A New Era of Batteries Spells Trouble for Gas in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/a-new-era-of-batteries-spells-trouble-for-natural-gas-in-america <comment><USER2> "A New Era of Batteries Spells Trouble for Gas in America" is the article's actual title, but the text does not back up this assertion.

Rather, a regulatory agency in California is ordering PG&E it must hold a competitive solicitation to "address two local sub-area capacity deficiencies and to manage a high voltage issue in another sub-area", because they're being blackmailed by Calpine [1] over three peaker plants.

Calpine has said they'd shut down the plants unless they get extensions on their must-buy contracts. The causality suggested in the article is backwards from the actual facts.

[1] [http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M200/K6...](http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M200/K602/200602742.PDF)

<comment><AUTHOR> In California, yes, PG&E is being required to use non-fossil fuel resources for peaker functionality.

 _But_ , battery storage is cheap enough to start replacing peakers nationwide [1]. GE also laid off 12k people from their gas turbine generator business due to dropping demand [2]. Also, "Major CEOs of power companies have also suggested, in a much more aggressive time frame, that peaker plants will go away entirely by 2020 in the USA." [3]

Batteries will never get more expensive. Renewables will continue their aggressive cost decline curve. Ergo, peakers are stranded assets, and energy storage + renewable will continue their march down the electric generator market vertical (peakers->load following->base load).

[1] [https://electrek.co/2017/12/13/solar-batteries-to- take-10gw-...](https://electrek.co/2017/12/13/solar-batteries-to-take-10gw- natural-gas/)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/ge-is- sai...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/ge-is-said-to- plan-12-000-job-cuts-as-new-ceo-revamps-power-unit)

[3] [https://twitter.com/jburwen/status/940635406697160704](https://twitter.com/jburwen/status/940635406697160704)

<comment><USER2> The Minnesota report [1] discussed in your links is much more nuanced than just the graph excerpt. It suggests that a judicious use of federal investment credits and future anticipated cost decreases might make storage combined with solar generation a competitive or cheaper option than natgas peakers by 2023, but also proposes that Minnesota is well-positioned to start early, and learn by example.

While this may presage an industry trend, it's a long way away from the raw, unsubsidized numbers of storage-only timeshift solutions fully being cheaper than peakers. Battery storage isn't booming because it's that good right now; it's about to start expanding because of smart players taking advantage of subsidies, and betting on long-term trends.

[1] [http://energytransition.umn.edu/wp- content/uploads/2017/07/W...](http://energytransition.umn.edu/wp- content/uploads/2017/07/Workshop-Report-Final.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that there's nuance. Renewables and energy storage receive subsidies, yet there is no carbon tax to level the playing field with traditional fossil peakers (or even load following or base load fossil, for that matter).

Besides California, Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington are also mandating utility scale energy storage. I anticipate additional states mandating the same in the near (1-3 years) future, which will contribute to driving down the cost of energy storage as manufacturing scales up. Time will tell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Replying here because I can no longer edit.

I just found this interesting article about how China wants to be the destination for all things lithium ion storage for repurposing.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-11/china- s-g...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-11/china-s-giving- batteries-a-second-life)

This could mean a profound shift in utility battery storage if all of these EV batteries are going to go into grid storage after their useful life has been depleted in vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One thing not touched on in the article is the marginal cost of wind and solar is near zero. Meaning when supply exceeds normal demand the price falls to near zero. This usually presented as a problem, but for some businesses this is potentially a big opportunity. If you consider a electric furnace processing scrap steel can easily use 10-100 MW of power for thirty minutes at a time. Potentially zero margin electricity can be used to decarbonize other industries as well.

<comment><USER4> It's definitely an opportunity, but the price at peak production periods is near zero precisely because nobody has yet figured out how to soak up these kinds of transient production peaks effectively, with sufficiently fast ramp- up and scale. It won't stay at zero if some big users figure out how to use that energy profitably. Though that wouldn't be bad overall. If some large users _did_ figure out how to take advantage of these periods, it'd be a step towards smoothing out both grid pricing and usage.

<comment><USER5> Is there really nothing that we could do with this excess energy? Couldn't we purify water or run simulations or something similar?

<comment><USER4> Some Nordic countries that have large district-heating systems have started experimenting with dumping the excess energy into those.

<comment><USER6> Electricity to heat is not that efficient; normally district heating systems run off of the waste heat of electricity generation. Are you talking about an example where the waste heat isn't enough to power the district heat?

<comment><USER7> Actual energy to heat is only useful in a true excess energy availability situation, but usually you'd start building up heat storage to decouple heat availability from electricity demand, which would otherwise be a problem with cogen plants. And heat storage is so much cheaper and efficient than electrical storage, so you want to run your cogen in sync with electricity demand. Once the heat storage is there, it becomes an absolute no-brainer to also use it when you have excess electricity to dump (as electric heating is 100% efficient, it's the production of electricity in thermal plants that makes electric the worst form of heating).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Since 2010, Bloomberg New Energy Finance data show, the price of lithium-ion > battery packs have fallen 79 percent.

But aren't Li batteries irrelevant for power plants? The advantage of Li is power/weight, but weight and size are no issue for power plants.

<comment><USER9> With the 79% decrease, Li-Ion batteries are now cheaper per cycle than lead acid. They still have greater installation cost, but lower lifetime cost. This means any further reductions in Li-Ion cost make battery storage more competitive compared to on-peak generation.

This may be a kind of "consumer electronics" dividend that is now paying off in EV and grid storage use cases.

[1] [https://medium.com/solar-microgrid/battery-showdown-lead- aci...](https://medium.com/solar-microgrid/battery-showdown-lead-acid-vs- lithium-ion-1d37a1998287)

[2] [https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium- ion...](https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion-vs-lead- acid-cost-analysis/)

<comment><USER3> Key thing, consumers prioritize initial capital cost. Where for utilities it's all about total cost.

Utilities probably also like that you can do continuous maintenance on battery systems. Servicing involves two men and a forklift vs multi day/week shutdowns. Friend is a millwright. Worked on a 7F gas turbine installation. They fired it up and it threw it's blades.

<comment><USER9> That's an excellent point about consumer versus utility behaviors.

The Tesla/SolarCity model, of basically renting out solar panel installation in exchange for a cut of the future energy value, is an interesting approach to incentivizing a different consumer behavior.

This article [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/20/teslas- powerwall-s...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/20/teslas-powerwall- showing-path-for-home-energy-stor.aspx) describes a similar program applied to home energy storage.

<comment><USER6> Tesla is abandoning that model. And note that the overwhelming majority of their grid battery business is selling to power companies, not consumers.

<comment><AUTHOR> The model made sense when residential systems were much more expensive, beyond the reach of the average homeowner even with the 30% tax credit. With the cost of systems declining so quickly, the PPA/lease model is no longer necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Solar is not going to work in many states the way it can in say CA, AZ or NV. Beyond that though, I really wonder how they are going to find enough resources to build a robust enough system of backup/peak use storage not just in CA but the entire country? I thought this was already going to be a challenge as electric car/truck share grew.

<comment><USER11> Why shouldn't it? It works just fine for Germany which gets the same amount of sunshine as southern Alaska.

<comment><USER12> They only get like 6% of their total energy from solar.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why- arent...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why-arent- renewables-decreasing-germanys-carbon-emissions/#6766188868e1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't it interesting that solar/wind was dismissed because it was erratic, and now it is being proposed (with battery storage) instead of "peaker" plants?

<comment><USER13> Proposed by who? The Sierra Club?

