Show HN: Consider Groups – Like Slack Channels for Email - <AUTHOR> https://consider.co/groups <comment><USER2> Hey HN! I'm one of the founders of Consider.

We just shipped Groups. I'd love to hear what you think. We've been using it in our company for several months, and it's greatly improved our communication culture.

Read a bit more about its origin here: [https://medium.com/the-consider- blog/the-next-piece-of-the-p...](https://medium.com/the-consider-blog/the- next-piece-of-the-puzzle-5557d68c5141).

Finally, if you're hearing about Consider for the first time – it's also an email client you can adopt just for yourself (although it works even better when multiple folks on a team use together!). Overall, we've tried to design for focus and flow throughout, and almost all features apply to your own private mail just as much as shared/team-level stuff. See more at [https://consider.co/](https://consider.co/).

Happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> A pretty website, but I'm not entirely sure how this differs from a mailing list based on your landing page.

<comment><USER2> (I work at Consider)

Two main things I'd call out.

First, it's easy to find history. With a Consider group, you can see all of the history of all groups you're in, right there in the email client. So – a new engineer, say, on their first day in the company, can browse engineering@. (And they can see all the conversations the team have pinned there, almost like a super lightweight wiki.)

Second, it's easy to browse groups you're _not_ a member of. So, that engineer can stop by design@, and take a sneak peak of what the design team are working on now and then, without having their inbox fill up with stuff they're not interested in.

Some companies (notably Stripe) have built cool internal tools to approximate these benefits on top of Gmail and Google Groups. With Consider + Groups, you get everything combined in one place by default.

<comment><USER4> Any plans for a unified inbox? I've two email accounts and switching between them in Consider is a hassle.

<comment><USER2> We hear this a lot, and it's something I'm personally interested in. There are also a few tradeoffs and downsides involved in building it… but it's something we're actively considering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there any work being done to add to SMTP and other open protocols to address these issues?

I had started to look into doing it as a hobby project, but as far as I could see, you need to be in the mail server to do the proper magic, and it would ad-hoc.

Basically what we'd need are ways to:

\- Forward an entire conversation to someone. (To add someone to a channel.) \- Have the recipients of a message be based on them subscribing, not you adding them to the TO: or CC: fields. \- Have a way to subscribe and unsubscribe. \- Have a way to receive the available channels. \- Have a way to reference a past message.

All of which are supported by mailing lists... but nothing is standardized, nothing is protocol-based and email clients have no built-in supports.

<comment><USER6> I'm working on such a project, but only indirectly.

The core problem I see is that sending a message over SMTP means you _push_ it to someone, and then you can't modify the message afterward.

This means (1) you can't add someone to a message. And as a result, if someone's added to a list, they don't automatically get the messages that were sent to the list before, because those were already sent.

And from another angle, it also means (2) you need to know all the recipients in advance. You can't send a message to the "public", for instance. There's no natural support for publishing all "channels", because there's nothing to subscribe to.

And from a third angle, it means (3) you have to build a _separate_ system to archive a mailing list, because SMTP itself acts as if it forgets a message after it's sent. There's nothing in the protocol to retrieve a past message!

The solution I'm working on is a little circuitous, but I think it will work, eventually. I think email needs a synchronization protocol. Where everyone who has received a message will receive updates, in sync. And every email will have a URL that can be referenced in replies. And email servers will _serve_ emails, rather than just firing-and-forgetting them like SMTP.

Now for the indirect part: I'm building this new email protocol on top of an extension to HTTP called Braid ([https://braid.news](https://braid.news)). The idea is to first add synchronization to HTTP, in a way that allows data to be federated in a P2P network, like with email. Then you can host any data, anywhere on the web, and any client or server, anywhere else on the web, can _synchronize_ with it. This gives you the same features as email, and then some.

Consider that most people use webmail anyway. And mailing lists host message archives on websites. So your email is already on the web. Well, now instead of having a different protocol for sending emails between servers (SMTP) and for getting emails from a server to a client (IMAP/POP/JMAP), and for viewing them in a web browser (HTTP), we can have a single synchronization protocol, which is general enough to share email messages between servers, and from servers to clients, all using the same network messages.

And it has the added benefits that (a) you can edit emails after you send them, (b) you can delete emails that you regret having sent (although you can't prevent recipients from caching a sent message), and (c) you can use the same protocol for posting a blog -- just send a message to a special "public" address, and your server's access control will allow any viewer to read it.

This last part is because we'll be switching email from a push protocol (SMTP) to a subscribe protocol (HTTP+Braid). With the Braid mail, when you send a message to someone else, you'll really just be pinging their server and saying "I'm hosting some emails that are addressed to you." Then their server will just do a

        GET /inbox

On your server and your server will send them all the outstanding messages that it has access to (anything addressed to `<user>@that_server.com`). And if you send a message to `public`, then anyone who does a GET /inbox will see it.

Similar to this work is the JMAP specification in the IETF. ([https://jmap.io](https://jmap.io)) This is a great improvement over IMAP, but it doesn't handle the server-to-server case that SMTP does, and it also has to implement its own particular synchronization mechanism over web push APIs because it doesn't get to benefit from the Braid synchronization extensions to HTTP.

Finally — and perhaps most importantly — we can solve email spoofing. This is huge. The prevalence of spoofing is why it's so hard to run your own mail server. Most email providers actually blacklist entire C-blocks of IP addresses, because they have been used to send spam. So the only practical way to send emails these days is to use one of the big mail providers which is already trusted by other mail servers -- and thus email has become centralized, into a few big boys. If we solve spoofing, we can decentralize email again.

Spoofing is so easy because SMTP doesn't inherently care who is sending a message, so there's no default way to verify the sender. A multitude of patchy standards (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) have tried to add layers of signatures onto the messages, each trying to patch flaws in the last one, but even altogether they can't solve spoofing. Since SMTP is a _forwarding_ protocol, they have to verify the signatures of every server in between A and B, and this breaks, for instance, when a mail server _modifies_ a message, adding text to the subject, or a footer, or even just a header, and thus breaks the signatures on the email that was sent out.

But if emails are _served_ over a synchronized HTTP, rather than _pushed_ with a fire-and-forget SMTP, then it's trivial to verify the sender -- it's already built-in with SSL/TLS certificates. You just GET the message.

And because this is HTTP, we can go ever further. We can also add in metadata, like have public/private keys generated for each user, and serve that at a

        GET /user/<foo>/public-key

URL. This is much better than how SPF does it -- by forcing you to hack metadata into your mail server's DNS records. It uses this DNS hack because if they hosted the keys over SMTP... it would basically turn SMTP into HTTP.

Similarly, a server can publish its mailing lists at a

        GET /lists

URL. And if you fetch a list, you'll get all the emails in the list. So you don't need to implement a separate system to archive your mailing list -- it's all just built in!

<comment> em-bee i agree that email could use server-to-server synchronization. but isn't that what usenet does/did? i think it would be worth to explore the specific differences to usenet to see if there is anything that can be learned from it

<comment><USER6> Interesting! Good point. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although I love the idea, that price would be a deal breaker for my teams. With G Suite at $12/mo/user it'd be hard to justify something with much less functionality for nearly the same price.

<comment><AUTHOR> We think the price of a couple cups of coffee per month is a fair price for something used for multiple hours per day. :) We're free for 30 days, so you can work out if this works for you!

<comment><USER8> I feel like pricing yourself higher than slack without a comparable free tier is going to make it hard for people to evangelize the merits of the platform. That aside, I love your aesthetic, great typography and color choices

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty neat. I love pretty much everything about the public facing site.

Some feedback during my signup:

\- nothing happens after I sign up with Google. Have to reload the page.

\- the onboarding video is really bad. Please re-record with better acoustics and no offense to Allie, but do a few test takes before recording the production version. It feels way too amateurish as it is.

\- why is the intercom chat widget there when I'm signed in? if the point of Consider is to eliminate anxiety during email processing, adding a little icon with yet another red notification is highly counterproductive.

\- I like the 'later' button on individual emails.

\- the filters are neat but maybe the 'done' category should be a first class citizen.

\- search needs more focus. I want to be able to search from the inbox and to use it as more of a filter than a search. Doubt my requirements are unique to me.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> Off topic: On the homepage, the tag line says "Email for startups" \- is that a marketing buzz these days? What's wrong with "Email for small businesses"?

<comment><USER11> Small business is a broader term. Something for small businesses could be aimed at people running a restaurant. If I'm looking for something with a high degree of relevance to my team, which is definitely the case if I'm looking at this instead of just going with big well known products from big well known companies, then that makes it a less appealing statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This makes a lot of sense. Email and Google groups continues to be heavily used by companies even though google has underinvested in it for years now.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is not directly related to Consider Groups (which itself looks interesting), but just wanted to say that your website looks very, very nice. Well-designed, nice fonts, nice color palette. :)

Edit: [https://consider.co/company](https://consider.co/company) that link in particular is worth checking out!

