AT&T Gives Up on the iPad 3G Unlimited Data Plan - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/06/02/att-kills-ipad-unlimited-data-plan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

<comment><USER2> The sign up any time you want unlimited plan is why I waited a month for the 3G to be available and why I paid a 130 dollar premium... This is completely untenable for apple to allow this to happen not even six months later. As a matter of fact, the announcement is VERY suspiciously timed exactly 1 month and 1day after the sale of the 3G ipads, making them unreturnable!!!

<comment><USER3> _Existing iPad customers, who already have the $29.99 unlimited monthly plan can choose to keep it_

<comment><USER4> Right, but one of the very appealing things about the iPad data plan is that you can start or stop service whenever you like. But now, if you stop your unlimited plan (or hadn't started it yet) the unlimited option ceases to be available to you.

<comment><USER2> Here is my FTC complaint. You too can file one!

[https://www.FTCComplaintAssistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=e...](https://www.FTCComplaintAssistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en)

Apple computer advertised 2 different models of the iPad: one at $500 with wifi only Internet capability, and one with wifi and 3G coverage for $14.95 for 250 MB of data per month, or $30 a month for unlimited data (provided by AT&T)

This 3G was a no contract plan, requiring no longterm committment from consumers and was a Major buying factor for a large number of buyers, myself included. The fact one could upgrade to a reasonably priced unlimited plan at any time for a single month enticed us to purchase the more expensive unit.

Now AT&T, 32 days after the huge initial rush of iPad with 3G models were sold, and 1-5 days after they became ineligible for returns to Apple, AT&T announces effective June 7, 2010, they are completely changing the two iPad data plans to:

200 mb a month for $15 with $10 for every 200 MB thereafter Or 2 GB a month for $25 with $10 for every GB after

I view this rate hike and significant change to the costs of ownership of the iPad 3G to be a material change to the functionality of the device. While AT&T is offering to grandfather subscribers to the unlimited data plan , I purchased a device I was supposed to only have to pay for 3G coverage in the months I needed it. As it is, I will have to either give up the unlimited plan, or pay $360 a year to maintain it or lose it forever, effectively placing me under contract

Either Apple Computer should be forced to refund the difference or portion thereof of the iPad vs iPad 3G difference, or AT&T should be forced to offer continued a la cart per month unlimited plans for all people who purchased the iPad 3G before their announced price change, for at least 365 days from the American release of the device April 30, 2010, Or apple computer should be forced to accept returns of all iPad 3G models purchased before the AT&t plan change announcement for an additional 90 days with no restocking fee and no requirement the consumer also returns the box.

No cellular provider in the US is an alternative to AT&T coverage in the US market.

<comment><USER5> Good letter. I have a feeling the class action attorneys are going to have a field day with this one.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is few companies have as many class action lawsuits against it as Apple. Perhaps Microsoft is the only one who has more. An old customer of mine is a lawyer specializing in class-action lawsuits, last time I talked to him about it he had filed suit against Apple seven times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to be a fly on the wall for the screaming matches between AT&T and Apple. This must be a prelude to AT&T losing exclusivity on the iPhone and punishing Apple for it. With all the data intensive iPad apps (e.g., Netflix) and the video conferencing coming in the next OS, this is a brutal move by AT&T. Factor in the dynamics of Android competition and we are in for some interesting telco moves in the coming months. Short term though, this is gonna suck for the consumer.

[edited to fix iPhone-induced ironic typo]

<comment><USER8> If this is a prelude to AT&T losing their exclusivity then it's an odd move - the standard "unlimited data" cap on Verizon is 5GB. I'm not sure why AT&T would charge more for less compared to a competitor who was about to offer an alternative for their customers.

I wonder when we'll see the famed Jobs reality distortion field try and sell us on 2GB being enough data for anyone.

This also exposes the ridiculousness of mobile data pricing - the excess charges are $10 per extra 1GB, but the base plan is $15 for 250MB? Hmm.

<comment><USER9> My feeling is ATT plans to offer ~5GB at ~$35 later. They probably don't want to announce it now since it will immediately be visible that they are charging more for less data. I foresee a rush of ipad 3G purchases from now to June7.

<comment><USER10> Elsewhere it was noted that iPad orders are now being placed on hold until the 7th... :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For some perspective on how low 2GB is, this isn't just about video, it is audio streaming too...

Pandora uses 64 kbps for normal quality and 128 kbps for high quality.

       64 kilobits (Kb) = 8 kilobytes (KB)
       8 kilobytes = 0.008 megabytes (MB)
       0.008 MB per second * 60 seconds = 0.48 MB per minute
       0.48 MB per minute * 60 minutes = 28.8 MB per hour
       28.8 MB per hour * 8 hours = 230.4 MB per work day
       230.4 MB per day * 23 work days in a month (max) = 5,299.2 MB
       5,299.2 MB = ~5.3 GB

Double that if you are listing to the high quality stream.

<comment><USER12> True, but if you're at work it can just go over WiFi (or just use Pandora on your computer). I think it's a bum deal because the terms changed just a month in, but as an iPad owner I'd have to try hard to use 2GB per month outside the range of WiFi.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not where I work. We have approved devices and insanely secure wi-fi that, even when you are connected, has surf-block implemented. Which is why I bought an iPad with an unlimited plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate to say this because it just makes me angry but it's all our fault.

If we didn't buy so many ipads with practically criminal TOSes then we wouldn't be stuck with a device that is tied to one of the worst cell phone providers in the world.

If more people demanded open network selection, and refused to buy an ipad until it was available on any network then we would have the features we want.

<comment><USER14> Ah the free market at it's best. Allowing consumers to unwittingly screw themselves over and over. Steve Jobs approved.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure Jobs was as against this change as the rest of us - do you really think this is something Jobs would willing do and 'approve'. Seriously?

There is no way this is a good for Apple and conversely, it's unlikely Jobs had any control over this change. Remember, this is ATT's move, not Apple's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Barely a month and they kill this plan? This was a large part of the reason I decided to buy a 3G iPad. Isn't it past time for Apple to dump ATT?

<comment><USER16> I bet Steve would want to for a long time. But it's an exclusive deal, so AT&T has the upper hand here, i think. If the rumours are true, AT&T has a 5-year- exclusive contract with Apple. That's still a lot time left. Ironically, this exclusiveness is some sort of lock in (from at&t's side) and here it's widely considered harmful :)

Meanwhile androids infiltrate all other major networks..

<comment><USER17> If things get bad enough, can't Apple buy out the rest of the contract ahead of time?

<comment><USER2> They can ignore it and pay damages if there is no cancellation clause. It is highly unlikely a court would enjoin them from doing some as pro consumer as opening their platform to another US provider.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't make sense to work out such a contract without a cancellation clause. They could as well just make a verbal promise without signing something. Penalties are usually very, very high if one side doesn't fulfill its part of the contract. By high i mean high enough so that Steve still sticks to AT&T ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hope Apple gets hit hard on this. Either they didn't sign a contract with AT&T and got blindsided, in which case they're guilting of creating a carrier- locked device that enabled this to happen, or they were fully aware of the upcoming changes and decided to misrepresent the product back in February. Would this have happened if the iPad was T-Mobile 3G compatible? I really doubt it.

<comment><USER19> iPad is NOT carrier locked

<comment><USER17> You can't get 3G speed on T-mobile with an iPad though can you?

<comment><USER19> Not sure, but carrier lock means that you cannot use a SIM that is not from the carrier that it is locked to ( like the iPhone ).

Carrier unlocked does not mean that it will work well with other US carriers, just that i can work with any SIM.

Point is you can take it anywhere in the world there is 3G coverage (at the right frequencies) stick a SIM in it and it will work. Not so with the iPhone (unless you bought an unlocked one, which is not possible in the US).

<comment><USER17> Yes, I'm not suggesting that the iPad isn't an unlocked device. Just pointing out that there is "effective" lock-in in terms of high speed data service.

