list percentage of fruit juice (front-of-pack). And manufacturers can't cheat with substitutes like apple cause it doesn't count. This is way more useful for consumers to decide what they want. In countries like Malaysia I have no idea what i am buying (sugar water vs real fruit juice)

<comment><USER7> The UK has a similar "traffic light" system[0] on their foods. I cannot speak to everyone, but for me seeing red salt makes me look again at other options. It is a gentle nudge but helps.

By contrast US food labeling is an anti-pattern. "Serving size" seems arbitrary and makes it impossible to compare foods even directly next to one another on the shelf (plus they're intentionally unrealistic, like a single chocolate bar having two "servings").

[0] [https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/to...](https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/topics/traffic- light-info.jpg)

<comment><USER5> It would be so simple to fix the serving size issue, too: just force labels to list nutrition information for the whole thing as well as per serving!

<comment><USER8> Arbitrary serving sizes are kind of useless though. In an ideal world, most foods would list nutrition information in two units: per container, and per 100g. You'd be able to tell at a glance a) what you're buying, and b) how it compares to similar items. Unfortunately that will not happen in the United States any time soon.

<comment><USER9> I dunno. 100g of butter is a lot.

<comment><USER10> But you could easily compare multiple brands because they will not have different package or serving sizes to trick the system. Here in germany 100g nutrition labels have to be added, made-up serving sizes can be used too if they want, but 100g nutrition tables are enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had the pleasure of holding a talk at the same event as Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, a rockstar entrepreneur and chemist in Sweden, and one of the questions he got during his talk was how he could reconcile his drive to be an ethical businessman and supply stuff to the military. His response was pretty long but it made a comparison with the sugar industry (paraphrasing here, sorry Saeid if you're reading this and I got something wrong):

"I would never force my ethics on someone else, I will however criticize someone if they don't think their business model through on an ethical level. You should be able to live with what you're doing, personally, without deluding yourself or being in denial. I think Sweden, a democratic country, has an obligation to make sure that the troops we send for peace keeping purposes have the right gear to do the job. However, I would never, ever, supply stuff to the sugar industry. Even though we've found loads of stuff that could be applied to that field, I just couldn't live with myself. It serves absolutely no utility to humanity, it kills more people every year than war and you're primarily marketing stuff to children to form life long habits. It just doesn't square with my morals but I've met other, smart people who have thought long and hard about the sugar industry and came to the conclusion that it's an ethical industry. Whatever floats their boat, but I don't want to make money that way."

<comment><USER12> That's a pretty self-serving attitude.

He sells weapons used to kill people, but is disgusted with the sugar industry?

<comment><USER11> I think he produces ceramic plates for body armor, but he could very well be making weapons too. Either way, he profits off of war.

So, yes, he sees the sugar industry as worse and as something without any sort of utility. Militaries bring security and are necessary, at least in his view, and thus he sees them as a net benefit. Personally, as a software developer, I would not build software for the military especially not anything based off of machine learning because it would be against _my_ ethics, and I think that was his point too; don't ape his morals, but do at least think whatever you choose to do through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just ban all ads and be done with it. Really don't understand why it's taking us (collectively) so long to get there.

<comment><USER14> The site you are commenting on is effectively an Ad for yc. Should that be banned?

<comment><USER15> It's not "effectively" an ad for anything, it's a discussion forum. The fact that it _also_ offers some publicity to YC's business is an additional aspect, but not the main one.

<comment><USER14> It's an "ad" in as much as anything. Not to mention it sells job advertisement space. It brings goodwill to the brand. A core tennant of advertising.

Such a weak minded assertion as "ban all advertising" without considering how that impacts freedom of speech is unbelievable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would like to see a ban on all ads. I am sick of them. I resent with all my heart that wherever I go I'm bombared with propaganda for products. Nobody should have the right to hijack other peoples attention.

<comment><USER17> Banning all ads is wrong. Ads help promoting good products and services. If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and that will make our economy less effective.

<comment><USER15> "If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and that will make our economy less effective."

That's a strange conclusion, since all products, including terrible ones are advertised. In fact ads are essentially content-free and don't help people decide if a product is good or not. They have zero correlation with the quality of a product.

Some countries like France and Germany have independent organizations that buy almost anything that one can think of, test it and make a list of quality products. _That_ ensures people buy good products and services.

You've made me see once again that ads are essentially worthless for individuals.

<comment> em-bee but they also allow the advertisers to use the test results in their ads. and that's effective. if i see a test-result in an ad i do pay attention (if i am in the market for that kind of product)

<comment><USER15> That would work just as well if they print the results on the packaging (which they do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In 2010-11 Singapore there used to be close to zero non-sugary drinks at convenience stores. Even all the teas used to be sweet. Lately they started carrying Japanese brands of non-sweetened tea but for a while if you wanted non-sweet tea you had to make it yourself. Which of course is probably better for the planet but if you're just out and about and wanted a drink from a 7/11 your options were pretty slim.

The big thing lately in Singapore, Tokyo, Malaysia is "brown sugar milk tea". I think it's hit NYC and LA but basically you take a tapoica milk tea but before you put the milk and tea in you coat the sides of the plastic cup with brown sugar syrup. Then, instead of the old tea + milk it's now like tea + cream and far more cream than tea such that it's more like sweetened tea flavored milk than milk flavored tea.

Search for "Tiger Sugar" for I guess the brand the started the new style?