<comment><USER14> Font looks like it comes from a 1980's magazine advertisement:

[https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0722/6987/products/MDS0262...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0722/6987/products/MDS02629_grande.jpg?v=1454763670)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I route emails to Slack using Zapier, which gives us rule based routing, text extraction, and follow on operations.

Most of my time now is spent integrating at lowest cost possible, and minimizing new SAAS adoption.

When you tally the total cost of SAAS, it gets very expensive. I've decided to take the dragon now.

<comment><USER16> ? is it worth spending a lot of time to avoid SaaS fees?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Landing page looks real nice, congrats

</comment><comment><USER18> I love that this is an email tool for reducing Slack usage. Lol.

</comment><comment><USER19> I should probably investigate more but ...

Sounds a lot like USENET to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> As others mentioned, great website.

Would be great if you had a video to easily showcase what the product could do, rather than me trying to imagine the features.

<comment><USER2> Yep, we should definitely add this. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does Consider compare to Superhuman?

</comment><comment><USER22> Hate the font

</comment><comment><USER23> isn't it an SMTP abuse? And just a perverted version of IRC (or Slack)?

"What if email had slack channels?" \- you mean like threads and aliases?</comment>


Show HN: Auto draft and mail a custom letter to end debt collector harassment - <AUTHOR> http://debtsettle.co <comment><USER2> Getting friends to do promotional votes and comments isn't ok on HN. This is in the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). We ban sites and accounts for doing this, so please don't. Also, it's usually obvious to the HN community when this is happening, and they consider it spamming.

We want users to upvote submissions that they personally find intellectually interesting, not because they or their friends have something to promote.

This does look like the community might find it interesting, though, so if you email email@example.com and promise not to do that again, we can help you repost the submission in a way that won't get flagged.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey everyone. Adam, cofounder of Juris/DebtSettle here. We're building stuff like this to use tech to close the gap on access to justice/legal services. Would love any feedback or questions!

<comment><USER4> What's the underlying tech aspect of this tool?

<comment><USER5> Hey, I'm Konstantin, CTO of Juris. Thanks for the question bjones! DebtSettle is powered by Juris, which is a web application that offers a combination of document assembly and case-management type tools to streamline legal processes and correspondences that already have a clearly defined legal framework in place afforded by the governing laws. Think TurboTax, but for repeatable legal processes.

In the case of DebtSettle, the legal framework is spelled out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Juris' tools parallel this framework technologically by allowing users to directly draft legally sound correspondences, deliver them in a provable manner, and then act appropriately depending on the letter's outcome. Streamlining this repeatable process makes it accessible to millions more than the current legal system can handle.

We also recognize that there are socially minded organizations out there that are working to make these same legal affordances accessible to the people they are meant to protect, so we have a professional dashboard in BETA that we hope will give these organizations an excalibur when dealing with frustrating debt collection cases.

In short, the law tells us what we CAN do, but not necessarily HOW to do it. With Juris, we're using technology to build out the HOW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool! Seems like a powerful platform for a great cause.

</comment><comment><USER4> John Oliver did a great piece on the need for reform in this industry: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxUAntt1z2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxUAntt1z2c)</comment>


Ask HN: How to get into genetic engineering if I have no formal background? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you mean something on the biological side of things like CRISPR, the answer is pretty simple: you don't. Biology weighs formal education, especially when hiring, very very heavily, and the odds of getting into the field without any are pretty much nil.

If, however, you want to work on the engineering side of companies that works with genetics like that, you're much more in luck. I work as a swe at a genetic diagnostic company, and while my background is in biology, the vast majority of devs do not share that background - it's too difficult a niche to fill. Instead, mostly what we look for in hiring is an interest in the field. We have plenty of PhDs that worry about the nuances of biological complexity, and enough devs that understand enough to bridge the gap between them and people that have zero biological background. We trust that we hire devs that have the ability to - at the very least - get up to speed enough to be effective, so that's what we look for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Start with an entry-level job in an MCB lab (standard bench work: pipetting, plating, PCR/PAGE, wet chemistry, etc.), and build upon that experience to get opportunities to do more sophisticated techniques, eventually leading to genetic engineering work.

Essentially, the path I'm recommending is a career in microbiology. It's admittedly the long road, and not a well-paying one at that, but it's one way to do it!

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odE8dNcklks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odE8dNcklks)

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if there is something for hobbyists to get a taste of lab work and experiments.

<comment><USER6> There is an active biohacker movement. Take a look at [https://www.the- odin.com/](https://www.the-odin.com/) which sells courses and supplies. Jane Metcalfe (one of the Wired founders) has a website, email newsletter, and blog, neo.life ([http://neo.life](http://neo.life)) that covers biohacking.

Of course, as human being you are equipped to reproduce. A careful selection of partners is a form of genetic engineering.</comment></comment>


BeeHopPing : Realtime Web Analytics Beta Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.beehopping.com

<comment><USER2> If there was a free tier I would definitely check it out.</comment>


Anti-anti-communism - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance <comment><USER2> All the old totalitarian ideologies seem to be coming back into vogue. Fascism is back too.</comment>


Google removes Palestine from map replaces it with Israel - <AUTHOR> http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/73489/google-attack-deleting-palestine-maps-app/#Sr3HMwwRK3Zj1rbO.97 <comment><USER2> _The Palestinian Journalists Front (PFJ) slammed Google for the move, stating that the removal of Palestine's name from the maps was an attempt by the "Israeli scheme to establish its name as a legitimate state for generations to come" while obliterating Palestine forever. ... PJF claimed the move was part of an effort to distort history and geography "as well as the Palestinian people's right to their homeland," and "a failed attempt to tamper with the memory of Palestinians and Arabs."_

 _The fact that there is no such entity as the State of Palestine did not come up in the attack._

Objectively, there most definitely is an entity known as the State of Palestine -- it's just that the Israel stands nearly alone in the world disputing this designation:

 _The State of Palestine (Arabic: دولة فلسطين Dawlat Filasṭīn), also known simply as Palestine, is a de jure sovereign state in the Middle East that is recognized by 136 UN members and since 2012 has a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations – which amounts to a de facto, or implicit, recognition of statehood. The State of Palestine claims the West Bank (bordering Israel and Jordan) and Gaza Strip (bordering Israel and Egypt) with East Jerusalem as the designated capital._

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

 _The term "Palestinian Territory, Occupied" had been utilized by the UN and other international organizations between 1998 to 2013 in order to refer to the Palestinian National Authority; it was replaced in UN Secretariat communications by the term State of Palestine starting in 2012, and the ISO adopted the name change in 2013._

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

So one would think that the ISO and UN designation would be the one that Google would go by.

<comment><USER3> thank you for this "annotation" to the OP; the sentence in the OP "The fact that there is no such entity as the State of Palestine...." is intended so clearly as a factual assertion ("The _fact_ that....") that i assumed it must be not just correct but verifiable correct. In fact just the opposite is true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No Google did not. I just looked.

Not only does 'Palestine' appear on the map, there are multiple border lines drawn, representing the various assorted claims, counter-claims and disputes in the area.

And the cherry on the icing is that the first picture shown in the map is of the Al-Aqusa mosque in Jerusalem, which is still technically administered by Jordan who historically held the territory, so is arguably Jordanian (through historic domain), Israeli (current domain), Palestinian (through their current claim) and international by the UN intention in 1948.

I don't understand the obsession by some to bring HN into disputes like Israel/Palestine through citing some tangential technology connection.

I think articles like this should have to be moderated before they are allowed on and then only when they show a strong technology basis and are relevant. HN is not your facebook wall - use your facebook account for this sort of nonsense.

<comment><USER5> Google shows different borders to different users depending on their locations. I don't see Palestine (I'm in the US).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amazing how political maps are. I wonder what method Google uses to determine borders. Disputed borders and states must be a nightmare to deal with.

I remember reading a while back that if two states have a border dispute, Google rendered the border differently based on your IP address. I wonder if that is still going on here.

<comment><USER7> If Google's responsibility is to the vanity of governments, then it is very political.

If Google's responsibility is to accurately represent the situation on the ground to their users, then it may not be easy but it isn't all that political.

<comment><USER8> Given that borders are entirely human-made constructs, the only "accurate", non-political representation I can imagine would be to display all possible borders at the same time.

As that isn't what happens (and would also be impractical if you actually wanted to use the map) I think you can say that they do have to be political.

<comment><USER7> What I'm trying to say is, if you are going to visit a certain location, the territory belongs to whoever controls it -- and that is who you need to reckon with.

China (PRC) says that Taiwan is a province of China, but they don't control it. If you show up at the Taipei airport with a entry visa from the PRC, you will find that out.

A similar but more extreme example, Google Maps says Raqqa is part of Syria, but due to the war that isn't exactly accurate at the moment.