<comment><USER20> T-Mobile and AT&T 3G services require different antennae (and possibly chips). You can use the same device to access their GSM networks and get onto Edge, but when it comes to 3G a device either supports one or the other. To my knowledge there are no phones (or devices) on the market that support both AT&T _and_ T-Mobile in the same device.

<comment><USER17> Correct. That's why it's "effective" lock-in. I can't see any technical reason not to support all 3G frequencies, but until these kinds of devices do we'll have this effective lock-in problem.

<comment><USER20> For smaller devices (i.e. phones), the issue may just be space, since you may need to include yet another antenna, as well as possibly another chip needing to be included.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Finally! I've been hoping AT&T would ditch the unlimited plans for a long time. Although it sounds good, unlimited plans are a real problem, because they distort the incentives for just about everybody.

For users, there's no cost-benefit balance for using bandwidth, only benefit. This leads to inefficient use of what is, at the end of the day, a limited resource. For the carrier, there's every incentive to minimize the amount of network activity, so they can squeeze more users onto the network. It's hard to know how this affects Apple, but is there any doubt that the fragility of the exclusive carrier in their primary market has affected their development schedules and priorities? App developers don't care about bandwidth, _except_ to the extent that they can get their app banned by the carrier if they use too much of it.

Unlimited data plans are not the only factor, but it's no coincidence that AT&T has such poor network performance, doesn't allow tethering etc. This even affects iPhone users in other countries - would the iPhone have supported tethering earlier, if AT&T could make more money from the increased network activity? What about downloading music over the air? Skype?

With a pay-for-what-you-use pricing scheme, the interests of the user and the carrier are more closely aligned. The ideal would be something like Amazon's S3 pricing: based on usage, metered in small increments, and cheap!

<comment><USER22> I remember all these same arguments circa 1989-1994 about internet access. You could pay hourly or per data. Needless to say... we all know how that ended up. And we all know how it's going to end up in the near future with telecoms. The same pricing scheme as high speed internet. You'll pay for reliability and minimum performance guarantees. Those that don't care about reliability or performance will have cheaper unlimited access. In the meanwhile they are going to milk the old system for every cent of profit that they can.

Similar behavior was seen when telecoms had to give up on long distance phone charges. And again with text messages. This is just more of the same. And I will tell you why customers won't put up with it - it's very hard for an average person to know how much data they are consuming. They don't want to know either, it's just another thing to worry about.

<comment><USER21> The "unlimited" access that you have with high-speed internet isn't really unlimited. The limits are just measured differently. Whether it's 2GB/month or 30Mb/s, you're still limited to some amount of data over some amount of time. On top of that many (all?) ISPs will cut you off if you "abuse" you're "unlimited" dataplan.

The point here is that cellular bandwidth is scarce. Apple and Google jump through all sorts of hoops to use less of it, while still providing a good user experience. If consumers don't feel some of the pain of that it leads to real problems. I can tell you that I have much better service here in Canada, with tiered data plans, than AT&T customers do.

As for consumers putting up with it, we'll see. People never had problems understanding how long-distance worked. And charging by the minute seems to be working well for Skype.

Today it's hard to see how much data you've downloaded, but it doesn't have to be that way. I see two causes for this: 1) It's hard to present an itemized bill for data usage the way telecoms have traditionally done for calls. 2) There aren't many tools for monitoring and managing data usage because right now it doesn't matter. Everyone (int the US) has unlimited data plans, so why bother? But these are solvable problems.

<comment><USER23> _As for consumers putting up with it, we'll see. People never had problems understanding how long-distance worked. And charging by the minute seems to be working well for Skype._

That's because a minute of usage for both Skype or long distance calling is easily quantifiable. If I talk on the phone for 10 minutes at a long distance rate of 10 cents a minute, easy, that's a buck.

Heck, it was easy 10 years ago when we had WAP phones that used circuit switched data, because a minute of browsing the web meant a minute of airtime.

But how do you tell an unsophisticated user that given the bit rate and duration of a video on Youtube or song on Pandora, he'll use X amount of data? What is the best way to explain how many web pages or Google maps driving directions they can access before he bumps into the limit? How much data is behind a Foursquare checkin?

Edit: ATT puts per-session data usage on detailed bills (meaning my data bill would be 30 pages long if printed), but its altogether useless at trying to match back to what you were doing when you generated those data usage records.

<comment><USER21> You've just restated my points 1) and 2). But it's not as much a problem as you think. Long distance charges usually aren't predictable in advance: you know you're being billed by the minute, but you don't know how long the conversation will be, and you probably don't know the per-minute rate. What's the rate when calling an Irish cell phone? Or a landline in Guayaquil, Ecuador? You can probably look it up, but it's not simple.

On the flip side, even as a "sophisticated" user, I can't tell how much bandwidth a given video will use, or how long I can afford to stream Pandora to my phone. But it doesn't mater. My carrier provides an app that I can use to check my usage, and I can see how much I've used as a percentage of my limit. It's easy to get a sense of "been watching a lot of video lately, gotta ease up on that," or, "oops, downloading that ISO over tethering wasn't a good idea." It's not long before you have an intuitive sense of what things cost, in terms of bandwidth. I find I don't have to pay much attention unless I use tethering, but my data plan has 6GB cap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> wow - talk about a bait and switch. if i was on the road and used my ipad anything like i do at home on my wifi, i would burn through 2GB/month more often than not.

if apple ever starts supporting streaming media via the ipod app to the ipad, this would seriously cripple it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well apple website still advertises unlimited plan: <http://www.apple.com/ipad/3g/>

<comment><USER14> So if I bought an iPad a few days ago am I grandfathered? Or does it need to be delivered and activated before I'm a 'customer'?

I feel like I was bamboozled. I bought something for a certain price, and by the time it arrives the terms have changed and suddenly I'm getting a lot less data for slightly less money.

<comment><USER23> >Or does it need to be delivered and activated before I'm a 'customer'?

This: you'd need to have the iPad in hand and activated with AT&T, and should you ever cancel it there's no going back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Also mentioned:

\- iPhone tethering will cost $20/month. And it only works if you have the 2GB/month DataPro plan already.

\- This is set to take effect on the same day as Jobs's WWDC keynote, June 7th.

</comment><comment><USER27> Whoa, you're kidding me right? I know it's still available for existing customers. Thing is, that's a VERY small portion of long term iPad customers. 2gb a month will not cut it. This is a huge detriment to the iPad. Apple needs to cut them out ASAP. I can get past the service problems, taking on the iPhones sudden influx of traffic is more difficult than they think. Capping data at a measly TWO GB? That's absurd.

<comment><USER28> Is this true? Nobody is offering any statistics. What is your current usage? What would drive you over 2Gb?

<comment><USER29> Video content is the primary culprit. A few episodes of any substantive-length video podcast pushes you over the cap before you even use your device for anything else. Take "This Week in Startups" for example. The last episode was 700mb. So 1:40 worth of video content would consume 35% of your available data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems amazing Apple didn't have the current price tier as a guarantee for at least some period of time. They based a lot of the push for the 3G model in the US around the 3G pricing.

</comment><comment><USER30> I seem to remember some pundit stating they believed the reason AT&T agreed to the initial pricing in the first place was that they didn't think many people would be using 3G on the ipad, preferring wifi instead.

Can anyone find that quote or story? I'm drawing a blank, but it _seemed_ to be one of the stupidest things I'd read in a while at that point.

My guess is that people have been using _so much_ 3G data that AT&T realizes they'll be in a horrible situation as the iPad adoption grows - could be 4-5 million 3G devices with _long_ battery life basically in an 'always on' state, using up far more bandwidth than anyone predicted.

That said, I just can _not_ figure out why people can't seem to predict this. Most active users (the early adopters) can easily use 5-10 gig on a ipad as part of their 'always on' lifestyle. This isn't rocket science.