It's still far less efficient that fossil fuels, harder to store, and more expensive to collect.

This has "rolling blackouts" written all over it.

<comment><USER14> Less efficient by what measure? In some sense it's all solar power; the efficiency of

        sun -> plants -> fossil fuels -> extraction -> burning -> electricity

can't be particularly high.

<comment><USER15> Not to mention that solar PV is more efficient at converting photons into stored energy than plants. Photosynthesis is typically around 1% hitting perhaps 10% for algae that's got less structure to maintain. Looking at solar PV in that context makes clear how amazing the technology really is.

<comment><USER7> But you can't beat self-replicating plants in capex!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing I noticed about "Insta-pubs" in the Midwest in the early 2000's: Well over half of them seemed to be converted gas stations. Maybe a new era of batteries means even more instant Irish Pubs? (Which, long term, actually means more sports bars with Irish pub decor.)

<comment><USER17> I'm thinking of Irish Pubs in NatGas peaker plants... it's very post apocalyptic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd love to see gas go. But the reality is, at least for now, Cali is an outlier. Cars are cars everywhere. But weather and sunshine and wind are different everywhere.

Fusion will be the ultimate game changed. Some say we're closer than most realize.

<comment><USER19> Fusion doesn't have a proven track record of getting cheaper with every year like batteries and renewables do.

These two technologies are already available today and their primary flaws are disappearing over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bloomberg is now measuring energy in Megawatts? How comes almost all of the pro-renewable articles are written by buffoons? 10 years ago I would never guess that a dumb trend would go as far as destabilizing the entire western economy. And no, I'm not "denying climate change", hold down your pitchforks, I'm denying irrational economics. I'm not willing to pay $400-$800/month for electricity (including heating and cooling, since I guess gas is out of the equation now as well), and neither should you.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know why Californians put up with this mess from their politicians.

In Texas, one company maintains the infrastructure and a variety of companies compete to provide service to customers. Separating these concerns means cheap, reliable electricity. Power is quickly restored after natural disasters and we don't have brownouts during the summer. Electricity is affordable and we don't pay extra during peak hours.

I pay $0.10/kWh for a plan 100% provided by wind power. When power is in demand, the smart meter my electric company provided for free (with free installation) will adjust my thermostat and give me a credit on my bill (under a program I opted into).

If my state made me pay $0.40/kWh for unreliable energy, I'd be furious.

<comment><USER22> _If my state made me pay $0.40 /kWh for unreliable energy, I'd be furious._

I would be, too! Fortunately, here in Santa Clara, California, we're paying about $0.11/kWh to Silicon Valley Power, as opposed to the $0.23/kWh that PG&E charges residential customers on average. Even that's sure not anything like $0.40/kWh.

I think we've only lost power maybe twice in the eight years I've lived in Santa Clara, so I'm not too concerned about reliability issues. Since I'm in an apartment complex, I don't have the option to switch to Santa Clara's "green power" option for 100% renewable energy sources, although they've recently gone coal-free for all their generation sources.

[http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/svp-and-community/about- sv...](http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/svp-and-community/about-svp/area- rate-comparison)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Switcheroo, exchange your stories with others, anonymously. - <AUTHOR> http://switcherooapp.com/

<comment><USER2> It seems that in the anonymous email that was sent to me, the user's apostrophes weren't formatted correctly, and turned into "'". Otherwise, I like the service!</comment>


A Manifesto for Scholarly Publishing - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i39/39b01001.htm <comment><USER2> Well, this long article is mostly addressed (by the director of Princeton University Press) to other University presses. Unfortunately, Dougherty's suggested domains of strategic leverage for sustaining university presses barely alludes to the issue of electronic-vs-printed publishing.

I think that the next decade will show that such timid, traditional strategies will lead University Presses down the same road as newspapers. _Embrace_ the new technology. Revolutionize your business model: seize the lead. Or welcome extinction.

<comment><USER3> I still say that you can't engage a text online in the same ways you can in print. When it's just you and the text in a coffeehouse you've got no Google to turn to. There's no scrolling to the comments to get the gist of the article. In short, you have to do the work yourself. When it comes to the hard ideas he is talking about, struggling through unaided until you finally grasp the concept is one of the best ways to internalize the real guts of the concept in the text.

There's also the physical aspect of taking notes in the margins and being able to remember content by it's location on the page or how far into the text it is. A whole host of spatial considerations that electronic media can't replicate in the same way.

*Edit for typo.</comment></comment>


What Do Pinterest,Venmo,Gogobot and PersonalCapital Have in Common? Mobile Growth - <AUTHOR>

Pretty awesome meetups on mobile growth are beginning to spread around the bay. I was at one hosted by Branch @ Pinterest last night. It was incredible. Anyone else know of good insights on growing your app? Or good resources to reference?<p>https://soundcloud.com/branchmetrics/building-companies-smart-people-great-ideas-arent-enough <comment><USER2> Here's are a few great videos I've watched -

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nDcQLhUVZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nDcQLhUVZk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=25&v=n_yHZ_vKjno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=25&v=n_yHZ_vKjno)</comment>


Show HN: WorkDNA – Attract engineers by showing off your engineering culture - <AUTHOR> https://workdna.com/cyberdyne/engineering <comment><USER2> As someone who has been involved in technical hiring for over 18 years, I'm very excited to start using this platform. What I love most about this platform is the ability of candidates to get a glimpse of what it will be like working for company before they ever talk to a person. Allowing candidates to peer into your company will make sure you're connecting with the right candidates.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, OP here.

As an engineer, a company's careers page and job post do not tell us much about working on the engineering team. We are trying to fix that.

Our software platform shows prospective engineers the culture, work schedule, technology, methodologies, hiring process, and Q&A. Most importantly, we help the company show how they deliver on their culture with specific examples from individual engineers.

We are launching with our first two customers on the white label platform next week. We write everything, as we know busy engineering teams are.

We'd love some feedback :), what is it missing that you want to know?</comment>


Things Programmers Should Never Say: "Who Wrote This Awful Code " - <AUTHOR> https://shubhamjain.co/2017/02/25/things-programmers-should-never-say--who-wrote-this-awful-code/ <comment><USER2> I've cut my fair share of corners to ship a product on time. Every time I somehow decide that cutting a corner is justified, I leave some comments in the code explaining why I decided to cut corners and how I think it should actually be done. I usually put something similar in the commit message.

As the company I worked for scaled from three guys to 50+ people, these comments have helped newcomers to the code base tremendously. Whenever someone encounters some not-so-great implementation, they know why and there are some pointers on how to make it better. It's been especially helpful to students/juniors we've hired that would maybe not even have figured out that the solution is sub-optimal.

It also prevents future me from coming back to some code and starting to harbor passive aggressive feelings towards past me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many times someone has said that to realise it was them.</comment>


Show HN: Devstream.tv – Watch developers code live - <AUTHOR> https://devstream.tv/ <comment><USER2> I've been streaming on and off for a few years now. Livecoding was a good idea in principal, but the team did not handle their growth well, and made a few pretty bad decisions which have been well documented on HN before. Twitch didn't ever feel like it was the right place for programming streams, but it's the best we have right now. I hope I can get back into streaming later on in the year (it's quite a big time commitment), perhaps there will be a better solution by then!

My wish-list:

A good chat API which supports code snippets (this is something that streamers will want to pour over and make streams about, because it makes good content!).

Localized streaming servers in order to keep latency low.