[https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=isch)

There are apparently the equivilant of 20 teaspoons of sugar in 1 drink. Compare to 330ml of Coke which is about 7 teaspoons of sugar. The Malaysian government put out a warning as they got super popular.

[https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health- mi...](https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-ministry- urges-malaysians-to-shun-sickly-sweet-bubble-tea/1774661)

I'm curious why now in Tokyo. Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it's even sweeter and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level. It's like every spare store front has started selling.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles > in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and > I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it 's even sweeter > and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level._

I believe it was around 2011 that the more premium bubble tea vendors in Singapore started offering a choice of how much syrup to add to one's drink (Koi Cafe, which may or may not have originated from Taiwan, might have started this trend).

I'm surprised that this particular service hasn't made its way to Japan.

<comment><USER18> Koi Cafe and Tiger Sugar are both in Tokyo now as are about 40 other brands, all within the last year or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bravo for Singapore govs! Instead of relying on people not digesting too much sugars, they make the policy surveyed on people to discourage the sugar access, reducing the diabetes risks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd go further than this. Here in Australia, cigarette packets are forced to use bland, non branded packaging. It should be the same for these drinks. They'll be less attractive if they all look the same.

<comment><USER21> I think we are many many years away from the plain packaging dream. Cigarettes were first plain packaged in 2012 in Australia[0], but doctors and researchers have been drawing links between tobacco and disease pretty much as long as we've had epidemiological tools available to do so [1].

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging) 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#History)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think this would be great to actually demonstrate what drinks are actually "sugary" and I mean it against drinks that market themselves to be healthy but are very high in sugar

</comment><comment><USER6> Singapore goes opposite direction as most countries. Personally I think sugar tax is way powerful. Those money can be used to educate people. Banning ads is not going to educate people.

<comment><USER18> Does it work? I think I'm mostly for the ban but as for a tax... Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I'd prefer a world where people choose to smoke less and eat healthier. I'm curious what methods are most effective. I believe it was going lower in the USA for a while but then blew up again with vaping? And you only have to visit almost any place in the USA to see we're failing at convincing people to eat healthy.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered > the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe > and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from > smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG > (please correct me if I 'm wrong)._

Singaporean here. I can get my $2 beers and $12 bottles of wine at the supermarket, so alcohol isn't that expensive. On the other hand, drinking at a restaurant or bar is expensive, but moreso because rent in Singapore is crazy.

I'm not sure about the smoking rates, but I reckon that it has gone down among the younger generation because there's so much else to spend their money on these days — and smoking was recently banned on Orchard Road, which is the main shopping district.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> By only targeting sugar, Singapore will become the test area for what happens when a population converts to artificial sweeteners.

I'm both curious and afraid for the results to come in.

<comment><USER24> Don't we have stable populations of people consuming artificial sweeteners for like 50 years now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not opposed to this but it strikes me as somewhat weak - if you think something is bad enough to ban visibility of it, why not just go all the way and ban the thing itself. Same with smoking, alcohol, etc.

Of course, prohibition doesn't have a terribly successful history but the whole approach seems odd and inconsistent to me.

I guess the rationale is a pragmatic de-normalising of toxic and addictive but currently fully normalised foods and substances over the long term.

<comment><USER26> Banning advertising here just restricts the freedom of corporations. Banning the item itself means individuals who want it can't get it.

<comment><USER25> And corporations can't vote .. :)

<comment><USER27> Corporations are a centralization of power that has obligations to money above all else.

Also if you give me the choice between being able to vote and being to to hire a lobbying firm, I know which would have more influence.

<comment><USER28> Would you admit the corporation one vote or as many votes as total number of shares divided by number of shares held by smallest shareholder?

<comment><USER27> Is this a serious question? Are you talking about voting for politicians? Anyone can start as many corporations as they want.

Also corporations have roughly 100 million shares and anyone can buy a single share, so your formula would give one corporation more votes than the number of people who participated in the 2016 US election.

Do you really think corporations are under represented in the political process?

<comment><USER28> I wanted to illustrate sillyness of the idea. Partners of a corporation are already represented, no need to represent the whole partnership.

<comment><USER27> That seems like a rehash of what I was already saying, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm curious if they already have bans on adds for candy? It seems like if you are going to ban ads for one kind of candy, you'd ban them for all.

<comment><USER30> By most objective determinations of what is "candy", "cereal" such as Froot Loops would qualify.

(And I'm fully down for banning ads for candy cereal.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of obesity.

But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence and politicians are too quick to pull the trigger in favor of industries that donate money for their political campaigns.

First of all the evidence that sugar directly causes T2 diabetes is weak [1], even if there is an association between sugary drinks and metabolic syndrome, see for example: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581)

You can associate sugar or fat or meat consumption with an increased risk for T2 diabetes, but fact of the matter is that it all comes down to calories, T2 diabetes having an _energy excess_ as the cause and the available evidence for that is pretty solid [3]. When energy excess happens, all markers will start indicating problems, your blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, etc, all of them going up.

People like to focus on one macro-nutrient, or another and it is true that they aren't the same ... for example fructose might give you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease before glucose or saturated fat are able to. But only when consumed in excess, only when it's not burned for energy and the liver's glycogen stores are full, only then fructose starts to become a problem. And if you eat a lot in excess, it doesn't really matter what you eat, as you will get a non-alcoholic fatty liver.

Going back to sugary drinks ... the reason for why I agree with banning ads for children and teaching people that sugary drinks are toxic is because it has been shown in studies that sugary drinks are not satiating at all and will make people overeat. This has been seen in other foods as well, what researchers have called the "cafeteria diet" [2]. The more processed a food is, the less proteins or nutrients it has, the less satiating it is. And sugary drinks are among the worst.