</comment><comment><USER31> File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC is empowered by law to investigate and address deceptive marketing practices such as these by Apple and AT&T.

It's easy and takes only a few minutes to file a complaint.

<https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/>

Here's the company info to make filling out the forms easier:

Apple 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA 95014 408-996-1010

AT&T 175 East Houston Street Dallas, TX 78205-2255 210-821-4105.

I believe that the key points are: Apple touted and advertised the $29.99 data plan as a major inducement to buy the iPad 3g. Apple described it as a "breakthrough deal" with AT&T, leading consumers to believe that Apple had locked in the terms and price. A key, heavily advertised, feature was the ability to jump between plans or have no 3G plan as dictated by needs and budget. The "grandfathering" announced by AT&T forces customers to either keep an unlimited plan continuously active in order to not lose it. The change in the plans has significant impact on the value of the device and the manner in which it can be used. We want AT&T and Apple to honor the advertised deal, not give us money, a coupon, a refund, free service for a month, etc. (That's what I want, anyway.)

If you're one of the people cheering because your bill got cut by $5 per month, don't bother with replying to this. This is a legal issue related to FTC rules and regulations on false and deceptive advertising, not whether you like the new plans better because you don't happen to move more than 2GB per month.

<comment><USER31> You can also file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau

<http://www.bbb.org/us/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bait and switch. The unlimited, on/offable 3GS was a big selling point for the iPad. I wonder when the first class-action suit will break out.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was going to sell my WiFi iPad and switch to the 3G, but now I'm going to stay put. I have a mobile hotspot with a true unlimited plan from Millenicom, which I use for all devices. I would have liked the GPS and the 3G, but AT&T just lost a customer. (It's also not attractive to get one for my Dad either, for his month-long stints in Florida.)

</comment><comment><USER34> As of right now, if you're an existing iPad user, you can still sign up for the unlimited plan (I just tried it).

<comment><USER35> Ahhh crap, my iPad isn't scheduled for delivery until June 15th.

Damn you accursed AT&T.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the 2GB isn't so bad if they charged half the original price instead of only $4 less. If it cost $15 for 2GB/month this may not be as big a deal.

This does look to me like bait and switch. People should not stand for this and show their displeasure by keeping their money in their pockets.

</comment><comment><USER37> I might be totally wrong, but the date (June 7) and the fact that this is being announced just after a month of iPad launch might mean Apple might have dropped a bomb on AT&T internally (like no more exclusivity) which would be announced in WWDC and AT&T is retaliating.

</comment><comment><USER38> Well its not in effect yet, because I just now signed up for the 29.99 unlimited plan via my iPad (I've been meaning to for about a week). AT&T having a large bureaucracy, there is probably a sizable delay between this announcement and its actual rollout.

<comment><USER39> June 7th, as clearly stated in the initial press release. Also just so happens to be the first day of WWDC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I bought the 3G iPad but I only plan on buying an AT&T plan when I know that I'm going to be somewhere without wifi for an extended period of time. I keep "marking the spot" on my iPhone. Yet my service seems to be getting worse.

</comment><comment><USER41> If I notice improvements on reliability and coverage in the SF area for this, its totally worth it. I just want coverage that works, if this solves it, awesome.

</comment><comment><USER42> aaaaaand that's why I'm moving my plan to Verizon this week.

</comment><comment><USER43> sigh- I suppose I really may have to dump my iPhone. Tethering was a promised feature in the 3gs.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is garbage, I am so mad at AT&T... Why do the consumers always lose

</comment><comment><USER45> Wow! AT&T has to be one of the dumbest fucking corporations in the world.

I'm sure Steve is thrilled that AT&T just took a crap on his lap by significantly changing the way the average person can use their iPad. It's even better that they sneak this in 1 month after the iPad launch, after Steve has fully demoed the iPad to the public, showing the most common uses as bandwidth intensive. It's almost like AT&T wants to lose Apple, and finally resorted to personally embarrassing Steve. (Golden Rule: You can never undo what you have demoed.) If this doesn't break the deal between Apple and AT&T, then nothing will!

</comment><comment><USER6> Reporter asking AT&T's CEO: What is it that you, AT&T, does?

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!

RAPE RAPE RAPE!

RAPE RAPE RUH RUH RAPE RUH RAPE RRrrrrrrrrrRAPE!"

Reporter: "What do you mean?"

AT&T CEO: "RAPE RAPE PROFIT RAPE RAPE RAPE PROFIT RAPE STEVE JOBS' BITCH RAPE RAPE RAPE PROFIT RAPE RAPE".

AT&T is just further proof that the Sherman Anti-Trust Laws have been a joke played against the public ever since Microsoft was given a light tap on their posterior as punishment for their crimes against the nation.

$15/month for 200MB is equivalent to paying $22,500/Mbps.

As a soon to be ex-at&t and iphone user, every single interaction with at&t and apple makes my anus hurt. But at least the call quality is second to none. Wait, is none really the word I mean to use?

</comment><comment><USER46> While I sympathise with people who feel mislead, we all know there is no such thing as "unlimited data". No teleco can honestly provide "unlimited data", it's just not possible or econonically viable. It's common for telecos to actually have a hidden limit on their unlimited plan. At least now they are being (more) honest about what you get.

<comment><USER47> Then perhaps they shouldn't have used that word.

<comment><USER48> "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." ( <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D58LpHBnvsI> )

Seriously, though, this has irritated me since the days where dialup internet access was all a normal person could get. All these plans were "unlimited", but in the TOS they made it clear that if you tried to use the service too much, or tried to stay connected too long, you're account would be suspended or closed.

Something is either unlimited or it isn't. If there's a cap it _isn't_ unlimited. I guess I might cut them some slack if they described it as "effectively unlimited" (meaning that there was more bandwidth than an everyday person could expect to use). Of course, on many services that have been labeled "unlimited", even that would be arguable.

Of course, I don't expect most people in advertising to be honest about anything (goods/services are usually described as a hundred times better than they could possibly be), but that doesn't mean I'm not still annoyed by it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Whats the big deal, its not like you have flash on these things anyway. The only decent site you can get content from is Itunes. 2G of Itunes product is a lot of $. A little extra for the bandwidth is no big deal.

<comment><USER23> The big deal is the CEO of Apple stood on a stage and talked about the crazy new price structure they negotiated with ATT. Sign up whenever you wanted, cancel whenever you wanted.

Because of the way it was announced, a lot of people bought the 3G model just as a hedge that when they _might_ need data they were covered. For example when on vacation they could switch on the $30 unlimited data plan just for the duration of their trip, because that would be cheaper than buying wifi in airports and hotels.

Now this is is not possible and Apple and ATT are going to have some explaining to do.

<comment><USER47> I just bought an iPad 3G last night for my in-laws for this exact purpose. They frequently spend time in their cabin which does not have an active internet connection. $15->$30 for the occasion when they needed the internet seemed like a fantastic solution for them.

I never imagined the pricing would change so drastically merely a month after the iPad 3G began shipping. At least in the US, you can't even order the 3G version and hope to have it in time to get the deal advertised on Apple's site anymore (estimated delivery is 7 to 10 days).

If nothing else this seems like a huge breach of trust between Apple and their customers, even if it is AT&T's fault.

<comment><USER20> > _If nothing else this seems like a huge breach of trust between Apple and > their customers, even if it is AT &T's fault._

Exactly. Apple should have had some sort of contract with AT&T to maintain their pricing for at least a reasonable period of time (e.g. 1yr) rather than changing the pricing structure immediately after launch.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tablo for iPhone lets you read emerging books as they are written - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tablo-reader-endless-library/id946820461?mt=8

<comment><USER2> Kind of like getting a beat version of a book? Intriguing.