The site development process should be streamed! I have no idea why the Livecoding guys didn't live stream their dev work (other than perhaps a fear of losing "IP", but I personally don't think that's a particularly strong argument - there's always some code that could be streamed without issue, such as frontend JS. I suspect the real reason was that their developers weren't aligned with the product and didn't want to stream).

Support for pair programming (two streamers working on the same project together) - this allows streamers to market to each others' audience, and can produce some really great content as the streamer is forced to explain to their partner _why_ they're doing what they're doing.

Integration with editors as an alternative to regular streaming. A UI which looks something like jsbin.com - where the text editor is shown next to the output - would allow for streamers with lower upload speeds to only stream their webcam, while their editor and terminal is mirrored in text, nicely resizing to fit the users' screens. This view could be composited into a video stream for users who aren't viewing through a web browser (like chromecast users).

<comment><USER3> This is somewhat where I'd like to see [https://flems.io](https://flems.io) going. It's based on the open source Flems web playground ([https://github.com/porsager/flems](https://github.com/porsager/flems)), so doing different kinds of embeds and sharing directly runnable code could be added easily. Currently the entire state lives in the URL, which is pretty interesting for sharing, and it really makes it a true serverless app, but I'm working to support shareable sessions and live streaming of changes as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also [https://www.twitch.tv/communities/programming](https://www.twitch.tv/communities/programming)

<comment><USER5> The problem is even if they can build near feature-parity as a streaming platform (compared to Twitch and Youtube), the second they make any discernable profit Twitch is just going to re-assign a few developers and blow them out of the water.

Things like storing VODs (videos of past streams), community tooling, etc., are hard and EXPENSIVE. The developers have a very hard path ahead of them.

<comment><USER6> Every big company can do this, and it's is precisely why, in a consumer facing startup, tech is often far less important than community building. YouTube or Twitch can build tools to enable streamers, but if your startup is _genuinely_ good to early adopters, and the communities they build, then you can still keep going in the face of an 800lb gorilla.

The tech behind 9 out of 10 tech startups is relatively trivial to clone. The part that's _really_ hard to copy successfully is the people.

It's also worth noting that if you can't do the people bit then even the most brilliant, un-cloneable tech is likely to fail. It's very hard to get customers if people don't like you as a person.

But hey, that's what co-founders are for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For people who like to watch live coding - in what ways do you find it helpful? Is it to learn about a particular domain, a way of thinking, a new technology? Where would you consider your skill level to be at?

I'd love to hear your perspectives! I understand streaming in gaming contexts, developer streaming is new to me.

<comment><USER8> When I work remotely, having someone "work" at the same time as me makes the situation feel less ... lonely, it's like having a co-worker :) See them work, makes me work.

Also I enjoy hearing other people code, especially the clack of the keyboard.

I remember there were some internet radio streams that had office sounds playing (at different intensities), but I do not think they're online anymore.

<comment><USER9> Not quite office sounds, but Coffitivity nicely captures coffee shop murmur: [https://coffitivity.com](https://coffitivity.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So this is basically a twitch aggregator for developer streams. Cool idea!

An idea: it would be cool to have separate feeds for the available tags so that users could browse the available streams/channels by topic.

Good luck for your project!

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool although it seems this just does what Twitch could do themselves? Not very familiar with that entire scene, though.

As a practical point the text on the stream thumbnails is strangely half- translated which looks odd on an otherwise English-using page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right - there is a #programming category on Twitch, but the plan is to gather dev streamers from more platforms (YouTube comes next) into one dedicated place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I claim any credit at all? Hahah. Nice work - this is what I wanted to see! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16545022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16545022)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, great minds think alike!

<comment><USER12> It happens quite a lot around here. I've seen multiple people be inspired by the right combination of things on HN and launch similar projects back to back. Keeps it fun! (But also encourages moving _really_ fast when you have an idea.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please don't auto play videos on your site.

<comment><USER14> It's a site for streaming videos. Seems appropriate here.

<comment><USER15> Yea but if someone sends me a link to one to look at later, I still don't want it to start autoplaying in class.

Maybe have an obvious ?autoplay=true param.

<comment><USER16> Twitch embeds are autoplay by default

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I want to get started doing this, anyone have advice on starting out and potential gotchas?

<comment><USER18> Get a good microphone. Get a webcam, even if it doesn't make sense people like to see a head. Get plenty of monitor space so you can stream on one monitor and monitor chat and other things on the other.

Stream in 1080p, its the perfect balance between text looking ok and everyone being able to view it well with their internet connection.

<comment><USER19> Also don't worry about having high fps a 10fps 1080p stream is a thousand times better for reading text than a 720p 30fps one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be cool if it would add some more context to what twitch already does. I.e. develop a plugin to support markdown in the chat so you can interact with your viewers and share snippets easily (just an example of a useful feature) or if you really wanna help education of coders some kind of plugin for sublime/vscode where twitch viewers can request to explain a certain line on the screen, kinda like a real time poll where you vote the next line of code you want explained?(again another example of useful addon for live coders that do edu coding streams)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's such a cool idea! I'll think of how this can be added, a VSCode plugin sounds awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> i got tired of livecoding.tv after a while. perhaps i may get interested again later. at the end of the day, i did not get the desired benefit of either watching others code, or streaming your coding session.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like your site, but I don't understand what the difference is from just going to [https://www.twitch.tv/communities/programming](https://www.twitch.tv/communities/programming)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice idea . I think you should make it more generic. I am confident that We will see a lot of this "Twitch of X " in years to come. I personally would like to see Twitch of Cooking and Twitch of Uber Rides

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't this similar to [https://www.liveedu.tv/](https://www.liveedu.tv/) ?

<comment><USER25> Liveedu used to be called Livecoding (but then pivoted) since a coding- _only_ live-streaming platform did not get traction. And became redundant once Twitch allowed live-streaming programming.

<comment><USER26> Livecoding had a lot of other problems.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486476)

<comment><USER25> I suppose that may have caused SEO problems as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Saw awesome-developer-streams on GitHub as well and had a similar idea :-) Site looks neat, good job!

</comment><comment><USER28> Which coders are worth watching, and what have you learned by watching them ?

</comment><comment><USER29> Was really hoping to find a Ruby streamer... Why is it so hard to find?

<comment><USER30> [https://www.twitch.tv/omatum_greg](https://www.twitch.tv/omatum_greg)

Greg is building a product on top of Ruby/Rails. You might find this interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> added

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> haha, i came here to post "why wouldn't this just be twitch.tv" and it is indeed twitch.tv, well done!

</comment><comment><USER32> This sounds familiar... ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> Just when I thought everything has been done. Wow. this is an original great idea!</comment>


Does anyone else not 'get' tablets? - <AUTHOR>

My parents (coming up to pension age) asked me to recommend a tablet. I talked them through the options (Apple vs. Google) and took them to the store to try out the iPad Air.
I own both MacBook and Lenovo laptops for work and personal use (programming) and have never owned a tablet. I have never owned a tablet and still do not see a genuine use for them when my laptops can do the same thing but better and the cost of ownership is not negligible, especially because it is a recurring cost and additional costs (iCloud, apps) are likely. For those reasons I have a hard time recommending tablets to anyone I know.
This is perhaps a bit of a strange question to ask on HN but does anyone else not 'get' them or am I just getting old? :) <comment><USER2> > I own both MacBook and Lenovo laptops for work and personal use > (programming) and have never owned a tablet. I have never owned a tablet and > still do not see a genuine use for them when my laptops can do the same > thing but better and the cost of ownership is not negligible,

You don't "get" tablets because tablets are not designed, nor marketed, to your demographic. You are the outlier, the 1% (or whatever percent, that's just made up), who needs a general purpose computer in order to "create".