But this isn't related to sugar, but to foods high in calories, low in nutrients and that make people overeat. Unfortunately because the "calories in, calories out" model appears to introduce "personal responsibility" into the mix, people are too eager to embrace other models, like the carbohydrate- insulin theory (CIM), which for now is a work of fiction [3].

The "calories in, calories out" model doesn't have to blame the victim however. The modern food environment is indeed more obesogenic and this can be explained with the effect of highly caloric, ultra-processed foods on our satiety signals, i.e. the main problem is in the brain, the more processed a food is, the more it induces drug-seeking behavior.

So why stop at sugary drinks? What about ice cream or donuts? What about white bread? What about deep fried stuff? Plenty of foods are super high in sugars or fat or a combination, with near zero nutrients.

[1] [https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific- basis-...](https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis- guideline-recommendations-sugar-intake-systematic-review)

[2] [https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on- caf...](https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-cafeteria- diet.html)

[3] [http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate- with-...](http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-gary- taubes-on-the-joe-rogan-experience/)

<comment><USER32> Food consumption is a leading cause of obesity so maybe all the food, beverages and restaurants ads should be banned.

<comment><USER33> Why would food or drinks need advertisement? These are products that have literally infinite demand, nobody can live without them.

<comment><USER32> Demand for food is not infinite (maybe the word you were looking for was inelastic?). And even if you don't need ads to create demand for "food" that is a broad category with many competing products from many competing providers.

<comment><USER31> Interestingly the food industry has perverse incentives ... because humans have a maximum limit of food eaten during the day, big companies like Coca Cola can only grow by encouraging people to eat more.

Since the more people eat, the more they spend on food, the more revenue generated.

Therefore food companies are incentivized to produce highly palatable food that trick the brain into overeating. One common strategy is to combine sugar with fat (think donuts), bonus points if it has caffeine too (chocolate with milk). Such combinations are not very natural. You won't find in nature foods that are high in both sugar and fat. And this kind of processing matters. Think of the difference between cocoa leaves and crack cocaine.

And now that we have an obesity problem, the same companies also sell products for diabetics, or diet products with "zero calories" that are highly processed and may contain substances that are damaging to our gut or general health. It's very profitable to create a problem and then to provide the solution too.

And unfortunately you won't see ads for whole foods.

But you will see whole foods vilified periodically (e.g. starchy plants, meat, etc), with ingenuous food companies jumping to the rescue with highly processed stuff. The ongoing race for "fake meat" makes me cringe.

<comment><USER32> > And unfortunately you won't see ads for whole foods.

"Whole Foods" does definitely run ads :—)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why not do something that might actually work, like ban the sale of high-sugar carbonated drinks?

<comment><USER35> Banning products that a sub-population of people are effectively addicted to has a long, multi-instance history of not working and instead contributing to crime (see various drug prohibitions). A product being banned can actually be a form of advertising (or at least production of demand) by suggesting it is risky, cool, or potent in some way.

On the other hand, banning advertising for a category of products, or restricting the advertising to fact-based, or forcing risk factor inclusion, can help produce or accelerate cultural shifts that reduce the demand for the product.

<comment><USER34> Banning the sale of != banning the thing itself.

If the goal was a massive reduction, not total elimination, I think it would work.

Would many people really go to the black market to get sugary Coke when the supermarket has shelves of Diet Coke available?

<comment><USER35> Ah, I see what you're saying, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How adout we stop arresting non violent offenders? Then I'll be impressed. This is fake crap news and hn upvoters should be ashamed of themselves. Furthermore, in Seattle, the sugar tax doesn't apply to the home town hero, further sealing their monopoly as they hand wave through social issues.

</comment><comment><USER37> They should also penalize gluten-containing products (and that's not just foods, e.g. shampoo may contain gluten too). Google zonulin, leaky gut, wheat belly and microbiome diet to find out why.

<comment><USER38> I get that you're being sarcastic, but can you expound on why? This isn't a ban on the sale of sugary drinks, just the advertisement of such.

<comment><USER37> I believe (given the information you can find by googling the subjects I've listed, it is scientifically-backed in reasonable degree, you will find references to scientific papers in the books too) gluten is the second if not the first cause of the obesity epidemic.

TL/DR: besides being very bad for people with genuine celiac disease gluten (via zonulin) disregulates intestinal wall tight junctions in generally healthy people causing systematic inflammation, immune system problems (including weak immunity, allergies and autoimmune diseases) and metabolic syndrome (which means obesity and increased risk of diabetes as well as cardiovascular and endocrine diseases). Meanwhile, you can find gluten everywhere, not only in wheat products. Added gluten increases groceries and cosmetics shelf life.

If I were the one in charge I would order more thorough research and consider ban on advertisements for both sugary and gluten-rich foods + additional taxation on these goods sales.</comment></comment></comment>


Electric vehicle price is rising, but cost-per-mile is falling - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09/the-average-price-of-electric-cars-rose-in-2016-but-its-not-a-backwards-trend/ <comment><USER3> This title is very misleading... The reason for the "price increase" is the declining popularity of the once most popular BEV, the Nissan Leaf, and the increasing popularity of the Tesla Model S. Leaf sales got crushed when gas prices fell in 2015. The reason is the Model S is a luxury car, the Leaf is a compact car.