Determining which organization _rightfully_ owns which territory is political.

Determining which organization _actually_ controls which territory isn't political though maybe not any easier.

<comment><USER9> Both are political questions. "Political power" and "effectively exerting control of people, including in a particular territory" are tightly-bound concepts.

But they are _different_ political questions, and it is important not to confuse the two.

<comment><USER7> It is a political question for the organization that wants to maintain power in a certain area. Assad's ability to control Raqqa is a political question. Google's ability to identify who is in control of Raqqa, much less so.

If Google negotiates the border location with the governments, according to the governments political needs, that is Google's choice -- Google can do this to try to maximally satisfy the governments. This is politically complicated.

If Google wants to maximally satisfy the practical needs of _the people_ who are actually going to the locations on the map -- all they need to do is identify the sovereign power. Exerting control is politically complicated, but this is not what Google needs to do, Google only needs to identify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is clearly extremely biased; see the name _Breaking Israel News._

This article is a bit better: [http://www.inquisitr.com/3397451/google-maps- vanishes-palest...](http://www.inquisitr.com/3397451/google-maps-vanishes- palestine-in-favor-of-israel/)

"Google Maps will find it difficult to achieve objectivity no matter how it addresses the disappearance of Palestine. Of the 193 United Nations member states, 136, around 71 percent, recognize the state of Palestine. Notably absent from this list of supporters are the United States and most of Western Europe. However, until the UN Security Council votes to establish the nation of Palestine, the support from various UN members for Palestine is considered a recommendation, not statehood, according to the UN Charter."

</comment><comment><USER10> A fair solution would be to remove both states.

<comment><USER11> maps.solomon.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A quick search on hackernews reveals this story has been submitted multiple times, the website in question is reposting the same material and changing the date of the article.</comment>


Ghost in the Shell - <AUTHOR> http://ashthorp.com/ghost-in-the-shell <comment><USER3> A theatre in New York was showing the 1995 film, so I watched it for first time on big screen on Wednesday, then saw the live action on Friday (first time I can remember going to a film on opening day in New York and having an almost empty audience).

I was prepared for a new interpretation of the material, and that never bothered me because between the films and TV series it's always been a bit confusing to me if there ever has been a cannon story, but have always really loved the match of philosophical ideas of mind and the visual atmosphere (and the spider tanks are just great fun).

Opening sequence of this film I was really excited because it was visually stunning, but 5 mins later I was questioning if I should stay or leave because the dialog was really really bad.

I stayed because I really wanted to like this adaption but I felt like it was 2 hours of my life wasted, I wouldn't recommend any of my friends to watch this, even later when it's released digitally.

<comment><USER3> But as a positive note, I love that science fiction has become mainstream. When I was a teenager I used to be embarrassed to say I read/watched science fiction and it felt like any given year you'd be lucky to have more than 1-2 science fiction films, but look at the line up for releases this year: [http://screenrant.com/our-most-anticipated-sci-fi-movies- of-...](http://screenrant.com/our-most-anticipated-sci-fi-movies-of-2017/)

<comment><USER4> "Science fiction" films.

I think sci fic tv series are getting main stream.

But all too often I see just action films masking as sci fic such as the current star trek incarnation.

I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff.

<comment><USER5> > _I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff._

I've been watching _The Expanse_ on SyFy lately and it's quite good! I enjoyed it so much I'm now reading the book series it's based on, and really enjoying that as well. They're slightly different, but both good in their own way.

<comment><USER6> I feel there are a lot of things wrong with The Expanse which make it really hard to enjoy. Personally I find the dialog often very weak and the acting very forced and obvious, but that's just my personal opinion. I seem to only be reading endless praise on reddit/HN.

As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see-through cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial characters and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they steal/look at top secret information? Why is AR (using HUGE eyeglass-like devices) reserved only for very special engineers/scientists? Haven't the shows creators heard of Hololens? It's like they took VR/AR and took it back to the 80s. Why do they need to do so many things manually, yet not completely manually e.g. control an antenna, but they can do it remotely they just have to be within 20 meters? How can they open solid metal doors without electricity in zero-g? It feels a bit like Star Trek back in the 60s, before they had any clue about what was to come, except it's 50 years later and they are still using similar ideas without adding anything new. I understand compromises need to be made to adapt to the screen so that viewers can understand the world, but it seems like there are tons of areas where a bit more creativity should be order.

<comment><USER7> > As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see- > through cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial > characters and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they > steal/look at top secret information?

I'm sure that's just for TV viewers to be able to see their screens. It is better than projecting the screen over the face or reflecting it on the glasses of the actors like other TV shows do.

If you don't like it, that is OK, no one is forced to like anything. I don't like The Walking Dead, and it doesn't mean a lot of people is wrong, just that we have different tastes.

But to be fair the show is ages ahead of Star Trek TOS in terms of plausibility.

In fact, the lack of the fantastic technologies indistinguishable from magic that are present in Star Trek is very much part of the appeal. Is what makes the show more real. There's no faster than light space travel for a start. They have to use orbital mechanics to move around. They have to accelerate half of the way and deccelerate the other half. They have to dock very carefully instead of saying 'beam me down'. It is a very welcome change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if I can watch the new live action movie. I saw GitS in 1996 in the only theater in the Bay Area that actually had the original 35mm release (before Manga Entertainment's first VHS release). A friend of mine and maybe three other people were in the audience in the small theater in downtown San Jose.

Seeing GitS that afternoon had a huge[1] influence on my life. How big was GitS's influence? During the ~decade I spent trying to make several anime conventions more efficient and sane, I learned (out of necessity) SQL, Ruby, Postscript, and the art of improvising[1].

With the comments about how they watered down the story in the new live action version, I suspect I should probably ignore it, even if it looks great. Regarding visual quality, however, I suspect most people that saw the original animated film saw it in _standard definition_ (VHS, DVD, _etc_ ). Those releases ruined a _lot_ of the detail. The city backgrounds had an _incredible_ amount of detail in the full 35mm version or modern HD re- release. I highly recommend watching (in 1080p) nerdwriter1's brief discussion[2] of Mamoru Oshii's use of detail to define the _space_ of the city as a cyberpunk _heterotopia_.

[1] "What do you mean you forgot to buy the right labels for our badge printers?! There are over 4000 people in line and we're about to open! ... Fine, send anybody available to the two nearest Fry's and buy out their stock. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can rewrite the Postscript template to work on last year's printers with different size labels in the next ~15min."

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw)

<comment><USER9> You're not the only one who will not be seeing this new film. I learned this after Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As someone who has absorbed much of the Extended Universe eratta, it physically hurt to watch that movie. The story overrode much of what Disney relegated to "Star Wars Legends" \- this is an experience not worth re-living with GITS.

<comment><USER10> If it helps, I saw it. If you hadn't need the original, you might think it was OK. I was mildly entertained, but not impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the problem the movie crew faced, was that GitS basically needs something like the Marvel Universe stretching to retell the story. Most of the episodes of GitS2 would have made for a Stand Alone movie. So what to do? The original is in particular running against the usual hollywood conventions. There is no visible villain, until late, then the villian turns out to be a grey area guy, hunted by other grey area guys.

>the culture series is longing for a movie

Honestly, i hate it when book SciFi gets put into movie shape. Its rarely looks like i imagined it.

<comment><USER12> I am surprised no-one mentioned "Ready Player One" yet. It is a NY Times best seller and Steven Spielberg is set to direct it in 2018. Great book, often referred to as a NERDGASM ;-) [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/books/ready- player-one-by-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/books/ready-player-one- by-ernest-cline-review.html)

<comment><USER13> I found that book to be dreadful and couldn't make it through. The initial worldbuilding was interesting but then it seemed to turn into an endless loop of "HEY DO YOU REMEMBER THIS THING FROM THE 80'S WASN'T IT AWESOME?".

<comment><USER14> I think you really need to appreciate and get into the 80s nostalgia. If that doesn't work for you--or you just don't have the cultural background--the [EDIT: book] probably isn't for you.

If it was about a topic or era where 90% of the references meant nothing to me, I don't think I'd have liked it either.

Personally I loved it even though I was never a hardcore gamer in that vein and I know others in the same boat. But I certainly get your criticism.

<comment><USER13> I generally enjoy that stuff, and I think that it made the book worse for me. Example: Referencing Tomb of Horrors as some kind of forgotten lore? Preposterous! That module is iconic. Whatever module he used should have been something I'd never heard of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The effects were cool, but I wish they hadn't randomly remixed elements from the franchise with a story that directly goes against the themes of the original. Then ending was diametrically opposed to the ending of the original. While I think the effects were great, the intellectual treatment reminds me of the knife throwing scene in the Starship Troopers adaptation...