But most "computer users" are not creators in the sense of a programmer. They are mere "consumers". And they treat a computer as little more than a glorified TV where they can "click" with a "remote" (mouse) to access content, then passively consume that content.

What little "creation" they do (posting something to their wall, twitter,, etc.) is easy enough to do from a tablet, so they don't see any difficulty that way.

You, however, are not a passive "TV" like consumer of others content. You are a content creator. Your needs are different, and as such, you don't see a tablet as useful, because it does not fit your use situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> This makes a lot of sense. To me a tablet is a "redundant" device. I can use my laptops for "consumption" purposes and can quickly switch between "consume" and "create" "mode".

That and I have a hard time justifying the cost of a tablet even though I can afford it. Call me crazy, but I scoff at people who own multiple game consoles. Must be upbringing :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kind of an odd question in that obviously tablets are quite established now. Tablets took off because they offered most of the features casual computer users need - web, email, facebook, youtube, aka basic communication and competent media consumption for a price cheaper than desktops and many a laptop. Add the extra portability and ease of use (AppStore, Don't make me think too much about a file system) makes it very convenient for many people. I do not own one, because I find my laptop is portable enough and I want a keyboard.

Surfaces or hybrid touchscreen laptops I think are very promising. Sometimes swiping and tapping the screen can be a great interface for certain things, like games, scrolling and zooming. It's nice to have that on a full powered keyboard computer too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree it is an odd question, thanks for the thoughtful response. My thoughts are that even though it is established I still quite often wonder if using a tablet is an improvement over using a (very) portable laptop.

I often see people struggling using the touch keyboard to write e-mails or take notes and wonder about the cramped ergonomics. The games on tablets are often very uninspiring clones of (portable) console classics at best and exploitative money making schemes at worst. There is often no way to tell the difference.

I realise this all sounds very negative, I know there are plenty examples of applications where tablet-type interface shine. I like the idea of hybrid touch screens too and would be interested to see if Apple could be tempted to move into that area with the MacBook Air.

<comment><USER4> 2 words

Bluetooth keyboard.

Logitech, Staples and Microsoft have long harbored fear of a Bluetooth planet but all the hybrid and convertable stuff is there because people are fooled by form factors.

Add a BT keyboard and mouse and then you can write, develop software, etc. On a Win8 machine you can even use your old software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point. Do Apple and app developers design/build with BT keyboards in mind? Do you use a tablet for software development?

<comment><USER5> Yur app will automatically not bring up the software keyboard.

The main issue is that they don't make keyboard shortcuts for things you need to tap on. I don't know of a single app that does that, so you have to type- type, tap-tap, type. I hate the mouse, so I REALLY hate this.

I bet Win8 apps make more shortcuts -- Windows has always been better at this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rush-tea I am one of this kind like you. :) I do not get tablets as well, but I own one (Nexus 7 2013).

To me, tablet is like a bigger screen version of a phone, it performs exactly like a phone (without telephony).

I own an iPhone 5 and I prefer iOS vs Android, but I opted to get Nexus 7 (and not iPad Mini) because

1\. price of N7 is so cheap (bought one at mid $100s for 32 GB). Android tablet is much cheaper, you can literally buy 2 refurb N7 for the price of 1 refurb iPad Mini with Retina.

2\. to read books and magazines (it is not convenient to read books/magazine using laptop and to read on an iPhone, it's too small). Kindle or any other e books can be read with an app that exists on both iOS and Android.

</comment><comment><USER6> you're too accustomed to being in front of a computer.

people who want to go surf the web or do other similar small tasks while sitting on the couch or while laying in bed will really enjoy their tablet (way more than a laptop). I personally use mine to read in bed at night.

its a similar concept to why people might want to buy a steam box (why get a console to run steam?): because in some situations having to sit in front of a computer might be a deterrent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is a very good point. I personally don't mind sitting in front of a laptop but my parents may find it much easier to perform small tasks using a tablet while sitting on the sofa. I'm not convinced reading a tablet in bed is a good idea, prolonged looking at a screen before bed time is supposed to be bad for sleeping patterns.

</comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn I like my Kindle Fire because I can hold it like a real book. The fact that it also does more than display books is a bonus. My next tablet will be a Surface Pro unless someone else makes a tablet with a Wacom screen that you can hold in one hand by the time I'm ready to buy.</comment>


List of Core ML Models for iOS 11 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/likedan/Awesome-CoreML-Models <comment><USER2> This is great! Just starting out to work with iOS with the ML and ARkit changes, so looking forward to working with some of these soon.

I'm thinking Apple might officially release a ML "search" at some point. I can imagine a life where they sell a variety of models (price determined by model complexity/size)... not sure if that's better or worse.

<comment><USER3> That's what Bixby vision on Android does[1]

[http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/bixby/vision/](http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/bixby/vision/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is the Android scene in regards of the nice tech (this, ARkit) presented by Apple?

<comment><USER5> the post wasn't about arkit, it was about coreml.

<comment><USER6> Note that OP said "(this, ARKit)".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be helpful to add license info so that people don't have to look for it for each model separately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions! We're planning on improving the format

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> for anyone interested I have written an article on how to train, convert and integrate your own model into an iOS app: [http://reza.codes/2017-07-29/how- to-train-your-own-dataset-f...](http://reza.codes/2017-07-29/how-to-train- your-own-dataset-for-coreml/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! It would be great if you can mention our awesome list in your article, so people know where to post their new-trained models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very useful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx! Feel free to create a PR if you found models not on the list!</comment></comment>


Amygdala and the tendency to regard the social system as legitimate&desirable - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0248-5 <comment><USER2> This is radical! It seems to be in line with two British studies that associated both conservatism and tendency to fear with larger amygdala. I understand that personality characteristics associated with brain physiography is heretical among American psychologists. Personally I know nothing about the subject and would like to hear informed opinions.</comment>


Senators Demand Military Right to Lock Up Americans Anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senators-demand-military-lock-american-citizens-battlefield-they-define-being <comment><USER2> The submission of this from a day or two ago linked to a blog that was a bit of a sketchy source, so it ended up going dead. The ACLU article is better and clarifies that this does indeed apply to Americans:

Don't be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1013 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.

But you don't have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill's sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: "1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland."</comment>


Hacker95.css – Make Hacker News look like Windows 95 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chowderman/Hacker95 <comment><USER2> Looks nice, but the shadows on the buttons are wrong: the top and left edges should be white, the other two black. This way, the buttons look more like elements of a status bar, those had the borders reversed to produce an "inset" effect (like in this screenshot: [http://188.8.131.52/chhtml/toolkit/demos/Windows/gifs/gad...](http://220.127.116.11/chhtml/toolkit/demos/Windows/gifs/gadgets1.gif))

<comment><USER3> I was always slightly perplexed as to how that difference in orientation of colors leads to the out/in effect. I guess it's not so much the left/right but the top/bottom that really achieves this phenomenon, given how most daily light sources come from above (sun, ceiling fixtures, floor lamps) and there are relatively few instances of uplighting (landscaping, ...) around us.

<comment><USER4> The up–down orientation unquestionably comes from the near-universality of light sources being above you. You'll notice that intense up-lighting is almost never found in the natural or artificial world.

(It's true that upwards-firing lights are often used in interior decoration, but these are almost always to illuminate walls and ceilings above us which then bounce light down to the contents of a room. Also, some techniques in photographic and studio lighting do use some up-firing lights, but these act as shadow fill, never as the primary light source—except when an unusual look is intended.)