[http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales- scorecard/](http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/)

<comment><USER4> I don't see that as misleading. The most successful EV has been an extremely expensive one. There hasn't been a market for truly cheap EVs.

This is probably because EVs are amazing if you're a well-off suburban home owner who can charge at home, and still OK if you're a well-off urbanite with charging stations at work and in your building, and practically useless if you're a less-well-off renter in an older apartment building. So you have range anxiety hurting the cheap ones for the well-off set, and feasibility blocking all of them for the not-as-well-off set.

<comment><USER3> The reason it's misleading is that the cost of batteries is falling dramatically 14-16% per year. This headline will leave people with the opposite impression... that battery costs are going up. I clicked on it because I was like... what the heck? the cost of cars is falling (think model 3) Then it basically reverse course and explains that battery costs per KWh are falling but doesn't really explain why the costs went up... because the most popular cars were in different classes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its interesting to see new prices go up while used electric car prices are falling so incredibly rapidly, that its caused me to seriously consider one.

A barely used (20k miles) 2014 BMW i3 can be bought for ~16k, and an equally used Nissan Leaf can be bought for half of that!

My Honda only has 75K miles on it, so I really don't need to upgrade just yet, but I'd jump on these deals in a heartbeat if I was in the market.

<comment><USER6> Yep, bought a 2015 Leaf with 19k miles for $8,500. Will never buy a gasoline car again.

<comment><USER7> Wow, that's cheap!

Does the mileage drop badly in very cold weather?

How long does it take to charge?

<comment><USER8> I live in Vitoria, BC. It doesn't get that cold here, but it was below freezing I lost maybe 10% of range. It takes maybe 3 hours to change with my level 2 charger.

<comment><USER7> Awesome, thanks.

For that kind of money, I am thinking about it for a Yukon commuter car! - <USER2> nice not to have to leave it plugged in all day or let it warm up for 20mins when it's -40 !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title is misleading. Cost per mile is calculated as the initial vehicle price over range.

It would be interesting to see if electricity cost per mile driven was also falling.

<comment><USER10> Yes, that's kind of a strange metric.

The discouraging thing in the article is "Although the global EV market set a record for number of sales in 2016, market growth actually slowed to 60 percent in 2016 from 77 percent in 2015."

<comment><USER11> Electric cars are ~2% of the global sales and compounding 50% growth would hit 100% in 10 years which seems inanely optimistic.

I suspect they will hit 10% fairly quickly, but take much longer to break 50%. The really interesting transition is when gas stations start disappearing.

<comment><USER8> It's already happening, last one os gone from downtown Vancouver: [http://bc.ctvnews.ca/last-gas-vancouver-s-sole-remaining- dow...](http://bc.ctvnews.ca/last-gas-vancouver-s-sole-remaining-downtown-gas- station-for-sale-1.3363976)

It's due to property values, not electric cars, but it would be interesting to see if people switch to electrics because of disappearing gas stations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transforming Text Into Knowledge API - kin-lane http://www.kinlane.com/2010/08/transforming-text-into-knowledge-api/

<comment><AUTHOR> Why does this feel more like spam than real information?

<comment> kin-lane I'm curious to know why? This is genuinely derived from me learning how to use the API while harvest job posting RSS feeds.

I have no affiliation with the company, just sharing how I used the API to solve my problem.

So I would entertain any feedback on why perceived as spammy?

<comment> kin-lane I'm sorry it didn't spur your intellectual curiosity. I was having a real good Sunday of discovery and play with data crunching.

I felt the need to share it. I guess I found it fun...and thought some one else might too.

First I posted a blog on my need for Meaningful Key Phrases and Tag Sets to run against data I"m harvesting.

Then I posted an overview of how an API saved my ass from many hours of programming this intelligence in another blog post called. A Programmers Need for an Application Programming Interface (API)

Then I posted the one you found did nothing to engage your intellectual curiosity called, Transforming Text Into Knowledge API. This post summed up the API and what it did for me.

Maybe you do this kind of work all the time?

But I"m playing around with many different ways of harvesting, storing and distilling down data right now....and felt the work I did on Sunday was intellectually stimulating.

In the current online world...I think its relevant too.</comment></comment></comment>


At one fell swoop - <AUTHOR> http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/at-one-fell-swoop.html

<comment><USER3> I always hear "in one fell swoop"

</comment><comment><USER4> I knew that "fell" as an adjective meant "terrible" (exposure to a computer RPG that had a "fell beast" as an enemy type helped); so I kind of guessed that if you do everything "in one fell swoop" it means with one terrible, indiscriminate strike.

<comment><USER5> "Fell beast" is a phrase J. R. R Tolkien used in The Lord of the Rings [1], probably owing to his study of medieval literature. The more current usage may have stemmed from reading his works. [1] [http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Fell_beasts](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Fell_beasts)

<comment><USER6> Did you not read the article?

It is clearly Shakespeare who popularized - if not outright invented - <USER2> term.

Shakespeare owns the English language. No single author has done as much to contribute to its continued confabulation.