I'd be interested to hear what authors think about people reading over their shoulder while they write.</comment>


Drexler: cognitive bias causes progress in nanotech to be overlooked - <AUTHOR> http://metamodern.com/2009/12/19/molecular-manufacturing-where%E2%80%99s-the-progress/

<comment><USER2> There's a parallel in business software development here. Often a programmer can toil in obscurity from his business counterparts, frustratingly producing no tangible output, until one day he press the big green button, and all the underlying code he's fleshed out comes together to produce something visible and dramatic.

The progress doesn't exist until it touches people in a way they intuitively understand.

What nanotech needs is a youtube video of a bucket of slop spontaneously organizing into something useful.</comment>


Antique 4x5 camera creates 20 micron photolithography masks [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAPt_DcWAvw <comment><USER2> Ben Krasnow (a Googler by day) has one of the most incredibly interesting channels on youtube - and accompanying blog [1].

The effortless way he is able to describe complex processes and techniques used in his experiments borders on being _Feynman like_.

[1] [https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/](https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER3> I agree. He's a treasure, and I've learned so much. And learned it fairly easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi. I'm the creator of this video. Let me know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER5> Awesome video and process, we've been talking about this at work since it showed up here and have a few questions if you don't mind:

How far do you think you'd be from making a simple 8-bit CPU like a 6502?

Have you thought about illuminating the initial film exposure as well as the substrate exposure (on the slide glass) using monochromatic light sources like a mercury UV lamp?

Instead of a vacuum pump to flatten the film during exposure, how about electrostatic charges?

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I'm very far from making a CPU. Check out Sam Zeloof's work to see some of the other parts of home IC fabrication. Creating the mask is just one part of the process, and dialing in diffusion, oxide growth, metal deposition would take a lot of additional effort.

Yes. My original attempt (years ago) was to use a standard photographic enlarger: replace the lens with quartz, place the paper or plastic master design on a UV light source on the table, then place the microscope slide with photoresist in the enlarger where the film would normally go. One problem is the lens is not setup to cover a whole microscope slide. Another problem is not enough UV light getting through the whole optical system -- exposure would have been hours if it worked at all.

Haven't tried electrostatic. Considered low-tack adhesive (3M post-it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to travel with a crown graphic - pretty much the same camera as in the video, shooting colour positive. You can do some great stuff with them, and tilt-shift is trivial, if that's your thing. Quality on slow film is just crazy - I've a shot of an ex, she's half-frame, and you can see the second hand on her watch - you can get very fine focus with a loupe, and having a Polaroid back to do some instant tests was a godsend - but you can't get the film for it any more.

I have no idea where he's finding film so cheap - I stopped when it was costing me £5 per exposure.

It also folded up into a very neat little box, which is irresistible to children - sadly one was handed it by a friend, who promptly destroyed it.

<comment><USER7> I literally just bought a box of the film he's using here, it's a high contrast red-insensitive film, $15 for 50 sheets, [https://www.freestylephoto.biz/531345-Arista-Ortho-Litho- Fil...](https://www.freestylephoto.biz/531345-Arista-Ortho-Litho- Film-3.0-3.9x4.9-50-Sheets-For-4x5-Film-Holders)

developing it for normal contrast images is more difficult but not impossible

<comment><USER8> I've shot a ton of Kodak Ortho film in 4x5 at EI 3, 6, and 12. It's actually super easy to develop. I recommend stand development in 1:100 HC-110 with occasional agitation. The developer basically exhausts after 10 or 12 minutes depending on the temperature, which happens to be pretty much exactly the right development time, so it's pretty much impossible to over-develop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my coworkers did his dissertation on photolithography, I grew up in a family printing shop and we followed a remarkably similar process to generate the metal offset plates that were used in the presses. It turns out that the processes are so similar that my colleague and I often frequently remark about it during idle chit-chat.

There's pitifully few good explanation videos about the printing version of this process, but here's a quick video (in Chinese, but if you watch the OP's video this one should be easy to follow) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KENIyBWNhyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KENIyBWNhyk)

The process in the printing industry has gotten very refined as well: you can go directly from a digital image file to a plate in one entirely automated step:

[https://youtu.be/mA8Dnp0rp3Y](https://youtu.be/mA8Dnp0rp3Y)

[https://youtu.be/TeJ_STTfBsI](https://youtu.be/TeJ_STTfBsI)

</comment><comment><USER9> Ben's interview on The Amp Hour [0] is pretty great as well. Awesome person, amazingly the same in person as in his video persona.

[0] [https://theamphour.com/480-an-interview-with-ben- krasnow-8-y...](https://theamphour.com/480-an-interview-with-ben- krasnow-8-years-on/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is so cool! Questions for engineers:

How much work would it take to go from this process to producing a working chip in his garage, like a 6502 or something? Would it be at all feasible? He did point out a ton of defects in the final product, probably due to dust or scratches in his equipment/materials. Would it be possible to clean this up enough to get 1-2 usable chips from a single sheet of 4x5 film? Without turning his garage into a clean room?

<comment><USER11> Here is a blog on home IC production: [http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first- ic/](http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/)

Having done some work in a university lab, I have no desire to be involved in silicon work in a home environment. It requires dangerous chemicals, and lots of equipment and dedication.

A short list of what I remember: \- Spin coater \- Some solution of exposure of masks \- Various chemical baths (HH, piranha, etc) in a dedicated area. \- Inspection microscope \- Tube oven \- Vapor deposition \- A way to measure film thickness

<comment><USER10> I wonder if at some point we'll develop new materials and techniques that make it easier to do this, with safer chemicals and less equipment. It may seem far-fetched but you never know. When I was a kid I would've thought it pretty far-fetched that people could 3D print ventilator valves at home that are actually saving lives during a pandemic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Applied Science is one of my favorite YouTube channels.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cringing it everytime he calls it an antique camera.

This is like a millennial talking about an antique technology called 'VHS' tape.

<comment><USER14> Go to craigslist (for a large city) or ebay and search "vintage computer". Stuff produced in the 90s is considered vintage.

<comment><USER15> Vintage != antique, and ginko is absolutely right. You can buy the exact same kind of camera brand new today:

[https://peartreephoto.com/sinar-p3-view- cameras/sinar-p3-df?...](https://peartreephoto.com/sinar-p3-view- cameras/sinar-p3-df?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrtS2k6rE6AIVCLTtCh0UbwYdEAAYASAAEgLWZ_D_BwE)

(Ignore all the marketing copy about digital. Anyone dropping this amount of money on a monorail probably would be using it with a high-end digital back, but that's not included in the price, and the camera above could perfectly well be used with a film back too.)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: JS based mechanism to upload big files - <AUTHOR>

I have seen flash and SL upload plugins, are there any JS/HTML based libs available to upload big files say 2GB to servers from web browser? <comment><USER2> I'd love to see an answer to this question too.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a secure way of uploading large (>100 MB) files directly to S3 from the browser. I couldn't figure out a good way to use a javascript solution because of the issue of needing access to the AWS secret key.

I ended up using a java applet called jumploader to get the job done, but I always wondered if I gave up too soon and there really is a good way to do this from the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try this : <https://github.com/23/resumable.js></comment>


Twitter's stock falls toward IPO-level prices - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/03/twitter-collapses-5-tumbling-toward-ipo-level-prices/ <comment><USER2> It's just the delusion of wall street. They expect hockey stick growth figures from a single product company that clearly already dominates their niche. Even though most people feel Twitter is declining, it's actually still growing.

The graphic shows the twitter bird in a freefall, but what's actually happening is the public markets traders worst nightmare, the bird is just flying straight on.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't call it a delusion. Investors were valuing Twitter at close to $40 Billion because they were expecting Facebook-like growth. Now that they don't see that growth they currently value it at around $20 Billion. Based on simple things like P/E that's still a good number.

I still think there's a good chance of a turnaround for Twitter. It's widely used by the media and celebrities. If they come up with a better way to consume this then I think they have a good chance of getting back to their recent highs in their stock.

<comment><USER4> I agree. It's the opposite of delusion, quite grounded in reality.