To the extent that we expect a certain left–right orientation, this will almost certainly be predominantly a matter of consistency with prior graphical user interfaces. The near-universal standard of a top/left lighting metaphor goes at least as far back as the original Apple Lisa/Macintosh which cast its 1-bit, 1 pixel shadows to the bottom/right.

The fact that people of near-identical cultures can natively integrate either left-hand driving or right-hand driving suggests to me that there's no inherent reason why it needed to be one way or the other. Had the first interfaces begun with a top/right lighting metaphor, we'd probably be all as native to that as British people are with right-hand-drive vehicles.

<comment><USER5> Upward-firing lights are aimed at the roof to spread the light and create more ambient light. So is primarily used as a down-light by reflection anyway.

I'm not sure the left/right shadows are a learned thing from user interfaces. As a kid, long before I got my first computer I was drawing 3D forms. Shadows always was drawn as light came from the upper left.

Maybe this is because I draw with right hand so prefer light to come from the left so I don't shadow my hand?

<comment><USER3> Now you've got me wondering if the left/right shadow preference might actually be rooted in other natural phenomena besides human dominant handedness, like something with the rotation of the earth a.k.a. sun setting in the west.

<comment><USER6> You're over thinking things there. More likely it's just an artefact of those interfaces being designed in the countries who read left to right.

Off topic but I like how you've referenced that infamous IRC meme in your HN handle.

<comment><USER7> What? The username just shows as ______*_ for me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It wouldn't be HN if I didn't say that I think Windows 95 had solid blue title bars rather than the 98/NT gradient.

But yeah this is cool :)

<comment><USER9> NT didn't have the gradients either. 2000 did.

<comment><USER10> Win98 did though.

<comment><USER9> That's correct. 98 was the first release to have it, chronologically speaking. 2000 was the first NT based Windows to have it.

So 98/NT didn't make sense to me. NT4, the last release to use the name NT, had a very Win95-like appearance. I also remember NT 3.51 (and I guess there were other 3.x) that had a very Win3.1-like UI despite being 32 bit.

<comment><USER8> Yeah you got me. Fair enough.

Windows 2000 was amazing and just my favorite OS. Saying that as a linux user.

<comment><USER11> Win2000 was the most perfect and least buggy Windows version of all time.

<comment><USER9> It didn't seem buggy at the time but you wouldn't want it on the public internet with all its security bugs.

It would be nice if Microsoft just backported security improvements and other kernel type stuff without messing with UI.

<comment><USER11> Of course but the problem with updates is that you can never only get security updates... You have to get "feature enhencements" too... It would be nice to have 2 branches.

<comment><USER9> I don't mean just security updates though. I mean _systemic_ security improvements coming from redesigns of components. Some of the changes are feature enhancements in the kernel too, some affecting security.

For all the criticisms of UAC or the Win8+ app store I would sooner trust a sandbox on recent windows than I would on Win2k. Even the XP SP2 era had huge security re-vamps that Win2k never got.

And there are performance things. I happen to know that Win32 message pumps have a better locking scheme on Win7 than they did in 2k.

The issue is in order to get enhancements in the lower layers you get forced into other bloat higher up.

Disclaimer, I spent a few years as a dev on the Windows team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hacker News already does look like made in Win95 age.

<comment><USER13> Simplicity has strong potential for standing the test of time.

<comment><USER14> Combined with consistency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I also wrote something like this a while ago. I created a GitHub Gist so you can compare: [https://gist.github.com/T0astBread/1e04aed3c8e1c3f19d5fc5e5a...](https://gist.github.com/T0astBread/1e04aed3c8e1c3f19d5fc5e5a5602281)

Someone mentioned how much they miss beveled buttons and how every button would be cooler with a beveled edge so I thought "well how about making everything beveled then", then I got a little carried away...

Anyways, mine is utterly impractical. I don't know how but I managed to make the site sluggish with just CSS. It's probably also broken in Chrome. This looks extremely cool in comparison!

</comment><comment><USER16> To do this for Chrome, all you need is the popular Stylus extension [1] and OP can upload it to userstyles.org [2] for even more convenience (don't need to download a CSS file).

Also to be even more Windows 95-ey I recommend making the top links (new, past, etc.) look like a tab bar! (I really like the way the footer links look like a status bar.)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne)

[2] [https://userstyles.org/](https://userstyles.org/)

<comment><USER17> If you don't want to install a 3rd party extension (maybe it seems like too much of a risk for such a frivolous purpose), then you can make your own. Just download hacker95.css and create a file called manifest.json in the same directory with these contents:

{ "name": "Hacker News 95 Extension", "version": "1.0", "description": "Hacker News 95 Extension", "permissions": ["activeTab"], "content_scripts": [ { "matches": ["[https://new.ycombinator.com/*"](https://new.ycombinator.com/*")], "css": ["hacker95.css"] } ], "manifest_version": 2 }

Then in your Chrome Extensions settings, find the option to "Load unpacked extension" and point it to your directory.

<comment><USER17> So my anti-procrastination setting kicked in just as I made this comment and now I can neither edit it or delete it. I made the same comment again with proper formatting of the json file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Honestly my immediate thought was, doesn't it kind of already? Just kidding

<comment><USER19> I don't think it's an insult anyway. I like the clean and simple look, and the Windows 95 theme gets a lot right in terms of UI design. Generally high contrast, easy to tell at a glance which widgets are clickable.

Hacker95 seems to get the Windows 95 buttons wrong though, showing them as 'sunken', and not giving a clear impression of being clickable.

<comment><USER18> It's a joky insult. Hacker News and Windows 95 have in common that they look objectively old. But what they also have in common is that they are function over form in an atypically pure sense, especially compared to some modern UI design.

Although I prefer a more balanced approach on the spectrum of pure function and pure form, pure function beats pure form any day

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems no one has mentioned it yet but what bothers me about most of these stylesheet hacks is that they never get the font right. Granted I don't know what it would take to make the old font (MS Sans Serif?) browser-compatible, possible copyright issues aside(?)

<comment><USER21> Check out this article on this exact topic: [https://vistaserv.net/blog/90s-fonts-modern- browsers](https://vistaserv.net/blog/90s-fonts-modern-browsers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is it rigged to give you the good ole' blue screen of death every 10th click or so?

<comment><USER23> Because real Windows 95/98 had BSOD every 10th click or so and people could not get work done at all.

Funnily, in last few months on macOS Catalina i've got more kernel panics than in prior 13 years on Mac and 8 years of Windows combined.

<comment><USER24> I know this is unsolicited and I apologize for that, but check your Console logs immediately after you boot back up if you haven't already, there might be a hardware issue, and you ought to be able to get a good idea of what's going on by seeing what kext is affecting it.

My current and previous laptop have been fine, but I used to have issues all the time on a much older laptop, and the issue back then, I forgot exactly which piece of hardware it was, but there was a bug in one of the drivers that was patched in an update, I think it was 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 that had the issue, a known issue at the Apple Store; but they couldn't do anything about it from behind the Genius Bar. Generally if you're getting kernel panics though, there's either something wrong with a piece of hardware or with the driver for it, although it could be any kind of kext causing the issue if you have any 3rd party kexts installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish win10 had a win95 or win 2000 theme. I really love this aesthetic. I used to use win7 like this too.

</comment><comment><USER26> I love retro-ish design but it's often not practical or pleasing, past the initial novelty, and a reminder of why things change.