<comment><USER5> I meant Tolkien may have originated the term "fell beast", not "fell" in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, I've been saying this for a long time without even knowing what it was. I think I said "in one fall swoop" TIL I guess.</comment>


ASK HN: Information Systems versus Computer Science - <AUTHOR>

For the people out there that are in the business of making money from computer related stuff. How viable in the job market is an Information Systems degree with a minor in Computer Science, as opposed to a Computer Science degree. (Just a Bachelors for both).
Reason being, I am currently a Computer Science major and I am not exactly fond of the Calculus, I can do it, I'd just rather not, and after doing some research on the subject. I discovered that Computer Science tends to be more Research/Academia related now, and MIS is more aimed at business. Although these opinions were that of yahoo answers and some random google searches. I figured I'd ask my trusted HN community for more insight on the topic.
Thank you for taking the time to answer this. <comment><USER2> For those questions, I like to follow paulg's advice:

 _" Another way to figure out which fields are worth studying is to create the dropout graph. For example, I know many people who switched from math to computer science because they found math too hard, and no one who did the opposite. People don't do hard things gratuitously; no one will work on a harder problem unless it is proportionately (or at least log(n)) more rewarding. So probably math is more worth studying than computer science. By similar comparisons you can make a graph of all the departments in a university. At the bottom you'll find the subjects with least intellectual content."_

Do CS.

</comment><comment><USER3> I did 3 years of both in college through a dual degree program the college had setup with a CS concentration.(dropped out my senior year, but went far enough to give you a general idea)

Keep in mind, this will vary from uni to uni:

MIS from my experience was more about database management and very basic coding skills. It was definitely more business oriented. There was a decent amount of introductory Service Oriented Architecture and other kinds of somewhat technical topics, but it's not really all that relevant.

CS still gives you the fundamentals needed to take on different kinds of system architectures and problem solving.

I by far favor CS as far as what skills will be most worthwhile. You will learn everything you could in MIS as you go along in CS. There's either a lot of overlap or MIS just plain has a lot of lacking skills as far as technical goes.

Despite the stereotype that CS is more academic, lots of those topics are amazing to have under your belt. If you're hoping to get a programming job CS is still the easiest way to get in the door.

If you just want to be a project manager (good luck at entry level) you might get away with MIS.

I would recommend the CS degree with an MIS minor instead. It's not a bad courseload in doses, but overall, to me, not as useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel your CS pains, I am also having trouble passing Calculus 3(Multi- variable). Math is of course useful to Computer Science, but learning math in reference to CS would be a whole lot better. Not sure if anyone knows any programs were they have Calc for CS majors or not but that would be nice. As to your question IS were I am at is a business major, and not at all like CS. No theory, little programming.

</comment><comment><USER5> IS is aimed at business in the sense that it is aimed at semi-technical or non-technical roles. Which means it's watered down.

CS is significantly more respected when it comes to engineering jobs. It is also more respected for product management, project management, and the like. Google, for example (extremely selective, obviously), targets CS majors for entry level product management roles.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should do CS since there's quite a lot of overlap of IS. With a CS degree you can still go for IS-oriented jobs when you graduate (and you may even be considered above people who have an IS degree), whereas it's a bit tougher to go for CS jobs with an IS degree.</comment>


AirBnB is now available in Cuba - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-02/airbnb-is-now-available-in-cuba <comment><USER2> Funny thing is that Cuba already has its own "airbnb" called "casa particulares", it's definitely a great way to travel! :)

<comment><USER3> you know, there are a couple of nice things about AirBnB that $COMPETITOR from Cuba can't easily match. For instance, first-world travelers are already quite willing to trust it with their credit cards. For another, it has global renown and doesn't need to advertise heavily to be found.

<comment><USER2> There is no competitor, it's an initiative from the state cuba. It's also not like it is heavily advertised. It just was basically the only option until now. I frequently use airbnb, so i know that it's great. Just saying that Cuba the state already had that kind of offering for years, as a fact.

<comment><USER4> casa particulars are more of a concept than a business entity. It pretty much means "Bed&Breakfast" (without the breakfast). The government involvement is licensing & taxation, although there's a thriving black market as well.

If anything, this will help AirBnB adoption since the concept of renting out a spare room is already widely known.

<comment><USER5> > It pretty much means "Bed&Breakfast"

No, it means something like "independent household". But functionally, yes, they are "bread & (maybe) breakfast".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was Brian's (CEO) tweet in December reacting to White House news. It took three months and they made it happen.

[https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/545597231164706816](https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/545597231164706816)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have mixed success with AirBnB as a traveller. I would say 80% of my requests to stay in a place are either ignored or rejected. I'm mainly talking about hosts from the UK.

In the end I just stay in Hotels, it's less hassle, often cheaper.

As for Cuba, very surprised if they have 1000 properties available. Getting internet access in Cuba is pretty much impossible.

<comment><USER8> Yeah AirBnB hasn't really taken off here in the UK as it has elsewhere. Not sure if that's a cultural thing (letting your home out to strangers) or something else. Like you said, much better to stay at a hotel or B & B if travelling to the UK

<comment><USER9> Thats interesting. I always thought bed & breakfast was a British "invention". The b&b's (in Scotland) I've stayed at have always been a pleasure, complete with toast and jam. Edit: sorry - didn't read your last paragraph about about b&b. But I would've thought b&b would be in the same market as airbnb?

<comment><USER10> But almost no actual "B&B"s are using airbnb, in my experience at least. The vast majority are spare rooms being let (or in some cases converted living rooms etc just to try and cope with london rents).

I spent about 4 months "between homes" and Airbnb got me through most of it. It's a hugely mixed experience, but in many ways I'm glad I did it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> After watching Conan's visit to Cuba, it looks like an awesome destination.