<comment><USER16> Interesting. As a big fan of the original and to a lesser extent the show, I actually liked and was impressed by how deftly they combined and remixed elements from different incarnations of Ghost In The Shell. Many seem to criticize this adaptation for not exploring the same themes or reaching the same conclusions as the original, but I was pleasantly surprised they did something new and did not just try to replicate the original. It's different, but to me also seems to be very much 'in the spirit' of the source material.

<comment><USER15> That's what's confusing to me. Why recreate so many scenes if they're trying to tell a new story? Why use Kuze's name and some details of his backstory, but put him in the place of the Puppetmaster with a wholly new theme to explore? Why is it important that Batou not have his fancy eyes until halfway in, rather than many years before, or if you're changing it anyway, why have them at all?

If they made an original story with the same setting and characters, I might have liked it more. But it seemed like they just included some iconic scenes from the original to draw in the fanbase and gave a bait and switch with something new, and conclusions I found much less profound and interesting. I found it... lazy. Like the writers didn't respect the original, and just said "what do we have to make up to get from set piece remake 1 to set piece remake 2?" "oh hey let's use this name I heard from way later on in the story because IDK." Again I must compare it to the slipshod work of the Starship Troopers adaptation. Certainly nowhere near as bad (I do think this movie was good in some respects), but they made many of the same mistakes in terms of reusing and deviating from source material (Why did you make X change? Ignorance, rule of cool, deliberate tone shift? It's unclear.).

Oh, and she blinked. ;)

<comment><USER17> I really liken it to the script writers playing the telephone game[0] about GiTS and it's history. The things you point out, as well as not explaining/introducing anyone really bugged me. I guess Pazu and Borma were there somewhere, and Togusa had some screen time but you didn't really know who he was. Saito finally made an appearance near the end of the film as was on-screen for 10s of seconds. And why did everyone speak english except for Aramaki?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really liked this movie.. I truly don't understand all the flack it's getting.. Probably because I expected very little (because of the review scores) and it was really not close to as bad as I expected..

<comment><USER19> I just returned from watching it. I on purpose haven't read any reviews (had to pretty much ignore facebook for couple of weeks) and first 15 minutes I was ready to be upset. Dialogues were not very promising, visually movie didn't felt deep and dark (nice pretty boy Batou, overdone holograms in city-scapes, no distinct music). But then it became so much better. References to GITS and GITS:Innocence are plenty but nicely done. Visually it became feast for my eyes, I really enjoyed it after all. THough still: holograms are not needed and there is no OST at all.

<comment><USER19> And soundtrack is actually big part of both original gits movies. Not sure why its' absence is not really noticed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The "solograms" were an amazing addition to the movie. My friend and I both commented on them walking out of the theater.

The visuals in the film we're really well done, in my opinion. In fact, I really enjoyed the movie as a great throwback to coming of age on cyberpunk material such as Snowcrash, Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, et al., whitewashing politics be damned.

<comment><USER21> The whitewashing didn't bother me, but the stupidwashing was offensive. Hollywood took one of the deepest, most brilliant cyberpunk classics and dumbed it down to the point of being insulting.

I've been recommending to my friends that they stay away from this film to prevent them having a bad impression of GitS. Instead, I am recommending they watch every episode and movie in the original GitS. Watch many of them multiple times to appreciate just how innovative this series is even today.

<comment><USER22> Well it was only 106 minutes long. Actually felt more like 90 minutes. I think it was great, I didn't expect a cinema blockbuster to perfectly sum up more than a decade of GitS canon.

I want to see it again, just for the visuals.

<comment><USER23> They didn't need to sum up the full canon, they needed to like... have any part of it? The original animation accomplished more with the story in less time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Adam Savage did a few Tested videos on some of the costumes and props which you may be interested in watching. (Either before or after you've seen the film if you care about that kind of thing.)

Adam Savage Behind the Scenes of Ghost in the Shell: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA)

How Weta Workshop Made Ghost In The Shell's Thermoptic Suit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCyXVEVpKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCyXVEVpKk)

How Weta Workshop Made Ghost in the Shell's Robot Skeleton: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUoqIrXd9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUoqIrXd9E)

</comment><comment><USER9> All 42 hours of the Ghost In The Shell animations from 1995 to 2006 can be strung together into cannon. It's all compatible. Both the 2015 stuff and this 2017 movie unfortunately conflict which what came before. Disappointing to me as a fan that what was achieved over 11 years has been undone and forsaken in recent adaptations of the franchise. Frankly, I'm angry Holywood is making millions from this.

<comment><USER25> >All 42 hours of the Ghost In The Shell animations from 1995 to 2006 can be strung together into cannon.

Can it?

[https://anidb.net/perl- bin/animedb.pl?show=rel&aid=61](https://anidb.net/perl- bin/animedb.pl?show=rel&aid=61)

<comment><USER9> Everything to the right on that diagram came after 2006.

I don't believe the story line to GITS 2: Innocence excludes Stand Alone Complex. If the person who made that diagram believed there was a reason, they omitted it in the diagram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every time you are making a movie you need to answer the question: why am I making this? Especially when doing a remake, what I have found missing from the original material that I think requires filling. Perhaps there's a prequel story to be told (Planet of Apes), perhaps I want to depict a version closer to how it could've happened in real life (True Grit) and so forth. If your answer is "well I want to make money" then don't do it.

Tell me true, what is the answer for this one?

Ps. If your answer is, well the original movie was funny but didn't have enough crotch jokes then _especially_ don't do it.

<comment><USER27> The irony is that GitS has done massively well with updating the premise and finding new plots that leverage the society and technology of the era.

Some folks didn't like the Arise OVA - I loved them, especially the 5.1 opening credits music. I found it to be a fresh and unpredictable prequel - which is rare this late in the game.

The Hollywood movie - nobody was talking about what made GitS click. It just seemed to be lots of tribute for the original. So much more has happened since 1995....

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pretty much no way I can enjoy the hollywood version... The 1996 movie is a watershed moment in anime to me. Its up there with Akira and the like. Same thing goes for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, watched the swedish version first and cannot get through 10 minutes of the hollywood one.

</comment><comment><USER29> I haven't seen the new Live Action remake of movie, but I have (like most others in here) seen and love the original.

When I saw the ads for the remake, the only thing featured is a semi-nude Scarlett Johansen, crashing through windows, doing things which exposes her as a semi-nudi Scarlett Johansen. No tech. No "ghosts".

That tells me everything I need to know about what the _movie studio_ thinks is important about this film. My wife already has it categorised as a "new Tomb raider". She's _not_ interested.

While the original movie had its fair share of semi-nudity, it was really down deep a cyberpunk-story and didn't compromise on that. Looking at the ads for this remake, I have no such expectations this time around.

<comment><USER30> > When I saw the ads for the remake, the only thing featured is a semi-nude > Scarlett Johansen, crashing through windows, doing things which exposes her > as a semi-nudi Scarlett Johansen. No tech. No "ghosts".

I wish I had more than one upvote. As someone who knows nothing about the source material, this is the only thing I've been able to glean from the trailers. For all I can tell, this is semi-robot Charlie's Angels in skin- tight bodysuits.

<comment><USER31> I've seen the new film (but not the original) and the nude suit is distracting (not in a good way) in a live action film. But to allay your fears, the film does feature a ton of tech including nigh-invisibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The visuals of this film is stunning. It's probably justified to watch the movie just for the visuals.

</comment><comment><USER33> I quite like it as a story telling and thought provoking one. It is different yes. But movie is different.

The original one is deeper but more confusing ...

This simplify a bit. It is ok. Sad it is doing so bad in theatre.

</comment><comment><USER34> This looks a lot like the screen savers that are currently running in Apple stores. I tried to extract it at some point because it looked great but couldn't find the file on the machines there.

</comment><comment><USER35> adaptation after adaptation after adaptation. it seems as if hollywood has lost new stories to tell. i thoroughly enjoyed the first one and, based on the trailer alone, refuse to see the remake especially considering who was cast for the lead. I love scarlett but she is not the major.

</comment><comment><USER36> Yes the effects were great. Especially the city, but come on how could the story in the movie be sooo weak! Instead of an kickass army verteran we got Scarlett Johannson playing a little girl.

<comment><USER37> > Instead of an kickass army verteran we got Scarlett Johannson playing a > little girl.

Isn't that canon? IIRC, in Stand Alone Complex they talk about how the Major is most at home in her cybernetic body and has been there the longest because she was forced to as a small child.

Then again, I haven't seen the movie yet, so perhaps I'm not quite getting the extent of the difference.

<comment><USER38> In the backstory of Stand Alone Complex, they showed she struggled with her body but through practice eventually mastered it. She came to lead the Section 9 team due to the skills she honed.

In the live action movie, she's the best solely because of the unique technology that she's given. She doesn't see herself even as having the ability for self-improvement.

I found the changes to her character to be very depressing.

<comment><USER39> > In the live action movie, she's the best solely because of the unique > technology that she's given. She doesn't see herself even as having the > ability for self-improvement.