This looks excellent (from the screenshot). It reminds me of a mid-late 90s Windows Usenet newsreader, which I wouldn't mind if every web forum looked like.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've added a user style sheet in Safari somewhat recently to fix an annoying video player. I think it was easy to find in Settings. Can someone check if that works? Not near my laptop right now, and I use a 3rd party app on the phone.

<comment><USER28> It's easy to add as a user style sheet in Safari (Preferences > Advanced > Stylesheet), but there's no CSS selector to limit it to a domain, so it makes the whole web turn Windows 95 style, not just Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a CSS stylesheet to theme your Hacker News in a Windows95/98 style

<comment><USER29> You have installation instructions for Firefox, which has like a 5% market share, yet you don't have instructions for chrome. That cracked me up

<comment><USER30> Chrome removed that functionality a few years ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1ymfgw/user_stylesh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1ymfgw/user_stylesheet_customcss_support_removed_in/)

(The comment there that removing this "is going to help increase speed significantly in the future" is pure BS. If anything, user stylesheet functionality was handled in native code --- just adding another CSS to the page --- which makes it far more efficient than going through the whole JS/extensions route.)

Ironically, IE11 is the last MS browser to support user stylesheets (Tools->Options->Accessibility) but Edge doesn't.

Even in Firefox, the fact that it's named "toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets" is ominous.

The Internet is becoming more and more user-hostile, and it's not just websites who are responsible.

<comment><USER31> >The Internet is becoming more and more user-hostile, and it's not just websites who are responsible.

That's because the webbrowser has been pushed away from hyperlinked documents viewer, to essentially a virtual machine running untrusted code from anywhere.

It's probably Googles fault somehow. They seem determined to ruin everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> fits nice to my wetransfer alternative [http://www.upload95.com](http://www.upload95.com)

<comment><USER33> The gradient on the titlebar was from windows 98 btw, windows 95 didn't have it.

win95: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Windows_95_at...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Windows_95_at_first_run.png)

win98: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Sound_Recorde...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Sound_Recorder_in_Windows_98.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I love this! Can you do reddit now please? :)

</comment><comment><USER35> I like this, because nostalgia adds fun to news!

My personal preference, however, would be to see Hacker News look like IRIX.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great project! A screenshot in the README would be awesome, though.

</comment><comment><USER37> I already have lots of custom CSS for HN though :D

</comment><comment><USER38> Now all we need is a good dark mode :)

<comment><USER5> I'm using darkreader for firefox, works ok.

[https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> That makes me feel 25 years younger!

</comment><comment><USER40> Sir/Madam, you are a hero!

</comment><comment><USER41> Themes...

Sitting in these Zoom meetings, that's about all I think about.

Three Participants: [https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/pl...](https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/placed_wide/nprshared/201805/582776998.png)

Four Participants: [https://www.feelingthevibe.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/06/NU...](https://www.feelingthevibe.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/06/NUP_186210_11411-1024x684.jpg)

Eight: [https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thebradybunch/images/3/3...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thebradybunch/images/3/3a/The_Brady_Bunch_Movie_opening_screenshot.png/revision/latest?cb=20140909185228)

Nine: [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0b/a1/b6/0ba1b63cf281efbe48eb...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0b/a1/b6/0ba1b63cf281efbe48eb455025970ee4.jpg)

Silly.

Sorry.</comment>


Cisimple releases RESTful/real-time API w/ Pusher channels - <AUTHOR> https://www.cisimple.com/api

<comment><AUTHOR> Rather than just exposing functionality via typical API operations we wanted to make it possible for consumers to get real time notifications when their builds changed state (i.e. Started, Failed, Passed, etc). To accomplish this goal we've exposed the ability for people to subscribe to Pusher channels via our API. One of our users has already developed an OS X app that uses this functionality to pop up Notification Center updates. <https://www.cisimple.com/dev_center#third_party>

Here's a quick list of functionality included in this release: -Retrieve a list of your Jobs -Retrieve a list of Builds for a given Job -Retrieve data about a single Build -Kick off a new Build for a given Job -Stop all Builds for a given Job

</comment><comment><USER2> Blog post providing some details about the way Pusher was integrated [http://blog.pusher.com/using-pusher-to-power-cisimples- real-...](http://blog.pusher.com/using-pusher-to-power-cisimples-real-time- api/)</comment>


Byebye SlideShare, Hello SpeakerDeck - <AUTHOR>

This is by no way an advertisement for Speaker Deck :) Not even an employee or friend of theirs (Considering how I'm all the way from Singapore)
just thought that their UI would be something people would very much prefer compared to SlideShare, which now seems a little clunky.
http://speakerdeck.com/ <comment><USER2> Really like it when compared to SlideShare for three reasons:

1\. The actual slides are bigger.

2\. There are no advertisements overlaid on the slides.

3\. You can download a PDF of the slides, without having to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER3> slideshare moved to HTML5 recently <http://www.slideshare.net/html5>

no more flash</comment>


Ask HN: How do you network on the road/in a new city? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> When I was growing up, I moved around a ton because of my Dad's career. Between a bad stutter and the stigma of always being the new kid, making friends was never easy. But, I learned some amazing things about networking. Odd, isn't it, how some of the worst things that happen to us as kids turn out to be some of our greatest gifts as adults??

Here are some of the best things that I learned.

1.) Don't approach people who are standing alone; approach groups of two. Whenever you approach a group of two, there is a very good chance that at least one of the two want out of the conversation.

2.) Learn to smile whenever you see someone.

3.) If you smile at the same person twice, it is time to introduce yourself.

4.) You don't matter. Ask lots of questions and put the focus on the person who you are talking to.

5.) Proximity is very important. If you want to make friends in a hurry, learn to situate yourself in a place with a steady stream of people. Standing at a buffet table is a cliche because it works.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meetups are a great way to find people interested in the same things you are interested in. And since you can target by distance to where you'll be as well as dates, you can have a schedule ahead of time.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I was in Berlin a couple of years ago I had checked out what hackerspaces existed there ahead of time and I'd chatted briefly with some of the people at one of the places through IRC. I was only staying in Berlin for a few days so I wasn't looking to build any long-lasting relationships with anyone (though there is nothing wrong in networking even if you're not going to stay some place) but I met a lot of friendly people and a couple of them were so welcoming that if I wanted to I think I could have built some pretty good relationships with them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd avoid going out entirely with the goal to network - it puts you into the wrong mindset, and people will pick up on it. The majority of people don't enjoy networking for the sake of networking.

Go somewhere people gather. Bars, clubs, meetups, work functions, really anything is fine. Be social. Expect nothing. Followup with the people you have a genuine connection with and they'll introduce you to their friends when the time is right. If you don't make a genuine connection, move on.

If you consistently do this, you'll build out a useful, large group of friends who actually care about you. Hopefully you care about them too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Use an app like the one we are releasing. It's specifically designed to solve this problem. People post what they want to do and others join. For now use meetup.com</comment>


Anthony Kennedy: US Supreme Court Judge to Retire - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44634176 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17410389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17410389)</comment>


Verizon has turned to Google Cloud's Contact Center AI to automate phone calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/13/if_customer_service_for_verizon/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure the telcos have statistics to validate this system, but it seems to completely oppose my own personal experiences.

I have never phoned customer support to:

\- View my account details (available online)

\- Find out about new plans and promos (available online)

\- Pay my bill (available online)

\- etc (available online)

I have only phoned customer support to:

\- Negotiate a better rate (requires a human)

\- Argue about excess charges on my bill (requires a human)

\- Get put on a off-market plan (ie loyalty, retention, etc -- requires a human)

I guess if there _really are_ that many people phoning support with trivial questions, a voice assistant will free up the phone line for people who actually need a human. I suspect it won't, as they'll reduce the number of support employees accordingly.