[http://teamcoco.com/cuba](http://teamcoco.com/cuba)

<comment><USER12> Conan almost looks like Caesar Flickerman on the streets of Havana. My wife is Cuban, I grew up in Miami. Cuba is a beautiful country with an interesting culture and a extremely corrupt oppressive government. The government of Cuba lies somewhere between Russia and North Korea for political oppression it is the type of place where expressing discontent the government in your own home can get you thrown in jail for years without judicial process. I do not have the words to describe the soul sucking disparity that exists in that country if you're not coming in with first world money.

Marco Rubio only scratched the surface of the reality in this speech: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI&feature=youtu.be)

My brother in Law was thrown in jail for a year just for trying to leave the country. He went into jail 200lbs and exited just over 110bs.

Please understand with some intellectual honesty that people will not risk their lives [1] and face jail time in the equivalent of a Russian gulag if things are peachy dory.

[1] [http://bestcubaguide.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/balseros...](http://bestcubaguide.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/balseros-cubanos.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Cuban here, I also lived in Russia several months and my wife is Russian. Cuba is well below Russia (and of course North Corea) in terms of oppression. Marco Rubio never lived in Cuba and only reflects the feelings of the previous generation of Cuban that emigrated to Miami when Castro took the power. This is understandable as Castro took many of their properties but has nothing to do with how cubans from 2015 feel. This can be easily seen when you note that he spoke against the Cuba-US relationship improvement recently introduced by Obama which is clearly something most of cuban supported.

<comment><USER12> My wife lived in Cuba from when she was born up until 2005 when her grandmother was finally able to get a family reclamation to go through. She knows many who were thrown in jail just for being associated with people who the government was "unhappy with". I would agree it's not as bad as North Korea, maybe my opinion of Russia is too high.

<comment><USER13> I never knew anybody who went to jail for speaking against the government neither directly heard such a story but I can believe that happens(journalist Yoanis Sanchez is an example). This is the way I see it, the government normally don't care much about this people or what they think/say, except when they try to do something that could affect their public image, for example if the Pope comes to visit and they want to organize a public protest. In this circunstances they are preventively sent to jail, and afterwards released when the visitor is gone. It is often the case that real criminals present themselves as "politic prisoners", that adds much noise to the whole situation and usually gets exaggerated by the media in Miami. While this is not ok, in Russia people actually get killed in similar circumstances, while the main opposition leaders in Cuba are all alive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you think about it, this is fascinating from a geopolitical perspective more than anything...wish this had been discussed more in the article

[http://www.newsweek.com/normalizing-relations-cuba- unfinishe...](http://www.newsweek.com/normalizing-relations-cuba-unfinished- agenda-303232)

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks like a nice Cuban Airbnb place to lounge: [https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5717762?s=Yoe5](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5717762?s=Yoe5)

</comment><comment><USER16> The article claims that this is only open to US customers? Those of us in other countries, like say Canada, have been going to Cuba for years, and having AirBnB would be great. Was this just a mis-type?

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting too, lately I've seen a growth of cuban users on my job-board in order to move to the US.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does AirBnb really only charge 3% as the article says? I thought it was closer to 10%.

<comment><USER19> It's a bit of a marketing trick. 3% from the guest, 7% from the host, or vice versa. (Not sure or course if it's exactly 3 and 7%, just the general idea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> AirBnb doesn't have to do anything to move into a new country. Just accept listings.

<comment><USER21> The article states that they were previously forced to block Cuban ip addresses and that AirBnb actively lobbied to be allowed to do business there. Also they had to find a way to forward payments to Cubans as most of the banks will not do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This title seems to be missing the '(YC 2009)' indicator.

<comment><USER22> To those downvoting: a short comment explaining why you disagree would be helpful. If I've made a mistake I'd like to know so I don't repeat it. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Nissan's bigger-battery BEV–the 2019 Leaf Plus review - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/07/nissans-bigger-battery-bev-the-2019-leaf-plus-review/ <comment><USER2> >And no, the battery still doesn't use liquid cooling, although it has a warranty for eight years or 100,000 miles against excessive loss of capacity.

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of nissan's early battery degradation issues were from a small battery.

Because of the limited range, people would cycle the battery almost daily, and people would charge to 100% if possible.

If you charge it daily and you get 2000 cycles out of it, you might get 5 years of life

If you have a larger battery and charge it weekly (same 2000 cycles), you get 38 years out of it.

You could do this calculation with battery range vs car mileage too. This also doesn't take into account range degradation.</comment></comment>


No Overview Available: A Survey of Apple Developer Documentation - <AUTHOR> https://nooverviewavailable.com/ <comment><USER2> I have worked on native Windows and Mac UI, and in my experience, Apple does document most symbols. It just does it really poorly. So percent of symbols documented is not a good metric.

MSDN is much much more thorough. MSDN usually tells you everything you need to confidently call a function... Apple docs tell you enough to start experimenting.

Apple tends to have good textbook style documentation that doesn't directly explain a symbol per se, but rather explains a topic e.g. how to write network code on a Mac. But these pages are usually outdated... like 10+ years outdated.

</comment><comment><USER3> My biggest annoyance with Apple's documentation was depreciation. I'd find an API that did what I wanted, but it had a note saying that it was deprecated. That's it. No reasoning for it, no indication of what replaced it, nothing.

And if you searched for tutorials/examples on Apple's developer site, there was a lot of stuff that was written for like 10.5 days. And if those deprecated APIs told me anything, it was that they were probably not gonna work as-is.

<comment><USER4> Around 10.5 I used to hold Apple's docs in very high regard. All the basics well documented, with examples.

But they've redesigned the dev site a few times, and each time they've changed the URL scheme (breaking all of external links), added more finicky JavaScript, and seem to be losing actual docs.