Is that not how it's supposed to be?

I haven't seen any of the other works or the new live action movie, so perhaps this was retconned. But I did watch the 1995 original just last week.

In the original film, she talks and acts just as you describe -- that she's "the best" because of "this body", which she doesn't _really_ consider hers. She seems totally aloof about much of the rote mastery she performs, and talks about her physical form as though it was just issued out like procedure, similar to the way a police unit might hand out badges and guns.

<comment><USER38> It's been a few months since I saw the original, and I've been watching SAC in the meantime. The Major is a little different between the two, but they're similar enough it's hard for me to remember the differences. I could be mixing things around, but I believe in both she regarded her cybernetic body as just a tool that she was very skilled at using.

The live-action movie goes beyond that. She feels that not only is her body a product of the people who created it, but that her mind is too. When she's chastised for a poor decision she made, she literally responds "Well, maybe next time you can design me better."

More broadly, I think the difference between the two films are very clearly reflected best in her IMDB quotes. [http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010863/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010863/quotes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would love to know what the song/music being played during the video is. Soundhound and Shazam both came up empty. Very Philip Glass-esque.

EDIT: skimmed through the Spotify playlist. Not there.

<comment><USER3> The composer is Kenji Kawai, check out this live performance: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z64HCi2rQkE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z64HCi2rQkE)

Edit: oops just realised you were referencing the music in the post video, which I don't know the origin. But that live performance is still really good :)

Edit #2: The track is 'Plastiglomerate & Co' [https://soundcloud.com/b-e-b-e- t-u-n-e/plastiglomerate-co](https://soundcloud.com/b-e-b-e-t-u- n-e/plastiglomerate-co)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Having read the manga more than 20 years ago, I barely remember it beyond a few bits, so I've decided that I won't watch this movie until I've re-read the source material. To be honest I wasn't a big fan of further stuff like Stand Alone Complex and found the second film unintelligible (but it might have been bad subtitles), so I'm not exactly a zealot.

<comment><USER42> It is not a retelling, so the plot doesn't help to refresh. It is an attempt to capture the vision and feel of the action scenarios and art work. In that it was brilliant. I will see it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Any idea what software stack he is using? I searched around on his site as well as learnsquared and couldn't quite figure it out.

<comment><USER44> Looks like Cinema 4D and OctaneRender.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great concept art. Blurry final output. The director, for some reason, wanted the backgrounds blurred. The parent article shows the detail was there, but it's not in the final film. I saw it in 3D and XD (midway between regular and IMAX), and it was kind of painful. Avoid the 3D version.

<comment><USER46> Before I was born, many directors tried to keep as much of the shot in focus as possible. Deep focus is both a technical challenge, because it requires brighter lighting, and an artistic challenge because it makes composition of the shots more difficult. You need to pay attention to the background so there's no distracting things behind the actor's heads, for example. You can't get away with shoddy sets. And it's more difficult for the actors. They can't improvise movement and let the photographer track them, they have to exactly follow their planned movements so they line up with the background correctly. I don't have any statistics for it, but it seems shallow focus is more popular now. But I think shallow focus is lazy and insulting to the audience. If your foreground action isn't compelling enough for me to watch then the solution is to make it better, not blur the background so I have nothing else to watch. Deep focus looks more realistic. In real life I can choose to look at the background details, and I want that option in film.

I want to see more use of deep focus. With the availability of high CRI LED lighting the technical challenge is much reduced now.

<comment><USER47> Shallow focus is (I believe) one of the main things that stops 3D working properly, and causes eye strain. The 3D part means that your eyes are expecting the focus distance to be a certain distance, but then it isn't, and when you try and look at the background and focus on it, it still stays blurred.

So yes, please no more shallow focus. And no more shaky-cam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have not seen the original film, but I quite enjoyed Ghost in the Shell (2017) for what it was - a big spectacle action film. The visuals were by far the best part and it is neat to see some of the work that went into them - <USER2> only the same attention had been paid on the script.

I wrote a longer (too long really) review of the film : [https://sheep.horse/2017/4/film_review_- _ghost_in_the_shell_...](https://sheep.horse/2017/4/film_review_- _ghost_in_the_shell_\(2017\).html)

</comment><comment><USER48> I haven't seen it yet, but have been hearing about the story changes. My take is that the original story is fairly complicated for many audiences to grasp. I had to watch the movie a handful of times to really start to get the philosophical ideas in it. It's likely they wanted to simplify and clean up the ideas to make it more palatable to a wider audience.

Probably a mistake IMHO, the Matrix after all showed that huge audiences will turn out for awesome action scenes and setting and philosophical jibber jabber without complaint.

</comment><comment><USER49> Shocked Ash Thorp had anything to do with the remake, thought he understood the original film better than this. Taking his self initiated GITS project into consideration.

</comment><comment><USER50> I just want them to keep their hands off Berserk. In fact, I hope Miura comes out and says a live-action Berserk shouldn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER51> Just saw it tonight and can't understand why all the critics panned it. By today's standards of what makes a good movie I thought it was great.

<comment><USER52> Most if not all GIS fans have seen the original. There's no use to compare it to lower standards. A reference point already exists, and makes it difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Why does this include the skyline and flag of Hong Kong...

I thought Ghost in the Shell was in Japan.

<comment><USER54> The original was also in HK.

<comment><USER55> From the Wikipedia page:

"Oshii based the setting for Ghost in the Shell on Hong Kong. Oshii commented that his first thought to find an image of the future setting was an Asian city, but finding a suitable cityscape of the future would be impossible. Oshii chose to use the real streets of Hong Kong as his model.[9] He also said that Hong Kong was the perfect subject and theme for the film with its countless signs and the cacophony of sounds.[6] The film's mecha designer Takeuchi Atsushi noted that while the film does not have a chosen setting, it is obviously based on Hong Kong because the city represented the theme of the film, the old and the new which exist in a strange relationship in an age of an information deluge. Before shooting the film, the artists drew sketches that emphasized Hong Kong's chaotic, confusing and overwhelming aspects."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_(1995_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_\(1995_film\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm just going to ignore this movie exists tbh.

</comment><comment><USER56> The visuals in this movie were incredible, particularly the cityscape.

<comment><USER57> I saw the 4:00PM 3D showing at the IMAX theater near Time Square. It was a truly amazing experience seeing that city and then stepping out into a city that was different but not quite that different.

<comment><USER58> I had the same experience after seeing Blade Runner in the theater.

<comment><USER59> Our current world can be reasonably described as full-blown cyberpunk scene.

<comment><USER60> The scenes in the movie depicting the "real" Hong-Kong (i.e no CGI) were a shock for me. As a citizen of medium-size european city, I cannot imagine such inhuman cities exist for real.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hangover Ruby Script - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts/blob/master/hangover.rb <comment><USER2> These scripts get passed around as examples of how to automate tasks. The programmer decided that anything that took more than 90 seconds to do should be automated.

He even wrote a script to brew coffee for him and timed it with a delay so it was ready by the time he walked to the machine to get it. The coffee machine used Linux and had an API to make it brew coffee.</comment>


Ask HN: Books or other resources for someone starting a computer science degree - <AUTHOR>

I'm in my mid 30s at the moment and have been a programmer for a long time. I finally decided to take a break and get some formal education. I've been accepted in to a university to study towards a bachelor of computer science.
What I want to know is if there are any books or good resources online that can give me a leg up towards things like the math or Java programming etc that are covered in a computer science degree.
Also, I have the option to choose a general degree or mathetics and statistics or software engineering. Would it really matter on a resume which major I chose? <comment><USER2> I cannot really help you with good book suggestions (there are just too many, and it really depends on what your course will actually look like), but to me it sounds like you're a more practical, pragmatic programmer. In that case, I would definitely opt-in for a a software engineering degree: a lot of people who graduate CS know everything about algorithms etc, but have no clue on how to manage to build a large software application; they have no real experience with project management, etc.

Those are the types of things you will learn in a software engineering degree.

Other than that, I can tell that many, many people in software engineering get statistics wrong (because it's so incredibly counter-intuitive at times), so anyone who would have a degree in statistics on his resume would get points from me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your reply.

You are right in that I am a more practical, pragmatic programmer. I do have experience building enterprise applications and project management which is great, but I am lacking in the algorithm side. This is part of the reason why I am pursuing the degree.

Ultimately, I would ultimately like to do something with robotics/machine learning. I have a real passion for automation. I would love to work at a place like Amazon and help build the future of automated distribution. The algorithm side of things would tie all my skills together.

I will talk to the university about their statistics side of things of this course. I will see if I can get a full course outline and go from there. Would be more of a challenge, but worth it in the end.

Thank you again for your reply.