And I agree with your second point. Their current level of network effect / lock-in should give them plenty of runway to find new ways to grow and/or monetize.

<comment><USER5> I am not so sure. They actually have negative earning, GAAP-wise, caused by a huge amount of stock based compensation and acquisition costs. Even with all these spending, Twitter is not showing any growth. Twitter will lose more engineering and product talents as the stock price goes down. They can't also use stock to acquire growth either. It's a dead spiral. Twitter has been leveraging Wall street goodwill and hype but I think it's the start of the end.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't aware of the extent of stock compensation costs, but I do realize that they haven't turned a profit.

You don't deny the power of the platform, network, and brand themselves, right? I forget the buzzword for this type of non-fungible, unique asset. I guess we just wait and see what sort of valuation it fetches in an acquisition.

<comment><USER5> No I am not denying the value of the brand and the network, but I don't know how to valuate these assets. I don't see how they are worth 20B, but maybe some others do. In terms of the engineering platform, I am quite confident a similar platform can be built with much less than 1B. Twitter platform is not that special in terms of engineering challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter needs multi-level threaded discussions and "sub-tweets" that are more than 140 characters. Right now Twitter is an exercise in frustration. It takes so much work to understand other peoples' views that few bother, leading to endless misunderstandings and fights.

A miscommunication platform. #DescribeTwitterIn3Words

<comment><USER7> The character limit is part of the usefulness in Twitter, for me - make your point. Be succinct.

This is why I hate people doing things like tweetstorms.

<comment><USER8> Character limit also means that the views that make good sound bites have a better chance of winning vs more nuanced views. Succinctness is good, but it isn't necessarily the same as 140 characters

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ...and there's really nothing stopping it from falling much much more. There's really no justification for the value placed on this company--or many other tech companies that have interesting offerings but haven't actually managed to create a real business.

TWTR will likely be marked as a turning point for the 'tech bubble 2.0' when tech companies get put in two camps. Those that are real business and those that are not. I don't think we're in a 1999-esque tech bubble but there are a lot of hyped up companies that aren't real businesses that need to get washed out of the system.

<comment><USER10> So a company that does $2B/year in revenue isn't a real business?

Overvalued, maybe. But that's real cash.

<comment><USER11> But their net income is around -$600 million annually.

You can have a business that tells people that if they give you a dollar, you'll give them $1.50.

Twitter right now (oversimplified) generates $2 billion in revenue by giving away $3 billion. Of course they could try tightening their financial belts, but that'd probably hurt their growth.

<comment><USER12> They could recoup $600M pretty easily.... in employee salaries alone if they relocated out of San Francisco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Twitter's valuation is down to $19B, which is what Facebook paid for WhatsApp. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook would make a bid for Twitter at this price, even though FB+Insta combo seems to be killing them.

I can't believe Twitter's product people are so asleep at the wheel. The success of Instagram shows how consumers want to consume content. If twitter was as simple as Instagram (and got rid of its silly 140 char limit) then it would have a chance of going mass market. You can already tweet photos, videos, but not more than 140 characters? Really? You can't have threaded comments? It's a mess, and the management is much too afraid to change the product. Zuck made many changes to FB over the years with users revolting at every stage. Twitter stood still. It's obvious now which strategy is the right one. Twitter needs to grow up and get serious if it wants to grow beyond its niche.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961314)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9937778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9937778)

I've been pretty negative on Twitter for a while. I just don't see what they offer to justify their valuation.

They have an estimated P/E of 87 and yet they aren't growing. On the other hand their short interest is growing:(

TweetDeck is awesome. Their real time news is awesome. Their main website is awful. It's like a worse myspace.

Twitter, find a way to clean news data and deliver it to me in under a second identified with sentiment and stock ticker and I'll pay.

<comment><USER15> I thought P/E is calculated for companies with a positive EPS. Twitter is loosing money. Not sure how you came up with P/E of 87.

<comment><USER14> > I thought P/E is calculated for companies with a positive EPS. Twitter is > loosing money. Not sure how you came up with P/E of 87.

Short answer I got it from my bloomberg terminal.

Long answer.

P/E is different from estimated( or forward) P/E. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93earnings_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93earnings_ratio)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing I've noticed with celebrity accounts: an increasing amount of tweets is just a link to a new instagram post.

A tweet gets maybe a few likes and retweets, but the linked instagram post has 500 likes & 25 comments within 30 minutes. That's quite alarming!

e.g: [https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/626084866631667712](https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/626084866631667712) 18k likes on twitter, 866k likes on instagram.

let these numbers do the talking.

</comment><comment><USER17> The reason both Twitter and Google+ are struggling to grow their user base, IMO is because many folks I have talked to - find both products difficult to understand and use. Surprisingly most normal folks don't really get what "follow" means, and the slightly arcane terminology of twitter. The learning curve is a bit steep - and most users sign up, hang around for a while, don't really invest in discovering and following the right people, and soon just give up and never come back. The same is true for G+ - as in both cases your experience is defined by who you follow. Facebook got this right - as the simple concept of a "Friend" request translates perfectly to the real-world analog of making friends. While Follow is an abstract, invented concept with no real-world analog. That together with the torrent of noise and information on Twitter, and no good tools to filter and manage the feed efficiently, make Twitter a tough product to use even for experienced users. I personally love Tweetdeck - and have managed to tame the newsfeed with lists etc - but it is still tiresome and inefficient.

<comment><USER18> > Surprisingly most normal folks don't really get what "follow" means, and the > slightly arcane terminology of twitter. The learning curve is a bit steep - > and most users sign up, hang around for a while, don't really invest in > discovering and following the right people, and soon just give up and never > come back.

Question, do these people who find it hard to grasp how twitter works have facebook accounts? As facebook is way more complicated than twitter is (which is just a textbox, a submit button and that's basically it).

<comment><USER17> Yes, every one of these folks - mostly friends and family - has a Facebook account and are active users of Facebook. It is not the simplicity of having a textbox and a submit button that matters in this case - they all know how to post a tweet. It is that once they do that - nothing happens. In FB - a post often immediately gets a reaction - a like or a comment - even if they have only a few friends. The stuff you post on FB is not as transient - while your Tweet most likely disappeared in a few seconds from the timeline of your followers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Company that never made money, Priced at 12+ times Sales, little Growth. Stock falling?

While companies are making real money, Twitter like companies are creating the Bubble chatter this time.

</comment><comment><USER20> Part of Twitter's problem is a mismatch between people who hold the largest megaphones compared to people they need to stick-around if their user growth is to continue.

People with millions of followers probably don't need to interact with any of them, but will maintain or grow their follower count through whatever celebrity got them their original following. They'll likely get retweets and replies to virtually everything they post - but may not even read any of it.

On the other side of the spectrum, people just starting out on the platform probably have few or no followers, nor are they likely to immediately find the people posting about content they want to follow. It's like walking into a party where everybody is already 3 or 4 beers deep and trying to join the conversation.

Twitter seems to think the answer to this problem is to encourage you to follow Barack Obama or Katy Perry, which seems like a really stupid suggestion if you're trying to show a new user that they can use their platform to establish networks of people interested in similar things that keep you coming back.

Most users will never get any personal reply from either Barack Obama or Katy Perry ... so maybe Twitter should research how to push new users towards people more-likely to reply. Once you find people you can corespond with on their platform, it establishes a natural hook to encourage you to return.

By lining up virtual "nobodies" with the most famous celebrities on the planet they're setting new users up for disappointment unless those users invest time finding the right people to interact with.

<comment><USER21> Another thing I'm thinking of is how authentic are the users? Is Katy Perry really Katy Perry or is she a team of ghost writers? That really turns me off about Twitter. Likewise I'm very impressed when the actual account owners tweet but who knows, It still might not be them.

As for new user onboarding one thing that I think could work is if you get them to start searching for interests through their search functionality. That's how I found a lot of interesting accounts.