Nowadays I just can't find anything. If I search the docs, I'll end up finding scraps like some variant of an enum "kEnableFoo" at most documented as "Enables foo.", and that's it. No links to what the other options are, the functions which take it, no examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Say what you will about PHP, I maintain that its language-documentation ruined me for most other languages' attempts at the same.

<comment> shaki-dora Agreed! PHP was the first language I learnt, and to this day I still feel like I must be missing something obvious when getting lost in other projects' documentation.

Case in point: python! I tend to find the C interface, or decades-old RFCs long before I get to what I'm actually looking for.

Only language on a level with PHP has been Ruby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Documentation in general is pathetic these days. Remember when software used to come with enormous, bound tomes? Even Apple used to provide like 10lbs of documentation for Final Cut.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/primeval/44956561934](https://www.flickr.com/photos/primeval/44956561934)

<comment><USER7> I feel the primary reason is because things are updated so much more frequently now. It's probably not worth the time to fully document software only for it to become outdated shortly afterwards.

Whereas before, software came on CDs, and if you wanted to update you had to just buy the next version.

<comment><USER8> I regard it as short-term greed. Documentation and QA doesn't sell short-term; things like Sidecar do.

Perhaps the right way to tackle it is updating less frequently (feature-wise) and focus more on stability and documentation instead. Because good documentation is written by the engineers themselves, it means less output from them (it is a myth that you can just throw more money and human resources at the problem). Imagine, for example, macOS and iOS only being updated once every 2 years with a major release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> iOS developers are pretty lucky if that's the biggest problem they have with the official documentation.

Story time: I started my career in programming with Android development in the years 2012-2014.

And it was quite painful.

In 2012, I thought that iOS and Android were going to be the two only huge mobile platforms, and here I was right. I randomly chose Android because that was the smartphone I had at that point.

I thought it was going to be cool. And here I was mistaken.

After some months, it became obvious that it was going to be hard. The coolness effect disappeared quickly. I struggled a lot to write good Android code. No matter how much I RTFMed, it seems that I was only able to copy/paste things on a trial and error basis. Building the simplest feature (login/subscription screen) took a looong time. The iOS colleagues generally seems significantly faster than us (although they have their own rabbit holes). I never (even now) understood how to make things look nice. But worse than that it was never reliable.

The code I produced was hard to write, hard to understand, harder to maintain, with traps everywhere. I went to Android conferences and the Android team asked us: are you writing tests? I didn't dare to answer "not really" but that was the truth. I RTFMed once more how to write tests on Android, but it never made sense to me.

To give you some context, it was a number of years ago, I was a junior developer and my colleagues were quite young as well. Things would be very different if you start now and have the luck to have a good Android mentor to guide you.

But what _I_ had was the official Android documentation.

And now that I am more experienced, I can see clerly that it was horribly written.

Even today, it continues to mislead every new generation of developers in a dark path.

The worst part is the so-called "Android Burrito Design Pattern" where you just put _everything_ \- your business logic, your application lifecycle, your views, you bindings, your threading, ... - in one big fat BurritoActivity or BurritoFragment that wraps _everything_. Make the beginner mistake to believe that the documentation writers know what they are doing, and use those samples as a blueprint for how you should build things, and you are going to find yourself in a very dark path indeed.

I wrote about it here

[https://dev.to/jmfayard/android-s-billion-dollar- mistake-327...](https://dev.to/jmfayard/android-s-billion-dollar-mistake-327b)

</comment><comment><USER10> From the Read Me on GitHub:

> It's become a truism among iOS and macOS developers that Apple's > documentation is often incomplete or missing altogether. > This project aims > to provide some objective metrics for evaluating the quality and quantity of > the docs on developer.apple.com/documentation.

[https://github.com/NSHipster/NoOverviewAvailable.com/blob/ma...](https://github.com/NSHipster/NoOverviewAvailable.com/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER11> Yup - almost everything with IO- at the front of it is below 50%. That's a pretty good reflection of how awful the IOKit docs are.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is vital for _any_ process to have good documentation available. Lack of or bad documentation makes me wonder about the rest of the product, especially security-related, and longevity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Music Kit JS. Never knew this existed. Any notable apps built on top of it? How do developers discover these kind of things?

<comment><USER13> You get to watch the juicy WWDC sessions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ah, the joys of audio programming</comment>


How we managed to work remotely while skiing in the Austrian Alps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mobilejazz.com/why-we-decided-to-stop-the-company-for-a-week-to-enjoy-a-magnificent-winter-holiday-in-the-austrian-alps/

<comment><USER2> Among the most productive workdays I've ever had, was while my bride-to-be was driving our car through rural newfoundland, while I wrote a C++ graphic editor on my Windows NT Compaq Presario 1800T. It was powered through an inverter by our car's cigarette lighter.

I couldn't get on the Internet then, you see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've a similar thing. I get most of my good ideas (and those are not necessarily big ideas, but simple tweaks) while not having Internet access and therefore not the opportunity to be constantly distracted.

Examples: driving a car (without radio/podcasts), sitting in a chair lift (when skiing), kitesurfing.

<comment><USER2> I get my best ideas while wandering around alone at night.

I invented quite a novel, lossless bitmap compressor during a boring commute along highway 1 - again at night - between San Mateo and Santa Cruz. The format I invented in the office though. The compression was quite conceptual, the actual file was file of all manner of petty details.