<comment><USER2> Robotics and machine learning are two entirely different beasts. If you want to go into machine learning, definitely opt-in for the statistics side. Machine learning is arguably more about statistics than about AI.</comment></comment></comment>


Stateless 3.0 – A State Machine Library for .NET Core - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Stateless30AStateMachineLibraryForNETCore.aspx <comment><USER2> While the title of the blog post says "for .net core", it is much more than that. The blog post clarifies it is actually targeting the new .net standard so it works on all platforms including .net core (Windows, Mac, Linux), .net framework on Windows, Windows UWP and Xamarin (iOS, Android).

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks ok, but why not lift states to the type level and define transitions as extension methods? Then attempts to make an invalid transition are compile- time type errors.

Edit: ha, just noticed a comment on the blog saying the same thing. The example can be encoding C# too using extension methods and generic parameters.

</comment><comment><USER4> Any alternatives for state machine/business flow in other languages/platforms worth to take a look at? I was actually looking for something more or less like this and I was thinking about python, but I'm open to evaluate Stateless or other solutions in other languages too...

<comment><USER5> I outlined an alternative on that post, have a look [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=A642B575...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=A642B575-49B9-47D6-A1CF-3EB109945F94#21917e2a-6e3b-495b-bb3b-9eb5799cfa9a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks very interesting. I've been thinking about replacing an increasingly complicated home-grown state machine in something I'm working on with this. Anybody have any experiences working with it?

<comment><USER7> I played around with it, seems to do exactly what it says on the tin and is super easy to start with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Saw Hanselman post this and took a look. I think it perfectly fits the bill for a number of our systems and hope to stop using our old hand-crafted solution instead.

</comment><comment><USER9> Related: [https://github.com/p-org/P](https://github.com/p-org/P)

</comment><comment><USER10> I found Stateless a few weeks ago and it came in super handy for a project. Definitely plan to use it more often.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great library and have used it on a few production systems.</comment>


Show HN: Hey vinyl lovers, Needle launch page - <AUTHOR>

Hello everybody,
wanted to officially share for the first time the launch page for the app we're working.
www.needle.me
It's a free iPhone app - coming soon - for vinyl records lovers, labels and shops. Between a social network and a marketplace. As someone said here on HN "Instagram for Vinyl Enthusiast" well, pretty close!
If you want some more info, just ask.
My only doubt for now is the Instagram field, does it looks like clearly explained how it works? There's a little disclaimer too.
Best,
Filippo
P.S. suggestion, ideas or whatever comes in your mind are highly appreciated! <comment><USER2> Signed up. Good luck!

I don't really have or listen to vinyl, but I'm a music lover and also love album art.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Location Will Connect Us - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/12/27/how-location-will-define-our-digital-experiences-interview-with-foursquare-co-founder-dennis-crowley/ <comment><USER2> Location will also make it easy for criminals to find out where we are and are not.</comment>


"Not Safe for Brand" (NSFB) or How Reddit Will Censor Controversial Content - <AUTHOR> https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2018/01/not-safe-for-brand-nsfb-or-how-reddit.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand the conspiratorial language here. The premise that businesses "love leftist dogma" because it's "non-controversial" is farcical, and an API flag marking something as unsafe for advertisement isn't "censorship."

The slippery slope arguments being employed by certain people in defense of "free speech" are starting to devolve into a swamp. I put free speech in quotes there because I have little doubt, judging from the site's content and my impression of the author's views, they would have no issue at all with censorship of "leftists" and their speech.

<comment><USER3> One the one hand, as someone more or less on the left, I am a little concerned with the political orthodoxy I see on the left, where there's a package of "correct" ideas of varying quality, and disagreeing with or having varying levels of enthusiasm about any of them is seen as almost worse than rejecting them all entirely.

On the other hand, nearly everyone I see these days who talks about being really passionate about free speech and preventing groupthink seems to be an actual goddamned neo-Nazi whose idea of free speech is the right to scream racial slurs at top volume into the faces of "libtard cucks" until they're driven out of public spaces and they can resurrect the Third Reich without interference.

<comment><USER4> I realize your statement may be slightly hyperbolic, but I want to reassure you there are many moderate/centrally leaning individuals passionate about free speech and the power of questioning any status quo as a tool to seek truth. (obviously not as many as I might desire, but...) This _cannot_ be an issue that only becomes provenance of the worst kinds, because then it becomes easy to dismiss. One need only be a student of history to see the importance of the above for _breaking_ oppression and tyranny.

(Sorry, not to distract from the OP and the primary discussion, I just felt strongly enough about the above statement to wave a "I promise we're out here" flag.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is literally a flag for "this thing is uncontroversial enough that we can display ads on it without the advertiser complaining". I don't see how this is a problem for a commercial enterprise that makes its money from advertising.

I encourage anyone reading this to browse around the rest of the linked site and decide for yourself whether the authors are driven by a sincere desire to protect free speech for everyone on Reddit, or if maybe they have another agenda in mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> So the insidious actions here are that certain subreddits are going to be manually reviewed, and marked as safe for large advertisers based on the absence of objectionable content. And reddit has yet to make a public announcement on this.

Cool? Seems like a sensical approach to monetization for me.

<comment><USER6> Choosing where to have your brand is really basic advertising stuff.

\---

That said, it's a little weird to have a global NSFB tag.

Safe for what brand? NRA? Ben & Jerry's? NFL? Chick-fil-a? Planned Parenthood? Hooters? Disney? Communist Party USA?

It further coalesces a division between universally "acceptable, popular" and universally "unacceptable, unpopular" thoughts.

<comment><USER5> There is already a global "nsfw" tag (applied per-post) for users to flag content as potentially objectionable. I don't see this as a huge step beyond that conceptually, it's the same thing with a different purpose.

<comment><USER6> But NSFW has a very well-understood definition: obscenity/gore. Obscenity is even a matter of legal interest and gets tried in court.

NSFB is really, really mushy. It's a matter of marketing interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Umm ... if it wasn't already obvious, this guy is a nazi. See:

"But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews. They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white." [https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/02/americas-race- problem...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/02/americas-race-problem.html)

See also: [https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-europe-is- committ...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-europe-is-committing- suicide.html) [https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2010/01/racist-word- invented-...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2010/01/racist-word-invented-by- ussrs-leon.html) [https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-alt-right- search-e...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-alt-right-search- engine.html) [https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/10/anonymous-email-is- an...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/10/anonymous-email-is-anti- semitism-new.html)

<comment><USER6> Where in those blog posts do you see that he is a member, ally, or ideological proponent of the National Socialist German Workers' Party?

He's a nationalist, but explicitly rejects Nazism/neo-Nazism.

> Why the Future of Nationalism is Far from the Mess that is "White > Nationalism"

> To my mind, it's a mistake to identify as pro-white or neo-Nazi when what we > want is much simpler...That means that each nation rules itself, makes its > own rules, and does so through culture instead of the bureaucratic > governments that absorb infinite money, make crazy rules, become corrupt, > and kick down your door in the night because you said something socially > unpopular on Farcebook or Twitless.

> In my view, those who want to be "pro-white" should shift to this > generalized nationalist program

[https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-future-of- nationa...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-future-of-nationalism- is-far-from.html)

EDIT: I definitely don't agree with his views; I'm just don't want HN to devolve into factless name-calling/labeling. I wouldn't call indiscriminately call anyone with far-left views "commies". We already have Reddit.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your pedantry - You are indeed correct that the author of the linked site does not appear to be a current member of a political party that ceased to exist some 70+ years ago.

He or she does, however, appear to be a neo-Nazi, a white nationalist and a white supremacist.

<comment><USER6> CommieBobDole, it's not pedantics; I simply saw his public denouncement of white nationalism/white supremacy/neo-Nazism (while still supporting general nationalism/cultural unity) and took it at face value.

If you disagree, you might explain why.

<comment><USER3> Here's an article from the site calling for less race-baiting because it's harmful to the public perception of white nationalism, thereby hindering white nationalists from reaching their goals:

[https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2015/05/you-can-fight-for- rac...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2015/05/you-can-fight-for-racial- nationalism.html)

Here's an article that suggests it's counterproductive to beat up gay people because again, it's unpopular, and instead advocates that they be segregated and their behavior outlawed as an unpleasant nuisance:

[https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-word-on- homosexuals...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-word-on- homosexuals.html)

Here's a link to a donation campaign being run by the organization "White Revolution" with the context that if white nationalist groups were more practical like this, the author would like them more.

[https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2011/04/unbelievable-white- na...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2011/04/unbelievable-white-nationalists- do.html)

Here is a link to a lighthearted funny meme about Anders Breivik, a neo-nazi who murdered 77 people.

[https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2014/01/anders-breivik- king-o...](https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2014/01/anders-breivik-king-of-all- media.html)

The general tone of the site seems to be that of a white supremacist and neo- nazi who believes that others who share his or her goals are not effective and should adopt other tactics in order to achieve their aims.

If you're not able to see this, I have to question whether you've reviewed the material your commenting on, or if you're incredibly politically naive, or if perhaps your questioning is not entirely in good faith.