<comment><USER20> Twitter purports to be an advertising company. Can't they use some of that retargeting tech to suggest potentially interesting users to follow rather than sell stuff?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This stock appears to be the high-beta canary-in-the-coalmine for the rest of tech.

Tech in general has been cut a lot of slack in the past 10 years by the market. Anyone with a dream and a disruption pitch was given the benefit of the doubt. Now the sector is having to compete like the rust belt. If you've got a flaw in your management, your busines plan, your execution, or you have a gap in your barriers to entry, you're being punished like the rest of 'em. Twitter Exhibit A. It has screwed up on monetization, too free for too long, too many hesitant initiatives, not enough killer instinct ("not enough Zuck", or if you like, "not enough Bill Gates"). It's the weak giant being taken down, SOTC-style. It's 2015's Lotus Development Inc. But it's not alone: AAPL stock performance is also being cut no mercy here on even a minor shipments hiccup. AAPL is looking IBM-circa-1990. At that time IBM was the only non-oil company in the Fortune 500 top-5.

It doesn't help that Chinese demand is tanking - the tech waterline is going downwards and the shipwrecks are starting to show.

</comment><comment><USER18> IMHO a lot of people stop with twitter because they don't get the right social circle going: they follow a bunch of people but don't gain much followers and who they gain aren't really engaging in any activity, so it feels as if they're posting text in a document they store on their own computer: no-one really sees it nor cares.

Twitter has the downside that it's really 'in the moment': stuff that's tweeted now is interesting now, not tomorrow. This gives a problem with people who open twitter occasionally: they're likely not on twitter when something happens IRL and everyone's tweeting about it. With Facebook this is different, as things aren't really 'in the moment', or at least aren't depending on that that much: it's perfectly fine to read someone's post 2 days after it's been posted.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised Twitter's stock has floated as long as it has. While Facebook has diversified into different, successful, products and platforms, Twitter has stagnated, fumbled around and underwhelmed. Much like Yahoo. Perhaps I'm just a bit cynical and biased against Twitter though. I find the mostly arbitrary 140 char limit, 6 second video communication concepts a cute gimmick that will eventually tire.

I wouldn't be surprised when the tech bubble bursts, these social media experiments will be the first to fall back to earth. Any significant slashing of advertising budgets (due to e.g. macro economic affairs) will seriously strain the revenue model (and investor patience) of these services.

<comment><USER24> YMMV? I have much more business engagement on Twitter than Facebook. FB could disappear tomorrow for all my business cared, but I would certainly notice Twitter not being around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Revenues are up. Losses are down. I might buy some discount Twitter...

<comment><USER26> You have to ask yourself what _drove_ that initial valuation that you're now being "cheaply" That initial valuation was driven by the belief that they would be aggressively adding new users. It wasn't based on them doing a great job of extracting a better profit from a fairly static install base.

<comment><USER25> I agree. I understand wall street is looking for massive user growth. That seems to be a wild misunderstanding of what Twitter is, though.

I'm in the same camp as a few other commenters. It seems that Twitter's value is really in being a broadcast platform for big names. I don't think there is a viable contender out there. That population is finite, and "followers" can be passive consumers. I'm not sure that there is going to be much growth in the user base, and I think that's a natural property of twitter. I think it's still valuable and can be relevant for quite a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The whole point of Twitter is to know what's going on in the world of people and things you're interested in, BUT, and perhaps more importantly, IMHO foster conversation. The latter is completely opaque to someone who is new to the service. Conversation threads are buried under a click/touch and even then, it's hard to parse it.

I think the best thing Twitter could do is to downplay the importance of favorites and retweets (though they are important for growth but are a proxy for ego boost for the average user and not easy unless you're popular or important), and make the replies and conversations to a tweet/news story more prominent and "always-on" (with some limit of course, lest you see 500 replies to a Britney Spears tweet -- but then again, if you're following someone like that, may be you want to know what people are saying about it).

Engage more people in the conversation and surface it better. New users will have a much better grasp on what Twitter is if they do this.

My 2c.

<comment><USER28> Fully agree - it took me a while to figure out "conversations" on Twitter, its very un-intuitive.

<comment><USER29> Honestly I still don't understand them. They are not always in chronological order and their seems to be no logic behind the way tweets are grouped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of the disappointments for me about Twitter has been the lack of engagement. Many (most?) people use it as a broadcast medium. The longest, most engaged threads I see are (big surprise, internet) trolling and fighting.

Here's an idea: gamify engagement for verified accounts. If you're a big enough personality to have a verified account, you must @reply to, say, 1% of your followers before you can write another naked tweet. Or you can buy tokens that let you tweet without forced engagement, price determined in part by your follower count.

For a normie like me, the novelty of seeing your favorite celeb or software hero or whoever on twitter quickly wears off once you realize they send tweets once in a blue moon and never reply. You might as well be on their mailing list instead.

<comment><USER31> Celebrities are only on Twitter because it is a broadcast mechanism. It is precisely the unidirectional nature of Twitter that meant it caught on for the media industry.

Without that it would be nothing.

<comment><USER30> But we don't need another mechanism for celebrities to beam their thoughts into our heads, and I think that's become pretty evident by the slowdown in user adoption. Twitter could differentiate by being the place for celebrity _engagement_.

Clearly some exceptions would have to be made, e.g. for news agencies and such.

<comment><USER32> Celebrity engagement is essentially impossible. The numbers don't work. No celebrity can "engage" with a million people when there's only 86,400 seconds in a day. If you don't like the "million", put whatever number you like in there that is still comfortably greater than the number of seconds in a day. Engagement doesn't scale.

You can create the illusion of engagement, but that's all.

Note the lack of the word "Twitter" in the reply up until this sentence. It's not even about Twitter. It's just generally impossible.

<comment><USER33> Correct. However, the illusion of engagement can be powerful. e.g. Obama and Clinton campaigns were able to use dinner w/ candidate or famous supporters as a fund-raising lottery tool. Would people engage more with Twitter if they knew there was a small but real chance of getting a non-canned response from celebs?

<comment><USER34> But isn't that how Twitter works. There is a small chance the celebrity will tweet back at you.

<comment><USER35> Correction: There is a small chance that the celebrity/politician's publicity agent will tweet back at you. There is an even smaller chance the celebrity will tweet back at you.

I think that this is part of the reason why it's really the "illusion of engagement" and not _real_ engagement. The elite will perpetually be separated from the masses... the specific medium may change, but the separation will persist.

<comment><USER32> But I think it's again worth highlighting that this "separation" isn't because they're in their ivory towers, but sheer simple math. _Nobody_ can "engage" with millions of people. It's part of why Internet flash mobs destroying people's lives is something we need to figure out how to get a handle on culturally, and start stigmatizing, because nobody can "engage" with a mob to defend themselves. It's why even if you're only "Internet famous" and you're running a blog with thousands of readers, you can't afford to spend even a second a day on each of your readers. It's not really an "elite" problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I predict that Twitter revenue will grow as iOS 9 is released. iOS 9 will cause mobile advertising to undergo a paradigm shift as app-centered advertising becomes more important than website-based advertising. This will lead to increased ad dollar spending on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER37> Twitter hasn't done anything wrong. They didn't drive the price up. Twitter doesn't set its stock price, at least not after the IPO. From that day it was in the hands of investors. They drove up the price. They should only blame themselves when it falls back.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wasn't there some speculation that twitter itself had some bots auto- generating fake users, sending fake tweets, etc?

Even if they are not doing it, others certainly are for various reasons. I have always wondered what the true user count is.

</comment><comment><USER39> What happens if a stock in a tech company goes down to low value? Do they owe money back to the brokers that made the IPO?

<comment><USER26> Nothing whatsoever happens. It's just the market doing its market thing.

<comment><USER40> Not necessarily true - if the value gets low enough it'll get the boot from the NYSE.

<comment><USER39> But what does that mean to the company and its employees?