I'm puzzling over documenting it online but strictly speaking it's not my intellectual property.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is every remote worker's dream company. Glad it worked out for these guys. Looks like so much fun.</comment>


Yahoo – $8B or B/O (sunnyvale) - <AUTHOR> https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/atq/5560593228.html <comment><USER2> Would jump on it if they offered free shipping. Alas...

Better idea, list it on Amazon, cross promote on Yahoo front page and pocket the affiliate fee.

</comment><comment><USER3> "condition: salvage"

Damn

</comment><comment><USER4> We had some open positions here at walmart.com in Sunnyvale for manager type roles. A high percentage were from yahoo.

Needless to say my new manager is from yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER5> In all seriousness, $8B may sound like a bargain for one billion users + extra perks(like one of Internet's oldest brand). By comparison, what facebook spent $19.3B for WhatsApp, they weren't even reach one billion users! [1]

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

<comment><USER6> I'm assuming WhatsApp had a pretty clear growth trajectory to better justify that valuation. Yahoo has been stagnant for years.

<comment><USER7> The issue with WhatsApp is that it never had a sustainable business model. First it was free with the hope of monetizing. Then it was free for a year, but a buck afterwards (pretty good if you ask me). Then WhatsApp found many users could partake of the e-economy due to lacking debit/credit cards, so it went back to free with some idea of Corporate relationships paying for things. ([http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/040915...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/040915/how-whatsapp-makes-money.asp))

While Yahoo has been stagnant, it makes money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant! CL > SF bay area >south bay >for sale >antiques - by owner

</comment><comment><USER9> They should have used Yahoo! Auctions. Oh, wait...

</comment><comment><USER10> What's the significance of "17.2" in Model Name/Number?

</comment><comment><USER11> If a sale of Yahoo were to happen, would it include Yahoo Japan?

<comment><USER12> No, it will include neither Yahoo Japan, nor the Alibaba stake [1]. Yahoo basically gets a licensing fee from Yahoo Japan, and the buyer would get that continued licensing revenue, but that's it.

[1] [http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/yahoo-sale- mayer/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/yahoo-sale-mayer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bottomless? A Kim Kardashian archive would be all bottom.

</comment><comment><USER14> Couldn't resist a dig at Kardashians, I see.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ca$h only?</comment>


Detroit and Silicon Valley don't hold the keys to the auto's future; Henry Ford does. - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/print/933 <comment><USER2> That wasn't insightful, that was gibberish. It further's Congress' continual confusion between "cars people will buy", "cars good for the environment", and "cars automakers are actually making"... that's _three_ distinct categories, and it is wrong to collapse them. (The most frequent collapse is that "cars people want to buy" are "good for the environment". This is wishful thinking. People will prefr good fuel economy, _all else being equal_ , but they're not going to pay twice as much or give up those little niceties like "a heater". Hold the auto companies to this wishful thinking, as Congress wants, and you might as well just finish digging their grave and throw them in.)

Watch the switcho-changeo in action: "Detroit's goal has never been to sell the cars that consumers want to buy; it's been to sell the cars that will yield the highest profits. By contrast, startup car companies such as Tesla, Aptera, Fisker, Bright Automotive, and Commuter Cars have adopted the Silicon Valley mojo, using indie, engineered-in-a-garage values to develop cars that people _should_ buy." That's content-free. Along with the category confusion, it also appears to praise the Silicon Valley companies for not chasing profits. Yeah, _that's_ the path to success alright!

And why on Earth would the startups _want_ to deal with the unions? Almost by definition of "union", they do not. That was just gibberish. They may _have_ to deal with unions (ideally a nice new one, IMHO, UAW 2.0 to go with Car 2.0), and hopefully they learn from how UAW 1.0 badly hurt their host, but _wanting_ to deal with a union is just stupid-talk. (Dealing with pay and stuff: probably OK. Defining every job down to the n-th degree so theres no flexibility, aka "work rules", and creating thousands and thousands of wasted worker-days per day: deadly.)

Unions aren't free. In fact, they are quite expensive if they have an effectiveness at all.

And as Erik says, I can spec the perfect vehicle too, that doesn't mean it can exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> "a vehicle for the exurbs of both our large cities and our less densely populated rural areas. It would be easy to assemble and wouldn't require expensive new lithium-ion battery technology or exotic composite materials. It would seat at least six, have a range of 400 miles on a fill-up, and get 35-40 miles per gallon with greatly reduced emissions. It would run on gas, diesel, biodiesel, or ethanol. It could probably be sold for around $25,000 to $30,000."

And it would come with a pony. And it should fly.

<comment><USER4> How about a flying pony?

No assembly required, no exotic technology (except for the flying thing), seats two or as much as four with the optional buggy attachment, _and_ it runs on pre-processed ethanol.

I'd like a brown one. With racing stripes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linking to the print version caught me slightly off guard, but otherwise an interesting article.

The author appears to be asking for a car manufacturer to build a one-size- fits-all car and make it cheap enough for everyone to be able to afford. I would be unsurprised to find that a car that meets his specification already exist, but is hidden by the wide range of options and alternatives offered by the various manufacturers (the curse of choice). So what the author is really asking for is for a manufacturer to pair-down their range and only offer one car, in black... While this might be possible for a start-up this is not possible for any of the large car companies. My example would be the Smart car, started with one design, and now has at least three or four different offerings to diversify their customer base.

Can anyone provide an example of an industry where choice has been significantly reduced over time?

Link to original article: [http://tbm.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2008/12/29/nex...](http://tbm.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2008/12/29/next- years-model)</comment>