<comment><USER3> As someone who in a past life worked at a telco..... its insane how common those are. A HUGE part of my job was getting people to use the dang website!

They work REALLY REALLY hard to get people to use the website.

It's mostly older generations, they refuse to use a website for many of those basic things. A lot of it is an issue of trust, they just don't trust websites.

<comment><USER4> The problem is, the second they have my email address, they start spamming you.

When they have to pay $0.62/message, it cuts down on the crap.

I'm a member of a profession where you're supposed to read all of their comms. Now that they've switched to email, they send way more crap that I have to sift through and I can't block them.

<comment><USER5> > The problem is, the second they have my email address, they start spamming > you.

Being (arguably) legitimate companies, their unsubscribe links actually do work.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't stop them from including crap in their invoices now that there's no printing cost.

Then there's the emails saying: "your bill is ready", but you gotta login to see what it is and open a PDF.

Paper is more convenient.

<comment><USER6> Or do it like PayPal: 'PayPal news and your transactions' \- 'to view your transactions, please log in on the site. Additionally, here's a bunch of commercial spam.'

<comment><USER7> That's infuriating, especially because you get that email even if you haven't made transactions on Paypal in months

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problems plaguing customer support today are not technical in nature and AI will not fix them.

> _You demand a human. The human is told what to say by the bot_

This has always been something I've never understood about customer support. In particular, chat support is bad about this, but I've had it happen on phone support too. Prior to getting connected to the human, the bot wants to take down a short description of your problem. That's fine, but the conversation often goes like this:

> _Bot: Please write a short description of your problem._

> _Me: Problem I am having._

> _Bot: One moment while I connect you._

> _(a small eternity later)_

> _Support: Hi. How can I help you? "

> _Ctrl+C problem, Ctrl+V problem*

> _Support: I see you are <verbatim repeats problem; with no paraphrasing and > no demonstration of understanding, I have no idea if the agent "gets it">. > Is that correct?_

> _Me: :shrug:^W Yes._

… like, why did I ever type that description? Here, a computer (I don't even know if it qualifies as "AI" given how rudimentary of a task it is performing) appears to have failed at the simplest of tasks. And this happens all. the. time.

Phone bots will often "authenticate" me with various credentials, and then connect me to a human who will immediately authenticate me with the same credentials. Whose time was saved?

<comment><USER9> A support agents time was saved because every annoying step like that causes x% of people to just give up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Except these automated systems never have the power to actually resolve problems. If they did, then someone would exploit them for gain.

I had a problem last year with a major credit card processing bank, where they decided I needed a new card/number, but apparently were unable to actually ship said card to me for an extended period of time. During which, I was locked out of the online/automated phone/etc system because I didn't know the new card/account number (and couldn't activate it). They literally wouldn't take my money, and it took mashing the '0' button in the automated system, which kept requesting my account number, for about 20 minutes before it decided I was allowed to speak to a human. That human located literally on the other side of the planet from me, also didn't know what to do about it, and it took being escalated through three levels of customer support before I got to someone who mysteriously had the power to ship me a new card within a day or two so I could pay my bill, activate the new card before traveling overseas/etc a week later. Thats hardly the first time I've had a problem with some bank/etc making some sweeping/automated change and not thinking through all the problems it will cause to various "odd ball" customers.

Anway, automated customer support is a joke unless your just calling to check your balance or some other activity you should be able to pull off with the web page/etc. At the end of the day, you need people who can understand the system, and solve the problems created by unthinking middle managers making broad decisions.

Companies that are known to have good customer support are the ones that have given their first line support people the ability to make financial decisions that could hurt the company if misused. You simply can't (yet) do that with an automated system.

<comment><USER11> I recommend Chase or Amex, I have had good success getting through and speaking with them about various issues. I'm not sure about not having the card number.

One thing you can try is the 'lost or stolen card' number rather than the general request line. They will get you taken care of most usually. Also, it's likely they already mailed your new card, so your card was indeed lost, only by them. I think this happened to me once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a customer support agent but I took a basic customer support training at my previous company to get better at communication.

If I remembered anything from the education it's this:

 _You have to address the customer 's emotional needs before addressing the customer's business need._

If you don't you end up with an unhappy customer who had his problem solved. I don't see an AI satisfying my emotional needs any time soon.

<comment><USER13> There's nothing more painfully frustrating than a customer service agent that tries to handle what they think are my emotional needs.

My emotional needs are that they fix their damn service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google is very clever! They write AI software to play _both sides_ of the customer-service interaction. The company side is this Verizon story of parsing human voices. The customer side is this story: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google- assistant-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google-assistant- makes-phone-call-demo-duplex-io-2018)

I would hope the Google Cloud speech recognition (used by Verizon) of the fake voice from Google Assistant (used by the phone customer) would have a 100% accuracy rate.

<comment><USER15> 100% accuracy is probably too much to hope for, as there will of course be poor-quality phone calls.

Of course, maybe Google could encode an alternate data stream inside the generated voice, which would enable perfect transcription.

Now I'm imagining a future where robots communicate with each other over audio channels....

<comment><USER16> What's wrong with that? We've preferred programs communicate with each other in human-parsable formats for decades.

<comment><USER15> Nothing wrong with it at all, necessarily. Just seems... a bit too on-the- nose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I noticed these systems typically immediately take you to a human if you start screaming swear words and overall sound enraged.

Try it next time! "____! Give me a _______ human you ____! ____!!" This is often followed by a prompt click of the line transferring and sure enough you're in the queue for a real person.

Of course, remember to do the opposite with the person. Be polite and respectful with the person on the other end of the line. And I've found, they often can really help you!

<comment><USER18> This generally isn't good advice and can result in your call being dropped, marked as "hot," etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had to return rental equipment after canceling FIOS service last month.

A few weeks ago I started getting automated calls from "Alex at Verizon" (obviously a computer) reading a script reminding me that the equipment needs to be returned. The only problem? Sometimes it would call 5 times a day, leaving a new VM every time.

I think it should be illegal to claim to be human, and generally these messages should always be delivered by text message with an option to reply STOP.

On the plus side, I brought the equipment to a UPS store where they scanned the barcode stickers directly into their system, handed me a receipt and an hour later Verizon had emailed confirmation of receipt. I didn't even need to pack them.

<comment><USER20> It sounds like annoying you with five voicemails a day is what it took to get you to do the return so if you're complaining about their strategy I doubt they care :p

<comment><USER19> No, they give you 30 days to return the equipment at which point they charge you late fees. The calls were totally superfluous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Rather than effort into phone bits, can we just put effort into letting you do everything from their website?

A well designed service doesn't let phone agents do anything the customer couldn't do themselves. It is literally called customer _support_ , because they help you do the things you want to do, rather than doing it for you.

<comment><USER2> I used to be with a Canadian MVNO who offer zero phone support agents (Public Mobile). Everything is done online.

As such, their online portal offers actions typically requiring a phone call, such as phone number porting, SIM unlocking, choosing a new number/region, and cancelling your account.

Aside: I once accidentally ported the wrong number over since autofill screwed up the input box (444 from my personal 444-4444 line and 5555 from my work line 555-5555). Within 5 minutes I my phone would ring 444-5555. I feel bad for the owner of that number, because it was assigned to me without any authentication whatsoever. Really put the 2FA attacks into perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We're going to need a new system.