I bring this up because of the stock market crash having such ridiculous effects from the great depression era. Though I may just be uneducated on what really happened.

<comment><USER41> The stock price need not matter at all to the company; the stock price is completely independent of the company. Once the shares are sold, the company no longer owns them, so whatever happens, happens, just like whenever you sell anything else. If a farmer sells some corn, and the price drops drastically afterwards, it makes no difference to the farmer.

However, the owners of the company might get together and force the board of directors to do something, like fire the CEO. The CEO, who probably has a lot of compensation as stock or options, would like price to be higher, so he is likely to take actions to get the stock price higher. Such actions may or may not be wise, and may or may not be helpful for the company. Frequently they aren't...

<comment><USER9> "The stock price need not matter at all to the company"

Tell that to the employees holding options. Those options are likely worthless if the stock price goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Now if you were Jack and you were semi-entertaining trying to be co-CEO do you think events post earnings would absolutely put the nail in the coffin in your mind of being Twitter CEO? I have to believe you'd be like "Who wants this job?!" realizing just how far and long the road ahead is. They're basically Yahoo now with a strong core base of users but little growth prospects.

</comment><comment><USER42> Was there some trigger or cause for this? Did something happen over the weekend to change investor feelings?

<comment><USER43> A lot of tech companies are down right now. Twitter isn't the worst, but its a fun target for people.

<comment><USER44> No, in fact there are also a number of tech companies up right now because they are showing growth. Meanwhile twitter has been flat. The investment community didn't decide to gather around and pick on twitter because it would be fun.

edit: apparently people didn't take too kindly to pointing out that not all tech companies are having a downward trend. Here are tech companies that are up compared to one year ago: $FB, $GOOG, $MSFT, $AAPL, $AMZN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> And here's me still trying to figure out what the hell it's good for ...

</comment><comment><USER46> Do we need better initial valuation standards?

</comment><comment><USER43> Last year around this time, Cramer was talking about how Twitter would hit $90 before the end of the year.

<comment><USER47> "!cramer" has been a successful trading strategy of mine for over a decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Twitter may out of steam, but the days where being a machine fueled by runnaway hype IPO's are not going to go anywhere.

I don't think twitter's discourse ever helped anyone, any group, or any society.

Can someone brighten my day and tell me a way twitter has helped us, somehow?

<comment><USER26> Arab Spring (what happened post Arab Spring isn't on Twitter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's not a business, it never was worth even the IPO value. You are trying to make a business out of 140 character text messages which is pretty silly.

</comment><comment><USER50> Well if a smartphone app called Yo got funding, why not Twitter?</comment>


Why Version Control isn't Package Management – use npm for the frontend - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wbinnssmith/why-version-control-isnt-package-management-a-brief-history-5d40c524ba3e

<comment><USER2> This sounds great...

 _...in the next release of npm, npm 3, deduping will be the default during the install process: modules will be lifted as far up the filesystem as possible without creating issues between conflicting modules._

To me, what's missing (and maybe this is more of a browserify transform than an npm thing) is a module that steps through all the _require()_ s and replaces as many as it can with code to pull resources from cdnjs (or wherever). Many people wouldn't want to use that, but it would be a good option for others.</comment>


T1: A Modern Programming Language for Constrained Environments - <AUTHOR> https://t1lang.github.io/ <comment> as-j Ok, I know maybe it's too early in this projects lifecycle, but when I read the page this was my initial reaction.

As an embedded engineer I found the github page incredibly frustration, and it's tempting to just write it off. If the original author, or anyone else putting a putting together a language page, here's question I shouldn't have to dig for:

1\. Where's an example this has been used professionally? (or out side an academic setting) I'm pretty risk adverse since FW/embedded systems are harder to OTA, and changes once we've approved the HW design blows up projects. If it hasn't been, be upfront about it.

2\. What's the plan for the project? Is the language stable? Is a standard library next? I use a vendors language/BSP to avoid writing everything little thing from scratch, like printf()

3\. Give me a comparison to other languages, why should I use T1 over any other embedded solution. Include size, and maybe the performance hit.

4\. Show me some code. If I'm picking this for a project I need to think of everyone else I need to teach the language too, and how they'll accept it. It really helps for a quick glimpse at the syntax to see how foreign it is. Even if it's just Hello World.

5\. How do I access peripherals/HW? For example if I need flash/nvram persistent storage, access to the serial port am I back to C to write driver or interface to the BSP? If so I now need good C skills, T1 skills and good binding skills.

Thanks for everyone for the slides, reading the hacker comments pretty much answered 1-5:

[https://t1lang.github.io/NorthSec-20190516.pdf](https://t1lang.github.io/NorthSec-20190516.pdf)

[https://bearssl.org/gitweb/?p=BearSSL;a=blob;f=src/x509/asn1...](https://bearssl.org/gitweb/?p=BearSSL;a=blob;f=src/x509/asn1.t0;hb=HEAD)

</comment><comment><USER2> Is this actively being developed? I don't see an update for the past 8 months.

From [https://github.com/t1lang/t1lang.github.io/blob/master/North...](https://github.com/t1lang/t1lang.github.io/blob/master/NorthSec-20190516.pdf) slides, are telling for the language analysis to see why they think it's necessary to develop this:

Go:

      - Only with TinyGo*
      - Limited language/runtime support*
        - "support for goroutines and channels is weak"
      - Maps can ony have up to 8 (eight!) entries
      - GC: only for ARM, other platforms "will just allocate memory without ever freeing it" (but GC is required for proper string management)

Rust:

      - Inherits all memory-safety features of Rust
      - Heap is optional
        - But without the heap, everything is allocated on the stack
      - Supports ARM Cortex-M and Cortex-R, RISCV, and MSP430 (experimental)
        - Not other architectures that LLVM does not support
      - Typically more stack-hungry than C
      - Lots of automatic magic

Forth:

      - Many incompatible implementations
        - It's more a concept than a language (there is an ANSI standard)
      - You are support to "write your own Forth"
      - Very compact, with low RAM usage
      - Even less safe than C and not portable

Given all this, is it really cheaper to write a new language than add architecture support to LLVM? I also don't understand the "lots of automatic magic", is that referring to the generics and/or type inference in Rust? Additionally, if not using Heap (the criticism about Heap being optional), where else would you allocate memory besides the Stack? Can someone who does embedded explain that?

btw, on the magic bit the T1 design does go on to talk about Generics support and a rich type system.

Edit: this comment sounds too negative, and that wasn't really my intent. I just wanted to better understand some of the considerations that were used in deciding to make this new language.

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested to see the comparison against zig[1], which I am eying up as a quite interesting language for embedded development. I think the comparable features would be:

\- No automatic magic, anything that looks like a function or memory allocation is, anything that doesn't, isnt.

\- Good compile time code generation capabilities including reflection, much nicer than C macros.

\- Runtime safety features, such as bounds checking, but not as intrusive as Rust's borrow checker (which makes less sense for single threaded embedded applications). These can be turned off in release builds.

\- Very good C interop for use with manufacturer HAL libraries etc, includes a C compiler.

\- Better error handling than C, without needing full exceptions, instead the "try" and "defer" macros nicely replace C's "goto" for error handling[2].

\- No garbage collection

\- Embedded is a first class target, unlike Go/TinyGo

\- Working async support on all platforms.

\- Sadly not as popular as others, one full time developer currently I think.

[1] [https://ziglang.org/](https://ziglang.org/) [2] [https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/04/27/using-goto-for- erro...](https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/04/27/using-goto-for-error- handling-in-c)

<comment><USER4> AFAIK Zig doesn't have a way to calculate maximum stack usage at build time. But perhaps this could be done in a language-independent way, in LLVM. That would probably be better anyway, since to really do it well, you'd have to do whole-program analysis, including calls between Zig and C.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, GCC has '-fstack-usage' to output the stack usage of each function into .su files, I didn't realise LLVM was lacking this feature.