<comment><USER8> So the author is calling for less violence against minorities, wants to remove racist language from public discourse, but he must still be racist because he does not totally condemn racists who happen to want the same goals as he does?

Not criticizing, I just want to know if this is a fair assessment. I do not know how I feel about this in general, but in specific, his short term goal of reducing violence makes him a more tollerable enemy.

<comment><USER2> > but he must still be racist because he does not totally condemn racists who > happen to want the same goals as he does?

Yes, because those goals are racist.

He's racist because of his belief in and support for white nationalism and racial segregation, and the genetic and cultural superiority of the white race, and his definition of "western civilization" in purely (pun intended) racial terms. He's racist because he views the presence of non-white people as a form of pollution and believes in racist conspiracy theories like white genocide.

Being racist and civil is still being racist.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure "genetic superiority" is in his list of claims. But in any case, going back to the original point, there's some real muddling of terminology here.

Racist != Nazi

My great grandmother was racist. Woodrow Wilson was racist. Neither one was a Nazi.

<comment><USER2> >My great grandmother was racist. Woodrow Wilson was racist. Neither one was a Nazi.

Fair enough. Racist but not full Nazi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The mix of conspiracy theory and condescension in this article is really obnoxious.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reddit has already devolved into a forum for 15 year olds to post nonsense jokes. Those of us who knew how reddit used to be and still occasionally visit tend to stay away from the main subs and visit for very specific reasons.

We should make another forum-aggregator to replace reddit and it's terrible moderation system, but it probably just won't get big enough.

<comment><USER11> I have been patiently waiting for an alternative to Reddit. In this time, I have been reading books, and hacker news. Going back to Reddit feels like an extreme regression.

Should I give up on the hope that one day we'll see another, better Reddit? Digg died when they redesigned their site, I was hoping we'd see the same thing with reddit, rinse and repeat...

<comment><USER12> There is an offshoot of Reddit that I frequent and enjoy, it was made by a former Reddit dev: [https://blog.tildes.net/announcing- tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes)

I've got 2 more invites for those are that interested.</comment></comment></comment>


The Perils of Stacking - <AUTHOR> http://coding.scribd.com/2010/06/01/the-perils-of-stacking/

<comment><USER2> I'm impressed with what they're doing and with the well-written descriptions. I hope they don't stop at 4 posts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating insight into a real-world problem, and hopefully one that I never personally have to deal with ;)

I've found it interesting to observe when loading up huge PDFs. The London Underground map PDF is an example which has always taken an age to sort itself out no matter how powerful a machine I'm working on.

Fascinating writing by scribd though, hope they continue the series.

</comment><comment><USER4> Too bad Scribd doesn't work at all for me since the switch to their new viewer (Opera 10.53 at home and some old Firefox at the university computer lab).</comment>


TRust-DNS: implementing futures-rs and tokio-rs support - <AUTHOR> http://bluejekyll.github.io/blog/rust/2016/12/03/trust-dns-into-future.html <comment><USER2> Great article. Very thorough. I'm really looking forward to Hyper (and in turn, Iron, or whatever replaces it) being rebuilt on futures-rs and Tokio. I'm eager to start using this approach in my HTTP programs.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. It looks like it's under progress, I'm really excited for HTTP futures as well. It will make it exceptionally easy to build highly performant web servers.

<comment><USER4> It is! [https://github.com/hyperium/hyper/tree/tokio](https://github.com/hyperium/hyper/tree/tokio)

<comment><USER5> It would be so great if Sean got to work full time on hyper, but of course I understand that he is needed elsewhere at Mozilla and he's doing a great job with the time he has. I would hazard a guess that there are so many besides me waiting for the upcoming HTTP client/server improvements that it would probably not be the worst idea if Mozilla (or some other org betting on Rust) threw some money at it.

I'm extremely grateful to everyone working on Rust and its ecosystem (paid or otherwise) for the work that you do. It sure sounds cheesy, but after trying lots of stuff over the years, Rust feels like coming home. There, I said it. I'm pushing it at my employer, and for every piece of tooling or important crate that matures, it gets easier to evangelize.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I hear you. That said, money is being thrown, but at tokio itself, rather than at hyper. You have to finish the lower bits before the higher ones.

(also, <3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So! To recap the bits, and where this all stands now:

The end goal is to implement "Your Server is a Function" [https://monkey.org/~marius/funsrv.pdf](https://monkey.org/~marius/funsrv.pdf) , that is, built on top of three primitives:

1\. Futures

2\. Services, which are functions of Request -> Future<Response>

3\. Filters, which takes a Request and a Service, and returns a Future<Response>

To do this, Tokio is built up of multiple packages that each have a focus.

At the lowest layer, you have two primitive libraries: futures and mio. Futures are a generic, no-allocation abstraction that looks something like this: [https://docs.rs/futures/0.1.6/futures/future/trait.Future.ht...](https://docs.rs/futures/0.1.6/futures/future/trait.Future.html)

      pub trait Future {
          type Item;
          type Error;
          fn poll(&mut self) -> Poll<Self::Item, Self::Error>;
      }

... and a bunch of more interesting methods built on top of poll. Futures, as you can see, can be generic over the kind of value they produce, as well as possible errors while producing said value. poll drives the future forward, and should never block. Usually, you don't call poll directly, you create a Task, which represents a chain of futures, and tell it to run. It will then handle doing the right thing, calling the right methods in the right ways.

The second component is mio. Mio is a low-level, asynchronous I/O library, that gives you the standard event loop stuff. In other words, it's a very thin wrapper around epoll/kqueue, and has an adapter to make iocp fit. There are deeper reasons that readiness was chosen over completion as a model, but I won't get into that right now.

So, the lowest layer of tokio proper is tokio-core, which combines futures and mio to give you the ability to say "give me an event loop. Chain some futures together. Run this chain on the event loop." But that's still a fairly low- level interface. And it's what's being shown off here.

At the same level, tokio-service is what gives you the Service abstraction.

At the sort of middle layer, there's a bunch of libraries that you can use, like tokio-proto, which gives a slightly higher-level interface for implementing network protocols.

Finally, the unreleased tokio package combines this ecosystem into an easy to use way to build servers, it's the whole package. This "tons of tiny packages" approach means that if you want to extend tokio in some way, you pick the appropriate level of the stack for your task, and plug it in, and everything up the chain can benefit. It's very modular and extensible.

In graphical form, check out this image: [https://twitter.com/rustconf/status/774734062636249089](https://twitter.com/rustconf/status/774734062636249089) which comes from this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrzfivXpc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrzfivXpc4)

The key enabler here is Rust's zero-cost abstractions: last time we measured, tokio-core had a very small (less than half a percent, IIRC) overhead compared to writing a mio event loop by hand. And that's before significant profiling effort has been done. So while in many languages, all of these layers would add up to significantly reduced speed, the idea here is that in Rust, they won't. A significant portion of this is zero-allocation or single-allocation, for example.

<comment><USER6> > There are deeper reasons that readiness was chosen over completion as a > model, but I won't get into that right now.

If you've got some time, would you go into those reasons a little bit? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Part of why I didn't go into it is because the post was already long, another part is because frankly, it's not my area of expertise and I didn't want to misrepresent it. Please remember that I'm not directly involved in tokio's development, and so this is always my understanding, I might be wrong in places, and you should ask someone on the team to be 100% sure. (The post above is stuff I'm sure about.)

What I will say for sure is that it wasn't "hey we use Unix so we're doing what we know and we'll tack on Windows support", it was made purely on technical merits of the two models. I also know that it was related to allocations.

At a high level, my understanding is that the situation is this: the unices have a rediness model, windows has a completion model. If you want a cross- platform abstraction, you can't get around needing to map one to the other. So the question becomes "is it cheaper to simulate readiness with completion, or completion with readiness."

I _believe_ that the situation is something like this: the completion model requires that you allocate a buffer up front, whereas the readiness model doesn't. So to map readiness to completion, you'd end up allocating the buffer, then doing your calls, then filling the buffer. But to map completion to readiness, you can do a trick: make a call for a zero-byte read, and when that comes back, allocate the buffer, and make another call. There's still a small amount of overhead here, but it's less than the other direction.

Again, I might be wrong here.

oh also, shout out to wio, which is mio, but focusing on just windows: [https://github.com/retep998/wio-rs](https://github.com/retep998/wio-rs) I haven't kept up with it as much as this stuff, but I like the idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing I don't get is why Rust sockets have a `set_nonblocking()` function at all. Should there just be separate`recv_blocking()` and `recv_nonblocking()` functions? It would be much simpler. Sadly you can't even do your own interface like that because there is no `get_nonblocking()` function.

Also is HN ever going to support markdown?