The profit motive of corporations is directly in conflict with the duty to social good. As we proceed into an automated future, our labor protections are pricing humans out of the market. A great deal of unnecessary evil and pain worldwide results from this conflict.

At the scale of corporations such as Verizon, even a cost efficiency of one cent per transaction can translate into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on the bottom line. Simple state machines with rigorously defined transitions are very efficient. Creatively handling exceptions and undefined states is a capability of human employees, and it's often very inefficient to do so. A million automated transactions could occur for every one bespoke transaction requiring ingenious human attention. Ideally, corporations would prefer not to hire people at all, but where does that leave us as a society?

<comment><USER23> > As we proceed into an automated future, our labor protections are pricing > humans out of the market

Not just that, but the skill and knowledge requirements to compete with automation will continue to grow and less and less people will be able to meet that demand. Many people argue that many thought this would be the case with many technical revolutions before, but fail to admit that it's converging on a singularity. Sure jobs we didn't know would exist are being created where people can shift their work to, but the cycle for automation is becoming shorter and cheaper and sooner or later we as humans won't be able to keep up (unless you meet the high demands which are unreasonable to expect everyone to adapt to).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The thing is telephone customer support is you are already starting with an extremely low bar. Calling Verizon support before was always horrible. So even if the support stays on par with being bad but using NLP and GA it's a win for Google and a win for Verizon but the customer still has a bad experience.

</comment><comment><USER25> I could see regulations go the other way: tech companies will be forced to hire quotas of customer service reps to offset the jobs they keep trying to displace. More specifically, above certain thresholds of revenue and customers for a digital service, you need X number of customer service employees.

This would be a great benefit to most since it creates jobs and gives us real humans to speak with. Of course, it would increase prices of things, but depending by how much (I'm sure there's a sweet spot), it may be worth it for the better customer service.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've worked in call center automation for a while. Clients (big old company) would complain that people would use the phone line instead of the website. The thing is, the authentication on the website was atrocious while you would be very easily trusted on a phone call. It was in part due to regulations. Because we were building an automated system to handle the calls, it had to use the same user unfriendly authentication as the website. So I'm really not sure that this went anywhere. "Now please type your client number, it's written on a letter we sent you 3 years ago"

</comment><comment><USER4> My favourite was a Canadian ISP _changing_ its tech support number. This is before ubiquitous wifi and mobile data, but after electronic bills.

Like, if your service goes down, how are you supposed to find the new number?

I thought telecom tech supports numbers were sacrosanct.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've found Verizon's people to be useful/helpful in the past. If this puts them out of work, I'll be somewhat sad. It won't lower my bill any, that's seems certain.

My Comcast experience probably wouldn't be hurt by replacing them with even a slightly malevolent AI.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've worked for large and small companies, and I've never understood the outsourcing/robot-ting of your phone customer care people. First and sometimes last line of defense in gaining or keeping a customer.

Best Buy was probably the most egregious example of this.

<comment><USER29> Having worked in a call center for Internet, Telephone, and TV about 3 years ago. In my experience most people have the same stupid question.

1\. Do I plug in the green wire in the green port or in the red port (They call before they have even tried to connect things).

2\. My TV isn't working when they haven't pressed "Source".

3\. Something is wrong, restart router.

4\. My WiFi is slow when they have one router for 200 m2 in a house of concrete.

5\. A few % of the costumers make up the majority of the calls because of how they are.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, of course you're going to have a majority bucket of calls. The issue is when it goes above and beyond that. There isn't critical thinking.

\- This customer called 3 times in the past two days and we told them to reboot their router. Maybe it's something else. (I've had personal experience with this and it took over a month to get someone to replace my line from the pole to the house).

\- In the case of retail, it is much more complex (returns, repairs, warranty, pricing, etc).

It turns from an "OK" experience to a very bad one pretty quick when the script doesn't solve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I never call until I've exhausted all self service options.

I don't need to be told every time "Did you know...you can find us online to X, Y, and Z?"

Verizon customers are paying more because they expect more, so this move by them is disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't talk to computers other than to demand a human. I doubt very much I ever will. It's why stuff like Alexa and Siri is doomed to fail. People don't want to communicate that way.

<comment><USER32> On the other hand, Amazon's chatbot for order issues is actually one of the best customer support experiences I've had.

Me: "I need to get a refund"

Bot: "Which order do you need refunded?"

Me: _select order_

Bot: "What's your reason for requesting a refund?"

Me: "Item did not arrive"

Bot: "Alright, I've credited your payment method x#### used on this order."

Fastest refund I've ever gotten-- the product never arrived at the door and usually a refund like that requires an escalation to prevent fraud; I'm assuming this system uses some sort of risk analysis score to determine if it can refund without a return.

<comment><USER33> You know that it's even faster through their return portal, right? I've had literally zero positive experiences with chatbots. There's a reason why they're not taking off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember a Canadian ISP that asked me to call back at a certain number. It turned out to be the direct number to the call centre where they would immediately answer.

I published that one far and wide!!!

</comment><comment><USER34> I just say "f __king human please " and AI seems to understand that pretty well in most cases.

<comment><USER35> That exact situation is what the article is about. The part truncated from the article title on HN is "...The human is told what to say by the bot".

<comment><USER36> We're implementing Manna [1] one little step at a time.

1: [https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> chat bots, automated phone systems etc have been an utter failure thus far. verizon and att have the most convoluted pricing models. telcos should be nationalized like the airline industry.

</comment><comment><USER38> the question become's who's in charge of developing the Dialogflow for this use case. If it's Verizon, I'd certainly expect it to make the human less useful.

</comment><comment><USER39> The key part of the title is left out, making this clickbait.

<comment><USER39> title changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Tough loss for Twilio Flex</comment>


Northern Rock to sack 650 people, may include techies - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers-hr/people-management/news/index.cfm?newsid=20614&utm_source=ycombinator&utm_medium=sb&utm_content=anguyen&utm_campaign=sb

<comment><USER2> I hope they keep the IT, they need it</comment>


FounderDating Expands to the Rough World of Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/21/founderdating-hardware-launch

<comment><USER2> Having always been asked "Do you know someone who does X?" a lot, I have certainly found it most difficult to answer for those in hardware. Perhaps it's just from my perspective having been in software so long, but I am excited to see a focus on Hardware networking, particularly at the founder level.

Curious to hear how hardware people have found co-founders/early employees to date. Classmates? Former co-workers?</comment>


Ask HN: How to find more time to read while working on a side project? - <AUTHOR> I like to read and learn, but it's getting harder these days as I focus all of my free time on my side project. It's hard for me to 'justify' reading when I can actually get something done.<p>How do you find time/reasoning to read? <comment><USER2> I have the same problem. The only thing that works for me is working in a set number of pages per day as a goal, say 10. That way, even a medium to large sized book can be covered in 1-2 months.</comment>


A Simple Tool to Send / Receive W9's for Contractors - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TomoHQ/status/707585039450513409 <comment><AUTHOR> It'll be 100% free. Hopefully it can help a lot of people!</comment>


Everything every London startup-scene wannabe needs to know - <AUTHOR> http://transferwise.com/blog/2013-04/tour-of-london-start-up-scene-part-1

<comment><USER2> Average salaries?</comment>


What appears superficially to be a line is actually just a one-dimensional mob - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/12/09/10102459.aspx

<comment><USER2> The headline is poor; the author's point isn't about the nature of lines in general, but of lines _in China_.</comment>