There is a tool in rust[1] I just found that makes LLVM emit this information for rust code, but it stores it within[2] the .stack_sizes section in the emitted .elf instead. Possibly a similar trick could be added to Zig

[1] [https://github.com/japaric/stack-sizes](https://github.com/japaric/stack- sizes) [2] [https://llvm.org/docs/CodeGenerator.html#emitting- function-s...](https://llvm.org/docs/CodeGenerator.html#emitting-function- stack-size-information)

<comment><USER4> I was referring to T1's ability to guarantee a particular stack size for the whole program (if I understand correctly), not individual functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Everything here is provided under the MIT license. This means that you can > use as you wish; you don't have to credit me

Doesn't the MIT license require that it be reproduced with all derivative works, including the copyright line (which includes the author)?

<comment><USER6> Yes, it does require that, even for binaries. MIT and [23]-clause BSD are probably the most often violated FOSS licenses because most people aren't aware of that.

BTW, that requirement is the reason why Boost, 1-clause BSD and 0BSD licenses are a thing.

<comment><USER7> You can also use CC0 for software to dedicate something into the public domain.

<comment><USER8> In many countries, you can't release your works into the public domain. You can only license them. Thus you should generally avoid CC0.

<comment><USER9> CC0 is explicitly designed with such legal issues in mind and includes a license for legislations that do not have direct way of putting works to PD

> If the waiver isn't effective for any reason, then CC0 acts as a license > from the affirmer granting the public an unconditional, irrevocable, non > exclusive, royalty free license to use the work for any purpose.

[https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#How_does_it_wo...](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#How_does_it_work.3F)

[https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public- domain/cc...](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/)

<comment><USER8> Alright thanks for pointing that out, I misremembered it then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anyone looking for examples, there are some here [https://github.com/t1lang/t1lang.github.io/blob/master/North...](https://github.com/t1lang/t1lang.github.io/blob/master/NorthSec-20190516.pdf) .

</comment><comment><USER11> T0 mentioned there is already used and available there: [https://bearssl.org/gitweb/?p=BearSSL;a=tree;f=T0;hb=HEAD](https://bearssl.org/gitweb/?p=BearSSL;a=tree;f=T0;hb=HEAD)

Example code: [https://bearssl.org/gitweb/?p=BearSSL;a=blob;f=src/x509/asn1...](https://bearssl.org/gitweb/?p=BearSSL;a=blob;f=src/x509/asn1.t0;hb=HEAD)

The slides are also much more educative: [https://t1lang.github.io/NorthSec-20190516.pdf](https://t1lang.github.io/NorthSec-20190516.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> I would argue that a language targeting bare metal type applications should at least be minimally aware of that underlying hardware. A single stack "virtual machine" type language is generally a terrible fit for the 2 and 3 operand register-based processors which dominate the landscape.

Every interview of Chuck Moore that I've read has contained zero push-back for his rather wild claims. It's entirely possible for an industry to do go down the wrong path for a while, but at some point, if Forth and stack processing were the giant killers they were cracked up to be, you would see them enter and dominate at least some portion of the mainstream. You can't say they haven't been given enough time.

It seems there are many "Forth curious" programmers out there, but they aren't being given the full picture with the various puff pieces and vanity projects floating around that never really go anywhere. It's almost a culture of victimhood.

<comment><USER13> I'd say calling a stack-based VM terrible is overstating the case a bit. In [1] the number seem to bear out that converting from stack-based to register- based yields an average, adjusted performance increase of approx. 25%. Also the transition results in an increase of code size of approx. 45%. That speed up is a non-trivial amount, but so is the code size increase, which is a valid area of concern for embedded/resource constrained engineering. Also, while I tend to STRONGLY agree about awareness of hardware at the language level (although I don't think this should be limited to just embedded environments) the methods in [2] are automated and simple ways the Compiler can take stack- based code and create optimized register-based instructions.

As an aside, there is probably a different argument to had about whether a stack-based VM as the mental model of a language is beneficial, but as a said, that is a vary different argument than discussing the technical ability to transpire a stack-based VM to a register-based one.

[1] 'Virtual Machine Showdown: Stack Versus Registers'. Ertl, Gregg, et al. 2005. [https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events%2Fvee05%2Ffull_papers/p...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events%2Fvee05%2Ffull_papers/p153-yunhe.pdf)

[2] 'Implementation of Stack-Based Languages on Register Machines'. Ertl, Dissertation. 1996.

<comment><USER12> I briefly skimmed [1] and their more sophisticated translation to a register VM yielded a 25% increase in code size, and not the 45% you stated? Regardless, VM to VM really isn't my point.

I still don't get the positives of why the programmer should be presented with a stack machine SW model when there is no stack machine type stack to be found in the HW. Programmers with no stack machine / language experience probably think (as I did at one point): "the stack on my HP calculator stack works great, why not base a language on that?" but it scales poorly, it gets really hairy if the stack is the only place to store things, and it's a major headache keeping the stack from going out of sync (hence Forth's clear I/O comments regarding subroutine stack use).

<comment><USER13> You are correct about the 25%. That was a mistake (for anyone else looking, the 45% was a decrease in the executed instruction amount from stack to register.

Correction aside, I, at some level, agree with you. The question of appropriateness/benefits of a SM model is different than considerations of the effectiveness of the code. In terms of the Forth SM model and its explicitly imperative model, I am familiar with the various complaints/arguments/critiques for varying reasons. I certainly acknowledge there is at least some burden placed due to the stack mechanics. I happen to be particularly attracted to the approach and enjoy programming that way, but that is just a preference of mine. However, I also tend to look at Forth as imperative language with which to program in what Backus describes as 'function level programming.' I find the benefits as listed by Jon Purdy, author of the Kitten language, in his talk about concatenative code to be compelling enough that exploration and refinement of this idea space to be valuable.

All that said, I am perfectly willing to consider that, as presented in Forth and presumably in the proposed language, SM mechanics and models are a hurdle for users of the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds promising! I like the idea of open source projects being an 'extraction' from something mission-critical like BearSSL, similarly to Rails' birth. Also agree totally re the comparisons of other languages, none are really ideal for embedded. Although I suspect that embedded CPUs will simply get more powerful for a given pricepoint, to the stage where we can use basically any language eventually. I suspect the syntax might be too alien for most though.

</comment><comment><USER15> A code sample on the landing page would have been nice.

<comment><USER16> These slides are handy: [https://t1lang.github.io/NorthSec-20190516.pdf](https://t1lang.github.io/NorthSec-20190516.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From t1spec.pdf:

"Postfix source code can be readily serialized into an executable format running on threaded code, a well-known code generation method that can allow for a very small compiled code footprint"

What's that method?

<comment><USER18> You take each symbol in sequence and append a reference to the compilation output. It's super easy and it results in a very small code footprint (it can often be smaller than compiled C for equivalent code).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me the most interesting part of T1 is the ability to strongly guarantee maximum stack usage, and the accompanying ban on general recursion. Are there any other languages or compilers that do this?

<comment><USER9> Resource Aware ML is a research language which analyzes resource usage, including memory bounds

[http://raml.co/](http://raml.co/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be interesting to try this or Forth out in some serious embedded system project. I wonder if I would get the "stack based" style to work in my head.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to see a statistic on the number of new languages announced on HN.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't quite get the target of this language. The landing page says it should be used for embedded systems, yet the compiler roadmap for v1 contains " functions for reading and writing files".

What files? This will run on top of an operating system? Why bother with a new language then.

<comment><USER22> A lot of embedded systems use file storage even while not having an OS.

A very cheap way to add storage to low volume productions is to add a microSD card. At that point it's easier to go for something like FAT and work with that

<comment> yc-kraln and yet that sounds like a library and not a core language construct.

<comment><USER23> Some people like larger languages that have more of the basics rolled into core. Not sure if that fits here though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>