<comment><USER4> The standard library's abstractions tend to be relatively thin mappers over OS functionality: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/stable/std/net/struct.UdpSocket.ht...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/stable/std/net/struct.UdpSocket.html#method.set_nonblocking)

So, in my understanding, it has this interface because that's the interface that the OS gives you.

Why couldn't you write this interface on top? You'd be writing that function yourself, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any chance Rust is going to get async/await keywords?

<comment><USER4> It's quite possible! And even if it doesn't, approaches like [https://github.com/erickt/stateful](https://github.com/erickt/stateful) might work as well.</comment></comment>


E-Commerce as a Jobs Engine? One Economist's Unorthodox View - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/business/dealbook/e-commerce-jobs-retailing.html <comment><USER2> This sounds to me like reading statistics without understanding them, or finding a gap in BLS numbers.

I worked at CompUSA in the mid 90s, which was a big box format computer store similar in size to a Bed Bath and Beyond or Staples. We had like 75-100 employees, 5-7 were salaried, and only 15-25 were full time. Most part-timers worked 25-28 hours a week. (They wanted to avoid state health insurance requirements which kicked in at 30)

I don't think that Amazon is replacing those manhours 1:1. I'd guess that they need 1/5 of the manhours. Most of the supporting people (UPS, FedEx, LTL freight, soda machine guy, cleaners) are a wash between retail and ecommerce.

The retail->logistics displacement hurts a lot of marginal workers like kids, single mothers and others. It also creates a permanent underclass of temp workers who as contractors will always be treated worse than employees. There isn't much of that in retail.

<comment><USER3> There are lies, dammed lies and then there are statistics... If online is cheaper then online can not pay higher wages when selling the same volume of goods in the long run. It is that simple.

We are undergoing a huge change. It makes no sense whatsoever to look at distribution centers and retail stores and weight jobs against each other as we are in a transition period. A lot of retail these days is loosing money and the jobs in these businesses may go away. There is a glut in retail space (particularly in the US but also elsewhere) but asking rents take a while to go down. At the same time real estate in general still moving up or at least sideways. The new distribution centers may have a fair number of well paying jobs but how much of it is transitory too? At the moment this is where the investments flow but a lot may well be one-offs.

Retail is revolutionized. Online has reached a market share where there is material impact on brick-and-mortar stores and the ecosystem around them. Shop-floor salespeople and rents are for many products too expensive to compete with online on price. Companies are also moving more towards direct sales to customers cutting out middle layers to be able to control pricing better and protect the traditional shop - although that only works for products with clear USP. Traditional shop use has to change and provide more value than just transactional selling. Some are distributing directly and combine it with services (Apple) or are may be only showing stuff (Tesla). Showing tangible products is still important but unless it is so important that manufacturers are willing to pay for it then it won't happen anymore. I suspect a lot of space is going to be freed up the coming years and one can only hope new constructive uses will be found.

<comment><USER4> > If online is cheaper then online can not pay higher wages when selling the > same volume of goods in the long run. It is that simple.

Real estate, profit, and salaries/bonuses to executives are all diminishing the wage/quantity of workers in retail and can more easily be cut in online markets where independent merchants need low capital. So independent merchants might be making more money from their own direct labor than the corresponding retail workers.

<comment><USER2> Independent merchants are hard to measure because they are captives of Amazon and eBay, and only the platforms really know what is up.

They rarely amount to much more than jobbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> E-commerce has added 178,000 jobs since 2002 while department stores have lost 448,000 in the same period according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I haven't read the paper the article is reference but it appears to be very liberal with how the author wants to define Ecomm jobs.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/06/business/ecom...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/06/business/ecommerce- retail-jobs.html)

The job parity isn't the same, I don't honestly believe the rhetoric of "other jobs will be created over time in new sectors." You can do so much more with less and it's only going to get worse for rural and suburban communities because it appears Ecomm is mostly growing in large metro areas.

<comment><USER6> Neither have I read the referenced paper[1] yet, but in contrast to department stores shedding jobs e-commerce I offer these observations.

E-commerce has enabled many small 'boutique' or 'mom-and-pop' style shops to survive in locations without sufficient footfall.

The combination of small business bricks and mortar engendering trust with e-commerce supplementing footfall and enabling the tourist dollar to be spent after the holiday has helped many small town artisan and craft stores.

[1] 1st Q 2017 ecommerce US census report [https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.p...](https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm skeptical. As pointed out in the article, automation at fulfillment centers will ramp up quickly. Warehouses are pretty easy to make into "clean" environments, and automating them should be a lot easier than, say, driverless cars or fruit picking.

That said, one thing that makes sense to me is warehouse workers are a highly efficient use of labor, and as such it makes sense that it pays better than retail. Pretty much all of their time is spent doing something in service to a customer, while in retail there is a ton of standing around doing nothing, or worse, pestering customers with lots of "Can I help you with anything?"

<comment><USER8> Automation at fulfilment centres will drive down prices, which will increase the volume of goods ordered online. Given labour is the only major scarce input to production for most categories of goods, the decrease in prices (and by extension, the increase in number of goods shipped) should be roughly proportional to the decrease in labour hours needed per good, resulting in no net change in labour utilisation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only real progress brought on by technology so far (in terms of human happiness) is in medicine.

Other than that it has mostly served to give people options that they don't really need.

If technology is not freeing up people from their jobs, then I think it isn't delivering the real progress that humanity needs.

Personally, I feel that the jobs have gotten worse especially in the last 5 years. I used to be an all rounder software engineer and these days I find myself more and more being either a front-end developer or a back end developer depending on the company... And the job is becoming increasingly tedious; that's why I change jobs every 6 to 12 months. I get paid more but the job gets more boring.

Most people in the West shouldn't need to work but instead of coming up with UBI and taxing rich shareholders more, the government prefers to invent increasingly narrow and meaningless jobs to keep the masses busy.

I think that's why Bitcoin is so valuable, everything in our system has become so extremely inefficient and low in value that now the only thing required for something to actually have value is the fact that it can get people's attention.

If something can get people's attention and keep them busy, then wealthy people and big companies will poor some of their infinite money in it.

<comment><USER10> _Most people in the West shouldn 't need to work but instead of coming up with UBI and taxing rich shareholders more, the government prefers to invent increasingly narrow and meaningless jobs to keep the masses busy._

Reminds me of David Graeber On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. It strikes a similar chord [1]

[1][http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/) (need to click 'here' to access)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Probably a better way to figure out the real employment numbers behind eCommerce is to trace the economy behind an average persons yearly consumption with and without Ecommerce. If the average person is spending more with eCommerce then you're going to have more employment due to the bigger economy behind it. (Assume $1000 spent by the average person in both cases result in equal employment.)

You can then trace second order effects by comparing where the employment is occurring and in what industries.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like he's not comparing like with like: he's taking the greater reach of the tech industry and comparing them with a more restricted reading of the previous industry.

That isn't even the worst thing with this reading: we know that the availability of decent jobs is going down. If, as he says, e-commerce is pushing them up, he needs to demonstrate a previously unidentified force that is large than the development of e-commerce pushing in the opposite direction. I find it highly likely that such a force exists.

<comment><USER13> > we know that the availability of decent jobs is going down

Do we know that? Are we sure it isn't just that people are being created faster than jobs?

<comment><USER12> Well, that's trivially true but you should still be worrying, since the US is growing at a historically unprecedentedly low rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Key point near the end of the article:

> To Mr. Mandel, it's not that e-commerce jobs are directly replacing > traditional retail jobs. Rather, he describes a world in which some of what > he calls "unpaid household labor" that we all do when we drive to the mall, > park, shop and bring the goods home has been transferred into the labor > market.

So sure, if you only look at the paid jobs, under an e-commerce regime we have fewer paid jobs than under big box retail. But if you factor the previously unpaid labor, we're netting more jobs.

</comment><comment><USER15> Americans never bought into eCommerce.

Just like US lagged with smartphone and mobile internet adoption, until Apple came with its smartphone, US will be off reach for the industry until eCommerce will get its "iphone moment"

<comment><USER16> Two out of three US households have Amazon Prime [0]. So I'm not sure what you mean by the US never buying into e-commerce (or what an "iphone moment" would mean in this context).

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2017/06/17/sixty- four...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2017/06/17/sixty-four-percent- of-u-s-households-have-amazon-prime)

<comment><USER15> Compare how much average American spends online vs average Chinese or Russian.

<comment><USER17> The old infrastructure is still in place and has advantages in some cases. Those countries never built the same level of retail infrastructure, so it makes sense they would buy more online. Similar trajectory happened here with landline usage vs cell phones, credit cards vs phone payments, cars and road infrastructure vs transit. We will see it with other disruptive technologies going forward as well. We will probably be among the last to transition the majority of our vehicles to electric because of huge existing infrastructure in gasoline distribution. If self-driving cars become reality, transitioning parking lots, parking garages, traffic lights, etc. will take some time while cities that will be built after that disruption can avoid that infrastructure cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>